Dallas prosecutor no longer supports death penalty

""I don't think the system can prove who is guilty and who is innocent" he said. Dallas County has had more DNA exonerations than any other local jurisdiction since 2001 (from article just below)

TEXAS:
Prosecutor in one of Dallas County's DNA exonerations no longer supports death penalty

James A. Fry, who prosecuted Dallas County exoneree Charles Chatman, said he is "shaken to the core" because of the number of exonerations throughout the country and problems with eye witness testimony.

Once a staunch supporter of capital punishment, Mr. Fry said no longer supports it because of the problems in the criminal justice system highlighted by the exonerations.

"I don't think the system can prove who is guilty and who is innocent," he said in an interview at his office in Sherman where he practices family law.

Mr. Fry prosecuted Mr. Chatman in 1981 for the rape of the exonerated man's former neighbor. Mr. Fry said that at the time, he believed the victim had correctly picked out Mr. Chatman from a photo lineup.

This week, The Dallas Morning News is running stories from its 8-month examination of the county's 19 DNA exonerations that show that eyewitness testimony can be flawed.

Dallas County has had more DNA exonerations than any other local jurisdiction since 2001 when the state began allowing post-conviction DNA testing. Unlike most other counties, Dallas County has preserved decades of evidence.

(source: Dallas Morning News)

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BREAKING: Supreme Court allows Troy Davis execution

By BILL RANKIN

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

The U.S. Supreme Court today rejected an appeal from death-row inmate Troy Davis, refusing to consider his case even though seven of nine key prosecution witnesses have recanted their testimony since the 1991 trial.

The decision means a new death warrant will be obtained and a new execution date will be set in the coming weeks.

Davis was condemned to die for the Aug. 19, 1989, killing of Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail. The 27-year-old father of two, working off duty, was shot dead after he responded to the cries of a homeless man being pistol whipped in a Burger King parking lot.

Davis’ lawyers had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to declare that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment bars the execution of the innocent and requires at least a court hearing to assess the recantation testimony. Davis’ claims of innocence have attracted international attention.

Davis had been scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Sept. 23. But, with less than two hours to spare, the high court halted the execution to give the justices more time to consider whether to hear his appeal.
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We at the JOH blog expect to keep following this story--so keep coming back...

Forgiveness is a Widening Circle

From "We Welcomed Him into the Circle"

by Pat Clark

I have worked with many communities of color and economically oppressed communities that are suspicious of the term restorative justice. "Restore to what?" is the question I often hear from people who understand the role that social, racial, and economic injustice plays in the build-up of the prison-industrial complex. So we’ve come up with other words to describe this different way of approaching the question of justice when crimes occur—words like transformative, redemptive, healing. But regardless of what we call it, it stands for a change of vision.

There has been an increasing awareness that the present justice system is not about justice as much as it is about punishment, humiliation, and dehumanization. To create a society where the needs of victims, offenders, and community are really addressed requires a different set of lenses—lenses that acknowledge that victim family members have a great capacity for compassion and forgiveness, that offenders have the potential for transformation and redemption, and that communities can only be healthy when we recognize and embrace the needs of all of their members.

I saw this reality demonstrated during my time with the Southern Poverty Law Center in the mid-1980s. I was working with the KlanWatch Project, which monitored the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other groups. At one point I became involved in a case involving a woman named Beulah Mae Donald. Her son, Michael, had been murdered by the United Klans of America.

In Mobile, a white woman had been raped by a black man and the case was before the court. The jury selected for the case was a mixed jury. The Klan felt very strongly that, because the jury was mixed, there was no way that this black man who’d been accused of raping this white woman would be convicted. So they decided they needed to send a message to the black community that black people shouldn’t be serving on juries.

Four Klansmen set out in a car to find a black person they could punish. The first person they stopped was an older black man, but he was at a pay phone and they were afraid he might be able to alert someone. So they went on until they saw nineteen-year-old Michael Donald, who was on his way to the store. They lured him over to the car under the pretext of asking for directions. Once he got there, they pulled him into the car and drove him to a nearby county where they slit his neck, put out cigarettes in his face, and beat him with a tree limb. Then they took him back to Mobile County and strung him up in a tree across from the house where they lived. It took police two years to make a connection between this black body swinging in a tree and this Klan home. Finally two members of the United Klans of America were convicted and sentenced: one to death, one to life in prison.

Mrs. Donald didn’t sit in on that first trial, the criminal trial. Her health had deteriorated as a result of the pain of the brutal murder of her son, and the Southern Poverty Law Center brought a civil suit on her behalf. I was asked to work with her; we felt strongly that she needed to be there. As a part of the preparation for the trial I had to go through all of the things she would hear about her son’s murder. What speaks profoundly to me, even right now, is that during that trial, Mrs. Donald kept her composure after she had to hear all these horrible things.

One of the people who testified was James ”Tiger” Knowles, the Klansman who was sentenced to life in prison. He had been fourteen when he joined the Klan. It's ironic how many of the people I met who were Klansmen or neo-Nazis often talked about these white supremacist groups as providing them with a sense of family and community. Even today I wonder why there weren’t other groups offering a sense of community as an alternative to the white supremacist movement.

James “Tiger” Knowles, who had already been in prison for a couple of years, had had ample opportunity to think about what he had done. He had decided to testify on behalf of Mrs. Donald. During one point in the trial, Knowles got down from the stand and confessed it was he who had put his foot on Michael’s neck in order to tighten the noose. Afterwards he turned to Mrs. Donald and said, “I know I don’t have the right to ask this of you, but I hope one day you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me.”

And Mrs. Donald didn’t miss a beat. She said, “Son, I forgave you a long time ago.” It was phenomenal.

After the civil suit was over, Mrs. Donald won a $7 million judgment against the United Klans of America. It put that Klan group out of business, basically.

After the civil suit was completed, I was asked by Morris Dees, who headed the Southern Poverty Law Center, to go back to Mobile and ask Mrs. Donald if she would write a letter to the governor to ask him not to execute Henry Francis Hays. Henry Francis Hays was the other Klansman who had been convicted and sentenced for Michael's murder. He had been sentenced to death.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a history of working on capital cases. I was already opposed to the death penalty and was working actively against it in Alabama. But I had some problems with this particular request. One of the problems I had was that at that time, there were about ninety people on Alabama’s death row. Henry Francis Hays was the only person sentenced to Alabama’s death row because he killed a black person. But you didn’t say no to Morris Dees! So I went to Mobile and I said to Mrs. Donald, “How do you feel about the death penalty?”

And she said, “I’m opposed to it.”

And I was shocked, although I don’t know why. I said, “Well, if anybody has the right to be in favor of it, you certainly do.”

She said, “I never want another mother to experience the agony that I experienced in losing a child.”

For me, that’s what compassion is about. It’s not wanting to inflict the kind of suffering you have experienced on anyone else.

When I talk about the experience of working with Mrs. Donald, people often say, “She’s a saint.” But I also work with Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation. We’ve all lost loved ones to murder. We’re all opposed to the death penalty. So people call us all either saints...or crazy. That's partly because they can’t imagine that ordinary people could do extraordinary things. But it really is about ordinary people.

