Spanish Prime Minister calls for the abolition of the death penalty worldwide by 2015

(UN Video)

SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Prime Minister, Spain:
My friends we have 5 years to achieve our goal -- to stop executions around the world: If we work together it is a goal within our reach.

Addressing the World Congress Against the Death Penalty meeting in Geneva today, the Prime Minister of Spain, whose country currently holds the presidency of the European Union, said it was unfortunate that today numerous countries still continue to apply the death penalty.

The two-day congress, organized by the French NGO Ensemble together with the Swiss government, and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, aimed to persuade more countries to sign up to a United Nations (UN) moratorium on the death penalty.

Referring to the death penalty as state sanctioned murder, Bianca Jagger, goodwill ambassador for the Council of Europe said she was shocked at the continued application of the death penalty in the United States (US), saying only when the US got its own house in order can it claim to stand for freedom and justice.

The Norwegian Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gry Larsen, said the world was at a turning point with an ever growing shift towards abolition. 138 countries have outlawed the death penalty but it still exists in 58 countries, including the US and Japan.

The death penalty exists in 35 of the 51 states in the US said Elizabeth Zitrin, US representative of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. Case by case defense lawyers had tried their best to defy the death penalty but that a universal moratorium was needed.

The World Congress Against the Death Penalty is a triennial opportunity to bring together abolitionist groups and strengthen the international dimension of the fight against the death penalty.

NC: Asheville marks Amnesty International's Death Penalty Awareness Week

Healing and Hope: This quilt, created by the families of murder victims and death-row inmates in WNC, stitches together the stories of individuals and families forever affected by acts of violence. The quilt, and other works by local artists, will be on display at the commemorative Execute Art Not People event. Image courtesy of Alexandra Cury of North Carolina Coalition for a Moratorium


Asheville marks Amnesty International's Death Penalty Awareness Week:
Monday March 1st, The event will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. at First Congregational United Church of Christ, located at 20 Oak St. It's free and open to the public. Info: 828 252-8729.

Execute Art Not People is an evening of poetry readings, presentations, performances, music and interactive art that will commemorate Amnesty International's Death Penalty Awareness Week. The gathering, slated for Monday, March 1, at the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Asheville, has been organized to creatively oppose capital punishment while focusing community dialogue on this controversial issue.

The death penalty has been abolished in 15 states in the U.S., but capital punishment remains legal in the vast majority of states. In North Carolina, the Department of Corrections lists 159 offenders on death row, nine of whom hail from Buncombe County.

Amnesty International decries any form of punishment by execution, describing it as "the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights." Here in Asheville, Execute Art Not People is a meeting ground for individuals who believe similarly.

"From my experience working in the prison system, I am convinced that dealing with violence and murder through the death penalty keeps us from addressing the problem for both the victim and perpetrator," says Rev. Mark Siler, who works as a chaplain at a state prison in Marion coordinating Christian services for prisoners. "I think my 8-year-old daughter said it best when she asked, 'Why do we kill people for killing people?' The core ethical problem is that the death penalty perpetuates [the notion] that violence can be redemptive." At Execute Art Not People, Siler will discuss the role that music plays in the lives of the prisoners he works with and will close the event with a song.

Former N.C. death-row inmate Edward Chapman, whose charges were dismissed after he spent 14 years on death row in Central Prison in Raleigh, will also give a short address. Local landscape painter John Mac Kah will contribute a painting titled "Cold Mountain," which he describes as both "an iconic image and a metaphor for the [often] cold and relentlessness of humans."

Additional works by local artists Anna Jensen and Linda Richards, plus works by death-row inmate Wiley Dobbs of Georgia, will be on display alongside the "Quilt of Healing and Hope." Assembled by the families of murder victims and N.C. death-row inmates, each patch of the quilt represents an individual or family reflecting on an act of violence that transformed their lives.

Local poet and featured guest speaker DeWayne Barton says, "it is always good to talk about the complete society, and about the people that are forgotten about because they made mistakes." Execute Art Not People "reminds us about the people that are neglected by society" and the disparity between in sentencing between Caucasians versus people of color, he adds.

In addition, mediator and author of the book Grace Goes to Prison (Brethren Press, 2009) Melanie G. Snyder will discuss "restorative justice in a tough-on-crime world" and her work at the Pennsylvania state prison developing programs to promote accountability and nonviolence among inmates. Also, Asheville City Council member Cecil Bothwell will give a brief address.


This write-up is by Aiyanna Sezak-Blatt in Vol. 16 / Iss. 31 on 02/24/2010 of Asheville News Briefs: Xpress magazine

(More events in NC and around the nation to be announced soon)

URGENT NOTE from Gilles at the 4th World Congress Against the DP

ACT NOW!
Posted by Gilles D. Winterhuder at 3:22am We need ALL 65,128 current cause members to ACT NOW!

1) Hank Skinner case - Texas death row

Please SIGN the electronic letter to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles here

We need MANY more signatures! I know that your time is precious but this action will only take you 2 minutes and it is a matter of life and death.

2) "Abolish the Death Penalty" - Ideas for Change in America

I am giving a presentation today at the 4th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Geneva, Switzerland. I will focus on my Idea for Change in America. Votes to be in the final round end in 13 hours. We need to be in the Top Ten to be invited to present this idea for change to the Obama Administration in Washington D.C.

Again, please take a minute of your time to VOTE

here

Change.org will ask you to register (name and email address) and to confirm your email in order to take your vote into account.

This idea is number 1 in Human Rights category. It means that the controversial topic of the death penalty in the USA is supported by many. We have a unique chance to be heard by the White House.

Let's grab this chance NOW!

Thank you all for your active support!

Gilles D. Winterhuder
Cause Admin

Abolish the Death Penalty By Gilles DENIZOT

Abolish the Death Penalty
By Gilles DENIZOT

The death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights. It is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state. This cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment is done in the name of justice.

It violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In 2008, at least 2,390 people were executed in 25 countries around the world and 8,864 people were sentenced to death in 52 countries. Amnesty International reports that executions almost doubled in number from 1,252 in 2007. 95% of all known executions were carried out in only six countries: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Pakistan and Iraq.

In December 2007 and 2008 the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted resolutions 62/149 and 63/168, calling for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. The United States of America voted against.

The United States of America is slowly turning against capital punishment. Yet, 52 human beings have been executed in 2009. It needs to stop, on a federal level, and in all states where capital punishment is still in practice.

The death penalty:

- denies the possibility of rehabilitation and reconciliation.

- promotes simplistic responses to complex human problems, rather than pursuing explanations that could inform positive strategies.

- prolongs the suffering of the murder victim’s family, and extends that suffering to the loved ones of the condemned prisoner.

