May 10 USA: 3 Newspapers Reverse 100-Year-Old Stand 3 established U.S. newspapers, 2 of them among the 10 largest in the country, in three different states have in the past weeks abandoned their century-old support of the death penalty and become passionate advocates of a ban on state-sponsored killing. The newspapers -- the Chicago Tribune in Illinois, the smaller Sentinel in Pennsylvania and the Dallas Morning News in Texas -- announced their change of heart in strongly-argued editorials following a series of investigative articles highlighting the flaws in the death penalty system in their states and country. "I think in a word it's the issue of innocence that has brought about these editorials," Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, told IPS. "The weight of evidence in death penalty cases as seen and confirmed in DNA testing has made the death penalty too risky." The Chicago Tribune said its "groundbreaking" reporting suggested that innocent people had been convicted and executed. 2 cases in Texas were cited. Also over the last 30 years more than 130 people had been released from death row in the U.S. after evidence was presented that undermined the cases against them. In that time, Illinois had executed 12 people and freed 18 from death row. "The evidence of mistakes, the evidence of arbitrary decisions, the sobering knowledge that governments can't provide certainty that the innocent will not be put to death -- all that prompts this call for an end to capital punishment. It is time to stop killing people in the people's name," the Chicago Tribune wrote, reversing its pro-capital punishment position held since 1869. Pennsylvania's Sentinel newspaper, founded in 1861, also came out editorially against capital punishment after its reporters highlighted the "ineffectiveness" of the death penalty system in the state. "The death penalty is useless," the newspaper wrote in its Apr. 3 editorial. The state's lengthy appeals process created an almost indefinite stay of execution. This meant the numbers on Pennsylvania's death row were steadily increasing. There were now 221 on death row, the fourth largest number of any state in the country. This was a huge expense for the taxpayers, the newspaper wrote. "We are left with a grueling process that in the end only guarantees more suffering for the victims' families and society at large as faith in the justice system erodes," the editorial said. The majority of public opinion in the U.S. now favoured prison without parole rather than capital punishment -- either out of "frustration with the system or revulsion at the punishment". "The pendulum is swinging away from Pennsylvania's position on a law it cannot even execute," the editorial concluded. The issue of race was also playing a major role in the fall in public support for the death penalty, particularly in Pennsylvania, Brian Evans of Amnesty USA told IPS. "There is a lot of doubt about the death penalty especially in Pennsylvania because of the disproportionate racial mix of those on death row," he said. In Texas, the Dallas Morning News reversed its century-old support for the death penalty in an editorial on Apr. 15, citing mounting evidence that the state had wrongly convicted a number of people in capital trials and probably executed at least one innocent man. Carlos De Luna was executed in 1989 for the murder of a petrol station attendant, although there was no forensic evidence linking him to the crime. Later, another man boasted to relatives that De Luna had been convicted for a murder he had committed. In a second disturbing case cited by the newspaper for its change of mind over the death penalty, Ernest Ray Willis was convicted of the murder of 2 women in 1987. A federal judge later found prosecutors had administered anti-psychotic drugs to Willis during his trial to give him a "glazed over" appearance and show he was "cold-hearted". Prosecutors had also suppressed evidence and provided no physical proof or eyewitnesses. Questions were also raised about the competence of the court-appointed defence lawyers. The sentence was overturned. Another death row inmate also confessed to the killings. Willis was released after 17 years on death row. "This board has lost confidence that the state of Texas can guarantee that every inmate it executes is truly guilty of murder," the Dallas Morning News wrote. "We do not believe that any legal system devised by inherently flawed human beings can determine with moral certainty the guilt of every defendant convicted of murder. That is why we believe the state of Texas should abandon the death penalty -- because we cannot reconcile the fact that it is both imperfect and irreversible." The number of death sentences handed down in the U.S. has been steadily decreasing as public opinion in support of capital punishment has been falling. Some 315 death sentences were handed down in 1995, 128 in 2005 and 102 last year. In the last 5 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute juveniles and the mentally retarded. 