------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Jan. 23, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
AS ILLINOIS GOVERNOR EMPTIES DEATH ROW, ACTIVISTS VOW TO END LEGAL LYNCHING By Gloria Rubac Aaron Patterson celebrated his first full day of freedom after 13 years by speaking to an anti-war rally in Chicago on Jan. 11. Patterson is one of four men released from Illinois's death row by outgoing Gov. George Ryan. One day after pardoning Patterson, Madison Hobley, Stanley Howard and Leroy Orange--all of whom had been on death row at least 12 years--the governor commuted to life or less the sentences of the remaining 167 death row inmates in the state. The four pardoned men had all been convicted on the strength of confessions extracted under torture. Police Commander Jon Burge, who was fired from the Chicago Police Department in 1993, had instructed his cops to use beatings, electric shock and suffocation to get confessions. Hobley, who had been in prison for 16 years, said he plans to go back to work and "frame my first paycheck to show I'm part of society." He also said he hopes the officers who tortured him would be investigated and charged. CALLS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD This was the largest commutation of death row sentences in the history of the United States. Ryan acted after being besieged with pleas from all over the world to end the barbaric system of state-administered death. The most recent had been a call from South Africa as the governor was in a deli eating a corned beef sandwich. "Yesterday, I went to Manny's Deli for lunch, and I got a call from none other than Nelson Mandela," Ryan told a large rally the next day at Northwestern University in Chicago, where he condemned the system of capital punishment as fundamentally flawed and unfair. In his speech at the university, which was televised live, Ryan recounted the details of the police torture, the abuses of power by police and prosecutors, the use of all-white juries, and the failure of the court system to provide justice even after the truth about these horrors came out. He said that politicians are quick to be tough on crime and call for executions. "It wins votes. But when it comes to admitting that we have a problem, most run for cover. Prosecutors across our state continue to deny that our death penalty system is broken--not one of the reforms proposed by my Capital Punishment Commission has been adopted. So when will the system be fixed?" The U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Three years ago Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in Illinois, after it came to light that in a period when the state had exonerated 13 people-- largely because of DNA evidence--it had executed 12 others. This Republican governor was the chair of George W. Bush's 2000 Illinois election committee. He was part of the legislature in 1977 that approved the rewriting of the death penalty laws. So why has he now broken so dramatically with his party and political colleagues? Ryan's action did not occur in a vacuum. Over the last decade, worldwide attention has been focused on the death penalty. Activists and attorneys, as well as those on death row, have exposed its inherent flaws. The movement against state killings has been slowly building. And the racism that puts so many people of color on death rows in the U.S. has been condemned around the world. In Texas, where George W. Bush came to be known as "Governor Death," the executions of Shaka Sankofa and Karla Faye Tucker brought more people into the abolition movement. Tucker was the first woman to be executed in the U.S. since 1984. Sankofa's innocence and revolutionary politics brought thousands into the streets condemning his racist execution. The threat that Pennsylvania may execute Black journalist Mumia Abu- Jamal has galvanized revolutionary youth, death penalty activists and progressives around the world. PRAISE FROM MOST, OUTRAGE FROM PROSECUTORS Death penalty opponents around the world were jubilant, but prosecutors and right-wing politicians vowed to reverse Ryan's move. In Ryan's home state, where Illinois University Law Professor Francis Boyle is leading a campaign to have him nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, his action was praised by Lawrence Marshall, director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University. Njeri Shakur of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement said, "This is wonderful. I am so happy for the prisoners and their families. This is a good day for abolitionists." "Governor Ryan has fired a shot that will be heard around the world and I think it will hasten the end of capital punishment," said Stephen B. Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights. Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School in New York, said, "Wiping the slate clean is a logical extension of all that Governor Ryan has learned about how flawed and corrupt" is the capital punishment system in Illinois. 'JUSTICE IN AMERICA IS ABOUT MONEY' Workers World spoke to Nanon Williams on Texas' death row. Williams was arrested in 1992 at the age of 17 for capital murder, despite much evidence of his innocence. Ten years later, Williams says, "I have grown from a 17-year-old kid into a man on death row and I realize justice will be found when I can afford it. Justice in America is not about evidence, it is about how much money you have. "Governor Ryan used his power to give the people of Illinois a moral victory. But other politicians, like former Texas governor George Bush and the current governor, Rick Perry, scapegoat those too poor to defend themselves. To find justice should not be like winning the lottery." The executive director of the Texas Defenders Service, Jim Marcus, says what Ryan did "needs to happen here in Texas as well. Texas has a much worse system than Illinois." But Illinois governor-elect Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police, said, "This is a big mistake." And Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine says he will review the legal options for undoing Ryan's move. Before this, Ryan was never considered to be even liberal. Now he has incurred the anger of his former colleagues for doing what any honest person should have done: He sought to change a horrible injustice. Racist history of death penalty The death penalty has a long and racist history in this country. In the South, where 80 percent of executions take place, the death penalty is a "legal" outgrowth of the racist lynchings of the 1800s. Until the early 1900s, there was rarely an execution of a white person. Even today, African Americans make up 43 percent of those on death row, but only 12 percent of the population. The majority now awaiting execution are people of color. In the states of the old Confederacy, racists support capital punishment as passionately as they once supported slavery. The death penalty in the U.S. was abolished de facto during the 1960s as the civil rights and revolutionary Black liberation struggles took center stage. Very few executions took place in that period, even though capital punishment was still on the books. In 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was arbitrary and racially biased. It said that states had to rewrite their laws to make them fair. By the end of the 1970s, most states had rewritten the laws, which were then approved by the courts. The death penalty was resurrected--as racist and biased as ever. Race is still the factor that most determines whether a person will receive a death sentence. When a white person is murdered, the chances of the killer receiving death are much greater than when the victim is Black. But the other common factor is economic status. With few exceptions, those on death row are poor. Ninety percent could not afford an attorney when they went to trial. Appointed attorneys, even if competent, are not given the funds to properly investigate capital murder cases. As Governor Ryan discovered, many court-appointed attorneys barely go through the motions. Of the 160 people on Illinois' death row, he found, 33 had been represented at trial by attorneys who were later disbarred or suspended from practicing law. In Texas, courts have ruled it is okay for attorneys to sleep during a capital murder trial--as long as they're awake for the "important" parts. There are now over 3,600 people on death rows across the United States. Thirty-eight states have the death penalty, but most rarely use it. There were 71 executions in 2002, 33 in Texas alone. The next-highest state was Oklahoma, with seven. The ultimate cure for the whole racist and anti-poor criminal justice system in the U.S. is a complete restructuring of who is in charge. Only when working people and the oppressed control the justice system will there truly be justice. Gloria Rubac is a long-time prisoner rights activist and a founder of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement in Bush's home state. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. 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