Collections : [National Death Penalty Archive]

This series contains information about numerous philanthropic foundations from which the Association sought funding. These files were kept separate from other records created or gathered by Association staff, and contain annual reports and other items published by numerous foundations, applications for funding, and correspondence. Also included are Association staffers' and board members' manuscript lists of contacts, fundraising ideas, and internal memoranda.

This series contains materials about Watt Espy, including his speeches, published and unpublished writings, testimony, portraits, and news clips featuring Espy or quoting him. Of interest are files relating to his unpublished manuscript on juvenile executions and to a small signed portrait and autograph collection, mainly featuring members of the United States Congress. In addition, there are several personal items of Espy's: his typewriter, which he utilized well into the 1990s, his eyeglasses, his hat, and a special award from the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty from 1991.

Contains publications of national magazines, LifeLines, the official newsletters of the NCADP as well as publications by affiliate organizations.

This series contains published works used by Streib in his professional duties as both a lawyer and a professor. Many of the articles are Streib's own writings, including his exhaustive and perpetually updated lists of every juvenile and woman on Death Row in America, as well as those who had been executed. This series also includes publications by the Legal Defense Fund and others who documented capital punishment cases. Source material for this finding aid is largely drawn from "A Tribute to Victor Streib," published in Ohio Northern University Law Review Volume XXXVII, no. 2 (2012), which can be found within this series.

This series includes reference material on death penalty law in both the United States and abroad. Items in this series relate to some aspect of the death penalty and focus on education. Subjects include juvenile executions, the cost of the death penalty, and its impact on victim and inmate families. Material consists of news articles, correspondence, newspaper clippings, press releases, statements, and reports.

This series consists of published copy, reprints, and drafts of articles about criminal justice and capital punishment by other authors which Watt Espy collected. Authors include scholars Michael Radelet, Hugo Bedeau, and Victor Streib. The archivists kept articles written by others and sent as part of correspondence to Espy with the original letters in Series 5: Correspondence.

July 1995 article in Iowa Law Review a,d 1996 Larry Kramer book: Reforming the Civil Justice System

Watt Espy amassed materials related to a variety of organizations advocating against capital punishment, for better prison conditions, for human rights, and for an improved and unbiased criminal justice system. The groups vary and may be secular or religious, national, statewide or local. Materials in this series include newsletters, execution alerts, appeals, meeting minutes, and brochures. In some instances, it is possible to determine that Espy was active within or supported a particular organization as his name appears in meeting minutes or related papers.

Since 1981 the NCADP has held an annual national conference. Files in this series contain flyers, published materials, and documents from each conference. Also included is material from conferences held by affiliate organizations.

Debate over the reinstatement of the death penalty in Iowa reappeared in the mid 1990s. Baldus made efforts to educate Iowans on what a death penalty would bring by speaking, writing, and communicating with groups like Iowans Against the Death Penalty. In early 1995 the State House passed a bill that would have reinstated capital punishement in Iowa. The bill was defeated in the State Senate later that year. State Representative Jack Holveck wrote that Baldus's "role was probably more important than any other single person."