[Deathpenalty]death penalty news --- USA

[Joerg Sommer]

death penalty news

December 21, 2004


USA:

The Forgotten and the Abolition of the Death Penalty in the Heart of America

The issue of the Death Penalty isn’t really directly important for most of 
us in Europe, because we have no death penalty. And so a lot of my friends 
or family members were surprised to hear of my interest in helping to 
abolish the Death Penalty in other regions of the world, with a focus on 
the United States. That was four years ago. Now, when I look back I see how 
naive I was to believe that someone in Europe could change a broken system 
in another country. But I am a part of this fight now and every day I learn 
what that means.

I met a lot of people over these four years - people who lost family or 
friends through a crime, people who are on Death Row and people who 
dedicate their time and resources to fight against the Death Penalty. I 
have heard many different stories. I heard arguments for the Death Penalty 
and of course, against it. I have witnessed small, but important victories 
toward the Abolition of the Death Penalty in the U.S.  I have  also very 
close to people who have been executed by the State.

Let me share with you some details* and personal experiences so you can 
better understand why I will never give up my fight against state executions.
There are 38 States in the USA who have the Death Penalty.


The total Death Row population is about 3.471 inmates.


The three Death Rows in the U.S. with the largest number of condemned are:

- California with 638 inmates
- Texas with 455 inmates
- Florida with 384 inmates

The three Death Rows with the least number (2 each) of condemned prisoners are:

- New Mexico
- New York
- Wyoming

This year 59 inmates were executed ( last year 65 ) and 130 Death Sentences 
were given (last year 144).


The percentage of executions by U.S. regions:

- South 85%
- Midwest 12%
- West 3 %
- Northwest 0%

There were 117 inmates who were exonerated and freed from Death Row since 
the Death Penalty was reinstated! Last year we had 12 people who were freed 
from Death Row, this year 5 people have been exonerated.

In Texas for example more and more concerns about the Death Penalty have 
been expressed because of the questions raised by DNA labs:

"Do we honestly want to risk executing people who may be innocent? I had 
enough questions about our administration of the death penalty to have my 
name taken off the prison that houses death row inmates. This is one of the 
reasons why I did so."

- Former TDCJ Chairman Charles Terrell
(in a letter to The Dallas Morning News, supporting calls for a moratorium 
on Harris  Co. executions in the wake of the Houston crime-lab fiasco.)

A few days ago the Kansas Supreme Court ruled the death penalty 
unconstitutional. Earlier this year it was the New York Supreme Court that 
halted its state’s practice of capital punishment. Under its new Governor, 
New Jersey is shortly expected to enact a moratorium on executions while a 
thorough study of that state’s death penalty system is being carried out.

I do not suggest that all Death Row inmates are innocent of the crimes with 
which they have been charged. No, most of them are not, but if you read all 
of this it shows that it is time to have a moratorium to take a closer look 
at this system, as was done in Illinois 2000.

During the last 4 years I have corresponded with people condemned on 
America’s Death Rows and have traveled from Germany to visit with some of 
them. Through this correspondence and travels I have learned a great deal 
about these folks and about myself. I have come to know some and have seen 
some put to death. One of my first pen-pals was one of the 117 inmates who 
had been released. In a letter, he offered that if I ever had any questions 
about the death penalty I could ask, Esther Brown, Executive 
Secretary/Treasurer of the Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty 
(www.phap.org)

Nearly four years ago, I wrote a short e-mail message to Esther which 
resulted in a wonderful friendship. Esther Brown is a powerful, "free 
world" voice of the Death Row inmates. She is the coordinator for meetings, 
interviews with the media and much more. For the past year and a half she 
has been traveling through Alabama to demand a moratorium on executions. 
Thirty three (33) city councils/ county commissions in Alabama have so far 
passed the resolution. In November I visited her for the second time and 
she asked me if I would be interested in going with her to the city council 
of a small town to urge another moratorium. I was pleased to do so. It 
involved a two hour drive with a short stop at the highest point in 
Alabama. The city, Ridgeville, has a population of 158 people and 124 are 
African-American.

