[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, US MIL., OHIO, MD., OKLA.

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 17



USA:

After Innocence: DVD Documents Plight of the Guilty till Proven Innocent


This revealing documentary is essentially ten different stories, each a
tragic case of mistaken identity and a rush to judgment. For all of the
men profiled here can thank their lucky stars that evidence was preserved,
otherwise theyd still be in jail.

For example, Herman Atkins had been sentenced to 45 years for rape and
robbery despite having an alibi and no previous criminal record. In the
film, his father, a cop, admits that he now regrets never visiting his son
even once during his 11-year incarceration, explaining that, as an officer
of the law, he had believed in the justice system.

Another of the unfortunate subjects, Scott Hornoff, was a police officer
when he found himself arrested for murder. Although he sat on death row
for over 6 years till his conviction was overturned, the State of Rhode
Island still refuses to pay him any damages or back pay. A common theme
running through each of the frightening tales told here is that none of
the victims have been compensated for the ordeals they had to endure.

Without money to get back on their feet, they presently find themselves
ill-equipped to cope in a world which has moved on without them. We also
see the toll that the time in jail has exacted on their families, from
wives having to work and to raise children alone to kids feeling alienated
to relatives not living long enough to see a sons name cleared before they
passed on.

One mother wonders why the jury had so callously dismissed her passionate
testimony, under oath, that her son had been with her at the time that the
crime had been committed. Meanwhile, one false accuser contritely tries to
explain away her regrettable mistake of identifying the wrong man as her
rapist.

By shining a scientific spotlight on the criminal justice systems dirty
little secret, After Innocence leaves no doubt that thousands of other
wrongly-imprisoned persons must currently be rotting away behind bars,
with only the ability to afford a Dream Team of DNA experts standing
between them and their freedom.

Excellent (4 stars)

Unrated

Running time: 95 minutes

Distributor: New Yorker Video

DVD Extras: Deleted scenes, bonus footage, updates, interviews, Pearl Jam
performance, media coverage, footage from the Sundance and theatrical
premieres, MTV and Larry King Live coverage, website and contact info, and
a theatrical trailer.

(source: Insight Magazine)

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

The Chief Justice's Quest for Less Fractured Supreme Court Rulings


The U.S. Supreme Court plays an essential role in resolving splits that
have arisen among lower federal and state courts on questions of federal
law. Often, the correct answer in these cases is far from apparent; if the
question presented had an easy answer, no lower court division of
authority would have occurred. Because the vast bulk of the Supreme
Court's workload consists of cases that present the most difficult and
important questions of federal law, it does not come as any great surprise
that many of those cases produce sharply divided rulings from the Supreme
Court itself.

But while sharply divided high court rulings provide countless hours of
enjoyment to the media and other Court watchers, they don't offer the same
promise of legal stability that unanimous decisions or nearly unanimous
decisions provide. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. recently addressed
this matter at length in a very interesting interview with law professor
Jeffrey Rosen that is the subject of an article in the January/February
2007 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

According to the article, Roberts said, "There was a question from one of
these [tour] groups that come in here: 'How do you decide who's going to
be the swing vote?'" The chief justice jokingly responded to Rosen, "I
don't know, we rotate," before remarking more seriously that the question
to him identified "a steady wasting away of the notion of the rule of law,
a personalization of it." The article went on to quote Roberts as saying,
"The whole notion that it's functioning as a Court doesn't seem to appeal
to anyone ... I think it's bad, long-term, if people identify the rule of
law with how individual justices vote."

In the aftermath of the interview, disagreement has arisen among
commentators over whether the chief justice's remarks were meant for two
of his most unyielding colleagues on the Court's conservative wing,
Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, or whether they targeted the
Court's newly perceived centrist, Justice Anthony Kennedy. My guess, for
what it's worth, is that the chief justice was aiming his remarks more at
Kennedy than at the other 2 justices.

Any discussion of the high court's current output must begin with the
recognition that the Court presently enjoys a remarkable amount of
unanimity in many cases and that the outlook of the justices is not all
that divergent on many important issues of the day. The Court currently
has seven justices appointed by Republican presidents, and neither of the
two Democratic appointees qualifies as among the most liberal justices
ever to serve on the Court.

To be sure, it is possible to view Kennedy as anchoring the center of a
Court that's divided between Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer on the left -- and the chief
justice, Scalia, Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. on the right. But on many
issues, Kennedy is more conservative than Sandra Day O'Connor, his
predecessor in the swing justice's seat, so I would expect to see the
results of the current Court be more solidly conservative than during the
final years of the Rehnquist Court.

To grasp how Roberts himself understands his quest for less fractured
Supreme Court rulings, it is appropriate to examine how he behaved when
voting in close cases during the Court's October 2005 term. In March 2006,
the chief justice wrote the lead dissent in the 5-3 ruling in Georgia v.
Randolph, where the majority held that "a warrantless search of a shared
dwelling for evidence over the express refusal of consent by a physically
present resident cannot be justified as reasonable as to him on the basis
of consent given to the police by another resident."

