Feb. 3
USA:
The Tide Shifting Against the Death Penalty
If there were such a thing as a golden age of capital punishment in
America, it peaked in 1999. There were 98 executions in the U.S. that
year, the highest number since 1976, when the Supreme Court, which had
overturned all death penalty laws in 1972, began approving them again. For
most of the 1990s the number of death sentences handed down annually by
courts had been humming along in the range of 280 to 300 and above. And it
had been years since the Supreme Court had done much to put limits on whom
states could execute and how they could do it.
A False Consensus on Lethal Injection
A decade later, capital punishment has a lot less life in it. Last year
saw just 37 executions in the U.S., with only 111 death sentences handed
down. Though 36 states and the federal government still have death penalty
laws on the books, the practice of actually carrying out executions is
limited almost entirely to the south, the region where all but 2 of last
year's executions took place. (The exceptions were both in Ohio.) Even in
Texas, still the state leader in annual executions, only 10 men and 1
woman were sentenced to death last year, the lowest number since the death
penalty was reinstated in 1976. In recent years the Supreme Court has
voted to forbid the execution of juveniles and the mentally retarded, and
barred the use of the death penalty for crimes that did not involve
killings. And in 2007 they put executions all across the country on hold
for eight months while they examined whether lethal injection, the most
common means of executing prisoners, violated the Eighth Amendment
prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment; in the end they ruled
7-2 that it did not.
Even more significantly, where states once hurried to adopt death penalty
laws, the pendulum now appears to be swinging in the other direction. In
2007 New Jersey became the first state in 40 years to abolish its death
penalty. In that same year repeal bills were narrowly defeated in Montana,
Nebraska and New Mexico, all of which are revisiting the issue this year.
And now the focus is on Maryland. After years of failed attempts by death
penalty opponents to bring a repeal bill to a vote in the state
legislature, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is personally sponsoring this
year's version, promising he will fight to have the legislature pass it
during its current 90-day session. In his state of the state address last
week O'Malley called capital punishment "outdated, expensive and utterly
ineffective." (
Death penalty opponents say the use of DNA evidence, which has led to a
number of prisoners being released from death row, is a big part of the
reason for the decline in executions generally. "That's had a ripple
effect," says Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, a
Washington-based advocacy group. "The whole legal system has become more
cautious about the death penalty. Prosecutors are not seeking it as much.
Juries are returning more life sentences. And judges are granting more
stays of execution. Last year there were over 40."
Maryland restored its death penalty in 1978, but it was 16 years before it
carried out its 1st execution under the new law. Since then the state has
put to death 4 more convicted killers, the last of them in 2005. Today
there are five men on Maryland's death row, but the state suspended
executions 2 years ago after its highest court ruled that regulations
governing lethal injections had been adopted improperly. Until new
protocols are in place, no executions can go forward, and the governor, a
longtime death penalty opponent, has been in no hurry to issue them.
Last year, after months of public hearings, a state commission on the
death penalty voted 13-9 to recommend that it should be abolished. In its
final report the commission, which had been headed by former U.S. Attorney
General Benjamin Civiletti, cited the usual objections to capital
punishment cost, racial and jurisdictional disparities in sentencing, its
ineffectiveness as a deterrent against crime and the possibility that
innocent people might be put to death. One of the commission's members was
Kirk Bloodsworth, who had been on death row in Maryland for 2 years in the
mid-1980s before he was cleared by DNA evidence.
Even so, repealing the Maryland death penalty is by no means a done deal.
Bills to repeal it have been introduced repeatedly since the 1st of them 6
years ago, only to die every time in the Senate's judicial proceedings
committee. And the make-up of that committee is no different now than it
was 2 years ago, when the bill fell 1 vote short of the number needed to
release it to the full Senate. But supporters of repeal think that this
year, with the governor's support and the commission's verdict still
fresh, the bill will make it to the floor for a vote that they are
confident they will win. "This year we have momentum to move it," says
Jane Henderson, director of Maryland Citizen's Against State Executions.
Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, the Baltimore Democrat who chairs the committee,
also thinks this is the year it will happen. "You have the commission
report, which confirms what we already knew," she says. "The death penalty
is not a deterrent, it doesn't reduce crime, it's expensive and it's
unfair. And the governor has the ability to persuade some of the swing
voters in my committee and I only need one to get the bill onto the
floor. " If the bill is passed by the Senate, it will then pass to the
legislature's other chamber, the House of Delegates, where House Speaker
Michael E. Busch has said he believes there are enough votes for approval.
If O'Malley can't budge any of those swing voters, there are still
parliamentary moves at his disposal that could allow him to bring the bill
to the full chamber without a committee vote. One of them would be to
persuade lawmakers on the committee who oppose the bill to release it
anyway without a recommendation of any kind from their body. Some
anti-repeal committee members are already said to be warming to that idea.
And O'Malley can get firsthand advice on parliamentary maneuvers from a
source very close to home. In 1978, the bill that eventually created
Maryland's death penalty was held up for a time by the same senate
committee before eventually being forced to a vote. Its chairman back then
was a future state attorney general named J. Joseph Curran, a longtime
opponent of capital punishment. These days he also happens to be the
governor's father-in-law.
(source: TIME Magazine)
****************
The forgotten victims----The families of death row inmates.
Celia McWee, 83, looked forward to Saturdays for 13 years. This was her
favorite day of the week because she would use it to make herself pretty
for her Sunday morning visit. But she wouldnt go to church. She would
visit the state prison. She would drive 3 hours from Augusta, Georgia, to
Ridgeville, South Carolina, to visit her son, Jerry McWee. Jerry had been
on death row since he robbed and killed John Perry, a grocery store clerk
in rural Aiken County, in 1991. He was executed on April 14, 2004. He was
52.
"Saturday was an exciting day because it was my day to choose the outfit I
was going to wear, to go to the beauty shop because I wanted to look my
best for him," she said, crying. "And Sunday going up there was exciting
because it was something to look forward to. But on the way back, it was
nothing but tears."
For as long as her son was in prison, her weekly schedule kept her going,
she said. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, she would not leave the
house until she received her son's phone call. Tuesdays and Thursdays were
her days to go grocery shopping, do the laundry, and vacuum. And then came
Sundays, when she would share a ride with other inmates' mothers to the
prison. She would meet them at a gas station in Columbia, South Carolina.
Although her son was executed 4 years ago, not a day goes by that McWee
does not recall the sound of his shackles dragging on the floor of the
prison each time she visited him.
"The noise that most stands out in my mind is when they would bring them
from one building to the other, and we could hear them walking with those
chains around their ankles and around their waist and their wrists," she
said. "That is torture. I mean, to see your son being brought in worse
than you do to a dog."
McWee's house is filled with pictures of her son. She proudly reminisces
about the day Jerry got married and when, despite having only a high
school education, he joined the police force. Then she shows a
black-and-white print of Jerry in an emergency medicine technician (EMT)
uniform. After two years as a police officer and five as a firefighter,
Jerry had decided to make his life all about helping others in need. That
is when he went back to school to study emergency medicine.
"He was the kind of guy that would go out of his way to help others," she
said. "He was a people person like me, used to helping the ones in need.
Never would I have imagined this could have happened to my family.
Everything was so nice and dandy, and it took so little time to turn
things around. It is true he is in a much better place now, but I still
feel he should be with me instead."
McWee's feeling is common to many relatives of inmates executed by the
state. They are trying to recover from the trauma of waiting many years
for their loved one's scheduled death. But often their suffering is made
worse because many people still do not recognize their pain as legitimate.
Zipped wounds
Like McWee, Bill Babbitt had a tough recovery. His younger brother Manny,
a decorated Vietnam War veteran severely affected by post-traumatic stress
syndrome, was executed at San Quentin State Prison on his 50th birthday
May 3, 1999. He had been charged with robbing Leah Schendel, an elderly
woman who died of a heart attack during the crime in Sacramento,
California.
