Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> StandDown Texas Project

Criminal Law

: StandDown Texas Project

Behind Closed Doors ,,, and Padded Words

By Steve Hall

Craig Haney posts, "Hiding From the Death Penalty," at Huffington Post.  Haney is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of Death by Design.Here's an excerpt from this must-read:Last month, Utah prison officials took a death row prisoner named Ronnie Gardner to a specially designed room, strapped him tightly into a chair, and draped a black hood over his head. By a prearranged signal, a group of five volunteer executioners aimed their Winchester rifles at a target placed over his heart, and opened fire. I met Ronnie Gardner more than 10 years ago, when his appellate attorneys asked me to analyze his background or "social history" to see whether the early trauma and abuse that he had suffered helped explain the tumultuous path his life had taken, and to form an opinion about whether that kind of analysis should have been presented in his capital trial...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on July 27, 2010 (boomark / email).