13 of the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia currently do not have the death penalty. (source: IPS News) ***************** Racism, resistance and the death penalty Hours before he was executed on March 7, Joseph Nichols told his mother what had happened to him as the prison prepared to move him from death-row housing in Livingston, Texas, to the death house in Huntsville. "They cut off all my clothes and stripped me naked. I finally got a pair of boxers but my feet were shackled together, my hand were chained and then another chain bound my feet, went up over my shoulders and bound my hands. This is how our people were brought here from the motherland, naked and chained, and this is how I will leave." Nichols was executed despite front-page articles in the Houston Chronicle and opinion pieces explaining his innocence. On the gurney, with the IV loaded with poison, he blasted the prison personnel who had ordered him to shave or be disciplined the evening before his execution. More and more in Texas, prisoners are not going willingly to their executions, but are fighting until the end. They are also actively protesting the conditions of severe isolation and torture. The DRIVE Movement, an activist organization on Texas death row, has held several hunger strikes in the last year, as have several individuals. Roy Pippin, who had steadfastly maintained his innocence, was executed on March 29, after his month-long hunger strike exposing the horrific conditions on Texas death row won significant media attention. In his last statement while on the gurney, Pippin said: "I charge the people of the jury, the trial judge, the prosecutor that cheated to get this conviction. I charge each and every one of you with the murder of an innocent man. All the way to the CCA, Federal Court, 5th Circuit and Supreme Court. You will answer to your Maker when God has found out that you executed an innocent man. May God have mercy on you. ... Go ahead, Warden, murder me. Jesus, take me home." Last summer, Michael Johnson, another Texas prisoner who had always maintained his innocence, slashed his own throat rather than let the state kill him. Before he bled to death, he wrote on the wall of his cell in his own blood, "I did not kill that man." In November 2006, after Willie Shannon was executed, he was laid in his casket dressed as a Black Panther, a reflection of his politics. He was a member of Panthers United for Revolutionary EducationPUREa Texas death row organization. Executions in the United States have dropped to the lowest levels in 10 years. The number of death sentences and the population of death row are also decreasing. For the 1st time ever, the Gallup Poll has reported that more people favor life in prison without parole over the death penalty. During the 1990s there were about 300 death sentences given each year. Now the number is around 125. Even in Texas, death sentences are down 65 % from 10 years ago. Because of the issue of innocence, juries are less willing to condemn someone to die. Over a dozen states have halted executions due to innocence and also the rising evidence that the method of lethal injection kills prisoners while they are still conscious. The New Jersey legislature had a hearing scheduled for early May that could end lead to that state ending the death penalty. In recent years, a number of major newspapers have changed their position on the death penalty and are now calling for its abolition. In the past month, both the Chicago Tribune and the Dallas Morning News reversed their longstanding support for capital punishment. And the Sentinel of Pennsylvania simply called the death penalty "useless." Amnesty International reported that executions worldwide fell by more than 25 % last year, down from 2,148 in 2005 to 1,591 in 2006. Of all known executions that took place in 2006, 91 % were carried out in 6 countries: China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan and the United States. Over 1/2 the worlds countries have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice. In the United States, the death penalty is used mainly in the former slave-holding states of the old Confederacy. Between 85 % and 90 % of all U.S. executions take place in the South. This is no accident. Racism plays such a huge role in the death penalty because it is a direct outgrowth of the legacy of slavery and lynchings. During the last 125 years there have been thousands of illegal, extra-judicial lynchings in the United States, primarily in the South, primarily done by whites against Blacks. The majority took place in the late 1800s and the first half of the 1900s. Today, in the 21st century, it is the era of legal lynchings. They are still carried out mainly by whites and used mainly against people of color. Ninety-eight percent of all district attorneys in the United States are white, and only 1 percent is Black. It is these district attorneys who decide whether a defendant will face the death penalty. States that sentence the most people to death also are the states that had the most illegal lynchings in the past, according to a study released in 2002 by sociologists at Ohio State University. Historically unjust The one factor that most determines whether a defendant will be sentenced to death is the race of the person killed. Even though Black and white people are murdered in nearly equal numbers, 80 % of people executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 had cases involving white victims. Only 14 white people have ever