What makes Babbitt feel better is touring the country to talk about his
brother's "unfair" execution; Babbitt is a member of Murder Victims'
Families for Human Rights (MVFHR), a group founded in Philadelphia in
2004. The group offers support and advocacy for victims.
He gives his testimony using what he calls "the power of remembrance,"
letting his "zipped wound" open, and pouring out what he thinks needs to
be said about Manny's case. He is trying to educate the public about why
the death penalty was unnecessary in his brother's case. Yet many still
consider his efforts to be those of a "second-class victim" who is
defending a criminal, he said.
"My job is to educate and tell them, 'Hey, you lose a rabbit or a dog or a
cat, and you grieve over it,'" he said. "'Manny was a human being. Why
should I not grieve over him just as well?' It is the unfairness of that I
have to talk about."
A trail of victims
The families who survive the state execution of their inmate relative are
still not specifically referred to as "victims of abuse of power," as
defined by the United Nations General Assembly's 1985 Declaration of Basic
Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power.
Article 18 of the declaration defines a victim of abuse of power as a
person "who, individually or collectively, [has] suffered harm, including
physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, economic loss or
substantial impairment of [his or her] fundamental rights, through acts or
omissions that do not yet constitute violations of national criminal laws
but of internationally recognized norms relating to human rights."
In some countries, including the United States, killing by lethal
injection is not considered an abuse of power. The declaration does not
include the death penalty as a "violation of internationally recognized
norms relating to human rights."
"But these people [families of death row inmates] have, in many ways,
suffered a trauma, and their experience, in many ways, parallels the
experience of survivors of homicide victims," said Susannah Sheffer,
director of No Silence, No Shame, a project of MVFHR.
The problem is that people don't think of the inmate as someone who might
have a family who will grieve when he is executed.
"Families of the executed are invisible victims, hidden victims. People
are not even thinking through the fact that when an execution is carried
out, it's going to leave a grieving family," Sheffer said. "A lot of
people hold the family responsible, [a] kind of 'guilt by association.'
They think this [the inmate] is a monster, so the parents must have
created that."
Jerry McWee's mother said she is haunted by the image of her son strapped
on the execution bed, blowing her the last kiss. She also said she was not
the only one to suffer from her son's death.
"It is a horrible, horrible experience to have to go through for years. It
not only punishes the inmates, it punishes so many people," said McWee.
"One of Jerry's daughters, Misty, exactly one year after his execution,
tried to commit suicide. She cut her wrists, because she said she had to
be with her father and that she did not belong on this earth."
The legacy of guilt
Babbitt has been battling feelings of guilt instead. Babbitt turned Manny
in to the police, and later he was not able to stop his execution. Babbitt
believed his brother's death was particularly unfair because his brother
suffered from a mental illness. It was out of desperation and fear that
his brother would commit more crimes that Babbitt decided to collaborate
with the police, who promised him his brother was going to be fine, he
said.
That is why he told Manny to go out to play some pool, when in fact the
police were waiting outside of his house to arrest him. But Babbitt did
not expect Manny to be convicted and sentenced to death. The hardest part
of all was having to explain to his mother why he let that happen, he
said.
"My mother loves me, and I know she has forgiven me for turning Manny in.
The problem is I have not forgiven myself for promising Ma that Manny
would not get executed," he said. "I took a gamble with my brother's life,
and I lost."
Since the day Manny was executed, Babbitt has not felt strong enough to
see his family, even on holidays. He believes he is not "worthy of their
love and trust anymore," he said. He feels uncomfortable around them even
though they forgave him for what he did.
"If it wasn't for my faith in Jesus, I would have killed myself. But I
didn't want my family to have to go to another funeral. I had to be strong
and live to tell that story," he said. "I will see my brother again when
my time is up on Earth."
No Silence, No Shame
Babbitt and McWee know each other well now. They met at No Silence, No
Shame's first gathering for families of death row inmates in Texas in the
spring of 2004. The conference was organized to allow people who share the
same grief to share their stories with one another.
According to Renny Cushing, director of MVFHR, the project is now trying
to "put a face with the name of the family of the condemned prisoners," by
bringing the testimonies of these family members into courts. Cushing said
the hope is that juries judging a death row case will consider these
testimonies before announcing their verdict.
