- Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook April 24, 1954) is an African-American journalist, political activist, and former militant leader from Philadelphia. An early member of the Black Panther Party, Abu-Jamal was convicted of the 1981 murder of Philadelphia Police Department officer Daniel Faulkner. Originally sentenced to death, Abu-Jamal's sentence, but not his conviction, was overturned in December 2001 by Judge William H. Yohn, Jr.
- Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman is an American progressive broadcast journalist and author. A 1984 graduate of Harvard University, Goodman is best known as the principal host of Pacifica Radio's "Democracy Now!" program, where she has been described by the Los Angeles Times as "radio's voice of the disenfranchised left". Coverage of the peace and human rights movements — and support of the independent media — are the hallmarks of her work.
- Helen Prejean
Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ (b. April 21, 1939, Baton Rouge, Louisiana) is a Roman Catholic nun, one of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille, who has become a leading American advocate for the abolition of the death penalty. Her crusade began in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1981, through a correspondence she maintained with a convicted murderer, Elmo Patrick Sonnier, who was sentenced to death by electrocution.
- Tammy Bruce
Tammy Bruce (born August 19, 1962) is a pro-choice lesbian feminist who hosts "The Tammy Bruce Show," a radio talk show broadcast on over 160 stations in the United States. Bruce describes herself as a classical liberal author and political commentator. "The Tammy Bruce Show" broadcasts three hours a day six days a week, including Saturdays. She is also a political contributor to Fox News Channel. She is described on her website as "an openly homosexual, …
- Terry Nichols
Terry Lynn Nichols (born April 1, 1955) is a U.S. Army veteran who was convicted of being an accomplice of Timothy McVeigh, the man convicted of murder in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, April 19, 1995), which claimed 168 lives. Nichols was convicted of eight counts of manslaughter in a United States District Court and was sentenced to life imprisonment in ADX Florence, a supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
- Nat Hentoff
Nat Hentoff contributes regularly to Village Voice and The Wall Street Journal . Among other publications in which his work has appeared are The New York Times , The New Republic , Commonwealth , The Atlantic , and The New Yorker , where he was a staff writer for more than 25 years.
- Bernard Shaw
Bernard Shaw (born May 22, 1940 in Chicago, Illinois) was a leading news anchor for CNN from 1980 to his retirement in 2001. He attended the University of Illinois at Chicago from 1963 to 1968. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps. Shaw is widely remembered for the question he posed to Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Michael Dukakis at his second Presidential debate with George H. W. Bush during the 1988 election, which Shaw was moderating.
- John Couey
John Evander Couey (born September 19, 1958) was convicted of kidnapping, raping, and murdering nine-year old Jessica Lunsford in February 2005, in Florida. Lunsford's disappearance and Couey's subsequent confession and trial received extensive media coverage. A jury recommended that Couey recieve the death penalty. Couey maintains that he is innocent.
- Judith Kaye
Judith S. Kaye, Chief Judge of New York (b. Monticello, New York on August 4 1938) was appointed by Governor Mario Cuomo on February 22 1993, confirmed by the New York Senate on March 17, and sworn in on March 23. She is the first woman to occupy the State Judiciary's highest office. Kaye holds a B.A. from Barnard College (1958) and a LL.B. from New York University School of Law (cum laude) (1962). She was admitted to the New York State Bar, 1963.
- Henry Lee Lucas
Henry Lee Lucas (August 23, 1936 - March 13, 2001) was an American criminal, convicted of murder and once listed as America's most prolific serial killer. However, he later recanted his confessions. He once flatly stated "I am not a serial killer" in a letter to researcher Brad Shellady. Lucas confessed to involvement in about 3,000 murders, an average of about one murder per day between his release from prison in mid-1975 to his arrest in mid-1983.
- Jean-Marie Le Pen
Jean-Marie Le Pen is a French far-right nationalist politician, founder and president of the Front National (National Front) party. Le Pen has run for the French presidency 5 times, including in 2002, when in a surprise upset he came second, polling more votes in the first round than the main left candidate, Lionel Jospin. Le Pen lost in the second round to president Jacques Chirac. Le Pen again ran in the 2007 French presidential election and finished fourth.
- Gary Gilmore
Gary Mark Gilmore (December 4, 1940 - January 17, 1977) was an American criminal who gained international notoriety as the first person executed in the United States after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 after "Gregg v. Georgia" lifted the four-year moratorium instated by "Furman v. Georgia".
