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* News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty
International *
10 August 2000
AI Index AMR 51/127/2000
News Service Nr. 154
The USA's hour of shame
The US death penalty continues to be one of the world's human rights
scandals, Amnesty International said today condemning the two executions
carried out in Texas yesterday.
"Texas is at the heart of that scandal," the organization continued,
pointing to the fact that Texas now accounts for 28 of the 58 executions
carried out in the USA this year, and 227 of the 656 since the USA
resumed judicial killing in 1977.
Brian Roberson and Oliver Cruz were killed by lethal injection within an
hour of each other despite serious concerns relating to racial
discrimination and mental impairment, two issues that mark many capital
cases in the USA.
"US contempt for international standards of justice and decency has once
again been on display for the world to see," Amnesty International said.
The organization also refutes Governor George W. Bush's reported
contention that Texas does not execute the mentally retarded, citing the
examples of Terry Washington and Charles Boyd -- put to death in 1997
and 1999 -- two of the 140 men and women executed since Governor Bush
took office in January 1995.
"The flawed nature of Texas justice was further exposed in the cases of
Washington and Boyd as the juries that sentenced them to death were
never told of the two men's mental impairment," Amnesty International
said.
Governor Bush did not support a bill to ban the execution of the
mentally retarded which failed to pass the Texas legislature in 1999. He
also vetoed a bill in 1999 which sought to raise the standard of legal
representation for low-income defendants.
Background
Brian Roberson, black, was sentenced to death for the 1986 killing of an
elderly white couple in Dallas County. The prosecutor at his trial
systematically removed African Americans from the jury pool, indicating
that they were not educated enough to sit on a jury. The prosecutor had
been trained at a time when such training in Dallas County routinely
used a manual encouraging new prosecutors to remove "minority races",
"Jews", and people with "physical afflictions" during jury selection
because they "almost always empathize with the defendant". A 1986 study
found that in the 15 capital murder cases tried in the county between
1980 and 1986, 91 per cent of African American jurors were removed.
At the trial of Oliver Cruz, a Latino accused of the rape and murder of
Kelly Donovan, white, the prosecutor argued for execution on the grounds
that Cruz's learning disability made him more of a threat to society.
International standards oppose the death penalty for the mentally
impaired. In yet another blatant example of the lottery of US capital
justice, Cruz's white co-defendant, charged with the same murder,
received a prison term in exchange for testimony against Cruz.
Studies have repeatedly shown that the US capital justice system places
a higher value on white life. Over 80 per cent of the more than 650
people executed in the USA since 1977 were convicted of crimes involving
white victims.
ENDS.../
Amnesty International, International Secretariat, 1 Easton Street,
WC1X 8DJ, London, United Kingdom
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