[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.C., ORE., USA

[Rick Halperin]

August 27




TEXAS:

Capital murder indictments issued in Royse City shooting deaths



2 men have been indicted on charges of capital murder in connection with the 
February homicides of 2 people in Royse City.

The current edition of the Hunt County grand jury returned the indictments 
Friday against Dearis Rayvone Davis, 19, of Arlington and Calvin Earl Rayford, 
18, of Rowlett involving the shooting deaths of Nicholas Young and Courtland 
Trowell-Wilmore.

Davis and Rayford are each being held in lieu of $1 million bond each on 
charges of capital murder of multiple persons filed by the Royse City Police 
Department.

Both were taken into custody May 29.

The Royse City Police Department reported it had found 2 people dead in the 
Woodland Creek subdivision during the early hours of Feb. 3, with a 3rd 
individual believed to have left the scene.

One of the two victims was a high school student at the time of his death, and 
the other was a former student.

Capital murder carries a sentence upon conviction of lethal injection or life 
in prison without the possibility of parole.

Davis has had an attorney specializing in death penalty cases appointed to 
represent him, while Rayford has hired a defense attorney.

Davis was appointed an attorney through the West Texas Regional Public Defender 
for Capital Cases program.

Hunt County has been a part of the program since first enrolling in August 
2012.

The West Texas Regional Public Defender Office was established in 2007 through 
interlocal agreements between the counties in the 7th and 9th judicial regions, 
with Lubbock County serving as the administrative county.

Each participating county agrees to pay a yearly fee, based on its population 
and the number of capital murder cases it has filed within the last 10 years.

In the event 2 people are charged with capital murder and are facing the death 
penalty in the same case, the office will only defend 1 of them. The office 
also doesn’t handle the appeals of any convictions, nor does it pay for “second 
chair” defense attorneys, both of which would be still be paid for through the 
county. The office also does not handle capital murder cases where the death 
penalty is not being sought.

Hearings on arraignments concerning the indictments were not immediately 
scheduled with the 354th District Court.

(source: The Herald Banner)








NORTH CAROLINA:

Last gasp for Racial Justice Act appeals before NC Supreme Court----Justices 
hear arguments from death row

The North Carolina Supreme Court will hear arguments from death row inmates who 
contend their sentences were impacted by racial bias.

The court will hear cases on Aug. 26 and 27 in the cases of six prisoners who 
have petitioned to have their sentences overturned using the Racial Justice 
Act, which allows for a systematic review of racial discrimination in death 
penalty trials. Inmates who proved discrimination had to be resentenced to life 
in prison without parole. The bill was signed into law in 2009 when Democrats 
controlled the General Assembly and governor’s mansion, but repealed in 2013 
when Republicans took over both branches.

The court must decide whether the six defendants, who filed claims while the 
law was in effect, have a constitutional right to present their evidence. The 
state is challenging their claim and moving for dismissal without hearings.

“The court must answer a key question for North Carolina,” said David Weiss, an 
attorney with the Durham-based Center for Death Penalty Litigation, one of the 
firms representing the petitioners. “Will our state abide by its constitution 
and confront the evidence that race has played an unacceptable role in death 
penalty trials? Or will we throw the evidence away without a hearing and send 
the message that pervasive racial bias doesn’t matter, even in life-and-death 
trials?”

Oral arguments start Aug. 26 on the cases of Andrew Ramseur, Christina Walters, 
Marcus Robinson, Rayford Burke, and Quintel Augustine. Tilmon Golphin’s case 
will be heard the next day.

Cumberland County inmates Robinson, Golphin, Walters, and Augustine are the 
only defendants whose RJA cases were heard in court. They were resentenced to 
life in prison without parole in 2012, but returned to death row after the N.C. 
Supreme Court sent their cases back to Superior Court for separate hearings 
after the state successfully argued for more preparation time. The Superior 
Court judge dismissed the cases without new hearings.

The Supreme Court will decide whether Robinson, Golphin, Walters and Augustine 
should be sentenced to life, or the right to new hearings.

Andrew Ramseur and Burke, who are from Iredell County, filed claims before the 
law was repealed, but their cases were never heard. After the repeal, their 
claims were dismissed, with the judge ruling they no longer had a right to 
present evidence.