Alito did not participate in Randolph because the case was argued before
he joined the Court. It is reasonable to conclude, however, that Alito
would have sided with the dissenters in that case, thereby producing a 5-4
ruling. The chief justice's decision to dissent in Randolph demonstrates
that his hope for less fractured rulings should not cause members of the
Court to abandon their views as to the correct outcome of a case merely to
ensure that the majority consists of six justices rather than only 5.

Even more revealing is the current Court's sharply fractured 4-1-4 ruling
in Rapanos v. United States on the question of when wetlands constitute
the "waters of the United States" for purposes of establishing liability
under the federal Clean Water Act. In Rapanos, the chief justice joined
Scalia's opinion, as did Thomas and Alito. The lead opinion for the other
four justices was written by Stevens and joined in by Souter, Ginsburg and
Breyer. Straddling the fence, as may soon become his recurring role, was
Kennedy.

Lower courts in the aftermath of Rapanos have struggled to understand its
consequences, because on some issues Kennedy agreed with the more liberal
group, while on other issues, he agreed with the more conservative group.
But what is significant for present purposes is that the chief justice did
not view obtaining 5 votes for the same result to be more important than
adhering to his understanding of the correct outcome of the case. Had
Roberts believed it more important to have a majority outcome, he could
have himself joined the more liberal group of four justices to accomplish
that goal.

Looking ahead to the balance of the current term, it is widely expected
that the Court will issue 5-4 rulings in 2 of the most closely followed
matters now pending, cases involving the constitutionality of a federal
ban on the so-called "partial birth" abortion procedure and the
constitutionality of race-based assignment of students to public secondary
schools. With respect to the abortion case, the key question is whether
Kennedy will adhere to his earlier expressed views on the subject, where
he concluded in dissent that such a ban was constitutional, or will depart
from those views to defend the Court's supremacy against a direct assault
from the U.S. Congress, which passed the very sort of abortion ban that
the Court recently held unconstitutional in a case from Nebraska.

Chief Justice Roberts makes a valid point when he reminds everyone that
unanimity is a value and that fractured U.S. Supreme Court rulings usually
fail to settle an issue in need of definitive resolution. Nevertheless,
the chief justice's own actions demonstrate that achieving a majority
holding or avoiding a slim five-justice majority are not significant
enough goals to abandon one's own firm convictions as to the correct
outcome in a case.

It cannot go unremarked that now is a convenient time for the chief
justice to be speaking in favor of unanimity and avoiding fractured
outcomes, because the composition of the Court at present all but ensures
that a majority in favor of the chief justice's own preferred disposition
can be accomplished in most cases if his colleagues demonstrate sufficient
flexibility. By contrast, 20 years from now, if the Court consists of 5
very liberal justices, 1 moderate justice and 3 very conservative justices
including the chief justice, Roberts may begin to view 5-4 rulings as
preferable to 6-3 rulings because they may be more easily overturned
should one of the more liberal justices be replaced with a conservative
one.

(source: Law.com----Howard J. Bashman operates his own appellate
litigation boutique in Willow Grove, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia. Access
his appellate Web log at http://howappealing.law.com/. )






US MILITARY:

Military Justice Goes AWOL


This week President Bush issued a final executive order authorizing
military commissions to begin trying suspected terrorists. Under rules
drafted by the Pentagon last month, the commissions would be permitted to
sentence defendants to imprisonment or even death on the basis of hearsay
or coerced testimony.

This lack of basic legal protections provided by civilian courts or
courts-martial has brought condemnation at home and abroad as an
abandonment of this nations historic commitment to liberty and the rule of
law.

Yet when military commissions  an American invention  were first
instituted 150 years ago, they were hailed around the world as an advance
for humanity and principles of justice.

The occasion was the Mexican-American War, the 1st time the United States
Army had been involved in an extended military operation beyond the
countrys borders. In 1846 Gen. Winfield Scott's forces were ordered to
seize Mexico City to bring an end to the fighting. Scott immediately
foresaw that, as an occupation commander, he would be facing a huge
problem of maintaining order both among the Mexicans in the territory he
controlled and among his own troops in a foreign land.

The traditional view of the laws of war held that an occupying army could
do anything, the legal maxim being "Inter arma leges silent": In time of
war, the laws are silent. As a result, the phrase "martial law" was widely
seen by Americans as synonymous with sheer tyranny. People recoiled at the
notion of a military officer administering law over a civilian population,
even an enemy population.

In Congress, many members denounced martial law and inter arma leges
silent as a holdover of a barbaric past. Scott asked President James K.
Polk for a clarification of his authority as occupation commander. The
president ducked the issue.

So Scott issued his own order. In February 1847, he published General
Orders No. 20, which enumerated ordinary recognized civilian crimes and
created the military commission to try them.