A lot of my friends in Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation have talked about the need to be able to sit down with the perpetrator and ask: “Why did you do this?” Or, “What did my loved one do to you to evoke such anger or rage?” But because of our legal system, we don't get a chance to do that.

The father of one of my friends was murdered. In the same attack, she herself was brutally beaten. At one point she went to the prison intending to visit the person who was the perpetrator. Prison officials wouldn’t let her in. When she asked why, they said, “Well, you just want to be able to say that, yes, this was a horrible thing, but I don’t want to see you die!” At another point she was asked to testify in the man's case. Officials told her, “You can’t testify.” Finally they allowed her do so on condition that she wouldn’t testify about her anti-death-penalty position. And so when she was questioned about what she did for a living, she answered, “Well, I do hair and I’m an anti-death-penalty activist.”

Victim family members shouldn’t have to manipulate the criminal justice system or legal processes in order to express their opinions. Yet we don’t have very good imaginations about what could be different about our present legal/criminal justice system. We continue to use practices and systems that denigrate people. And with victims, there is a whole hierarchy as to who really is a victim.

I want to add an addendum to the story about Mrs. Donald. Henry Francis Hayes had been sentenced to death for Michael Donald’s murder. Henry’s father, Benny Hays, was the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan who had actually encouraged Henry, James “Tiger” Knowles, and other Klansmen to be involved in that murder. During an anti-death-penalty meeting in Mobile (after the successful civil suit against the United Klans of America), Grand Dragon Benny Hays walked into the room. He turned to the folks there, which included Sister Helen Prejean, family members of death row inmates, black and white abolitionists, and said “I’m here because my son’s on death row.” And we welcomed him into the circle, where we joined hands and sang. One of the people who went with me, a black woman, stood there holding Benny Hays’ hand.

Afterwards, when we left, we laughed and said, “This is one of the funniest things!” Except that it wasn’t. It was really very powerful.

And it was remarkable that the very people Benny Hays had reviled were the ones that he needed in the end.

As I have gone on to other experiences with people and communities, I have continued to see relationships develop out of some of the most tragic situations. None of us know where we’re going to be at any time on this journey. We don’t know whom we are going to need. It’s important to keep welcoming people into the circle, into the community.

Pat Clark was executive director of Fellowship of Reconciliation when she wrote this.
Article was in May/June 2004 Fellowship of Reconciliation, a periodical

Life after death row

In 1992 Ray Krone, a former sergeant in the US Air Force, was sentenced to death row for the murder of Kimberly Ancona, a bar manager found stabbed to death in a restaurant near his home in Arizona. Ten years later, after running newly developed DNA tests on the victim's clothes, he was found innocent and freed. Krone was the 100th prisoner in the US to be exonerated from death row. Now a campaigner against the death penalty, he describes the long fight to clear his name

Being arrested was quite a surprise. On the day they found the body, they brought me in to the police station and questioned me for three hours. I told them everything I knew and thought that would be the end of it.

The next day they brought me to the police station to take blood and hair samples, as well as dental casts of my teeth, and they questioned me for yet another three hours. But again, I told them the truth. I knew I had nothing to hide. The next day was New Years Eve, December 31, 1991; I’d just got home and was in my driveway, getting out of my car, when all of a sudden a van screeched up behind me, the doors flew open and people were shouting “Freeze! Don’t move!” Armed officers in full riot gear spilled out of the van and arrested me right there.

Without any real evidence or any scientific support for it, the lead detective decided that I was guilty, and he acted on it quickly. I worked at the post office and it wasn’t as if I was going anywhere. But within two days the analysis had come back confirming that my fingerprints, footprints and hair had been found on the victim’s body. That stuff couldn’t possibly have come back from the lab in two days.

I knew the fingerprints and strands of hair at the crime scene weren’t mine. The footprints were of size nine shoes and I’m a size 11. DNA testing wasn’t as prevalent then as it is now and they simply said that whatever prints didn’t match mine had nothing to do with the murder. The size nine footprints at the crime scene were not only found in the kitchen where the murder weapon – a butcher's knife – was taken from, but they were also on the floor tiles next to where the body was discovered. I found out later that whoever made the initial police report had changed the killer’s footprints to a size 11 to make it fit my profile, and when they went to my house they couldn’t match them to any of my shoes. But then they found a local medical examiner who would testify that the bite marks on her body matched my teeth.

It didn’t matter what I said after that. It was like the frustration you feel when you’re a kid and your parents blame you for something your brother or sister did, only this time it was a sharper intensity of pain and lasted for a lot longer.

I was in contact with my sister regularly. I would tell her: “Don’t worry about it, I’ll be out of here any minute.” Seven months went by and I was put on trial for murder, but I was still telling her it would all work out. Then I got convicted and sent to death row. That was when it became a heck of a burden on my mom and my family. I was the oldest in the family, and had always been the responsible one – my folks knew to trust me if I said everything would be all right. Death row changed that.

When you get sent to death row you’re in a little cell the size of most people’s bathroom and you’re kept separate from all the other inmates. You can see them in the distance and yell out to them, but you don’t have any physical contact. I realised in a short time that if I was going to fight the system I’d better get to know it. I started going to the law library, reading up on case law.

Eventually it became known that the prosecutor had been withholding evidence and the Arizona Supreme Court granted me a new trial. The judge convicted me again, but said that there was lingering doubt of my guilt and sentenced me to life imprisonment instead of death row.

In 2001 a new law was passed making it easier for inmates to request DNA testing. The police still had items of the victim’s clothing so I asked the judge if I could have them tested. The prosecutor objected, as did the attorney general’s office, but nevertheless the judge ordered that it go ahead. The Phoenix police department put some of the DNA into the nationwide data bank, which is where the DNA of convicted felons all over the US is stored, and it came back with a match. It was a man who had a history of sexual assaults on women and children and lived 500 feet from the bar in which the murder took place.

I remember that day clearly from start to finish. It was April 8, 2002. A Friday. It began as just another day in prison but at noon I was told my attorney was on the phone. He asked me how I was doing and I said: “Oh you know, fine, just another day in paradise.” He laughed and said: “What are you hungry for, Ray?” and I said that I guessed I'd eat whatever was in the chow hall. But he kept on and said: “No really, you want steak, seafood? How about a Margarita?” I asked him what the devil he was talking about and that’s when he said: “I just got off the phone with the prosecutor’s office. They’re cutting the paperwork. You’re going home today.” My heart stopped; I couldn’t breathe. Two hours later I walked out of prison. I kept looking over my shoulder in case they’d made a mistake.

What that prosecutor did, hiding evidence while at the same time actively pursuing the death penalty for me, could be seen as attempted murder. When I found out that he had covered up so much evidence and was still alleging that I got away with murder, even after I was released, I started talking to attorneys. I figured that this monster was never going to let me live, not as a free and innocent person anyway. I took out a lawsuit against him and after three years he settled with me – or rather the city and the county settled. We couldn’t sue him; we had to sue his supervisors for not training and supervising him.

