Paranoia and the death penalty:  Nicholas Von Hoffman has this article in The Nation, entitled "Surveillance Makes You Paranoid," with a new twist on the NYC Police Dept's surveillance practices (including of anti-death penalty activists around the US) leading up to the 2004 Republican National Convention (as recently reported on in this March 25 article in the NYT, entitled "City Police Spied Broadly Before G.O.P. Convention").

Pass-through excerpt from NYT article:
..."For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.... These [the spied upon] included members of street theater companies, church groups and antiwar organizations, as well as environmentalists and people opposed to the death penalty, globalization and other government policies. Three New York City elected officials were cited in the reports." ...