Sept. 19
MISSOURI----impending execution
Catholic bishops ask Gov. Parson to halt execution, spare Bucklew's life
Missouri's Catholic bishops want Gov. Mike Parson to halt the scheduled
execution of convicted murderer Russell Bucklew and reduce his sentence to life
in prison.
Bishop Edward Rice of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese is one of four
bishops who signed a publicly issued statement this week seeking to spare
Bucklew's life.
Bucklew is scheduled to be executed on Oct. 1 for killing a man in Cape
Girardeau County more than 23 years ago.
Gov. Parson's office did not respond by Wednesday afternoon to voice and email
messages asking if he would agree to the bishops' request as well as seeking
his position on the death penalty in general.
But as a state senator in 2016, Parson, a former sheriff, voiced support for
the death penalty.
Pope Francis has called for the "global abolition of the death penalty," the
bishops wrote.
"As Catholic bishops, we have consistently opposed the use of the death
penalty. Evidence shows that the death penalty is often unfair and biased in
its application," they wrote.
"By ending the use of the death penalty, we can hopefully begin to break the
cycle of violence," the bishops added.
Bucklew's "particular medical situation warrants special consideration," the
bishops wrote.
The ACLU, in a series of tweets, also called for Parson to grant clemency to
Bucklew. The organization set up an online petition to "stop the torturous
exeution of Rusty Bucklew." As of Wednesday afternoon, 43,000 people had
supported the petition.
Bucklew's execution date has been set three times previously but halted over
concerns about his medical condition. The condition, cavernous hemangioma,
causes blood-filled tumors to grow in his head, neck and throat.
His attorney has said the tumors could burst during execution by lethal
injection, causing him to choke on his own blood.
In March 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution just before
the lethal injection was set to begin. It was the 2nd such stay issued by the
high court on behalf of Bucklew in 4 years.
Swingle, who prosecuted Bucklew for killing a man in Cape Girardeau County in
1996 during a violent crime spree, was at the state prison to witness the
execution. He told the Southeast Missourian last year he was frustrated at the
high court's last-minute decision.
"It is just absurd that this guy is just too sick to kill," Swingle said at the
time.
The U.S. Supreme Court, however, ruled in April 2018 the state could move ahead
with the execution. The decision came on a 5-4 vote, with the court's five
conservative justices rejecting Bucklew's argument subjecting him to lethal
injection would violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
In June of this year, the Missouri Supreme Court set the new execution date.
Swingle, now a prosecutor for the city of St. Louis, plans to witness Bucklew's
execution this fall.
"I have said before, Russell Bucklew is the most evil person I have ever
prosecuted. If he doesn't deserve the death penalty, nobody does," Swingle
said.
Bucklew fatally shot Michael Sanders on March 21, 1996 in Sanders' trailer
where he lived with Bucklew's ex-girlfriend, Stephanie Ray.
Bucklew shot Sanders in front of Ray and Sanders' young sons, then kidnapped
and raped Ray.
He was later captured after a shootout with state troopers.
Bucklew later escaped from the Cape Girardeau County Jail in Jackson and
attacked Ray's mother with a hammer before being recaptured.
Swingle said Bucklew is "a coldblooded killer and I don't care one bit that he
is sick; all the more reason to kill him quickly. He should have been killed 10
years ago."
The former Cape Girardeau County prosecutor said the death penalty won't deter
killers like Charles Manson and Ted Bundy. But, he said, it can deter some
people from committing murder.
Swingle said he once prosecuted a man who kidnapped, raped and sodomized a
5-year-old girl in Cape Girardeau County. The man admitted that he let the girl
go — she was found wandering on a blacktop road — because he knew Missouri had
the death penalty, Swingle said.
"I believe in cases like that, if it saves one child's life, it is worth
having," Swingle said of the death penalty.
(source: Southeast Missourian)
ARIZONA:
Az execution witnesses have First Ammendment right to hear entire process, 9th
Circuit rules
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that witnesses to Arizona executions have
a First Amendment right to hear the entire execution process to help determine
if executions are done “in a humane and lawful manner.”