Scott's motive was equal parts necessity (maintaining public order) and
shrewd politics (appealing to the Mexican population to cooperate with his
forces). In place of arbitrary and raw power and summary justice at
gunpoint, a system of impartial courts gave Mexicans the assurance that
they would be treated fairly.

Scott in particular wanted to impress upon the civilians the contrast
between American justice and the lawlessness they had endured when the
Mexican forces led by Gen. Antonio Lpez de Santa Anna rode through their
villages, looting, raping and killing.

By the same token, Scott used military commissions to try  and punish
American soldiers who had committed crimes, including rape and theft,
against local citizens. This, too, was not lost on the populace.

General Orders No. 20 became the spark that ignited an international
revolution in thinking about martial law. It established for the 1st time
the principle that an occupation commander was subject to a higher legal
authority, same as civilian government. It became the model for orders
promulgated during the Civil War that established military commissions and
guided federal occupation commanders in their administration.

These later orders reiterated the revolutionary principle that martial law
did not mean arbitrary power or tyranny over an enemy; rather, as a panel
of officers who drafted the key Civil War era order on martial law
declared, it was exactly the opposite. Far from signifying military
oppression, the panel stated, martial law would be "strictly guided by the
principles of justice, honor, and humanity  virtues adorning a soldier
even more than other men, for the very reason that he possesses the power
of his arms against the unarmed."

It is a measure of how far we have come as a nation  and in values at one
time widely held  that military commissions, once seen as a great stride
forward for American principles of justice and the rule of law, will now
for ever after be associated with the abridgement of rights.

And it is a cruel insult to American military honor that where the nation
once saw its military as called to an even higher duty in administering
justice  because of the special place honor and duty hold for the soldier
it has now turned to the military as a way to shirk the American tradition
of "justice, honor and humanity."

(source: Op-Ed, New York Times; Stephen Budiansky is the author of the
forthcoming book "The Bloody Shirt," about Americas war against terrorist
violence during Reconstruction)

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

Criminal Records and "Moral Waivers"


Reflecting the difficulties it is experiencing finding young working-class
folks willing to sacrifice lives and limbs in the bloody and criminal
occupation of Iraq, the United States Army has granted an increasing
number of so-called moral waivers to enlistees with official criminal
backgrounds.

According to a front page story in last Wednesday's New York Times, the
number of such waivers given to Army recruits expanded 65 %, from less
than 5,000 in 2003 to more than 8,000 in 2006. Most of the waivers are for
"serious misdemeanors" but the number offered for felony convictions has
risen from 8 to 11 %(1).

"THOSE INDIVIDUALS"

According to University of California professor Aaron Belkin, "more than
125,000 service members with criminal histories have joined the military
in the last 3 years." Belkin worries that "you have a sizeable population
that has been incarcerated and is not used to the same cultural norms as
everybody else. The chances that one of those individuals is going to
commit an atrocity or disobey an order is higher" (2).

According to Beth Asch, an economist at the military-industrial RAND
Corporation, the increasing number of recruits with criminal backgrounds
is "something that should be treated with concern."

This sentiment is echoed by John D. Hutson, dean and president of the
Franklin Pierce Law Center and former judge advocate general of the U.S.
Navy. "If you are recruiting somebody who has demonstrated some sort of
antisocial behavior and then you are putting a gun in their hands," Hutson
told Times reporter Lizette Alvarez, "you have to be awfully careful about
what you are doing."

THE MARK OF A CRIMINAL RECORD

"It is not uncommon for young criminal offenders to turn to the military,"
notes Alvarez (who should have said ex-offenders), "because their records
typically narrow their job opportunities" (3).

Indeed, mass incarceration helps drive its own spectacular expansion in
the U.S. It does partly this by significantly damaging the employment and
earnings prospects of ex-prisoners, most of whom were already severely
disadvantaged in a post-industrial labor market that offers remarkably few
opportunities for lesser skilled male workers of color.

Reflecting the fact that roughly 80 % of large- and medium-sized employers
now do criminal background checks on job applicants (4), the best social
scientific research shows that the chance of securing legitimate
employment decreases significantly with prison time and that the nation's
3 million ex-prisoners suffer a lifetime "wage penalty" (earnings
reduction) of 10 to 30 %. Ex-prisoners on average experience no real wage
increases in their twenties and thirties, when young men who have never
been incarcerated tend to experience rapid wage-growth. Prison time serves
to channel individuals away from skilled occupations and into job sectors
characterized by low wages, limited job stability, and fewer opportunities
for advancement. It disrupts the career-building process with prior work
experience contributing little to future opportunities. Ex-offenders are
left to start back at square one with respect to gaining a foothold in a
particular occupations(5).The unsurprising results include the return of
most ex-prisoners to prison in a viciously circular game of inmate
recycling that turns millions of inner city residents into raw materials
for the expansion of a mostly rural prison industry (6).