been executed for the murder of a Black person, while 215 Black people have been executed for killing whites. Conversely, white women represent only 0.8 % of murder victimsyet 35 % of those executed since 1976 were sentenced to die for killing a white woman. The over-all picture of capital punishment shows nationality involved at every turn. If a white person is murdered, whether the defendants are Black or white, they are at least 5 times more likely to be given the death penalty than if a Black person is murdered. African Americans are the least likely to serve on capital juries but the most likely to be condemned to die. In Texas, racism in the criminal justice system was openly practiced until recently. Defense attorneys in Dallas remember that until the mid-1980s so-called Black-on-Black murders were known around the courthouse as "misdemeanor murder." Attorney Fred Tinsley reported in 2000, "At one point, with a Black-on-Black murder, you could get it dismissed if the defendant would just pay funeral expenses." The U.S. Supreme Court twice found the method of jury selection in Dallas unconstitutional. In response, Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade developed a system of training prosecutors to excuse people of color, women, Jews and those physically disabled. Wade reprimanded a prosecutor in the late 1950s for allowing a Black woman on a jury, telling him, "If you ever put another n-r on a jury, youre fired." An African American, Thomas Miller-El, was sentenced to death in Dallas in 1986. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that he be retried because all African Americans except for one were excluded from his jury. He is now at the Dallas County Jail awaiting a new trial. In Philadelphia, where political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death, the odds of receiving a death sentence are 38 % higher in cases in which the defendant is Black. In fact, in Pennsylvania, over 70 % of those on death row are African American; this is the highest proportion in the country. The United States is a little over 225 years old. It was built on land stolen from the Indigenous peoples and Mexico, and on the backs of African slave labor. It became highly industrialized during the last hundred years and today is the leading imperialist power because it exploits its large working class, a growing proportion of whom are African American, Latino, Arab, Asian and Native American. National oppression and racism is so tightly woven into the fabric of life in this country that it colors all aspects of life from birth to death, including death at the hands of the state. "The movement to abolish the death penalty is growing and learning that if executions are to end, we must be a movement of all peoples, particularly those of us who make up the majority on death row. No change has ever come willingly. We must fight for it. But with unity and struggle we will see the end of this crime called capital punishment," said Njeri Shakur, a leader of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement for over a decade. (source: Worker's World) MASSACHUSETTS: Appeals court upholds death sentence for Sampson A federal appeals court has upheld the death sentence of convicted killer Gary Lee Sampson, a drifter from Abington who confessed to killing three men during a weeklong crime rampage in 2001. A federal jury gave Sampson the death penalty in 2003 after hearing weeks of testimony about how he carjacked Jonathan Rizzo, 19, of Kingston, and Philip McCloskey, 69, of Taunton, then slit their throats. Sampson told police he then fled to New Hampshire, broke into a house in Meredith and strangled Robert Whitney, 58. Sampson appealed the death sentence, arguing the trial judge should not have allowed gruesome crime scene photographs that played to the emotion of jurors. A 3-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his appeal in a ruling earlier this week. The court took the unusual step of sealing the decision for 1 week. "It's essentially to allow the attorneys the opportunity to object to any reference to any material they feel shouldn't be made public," said Susan Goldberg, deputy circuit executive of the appeals court. During Sampson's trial, U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf sealed numerous documents, including some related to the gruesome details of the killings. David Ruhnke, one of Sampson's attorneys, said he planned to request another hearing before the full, five-member appeals court to fight the death sentence. Sampson is the 1st person sentenced to death in Massachusetts under the federal death penalty law. The state, which does not have a death penalty, has not executed anyone in more than half a century. The trial judge ordered that Sampson be executed in New Hampshire, the closest state with a death penalty. Although New Hampshire has a capital murder law, no one has been executed since 1939. NEW YORK: Death Penalty Is Barrier to Bench for Mauskopf The frequency with which the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn seeks the death penalty is emerging as an obstacle to her confirmation to the federal bench. Although President Bush first nominated Roslynn Mauskopf to a district judgeship last year, her candidacy is