When we arrived the meeting point, I understood what these trips mean to 
Esther. Some of these small towns and cities have so many problems like bad 
water, poor public education, poverty, unemployment and so on. We came into 
the room where poverty could easily be seen but we were immediately met 
with a warm reception, filled with kindness and cordiality. We had coffee 
together and small talk with and about the folks of Ridgeville. The mayor 
asked Esther to make her statement and in the audience I noticed a minister 
who could be best described as a man with sad eyes. Please understand that 
all the people in the room, with exception of Esther and I, were 
African-American and that Esther’s message struck a chord with them. At the 
time, my thought was that perhaps one or more of them had a family member 
or a friend in prison.

After Esther had finished her presentation, the members of the city council 
voted unanimously for a moratorium on the Death Penalty. When we left the 
room the minister shook Esther’s hands and he was so happy that we had 
come! At that moment I understood what it means to truly care for another 
human being. The minister deeply cares for the people in his community and 
I am sure he talked about that evening at his church on the following 
Sunday. For me it was a moment which remains deep in my heart.

To feel the gratitude these people had for simply being considered 
important for a few short moments - to see their thankfulness to two 
sisters who had come to listen to their problems was one of the most solemn 
and humbling experiences in my life. For these reasons and for our overall 
objective, we will continue our fight against state executions. We are 
committed to do everything we can to help the many within and outside the 
United States who object to state-run killing and are fighting every day to 
abolish the Death Penalty. I am fully confident that one day we will be 
victorious. Every small victory is a step forward. We invite every Axis of 
Logic reader to do what you can and to join us in our mission to end the 
death penalty in the United States and around the world. The intrinsic 
rewards of this work for justice are deeply gratifying and far outweigh the 
costs.

(source: AxisofLogic.com)


-------------------


Death Penalty Conveys Justice To Victim And Society

Two high profile criminal cases have focused the public’s attention on the 
death penalty. In California, after three days of deliberation, the jury 
that found Scott Peterson guilty of murdering his pregnant wife and their 
unborn son determined he should be executed for his crimes. In Connecticut, 
Michael Ross is scheduled to be executed on January 26, 2005, for 
kidnapping and murdering four young women in 1983 and 1984.

Even though the death penalty is a just and appropriate form of punishment 
for certain crimes, there are individuals and organizations that lobby for 
its abolition.

The European Union has sent a letter to Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell, 
asking her to grant a reprieve to Ross.
In the December 10 letter, officers of the EU asked Rell to “grant a 
reprieve to Mr. Ross to allow for deliberation on this complex and emotive 
issue.”

The death penalty certainly stirs emotions, but the case of Michael Ross is 
not complex. After a four-month trial in 1987, he was convicted of 
murdering four women and he has confessed to killing four more. He was 
given the death sentence for his crimes. Since sentencing, the Ross case 
has voyaged through 17 years of deliberation and judicial maneuvering. It 
has been a long road, not a rush, to justice.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty and says the policy “cannot 
disguise the fact that the state is involved in a premeditated killing, a 
policy that is a symptom of a culture of violence rather than a solution to 
it.”

The AI web site says the death penalty has not been shown to have a 
deterrent effect, can have a brutalizing impact on society and undermines 
respect for human rights.
Others have made similar claims. In Connecticut, public defender John 
Holdridge opposes Ross’s execution, claiming that it would make the death 
penalty more “socially and politically acceptable.”

Both Holdridge and AI misconstrue the purpose of punishment and the 
justification for the death penalty for certain crimes, such as murder.

The death penalty is not a “solution” to crime. That is why the debate over 
whether or not capital punishment has a deterrent effect is irrelevant. The 
execution of a criminal is not carried out to send a message to potential 
criminals; the issue is not to prevent future acts of murder but to convey 
justice to the victim and society.

Writing in the 1986 Harvard Law Review, Ernest van den Haag, pointed out 
that punishment is not intended to be an act of vengeance or compensation 
for a victim’s suffering but to “vindicate the law and the social order 
undermined by the crime. This is why a kidnapper’s penal confinement is not 
limited to the period for which he imprisoned his victim
”

An execution, like any form of punishment, confirms essential moral values. 
Individuals have free will and possess the ability to exercise self-control 
when tempted to do wrong. The morality of the death penalty, as with any 
punitive measure, depends upon it being deserved, justly imposed and in 
proportion to the crime being considered.