Since the nation's prisoner, felon, ex-prisoner, and ex-felon population
is very disproportionately black, moreover, the nation's veritable
explosion of mass incarceration and criminal-marking has significantly
undermined America's ability to pursue racial justice and act on the
cherished goals of equal opportunity and black equality that were
articulated by Martin Luther king, Jr. and the civil rights movement more
than a generation ago. In 2002, 38 years after the passage of the Civil
Rights Act, just more than 10 % of black males between the ages of 25 and
29 were incarcerated in the U.S., compared to 1.2 % of white men and 2.4
Latino men of the same age. Under existing criminal justice trends
reflecting a dramatic increase in racially disparate mass imprisonment
beginning in the middle 1970s, 1 in 3 black males will be sent to state or
federal prison at some point in their lives compared to 1 in 6 Latino
males and 1 in 17 white males. Blacks are 12 % of the nations population
but comprise nearly half of the nation's 1.4 million prisoners and of the
nation's 3 million former prisoners. As The Economist noted in an article
titled "The Stigma That Never Fades," an astonishing one in three black
adult males carried the lifelong burden of a felony record by 2002 (7).

Thanks to its racially disparate labor market consequences, the
"prison-industrial- complex" has become a significant form of racially
regressive state intervention in the US labor market(8).

This is an important but relatively unknown aspect of the domestic
societal racism and socioeconomic regression that help fuel Empire and
Inequality at home and abroad (9).

"ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR": THE POWER "ELITE'S" "MORAL WAIVER"

Don't get me wrong. I'm a longstanding critic of hiring and other forms of
discrimination against people with criminal records and criminal
histories. I've written repeatedly and at length about the racially and
socioeconomically disparate and regressive nature of mass incarceration
and felony marking (10).

At the same time, I do not think you need a criminal record or prison
history to exhibit relevant "antisocial behavior" or to be at risk of
committing atrocities and breaking laws. The most significant
transgressions against social and ecological health ("antisocial
behavior") are routinely committed by people who are generally protected
from criminal marking by privileges of class and race  the directors of
the nation's powerful and inherently socio-pathological corporations, who
are legally required to privilege bottom-line investor interests (profit)
above and beyond the common good of the broader society and polity (11).

I also observe that the biggest and most relevant atrocities are ordered
and this most significantly committed by the generally felony-free power
"elite." Important examples include Dick Cheney and George W. Bushs
decisions to launch the monumentally criminal occupation of Iraq  an open
violation of international rules forbidding wars of aggression  and to
conduct this invasion and their larger so-called "war on terror" without
regard to standard international prohibitions of torture and the killing
and maiming of civilians. These are great transgressions that far exceed
and create the essential context for war crimes committed by on-the-
ground GIs with or without "criminal backgrounds." GIs are in Iraq to do
wrong in the first place only because of the broader atrocity ordered by
Cheney and Bush, with predictably (in fact widely predicted) terrible
consequences for Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers.

As good middle-class Americans fret over the criminal backgrounds of their
baby-sitters and gardeners, they might want to reflect on the need to
rescind the "moral waiver" granted to top national economic and political
authorities.

"EXCEPT WHEN IT COMES TO HIMSELF"

Still, I wonder if Alvarez, Belkin, Asch and Hutson would like to apply
their concern about handing military power to people with criminal
backgrounds to the fact that Bush "was arrested in 1972 for possessing
cocaine." As journalist Mark Hatfield noted in the afterword to his 2001
book Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American
President, Bushs father (a U.S. Congressman in 1972) "worked out an
agreement with the [presiding] judge, a fellow Republican and elected
official, to allow George W. to perform community service at Project
P.U.L.L. in exchange for having the entire record regarding the incident
expunged." As one former Yale classmate and close friend of Bush told
Hatfield, "George W. was arrested for possession of cocaine in 1972 but
due to his father's connections, the entire record was expunged by a state
judge whom the elder Bush helped get elected" (12)

The story was verified by another top Bush source who added the following
in 1999:

"You know what makes me sick about all this shit? It's Bush's hypocrisy.
Cocaine use is illegal, but as Governor of Texas, he's toughened penalties
for people convicted of selling or possessing less than a gram of coke (a
crime previously punished by probation), Ok'd the housing of 16-year-olds
in adult correctional facilities and slashed funding for inmate
substance-abuse programs. Texas currently spend over $1.45 million a day
incarcerating young people on drug offensesI've known George for several
years and he has never accepted youth and irresponsibility as legitimate
excuses for illegal behavior  except when it comes to himself" (13)

Exactly. Whatever one thinks about the criminalization of narcotics (I'm
opposed), Bush II committed a technical crime that would have saddled him
with the crippling lifelong mark of a felony record (and perhaps a prison
history) if he had not been a Fortunate Son of the white ruling-class. To
make matters worse, he used the political career granted to him by
elevated family connections to toughen drug laws and expand racially
disparate and drug related youth and mass incarceration, helping feed the
spectacular expansion of the U.S. prison-industrial complex.