languishing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The delay is due to questions from Senator Feingold, a Democrat of Wisconsin, relating to the rise in federal death penalty cases in Brooklyn since Ms. Maukopf became U.S. attorney in 2002, letters between Ms. Mauskopf and Mr. Feingold show. Mr. Feingold, who opposes the death penalty, wrote Ms. Mauskopf last week that answers she provided to his questions on her death penalty cases "will be of significant help to me as I determine whether I am able to support your nomination for a lifetime appointment as a U.S. district court judge." Earlier this year, prosecutors under Ms. Mauskopf secured the first federal death sentence in New York since the era of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed more than 50 years ago. The defendant in the recent case, Ronell Wilson, murdered two undercover detectives. Prosecutors under Ms. Mauskopf have sought the death penalty at trial in 3 other cases, but were rebuffed by juries. Ms. Mauskopf's office has pending capital charges against 8 other defendants. The trial of 2 of them, men accused of taking out insurance policies on alcoholics and then murdering them, opened yesterday. In a letter dated April 30 responding to Mr. Feingold's written questionnaire, Ms. Mauskopf said she never received "pressure or encouragement" from the Justice Department or Bush administration officials to pursue more death penalty cases. Ms. Mauskopf also wrote that her "office's record of seeking the death penalty was never a topic of discussion" during interviews with Bush administration officials during interviews regarding whether she would be nominated. Mr. Feingold, in a follow-up letter last week to Ms. Mauskopf, did not state whether he would support her nomination. He said he first required more information: what Ms. Mauskopf had recommended to the attorney general in the more than 100 instances in which her office had the choice to seek the death penalty. The decision to pursue the federal death penalty is made by the attorney general, but local U.S. attorneys offer their recommendation in each case. The Justice Department closely guards that information, and Ms. Mauskopf earlier told Mr. Feingold that she is "not at liberty to disclose information concerning" her recommendations. A spokesman for Ms. Mauskopf declined to comment. In other news, the Senate yesterday unanimously confirmed a Columbia Law School professor, Debra Livingston, to a seat on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in Manhattan. (source: The Sun) ************* Execute N.Y. cop killers? Not this year, sez Silver Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver adamantly refused yesterday to introduce legislation restoring the death penalty for cop killers despite the recent state trooper shootings. "I don't see it happening this year," said Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, instead suggesting the state toughen laws to curb the access of illegal guns. But his fellow Democrat, Assemblywoman Roann Destito of Rome, said she believes the votes are there to win approval of her death penalty bill. She thinks the 42 Republicans in the 108-member Assembly would come out strong and join Democrats who want the option of execution reinstated. The Assembly is the last obstacle to enacting the death penalty, which was ruled unconstitutional in 2004, because the Republican-controlled Senate supports it and Gov. Spitzer also backs it for cop killers. The debate to restore the death penalty was revived last month after a Utica cop was killed in the line of duty and 3 state troopers were shot in the Catskills by a gunman who eventually killed himself after a shootout with a state police SWAT team. In addition, 4 NYPD officers and two city auxiliary officers have been killed by gunfire in the past 2 years. (source: New York Daily News) PENNSYLVANIA: Prosecutor to seek death penalty in alleged revenge killing Prosecutors say they intend to seek the death penalty against a man accused of gunning down 2 men, killing 1, allegedly in an attempt to avenge the shooting of his brother. A district judge on Wednesday ordered Obataiye Scott, 35, of Pittsburgh, to stand trial on charges of homicide, attempted homicide and aggravated assault in the April 21 shooting death of Shawn Allen, 32, and wounding of Michael Brown, 42, in Washington. "This appears to be one of the more violent type of killings that we've had," District Attorney John Pettit said. "He had quite an arsenal. Not only did he have guns, but multiple, multiple rounds of bullets. He took the life of a helpless man in the name of revenge." Police said about 2 dozen shots were fired from an AK-47 rifle and another 7 from a 9 mm handgun. Scott told investigators he was avenging the April 19 shooting of his brother, Jabreel Scott, 27, in downtown Pittsburgh, police said. Jabreel Scott died April 26 from his injuries. No arrests have been made in his shooting. Scott assumed Brown shot his brother because Jabreel Scott's assailant had dreadlocks and bow legs and Brown has dreadlocks, Washington police Lt. Dan Stanek said. Stanek said neither Allen nor Brown were armed and Pittsburgh police have not found any connection between Brown and the shooting in Pittsburgh. (source: Associated Press) TENNESSEE: AI Index: AMR 51/084/2007 10 May 2007 AI Index: AMR 51/084/2007 (Public) 10 May 2007 USA: Death and democracy The majority of citizens through their freely elected officials have chosen to retain the death penalty for the most serious crimes, a policy which appears to represent the majority sentiment of the country. US Government, 1994(1) In the early hours of 9 May 2007, Philip Ray Workman was taken from his prison cell and killed by lethal injection in Tennessee's execution chamber. He had been on death row for the past quarter of a century. His execution went ahead despite evidence that a key state witness had lied at the 1982 trial and that Lieutenant Ronald Oliver, the police officer Workman was convicted of killing, may have been accidentally shot by a fellow officer.