The ruling comes 5 years after the last execution in Arizona ended up with the
condemned inmate, Joseph Wood, gasping for almost two hours and in apparent
agony behind soundproof glass.
A 3-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the claim,
by seven death-row inmates and the First Amendment Coalition of Arizona, that
the ability to hear what’s happening in the execution room will foster a
heightened level of transparency around the death penalty.
“People might say, ‘That sounds so gory, why do you want to hear what’s
happening in there?'” said Morgan Loew, an investigative reporter with CBS 5 in
Arizona and the president of the First Amendment Coalition. “What we’re doing
is fighting for more access to probably the most final and irreversible act a
government can make.”
The court rejected 2 other claims, that inmates have a First Amendment right to
know the manufacturer and type of drugs to be used in the lethal injection, and
to know the qualifications of the individuals administering those drugs.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said they were disappointed that the judges
rejected those arguments, and might yet appeal, but they welcomed the finding
that corrections officials cannot silence microphones in the death chamber
while an execution is taking place.
“If we’re going to have a death penalty, and going to carry out executions,
it’s important for the process to be as transparent as possible,” said Dale
Baich, an assistant federal public defender and one of the lawyers who
represented Wood.
Calls seeking comment from the Arizona Attorney General’s Office and the
Arizona Department of Corrections were not returned Tuesday.
Wood was 1 of 6 death-row inmates who had sued the Department of Corrections
over an alleged lack of due process in executions – changing the type of drug
to be used less than 48 hours before one execution, for example, or limiting
notes in the official execution log.
But Wood, who murdered his ex-girlfriend and her father in 1989, eventually
exhausted his appeals and was scheduled for execution at Florence State Prison
on July 23, 2014. That execution was “botched in several ways,” according to
the opinion by Circuit Judge Paul J. Watford.
Wood rose up and gasped for air 12 minutes after he appeared sedated by the 1st
injection, then struggled to breathe for the next 2 hours, during which
corrections officials eventually administered 15 doses of the fatal drug,
though Arizona’s protocol only calls for 2.
“According to journalists who attended the execution, Wood appeared to be in
agony throughout the process,” the opinion said.
But witnesses could only hear on a few occasions, when corrections officials
turned on microphones in the death chamber to make an announcement.
“One of the issues that comes up over and over again is whether the prisoner is
gurgling or snoring or choking or what,” said Ron Dunham, executive director of
the Death Penalty Information Center, which was not involved in the case. “It’s
really important to hear what’s happening, as opposed to just seeing it through
glass.”
Loew said Wood’s execution “sort of highlighted the fact that the media does
not have a ton of access to what’s happening behind the scenes for executions
here.” The coalition went to court to “expand the media access and public
access to the execution process,” he said.
Watford said in his ruling that it would not be burdensome and there is no
security reason why corrections officials, who already open a microphone for
part of the execution, could not leave it on the whole time, rather than
shutting it off once the lethal drugs are administered.
The court would not grant the plaintiffs’ request for more information about
the lethal drugs.
“We have seen evidence of states trying to illegally obtain the drugs,
including Arizona,” said Dunham. “And we have seen evidence of states
improperly mixing the drugs and we’ve seen evidence of states obtaining drugs
from disreputable producers.”
Support TucsonSentinel.com today, because a smarter Tucson is a better Tucson.
But Baich said the 9th Circuit’s focus on “the repeated failure by the state to
follow its own law and protocol” in executions should force the state to behave
more appropriately in the future.
The court also rejected the claim that inmates and the public should be able to
know the qualifications of the individuals administering lethal injections. The
plaintiffs claimed that under current rules “an amateur with an online
certificate” could be authorized to carry out the injection or insert
intravenous lines to administer drugs.
“We’ve learned from discovery in the litigation that Arizona employs people who
lost nursing licenses, or who had narcotics violations or a DUI,” Baich said.
“So we want to make sure that if someone is serving in that role, that he or
she has the proper qualifications to do the job and do it safely.”