- diverts resources and energy that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it.

- is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it. It is an affront to human dignity.

- should be abolished in the USA. Now.

Thank you all for voting! Scroll down to the post just below this if you haven't yet and be sure to go to Gilles blog or facebook to say hello and wish him a belated birthday!

Gilles DENIZOT

Be sure to go to his recent post DO UNTO OTHERS which says so much so passionately that we all need to hear frequently...I would not do it justice to pull out any part of it and I want you to see this post set into his admirable and humble yet brilliant website. Gilles is someone I want to meet someday and get him to autograph a piece of music for which he's been singer and/or director! You can also vote on his blogsite - send it out - and or send out and vote on the twitter URL Abe just sent...scroll to the post just below...

DO UNTO OTHERS posted by Gilles here

Gilles Blogsite: here

For more from Gilles and Abe and from Bill on the 4th World Congress...plz scroll below.

Less than 200 votes needed! Plz get out the word...

Abraham J. Bonowitz and GILLES DENIZOT remind us: LESS THAN 200 VOTES NEEDED for "Abolish the Death Penalty" to be in the TOP TEN!

PLZ get out the word: here

Gilles D. Winterhuder says: Guess what... I'm doing a presentation of my Idea for Change during the World Congress! I'm not just going to the swimming pool, I'm diving right in it ;-) Let's all give him a winning report to take to the Congress with him, OK? Scroll below for more on the Congress and Bill Pelke's participation.

Just send around this URL to everyone you can think of who may sign no and a few more - slow (E) mail :) or Facebook Twitter Phone...what else is there?

I believe Gilles just had a birthday....please go to facebook and wish him a grand birthday AFTER GLOW and get out the word to your friends about this voting needed, will you?

Thanx for tuning in...

Scroll to Greg for an update on his condition!

Maybe God does answer prayers :) from Bill -- Go read more from Bill and others on Greg's improving condition - just below the 4th Congress and the reminder to do what you can to STOP execution of Hank (if you haven't plz do that on your way down to Greg.)

4th World Congress Against the Death Penalty

A message by Bill Pelke:

In less than 24 hours I will be headed to Geneva, Switzerland for the 4th World Congress to Abolish the Death Penalty. I was present in Rome Italy when the World Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty was founded on May 13, 2002

The second World Congress was held in Montreal in 2004 and Paris in 2007. It was an honor an pleasure to participate in those two events. The Journey of Hope banner led the march in Montreal at the conclusion of the Congress.

This year in Geneva I will be participating in a workshop called "How to work with public opinion".

I am very excited about the Congress this year. As many as 1700 participants are expected and I will be seeing many people I know involved in the world wide abolition effort.

The follow is an article of the 4th World Congress..

Peace, Bill

Founding of the World Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

4th World Congress Seeks to Abolish Death Penalty
Friday 19 February 2010
by: Mary Susan Littlepage, t r u t h o u t | Report

More than 1,000 people are expected to attend the 4th World Congress Against the Death Penalty February 24-26 in Geneva. The Congress is organized by the French NGO Ensemple in partnership with the Swiss Confederation and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

During the 3rd World Congress Against the Death Penalty, held in Paris in 2007, Micheline Calmy-Rey, federal councillor and head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland, invited the event's organizer to hold this year's Congress in Geneva. Abolition of capital punishment is a foreign policy priority in Switzerland, and Switzerland is co-funding half of the Congress's budget.
Arnaud Gaillard, coordinator of the 4th World Congress, said the conference wants to welcome different countries and aims to build strategies to help them abolish the death penalty.

The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty was created in Rome in 2002. It's composed of 104 bar associations, cities, local groups, unions and the like. It is actively supported by the European Union, and it aims to strengthen the international dimension of the fight against the death penalty.

Gaillard said the death penalty often is a European debate, but that he would like to see the topic discussed and debated among other countries as well.

In addition, Gaillard said he would like to see NGOs (non-governmental organizations associated with the United Nations) and IGOs (international government organizations) collaborate rather than work independently. "We want to gather all the strength together of these organizations to work together and to abolish the death penalty," he said.

It is a challenge to get countries to ratify the second protocol, he said. The second protocol is an international treaty that links to international government, is signed by many countries and calls for a moratorium on the death penalty. Every two years it is voted on, and it will be voted on in December this year. " We want more and more countries to vote for the moratorium," he said. "One of the main strategies is to help the other countries to create the debate in their own countries, own societies to help them create debate for the abolition [of the death penalty]."

Talking about the death penalty debate in the United States, he said, "We know we are on this road [toward abolishment of the death penalty], but we want to explain to the United States that the death penalty isn't something that belongs to justice," Gaillard said. "It belongs to violence, something like barbarism, and we want to explain over the world that we can't be a democracy and go further in the civilization process because the death penalty is something that belongs to the past."

Many key figures have already confirmed their presence at the conference: José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, head of Spanish government; Navanethem Pillay, UN high commissioner for human rights; Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico; Renate Wohlwend, rapporteur of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly on the Death Penalty, and Ibrahim Najjar, Lebanese minister of justice.

The conference will feature two plenary sessions, ten roundtables and nine workshops. A cultural program aimed at the general public will also be organized in parallel at the International Conference Centre in Geneva and within the city,, which is the world capital of human rights and home to a number of international organizations.

The World Congress Against the Death Penalty is a triennial opportunity to bring together abolitionist groups and strengthen the international dimension of the fight against the death penalty. More specifically, the Fourth Congress will pursue the following goals:

• To strengthen ties between civil society, international and intergovernmental institutions and organizations as well as national and local entities in support of the abolitionist movement.

• To involve players of retentionist states, which are territories that retain the death penalty for ordinary crimes, from so-called Southern regions in the defining and leading of abolitionist strategies.

• To increase the political, diplomatic, religious, social and cultural impact on retentionist states.

• To enlarge the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty and to encourage the building of national and regional coalitions.

Roundtables will cover many topics, including:

• Racial, ethnic and social bias in the death penalty implementation: Are political and social commitments to equality effective tools for abolition?

• Protecting vulnerable groups from the death penalty, such as juveniles and those with mental health issues.

• Violence, victims and the death penalty: how to respond to violence and compensate victims without the death penalty.

• Approaching law enforcement issues without the death penalty.

• Tools and strategies for death penalty abolition in the Middle East, North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, from moratorium to abolition in law.

• Access to a competent counsel in capital cases: how lawyers can make the difference between life and death.

• The Caribbean: the continued danger of escalating executions.

