By The Editors
As 2012 looms, and TheDefendersOnline.com takes its traditional two-week hiatus for the holidays, we look back on a year full of astonishing events.

By Lee A. Daniels
The death penalty, once an inviolate feature of America’s legal and political landscape, has lost significant support among the American public, according to a report released this week.

In an article for the Open Society blog, Christina Swarns, Director of the Criminal Justice Practice of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, discusses how the controversial case had “continued to follow the arc of [the debate about] the American death penalty.”

By The Editors
Addressing what he said was “a consistent drumbeat of concern from many Americans,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Tuesday pledged that the government will vigorously oppose measures and schemes designed to prevent registered voters from voting next year, whether they come in the form of direct challenges to core provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 or are couched in measures ostensibly meant to prevent voter fraud.

There are two things well-read people know about Margaret Walker. She spent the first 50 years of her life getting set to write her only novel Jubilee and the rest of her life being celebrated for it.

By Kenneth J. Cooper Brown University’s daring self-examination of its historical ties to slavery has prompted a second Ivy League school, venerable Harvard University, to do the same. The 2006 report that Brown President Ruth Simmons, “Slavery and Justice,”  commissioned found deep connections between the university in Providence, R.I. and slavery and the slave trade. [...]

By Lee A. Daniels
For the past few months the state of Alabama has been buffeted by an unusual force.

Call it the “day of absence” syndrome.

The defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose controversial 1982 conviction and death sentence for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer galvanized a worldwide protest, recorded a critical landmark this week.

Today, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office announced that it will not seek another death sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Pennsylvania law now requires Mr. Abu-Jamal to be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for his controversial 1982 murder conviction in the shooting death of a police officer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

By George E. Curry
Herman Cain’s asinine campaign to become president of the United States is now toast. Not just toast – burnt toast. He officially flamed out Saturday on the heels – or, shall we say, high heels – of yet another woman accusing him of sexual misconduct.