The day I got out of prison was the day I won justice for myself and my family – and for all those friends and people who had stood up and defended me when the rest of the world was entitled to say “That guy’s a murderer”. I didn’t want to let any of those people down by coming out angry and negative; what I wanted was for my family to feel safe again, and proud of what they had stood for all those years. I wanted them to be proud of me.

My life started over again at the age of 45, and I walked out of prison to the distinction of being the 100th person in this country to have been exonerated from death row. There were a lot of anti-death penalty groups out there waiting for that milestone, and there was a lot of press coverage. One of the reporters asked me: “Mr Krone, given your faith in God, how do you justify Him leaving you in prison for 10 years?” I wasn’t sure how to answer a deep, soul-searching question like that and my mind went completely blank. Then suddenly it came to me and I said: “Well, maybe it’s not about those 10 years in prison. Maybe it’s about what I have to do in the next 10 years.”

So later on, when I had more time to think about it, I thought that maybe I was right, that maybe there was a reason why at the age of 35, when I thought I was running my life, everything suddenly flew out of control. I thought that this could be bigger than me, that there could be a reason why I was arrested, and why I got out of prison on the day I did. So I’ve been travelling around the country speaking to people about it and trying to raise awareness, because if it can happen to me it can happen to anybody.

It’s part therapy being able to talk about it – not keeping it inside where it can blow up one day – and it’s also important to feel that something good can come out of my experiences. People are beginning to realise that the justice system can make terrible mistakes and condemn innocent people. I didn’t see this as a career, and I certainly didn’t plan on being a motivational speaker or an activist against the death penalty, but in the same way that some people go to college for 10 years to become doctors or lawyers, it does give my time on death row some sense of purpose.

Ray Krone is now a director of Witness to Innocence, an organisation that campaigns against the death penalty. He was interviewed by Anna Bruce-Lockhart, TheGuardianWeekly

Victim’s sister forgives killer

Lisa Fair finally got the chance yesterday to say what she has been wanting to tell Freeman May, the man convicted of killing her sister 26 years ago.
“I’ve learned the power of forgiveness,” the pastor from Cincinnati, Ohio, told jurors who will decide next week whether the 51-year-old May will die by lethal injection or spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Lisa Fair told the jury that she forgave May for the stabbing death of her 22-year-old sister.

“I feel my sister would have forgiven him,” she said. That was what her sister believed, Lisa Fair said. Lisa and Kathy lived together in a Lancaster apartment at the time of Kathy’s disappearance on Sept. 4, 1982.

She said her sister’s murder had torn apart her family, but they all had the same experience after her death.

“The miracle of it was every one of us turned to God,” Lisa said. [...]

By LES STEWART, Lebanon Daily News

Journey of Hope in MontanaThe story of Eddie Hicks

[...](David) Kaczynski, exonerated death-row inmate Juan Melendez and Eddie Hicks, whose daughter was murdered at age 26, gave a presentation at Risen Christ Catholic Church in Evergreen Thursday afternoon as part of a 50-event state campaign for an end to the death penalty in Montana.[...]

Justice never can be achieved for Hicks. In May 2000, his daughter, who had been an athlete and an honor student in high school, was shot in the head in High Point, N.C., in front of her younger sister and brother.

His daughter’s killer was released after eight years in prison; the charge had been reduced from first-degree murder to manslaughter.

Although the short sentence was decried as an injustice by all three of the speakers Thursday, Hicks said he has never supported the death penalty — before his daughter’s murder or since.

The retired firefighter remembered heated debates in the firehouse when he felt that he was the lone voice speaking in opposition to the death penalty. He considered it barbaric that the government should take life so deliberately and that its deterrent value was unproven.

“Without fail the conversation would end with someone saying, ‘You wouldn’t feel that way if you lost a loved one to murder,’” Hicks said. “At the time, it was so far-fetched, I didn’t even consider it.”

In the early days after his daughter’s death, Hicks said he would have considered “doing the guy in myself. But after that passed, I realized that the reasons I was opposed to the death penalty before remained.”

Hicks said he continues to share his painful story because he’s heard too many politicians and law enforcement officers say that “all” of those who have lost loved ones to murder are in favor of the death penalty.

“It’s important for them to know they’re not speaking for everyone,” he said. [...]

Taken from "Their journeys of hope" by HEIDI GAISER/Daily Inter Lake

Journey of Hope in Helena, MontanaThe story of Shujaa Graham

When Shujaa Graham tells his story of living on death row, he weeps.

Sent to death row in 1976, he lived there until he was eventually acquitted.

He was in Helena Friday with other former death row inmates and also relatives of those on death row as part of World Day Against the Death Penalty events.

The “Journey of Hope...from Violence to Healing” tour, which held 60 events this week in Montana, seeks to end the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment without parole.

Graham grew up poor in the South. At 11, he followed his mother to California. Soon he was caught up in gangs and crime.

At 18, he received four years for robbery.

While in prison, he became active in the prison justice movement and learned to read and write.

But then on Nov. 22, 1973, a guard was killed.

Graham was charged with the crime. Perhaps it was because he was outspoken and a leader, he said.

On death row, much of his time was spent in solitary confinement. The cell was so small he could touch all the walls from where he sat on his bed.

Then, he said, there were beatings by guards.

The prison guards yelled “dead man walking” whenever they took him from his cell into the prison yard. The sea of prisoners would part for him to walk — in solitude. The words still echo in his head.

“I fought for my life,” he said, tears pouring down his face as he addressed a group of about 50 at the Lewis and Clark Library.

“I thought I knew prison,” he said. “When I went to death row, it was a whole new reality.”

The California Supreme Court eventually overturned Graham’s conviction, and in 1982, after 14 years in prison, he was acquitted and set free.

Since then, he’s tried to rebuild his life, he said. He has three children, the youngest playing baseball on scholarship at a college in Mississippi.

“I’m thankful to be here,” Graham said, “so I can stand up and fight for human justice.”

Even on his happiest days, watching his son play baseball, he’s haunted by death row memories.

“I don’t want no one to experience what I have, that’s why I fight.”[...]

taken from "Group against death penalty rallies in Helena" by MARGA LINCOLN - Independent Record - 10/11/08

Activist Focus: Death Penalty Law Creates Other Victims

Fontana decided the victims' families in death penalty cases should always come first.

LOUISIANA:

Amy Fontana of Monroe has taken a fortuitous path on the way to becoming a state death penalty abolition coordinator for Amnesty International, a worldwide organization that advocates for human rights and the abolition of the death penalty.

Far from an ideologue, she hadn't been involved with or even really thought about the death penalty until a friend at Tulane University started up an Amnesty International chapter.

Fontana, working on a graduate degree in social work at LSU at the time, decided to find out what her friend was up to.

She joined up, paid her dues and attended the meetings. But her galvanizing moment wouldn't come until her last year of school in 2003.

A speaker visiting her class gave Fontana a test before the speech to assess how much she knew about the death penalty.