In addition, the conference will feature "Words of Victims," an evening during which former Death Row inmates and families of victims of crime and execution witnesses tell their stories. This series of stories will be accompanied by interludes animated by the Franco-British singer Emily Loizeau. Also, "The Omega Suites," a photo exhibit of Lucinda Devlin referring to the process of killing in the United States, will be featured. Film and documentaries screenings on the death penalty issue from several countries will be showcased as well to offer a panel of death penalty cases at different periods, from different cultural, religious and political backgrounds.

According to the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, in 2008, ninety percent of recorded executions took place in five countries:

• Saudi Arabia - at least 102 people, including 39 foreigners.
• China - 1,700 executions according to the Amnesty International record and 6,000 according to the Dhui Hua Foundation.
• The United States - 37 executions, including 18 in Texas.
• Iran - 346 people executed, including eight who were under 18 when they allegedly committed their crimes.
• Pakistan - at least 36 executions.

In 58 countries, the law still provides for capital punishment. Although democracies such as the United States and Japan still execute people, the majority of the death sentences are carried out by authoritarian governments. Geographically speaking, executions mostly take place in Asian and Arabic countries and also in some parts of the Caribbean.

Texas: Please Don't Execute an Innocent Man

STILL COLLECTING SIGNATURES - MORE NEEDED - PLZ HELP: here

Bill Pelke on WFLT-AM Morning News Yesterday

Sent from a friend of The Journey of Hope on Thursday, February 18, 2010 7:12 AM

Good morning,

Yesterday, the day after Martin Grossman’s execution in Florida, Bill Pelke was a guest on a segment of the “ 850 Morning News” with Russ Morley on WFLT-AM, a 50,000 watt conservative radio station which broadcasts to West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami. To hear the interview, go to here, the station’s news home page. Then click on the box that reads “Audio” which will drop down a number of options. Click on the option which reads “WFTL 850 Morning News” and it will redirect you to the program’s audio player. Once there, click on the link which reads “15. 10-02-17 Abolish the Death Penalty Bill Pelke.”

Thank you again Bill for getting up extremely early yesterday morning on Alaska time to be interviewed at 8:12 a.m. Eastern Time in order to represent NCADP and share your particular perspective on capital punishment.

Sincerely,

Margaret

UPDATE: Pray for Greg Wilhoit (part of the Journey of Hope Family)

GREAT UPDATE on Greg (posted Sunday Feb 21st)

Rather than put this as a comment I felt it deserved here on top...this just in from Bill Pelke, right before he leaves for Europe:
Maybe God does answer prayers :)

Reports of Greg Wilhoit's improved condition are being called a miracle. Keep those prayers coming.

Bill Babbitt reports that Greg Wilhoit surely has blue eyes. What a joy it has been for Bill to see Greg open his eyes for a bit on Friday and then even wide open this morning. Bill is very encouraged with the improvement he has seen in the last few days, a relief for him as he prepares to go to the 4th World Congress in Geneva, Switzerland.

Lisa Rea visited with Greg on Thursday talked with Joy, the housemate of Greg who has been helping take care of Greg since his bike accident. She gave this report today to Lisa, "the tube is out, he's awake and trying to talk (unintelligible so far), able to respond to yes/no questions, producing urine (fantastic!). This AM, doctor said he's a miracle. Still a long way to go, but these are positive signs. His mom, dad, sisters are all here now."

Lisa also says it is a miracle.

Miracle or not, Greg still needs our prayers, he is not out of the woods yet. Keep him in our prayers.

I believe in miracles, I believe in God.

Peace,

Bill
===============================================
Our Lovable and extremely gifted brother, Greg Wilhoit, who is a death row exoneree, needs vigilent and daily - if not hourly prayer. He is in intensive care in a coma. Journey member Bill Babbit has been at his side and says Greg is getting excellent care from the hospital staff...more to follow. Perhaps you'd like to send him a message in the Comments section below and we can show Greg how much love is coming his way when he wakes up? And/or leave a message to encourage Bill Babbit and Greg's other friends and family members.

We hope to have more on HANK soon...see post just below...we MUST pull together and not let up and allow Hank go be killed by the State...

Help STOP Execution of Hank Skinner (scheduled for Feb. 24!)

Plz also note below also all the JOURNEY folk who plan to be at the Alternative Spring Break in Texas!


HELP STOP IT!

Please scroll down to take action to help stop the execution of Hank Skinner, scheduled for February 24, 2010 in Texas. Read the article below for more information on Hank's case. Don't let Hank become the next Todd Willingham, an innocent person executed in Texas. Suggested ACTION doesn't take long at all-GO
here

Also, take a moment to vote for the Abolish the Death Penalty as an Idea for Change in America at Change.org. (You will have to register at Change.org to vote.)
here

If the idea becomes one of the top ten, Change.org will host an event in Washington, DC, where each of the 10 ideas will be presented to representatives of the media, the nonprofit community, and to relevant officials in the Obama Administration. After the announcement, Change.org will mobilize the full resources of their staff, their 1 million community members, and their extended network of bloggers to support a series of grassroots campaigns to turn each idea into reality.

Finally, if you want to spend four days learning about the death penalty and training to take action, register for the Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break, March 15-19, 2010 in Austin, Texas. It is designed for high school and college students, but all the workshops and events are open to the public of all ages. We have arranged many interesting speakers, including four innocent, exonerated former death row prisoners, Curtis McCarty, Ron Keine, Shujaa Graham and Perry Cobb, as well as the national director of Sister Helen Prejean's Dead Man Walking School Theatre Project, Bill Pelke of Journey of Hope, Susannah Sheffer of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights and Brian Evans from the Washington D.C. office of Amnesty International.

If anyone is interested, you can register at the website GO HERE

Actions for Hank Skinner:

here (Sign and send this online petition/email to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.)

Write, call, fax or email your own letter to the Board of Pardons and Paroles and Texas Governor Rick Perry. Urge them to stay the execution to allow testing of DNA. In the subject line of your emails or in any letters to the Board of Pardons and Paroles, write "Attention Case of Hank Skinner #999143".

Hank Skinner is scheduled to be executed in Texas on February 24 for three murders he maintains he didn't commit. Several key pieces of biological evidence from the crime scene have not been tested. DNA testing could prove Skinner's innocence or confirm his guilt, but prosecutors are opposing Skinner's appeals and seeking to execute him. There are several pieces of probative biological evidence from the crime scene that haven't been tested. Among this untested evidence are hairs from one victim's hand, a rape kit, fingernail clippings and a windbreaker that could have been worn by an alternate suspect. It is crucial that this testing be conducted before Texas carries out a sentence it can't reverse.

DNA testing can prove the truth. It is not a delay tactic or a diversion -- it has the potential to confirm Skinner's guilt or prove him innocent and you would be making a grave mistake to allow Skinner to executed without first conducting DNA tests.

