Collections : [National Death Penalty Archive]

This series contains legal records that are mostly official court proceedings of the Alvin Ford cases covering a period of seventeen years. These cases include State of Florida v. Ford: 1974, which covers the original trial court proceedings. Later cases that bear the same style relate to later attempts of Ford on a motion for post conviction relief and stay of execution in 1981 and a second attempt in 1987. Ford v. State of Florida:1975-1988, Ford v. Strickland et al.: 1981-1984, Ford v. Wainwright: 1981-1988, and Ford v. Dugger: 1986-1991 all represent the trial cases Ford's attorneys filed against a succession of superintendents of the Florida State Prison and secretaries of the Department of Corrections. Other proceedings include multiple trials, pleas, motions, hearings, testimonies, and appeals. Other legal records are background studies on Ford that include detailed psychiatric evaluations, medical and prison records, case summaries, and undated notes by Laurin Wollan.

This series features administrative national files for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP). There are materials on national events such as Abolition Day and Fastathon, as well as national newsletters, including execution alerts. The NCADP bylaws and director's list are also included.

Series contains records from Leigh Bienen's participation in the New Jersey Proportionality Review Project led by Special Master David C. Baldus. This includes correspondence, data gathering information, data tables, and multiple case briefs for the major cases involved in the proportionality review including New Jersey v. Robert O. Marshall, New Jersey v. Marko Bey, and New Jersey v. John Martini.

Series 1 consists of news clippings and magazine articles related to the death penalty issue, notices of rallies, fliers, and pleas written by death penalty abolitionists. The original order of materials, accumulated and grouped together by Halperin, was maintained.

This series contains records created by or about commissions, hearing notes, legislation, bills, testimonies, letters and other political outreach materials, collected or created by Maryland Citizens Against State Executions, intended to end the death penalty in Maryland.

This series contains drafts and reprints of the works of Hugo Bedau. They are organized first by format and then alphabetically by title. Formats include journal articles, newspaper articles, pamphlets, book chapters, lectures, and encyclopedia articles. Also included are materials related to various conferences Bedau attended.

This series comprises the bulk of Watt Espy's primary and secondary research and is therefore the largest in the collection. Initially, approximately half of these documentation of execution records were arranged in an organized fashion alphabetically by state, or by federal, military, tribal or international categories and then alphabetically by an individual's name. The others were not arranged in any discernable scheme with a significant amount of materials kept as unorganized loose documents in boxes. Espy marked some files as "not written up," but it was ultimately unclear how these differed from other records. After careful review, the archivists decided to combine all of the documentation of executions together, divided the records into five subseries for executions conducted by all 50 states and the District of Columbia, federal executions, military executions, indigenous executions, and international executions, and subsequently arranged and inter-filed all the loose materials.

The SCJP gained the attention of a diverse group of benefactors, including the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the New World Foundation. Not every institution found in the fundraising series was a donor to the Coalition; some were solicited by Joe Ingle and his colleagues but did not have donating policies that included death penalty issues. Other institutions supported the anti-death penalty platform but could not stretch their funds to meet the Coalition's needs in a given year. Most of the material in this series is correspondence between foundation officials and Ingle, but there are also some grant proposals included. More grant proposals can be found in the subject files.

The series consists of the contents of Manny Babbitt's cell at the time of his execution in May 1999, materials relating to his time in San Quentin, and documents about his Marine Corps service. This series contains Manny Babbitt's original works, including several poems. There also is an empty cardboard box which housed Manny Babbitt's personal items in his cell. Please note that the dates for the series are not inclusive and the bulk of files date from the 1990s.