Loew said the suit was not about the death penalty itself but “about whether
the press, and the public through the press, have a right to know what’s
happening in that process.” And making the process “as transparent as possible”
could lead to a debate on the larger question, Baich said.
“Coverage by the media will be more comprehensive,” he said. “And that, in
turn, will help the public determine if executions are being carried out in a
humane and lawful manner in the state of Arizona, and also an informed debate
about whether the death penalty is sound public policy, or a relic of the past
we should abandon.”
Until then, the advocates said they plan to keep pushing for answers.
“When the government says, ‘I’ve got to hide something,’ you’ve always got to
wonder why,” Dunham said.
(source: Tucson Sentinel)
IDAHO:
Ricks plans to sponsor wrongful conviction bill in 2020
Idaho is 1 of 15 states in the country that doesn’t provide any sort of
compensation to people who are wrongfully convicted of a crime.
Driven by a high-profile Idaho Falls case, a local lawmaker wants to change
that.
“I feel like if somebody’s been put into jail wrongfully, and certainly spends
years in jail, (like) this case with Christopher Tapp … I think the state owes
people like that something,” said Rep. Doug Ricks, R-Rexburg.
Tapp was charged in 1997 with murdering Angie Dodge, after he confessed to
helping other men rape and kill her. He gave several names to detectives, none
of whom were charged for the murder. He was convicted and sent to prison, but
released in 2017 amid concerns his confession had been coerced. Earlier this
year, Idaho Falls Police officers arrested Brian Leigh Dripps after his DNA was
found to match samples found at the scene of Dodge’s murder. Dripps told police
he acted alone.
Ricks said he started to research the law earlier this year, including reaching
out to Tapp and to the Innocence Project, a group that works to exonerate
people who have been wrongly convicted and was involved in helping free Tapp.
Ricks said Tapp has agreed to help, and he wants Tapp to come testify before
the Legislature if the bill gets a committee hearing. The Idaho Innocence
Project is helping Ricks craft the bill, which will be called the “Idaho
Wrongful Conviction Act.” Ricks said they are closely studying recent bills
passed in Kansas, Indiana and Nevada.
As well as the Tapp case, the National Registry of Exonerations records five
other wrongful convictions in Idaho in recent years, including two death
penalty cases. One was that of Charles Fain, who was convicted of raping and
murdering 9-year-old Daralyn Johnson in Nampa in 1983 and sentenced to death.
He was released in 2001, after DNA testing found the hairs on the victim’s
remains weren’t his. The other was the case of Donald Paradis, who was
sentenced to death for a 1981 murder. Paradis admitted to helping hide the
bodies of Kimberly Anne Palmer and Scott Currier but denied committing murder,
and he was freed in 2001.
The 2020 legislative session starts in January. Ricks is still working out the
details of the bill, but it would likely include money for each year wrongfully
spent in prison plus other assistance. He said about $50,000 a year is typical
in other states that have wrongful conviction compensation statutes, with more
in cases where people were on death row.
“We’re looking at trying to help them with some health care, dental, some
counseling for a period of time, housing assistance if they need it, job
training skills,” Ricks said. “Some states provide some tuition assistance.
We’re talking about some ideas and trying to come up with what’s right, what’s
a good scenario and what’s fair.”
A judge would likely be in charge of determining who gets compensated and how
much money they get, Ricks said. Ricks said he wants to make sure the bill is
worded in a way that only people who were genuinely innocent, not people who
were guilty but get their convictions overturned due to a technicality, are
eligible for compensation. He also said he is looking into how the compensation
would be paid for. Ricks said he is considering making the bill retroactive by
2 years.
Speaking on behalf of the Idaho Prosecuting Attorneys Association, Twin Falls
County Prosecuting Attorney Grant Loebs said he would need to see the bill and
the exact details of the proposal to comment in detail. However, he said any
bill would need to distinguish between cases where a truly innocent person is
in prison and ones where a conviction gets overturned due to a procedural
issue.