Office of the Governor
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, Texas 78711-2428
Fax: 512-463-1849
Main number: 512-463-2000

Clemency Section
Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles
8610 Shoal Creek Blvd.
Austin, TX 78757-6814
Fax (512) 467-0945
bpp-pio@tdcj.state.tx.us


CLOCK TICKS

Will Texas Soon Execute Another Innocent Man? Our Reporting Challenges Verdict As Clock Ticks

THE LATEST: Condemned Man's Lawyers Appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court

By David Protess

February 12, 2010

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is under fire for allegedly obstructing an investigation into the wrongful execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was put to death in 2004 -- despite forensic tests proving he did not murder his three young children.

Four years earlier, Gary Graham was carried to Texas’ death chamber defiantly proclaiming his innocence in the face of new evidence that even the murder victim’s widow called “reasonable doubt.”

Investigative stories have revealed that Ruben Cantu in 1989 and Carlos DeLuna in 1993 likely suffered the same unjust fate at the hands of Texas executioners.

Now the clock is ticking on another Texas death row inmate who has steadfastly maintained his innocence – with credible evidence to support his claim. The condemned man is Henry Watkins “Hank” Skinner, and much of that evidence was unearthed by the Medill Innocence Project and reported in the January 28 and 29 editions of the Texas Tribune, "Case Open" and "Case Open: The Investigation". Yet, Skinner faces death by lethal injection on February 24, less than two weeks from now.

Texas continues to lead the nation in executions. But will the state earn the dubious distinction of executing five innocents in two decades? Hank Skinner’s fate lies in the hands of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, Gov. Perry and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here is a synopsis of the case, spotlighting the evidence developed by Medill student-journalists who traveled to Texas’ death row and to the crime scene in search of the truth. For a more detailed account, read my testimony to the Board of Pardons and Paroles, and today's appeal by Skinner's lawyers to the Supreme Court.

I will continue to report about the Skinner case on this site until it reaches finality.

Hank Skinner, January 20, 2010
Caleb Bryant Miller, The Texas Tribune

Hank Skinner, age 47, was convicted of bludgeoning to death his live-in girlfriend, Twila Busby, and fatally stabbing her two adult sons in their Pampa, Texas home on New Year's Eve of 1993. Skinner was convicted of the crimes in 1994 and sentenced to death in 1995. He is scheduled to be executed on February 24.

The state's case against Skinner was entirely circumstantial. He has consistently professed his innocence, there was no physical evidence linking him to the murder weapons and no eyewitness or apparent motive for the crime. Skinner indisputably was in the home at the time of the murders, but claims he had passed out from mixing large quantities of alcohol and codeine. When he awoke, he stumbled to a neighbor’s residence to report the murders, according to Skinner.

But the neighbor, Andrea Reed, testified that Skinner made incriminating statements about the crime and ordered her not to call the police. That was enough for the jury to find him guilty, and, although Skinner had no history of violence that would remotely explain the horrific murders (his worst offense was a conviction for assault), he was sentenced to death.

Our investigation

The Medill Innocence Project first became involved in the case in the fall of 1999 when a reporter at the Associated Press in Houston raised questions about Skinner’s guilt. Eight investigative reporting students made two trips to the Panhandle town in 1999-2000 to interview sources and plow through documents. They returned with grave reservations about whether justice had been done.

For one thing, Andrea Reed, the state’s star witness, recanted her trial testimony in an audio-taped interview. Reed told the student-journalists that she had been intimidated by the authorities into concocting a false story against Skinner. “I did not then and do not now feel like he was physically capable of hurting anybody,” Reed said.

For another, toxicology tests on Skinner's blood and statements by experts revealed he would have been nearly comatose on the night of the crimes, certainly lacking the strength, balance and agility to commit the triple homicide. This finding is consistent with Reed’s observation of Skinner when he entered her home after the crime: “He was falling into the walls and stuff. He was staggering, falling into stuff,” she said in the taped interview.

Other residents of Pampa told the student-journalists in videotaped interviews that the more likely perpetrator was Robert Donnell, Twila's uncle. Donnell had been “hitting on” his niece at a New Year’s Eve party shortly before the slayings. Rebuffing his advances, she left the party frightened, her uncle following behind, according to the witnesses. (A close friend of Twila’s said she confided to being raped by her uncle in the past.)

The day after the crime, another witness claimed to have seen Donnell scrubbing the interior of his pick-up truck, removing the rubber floorboards and replacing the carpeting. Perhaps most telling, a windbreaker just like the one the uncle often wore was found at the scene – directly next to his niece’s body. The jacket was covered with human hairs and sweat.

Yet evidence from the windbreaker has never been scientifically tested. Moreover, prosecutors have steadfastly opposed DNA tests on two blood-stained knives, skin cells found underneath Twila’s fingernails, vaginal swabs and hairs removed from her hand – even though forensic tests on one of the hairs proved it did not come from Skinner. (The physical evidence remains sealed, but the courts have acceded to prosecutors’ demands not to conduct the tests.) In a death row interview with the student-journalists, Skinner said he was innocent and welcomed new tests on the old evidence.

"They have no right to kill me because I'm innocent, innocent, innocent."
Hank Skinner to the Texas Tribune, January 28, 2010.

Another troubling aspect of the case is the background of Skinner's trial lawyer, Harold Lee Comer. Formerly the District Attorney of Gray County, Comer had prosecuted Skinner for two offenses, theft and assault. After resigning from office and pleading guilty in a drug scandal, Comer was appointed at taxpayer's expense to represent Skinner at his capital murder trial -- without the required hearing to determine whether he had a conflict-of-interest.

The trial judge, a personal friend of Comer's, paid him roughly the same amount to represent Skinner as the former DA owed to the IRS. Comer failed to request DNA testing, or present compelling evidence about the alternative suspect. And, at the sentencing hearing, he failed to object to using Skinner's prior convictions -- which he had prosecuted -- to justify the death penalty.

When the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the claim that Skinner had been ineffectively represented by Comer, a Texas court set his execution date. In light of the cases of Cameron Todd Willingham, Gary Graham, Ruben Cantu and Carlos DeLuna, the specter of wrongful executions now hangs over Texas' system of capital punishment.

Will Texas next put to death a man who has steadfastly professed his innocence and whose lawyer was his legal adversary -- without even conducting DNA tests to be sure the right man will be punished for the crime?

Not much time will tell.

ACT NOW PLEASE:

Register Now for the 2010 Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break March 15-19

here

PLZ Vote! A Plea from Gilles!

I was going to post in Comments but decided to put this on top today. Plz be sure to read the posts just below. Thank You...Connie

49 votes more and we're back in 1st position!

here

Plz be patient because posting may take a little while...