"I failed every question on the pre-test," Fontana says.

"At the time I don't know what I was. I was Catholic, and Catholic views are supposed to be anti-, anti-death penalty. I took the test, and I'm like, 'My goodness, I was so misinformed,' and so was everybody else in the class."

She decided to learn more about the issue, and when a local law firm, the Baton Rouge Capital Conflict office, was looking for a mitigation investigator, she joined up. Fontana worked on eight cases over 2 1/2 years and investigated the lives of perpetrators the state was seeking to put to death. She worked with defendants and indigent board defense attorneys to try to figure out what had gone so wrong in defendants' lives.

She found the perpetrators almost always come from broken homes, grow up in awful living conditions and are uneducated.

"They never had a chance in the world," Fontana says.

She discovered what she calls the arbitrary way in which offenders are convicted and given the death penalty.

Those whose victims are white are statistically more likely to get the death penalty than those whose victims are black, Fontana points out.

Furthermore, perpetrators usually can't afford their own attorneys.

"I hate to bring it up, but O.J. was ruled innocent," Fontana says, referring to his murder trial, not his recent conviction on robbery and other charges.

Working as a mitigation officer, Fontana presented the information she found to juries to try to persuade them to vote for life in prison instead of death.

Fontana is most proud of her work with Jesse Schwartz, who was accused of killing a police officer and could have received the death penalty. Fontana said she helped convince the victims' parents to forgive Schwartz, and she also helped convince Schwartz to plead guilty and take life in prison.

"He said he felt God had forgiven him," Fontana says.

During those two and a half years, Fontana attended national conferences and became well versed in all the issues surrounding the death penalty.

She found strength in the example of Sister Helen Prejean, the author of the book "Dead Man Walking."

"All of us are worth more than our worst act," Prejean has said. Fontana decided the victims' families in death penalty cases should always come first. And that's part of the logic behind her efforts, Fontana says.

She believes families suffer unnecessarily when they are put through the wringer during years of trials and appeals, and the country can ensure justice without the death penalty.

"We don't want court processes to bring them through suffering, suffering, suffering, only to either have the person get the death penalty and be executed years later, or they just constantly relive all the trials," Fontana says.

Now 33, Fontana works for the state as a medical social worker in Monroe, and will work for Amnesty on nights and weekends. She makes sure to separate her Amnesty work and her work for the state.

Her activities in northern Louisiana will include working with the local Amnesty chapter at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, outreach to victims' families and perpetrators’ families, and fostering general awareness of death-penalty issues.

"I'm not here to persuade someone to believe some way or the other, but to know the facts," Fontana says.

Her and Amnesty's ultimate goal is to get a national moratorium on the death penalty.

"There's too much of a chance of executing an innocent person," Fontana says.

"And until we can get this fixed and figured out, we should stop using it."

(source: The News Star)

Cities Across the World for Life

Somehow, it feels most fitting--in leaving the weekend of special attention on the international abolition movements--to remember how interconnected we all are in this effort...

Affirming their participation to the initiative NO JUSTICE WITHOUT LIFE...
The Cities against the Death Penalty” reminds all of the the first abolition of the capital punishment from the legal ordainment of an European country: the one in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, in 1786.

This initiative promoted by the Community of Sant’Egidio and supported by the main international organizations for human rights, gathered in the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (among them Amnesty International, Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort, International Penal Reform, FIACAT)...

...many symbolic monuments (have been) enlightened - from the Coliseum in Rome to the Plaza de Santa Ana in Madrid, from the Central Obelisk in Buenos Aires to the Moneda Palace in Santiago, from the Atomium in Brussels to the square of the Cathedral in Barcelona - making a worldwide moral alliance to ask to stop every execution.

The death penalty is stepping back all over the world and this trend emerges as a constant in the last quarter of the century. Nevertheless, anachronistic claims to its reintroduction in Europe, or the unacceptable justifications in favor of its usage in Iraqi, together with the long way yet to be covered to reach its universal abolition, need a tenacious and incisive action to affirm the civilization of right and defense of human dignity...

In this direction, new strategies and common visions have been started...

We look forward to more updates from the Community of Sant’Egidio and others on such global movements and trends among the cities and countries of the world in the days ahead including more reports from Montana. Part of the reason that there is such controversy about abolishing the death penalty in the USA may have to do with the isolation of our country and continent. We are grateful that this Journey of Hope stays connected so continually with the international abolition movements. For this we thank both our visionary, Bill Pelke--along with the openness of so many in the global community who have invited Journey speakers to their countries.

World Day in Helena

Death row survivors were speaking in Helena, Montana on the World Day against the Death Penalty.

Juan Roberto Melendez Colon became the 24th person exonerated and released from Florida's death row when he was freed on January 3, 2002 after spending almost 18 years facing execution for a crime he had nothing to do with.

In 1973, Shujaa was framed in the murder of a prison guard at the Deul Vocational Institute, Stockton, California. Shujaa and his co-defendant, Eugene Allen, were sent to San Quentin's death row in 1976, after a second trial in San Francisco. The DA systematically excluded all African American jurors, and in 1979, the California Supreme Court overturned the death conviction. After spending three years on death row, Shujaa and Eugene Allen, continued to fight for their innocence. A third trial ended in a hung jury, and after a fourth trial, they were found innocent. As Shujaa often says, he won his freedom and affirmed his innocence in spite of the system.

World Day Against Death Penalty: urgent need for abolition also concerns journalists

by Reporters without Borders

[...]“It would be inappropriate, when talking about the death penalty, to suggest that its use in some cases is more appalling than in others,” the press freedom organisation said. “But we want to highlight one of its pernicious aspects, which directly concerns journalists and free expression, with the aim of responding once and for all to those who still hesitate to support calls for the abolition of this irreversible punishment on the grounds that it is only used against the most horrible criminals.”

The most emblematic case today is in a country which, paradoxically, is under the surveillance of powerful parliamentary democracies - Afghanistan. Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, a young journalist and student, and contributor to the magazine Jahan-e Naw (“New World”), languishes in a Kabul prison cell awaiting the outcome of the interminable appeal proceedings against his conviction on a blasphemy charge.

Despite demonstrations by many fellow Afghan journalists and writers, this young man is still under the sentence of death that was issued by a court in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif in January 2008, at the end of a summary trial behind closed doors at which he was not defended by a lawyer. [...]

A similar case in Iran last year highlighted how the death penalty can be a terrifying tool for silencing dissenting voices. Adnan Hassanpour, a 26-year-old journalist in Iranian Kurdistan who wrote for the now banned weekly Asou and various foreign news media, was arrested on 25 January 2007 and imprisoned in Mahabad (Kurdistan).

After sentencing him to death twice for “subversive activities against national security,” the Iranian courts finally decided in September of this year that he could not be regarded as a “mohareb” (enemy of God) and transferred his case to a civil court in Kurdistan. This impassioned young advocate of Kurdish cultural rights is now being held in Sanandaj. He has already gone on hunger strike twice in protest against his prison conditions. [...]