THEFT AS "LIBERATION"

For what it's worth, the historically erased 1972 coke bust wasn't the 1st
time that Daddy Bushs connections spared Dubya from the indignities and
disabilities of a criminal background. "In 1966 while serving as
fraternity president [at Yale]," Hatfield reported, "Junior had his 1st
brush with the law, involving the theft of a holiday decoration so he
could hang it on the door of his frat house. 'We evidently made a lot of
noise,' George said, recalling how the police responded to the theft
scene, 'because the local gendarmes came and said, "What are you doing." I
said, "We are liberating a Christmas tree wreath. Don't you understand the
Delta Kappa Epsilon house is short of a Christmas wreath?" They didn't
understand.' The police," Hatfield noted, "booked him on a misdemeanor but
later dropped it after the intervention of one of his fathers friends"
(14).

The 1966 incident was quite minor, but it carries a certain haunting feel
in light of subsequent events. It would not be the last time that Bush
would confuse theft with "liberation."

"DON'T KILL ME:" BUSHS GUBERNATORIAL RECORD

Of course, one doesn't have to focus only on technically illegal activity
in Bush's reckless youth to suggest that tens of millions of Americans
might have wanted to look a bit more deeply into Bush IIs background (and
that of his creepy family) before voting for him in 2000 and 2004. Dubya's
tendency towards "antisocial behavior" from the top down is evident in his
Texas gubernatorial record, which included a pro-concealed handgun bill,
an especially punitive model of public-assistance elimination ("welfare
reform"), a strong and self-interested predilection for corporate welfare,
a distinctive hostility to labor and environmental concerns, and a
special, record-setting taste for incarcerating and executing the states
disproportionately black and Latino poor (15).

In September of 1999, Bush revealed something of his true character when
he mocked what the evangelical Christian Karla Fay Tucker said when asked,
just before her execution, "what would you say to Governor Bush? : "'
Please don't kill me'" (16). Bush sneered as he derisively repeated
Tuckers dying comment. Tucker was electrocuted on Bush's controversial
order, over the (admittedly hypocritical) protest of Pat Robertson. By
this time, Bush was well into his alleged conversion to evangelical
Christianity.

[****my note-----Tucker was put to death via lethal injection, not
electrocution]

By the time of his 2004 re-"election" (17), of course, Bush had committed
numerous impeachable offenses. He had brazenly violated international law
and guaranteed himself an honored in the War Criminals' Hall of Fame.

It's nice that many of his former supporters have turned against him
Bush's popularity numbers have fallen towards the 1974 Nixon zone. But
it's a little late, under the rules of the U.S electoral system, for U.S.
citizens to be waking up to Bush's vile nature. Barring impeachment and
removal from office, which he richly deserves  the legal case is very
strong (18)  boy king George still has nearly 2 more years to wreak havoc.
The consequences could be truly disastrous at home and abroad. A little
more Bush background checking might have been useful.

WANTED: SOLDIERS WILLING TO DISOBEY CRIMINAL ORDERS

Considering the inherently illegal and terrorist nature of the
administration's war on Iraq , finally, one has to wonder about professor
Belkins concern that soldiers with criminal records might "disobey orders"
and "commit atrocities." Maybe we need more troops with a history of
defying authority on the ground in Iraq . Some orders need to be
disobeyed. There is legal as well moral basis for U.S. soldiers refusing
to participate in the sort of illegal and atrocious actions they have been
commanded to execute within and beyond Iraq .

Notes

1. Lizette Alvarez, "Army Giving More Waivers in Recruiting," New York
Times, 14 February 2007, A1. Alvarez defines a felony to mean an offense
carrying at least 1 year of prison time.

2. Alvarez, Army Giving More Waivers, A20. 3. Alvarez, A20.

4. Adam Liptak, "Expunged Criminal Records Live to Tell Tales," New York
Times, 17 October, 2006, p. A1.

5. Bruce Western and Becky Pettit, "Incarceration And Racial Inequality In
Men's Employment," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 54 (October,
2000): 3-16; Bruce Western, Jeffrey Kling, and David Weiman, "The Labor
Market Consequences of Incarceration," Crime and Delinquency, 47 (July
2001): 410-27; Bruce Western, "The Impact of Incarceration on Earnings,"
paper delivered at the 2000 annual meetings of the Society for the
Advancement of Socio-Economics (London); Devah Pager, "Criminal Careers:
the Consequences of Incarceration for Occupational Attainment," paper
delivered at the Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association,
2001.