The defendants plan to offer evidence of race discrimination during the 
hearing, including a prosecutor referred to Burke as “a big black bull” during 
closing arguments; two white jurors being allowed to remain in the jury pool 
during Golphin’s trial even after suggesting he should have been lynched. In 
Augustine’s case, prosecutors wrote insulting notes about black jurors. A black 
juror with criminal history was a “thug” while a white juror who trafficked in 
drugs was “a fine guy.” A black juror was a “blk wino” while a white juror with 
a DUI conviction was a “country boy - ok.” A black woman was acceptable because 
she was “from a respectable BLK family.”

In all 6 cases, a statistical study showed prosecutors struck qualified black 
jurors at higher rates than whites, which advocates say denied the defendants 
the right to a jury of their peers.

“These defendants uncovered a mountain of evidence that race played a role in 
their death sentences. Now, the law requires that our state deal with that 
evidence,” Weiss said. “If the justices don’t allow these defendants a fair 
hearing, North Carolina will have given up even the pretense of believing in 
justice for all.”

Racial discrimination in the jury box is a national problem, which was 
highlighted again in June when the U.S. Supreme Court granted a new trial to 
Mississippi death row prisoner Curtis Flowers because the prosecutor 
systematically excluded black jurors over his trial and subsequent appeals.

“Jury discrimination is one of the key civil rights issues of our time,” said 
Jin Hee Lee, senior deputy director of Litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense 
and Educational Fund, which filed a brief in support of the RJA defendants. “It 
threatens the integrity of our justice system and our democracy when we allow 
black citizens to be illegally barred from jury service. We hope North Carolina 
will give the evidence in these capital cases the serious consideration it 
deserves, and take needed steps to end race discrimination in North Carolina’s 
death penalty.”

(source: The Charlotte Post)

*********************

The Persistent History of Excluding Black Jurors in North Carolina



A statewide pattern of discrimination in jury selection has gone largely 
uncorrected, while lives remain in the balance, advocates say.

Shirley Burns lost one of her sons to murder in 2006. The following year, 
another son, Marcus Robinson, was scheduled to be executed.

North Carolina sent Robinson, who is Black, to death row in 1994 for fatally 
shooting Erik Tornblom. At the time of the crime, Robinson was 18 and Tornblom 
was 17.

But in February 2007, the state granted Robinson a stay. And in 2009, the state 
legislature passed the Racial Justice Act, which permitted death row prisoners 
to challenge their sentence by showing that “race was a significant factor in 
seeking or imposing the death penalty.”

Robinson’s attorneys argued 3 years later that Black jurors were unfairly 
excluded from his jury, which reflected a statewide pattern of discrimination. 
The court agreed, and sentenced him to life without parole.

“Marcus could see a life without parole sentence,” Burns told The Appeal. “But 
no sooner than he got it, it was taken away from him.”

In 2013, the legislature repealed the Racial Justice Act. Robinson was sent 
back to death row without a hearing. “You’re not only killing him, but you’re 
killing me, the mother,” said Burns. “It’s like a slow death.”

This week, Robinson will return to court, along with five other death row 
prisoners who filed claims under the act. Four of them, including Robinson, 
were sentenced to life without parole as a result of the act and then, after 
the law’s repeal, sent to death row. They are asking the North Carolina Supreme 
Court to either sentence them to life or grant them a hearing.

The exclusion of Black jurors is a pervasive problem in North Carolina, 
advocates say. In 1995, prosecutors were given a “cheat sheet” on how to dodge 
allegations of racial discrimination in jury selection, according to the 
defendants’ counsel. And studies have shown that, for decades, Black jurors in 
the state have been struck at rates higher than non-Black jurors. However, it 
appears little has been done to correct the injustices of the past or prevent 
the continued exclusion of Black jurors, advocates say.

“Those prosecutors go on to train the generation behind them,” said Cassandra 
Stubbs, co-counsel for Robinson and director of the ACLU Capital Punishment 
Project. “It’s just like this passed down playbook of discrimination.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1986 in Batson v. Kentucky that it is 
unconstitutional to discriminate against potential jurors because of their 
race. Despite the constitutional prohibition, Robinson’s counsel charge, 
discrimination continued in North Carolina courtrooms.

