Collections

For more than three decades, Abraham J. Bonowitz has worked to educate the public about human rights problems, in particular the death penalty and the need for alternatives to the death penalty. During this time he served in numerous director, consultant, managerial, and activist roles with leading advocacy and death penalty abolitionist organizations.

The Bill Babbitt Collection documents nearly ten years of legal efforts to spare Manny Babbitt's life from execution, and two decades of advocacy activities to try to abolish the death penalty.

The Capital Jury Project (CJP) was started in 1991 under the direction of principal investigation, William J. Bowers. The project was funded by an NSF grant to conduct surveys of juror who participated in capital trials. There are three phases to the project.

An artificial collection of over 150 clemency petitions filed by inmates from across the United States for the lessening of their death sentence.

This collection documents the extensive work of death penalty abolitionist Celeste Fitzgerald in the State of New Jersey.

The David C. Baldus Papers document the distinguished legal research career of David C. Baldus, which includes the most sophisticated challenges to capital punishment in the United States since the reinstatement of the Death Penalty in 1976. Included is material from the Georgia Charging & Sentencing Study, which was used as evidence in the McCleskey v. Kemp (1987) decision. Similar studies involving capital sentencing in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Military are also detailed, as is Baldus's formal reports to the supreme courts of a number of other states. Also present is material documenting Baldus's long career as the Joseph B. Tye Professor of Law at the University of Iowa Law School. This includes teaching material, presentations, publications, and material documenting faculty service.

This collection predominantly contains the Death Penalty Information Center's audio/video resources and clippings files on capital punishment.

This collection documents the Death Row Support Project, a project of the Church of the Brethren, which connects individuals incarcerated on Death Row with pen pals.

Elisabeth Semel's papers primarily consist of articles published from the 1990s to early 2000s used by Semel in her research and work concerning the death penalty.

For over six decades, Eugene G. Wanger created or collected the materials about capital punishment that comprise the Eugene G. Wanger and Marilyn M. Wanger Death Penalty Collection. The collection includes a wide range of materials on the death penalty documenting its history, efforts to abolish or reinstate the practice, its psychological impact, compatibility on religious, moral or ethical grounds, and its operation.