6. Paul Street, "Color Bind: Prisons and the New American Racism, "in Tera
Herivel and Paul Wright eds., Prison Nation: the Warehousing of America's
Poor (London: Routledge, 2002), 30-40; Street, The Vicious Circle: Race,
Prison, Jobs, and Community in Chicago, Illinois, and the Nation (Chicago,
IL: Chicago Urban League, 2002), available online at www.cul-chicago.org,
click on "Research Reports Available Online;" Street, "Reverse
Reparations? Race, Place, and the Vicious Circle of Mass Incarceration,"
in Tera Herivel and Paul Wright, eds., Profiteers of Prison (New York, NY:
Seven Stories, 2007); Street, "Race, Place, and the Perils of
Prisonomics," Z Magazine, volume 18 (July/August, 2005); Street, "'Our
Brothers Keeper': The Thoroughly Dismal Science of Prison Economics,"
Opportunity (July 2002): 48-52; Street, "Starve the Racist Prison Beast,
ZNet Magazine (November

8, 2003), available online at www.zmag.org/ content/showarticle.cfm?
SectionID= 43&ItemID=4471, reprinted by Black Commentator, Issue 65
(November 20, 2003), available online at www.blackcommentator.com

7. "The Stigma That Never Fades," The Economist (August 10, 2002); Marc
Mauer, The Race to Incarcerate (New York, NY: New Press, 1999); Erick
Eckholm, "Plight Deepens for Black Males, Studies Warn," New York Times,
20 March 20016, A1; Paul Street The Vicious Circle: Race, Prison, Jobs,
and Community in Chicago, Illinois, and the Nation (Chicago, IL: Chicago
Urban League. 2002), pp. 4-8; Travis, But They All Come Back: Facing the
Challenges of Prisoner Reentry (2005), p.164.

8. Bruce Western and Katherine Beckett, "How Unregulated is the US Labor
Market? The Penal System as a Labor Market Institution," American Journal
of Sociology, 104 (January 1999): 1030-1060; Western and Pettit,
Incarceration and Racial Inequality;" Pager, "Criminal Careers." According
to Western, the American penal system has itself become a significant form
of racially regressive state intervention in the US labor market. He
recently concluded that "the penal system has a pervasive influence on the
life chances of disadvantaged minorities. Although typically the preserve
of criminology," Western observes, "incarceration appears to shape aspects
of inequality that are of traditional interest to stratification
researchers. It seems likely that status attainment, school-to-work
transitions, and family structure are all influenced, perhaps even
routinely, by the penal system in the current period of high
incarceration. From this perspective, the usual list of institutional
influences on social stratification  schools, the families, and social
policy  should be expanded to consider the coercive redistribution of life
chances through incarceration."

9. See Paul Street , "Empire Abroad, Prisons At Home: Dark Connections," Z
Magazine (January 2003): 41-46

10. Street, "Color Bind;" Street, The Vicious Circle; Street, "Reverse
Reparations?;" Street, "Race, Place, and the Perils of Prisonomics;"
Street, "'Our Brothers Keeper';" Street, "Starve the Racist Prison Beast;"

11. Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and
Power (Penguin Canada , 2004). See Paul Street , "Boeing Behavior: The
Biggest Scandal of Corporate America is What Happens on its Best
Behavior," ZNet Magazine (July 23, 2002), read at
www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=10 &ItemID=2135. Corporate
pathology imposes a large number of great and interrelated costs on
society: rampant pollution and ecological crisis, chronic overwork,
widespread economic insecurity, endemic political corruption, devastating
disinvestment and job loss, the crippling atrophy of positive government
social functions, the mass misinformation, diversion and consumer
addiction of the populace, radical upward distribution of wealth and
power, mass obesity, the collapse of local independent business sectors,
an addictive societal attachment to militarism and war, mass over-reliance
on pharmaceuticals and processed foods and commodities and corporate
services in general, etc.

12. Mark Hatfield, Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an
American President ( New York : Soft Skull Press, 2002), pp. 306-318.

13. Hatfield, Fortunate Son, p. 318

14. Hatfield, pp. 33-34.

15. Hatfield, pp. 143-268; Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, Shrub: the Short
But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush ( New York , NY : Vintage,
2000). On Bushs fascinating and incredibly vile family background, loaded
with hyper-aristocratic and military-industrial connections, see Stephen
Lendeman, "The End of the Bush Dynasty," ZNet Magazine, December 5, 2006,
read at www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11552

16. Marc Crispin Miller, The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National
Disorder ( New York , NY : W.W. Norton, 2002), p, 121.

17. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?," June 1, 2006,
available online at
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/61/20209.

18. Elizabeth De La Vega, The United States v, George W. Bush et al. ( New
York , NY : Seven Stories, 2006).

(source: Veteran radical historian, journalist, and activist Paul Street
is an anti-centrist political commentator located in Iowa City, IA, U.S.
Street is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since
9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004), Segregated Schools: Educational
Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York, NY: Routledge, 2005),
and Still Separate, Unequal: Race, Place, and Policy in Chicago (Chicago,
2005) and The Empire and Inequality Report.* Street's next book is Racial
Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History (New
York, 2007)---zmag.org)






OHIO:

Death penalty supporters, opponents write Ohio governor's office


In one of the nation's busiest death penalty states, letters to Gov. Ted
Strickland are running almost 5 to 1 in favor of ending capital punishment
or temporarily stopping it to study the system.

Strickland supports the death penalty, but almost immediately after taking
office, he delayed the executions of three condemned killers while he
reviewed their cases. The decision resonated in Ohio, where former Gov.
Bob Taft let 24 executions proceed with little hesitation.