Our concerns are not limited to the Muslim world. The Ethiopian authorities jailed the leaders of the main opposition party on charges of high treason and genocide in November 2005 after a wave of rioting and bloodshed was triggered by the announcement that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s party had won the parliamentary elections.

Around 20 pro-opposition newspaper publishers and editors were also jailed on the same charges. They were all eventually acquitted or pardoned in 2007, but before that, some of them were sentenced to death for what was regarded as an ethnically-motivated coup attempt.

The case of radio journalist and Black Panther Party member Mumia Abu-Jamal in the United States serves as a reminder that capital punishment still has not been abolished in the world’s biggest economy. Sentenced to death in 1982 for the fatal shooting of a policeman, Daniel Faulkner - which he denies doing - Abu-Jamal has spent 26 years on death row. A Philadelphia federal appeal court commuted the sentence in March of this year to life imprisonment. The prosecution could still appeal.

Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned journalists and press freedom throughout the world. It has nine national sections (Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland). It has representatives in Bangkok, London, New York, Tokyo and Washington. And it has more than 120 correspondents worldwide.

Oct. 10th: World Day against the Death PenaltyWorld is moving towards banning death penalty, says Reprieve

by Duncan Campell, The Guardian

The world is moving closer to the final abolition of the death penalty, according to the latest figures published to coincide with World Day against the Death Penalty today.

Five nations were responsible for almost all the state executions carried out in the past year. A total of 137 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice, while 60 countries retain its use, usually for people convicted of murder.

There were at least 1,252 known executions in 24 countries during 2007. Of all the executions in 2007, 88% took place in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the US.

By the end of 2007, 91 countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes and three more (Albania, the Cook Islands and Rwanda) have since joined them, according to Reprieve, which represents death row prisoners around the world.

"The reality is that despite the progress that has been made over the last 18 months, there are still thousands of people being executed every year around the world," said Clive Stafford Smith, the director of Reprieve.

"I have witnessed the barbarity of this sentence in person, having been present at the execution of four of my clients and can say that one execution is too many. We cannot rest until capital punishment becomes little more than an embarrassing chapter in our history."

In Europe, only Belarus retains capital punishment. Countries with the death penalty cannot join the EU.

The US is the only country in the Americas to have carried out any executions since 2003. Its 53 executions in 2006 represented the lowest annual total for a decade, and death sentences continue to drop from a peak in the mid-1990s.

"Asia leads the way globally as the continent that carries out the most executions," said the Amnesty International UK director, Kate Allen.

"The number of executions carried out by China last year makes them the world's number one executioner. This year we have seen a noticeable increase in the use of the death penalty in Japan. Executions in that country are typically shrouded in secrecy. And in Pakistan there are approximately 7,500 people, including children, on death row … We call on Asia's state leaders to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolish the death penalty."

In some areas with a long tradition of executions, such as central Asia, there is a clear move towards abolition. Recently, Kyrgyzstan abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes, Kazakhstan has had a moratorium on executions since 2003 and Tajikistan has had moratoriums on executions and death sentences since 2004.

In Africa, only six countries carried out executions in 2006. Last year the high court in Malawi declared the mandatory death penalty unconstitutional and Rwanda abolished it. Burundi, Gabon and Mali are taking steps towards abolition.

In seven countries the death penalty is applied for consensual sexual acts between adults of the same sex: Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen and parts of Nigeria.

Iran retains the death penalty for a large number of offences, among them "cursing the Prophet," certain drug offences, murder, adultery, incest, rape, drinking alcohol and sodomy. Last year Iran executed at least 317 people, including eight juvenile offenders.

In 2007, Saudi Arabia executed at least 143 people, including children and three women. This year's has already reached 58.

Pakistan retains the death penalty for 26 offences including murder, blasphemy, arms trading, drug trafficking, armed robbery, stripping a woman of her clothes in public, extramarital sex and rape. Yemen retains it for a variety of offences, among them endangering transport and communications, apostasy, robbery, prostitution and adultery.

Reports of executions in 2007:
China: 470+
Iran: 317+
Saudi Arabia: 143+
Pakistan: 135+
US: 42
Iraq: 33+
Vietnam: 25+
Yemen: 15+
Afghanistan: 15
Libya: 9+

Wednesday night at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Great Falls

The Great Falls Tribune reports about the Journey of Hope event on wednesday night:

With personal tales of anger, grief and forgiveness, David Kaczynski and others with close connections to horrible crimes spoke out against the death penalty Wednesday night at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Great Falls.

The speakers are part of a national group called Journey of Hope. They are on an eight-day tour of Montana, speaking at churches, schools and libraries across the state. The tour was organized by the Montana Abolition Coalition, an anti-death penalty organization. [...report about David Kaczynski's and Bill Babbitt's story...]

The group also included a man who spent 18 years on death row for a crime he didn't commit, and relatives of murder victims.

Juan Melendez was nearly put to death for murder and armed robbery, but was released after nearly two decades in prison when authorities learned another man committed the crimes. He believes the U.S. government has probably already executed innocent people, and shouldn't risk doing it again.

"You can always release an innocent man from prison, but you can never release a man from the grave," he said.

Speaker Bud Welch talked about his daughter, Julie, who was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

Timothy McVeigh was executed in 2001 for his role in the attack. It brought Welch no closure.

"There was nothing about that that gave me peace or made me feel good," he said. "The death penalty does not bring peace to families. Anyone who tells you it does — it's nothing but a lie."

The Montana Abolition Coalition is urging the Montana Legislature to ban the death penalty, and to replace it with a prison sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

"The biggest message we try to get across is, our justice system is made up of humans — even with the best of intentions, mistakes can happen," said Rachel Carroll, an organizer for the group. "How can we risk people's lives?"

At UM, Unabomber's brother, others say death penalty unfair

By TRISTAN SCOTT of the Missoulian

David Kaczynski says his efforts to abolish the death penalty were born of the same moral sense he had 12 years ago, when he first suspected his brother might be the person law enforcement called the Unabomber.

“My objective today is the same objective I had the day I turned my brother in,” Kaczynski said. “I don’t want there to be any more victims.”

Kaczynski was in Missoula on Tuesday with the Journey of Hope, a statewide speaking tour led by the family members of murder victims, the relatives of death row inmates and exonorees who seek alternatives to the death penalty.

In an interview with the Missoulian, Kaczynski said social injustices compelled him to join the group of activists, which tours the country and urges states to adopt anti-death penalty legislation. Capital punishment disproportionately impacts the poor, people of color and the mentally disabled, he said.

Today, David Kaczynski is the executive director of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty. Although he has long opposed the death penalty on principle, he said the issue was never more immediate than the day he and his wife read the Unabomber’s manifesto in a newspaper and recognized his brother’s writing.

“Our family had struggled with an incredibly difficult moral situation. We looked at the truth when the truth had never been harder to look at. And if there was one thing that could have deterred me from turning my brother in, it would have been the death penalty,” said Kaczynski, who was dismayed by the Justice Department’s pursuit of the death penalty for his brother. “The death penalty is applied unfairly, it is administered unevenly, and it risks executing the innocent and the mentally challenged. It’s not justice. It’s skin color and good lawyers.”