Activism, Tolerance, Acceptance, and Passiveness

Gilles Denizot writing about Activism, Tolerance, Acceptance, and Passiveness in his blog. A just wonderful piece of work we wanted to share with you

ACTIVISM

The theme of last year’s World Day Against the Death Penalty was “Teaching Abolition” to all citizens around the world, especially to teenagers aged 14 to 18. On October 10, 2009, we were encouraged to raise awareness and educate younger people, as they represent our future. It seems difficult to alert teenagers to the reality of capital punishment, especially when living in a country where it has been abolished. I decided to focus on the topic “Juvenile Death Penalty“, more particularly in Iran, currently the world’s biggest executioner of juvenile). International human rights treaties forbid the use of capital punishment for all those under 18 at the time of the crime of which they are accused (note that in Iran, a boy who loves another boy “commits a crime”, and is therefore likely to be hanged). However, a small number of countries continue to execute juvenile. Since 1990, nine countries have executed offenders who were juveniles at the time of their crimes: The People’s Republic of China (PRC), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United States and Yemen. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbids capital punishment for juveniles under article 37(a), has been signed by all countries and ratified, except for Somalia and the United States.

Of course, there was not much television coverage in Germany, except for a tiny interview of an Amnesty International local representative. But later that evening, I stumbled upon a documentary about a German teenager girl, who had spent almost a year in a Texan family. Obviously, this documentary would have be watched by at least all of her teenagers friends in Germany, and probably by many others. The USA is a fascinating destination for young Europeans, and we know Texas i.e. through the tv series “Dallas” and because of a certain US President. But who remembers that GWB authorized 152 executions in his 6 years of governorship (that’s an average of 25 per year, or 2 per month. Every month, during 6 years!)? Nothing has really changed in “The Lone Star State”, as a matter of fact, its new Governor already has presided over 210 executions, and counting. So basically: that young German girl, who flew to Texas and lived there for nearly a year, who had to go to church on Sunday morning with the family, who enjoyed BBQ parties by the pool and shopping sprees in local malls… did she know that Texas executed several human beings while she visited? Did her family and friends, back in Europe, know about it? There was absolutely no mention of it in the documentary. Everything was great in Texas, and she was seen weeping as she boarded her return plane. Do you think it could have been a good opportunity to “Teach Abolition” to this girl, to her friends, and to all teenagers who watched television that day? Yes. Maybe next time? It will be on October 10, 2010.

TOLERANCE

Ever heard of the concept “Export democracy to other parts of the world”? Well, at least three Americans did and The New York Times wrote a story about them. Like the German teenager, these three American evangelical Christians also took a plane. They flew to Uganda in March 2009 and gave a series of talks on The dangers of homosexuality, on how to convert gays into heterosexuals, and explained why HIV-positive homosexuals often contaminate teenagers. Then they left.

A month later, on April 20, 2009, the first draft of an Anti-Homosexuality Bill was created. The proposed legislation defines a new crime of “aggravated homosexuality” for those who engage in sex with someone under the age of 18, who are HIV-positive, who is a “repeat offender” (so broadly defined as to include anyone who has had a relationship with more than one person, or who had sex with the same person more than once), or who had sex with a disabled person (consensual or not). The penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”: death by hanging.

These “experts on homosexuality” are: Scott Lively, a Holocaust revisionist missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including The Pink Swastika; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay black man who leads “healing seminars” (think about the impact of a “former” gay black man before a crowd of Ugandans); and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is “mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality”. They were helped by many others, notably by members of the American secretive group The Family (sometimes known as The Fellowship). There are some very interesting names in this family, well-known amongst US politicians. Do you remember South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford? Yes, the man who is against same-sex marriage and civil unions, and who voted against allowing gay couples adopt children, but who – when spotted – admitted having an extramarital affair. You know, the man who not only is in favour of a harsher death penalty, but who, as Governor, has sole authority to grant clemency. Well, he nonetheless authorized 14 executions since 2003.

Seems to me like these “Christians” really read their Bible. And they especially understood the Golden Rule, the most essential basis for the modern concept of human rights: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

ACCEPTANCE

I increasingly admire abolitionists, especially those who live in countries without capital punishment. What have they to gain from entering this battle? Why does it matter to them that, somewhere far away, in Texas or in China, human beings are locked up and treated worse than animals before being executed? Why do they spend some much time, so much energy, so much money, to save these men and women? Why do they tirelessly write to US governors before an execution, pleading for mercy? Why do they vote in polls and sign petitions against capital punishment in Ohio or in Saudi Arabia? I guess each and every one of us has specific and personal reasons. Hopefully it has to do with the conviction of being connected to other human beings, people we may never meet, but who also live on the same planet and who breathe the same air. Hopefully it has to do with empathy, understanding and sharing the feelings of another or even sometimes with sympathy, to suffer with another. I have never met Connie Wright in real life, but I vividly, painfully, recall that evening of October 30, 2008. Her husband, Gregory Wright was scheduled to be executed by the State of Texas. I hoped and prayed for a stay, I stayed up late and imagined the horror that was taking place thousands of kilometers away. I have never met Terri Been, whose brother Jeff Wood is sentenced to death under the Texas Law of Parties. Jeff was not the shooter in the crime and could not anticipate that a murder would occur (the actual shooter has already been executed by the State of Texas). How can one accept the injustice and cruelty of this law? How can one not be in sympathy with Terri and her children as well as with the victims of crimes? They all are victims, theyall suffer. Can you imagine that, because of this ordeal, the organization KADP was founded by a group of children from Jeff’s family (yes, children!), who know that the death penalty is wrong? Instead of playing and living the life that one would wish for any child, they visit Texas death row and fight a monstrous creature that may well take their family member away. I have never met Carolina Soza-Gonzalez but I rejoiced when her husband Gabriel Gonzalez saw his death penalty sentence commuted to life. I have never met Tony Medina, but I am enraged when I read the transcripts of his trials, when I see how he obviously was wrongfully convicted and how, since 1996, he fights to prove his innocence and to come out – alive – from Texas death row!