An Associated Press review of correspondence Strickland received since his
election and running through Feb. 15 found 125 letters or e-mails from
death penalty opponents. That number does not include letters asking for
specific killers to be freed without reference to the writer's position on
the death penalty.

"Killing people is wrong. Please end the death penalty in Ohio," Gerald
and Andrea Breen of Cincinnati said in a handwritten note on Jan. 20.

"I firmly believe that human life is given by God as sacred and that only
He has jurisdiction over each person's life and death," wrote Sister Rose
Clement Stalter of Columbus, a nun with the Dominican Sisters and one of
several nuns who wrote Strickland opposing capital punishment.

Another 27 letters urged Strickland to keep the state's death penalty in
place.

"Please don't mess with the death penalty," Gene Metz, a warehouse clerk
in Harrison, challenged Strickland in a Jan. 28 e-mail. "It is the only
tool that we have left to deal with killers."

That opponents' figure does not include about three dozen letters
specifically urging the execution of individual inmates, 27 of them from
relatives and friends of Tami Engstrom, murdered by Kenneth Biros in 1991.

Strickland, the 1st Democrat elected governor in Ohio in 20 years,
indicated shortly after being sworn in last month that he was worried
about having enough time to review the case files for upcoming executions.
On Jan. 19 he officially delayed the executions of Biros and 2 other
inmates.

Both supporters and opponents of capital punishment interpreted
Strickland's actions as the possible 1st step toward a moratorium. But
Strickland says people shouldn't assume anything.

"If I were to decide I was going to have a moratorium on executions, I
would just say so," Strickland said. "People are reading between the
lines, and there's nothing written there."

Ohio executed 5 people last year, 2nd highest in the country after Texas
with 24. From 2002 through 2006 Ohio executed 22 people, a tie for 3rd
with North Carolina and behind only Texas and Oklahoma.

After Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine took office last year, his office received
hundreds of letters regarding the 1st execution he oversaw in April 2006.
Spokesman Kevin Hall attributed the unusually high number to Kaine's
well-known personal opposition to the death penalty.

Death penalty opponents "in particular had some expectation that they
might have more of an impact by making contact," said Hall, who also
worked for Kaine's predecessor, Gov. Mark Warner.

But Kaine, a Democrat, also said he would uphold the law and he let that
execution go on, along with 3 of 4 other cases that have come before him.

In Florida, newly elected Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican and death
penalty supporter, has received only 22 letters and e-mails split evenly
between capital punishment backers and opponents.

"I wouldn't say we felt like it was high or low," Crist spokeswoman Kathy
Torian said.

Florida executed 21 inmates under Crist's predecessor, Republican Jeb
Bush. The state has a temporary moratorium on executions while a
commission studies whether changes are needed in the way the state carries
out the death penalty.

Bush created the commission after December's botched execution of Angel
Nieves Diaz, who survived for more than a half hour after being given two
doses of the lethal injection drugs.

A Feb. 1 poll by Quinnipiac University found that 60 % of Ohio voters
supported Strickland's decision.

The governor granted Biros a reprieve until March 20. He also delayed the
executions of James J. Filiaggi until April 24 and Christopher J. Newton
until May 24.

Some of the most heartfelt letters Strickland received came from relatives
of Engstrom, a 22-year-old woman who was stabbed 91 times by Biros on Feb.
7, 1991 in Trumbull County, then strangled and dismembered.

"Sorry for Kenneth Biros I will never be," Engstrom's father, James Heiss,
wrote in a December letter. "I think he has been kept alive way beyond the
years he deserves as my Tami was snuffed out of her life at such a young
age and was not given a choice on living or dying."

ON THE NET----Gov. Ted Strickland: http://governor.ohio.gov/

Gov. Tim Kaine: http://www.governor.virginia.gov/index.cfm

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

Letters to governor from death penalty supporters, opponents


A sampling of comments from death penalty supporters and opponents sent to
Gov. Ted Strickland since the Democrat's November election:

>From capital punishment opponents:

"There are just too many questions about the death penalty to believe it
is just or humane."

-Jan. 12 e-mail from Jennifer Stewart, of Stow in northeast Ohio.

"Please stop capital punishment by appointing a commission to review it
and build public support for ending it altogether."

-Jan. 11 e-mail from Neil Conway, of Cuyahoga Falls in northeast Ohio.

"The Catholic Bishops of Ohio have consistently advocated for an end to
the death penalty. We believe this form of punishment is unnecessary and
systematically flawed.

"Viable and just alternatives, such as life imprisonment, are effectively
used in other states and other countries. An important first step would be
a study that would allow for an objective review of Ohio's death penalty
system."

-Jan. 20 letter from the Most Rev. Daniel E. Pilarczyk, Archbishop of
Cincinnati.

>From capital punishment supporters:

"Years ago when people knew they were going to the death chamber they
thought twice about doing the crime. Today it is easy for them. 3 squares
a day and a room. Prisons are more comfortable then some of our homes."