Cushing is also a survivor. In 1988, his father, Robert Cushing, was
killed through his screen door at his home in New Hampshire by 2 bullets
fired by an off-duty policeman. Officer Robert McLaughlin Sr. had a dirty
record: He had killed his best friend, had taken part in an armed robbery,
and had arrested an elderly town woman for no good reason, according to
Cushing in his testimony in "Forgiving the Unforgivable" on MVFHR's
website. Cushing and his brother had been keeping an eye on the officer
ever since, and McLaughlin didn't like that pressure, said Cushing. That
is why McLaughlin went to the Cushing house that night to settle the
score, so to speak, but he shot the wrong person, said Cushing in the
testimony.
"If the state is going to kill someone's father, we would like to have the
court think about what that would mean, and the people who are most
effective [at] talking about that are individuals [whose] father was
executed when they were children," Cushing said.
On average, 50 to 60 people are executed every year by the government, and
they typically have 3 family members each. That means 150 to 240 more
victims are created annually, according to the Death Penalty Information
Center.
No Silence, No Shame is trying to reduce those numbers by making the
public aware of these survivors experiences, to show the ripple effects of
the death penalty.
Studying loss
Sandra Jones, a research sociologist and professor at Rowan University in
New Jersey, released a study on the issues of grief and loss faced by the
families with a relative on death row.
Jones spent years building relationships with families of death row
inmates. She has taken it upon herself to bring kids of inmates to see
their fathers in the Delaware County Prison in Pennsylvania when their own
family members refuse to do so.
She became particularly close to Brian Steckel's family. Steckel was
convicted of raping and killing 29-year-old Sandra Lee Long. Jones
witnessed Steckel's execution in 2005. She is now writing a book about her
personal experience with death row inmates' families. She said the
government ignores these families because it feels guilty.
"If the system gave these families the attention they deserve, it would
come across [as] really hypocritical, because they are the very system
that is killing their loved ones," she said.
She also explains that the reason death row inmates' families are often
forgotten is that the survivor victims themselves do not want to be put in
the spotlight, since they feel guilty for and are ashamed of their loved
ones' mistakes.
"The family gets criminalized along with their loved ones, and stigmatized
to the extent that they dont feel comfortable coming out and demanding
attention because they feel guilty. They have a lot of guilt and a lot of
shame. They [ask] themselves what they could have done differently," she
said.
"Writer Elizabeth Sharpen sometimes refers to them as the 'double
losers,'" Jones said. "A lot of these guys on death row have murdered a
wife or an uncle or somebody within the family, and so the surviving
family members are put into this position where if they support and grieve
the loss of the loved one on death row, they are made to feel they did not
really love the one who was murdered."
Losing a child to the death penalty becomes a never-ending loss, one
"similar to having a disabled child that you are grieving for every unmet
milestone he misses throughout life," said Jones. It becomes a "wound that
never heals and keeps opening up with every failed appeal."
Between losing a child to a murderer and losing one to death row as is
the case for McWee the latter seems to be the more painful of the 2
because of the "never-ending wait."
Having to wait for your son to be executed is "horrible, because you know
it is coming, but you don't know when," said McWee, whose son, Jerry, was
executed 14 years after her daughter, Joyce, was murdered by Joyce's
husband on December 31, 1980.
"[My daughter's murder] was a shock, but [it was] nothing compared to the
death penalty hanging over your head for 13 years," she said. "News of her
murder came unexpectedly, [but] the wait is horrible. One day he called me
at 12:30, and he said, 'Mother, I have been served.' I had no idea what he
meant. All I knew was that lunch was served at 11:30. So I said, 'What
[do] you mean, you have been served? What did you eat for lunch?' So he
said, 'Mother, you don't understand. I have been served with my death
warrant they have given me my day of execution.'"
Murder is murder
Even murder victim families sympathize with state execution survivor
families, finding it unjust that their pain is labeled differently from
theirs.
The Rev. Walter Everett, a pastor at St. Jones United Methodist Church in
Sunbury, Connecticut, lost his son, Scott, in 1987. Scott was murdered by
Mike Carducci in Easton, Connecticut. The pastor has been part of MVFHR
since it was founded. He said he feels close to parents whose children are
on death row.