These are just a few examples. There are over 3,500 men and women sitting on death row in the USA and 28,000 worldwide. There are thousands of abolitionists around the globe. I don’t think we have something more that other human beings. Maybe we let empathy speak louder in ourselves. It doesn’t take much to get in the fight: once you have signed a petition, you have shown your human side. The “mornings after” an execution are difficult days for us all. Yet, it gives us more strength, more determination. Then we go back to the battlefield. We all have a role to play, although we all fight with different weapons. But weall are crucially important. Do not under-estimate your power if you “only” sign a petition or donate $5. You play a necessary part in the fight against the death penalty. It took over 17,000 people contacting Governor Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to make a difference for Kenneth Foster, whose death sentence under the Law of Parties was commuted in 2007. True, sometimes, even with 17,134 signatures on a petition (the very first one I signed) and more than 500 personal letters from around the globe, it still does not prevent Texas from executing human beings like Reginald Perkins, who had an IQ of 68 (On June 20, 2002,the US Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling ending the execution of those with mental retardation. In Atkins v. Virginia, the Court held that it is a violation of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel unusual punishment to execute death row inmates with mental retardation. Generally, mental retardation encompasses everyone with a score of 70 or below. Additionally, it includes some individuals with scores in the low 70s – and even mid-70s -, depending on the nature of the testing information.). But you never know how important your vote or your signature may be. Therefore, I urge you to please positively respond to invitations from abolitionists.

The fight happens everywhere and you are needed everywhere, not only in Texas and in all American states where capital punishment is in use, but also for example in Indonesia, where Serge Atlaoui, a Frenchman, is fighting for his life. There, also, you are needed! And “every little helps”. If we were not with them, US abolitionists would be fighting alone. Furthermore, it is vital for us all to have access to information and education about capital punishment. Most of the time, when you clearly explain why capital punishment should be abolished, you open the eyes and the heart of potentially new supporters. Teaching abolition helps recruit new abolitionists, who sometimes have nothing to do with countries where executions take place. They are the new soldiers, they need to be trained and respected too.

I am a fairly young abolitionist myself (although I have always been against the death penalty, as far back as I can remember). Therefore, from February 24 to 26, 2010, I shall be volunteering for Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort, the organizers of the 4th World Congress Against the Death Penalty. I am going to Geneva to learn more, to understand how to fight better. Don’t you dare telling me that I should spend this money in Texas instead because this is where the fight is happening. Let me go my way too. You do not know how the activist in me will grow from this experience and how much more powerful I will be afterwards. I am proud that my native city will welcome over a thousand people for three days of international convention, and I especially look forward to hearing:

• Senator Robert Badinter, former Minister of Justice who abolished the death penalty in France (my second citizenship) on September 31, 1981.


• Joaquín José Martínez, a Spanish national wrongfully sentenced to death in Florida, who remained on death row for 4 years before being cleared and released. A private meeting with Joaquín Martínez was organized for me in Paris, thanks to Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner, Chairperson of the international committee for the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and representative of the TCADP at the steering committee of the World Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner, wife of Hank Skinner, currently on Texas death row and scheduled to be executed on February 24, 2010 (on the very day of the congress’ opening) works tirelessly against this execution, but also against the Uganda death penalty bill, and executions of Iranian juveniles or homosexuals. Unfortunately, Mr. Martínez got ill and I will have to wait until I meet him in Geneva.


• Bill Pelke, President and Cofounder of Journey of Hope… from Violence to Healing, USA. On April 29, 2009, I attended a conference in Hamburg and was fortunate enough to meet Bill Pelke (A retired steelworker, Bill has dedicated his life to working for abolition of the death penalty. He shares his story of forgiveness and healing, and how he came to realize that he did not need to see someone else die in order to heal from his grandmother’s death. On May 14, 1985, Ruth Pelke, a Bible teacher, was murdered by four teenage girls. Paula Cooper who was deemed to be the ringleader was sentenced to die in the electric chair by the state of Indiana. She was fifteen-years-old at the time of the murder. Bill Pelke, after supporting her death sentence engaged on an international campaign to save Cooper’s life, who is still incarcerated but no longer in death row.). Also present that evening were Terri Steinberg (Mother of Justin Wolfe, currently on death row in Virginia since 2001, at the age of 20, for a murder he neither committed nor was present at!) and Ray Krone (A death row survivor, Ray Krone spent more than a decade in prison, some of it on Arizona death row, before DNA testing cleared his name. He is the 100th former death row inmate freed because of innocence since the reinstatement of capital punishment in the United States in 1976. He was the twelfth death row inmate whose innocence has been proven through postconviction DNA testing. Prior to his arrest, Krone had no previous criminal record, had been honorably discharged from the military, and had worked in the postal service for seven years.) This event was my first encounter with the reality of the death penalty in the USA. It was incredibly instrumental in helping me to understand capital punishment and its mechanisms, its flaws, and how crucial it is to fight it until it has been abolished.


• Keiko Chiba (attendance tbc), Japan Minister of Justice and abolitionist, who may well play a decisive role in getting rid of the death penalty in her country.


• Shirin Ebadi, Iranian Lawyer, 2003 Peace Nobel Prize.


• Governor Bill Richardson (attendance tbc) of New Mexico (USA), who was brave enough to abolish the death penalty in his state in 2009.


• Sister Helen Prejean, most famous for her book Dead Man Walking (later turned into a movie with Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn).

You see, acceptance is not only about understanding that will all have different abilities and needs, but also to recognize the importance of learning and progressing towards being fully admitted into a group.

PASSIVENESS

I guess belonging to a group has its importance from time to time in life. Sharing an identity and common beliefs makes us feel recognized. Acting together strengthens us and increases our impact. In the case of activism, it is of the utmost importance to feel the support of the group, of like-minded individuals. Sometimes, the activist feels utterly lonely. You feel as though you are screaming in the desert of passiveness and none hears, none replies, none reacts. Slowly your friends start to think that you really are doing a bit too much fuss about these criminals on death row, that all you can think or speak of is related to human rights. And wouldn’t it be better to simply just ignore these topics and focus on lovely things? Sorry. Once you have begun seeing injustice around you, once you have begun feeling that something should be done, it is hard – if not impossible – to ignore the flaws of the world we live in.

Not only do I see the beauties and the flaws of the world around me, but I also see the connections between issues such as poverty, education, health, human rights, to name but a few. You are slowly drawn to understand other issues than your own, and this, in turn, makes your experience of your own reality much sharper. Let me share an example: I am a trained opera singer. I used to sing as a soloist a lot, worldwide, before turning to other artistic activities. Then one day, I received a first letter from Tony Medina. He was impressed that people were listening to my voice, that they actually would pay to hear me. He believed that I had an incredible gift and power. He was impressed because his voice was not being heard, because he felt he had no voice. I suddenly felt so embarrassed not to be using my voice to its full capacities, it made me want to go back to more singing. I have since then begun planning concerts against the death penalty, just like I have been singing against HIV&AIDS for the past 17 years.

The Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill represents everything I loathe: it attacks gays, it stigmatizes people living with HIV/AIDS, and it promotes capital punishment. Obviously I invited many friends to find 1 minute of their time to sign an online petition. If you are homosexual or know anyone around you who is, it would make sense to click on the link and sign up. Knowing that the bill would authorize HIV+ human beings to be hanged, you would click on the link and protest, even if you are not HIV+, and think you do not know anyone living with HIV/AIDS. If you are against the death penalty in general, you would click on the link and add your name to the list. So I invited everyone I know to join, including the +524,000 fans of my page “The Red Ribbon Army“, and the grand total so far is +7,000 signatures. Yes, there are a bit more than 7,000 people in the world who took a stand to say NO to Uganda. In comparison, there was an estimated crowd of 1.2 million on June 27-29, 2009 at the San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade & Celebration, the largest in the USA. How can you celebrate being gay and ignore those about to be hanged in Uganda or in Iran? Can’t you scream your pride AND your outrage?

I fought against Prop. 8 and I still believe marriage equality is a right. Yet, on the very same day that saw Obama elected, with the large support of the LGBT community, the rights of many who voted for hope were taken away. This is when you feel ignored and despised. You thought black people in the USA would support you because you supported the candidacy of the potentially first black US President? Well no. You woke up and that coffee was awfully bitter. Another example: in total, the death penalty system cost California taxpayers $137 million each year, whereas permanent imprisonment for all those currently on death row would cost just $11 million. Yet, Gov. Schwarzenegger wants to spend $400 million to construct a new facility to house death row inmates. When this was announced (end of July 2009), I also noticed that there was going to be a minimum of $52 million budget cut in services from HIV/AIDS to child health care to domestic violence victim. If everyone currently sentenced to execution were sentenced to permanent imprisonment instead, California taxpayers would save $1 billion in five years. Do you see the link now? California wastes money that could – and should – be used to recruit and pay more teachers, nurses, firefighters. And the online petition to save this billon $ got 7,648 signatures only. But we know that capital punishment is a symptom of a culture of violence. Money for death, not for life!

We are all connected you see. We are all connected even if you don’t see that we are. I wish my LGBT friends from California would vote to abolish the death penalty in the USA. I wish my abolitionists friends would say NO to Uganda’s anti human rights bill. I wish my friends who fight against HIV& AIDS in London would attend the silent protest in front of the American Embassy in London on April 30, 2010, organized by my friends Linda and Tim, of Voices for death row inmates. We are all connected as members of the large group called Humanity.

When I feel alone in my activism, I go back to that “Journey of Hope” conference in Hamburg and remember what Bill Pelke told us. In a very emotional moment, he said:

When I hear the stories of Terri (Steinberg) with a son on death row, of Ray Krone, innocent man on death row, people will change their minds and get rid of the death penalty. So when you sign your name to petitions, that is something that is very important, it is something you can do, and signing your name is something that is very important. Each one of you (…) can make a difference. I know that because you saved Paula Cooper’s life. Someday, the death penalty (…) will be abolished. The answer is love and compassion, for all humanity. Thank you very much.

World Congress - World Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Feb 24-26 Geneva

The World Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty will be hosting the 4th World Congress in Geneva, Switzerland Feb 24-26. The Journey of Hope...from Violence to Healing is founding member of the WCADP.

The following link is a great report by Gilles Denizot about that conf. that I think you will find interesting reading. Gilles has been a strong Journey supporter since he joined us for an evening in Hamburg, Germany last year in the midst of a three week tour the Journey did in Germany as guests of the German Coalition to Abolish the death penalty.

Thanks for reading this.

here

Peace,

Bill Pelke, President
Journey of Hope...from Violence to Healing
PO Box 210390
Anchorage, AK 99521-0390
Toll Free 877-9-24GIVE (4483)
Bill@JourneyofHope. org
www.JourneyofHope. org
Cell 305-775-5823

"The answer is love and compassion for all of humanity"

TRAVELER VIEWS: The death penalty needs to pass away

From Arkansas City dot Net

The Arkansas City Traveler

Published:
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 1:20 PM CST

The death penalty should be abolished.

The evidence against it is abundant.

It is not applied fairly. It is not a deterrent. It is expensive.

It risks putting an innocent person to death.

Most of all, it rips the cords of morality upon which our justice system is based.

The United States do not follow eye-for-an-eye justice. We are not Saudi Arabia.

Our system is meant to squeeze out emotion and human impulses, so that we might apply the laws of the state fairly and objectively.

Yes, even for the most savage among us.

Our constitution outlaws "cruel and unusual" punishment.

What is the difference between life in prison and death, as far as society need be concerned?

Let's get rid of the death penalty in Kansas — as a Senate committee recently voted to do — and let the worst killers feel our contempt from a permanent prison cell.

VOTE in Kansas Morning Sun Now

here

The Founder of Death Pen Model has Withdrawn: Hear Hear!

Yes, I know they quit some weeks ago but we MUST keep letting folk know who are trying to keep something alive which has died.

FEBRUARY 4, 2010

USA:

Could Alabama please listen?

The death penalty -- it's unworkable----The American Law Institute, instrumental in structuring the model statutes on which most death sentences are based, has withdrawn its support of such laws.

Nearly 50 years ago, as concern grew in the country about the fairness of death penalty laws, the American Law Institute published a "model statute" aimed at helping state lawmakers draft laws to ensure that death sentences were meted out fairly and consistently.

Last fall, the institute withdrew its support for the model death penalty law. The decision was a striking repudiation from the very organization that provided the blueprint for death penalty laws in this country.

The institute, with a membership of more than 4,000 lawyers, judges and law professors of the highest qualifications, is the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify and improve the law.

In the decade after the institute published its law, which was part of a comprehensive model penal code, the statute became the prototype for death penalty laws across the United States. Some parts of the model -- such as the categorical exclusion of the death penalty for crimes other than murder and for people of limited mental abilities -- withstood the test of time. But the core of the statute, which created a list of factors to guide judges and jurors deciding when to sentence someone to death, has proved unworkable and fostered confusion and injustice.

Now, after searching analysis by our country's top legal minds, the institute has concluded that the system it created does not work and cannot be fixed. It concluded that we cannot devise a death penalty system that will ensure fairness in process or outcome, or even that innocent people will not be executed.

I am speaking for myself, not as a representative of the institute, but I can say with certainty that the institute did not reach these conclusions lightly. It commissioned a special committee and a scholarly study, heard various viewpoints and debated the issues extensively. A strong consensus emerged that capital punishment in this country is riddled with pervasive problems.

The death penalty cannot balance the need for consistency in sentencing with the need for individualized determinations. Its administration is unequal across racial groups. There is a grave lack of resources for defense lawyers. The law is distorted by the politics of judicial elections, and it consumes a disproportionate share of public resources.

California's death penalty exemplifies these problems. Portions of California's law were copied from the institute's model statute. The system now is on the verge of collapse. There are about 700 people on death row in California, and it can take 25 years for mandatory appeals to be completed. Since 1978, California has executed 13 prisoners, while 72 have died of old age or other causes.