-Dec. 9 letter from Ron & Ruth Herrmann, retirees in North Lima, near
Youngstown.

"Undertaking a study at this point sends the wrong message to the citizens
of this state that there is something wrong with our death penalty when
the fact is that there is nothing wrong with our death penalty except that
it takes too long to get the penalty enforced."

-Jan. 15 letter from John Murphy, executive director of the Ohio
Prosecuting Attorneys Association.

"Keep the death penalty. Do not pardon these people on death row. A jury
found them guilty & judges did their job by sentencing them to death
according to law."

(source for both: Associated Press)






MARYLAND:

Kill Maryland's Death Penalty----Repeal Is the Only Solution to the
Problems of an Inherently Flawed System


During my 8 years as governor of Maryland, I never had to confront the
hardest decision a governor can face: whether to allow an execution to
proceed.

I am not sorry I missed such a life-or-death choice, although I feel
certain I would have opted against execution.

Today, Maryland's lawmakers face their own life-or-death decision. I urge
them to take the only logical path and put an end to Maryland's system of
capital punishment.

I stand with Gov. Martin O'Malley in saying it's time to give up on this
failed policy. My opinion is that executions demean us as a society. I
also join with the majority of Marylanders who believe that on a practical
level, the system is rife with problems that cannot be solved.

Let me address the main ones.

First, the death penalty is irreversible. For that reason, the process is
longer and more complicated than for other punishments. Reversals,
retrials and delays clog our courts and dominate the attention of law
enforcement, weighing down our system in ways that actually impede public
safety. Delays inevitably increase the pain for victims' families, who
must relive their trauma over and over, waiting in limbo with every
reversal.

This excessive time and energy also translate into dollars spent
maintaining this complex system. One study found that it costs Texas an
extra $2.3 million to prosecute a single death penalty case. Maryland's
system is even more careful than Texas's -- meaning our costs are probably
much higher. State and local funds are drained from far more effective
public safety services -- additional police, better correctional
facilities and more prison staff.

The legislation pending at the State House would replace the death penalty
with a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, a harsh
punishment that would keep murderers off the street and keep us safe
without undue burdens on law enforcement or victims' families.

I also remain deeply concerned about disparities in the imposition of the
death penalty in our state. A University of Maryland study released in
2003 showed that both race and geography play a strong role in determining
who lives and who dies. These kinds of disparities in Maryland's most
visible punishment undermine the integrity of our entire criminal justice
system.

Finally, and most important, we must acknowledge that in any human system
there is room for error. Again and again, we hear about prisoners freed
from death row after being exonerated of their alleged crimes -- at least
123 across the country in the past 34 years.

The story of Eastern Shoreman Kirk Bloodsworth should be chilling to all
Marylanders. Mr. Bloodsworth was sentenced to death and spent nine years
behind bars before being cleared of rape and murder through DNA testing.
There is a real risk that the state will execute an innocent man or woman
-- a risk we need not take. If anyone believes the solution to the
system's excessive costs and time is to simply shorten appeals or
streamline the system, Mr. Bloodsworth is a stark reminder that there are
no shortcuts when it comes to due process and accuracy.

As the debate unfolds, I hope all 188 Maryland legislators will get the
chance to talk with Vicki Schieber, a Chevy Chase resident whose
23-year-old daughter was murdered in Philadelphia in 1998.

Mrs. Schieber experienced firsthand what the death penalty system does to
victims' families. Today, she is volunteering countless hours urging
legislators in Annapolis to end executions in Maryland to ensure that no
more families will have the pain of their losses compounded by the
difficulties of capital punishment.

The issue is now before the legislature. To those lawmakers who have
supported capital punishment in the past, please consider all that we have
learned in recent years about how drastically it fails in practice. Around
the country, Americans are moving away from the death penalty. A recent
New Jersey commission recommended replacing the death penalty with life
without parole because it simply could not come up with a way to make the
system work both fairly and effectively.

It's time for Maryland to take heed and end capital punishment here.

-- Harry R. Hughes----Denton, Md.

(source: Washington POst; The writer, a Democrat, was governor of Maryland
from 1979 to 1987)




OKLAHOMA:

Dennis Fritz will be appearing on Hannity and Colmes Feb.21, 2007 Wed.


Dennis Fritz is the Author of Journey Toward Justice.

Praise For Journey Toward Justice by John Grisham: "Journey Toward
Justice" by: Dennis Fritz -

The story of the unwarranted prosecution and wrongful conviction of Dennis
Fritz is compelling and fascinating. After serving eleven years for a
murder he did not commit, Dennis was exonerated and had the strength and
courage to put his life back together.- John Grisham

Please watch this show and read his book Journey Toward Justice Amazing
Story

For Information or Questions on Book Tours or Speaking Locations with
Dates or Requests For Speaking and Interviews with Dennis Fritz you can
email him doc.fritz at yahoo.com