In 1995, the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys held a statewide 
training in which attendees received a handout entitled “Batson Justifications: 
Articulating Juror Negatives.” The organization provided a copy of the document 
to The Appeal. Seventeen prosecutors attended the 1995 training, according to a 
list of attendees David Weiss, an attorney with The Center for Death Penalty 
Litigation and co-counsel for Robinson, shared with The Appeal.

The North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys turned over the handout 
during the discovery process for the Racial Justice Act claims, according to 
Weiss. The handout, according to motions filed on behalf of the defendants, 
instructed prosecutors on how to use seemingly “race-neutral” reasons to defend 
against Batson objections. “Attitude — air of defiance, lack of contact with 
Prosecutor, eye contact with defendant or defense attorney,” reads the handout. 
“Body language — arms folded, leaning away from questioner, obvious boredom may 
show anti-prosecution tendencies.”

The director of the district attorneys organization, Peg Dorer, defended its 
use. “It was a sheet of paper that listed appropriate reasons to strike a 
juror,” Dorer told The Appeal. “They have taken that and misrepresented that it 
was a cheat sheet on how to avoid Batson,” she said of the defense attorneys.

When asked if she thought there was an issue of Black people being unfairly 
excluded from juries in North Carolina, Dorer replied, “No, I don’t.”

“We teach the law and we teach appropriate application of the law,” she said. 
“We always have and we always will.”

That posture is precisely the problem, said Weiss. “They don’t think they need 
to adopt any training or do anything different,” he said. “You can’t possibly 
come to the conclusion after reviewing all of this that everything is fine.”

In a study of 173 North Carolina capital cases that occurred from 1990 to 2010, 
prosecutors used peremptory challenges to strike more than half of Black 
potential jurors, compared with about 25 percent of non-Black potential jurors. 
Researchers who studied more than 1,300 felony trials that occurred in 2011 
found similar results: North Carolina prosecutors struck Black jurors at twice 
the rate of white jurors.

During Robinson’s trial in Cumberland County, the prosecutor, John Dickson, 
used peremptory strikes against 5 of the 10 potential Black jurors, compared 
with 4 of the 28 potential non-Black jurors, according to his attorneys. 
Dickson also asked one possible juror, a Black man, if he had graduated high 
school, if he had trouble reading, and if he repeated any grades in school, 
according to Robinson’s attorneys.

The Cumberland County district attorney’s office did not respond to requests 
for comment.

Prosecutors can take steps to avoid racial bias, Weiss said, but they aren’t 
the only ones who haven’t changed course. In the more than 30 years since the 
Supreme Court’s Batson ruling, North Carolina appellate courts have never 
substantiated a Batson violation when a prosecutor has articulated a reason for 
striking a Black juror.

“If the appellate courts are not looking at it closely, that sends the message 
to lower court actors that whatever they do goes and there’s not really going 
to be any oversight,” said Weiss.

Excluding Black jurors not only calls into question the sentence received, but 
the conviction itself, advocates say. Prosecutors have a duty to ensure that 
diverse juries are selected, said Miriam Krinsky, a former prosecutor and the 
executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution.

“Where juries don’t represent the diversity of our communities, that is not a 
system of justice that the prosecutors should stand behind,” said Krinsky. 
“This issue is just fundamental to the integrity and fairness of the justice 
system.”

In Durham County, the district attorney’s office does not track the racial 
makeup of juries, but a spokesperson told The Appeal in an email, “that is 
something we are working to implement.” And District Attorney Satana Deberry 
has held staff trainings on racial bias and the Batson ruling since January, 
when she took office.

“Our gut feelings are susceptible to all our prejudices and biases, just like 
any other decisions we make,” said Deberry. “The first step is training around 
this, acknowledging our gut feeling includes biases and how to work against 
those” when picking juries, she said.

While the trainings are intended to ensure diverse juries going forward, 
Deberry told The Appeal that she is also seeking to review past convictions 
through the creation of a “relief unit.” The unit, she said, would act as an 
“internal watchdog” for the office, and examine life without parole sentences 
for both juveniles and adults, life sentences for felony murder convictions, 
and claims of innocence.