With Kaczynski’s help, police where able to arrest Unabomber Ted Kaczynski at a remote cabin near Lincoln in 1996. Ted Kaczynski is serving a life sentence for sending mail bombs that killed three people and wounded many more.

Kaczynski is one of about 20 speakers headlining a statewide speaking tour, called From Violence to Healing. The group is sponsored by the Montana Abolition Coalition and spoke at the University of Montana throughout the day and at an evening event.

Another speaker, Bill Babbitt, is a friend of Kaczynski’s and compelled him to join the Journey of Hope tour years ago by telling him his own, similar story.

Bill Babbitt is the brother of Manny Babbitt, a veteran of the Vietnam War who in 1980 was convicted of murdering a 78-year-old woman during a burglary in Sacramento, Calif. In 1999, Babbitt was executed by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison, just hours after his 50th birthday.

Like Ted Kaczynski, Babbitt was diagnosed with schizophrenia and convicted of first degree murder. Unlike Kaczynski, who is Harvard-educated, white and had a solid defense team of high-profile attorneys, Babbitt was black and was appointed a public defender who had never tried a criminal case.

And like David Kaczynski, Bill Babbitt turned his brother over to law enforcement after suspecting him in a string of burglaries and sexual assaults.

“My brother went to Harvard. He had a Ph.D.” Kaczynski said. “Bill’s brother went to Vietnam. I guess it was my first realization that this was a larger issue.”

Marietta Jaeger-Lane, another speaker and a co-founder of Journey of Hope, was the mother of Susie Jaeger, who was kidnapped from her family’s tent at the Missouri Headwaters State Park near Three Forks and murdered more than 30 years ago.

On the one-year anniversary of Susie’s disappearance, the girl’s abductor called Jaeger-Lane on the telephone and taunted her. But her spiritual words about forgiveness disarmed him, and he spoke with the woman for more than an hour, revealing details about himself and the crime that helped the FBI solve the case.

Jaeger-Lane soon learned that Susie had been killed on a remote Montana ranch one week after her disappearance. The death penalty was applicable, but, at Jaeger-Lane’s request, prosecutors offered the alternative sentence of life imprisonment without parole. After the offer, the man admitted to the rape, strangulation death and dismemberment of Susie, as well as the deaths of a woman and two young boys in the same area.

“There was evidence that this man had caused more children’s deaths around the state, but the county prosecutors in those instances were insisting on the death penalty,” Jaeger-Lane said. “He would only confess to the deaths in Gallatin County, where he was being offered life imprisonment.”

Jaeger-Lane found no healing through hatred of her daughter’s murderer and instead turned to forgiveness and spirituality.

“I moved from wanting to kill him with my bare hands to believing that, in God’s eyes, he is just as precious as my daughter. She was worthy of something more noble, more beautiful than killing a chained, defenseless person,” she said. “It dehumanizes us, it degrades us, when we use the same violent methods as these offenders to solve our problems.”

“Every one of us would give everything we have to not be an authority on this issue because of our personal experiences,” she said. “Hopefully, when we offer our stories it gives people with similar experiences a new option for peace and health and happiness.”

Beautiful Somber Gathering in Montana (blog #2)

Greetings!

Saturday morning began with a somber gathering. Journey of Hope co-founder, Marietta Jaeger-Lane began her Journey from Violence to Healing right here in Montana. Her daughter Susie was abducted at the age of seven during a family camping trip here in 1973. We gathered at this very campground Saturday morning. We held a memorial service and planted a tree in Susie's honor. When we first arrived, I was awed by the beauty of the place. The campground sits on the edge of the Gallatin River near the town of Three Forks. It is so named because it is the near where the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin Rivers converge to form the Missouri River. My survey of the beauty was interrupted by Marietta pointing out two trees that marked the spot where the tent had stood. Susie's abductor had cut a hole and removed her while the family slept. As the horror of the crime so long ago washed over me and fear crept into my soul for my little boy, I was immediately struck by the juxtaposition of such horror in a place of such beauty. My mother's family is from this area of Montana and I remember family picnics and reunions in places such as this. You see, I was born the year before Susie and she would be almost my age now. I was immediately worried about Marietta seeing Isaac running around and missing the grandchildren that would surely have been hers. Isaac was busy being three. He climbed a hill nearby and enjoyed splashing a branch in the waters of the Gallatin as the service proceeded. When it came time to plant the tree, Isaac, a tool man at heart, rushed forward to help shovel dirt on the tree. I tried to pull him back so others could get a chance and Marietta stopped me, saying that his work was precious to her. You see, that is what is different about Marietta. She has forgiven. While I worried that she would see what she had lost; she saw only the joy of a boy in a place long bereft of joy, and it was precious to her. The forgiveness she offered was, in the long run, most beneficial for her. More to come . . .

Beth

Left to right, Greg Wilhoit & Isaac Bonowitz shoveling dirt on the memorial tree. In the background, Joanna from England, Rev. Walt Everett, Marietta Jaeger-Lane & Bill Pelke.

Terri Steinberg speaking during the service.

Photos by Jack Payden-Travers

Unrepresented Death Row Prisoner Project (UDRPP)

In our focus on the high profile cases, we do often admit to forgetting the unrepresented, the inmate often without the means, the family or company to be able to even send a letter...

Hello, here is a simple suggestion for some other states to follow...or perhaps each one could find one to support? (However, never assume this will be easy to sustain nor uncomplicated. May we recommend prayer, mindfulness and practical wisdom for any commitment or relationship. This can be rewarding yet is often difficult for many reasons. Working with such a group as this may be one way to circumvent loneliness in such an endeavor to be of some comfort and help to the most powerless among us.)

Unrepresented Death Row Prisoner Project (UDRPP)

California provides all people sentenced to death in the state with an automatic appeal to ensure against the execution of possible innocents or otherwise less culpable defendants due to errors at the trial level.

Because death sentences have been handed down more quickly than attorneys can be appointed, it currently takes between four and six years for most death row prisoners to have appellate counsel appointed.

The purpose of the UDRPP is to provide indigent prisoners on California’s death row with access to items such as postage stamps, paper, and toiletries during this long period of waiting.

Volunteers assemble packages of donated stamps and holiday cards to send to unrepresented death row prisoners to facilitate communication with their family and friends.
+++
(In California, there is also a Clergy Mobilization Project. See the link Lower Right for Death Penalty Focus (Visionary of this group: Mike Farrell, formerly star of the classic Vietnam dark Comedy, "Mash")

Perhaps your state has a unique Death Row project, seed idea or challenge you'd like to share?

Marietta Yaeger Lane: Interviewed Recently in Montana with JOH

ERIK PETERSEN/CHRONICLE Marietta Yaeger Lane poses for a photo at her Three Forks area home Thursday morning. Yaeger Lane, along with about 20 others, including Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski’s brother, David, travels the country speaking with “Journey of Hope,” a group working to abolish the death penalty and will speak 7 p.m. Saturday at Montana State University.

