[Deathpenalty] death penalty news---USA, MASS., N.Y., PENN., TENN.

[Rick Halperin]

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)