“My predecessors would tell you they didn’t prosecute people because they were 
Black or brown or poor, but what I would say about that is they never even 
asked those questions,” said Deberry. “What we are trying to do is not just 
look at each individual case but look at it in a systemic way and understand, 
why are there so many Black and brown people here?”

(source: theappeal.org)








OREGON:

Oregon’s New Law Narrowing Use of Death Penalty: How Retroactive is “Not 
Retroactive”



When Oregon’s legislators passed a new law limiting the scope of the state’s 
death penalty, the sponsors of the measure offered assurances that it would not 
apply retroactively to prisoners on the state’s death row. Now, a new legal 
opinion by the Oregon Department of Justice has raised questions as to how 
retroactive “not retroactive” actually is and whether the new law applies to 
legal proceedings involving current death-row prisoners whose convictions or 
death sentences may later be found to be unconstitutional. As prosecutors cried 
foul, the sponsors of the bill are split over whether that is what they 
intended, and Governor Kate Brown has not decided on whether to call a special 
legislative session to address the issue before the law goes into effect 
September 29.

SB 1013, signed into law by Governor Kate Brown on August 1, restricts Oregon’s 
future use of the death penalty to certain acts of terrorism, prison murders by 
those already incarcerated for a prior murder, premeditated murders of children 
age thirteen or younger, and premeditated murders of law enforcement personnel. 
A second bill, SB 1005, signed into law August 9, was supposed to clarify that 
SB 1013 did not apply retroactively to the 30 current death-row prisoners who 
were sentenced under the old law. Only one of those prisoners would be subject 
to the death penalty under the new law.

During legislative debate on the death-penalty reform, bill sponsors Sen. Floyd 
Prozanski (D-Eugene) and Rep. Jennifer Williamson (D-Portland) repeatedly 
emphasized that the limitations on death-eligibility would not apply to 
overturn the convictions or death sentences of those already sentenced to death 
in the state. However, on August 9, 2019, Oregon Solicitor General Ben Gutman 
sent an email to state prosecutors advising them that the provisions of the new 
law applied to all future capital trials or sentencing hearings, including 
retrials or resentencings of persons previously sentenced to death. Oregon 
Department of Justice lawyers, Gutman wrote, “have concluded that the new, 
narrower definition of aggravated murder in SB 1013 does apply to pending 
cases—including cases that have been sent back for new penalty or guilt phases. 
That means that most of those cases could no longer be prosecuted as capital 
aggravated-murder cases; they presumably would have to be prosecuted as 
first-degree murder cases instead.” Prosecutors expressed outrage at what they 
considered to be the retroactive application of the law.

Lewis & Clark Law School professor Aliza Kaplan—who provided legislative 
testimony in favor of the bill—said the law is clear on how it should be 
applied and expressed surprise at the controversy. “There is a really big 
difference between retroactivity and resentencing,” she said. The law does not 
retroactively apply to overturn existing capital convictions and death 
sentences, she told The Oregonian, but it does apply to future legal 
proceedings for former death-row prisoners whose cases have been are overturned 
on appeal. “If we got those cases right the first time, then they would be 
settled and done but they are not because of unconstitutional behavior,” Kaplan 
said. “Putting those cases in the same place as settled cases is incorrect.”

Responding to the prosecutorial criticism, Prozanski said the intent of the 
bill was “it was not retroactive” and that its apparent retroactivity resulted 
from “a drafting error.” However, after signing on to an August 13 letter with 
Prozanski saying there had been “an unfortunate technical drafting error … 
[that] we will work to fix,” Williamson—the former House Majority Leader—said 
she had always intended the death-penalty reforms to apply to all future trials 
and sentencings, whether they were new trials or resentencing proceedings. In 
interview with the editorial board of The Oregonian, Williamson said: “This is 
not a technical error. It does what we said it was going to do.” Her initial 
statement, a House staffer later said, had been based on incomplete information 
about the impact the DOJ thought the law would have on unreversed capital 
convictions and death sentences.