Murder victim’s mother speaks out against death penalty

By JESSICA MAYRER Chronicle staff writer from October 2, 2008

In 1973, David Meirhoffer cut a hole in the tent where Susie Yaeger was sleeping. After taking the 7-year-old girl from a campsite near Three Forks, molesting and killing her, he called the family asking for a ransom. He let them believe she was still alive.

“I’d have been happy to kill the man with my bare hands,” her mother Marietta Yaeger Lane said in an interview this week.

But now, 35 years later, she and 20 others, including David Kaczynski, brother of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, travel the country speaking with “Journey of Hope,” a group working to abolish the death penalty.

And on Saturday, at 7 p.m. in the Montana State University Ballroom, Yaeger Lane, Kacyzinski and others will share their stories.

Yaeger Lane will document her journey from rage to what some may see as superhuman compassion. She said putting Meirhoffer to death would have further colored Susie’s memory.

“You could be killing people for the rest of my life and it wouldn’t compensate for the loss of my little girl,” she said. “All it really does is make another victim.”

Authorities found some of Susie’s remains and those of another victim at an abandoned ranch in the Horseshoe Hills.

Meirhoffer, who admitted to killing three others in Gallatin County, hung himself in jail before he was prosecuted. But by then, Yaeger Lane had been forced to confront conflicting feelings.

“I had done a lot of thinking about the death penalty, in terms of my faith and in terms of how I wanted to honor my little girl,” Yaeger Lane said.

CRUEL & UNUSUAL

She is one of a growing chorus of people arguing the death penalty debases society and disproportionately affects minorities, the poor and the mentally ill.

When Unabomber Ted Kaczynski went on trial, he was portrayed as a cold-blooded killer, David Kaczynski said.

Yet, the infamous technophobe that carried out a series of bombings is schizophrenic, his brother said, and prosecutors knew that.

“It was more about winning and losing then it was about justice,” David Kaczynski said. “I saw that the trial was not really about morality or justice.”

While Kaczynski is serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole, stories of other mentally ill individuals sentenced to death after committing crimes spurred David Kaczynski to action.

“People just don’t have any idea how this system is applied in this country,” he said.

The death penalty unduly affects people with a limited ability to combat prosecution, said Scott Crichton, executive director of the Montana ACLU.

“The ones who are likely to be prosecuted for capital crimes likely have no capital,” Crichton said.

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit challenging the Montana death penalty, arguing the state’s lethal injection procedure is cruel and unusual. The ACLU sued on behalf of Ronald Smith, sentenced for killing two men in 1982 and one of two prisoners on Montana’s death row.

The ACLU’s case is slated to go before the Montana Supreme Court in October 2009, Crichton said. If it wins, Montana would be barred from using lethal injection.

That case would put the death penalty on hold, but legislative action would be needed to permanently outlaw it. Efforts to eliminate the death penalty have fallen short in three consecutive legislative sessions. Convicted murderer David Dawson was the last person executed in the state, in 2006.

OPPONENTS DROWN OUT PROPONENTS

Nationwide, 3,309 inmates were awaiting execution as of January 2008. The death penalty is legal in 36 states, although several have put executions on hold.

But, according to a 2007 Gallup Poll, 69 percent of Americans support putting convicted murderers to death.

“I’m a pro-death penalty person,” said Mikie Baker-Hajak, a long-time Montana victim’s advocate whose brother was murdered the day after Thanksgiving more than 20 years ago.

“Even before this happened to my brother, I believed a person has to be held accountable for what they do,” she said.

Many Americans feel like she does, she said. But anti-death penalty folks drown them out.

“You get a boisterous minority out there that’s taking it on as their mantra,” Baker-Hajak said. “I think the silent majority still believes in the death penalty as a criminal consequence.”

Her brother’s killer made a plea agreement and served what she said was a “paltry sentence.” He was let out of prison to live his final days in a veteran’s home.

“My brother didn’t have that same consideration, to live out his last days happily,” Baker-Hajak said.

And while folks looking to abolish the death penalty argue it disproportionately targets the mentally ill and the poor, Baker-Hajak said those injured are also from vulnerable populations.

“I think that’s a moot point. It’s grasping at straws,” she said. “Victims that are the easiest to victimize are mentally ill folks or children, because they make the worst witnesses.”

FOR THOSE ‘HORRIBLE ACTS’

But Crichton also pointed out the danger of making irreversible mistakes. Since 1973, 130 people have been released from death row after evidence of innocence came to light.

“We don’t have a system that can guarantee that only the guilty are put to death,” Kaczynski said.

Nor does the prospect of execution stop criminals, Yaeger Lane said. The death penalty was in use in Montana when her daughter was killed.

“It certainly did not stop this poor sick young man who took my daughter’s life,” she said. “It’s not a deterrent.”

And their argument may be working. Nationally, the using of capital punishment is slowing. And it’s getting tougher to prosecute those cases.

Yellowstone County Attorney Dennis Paxinos said in September he would not seek the death penalty in a triple-homicide case against accused killer Richard Covington.

Citing his experience prosecuting convicted killer David Dawson, who asked to be executed, Paxinos said executions in Western states were increasingly unusual because of the appeal process.

“In the Ninth Circuit there just simply have not been any executions in the last decade, unless they were volunteers,” he said in September.

That has Baker-Hajak worried.

“I think we’re coming precariously close to abolishing the death penalty,” she said. “It still needs to be there for those McVeighs and those Duncans out there who are doing horrible acts.”

COMPASSION FOR EVERYONE

But after working with the families of murder victims for more than 30 years, Yaeger Lane said she has a unique insight on the death penalty.

“It is not closure. It is not healing,” Jaeger Lane said. “They are as empty and unsatisfied as they were before.”

She now lives in Three Forks, after moving here to be with her second husband, a cattle rancher she met nearly 10 years ago while in Montana marking the 25th anniversary of Susie’s death.

This Saturday, Yaeger Lane will plant a tree at Headwaters State Park at the site where Susie was taken.

Yaeger Lane did not want to use the name of her daughter’s killer for this story. His family has been through enough, she said. All life is sacred, and society as a whole will achieve a higher nobility when it shows compassion for everyone.

“The quality of our society is determined by how we treat the least among us,” she said.

Jessica Mayrer can be reached at jmayrer@dailychronicle.com or 582-2635.
Reader Comments

Beth Wood on the Montana Journey, Oct. 3rd

Hello All!

I have been the official blogger for the Journey before so you may already know me. However, if you don’t, I’ll give you a quick bio of me. I was a very low-key Ohio abolitionist who came on board when I became disgusted about the state’s intention to start executing folks in Ohio. Then . . . I went to the Fast and Vigil and met Abe Bonowitz. Years later, we have formed a family that now includes our son, Isaac. I am actually an elementary school teacher but have been on hiatus from that while enjoying my son’s early years. During this hiatus, I started doing some part-time work with New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty while I lived in New Jersey. Since their successful abolition campaign wrapped up, I have been working for Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation, Equal Justice USA and Witness to Innocence. I am currently traveling on the Journey on behalf of MVFR as support personnel for the speakers. On a side note, MVFR has JUST rolled out a wonderful new web site. See www.mvfr.org! Bill Pelke has asked me write about my experiences and the people that I meet while I am here.

