Soros Justice Fellowships
Soros Justice FellowshipsApplication Guidelines | Grantee List
|
Fredric Dannen
2005 Dannen is completing a nonfiction book on David Wayne Spence, an innocent man executed by the state of Texas. The Spence case is a paradigm of virtually everything that is wrong with the American system of capital punishment: Spence received all the due process to which he was entitled, yet never once came close to getting a new trial. Like so many other capital cases that resulted in wrongful convictions, the Spence prosecution relied heavily on jailhouse snitch testimony and junk science. Dannen will use the Spence case to tell a revealing story about the realities of the post-conviction phase of a death penalty case, and to highlight the collective failure of the courts to prevent Spence’s state-sanctioned murder. Austin, TX | |