Everett said it is important to educate people about the death penalty
without making a distinction about different victims. He travels around
the country to speak about the experience he shares with many families
whose loved ones have been executed under the death penalty.
"I see them just as much a 'victim' as I am. That person, regardless of
what their son or daughter has done, or their loved ones, they still love
them, so they become a victim when that person is killed," he said. "Since
I got to know several people whose family members were executed, I see the
pain they have gone through, and I believe their story should be told as
much, because their pain is just as deep as my pain."
Everett took part in a vigil in California to stop the execution of
Clarence Ray Allen, a 76-year-old, and at that point blind and in a
wheelchair. Allen was put to death on January 17, 2006, for planning three
murders from his cell while serving a life sentence.
"I went out there and I met his children. Lovely people. And they hurt,
they pained as he went through that," he said.
Former death row inmates who have been exonerated share the belief that
their families' grief rarely receives attention. Since executions now take
place behind closed doors, the system has become "sterile," said Kirk
Bloodsworth, the 1st person on death row to be exonerated because of DNA
evidence.
Bloodsworth served nearly 9 years in a Maryland prison for the 1984 rape
and murder of 9-year-old girl he had never met.
"They don't want to show the 'crying mother' over the executed son. No
matter what he has done, he is still paying for that, and they dont show
that part of it," he said. "She has got no say. She raised a murderer.
That is how they are looking at her, and that was not her fault,
necessarily."
Bloodsworth regained his freedom on June 28, 1993, but his mother,
Jeanette, did not live to see him walk out of prison. She died earlier
that year. Bloodsworth was taken in chains to see her body, but prison
officials refused to allow him to attend the funeral.
"My mother went through hell watching me. I was her son, and I was going
to be executed, and nobody cared about a word she said. I thought that was
a terrible way to have to treat somebody," he said.
Rob Warden is the director of the Center on Wrongful Conviction in
Chicago, and has been a legal affairs writer for more than 25 years. He
said that while the stories of inmates family members are not necessarily
ignored, the focus is often on the person "walking out of the door."
"The stories of relatives of wrongful conviction in general tend to be
overlooked," he said, "because they are so overshadowed by the poignancy
of the innocent person or the person who was executed himself."
This does not imply that these stories should not be told. On the
contrary, they should not be forgotten, Warden said.
"We should understand that when we execute somebody, no matter how heinous
that person might be, it is over for that person," said Warden. "But the
pain that is inflicted on parents, or siblings, or children, is permanent.
It is everlasting. It will be there. It is ongoing."
(source: In The Fray Magazine)
MARYLAND:
Senator suggests deal on death penalty measure----Republican would help
move bill out of committee in exchange for action on same-sex marriage ban
A new wrinkle in the death penalty debate emerged in the General Assembly
yesterday when a state senator said he would vote to move a repeal bill
out of the committee where it has been bottled up for several years.
But the lawmaker, Sen. Bryan W. Simonaire, also wants the committee to
move a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Both bills are stalled in
the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee.
Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, has made abolition of Maryland's death
penalty a personal crusade, and opponents of capital punishment have eyed
Simonaire as a potential swing vote to spring the repeal bill from the
committee.
Though Simonaire has voted against the bill in the past, the Anne Arundel
County Republican said that he would keep an open mind this year after a
state commission found flaws in the system.
Some lawmakers have argued that all senators should be allowed to debate
the death penalty, and opponents have focused on that chamber because many
believe that they have the votes to get a bill out of the House of
Delegates committee with jurisdiction.
"People are making a compelling argument to me that we need to do this,
and I understand that, but we shouldn't pick and choose which logic we
apply that to," Simonaire said. "Basically, what's good for the goose is
good for the gander."
Simonaire's proposed trade-off, however, is not likely to be embraced. The
deal would force Democrats to advance the constitutional amendment
defining marriage as between a man and a woman, which many oppose.
And several Democrats on the panel, including Chairman Brian E. Frosh, a
Montgomery County Democrat, said that the 2 issues should be debated on
their own merits.
"It's clever and interesting, but I wouldn't support something like that
in any way," said Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, a Baltimore Democrat who has
sponsored legislation to repeal the death penalty.
(source: Baltimore Sun)
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