The Journey officially kicked off yesterday with a well attended student event at Carroll College in Helena. We have already garnered lots of positive media attention. In fact, we were thrilled to see that the Bozeman Daily Chronicle ran a story titled, “Eye for an Eye No More,” featuring Journey of Hope co-founder and a founding board member of MVFR, Marietta Jeager-Lane. See: http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2008/10/03/news/000death.txt. It was not only front page above the fold but ABOVE last night’s vice presidential debate coverage. We are being hosted by the Montana Abolition Coalition, which is a “broad based group of organizations and individuals committed to ending the death penalty in Montana. The Coalition includes faith groups, civil and human rights organizations and murder victims’ families groups. The groups differ in their reasons, but all agree on the need to end capital punishment.” They are very capably led by Jen Kirby. Our experience has been outstanding and they have been most welcoming. See: http://www.mtabolitionco.org/ to learn more about them.

Some fun things that happened yesterday in Montana. Isaac was restless at the event so we went outside to kick a ball around. As we were playing, a deer walked up and grazed nearby. Apparently, there is quite a deer population in Helena but certainly an unusual happening for us city folk.

Be sure to tune in tomorrow to meet some of the folks on the Journey this year and hear of tomorrow’s happenings.

Warmly with wishes for a peaceful day!

Beth Wood

Death row realismDo executions make us safer? San Quentin's former warden says no

by Jeanne Woodford, LA Times, October 2, 2008

As the warden of San Quentin, I presided over four executions. After each one, someone on the staff would ask, "Is the world safer because of what we did tonight?"

We knew the answer: No.

I worked in corrections for 30 years, starting as a correctional officer and working my way up to warden at San Quentin and then on to the top job in the state -- director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. During those years, I came to believe that the death penalty should be replaced with life without the possibility of parole.

I didn't reach that conclusion because I'm soft on crime. My No. 1 concern is public safety. I want my children and grandchildren to have the safety and freedom to pursue their dreams. I know from firsthand experience that some people are dangerous and must be removed from society forever -- people such as Robert Lee Massie.

I presided over Massie's execution in 2001. He was first sentenced to death for the 1965 murder of a mother of two. But when executions were temporarily banned in 1972, his sentence was changed to one that would allow parole, and he was released in 1978. Months later, he killed a 61-year-old liquor store owner and was returned to death row.

For supporters of the death penalty, Massie is a poster child. Yet for me, he stands out among the executions I presided over as the strongest example of how empty and futile the act of execution is.

I remember that night clearly. It was March 27, 2001. I was the last person to talk to Massie before he died. After that, I brought the witnesses in. I looked at the clock to make sure it was after midnight. I got a signal from two members of my staff who were on the phone with the state Supreme Court and the U.S. attorney general's office to make sure there were no last-minute legal impediments to the execution. There were none, so I gave the order to proceed. It took several minutes for the lethal injections to take effect.

I did my job, but I don't believe it was the right thing to have done. We should have condemned Massie to permanent imprisonment -- that would have made the world safer. But on the night we executed him, when the question was asked, "Did this make the world safer?" the answer remained no. Massie needed to be kept away from society, but we did not need to kill him.

Why should we pay to keep him locked up for life? I hear that question constantly. Few people know the answer: It's cheaper -- much, much cheaper than execution.

I wish the public knew how much the death penalty affects their wallets. California spends an additional $117 million each year pursuing the execution of those on death row. Just housing inmates on death row costs an additional $90,000 per prisoner per year above what it would cost to house them with the general prison population.

A statewide, bipartisan commission recently concluded that we must spend $100 million more each year to fix the many problems with capital punishment in California. Total price tag: in excess of $200 million-a-year more than simply condemning people to life without the possibility of parole.

If we condemn the worst offenders, like Massie, to permanent imprisonment, resources now spent on the death penalty could be used to investigate unsolved homicides, modernize crime labs and expand effective violence prevention programs, especially in at-risk communities. The money also could be used to intervene in the lives of children at risk and to invest in their education -- to stop future victimization.

As I presided over Massie's execution, I thought about the abuse and neglect he endured as a child in the foster care system. We failed to keep him safe, and our failure contributed to who he was as an adult. Instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to kill him, what if we spent that money on other foster children so that we stop producing men like Massie in the first place?

As director of corrections, I visited Watts and met with some ex-offenders. I learned that the prison system is paroling 300 people every week into the neighborhood without a plan or resources for success. How can we continue to spend more than $100 million a year seeking the execution of a handful of offenders while we fail to meet the basic safety needs of communities like Watts?

It is not realistic to think that Watts and neighborhoods like it will ever get well if we can't -- or won't -- support them in addressing the problems they face.

To say that I have regrets about my involvement in the death penalty is to let myself off the hook too easily. To take a life in order to prove how much we value another life does not strengthen our society. It is a public policy that devalues our very being and detracts crucial resources from programs that could truly make our communities safe.

Jeanne Woodford is the former director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the former warden of San Quentin State Prison

Montana Journey of HopeOctober 2nd through October 11th, 2008

In 2007, Montana made history when the Montana Senate voted to abolish the death penalty and replace it with life without the possibility of parole. Though the bill failed by a single vote in the House Committee, the success in the legislature showed that we are on the verge of victory. The Montana Abolition Coalition is seizing the opportunity and the momentum to abolish the death penalty in the 2009 legislative session.

The Montana Abolition Coalition is a broad based group of organizations and individuals committed to ending the death penalty in Montana. The Coalition includes faith groups, civil rights organizations, and murder victims' families groups. The groups differ in their reasons, but all agree on the need to end capital punishment.

The Coalition recognizes the need to bring together murder victim family members, exonerees and death row families and have them share their stories with the public.

So that is why the Coalition has invited Journey of Hope to Montana. We hope the Journey will change minds and help expand the support for abolition. We know that the speakers have the power to win us votes in the legislature. The Coalition has determined a number of legislative districts that are key to winning in the next legislative session. These will be focused on during the Journey by having a number of venues in those districts and arranging for legislators and legislative candidates to attend Journey events. By having the Journey work in the targeted legislative districts, we will build grassroots support for abolition in these key areas. So in the 2009 session, we will have a strong organized group of constituents that will help move legislators to vote their conscience and end capital punishment in our state.

The Journey will take place October 2nd through October 11th, 2008. Events will be held throughout the state in a wide variety of venues.

Montana made national headlines in 2007 with the State Senate's vote to end capital punishment. Today, abolition is closer than ever. With the help of Journey of Hope, we can have victory in 2009!

Jennifer Kirby
Coordinator, Montana Abolition Coalition
406-461-8176
jenk@aclumontana.org
jenk@mtabolitionco.org