(2) The executions of Philip Workman and the 1,074 other men and women put to death in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977 have been justified as democracy in action. In explaining the USAs continuing use of the death penalty to the United Nations Committee Against Torture in 2005, for example, the US government stated that "a majority of the people in a majority of the states, and of the country as a whole, have chosen through their democratically elected representatives to provide the possibility of capital punishment for the most serious of crimes".(3) The people want the death penalty, the argument goes. If they did not, they could vote for politicians and legislators who would bring about abolition. Of course, this argument assumes a fully informed electorate fully engaged on this issue, and an elected class fully responsive to public opinion. An opinion poll in February 2007 indicated that 66 per cent of people in Tennessee support a moratorium on executions to allow consideration of the fairness and reliability of the states capital process.(4) A recent study conducted under the auspices of the American Bar Association, which takes no position on the death penalty per se, found that "Tennessee's death penalty is plagued with serious problems" and recommended a moratorium on executions while the system was subjected to review.(5) On 2 May, the House Judiciary Committee of the Tennessee legislature approved a bill that would establish a commission to examine the death penalty system. Still, Philip Workmans execution was allowed to go forward. Workman's case revealed a particular aspect of this "democratic" killing when, as has happened in other cases, it divided a federal court.(6) In 2000, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit split 7 votes to 7 on whether to grant him a hearing on new evidence supporting his claim of innocence (Workman needed a majority to prevail; the 7-7 tie meant that he lost). The seven judges voting for a hearing had all been appointed by Democratic presidents.(7) The seven voting against had all been appointed by Republican presidents.(8) Federal judges in the USA are appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. The political support for the death penalty in the White House and Congress over recent decades has unsurprisingly meant the appointment of few if any federal judges who were publicly opposed to executions. The main distinction between "liberal" and "conservative" judges in relation to the death penalty has thus tended to be one of their greater or lesser support for regulation of the capital process, rather than opposition to executions per se. The end result of a conservative/liberal judicial divide can have the appearance of political decision-making by federal judges. A seminal article in 1992 examining the various notions of 'political' used to describe the US Supreme Court noted that: "Different philosophical principles will inevitably dictate different results, so that different policy consequences will follow ineluctably from justices different jurisprudences. For example, those who see the fundamental role of the Court as the protector of the individual, particularly the unpopular individual, against the power of the state, will necessarily incline towards activism (defined here as a willingness to find unconstitutional the laws and actions of duly elected officials); those who defer to elected officials except where the most egregious breakings of the Constitution have taken place will naturally seem self-restrained".(9) Amnesty International is not suggesting either that US federal judges lack independence or that the system of appointing them is undemocratic. Voters, for example, would or could have known that President George W. Bush would likely appoint conservative judges if elected as President.