“Nobody is more opposed to wrongfully convicting people than prosecutors are,
but the problem is, if you look at the wrongful conviction website (and) groups
around the country that claim to be exonerating people, almost none of those
are wrongful convictions,” he said.
Kathy Griesmyer, policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of
Idaho, said the group supports compensating people who are wrongfully
imprisoned.
“Yes it would be, just knowing how the system doesn’t always dole out justice
in the way we might always hope that it does,” she said. “We know innocent
people go to jail and to prison.”
Innocent people can end up in jail for a myriad of reasons, she said, such as
inadequate public defense or policing targeted at certain communities. Being
wrongfully imprisoned, she said, has consequences including loss of income,
time away from family and a criminal record when you get out. She said many
people have difficulty finding jobs or housing when they get out of prison, and
that it is good that Ricks’ proposal might address those issues.
Ricks said he has talked to Sen. Todd Lakey, R-Nampa, and Greg Chaney,
R-Caldwell, chairmen of the Senate and House Judiciary committees respectively.
He said they have questions but they’re not against the idea.
“Both those chairmen have a lot of weight on something like this going through,
and I just wanted to make sure they were included in the process,” Ricks said.
“They’re interested. It all depends on the language.”
(source: postregister.com)
NEVADA:
Reputed Nevada gang members’ murder cases to be prosecuted separately
The cases of 2 reputed Aryan Warriors members were severed from a case against
21 other members Wednesday because the two men are facing the death penalty in
connection with a deadly 2016 prison stabbing.
Defense attorneys for Anthony “Mugsy” Williams and Tarik “Torque” Goicoechea
asked during a Wednesday hearing that their cases be prosecuted separately
because they’re the only defendants for whom the state is seeking capital
punishment.
Williams and Goicoechea are accused of stabbing 26-year-old Andrew Thurgood
dozens of times inside a cell in February 2016. Williams was released from High
Desert State Prison in May 2018, without facing charges in the killing, and
went on to commit a series of armed robberies.
Several defendants were present at the hearing, and one, Robert Standridge,
appeared via video from Ely State Prison. Courtroom staff stopped the video
during the hearing after Standridge flashed an apparent white supremacist hand
gesture.
Attorneys for Williams and Goicoechea also requested in court that the district
attorney’s office turn over an email leaked to the Review-Journal regarding the
stabbing.
The request came after the Review-Journal published a story Wednesday revealing
a 2018 internal email from a top prosecutor at the state attorney general’s
office recommending that no murder charges be filed against Williams and
Goicoechea.
Goicoechea’s attorney, Kristina Wildeveld, said she made an informal request to
the district attorney’s office to see if the email would be included in
discovery, but was told that it was not.
“I don’t know how the DA’s office would one, be in possession of that, or 2,
how that would be exculpatory evidence in terms of this investigation,” Chief
Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal said, referencing that the email came from
the attorney general’s office.
Palal said any documents relating to the investigation from the state attorney
general or the Nevada Department of Corrections would be handed over to defense
attorneys.
“I haven’t had a chance to read the RJ today,” District Court Judge Douglas
Herndon said at the hearing, “so I’m not quite sure what everything is, but I
will grant the oral request for discovery.”
The email was sent from Michael Kovac, chief deputy in the attorney general’s
criminal prosecution unit, to three other prosecutors. In it, he wrote that
Thurgood “comes off as completely unhinged” and may have been the aggressor in
the fight.
However, the murder and conspiracy to commit murder charges were included in
the indictment that swept up Williams, Goicoechea and 21 others with ties to
the white supremacist prison gang.
Williams and Goicoechea will be assigned court dates separate from the other
alleged members after a status check in October.
(source: Las Vegas Review-Journal)
OREGON:
Oregon Governor Will Not Call Special Session To Adjust Death Penalty Law
Gov. Kate Brown will not call a special session to address controversy in the
state’s death penalty laws after support for a session failed to materialize in
the Oregon House of Representatives.
“There does not appear to be support to ensure passage of a bill,” Brown said
in a statement Wednesday. “I cannot justify the additional cost and time a
special session requires without that support, and I will not be calling the
Legislature into a special session this month before the law goes into effect.”
