Sept. 25
USA:
Only conservatives can end the death penalty.
How can we end the death penalty in the United States?
Every so often, one capital case receives wide attention and makes a public
spectacle of the American machinery of death. Last week, it was the controversy
over Troy Davis, who was executed in Georgia after years of impassioned
argument, organizing and litigation.
I honor those who worked so hard to save Davis’ life because they forced the
nation to deal with all of the uncertainties, imperfections and, in some
instances, brutalities of the criminal justice system.
Yet after all the tears are shed and after the last candlelight vigil ends with
a prayer, the repeal of capital punishment is still a political question. Can
the politics of this question change? The answer is plainly yes.
It’s hard to imagine now, but in 1966, more Americans opposed the death penalty
than supported it — by 47 % to 42 %. But the crime wave that began in the late
1960s and the sense that the criminal justice system was untrustworthy sent
support for capital punishment soaring. By 1994, 80 % of Americans said they
favored the death penalty and only 16 % were opposed.
Since then, the numbers have softened slightly. Over the last decade, the
proportion of Americans declaring themselves against capital punishment has
bumped around between 25 % and 32 %.
The mild resurgence of opposition — caused by a decline in violent crime and by
investigations raising doubts about the guilt of some prisoners on death row —
has opened up political space for action.
Forgive me, fellow liberals, but we’re not going to be the ones who lead this
fight. Too many Democratic politicians remember how the death penalty was used
in campaigns during the 1980s and ‘90s, notably by George H.W. Bush against
Michael Dukakis in 1988. They’re still petrified of looking “soft” on crime.
Moreover, winning this battle will require converting Americans who are not
liberals. The good news is that many of our fellow citizens are open to
persuasion. Gallup’s own polling shows that support for capital punishment
drops sharply when respondents are offered the alternative of “life
imprisonment, with absolutely no possibility of parole.” When Gallup presented
this option in its 2010 survey, only 49 % still chose the death penalty; 46 %
preferred life without parole.
And a survey last year for the Death Penalty Information Center by Lake
Research Partners showed that if a variety of alternatives were offered to
respondents (including life without parole plus restitution to victims’
families), hard support for the death penalty could be driven down to 33 %.
If a majority is open to persuasion, the best persuaders will be conservatives
— particularly the overlapping groups of religious conservatives and opponents
of abortion — who have moral objections to the state-sanctioned taking of life
or see the grave moral hazard involved in the risk of executing an innocent
person.
There have always been conservatives who opposed the death penalty, but perhaps
now their voices will be heard. In Ohio this summer, state Rep. Terry Blair, a
Republican and a staunch foe of abortion, declared flatly: “I don’t think we
have any business in taking another person’s life, even for what we call a
legal purpose or what we might refer to as a justified purpose.”
Last week, Don Heller, who wrote the 1978 ballot initiative that reinstated the
death penalty in California, explained in the Los Angeles Daily News why he had
changed his mind. “Life without parole protects public safety better than a
death sentence,” he wrote. “It’s a lot cheaper, it keeps dangerous men and
women locked up forever, and mistakes can be fixed.”
The most moving testimony against Troy Davis’ execution came from a group of
former corrections officials who, as they wrote, “have had direct involvement
in executions.”
“No one has the right to ask a public servant to take on a lifelong sentence of
nagging doubt, and for some of us, shame and guilt,” they said. “Should our
justice system be causing so much harm to so many people when there is an
alternative?”
We live in an unreasonable time when political ideology has built a thick wall
that blocks us from acknowledging that some of the choices we face are tragic.
Perhaps we can make an exception in this case and have a quiet conversation
about whether our death-penalty system really speaks for our best selves. And I
thank those conservatives, right-to-lifers, libertarians and prison officials
who, more than anyone else, might make such a dialogue possible.
(source: Column, E.J. Dionne; He is a twice-weekly columnist for the Washington
Post Writers' Group and a senior fellow in governance studies at The Brookings
Institution, a professor at Georgetown University and a NPR
commentator----Washington Post)
***********************
Ebenezer pastor continues fight against death penalty
One of Atlanta’s prominent religious leaders took to the pulpit Sunday and
argued that that the battle against the death penalty should not die with this
week’s execution of convicted cop killer Troy Davis.
The Rev. Raphael Warnock, pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, spoke
out from the pulpit Sunday against the death penalty and the execution of Troy
Davis.
The Rev. Raphael Warnock called on congregants at Ebenezer Baptist Church to
live their faith through both justice and mercy.
Both were absent, he said, when the state executed Davis Wednesday for the 1989
murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah.
“I’m afraid the word justice has fallen out of the American Christian lexicon,”
Warnock said. “That’s how people can worship God on Sunday and break out in
applause the next week when they hear how many people have been executed.”
State and federal courts upheld Davis’ conviction, dismissing claims that seven
witnesses who recanted their testimony exonerated him.
Warnock said he believed that Davis was innocent. But even if Davis were not,
the reverend said the execution did not allow for mercy, which the Board of
Pardons and Paroles also denied.
“Mercy reaches beyond the limit of justice,” Warnock said. “Where the law was
limited, the Board could have done what was right. They did not do their job.”
Church member Brenda Davenport agreed, noting that no consideration was given
for whether Davis was a different man this week than the man convicted of the
crime.
She said she also worried about questions raised from so many changes in
witness testimony.
“Twenty years was a chance for rehabilitation if he really did it,” Davenport
said. “If not, America will be looked at in horror to think we’ve killed an
innocent person.”
MacPhail’s family has rejected innocence claims, repeatedly saying they
believed Davis was the murderer. They supported his execution.
Still, Warnock said he prayed for them, saying their pain was similar to that
of the family of James Byrd, a Texas man dragged to his death behind a pick-up
truck in 1998.
Texas executed Lawrence Brewer Wednesday for his role in Byrd’s death.
“We have to move past that pain and do justice,” Warnock said. “The death
penalty is still wrong.”
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
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