(10) Nevertheless, close votes on divided courts add to the arbitrariness or to a perception of arbitrariness of the death penalty. If whether a condemned inmate lives or dies depends on the balance of the jurisprudential philosophies of the various judges who happen to be overseeing his or her case, is that fair? Or to put it another way, if the legal issues in a capital case are so open to interpretation that courts are split down the middle, with perhaps a single vote tipping the balance, is this acceptable where an irrevocable punishment is concerned? As Workman's execution loomed in 2007, this phenomenon re-emerged. On 4 May, a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit rejected Workman's appeal for a stay of execution to pursue his claim of innocence. Two of the judges ruled that he had "not met his burden of showing a likelihood of success" on the merits of his appeal. They emphasised societys need for finality over the individuals claims: "Nearly 25 years after Workman's capital sentence and five stays of execution later, both the state and the public have an interest in finality" These two judges were appointed to the Sixth Circuit by Republican Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. The third judge, Judge Cole, appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, dissented from the refusal to stay the execution, rejecting his colleagues' reasoning. Also on 4 May, a federal district court judge appointed by President Clinton issued a temporary restraining order until 14 May after Philip Workman's lawyers filed a motion to stop the execution under the state's newly revised lethal injection protocol, at least until it could be judicially reviewed. The judge pointed out that the government has "no interest in proceeding with an execution protocol which may ultimately be found to be unconstitutional". On 7 May, the same three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit that had refused to stay Philip Workman's execution on his innocence claim vacated the restraining order on the grounds that Workman had little chance of success. Again, the two Republican-appointed judges emphasised the need for finality. They concluded by stating that "at some point in time, the State has a right to impose a sentence not just because the States interests in finality are compelling, but also because there is a powerful and legitimate interest in punishing the guilty, which attaches to the State and victims of crime alike. 25 years after the imposition of this sentence, that time, it seems to us, has come". Again, Judge Cole dissented: "despite the extensive and detailed allegations Workman raises tending to show that Tennessees new lethal-injection protocol will subject him to pain and suffering in violation of the Eighth Amendment; despite that Workman supports his allegations with testimony from physicians familiar with lethal-injection protocols, medical studies, and evidence from recent botched executions; despite the statements from federal courts across the United States expressing deep scepticism with similar lethal-injection protocols adopted by other states; and despite the deference that an appellate court owes to the judgment of a district court, the majority concludes that Workmans concerns are insufficiently compelling to warrant a brief 5-day preservation of the status quo to determine whether his claims have merit" In contrast, the two judges in the majority described lethal injection as "the most humane method of execution", praising the "democratic processes" that brought about its introduction in most of the USA's death penalty states: "As modern sensibilities have moved away from hanging, the firing squad, the gas chamber and electrocution as methods of carrying out a death sentence, so too have the death penalty procedures of the States and Federal Government. While the Supreme Court has tolerated continuity rather than change in this area, the democratic processes to their credit have insisted on change." Another way of looking at this is that the executing states have tried to stay one step ahead of the legal challenges to the method chosen to kill condemned prisoners: "Historically, challenges to execution methods have followed a fairly predictable Eighth Amendment path. When one method of execution became problematic, such as hanging, for example, states would sense constitutional vulnerability and switch to another method, such as electrocution or lethal gas. When those two methods established a record of serious botches, states switched to lethal injection."(11) This is surely an example of what US Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun referred to as "tinkering with the machinery of death", something he vowed in 1994, after two decades on the Court, he would no longer do. Nothing, he said, could save capital punishment from its inherent flaws. "Rather than continue to coddle the Courts delusion that the desired level of fairness has been achieved and the need for regulation eviscerated," he wrote, "I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed".(12) Was Justice Blackmun behaving "undemocratically"? Current Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, for one, might say so and indeed has written that in his view "the choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation, rather than simply ignoring duly enacted, constitutional laws and sabotaging death penalty cases".(13) Justice Scalia also suggested that the "modern aversion to the death penalty" is the predictable but erroneous response to "modern, democratic self-government" in which, he says, private morality is equated with governmental morality. Few people, he wrote, "doubted the morality of the death penalty in the age that believed in the divine right of kings."