News and Updates

Credit: Allthingsharlem.com

Joseph “Jazz” Hayden speaks to New York 1 during the Courthouse Protests.

At 8:45 a.m. on a frigid January morning, the protesters are warming up:

“Mic Check!” “Mic Check!”

“Mic Check!” “Mic Check!”

Outside the New York Criminal Court Building on Centre Street a crowd of about 50 huddles behind a row of metal barricades as a few N.Y.P.D. officers look on. A red sign reads “WE ARE IN A POLICE STATE.” Next up is Kassandra Frederique of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA); her breath visible as she speaks, a chilly cameraman from NY1 a few feet away.

Attempted murder. That's what Joe D'Ambrosio wants the prosecutors to be charged with.

He says the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office tried to kill him by withholding 10 pieces of evidence at his trial, evidence that could have led to a not-guilty verdict.

Man who has spent 20 years on death row could be freed

Jermaine Wright was convicted in 1992 in the killing of a clerk at a liquor store on Gov. Printz Boulevard.

WILMINGTON -- The second-longest-serving inmate on Delaware's death row may be free on bail as soon as next week.

 At a brief hearing Tuesday that left prosecutors speechless, Superior Court Judge John A. Parkins Jr. overturned the conviction and death sentence of Jermaine Wright for the January 1991 slaying of liquor store clerk Phillip Seifert. 

Adam Cohen

California is having problems with its death penalty. It hasn’t executed anyone since 2006, when a federal court ruled that its method of lethal injection was improper and could cause excessive pain. The state spent five years coming up with a better method — and last month, a judge threw that one out too. One indication of just how bogged down California’s capital-punishment system is: the inmate who brought the latest lethal-injection challenge has been on death row for 24 years.