- Stanley Williams
Stanley Tookie Williams III (December 29, 1953 - December 13, 2005), born in Monroe, Louisiana, was a convicted murderer and an early leader of the Crips, a notorious American street gang which had its roots in South Central Los Angeles in 1971. In December 2005 he was executed for the 1979 murders of Albert Owens, Yen-Yi Yang, Tsai-Shai Lin, and Yee-Chen Lin. Williams refused to aid police investigations with any information against his gang, …
- Austin Sarat
Austin Sarat is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College and Five College Fortieth Anniversary Professor. He is a former president of the Law and Society Association; former president of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities; and president of the Consortium of Undergraduate Law and Justice Programs.
- Willie Francis
Willie Francis was a 17 year old African American sentenced to death by electrocution by the state of Louisiana in 1946 (at age 16) for murdering Andrew Thomas, a drugstore owner who employed him. His case is notable as being the first known incident of a failed execution by electrocution in the United States. The murder remained unsolved for nine months, until August 1945 when Francis was detained due to his proximity to an unrelated crime.
- Megan Kanka
Megan Nicole Kanka (December 7, 1986 - July 29 1994) was a seven-year-old girl who was raped and murdered by her neighbor Jesse Timmendequas in Hamilton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey. Timmendequas was already a convicted sex offender. Kanka's death resulted in the New Jersey Legislature passing Megan's Law, which requires convicted sex offenders to notify the local police department when they move into a neighborhood.
- Kenny Hulshof
Kenneth C. "Kenny" Hulshof is a politician from the U.S. state of Missouri, currently representing (map) in the United States House of Representatives. Hulshof was born in Sikeston, Missouri and attended the University of Missouri. Hulshof earned his J.D. from the University of Mississippi Law School. Prior to serving in Congress, Hulshof worked in the public defender's office and as a special prosecutor for the Missouri attorney general's office.
- Wesley Baker
Wesley Eugene Baker was a convicted murderer executed by the U.S. state of Maryland. He was convicted for the June 6, 1991, murder of Jane Tyson in Catonsville. He was pronounced dead at 9:18 p.m. EST after being executed by lethal injection.
- David Kaczynski
David Kaczynski (born October 3, 1949) is the brother of infamous "Unabomber" Theodore ("Ted") Kaczynski. After the anonymous Unabomber demanded in 1995 that his manifesto, titled "Industrial Society and Its Future," be published in a major newspaper as a condition for ceasing his mail-bomb campaign, the "New York Times" and the "Washington Post" both published the manifesto, hoping somebody would recognize the writing style of the author.
- David Westerfield
David Alan Westerfield (born February 25, 1952), of San Diego, California was convicted, in 2002, and sentenced to death for the murder and kidnapping of seven-year-old Danielle Van Dam. He was a successful, self-employed engineer who owned a luxury motor home and lived two houses away from Van Dam. A divorced father of two college students, he is currently incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison.
- Anthony Porter
Anthony Porter (born 1955) was a prisoner on death row whose conviction was overturned in a landmark case for Illinois law and opponents of the death penalty across the world.
- Juan Melendez
Juan Melendez (born 1951 in Brooklyn, New York) is a human rights activist who served 17 year on Death row because he was erroneously sentenced to death. He founded the "Juan Melendez Voices United for Justice Project" and tours the U.S. and Europe to speak against the Death Penalty.
- Earl Washington
Earl Washington Jr. is a former Virginia death-row inmate, charged in 1982 with rape and murder. Washington, with an IQ estimated at 69, confessed to the crime, but apparently only after being coerced by investigators. In 1994, DNA evidence indicated that he was not responsible for the crimes for which he was sentenced. Shortly before his scheduled execution, he was granted clemency by Virginia's governor, who commuted his sentence to life in prison.
- James P. Barker
James P. Barker (born 1982) is a former specialist in the U.S. Army who pleaded guilty on 15 November 2006 to the rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, and of helping murder her and her family. Barker told Army criminal investigators that he poured kerosene on the girl's bullet-ridden body after the killing, according to testimony given at a military hearing in August. The girl's father, mother and five-year-old sister were also killed.
- Rose Bird
Rose Elizabeth Bird (November 2, 1936-December 4, 1999) served for 10 years as the 25th Chief Justice (and first female Chief Justice) of the California Supreme Court until removed from that office by the voters.
- Eric Robert Rudolph
Eric Robert Rudolph (born September 19, 1966), also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, is an American anti-abortion and anti-gay extremist and domestic terrorist who committed a series of bombings across the southern United States, which killed three people and injured at least 150 others. He declared that his bombings were part of a guerrilla campaign against abortion, …
- Gerald Zerkin
Gerald T. Zerkin (1950 -) is a senior assistant federal public defender in Richmond, Va. In the 1970's, he attended Brandeis University, where he received his Bachelor's degree, and Boston College, where he received his degree in Law. He began private practice in 1978, and began his work defending death row inmates in 1980, including Earl Washington. He has specialized in death penalty defense and civil rights.
