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 contains records pertaining to various international, national, regional, state, and local activist organizations, non-profit groups, political parties, and religious organizations concerned with the death penalty and other activism related activities and events. The groups represented are primarily, but not exclusively, concerned with the abolition of the death penalty and prisoner rights. Included in this series are newsletters, correspondence, pamphlets, flyers, mass mailings, as well as a small amount of administrative material for organizations in which Bill Pelke himself was involved, such as the Indiana Coalition Against the Death Penalty (ICADP), the Northwest Indiana Coalition to the Abolish Control Unit Prisons, and the Northern Indiana Coalition Against the Death Penalty. Researchers should be aware that the bulk of this material consists of public outreach materials collected by Bill Pelke.

New York county court papers arranged by county of Murder Two indictments.

Watt Espy kept a series of index cards, grouped mainly by state, that records information about executions on American soil (colonies, states, territories) since the 1600s. Some cards contain lots of information, including name, place of execution, method, and details of the crime. Other cards have very little information aside from the fact that someone was executed. Sometimes there is not even a name—just "two slaves" or "pirate". There are additional categories for federal, military, and indigenous executions. There are two different card sizes; for the 3x5 inch cards, each state, territory, or other main division is identified with a manila tab. Subdivisions are marked with blue, unlined cards and are intended to mirror the arrangement of materials in Series #2 as closely as possible.

This series contains a file for every execution or sentence of death given to a woman or a juvenile that was known to Victor L. Streib. Some of the case study files are simply photocopies of Watt Espy's research cards, especially in cases where Espy's research is the sum total information available that particular execution. Many of these cards are from before 1976, when the death penalty was re-instated in America. Due to improved record-keeping in the modern era, case files from recent years, especially ones that Streib advised in some capacity, may contain significantly more information than others. Information pertinent to these cases vary greatly by individual depending on the state, the era, as well as media coverage of the case. The research collection is up-to-date as of 2012, so any executions, pardons, or reversals that went forward since that date will remain in the series they were in at the time these papers were acquired by the archives.

The NCADP collection is comprised mainly of case files. Files include newspaper clippings, publicity materials, and correspondence between the NCADP, inmates, lawyers, and family and friends. Some artwork, court transcripts, and death warrants are also present. Each folder represents a death penalty case that the organization was interested in or involved with.

Death row inmates over the age of 17

This series consists exclusively of the annual reports on prison and jail conditions that the Prison Association/Correctional Association submitted to the New York State Assembly. The reports contain minutes of meetings, presidential addresses, committee reports, reports on individual prisons and prison conditions, prison reform campaigns in New York State, transcripts of testimony before the NYS legislature on pending policy measures, and lists of members and corresponding members of the Association. Reports published during the latter half of the nineteenth century chronicle the Association's role in establishing national and international prison reform organizations and conferences and furnish information about prison policies elsewhere in the United States and the world.

This series contains all of Professor Baldus Georgia material. In particular the McCleskey v. Zant and McCleskey v. Kemp cases in Georgia.