Brown’s decision comes three weeks after the governor announced she was open to
convening lawmakers in order to tweak the effects of Senate Bill 1013, which
narrowed the state’s capital punishment laws. But Brown’s support for a special
session was contingent on proponents of such a tweak — namely Sen. Floyd
Prozanski, D-Eugene, and Oregon prosecutors — building consensus around a bill
that could be passed in one day.
That consensus did not materialize, despite weeks of lobbying. While Prozanski
has said he had support in the Senate to pass a bill and had been circulating
draft bill language among interested parties this week, House Democratic
leadership was skeptical that SB 1013 needed changes. The proposal was seen as
a tough vote for lawmakers who oppose capital punishment and were suddenly
faced with a bill strengthening a law they had just pared back.
“The whole Senate stepped up to fix a problem,” Prozanski said Wednesday, not
long after meeting with Brown about her decision. “The issue was within the
House of Representatives. Most Democrats and the Republican leadership were
unable to demonstrate to the governor that they had the votes. I believe it was
a game of politics.”
In an Aug. 29 statement on the issue, House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland,
said that there was “no consensus whether the law needs to be amended and there
is no agreement among legislators on appropriate next steps.” House Majority
Leader Barbara Smith Warner, D-Portland, concurred with that statement, a
spokesman said.
Republican lawmakers were said to be equally leery, with some feeling death
penalty bill should be repealed rather than altered. Even so, the House
Republican Office criticized Brown’s decision Wednesday, tweeting that it was
“a lost opportunity to protect victims’ families, find a bipartisan solution,
and uphold the will of Oregonians.”
The idea of a special session also saw push back from justice reformers, who
viewed it as a step backward after Oregon had meaningfully narrowed its death
penalty standards.
“Any amendment to SB 1013 that would increase the number of cases subject to
death penalty is simply not a change we can support,” Kimberly McCullough,
policy director for the ACLU of Oregon, wrote in a recent blog post.
SB 1013 represented the most meaningful change to the state’s capital
punishment laws in years. Rather than seeking to repeal the policy outright —
which would require a public vote — the bill redefined the crime of aggravated
murder, the only offense punishable by death under state law.
Under the changes, aggravated murder only applies to terrorist attacks that
killed two or more people, murders of children under 14 and law enforcement
officers, and killings by prisoners who’d already been convicted of murder.
SB 1013 was muscled through the Legislature by Prozanski and Rep. Jennifer
Williamson, D-Portland. They and other supporters of the bill repeatedly
slammed Oregon’s death penalty system as hugely expensive and inefficient.
But the bill was opposed by state prosecutors and some victims groups, who
argued the changes it made were arbitrary and that voters should have a say in
any changes.
Those protestations grew louder in August, when prosecutors say they learned
that the bill would apply not just to future murder cases. The new law also
applies to defendants who’ve been convicted of murder — even decades in the
past — but who are granted new trials or sentencing hearings.
Advocates of SB 1013 have said that facet of the bill was always clear, and
chided opponents for not reading the legislation. But prosecutors and the
Oregon Department of Justice say they only learned about it when a former death
row inmate was deemed ineligible for the death penalty upon retrial in
Washington County.
The Oregon District Attorneys Association began lobbying for a tweak to the
bill that ensured it would only apply to murders that occurred on or after
Sept. 29, when the legislation is set to take effect. Prozanski wound up
agreeing with that sentiment. Williamson, the bill’s other central champion,
insisted that no change was needed.
In an interview last week, Prozanski said he’d built support among his fellow
senators. That support was reflected in a letter Senate Majority Leader Herman
Baertschiger, Jr., R-Grants Pass, sent to Brown on Wednesday.
“On behalf of the Senate Republican Caucus, I am writing to urge that you call
a special session dedicated solely to fixing Senate Bill 1013,” Baertschiger
wrote. “The Senate Republicans do no agree with SB 1013 as passed, but we
refuse to stand silent and let this bill take effect and inflict even more
trauma on the victims’ families who have already experienced unimaginable
pain.”