The Oregon DOJ first confronted the retroactivity issue after a trial judge 
barred prosecutors from seeking the death penalty against Martin Johnson, who 
was facing a potential capital retrial following the reversal of his 2001 
conviction and death sentence for the murder of a 15-year-old girl. “When you 
look at the plain language of [SB] 1005, it just doesn’t apply to our case,” 
said Dean Smith, one of Johnson’s lawyers. “I don’t know what the intention of 
the legislators was, but if they wished to make it so that [SB] 1013 did not 
apply to people like Mr. Johnson, that was not that hard to do.”

Prozanski has asked Governor Brown to schedule a special legislative session 
before the September 29 effective date of the legislation to address the 
confusion, a move that Williamson opposes. In an August 16 memo to lawmakers, 
she explained the intent of the law and charged that the Oregon District 
Attorneys Association had deliberately sewn confusion about the retroactivity 
issue. The prosecutors, she wrote, “used this same coordinated strategy to 
oppose limitations to the death penalty during session and continue to oppose 
this new law after its passage.”

(source: Death Penalty Information Center)








USA:

The DOJ Wants the Death Penalty for the Accused Pittsburgh Synagogue 
Shooter----The shooter is accused of killing 11 people attending Shabbat 
services at the Tree of Life synagogue last October.



Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty for the man who's accused of 
killing 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh last October, the Justice 
Department said Monday.

Robert Bowers, 46, walked into the Tree of Life synagogue on the morning of 
Oct. 27 armed with an AR-15 and 3 semi-automatic pistols and opened fire on 
worshippers who’d gathered there for their Saturday Shabbat service.

Survivors told investigators that he shouted “All Jews must die” during the 
attack. He then continued to make violently anti-Semitic comments while he was 
in custody and receiving medical treatment, according to the federal complaint.

In prosecutors’ statement of intent to seek the death penalty, they said that 
the gunman demonstrated a lack of remorse for his actions that day — one of the 
aggravating factors they’d considered. They also noted his “substantial 
planning and premeditation,” and his decision to target “vulnerable victims,” 
all aged between 54 and 97.

He was indicted in January on 63 federal crimes, including 11 hate crimes 
leading to death. 22 of those federal crimes carried the possibility of the 
death penalty. He’s also facing 36 counts in Pennsylvania State Court.

The DOJ’s decision to sentence him to death comes one month after Attorney 
General William Barr directed the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to resume federal 
executions after a 16-year de facto moratorium on the federal death penalty.

(source: vice.com)

**********************

The woman who helped change how America thinks about the death penalty is not 
done yet----Sister Helen Prejean’s Dead Man Walking was a milestone. Now she’s 
talking about the justice system, sexism in the church, and more.



In 1982, a Catholic nun from Louisiana began writing letters to a man on death 
row who had been convicted of rape and murder. They began a correspondence. And 
when she realized he didn’t have visitors, she visited. But she never thought 
he would be executed — it hadn’t happened in the state in 20 years.

The nun was Sister Helen Prejean, and her relationship with Pat Sonnier and 
witness to his state-mandated death became the subject of Dead Man Walking, her 
1993 book that inspired the popular film by the same name, in which Susan 
Sarandon played Prejean in an Oscar-winning role.

Today, Sister Prejean is perhaps the greatest single advocate against the death 
penalty.

In River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey, Prejean’s new memoir, the nun 
chronicles her personal transformation that led to her meeting Sonnier — from 
someone who looked to God for answers to someone who believed God’s work should 
be carried out through active community engagement. It’s a transformation that, 
she tells me, is “still happening.”

I talked to Prejean, now 80, about how the church’s changes in the ’60s created 
opportunities for nuns, about the deep structural problems with the criminal 
justice system, and about why many Americans are turning against the death 
penalty.

Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

There was a point in your life where you say you shifted from a kind of 
personal religious journey to a relationship with God that involved engaging 
with the outside world. What happened?

Hope Reese

Helen Prejean

Before, my spiritual life was about directly praying that God would settle the 
big problems of the world and help suffering people. You’ve got to understand, 
I’m operating in a little cocoon. A little microculture of someone who was 
coming from a well-to-do family, out in the suburbs and in the Catholic 
institutions where nuns would teach. I was really separated from actual poor 
people, even in my own city of New Orleans.