- Hasan Akbar
Hasan Karim Akbar (born Mark Fidel Kools, c. 1971) is an African American and Muslim convert from Los Angeles, California. He was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder, or "frag", of two fellow soldiers during the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, while he was a U.S. Army soldier with the 101st Airborne, 326th Engineer Battalion.
- Robert Badinter
Robert Badinter is a French politician (after being a high-profile criminal lawyer and a university professor in Law). He belongs to the French Socialist Party and is currently a senator for the Hauts-de-Seine "département". He is mainly known for his struggle against the death penalty.
- Randall Dale Adams
Randall Dale Adams was sentenced to death for the murder of police officer Robert Wood. The crime occurred on November 28, 1976 in Dallas, Texas. Evidence in the case pointed to David Ray Harris. However, Harris may have been an unsatisfactory suspect to police because he was 16-years-old and under Texas law could not be sentenced to death. At Adams' trial, Harris named Adams as the shooter, and Harris was soon back on the streets. A prosecution psychologist, Dr.
- Ernest van den Haag
Ernest van den Haag was a Dutch-American sociologist, social critic, and John M. Olin Professor of Jurisprudence and Public Policy at Fordham University best known for his contributions to National Review. Van den Haag was born in The Netherlands and raised in Italy. In 1937, he was jailed by Mussolini's Fascist government and spent almost the next two full years in solitary confinement. After escaping from Italy, and then from Nazi-occupied France, …
- Ruth Ellis
Ruth Ellis (October 9 1926 - July 13 1955) was a British murderess who was the last woman to be executed in the UK. She was convicted of the murder of her lover, David Blakely, and hanged at London's Holloway Prison.
- Wayne Adam Ford
Wayne Adam Ford (born December 3, 1961) is an American serial killer. He was arrested after he walked into the Humboldt County Sherrif Department in Eureka, California in November 1998 with a woman's severed breast in his pocket. He confessed to having killed four women, and is thought to have killed others. He was found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder on June 27, 2006, and was sentenced to death on August 11.
- Marcus Wesson
Marcus Wesson (b. 1946) is an American man convicted of nine counts of first-degree murder and 14 rape crimes, including the rape and molestation of his underage daughters. All of his victims were his own children, fathered by incestuous relationships with his daughters and nieces, as well as the children by his wife. It is to date Fresno, California's worst mass murder. After a March 12, 2004 standoff with police over a child custody issue, …
- Samuel R. Gross
Samuel R. Gross is an American lawyer and professor known for his work in false convictions and exonerations, notably the Larry Griffin death penalty case. He graduated from Columbia College in 1968 and earned a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1973. He currently teaches at University of Michigan.
- Scott Dyleski
Scott Edgar Dyleski (born October 30, 1988) is an American teenager who was convicted of murdering his neighbor Pamela Vitale, the wife of prominent attorney Daniel Horowitz. He received the maximum penalty allowed by the law, life without parole. As a juvenile he did not qualify for the death penalty.
- Borris Miles
Borris L. Miles (born 1965, Democrat) is a member of the Texas House of Representatives from District 146. Miles was elected in 2006, defeating the 26 year incumbent Democrat, Al Edwards. He has been assigned to the Government Reform and Licensing and Administrative Procedures Committees. Miles drew attention in March of 2007 when he removed two paintings that he found offensive from a display in the state capitol.
- Vincent Brothers
Vincent Brothers is an American convicted mass murderer and the former vice principal of John C. Fremont High School in Bakersfield, California. Brothers holds a master's degree in education from California State University Bakersfield and a bachelor's degree from Norfolk State University. Brothers first gained national attention after the 6 July 2003 death of his wife, Joanie (née Harper), his sons, Marques and Marshall, his daughter, Lyndsey, and his mother-in-law, …
- Mojtaba Saminejad
Mojtaba Saminejad. He was initially arrested in November 2004. He was released on bail on January 27, 2005 but re-arrested on February 12, 2005 because the bail condition was doubled and he could not pay it. According to his supporters, the reason for Saminejad's arrest was the publication on his blog of the arrests of three other bloggers.
- William Bonin
William George Bonin was an American serial killer, also known as “the Freeway Killer”, a nickname he shares with two other serial killers. Along with several accomplices, Bonin raped and killed as many as 36 young men and boys, 14 for which he was convicted and eventually executed.