House Minority Leader Christine Drazan wrote a similar letter to Brown on
Wednesday.
Despite those strong sentiments, Prozanski said last week that he’d run into
difficulties getting getting various players in Salem to trust one another.
“There’s a lack of trust on many people’s parts and that lack of trust runs the
gamut: member to member, chamber to chamber, organizations such as the DA
association and the Legislature,” Prozanski said. “There’s a lot of concern as
to if we made this fix can we feel confident that that’s a fix that everyone
would abide by and allow the law to go forward.”
At the time, Prozanski said he still believed a session was possible, and that
he was hoping the governor would call it on Sept. 27. But the senator’s time
ran out on Wednesday.
“While it is clear there is a misunderstanding regarding the intent of the
words in Senate Bill 1013,” Brown’s statement read, “it is also clear the
support has not been built for a successful special session.”
(source: opb.org)
USA:
Executions are the public’s business, and they shouldn’t be done in the shadows
As opposition to the death penalty has grown in recent years, some execution
states (including California under Proposition 66) have gone to great lengths
to protect their sordid practice in part by trying to hide exactly what it is
they are doing.
Arizona, for instance — which spent nearly 2 hours executing Joseph Wood in
2014 — has adopted a set of laws and procedures that let it shut off the
microphone in the death chamber after the insertion of intravenous lines so
witnesses can see but not hear what’s happening, mask the sources of the
execution drugs they use, and keep secret the names and credentials of the
people who are conducting the executions on behalf of the people of Arizona.
Yes, there have been legal challenges, and on Tuesday the U.S. 9th Circuit
Court of Appeals reopened a window into Arizona’s execution practices by saying
the microphones must be left on.
“Execution witnesses need to be able to observe and report on the entire
process so that the public can determine whether lethal injections are fairly
and humanely administered,” Judge Paul J. Watford wrote for the 3-member panel.
“Barring witnesses from hearing sounds after the insertion of intravenous lines
means that the public will not have full information regarding the
administration of lethal-injection drugs and the prisoner’s experience as he
dies.”
But the court also ruled that the public and the condemned do not have a 1st
Amendment right to know what drugs are being used and who’s administering them,
a ruling that in effect forces the public to take the state government at its
word that it’s using suitable drugs and trained personnel.
Or to look at it another way, the public gets to hear the execution but not
know the details of how it’s being carried out, including whether the people
conducting the execution know what they’re doing.
So much for public accountability.
The court did suggest that the lawsuit by several condemned inmates and the
First Amendment Coalition might have had more success if they had invoked a
violation of due process rather than the 1st Amendment right to access
government information.
It also cast a cold eye on Arizona’s history of conducting executions.
“Given Arizona’s checkered past with executions, we are troubled by the lack of
detailed information regarding execution drugs and personnel,” Watford wrote.
“Such information would undoubtedly aid the public and death-row inmates in
monitoring the constitutionality of Arizona’s execution proceedings. However,
as the Supreme Court has held, the 1st Amendment does not mandate the
disclosure of ‘all the information provided by [freedom of information] laws.’
Thus, although the inmates may be able to assert a procedural due process right
to obtain the information they seek … neither the inmates nor the First
Amendment Coalition possesses such a right under the First Amendment.”
That reads like an invitation to sue anew, and the plaintiffs ought to take the
court up on it.
Beyond the legal issues of which amendment might be invoked, it is appalling
for states to conduct such barbaric acts in the name of the people without
providing as much transparency as possible.
Proponents of these secrecy measures argue that anti-death-penalty activists
might demonstrate outside the pharmacies that provide the lethal injection
drugs, and that those directly involved in the executions might get harassed
(although there already are laws to guard against that).
As for the pharmacies or other businesses that provide the execution drugs,
they are willingly selling goods to public agencies to be used in conducting
the public’s business. Barring an argument that somehow identifying the vendors
would compromise trade secrets, there is no presumption of privacy here. And
fearing that members of the public might object to the sales isn’t cause to
drive business that should be conducted in sunlight deep into murky shadows.