Marie Augusta Neal, this great nun, said that Jesus could help the poor. Well, 
I’d been meditating on Jesus my whole life … “If you’re poor, God bless you. 
You share more in the sufferings of Christ. One day you’d have a great reward 
in heaven.” Look how superficial it was. So that talk jolted me and led me to 
move into the inner-city housing project in New Orleans and work at a place 
called Hope House. It was the 1st time African American people were my peers. I 
met them, shared with them, and learned from them.

Hope Reese

That “cocoon” you say you were living in before that ... did the church also 
encourage it?

Helen Prejean

Yeah, they had a club called the “cocoon keepers.” Well, Vatican II [an 
assembly of Roman Catholic religious leaders who met between 1962 and 1965 to 
establish a new foundation for the church, at the behest of Pope John XXIII] 
was part of a huge ecumenical council. It opened the doors to saying that being 
a Catholic, being Christian, is not simply to go to Mass on Sunday and saying 
you believe in the creed. It’s getting out there and responding to the needs of 
the people — which Pope Francis really embodies when he says the church should 
be a “field hospital” where the wounded, suffering people are. So we started 
the church on a trajectory to move out into the world and to work for social 
justice.

Hope Reese

For those who aren’t familiar with Dead Man Walking, in 1982, you began writing 
letters to a man on death row and you eventually witnessed his execution. How 
did this change you?

Helen Prejean

Incrementally. First I wrote letters. Then I realized he didn’t have visitors. 
I had the instinct to visit him. I did this for two and a half years. The next 
thing I know, he’s ratcheting up to execution. [The state of Louisiana] hadn’t 
had an execution in 20 years. I talk to my students about sneaky Jesus. You 
think, “Yeah, I’ll just write a few letters.” You never dream somebody’s going 
to be executed, much less that you were going to witness that.

You can’t witness a person being rendered completely defenseless in a 
premeditated protocol of death, strapped down and killed, and walk away from 
that saying, “I think I’m going to do something else in my life.” Because 
you’ve been a witness, you’ve been drawn in. So then the moral imperative 
begins.

Hope Reese

In 1993, when the book was published, the public was supportive of the death 
penalty. How has public opinion shifted since then?

Helen Prejean

Dead Man Walking, the film, changed the way films were done; they were much 
more reflective. “Wait a minute, what does this mean that we’re going to give 
the state this power?”

Now, over 150 innocent people who were all in the system, condemned to death, 
went to trial, [and were] found guilty [were wrongly convicted]. DNA helped 
open the door. Most of that is prosecutorial misconduct. So the staggering 
number of mistakes we made enters into that.

Then the cost factor. You are throwing literally millions of dollars to execute 
one person, and to what end? Sometimes it doesn’t even happen. Of all the death 
penalties that were sought in Louisiana, over 80 percent of them never come to 
execution, because prosecutors are overzealous, they’re hiding evidence or 
whatever.

On one level, people are saying it’s not worth it. So more and more, the talk 
was, to be tough on crime, [we should] be smart about crime and begin putting 
those resources into community policing — actually making communities more 
safe.

Plus, the data [shows] that the death penalty doesn’t deter anybody.

Support for the death penalty, as of a couple of years ago, dropped below 50 % 
when you [asked], “Death penalty or life imprisonment?” [The most recent data, 
from 2018, has support at 54 %.] Most people don’t want to kill people or trust 
the government to do it, and so that is a shift.

Hope Reese

What about the shift, specifically, within the Catholic Church?

Helen Prejean

I’ve been to all 50 states to talk to people, to bring them close and just say, 
“Look at this.” So first, I’m in Catholic parishes. Occasionally, I bump into a 
bishop. I’ve found that most bishops didn’t want to touch the death penalty 
with a 10-foot pole. But the people begin to get it. And so then I started 
bumping into a few popes along the way.