(14) He maintains that if "the American people have determined that the good to be derived from capital punishment outweighs the risk of error", then it is "no proper part of the business of this Court, or of its Justices, to second-guess that judgment, much less to impugn it before the world, and less still to frustrate it by imposing judicially invented obstacles to its execution."(15) Late on 8 May, the US Supreme Court refused to intervene to stop Philip Workmans execution. Did his subsequent killing in the face of evidence that the fatal bullet that killed Lt Oliver may not have come from the condemned man's gun reflect the will of the people? The President of the state Fraternal Order of Police claimed that its members were supportive of the execution.(16) Lt Olivers widow and his stepson and stepdaughter watched the execution. After Philip Workman had been killed, a spokesperson for the victims' rights group, You Have the Power, spoke on behalf of the relatives and said that "This is not a happy night for anyone. However, for those who loved and cared for the victim there is at last some small sense of justice."(17) Justice, however, is in the eye of the beholder. Many people opposed the execution. Indeed, several jurors from Workman's 1982 trial have said that they would not have voted for a first-degree murder conviction or a death sentence if they had been presented with the evidence that had emerged since the trial. In 2000, as a previous execution date loomed, the daughters of both Lt Oliver and Philip Workman united at a press conference to appeal for clemency. The former District Attorney of Shelby County, the office which prosecuted Philip Workman, also came forward in 2000 to oppose the execution because of the post-conviction evidence. Whether or not Philip Workman's execution represented US democracy in action, the state carried out a killing far more calculated than the shooting for which this man was being punished a quarter of a century later (even presuming he was guilty). Democracy can surely do better than this. As a Judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa said more than a decade ago in the decision heralding the end of judicial killing in that country, "there is ample objective evidence that evolving standards of civilisation demonstrate the unacceptability of the death penalty in countries which are or aspire to be free and democratic societies".(18) The USA should join the 129 countries that have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT, 1 EASTON STREET, LONDON WC1X 0DW, UNITED KINGDOM (1) Initial report of the USA to the UN Human Rights Committee on implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, UN Doc. CCPR/C/81/Add.4 (24 August 1994). (2) Amnesty International Urgent Action, http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510802007. (3) Second Periodic Report of the USA to the Committee Against Torture, 6 May 2005. (4) See http://www.abanet.org/moratorium/assessmentproject/tennessee/survey.pdf. (5) An Analysis of Tennessee's Death Penalty Laws, Procedures, and Practices. March 2007, http://www.abanet.org/moratorium/assessmentproject/tennessee/finalreport.pdf. (6) See also USA: The experiment that failed A reflection on 30 years of executions, January 2007, http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510112007. (7) Five were appointed by President Clinton, two by President Carter. (8) Four had been appointed by President Reagan, three by President George H.W. Bush. (9) Six definitions of 'political' and the United States Supreme Court. Richard Hodder-Williams, British Journal of Political Science, Volume 22, No. 1 (1992). (10) See, for example, comments of Senator John Kerry, second 2004 presidential debate: "A few years ago, when he came to office, the President said these are his words 'What we need are some good conservative judges on the courts.' And he said also that his two favourite justices are Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas. So you get a pretty good sense of where he's heading if he were to appoint somebody". Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/10/20041009-2.html. (11) Deborah W. Denno. The Lethal injection quandary: How medicine has dismantled the death penalty. Fordham University School of Law (Working Paper), May 2007, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=983732. (12) Callins v. James (1994), Justice Blackmun dissenting. (13) God's justice and ours. Antonin Scalia. First Things 123 (May 2002), pages 17-21. (14) Ibid. (15) Kansas v. Marsh, 26 June 2006, Justice Scalia concurring. (16) Workman seeks to block autopsy. The Tennessean, 8 May 2007. (17) Tennessee executes Philip Workman by lethal injection. Associated Press, 9 May 2007. (18) The State v. T.Makwanyane and M Mchunu, Constitutional Court of South Africa, 6 June 1995, Ackermann J., concurring. (source: Amnesty International) *************** Many death-row inmates proven innocent To the Editor: Every Tennessean who knew of Philip Workman's impending execution and didn't speak out to stop it will forever have blood on his or her hands. Evidence suggests that it is innocent blood, too. We know that Workman posed no danger to us since the state had safely sequestered him from society for years. So far, the Innocence Project at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law has freed 200 prisoners who were wrongly convicted of crimes and thus served a total of nearly 2,500 years behind bars because of a flawed justice system. Many of these were death row inmates. Still, most people are content to believe that anyone convicted of a crime must have committed it, and thus deserves the punishment that's been handed out.