In the book, “Criminal Justice? The Legal System vs. Individual 
Responsibility,” John Dilulio and Charles Logan wrote, “It is precisely 
within the context of punishment that humanistic concepts are most 
relevant. Principled and fair punishment for wrongdoing treats individuals 
as persons and as human beings, rather than objects. Punishment is an 
affirmation of the autonomy, responsibility and dignity of the individual.”

Despite this common sense argument, there remain those who insist that the 
execution of even the most contemptible murderer legitimizes killing and 
brutalizes society. It does no such thing. Every form of punishment is 
intentionally disagreeable, yet as unpleasant as incarceration is no one 
makes the case that holding someone against his will in prison legitimizes 
the act of kidnapping.

“The difference between murder and execution, or between kidnapping and 
imprisonment,” van den Haag pointed out, “is that the first is unlawful and 
undeserved, the second a lawful and deserved punishment for an unlawful 
act. The physical similarities of the punishment to the crime are 
irrelevant. The relevant difference is not physical, but social.”

Everyone has free will. By committing a crime an individual voluntarily 
assumes the risk that he might be caught and, if he is, receive a 
legitimate punishment that he would have avoided if he had chosen not to 
engage in a criminal act. The sentences imposed on Ross and Peterson are 
punishments they freely risked facing by committing murder. The death 
penalty is not an injustice when imposed on an individual who has committed 
murder.

One of the main purposes of the law is to make people aware that they will 
be held responsible for their own behavior, yet there are those who 
continue to draw water from the philosophical wells of the 1960s, when 
criminal law was altered by those who insisted crime was caused by social 
factors beyond a criminal’s control. It was determined that a variety of 
extenuating circumstances - perhaps the criminal suffered an abusive 
childhood – should be considered during a trial. This process neglects the 
fact that while an individual may not have had control over what happened 
to him in the past, he does have control over how he responds to his, 
perhaps tragic, circumstances. A criminal’s biography may well be a story 
of misfortune and misery, but that offers no comfort to a victim and his or 
her family and the narrative will not nullify the crime.

Those who oppose the death penalty suggest their moral superiority by 
calling for consideration of the sanctity of life. Of course, they mean the 
sanctity of the murderer’s life. (After all, the victim is dead.) However, 
life in prison permits a murderer to enjoy a degree of life in confinement 
that the victim will never experience. Even the simplest of pleasures – 
reading a book, enjoying a meal, taking a walk – are forever denied the 
victim. A victim’s family also suffers from the violent loss of a loved one.

More than three centuries ago English philosopher John Locke wrote, “Two 
Treatises on Civil Government.” Declaring a number of truths that America’s 
Founding Fathers would embrace, Locke said man was born with the right to 
enjoy all the privileges of the law of nature.

All men, Locke said, had the right to preserve their life, liberty and 
estate against the injuries that would be imposed by others and to judge 
and punish the violations of that law “even with death itself, in crimes 
where the heinousness of the facts in his opinion require it.”

Those who prey brutally and purposefully upon their fellow man invite, by 
their own deeds, society’s absolute punishment. It is the murderer who 
violates the sanctity of innocent life and justice demands, once convicted, 
the forfeiture of his own life. The degree to which a society respects the 
sanctity of life is manifested in its readiness to justly take the life of 
one who has unjustly taken life. Such a severe penalty is not invoked with 
joy, but with justice.

[The author, Joseph Bell, has hosted a radio talk show and is a former 
editorial writer/columnist for several Connecticut newspapers. A former 
liberal Democrat, Bell has not been on the conservative side of the aisle 
for very long. He voted for Clinton/Gore in 1992. Abandoning the 
convictions that he had held and defended through adolescence and into 
adulthood was not easy. Sincere soul-searching and a commitment to 
distinguish fact from fiction compelled him to accept that liberal ideology 
was bankrupt.]

(source: opinioneditorials.com)