And there was a man, Joseph O’Dell, in Virginia. I was with him when he was 
executed, and Italians got interested in his case. Pope John Paul II heard 
about it in Rome. And so I wrote him a letter and said, “When a man turns to 
you and says, ‘Sister, please pray God holds up my legs,’ while we’re making 
this walk to his death, he’s completely defenseless. He’s strapped down in an 
electric chair or lethal injection, and he’s killed. Does the church only 
uphold the dignity of innocent life? What about the guilty? Where is the 
dignity in that death? Especially when we can defend people through prisons. We 
don’t have to imitate the killing and kill people.”

Pope John Paul was the first to recognize that when he gave a talk in St. Louis 
[in 1999]; he held that up. Dignity doesn’t just belong to the innocent. The 
pope, of course, has a heart. He has a bent for compassion and justice.

Well, let’s just say dialogue bumps along slowly. It took 1,600 years in the 
church to reach a point, on August 2, 2018, for Pope Francis to declare, 
unequivocally, we can never put government in charge of deciding that some of 
their citizens can be killed, that killing is the solution, and we are in 
charge of setting up the system whereby we choose who makes this happen. There 
were too many broken things in the system.

Hope Reese

What if there weren’t “too many broken things in the system”? Is it a problem 
with the system or the death penalty itself?

Helen Prejean

There’s a direct connection between those 2. The massive imprisonment of poor 
people, and especially people of color, is directly connected to the death 
penalty. Who is mainly selected for death in the United States? Eighty percent 
of people [on death row have] killed white victims [while about 1/2 of murder 
victims are white]. So all victims are not equal: Some victims have status, 
some don’t.

Jesus talked about leavening and dough. Jesus talked about seeds growing. 
Things are incremental. There are no absolute boundaries. Over here you have 
the death penalty, over here you have the prison system.

Hope Reese

As a woman, you wrote that your voice is “muted by the Church.” Can you talk 
about how, in practice, you are able to be critical of the church?

Helen Prejean

Sure. The church is the people. It is many things. When you love an institution 
or a body of people that you’re part of, when you see something morally wrong, 
you speak about it.

I’ve been in dialogue with the church about the death penalty. You can look at 
that and say, “Oh, she’s critical of the church.” Of course I’m critical. I’ve 
been in the execution chamber. What we stated in the catechism, “Oh, we can 
trust government,” is wrong. I’ve seen the hurt, the suffering, the cruelty. So 
when you see something wrong, you speak up.

There’s constant dialogue going on in the church, especially since Vatican II, 
so more and more women are speaking up. Why aren’t women a vital part of 
decision-making in the church? When it’s an all-male group of people sitting 
around the table making the policies, it’s not very healthy.

In the early church, Jesus’s disciples were men and women. Mary Magdalene, who 
was just declared having her own feast day, was instrumental. You had strong, 
outspoken women who were part of the original ministry, the Gospel of Jesus and 
the early church. St. Paul worked side by side with women who were preaching 
just like the men.

One of the dangers of an institution is that it starts getting solidified and 
rigid as it goes along.

Hope Reese

How many executions have you witnessed since 1984?

Helen Prejean

I’ve witnessed 6 total executions: 3 electrocutions and 3 lethal injections. 
Lethal injection is just as bad. The Supreme Court is letting states experiment 
with drugs, so when that person is strapped down, they literally don’t know 
what’s going to be injected in their veins. Like Texas, where does it get its 
drugs? Supposedly, it’s supposed to have FDA approval, but here’s what 
happened.

See, people have to be deep enough under so that when potassium chloride goes 
through their veins and stops their heart, they don’t feel the pain. And when 
the European companies that made the main drug that was the main anesthetic 
heard that their drugs were being used to kill people in the US, they cut off 
the drug supply. That is what has led to all this experimentation. We have had 
botched executions. You know, we had Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma. There had 
been a number of people yelling out, “Acid’s in my veins!”

You have an Eighth Amendment that says you won’t practice cruelty, but you turn 
your heads because you’ve already demeaned these people as not human anyhow. 
You turn the switch. Because you say, “Look what they did to the victim.”

That was [Justice] Antonin Scalia’s justification, why he always upheld the 
death penalty. But the death penalty’s about us. We know people do terrible 
things, but what about us?

(source: Hope Reese is a journalist in Louisville, Kentucky. Her writing has 
appeared in the Atlantic, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, Longreads, 
Vice, and other publications----vox.com)