<>P> Parents rail against fictional violence on TV. Yet, most of them accept or embrace the actual violence of state executions taking place in their own back yard. Isn't that teaching our children the lesson that it's OK to kill people if it makes us feel more virtuous or safer? How sad. How cruel. Edward Morris, Nashville 37204 (source: Letter to the Editor, The Tennessean) ******************* Workman's Execution Could Affect Future Executions In Tennessee Philip Workman's execution is only the 3rd in the state of Tennessee since 1960. And, Tennessee ties Kentucky for the least number of executions in the south. While some believe Workman's execution will open the flood gates for more executions in the state. Others disagree. Local prosecutor Steven Hatchett explains Workman's case left many unanswered questions. And, those questions could result in less executions in Tennessee, "you're going to see more push from death penalty opponents to have it done away with. Then, with the ABA putting out their report, saying that there need to be changes, that's going to add fuel to the fire." The American Bar Association conducted a thorough investigation of death penalty states, including Tennessee. The ABA found many points of concern in the states' procedures. (source: WDEF News) ***************************** No redeeming value in Workman execution This state did not accomplish much with the execution of convicted killer Philip Workman Wednesday morning. It would be nice to say that the execution at least served as a deterrent to other killing. But it doesn't. It would be nice to say that it solved some of the ills of society, like the shootout with police Workman was involved in when he robbed a Wendy's restaurant in 1981 in Memphis. But it's difficult to believe anyone truly thinks this week's execution is a remedy for crime in Tennessee. It would be especially nice to at least be able to say that Workman's death brought closure to the family of Memphis police Lt. Ronald Oliver, who was shot and killed that day. But a victims' rights representative who spoke for the family at the execution said, "Though a sentence has finally been carried out, nothing will happen that will ever provide them closure." The state cannot even rationalize its action with claims that an execution somehow settles a score. So what exactly did the state accomplish, other than to appeal to those who somehow see redeeming value in answering one death with another? The fact is that, try though this state and others might, there is not likely to ever be a death penalty that serves as a solution to murder. In Workman's case, there was not even certainty that his gun actually killed Oliver. It is agreed that Workman was certainly there, that he robbed and engaged in battle with police. Speculation has been that "friendly fire," a bullet from another police officer, may have killed the officer. But for some people thirsty for an execution, details about the event were deemed irrelevant. A police officer was killed, Workman was involved; that was enough, it seems. But the state has broader reasons to doubt this renewed path of executions. Although the state had gone since 1960 without executing a prisoner until Robert Glen Coe was put to death in April 2000, followed by Sedley Alley, who was executed in June last year, executions in Tennessee have now become more common. And as each additional execution tends to diminish the enormity of such state action, the serious questions seem to fade along with the gravity of the act. Ironically, executions are becoming more routine, while reasons not to conduct them grow. Death-penalty proponents do not seem too concerned with scientific evidence affecting capital cases in other ways. The world knows DNA evidence can exonerate certain inmates of crimes for which they've been convicted. That alone shows government can sometimes get things wrong. In Workman's case, as with several others throughout the country, serious questions have emerged over lethal injection. The system uses a combination of three drugs to put the inmate to death, in a way meant to be more humane than some cruder methods used in the past. Knowledgeable people have said the protocol only masks the suffering of the inmate and that the inmate does suffer, despite appearances. Doesn't seem to matter though. It looks better, therefore it must be all right, some believe. Whom is the system kidding? This state still rightly mourns the death of Lt. Ronald Oliver. That's ample reason to compel the state to seek substantive, truly effective ways to see that such awful events do not happen again. Sadly, the state has not found that answer. Not with this act, not in this week, not with the concoction that is only the latest flawed attempt that solves nothing. (source: Editorial, The Tennessean)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news---USA, MASS., N.Y., PENN., TENN.
Rick Halperin Thu, 10 May 2007 17:21:39 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)