Friday, July 17, 2009

Press Release: Reginald Blanton

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
CAMPAIGN TO END THE DEATH PENALTY
Lily Hughes (512) 482-0642 or Laura Brady (512) 638-0403

Friday, July 17th: Austin's chapter of the Campaign to END the Death Penalty condemns the execution date recently given to Texas Death Row prisoner Reginald Blanton. Blanton was delivered an execution date for Tuesday, October 27th 2009 by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Blanton's supporters with the Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP) claim he has a strong innocence claim. According to Randi Jones of the CEDP, no physical evidence links him to the crime.

"Reginald's case exemplifies serious prosecutorial misconduct," said Jones, "They systematically excluded African Americans from the jury pool."

Jones added that Blanton was forced to rely on an incompetent public defender who failed to present evidence of innocence at the original trial.

Blanton has a strong base of support. Most notably, his mother Anna Reese has, along with fellow parishioners at San Antonio's Macedonia Baptist Church, held several events to publicize Blanton's case.

Blanton is a founding member of the DRIVE Movement, a group of prisoners who seek to unite the death row community and organize for better living conditions at the notorious Polunsky Unit, Texas’ Death Row prison house in Livingston, Texas.

Reginald’s case is not free from the problems that exist throughout this country.

Texas continues to buck the national trend, which is turning against capital punishment and is churning forward with numerous scheduled executions in spite of the recent 135th national exoneration from death row.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree with this .,.,.,



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Anonymous said...

A group of us at Boston College performed a play, "Not in My Name," on October 25th to protest the death penalty. In the play, performed with members of The Living Theater, we protested the upcoming execution of Reginald Blanton and called for a stay of all executions in the U.S. See the website: http://www.livingtheatre.org/nimn/index.html
for a copy of the play. It can be performed by any person or group for their use in efforts to end the death penalty. Stop the death penalty!
-Susan

ptg said...

Adios, Blanton. This creep was guilty. The anti-death penalty cause is hurt when wretches like Blanton are defended as innocent. Maybe nobody ought to be put to death for murder, but claiming that murderers are innocent when they aren't makes the cause look stupid.

Anonymous said...

guilty..rip carlos..the guy was videotaped at the cash america..he was on the news wearing carlos' jewelry..all the supporters in the world dont know the truth, people who lived at the stepping stones do though.. r.i.p to both..

#WhenI'mEnough said...

People pawn jewelry all the time, there are pictures of Reginald and Carlos both wearing the same jewelry at different times of the month before the murder of Garza. ALSO, that is completely circumstantial evidence, there was no murder weapon, no fingerprints, no DNA evidence, and I hardly think that $79 worth of jewelry is motive for murder. It is easy for us to sit back and just trust the criminal justice, system simply because if we deal with the reality that our brand of Texas justice is more concerned with convicting someone, anyone, and will go to any means to achieve that is pretty horrendous. RIP Reginald Blanton, & the fight against injustice in Texas will live on, in yours and Cameron Todd Willingham's name.