Similarly, the public has a legitimate interest in being able to ensure that
the government is not cutting corners when it deputizes people to kill in our
name. Notably, these aren’t issues of national security in which making public
the names of those involved would imperil the national interest or foreseeably
endanger lives.
If the work at hand is so shameful those engaged in it fear public repudiation,
then maybe the work shouldn’t be done in the first place.
(source: Editorial, Los Angeles Times)
********************
Sister Prejean tells how she ‘woke up’ to injustices nearly 40 years ago
Sister Helen Prejean, the well-known advocate for the abolition of the death
penalty, was not always doing this work. It came out of her “waking up,” as she
put it, to capital punishment’s injustice.
“When we’re ready, God wakes us up. Then we go help wake each other up. That’s
what’s happening with the death penalty in this country,” she told an audience
at Georgetown University Sept. 16.
The 80-year-old Sister of St. Joseph of Medaille, who grew up in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana, and entered religious life when she was 18, in 1957, pointed out
that she had no idea of the extent of racism in this country or its impact on
the criminal justice system when she was growing up or during her early years
as a woman religious.
She said she was “cushioned and protected” — a description that hardly seems to
go with the sister who has been living and working in the St. Thomas Housing
Project in New Orleans for almost 40 years and who divides her work between
activism, counseling death-row prisoners and working with murder victims’
family members.
Although Sister Prejean was primarily talking about details she reveals in her
new book, “River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey” — a prequel to her 1993 book
“Dead Man Walking”– her remarks also indicated that she wasn’t just there to
tell her own story but to push others along to do more about the social justice
issues they feel strongly about.
“It doesn’t matter when you wake up; it’s what you do after you wake up,” she
said, adding that “hope happens when we put our hands on some rope and start
pulling with a community of people.” She also said it’s paralyzing to just sit
around and talk about the things that need to be done instead of actually doing
something.
Which is why she didn’t just speak about the death penalty on the Georgetown
stage, she also highlighted volunteer work going on at the border, which she
said gives her hope, and the work of women in leadership roles in the church
today.
In the speaking engagement, one of many she is doing across the country since
her new book was released Aug. 13, Sister Prejean, dressed in dark pants and
black sweater and wearing a silver cross, poked fun at herself with her
Louisiana drawl, describing herself as “one more white lady waking up.”
But she also explained how this awakening occurred by reading from the preface
of her book, which describes the first execution she witnessed with these
words: “No religious leaders protested the killing that night. But I was there.
I saw it with my own eyes. And what I saw set my soul on fire — a fire that
burns in me still.”
But backing up to before that execution, she said she started to change her
views when she first came to live in the housing project after realizing she
never knew anyone personally who was poor. It was there, she said, that she got
a request to be a pen pal with a Louisiana death-row inmate, which changed her
life.
In her talk, moderated by questions from Paul Elie, author and senior fellow at
Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, she
interjected expressions showing her Southern roots and her death penalty
advocacy, such as: “Equal justice under law doesn’t mean beans when capital
punishment is based on prosecutorial discretion,” referring to attempts to sway
a jury to wrongly convict a defendant or impose a harsher than necessary
punishment.
The hall where she spoke was filled with about 400 people — students and
nonstudents alike — and after the talk was over, many from the audience lined
up to get books signed by Sister Prejean. The presentation was sponsored by
several Georgetown groups: the university’s Office of the President, Berkley
Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, the Initiative on Catholic Social
Thought and Public Life, and Prisons and Justice Initiative as well as the
Pontifical Council for Culture.
Sister Prejean’s closing remarks pretty much summed up why she does her
advocacy work and how it ties in to her many decades as a woman religious.
Regarding the death penalty, she said: “Every human being has dignity and worth
more than the worst act in their lives,” and “spiritually, who are we to say,
‘God’s finished with you?'”
She also said advocacy work, like what she has been doing for a long time now,
can’t be done alone.
“Lone rangers don’t last too long,” she said. “You need to do this in
community.”
(source: The Catholic Spirit)
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