Resources are woefully inadequate. More than half of the people on death row don't have access to a constitutionally-required lawyer. A statewide commission found that there remains a serious risk that the state will execute an innocent person. And then there is the cost. Housing a prisoner on death row costs taxpayers $90,000 a year more than if that prisoner were held in another type of high-security prison. The total additional cost for housing all of California's death row inmates is more than $60 million a year.

These problems are entrenched in the death penalty system, both in California and nationwide. The cumulative result: Executions remain as random as lightning strikes, or more so, and that is the very problem the institute's model statute intended to fix. In addition, across the country, at least 139 individuals have been released from death row after establishing their innocence.

The institute's action comes at a time of widespread reevaluation of capital punishment. 15 states have abandoned capital punishment, including 3 in the last 3 years. In 2009, the country saw the lowest number of death sentences since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

We now have decades of experience, which the institute lacked when it proposed its model statute almost 50 years ago. Life without the possibility of parole, now an important alternative in nearly every state, was then virtually untried. To the extent that society needs to punish murderers severely, it can do so far more effectively using tough yet fair prison sentences rather than through an ineffective and extravagant death penalty.

The American Law Institute could have chosen to do nothing. But having laid the intellectual and legal groundwork for the modern death penalty, it concluded that it had a responsibility to act now that the system's fatal flaws have fully emerged.

The withdrawal of the model death penalty statute recognizes that it is impossible to administer the death penalty consistently and fairly, and it therefore should not remain a punishment option in this country. The institute could no longer play a role in legitimizing a failed system. How much longer can any of us?

(source: Michael Traynor is president emeritus of the American Law Institute and lives in Berkeley; Los Angeles Times)

Innocent, convicted

By ADRIAN JAWORT - source The Outpost

George White, the guest speaker sponsored by the Montana Abolition Coalition to End the Death Penalty at Rocky Mountain College’s Fortin Auditorium, greeted the crowd this week as if he were addressing a jury: “Ladies and gentleman of the jury, I am not a lawyer. I am just a man … .”

Charlene and George White, or “Char” as he called her, had two children and were living their piece of the American dream in a town called Enterprise, Ala., in 1985. One night an unexpected phone call interrupted his planned dinner and movie date night, and White begrudgingly agreed to meet a customer at his store to get him a breaker part for a supposed emergency. His wife suggested she go with him to convince the customer they were in a hurry so they could make the movie.

After waiting some five minutes at the store, there was a knock on the door. “We were expecting a grateful customer; instead we were confronted by a man with a gun,” White said.


He and his wife cooperated with the ski mask-wearing gunman, giving him the money in the safe and his wallet. The gunman motioned for them to go to the cash registers up front.

“We were all moving, and Char stumbled,” White said. “And the first shot was fired. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.”

Bleeding from three shots to his arm, leg and stomach, White struggled to his feet before seeing his wife face down in a large pool of blood. When he tried to raise her head, he witnessed a sight that is forever sealed into his memory as her life slipped away.

“I looked into the face, into the aftermath of the insanity and horror of murder: I looked into the shattered remains of my wife’s face, and I screamed,” White said, pausing for a moment to collect his thoughts. He continued, “I don’t know if I screamed out loud or not, and I can’t remember if I said goodbye.”

This was only the beginning of a nightmare for George White and his son and daughter, Tom and Christie, who were 12 and 5. Sixteen months later White was arrested, charged and held without bond for the murder of his wife. With his assets frozen - which wasn’t legal - he was only able to conjure up one dollar to pay his hired lawyer, Paul Young.

Fourteen months later he went to trial. Mr. White said, “I was brought up to believe that once we got to trial, truth and justice - whatever that is - would prevail. I knew it couldn’t be made right, but I thought it would be brought back into some kind of balance. I was wrong.”

After a two-week trial, he was convicted and given a life sentence. White still considered himself “lucky,” he said with a scoff, because the prosecution had been pushing for a death sentence. One juror later confided to White that they gave him life instead of the death sentence because he was white.

“If my skin had been a little darker, I’d be on death row or be a dead man today and that’s a fact, and that ain’t right,” White said. “Please understand that I’m grateful, but I benefited from reverse discrimination.”

He spent the next two years and 103 days in an Alabama prison. “And by the way folks, it wasn’t a country club,” he said.

White’s first appeal was granted after it was decided he had an unfair trial because he was convicted solely on circumstantial evidence, and the judge exercised no control over the court proceedings. He was released after his court case was ruled as “a mockery and a sham, a circus.”

After three years and 16 sessions of continuances, a long list of evidence that wasn’t presented in the first trial was brought to light, including a statement from a store owner across the street who had given police the same description of a man in a mask that White had.

On April 8, 1992, White and his lawyer presented a box of evidence that contained 108 pieces of evidence that proved his innocence beyond a reasonable doubt. A judge quickly said the murder charges were “forevermore dismissed with prejudice.”

It was the end of White’s hell. “Where was George White during all of this in my heart and in my head?” he asked.

• • •

White had always considered himself an intelligent man, but he’d never had any discussion that he could recall about the death penalty. Now he opposes it for every circumstance and for every reason.

“However, folks, from the night Char and I were shot, and for a long time afterwards, I absolutely supported it,” White said. “I didn’t know what hatred was before that night. Not every murder victim’s family members go to hatred, but I did. I hated that man.”

Along with the murderer and a long list of people that had convicted him, he also hated God. He said, “That night I cursed my God. I wasn’t screaming though from my head, I was screaming from a broken heart. Do I understand the feelings of anger, rage, desire for retribution and revenge? Absolutely.”

He doesn’t disown his initial feelings of hatred. He said that those are normal and valid human responses people have gets when they are grieving, and people are entitled to their feelings, whatever they are.

But White said that it wasn’t the hatred that kept him going for seven years, but love. Hating was easy to do, but the love of his children kept him going.

“See, throughout it all, no matter how bad it got for me, I couldn’t comprehend how bad it was for my babies - for my children, Tom and Christie,” White said. “They’d lost their mother, and they had the state of Alabama say, ‘Your daddy did it!’ and their response was - and this in no way to minimize their pain, their anger, their outrage - their response was to keep on loving me.”

White said he came to understand that God still loved him all through those bitter years as well, and that love manifested through those loyal people, who included his lawyer as well as his children. He still held onto his anger, however, and likened the anger to a clenched fist, the fist eventually cramping the arm into that position until all the feeling was lost in it.

“I was permitting that man and others to rob me of whatever quality of life that I might have remaining,” White said. “The anger controls you. It harms you. And you forever remember your loved one as ‘a murder victim.’”

After White was eventually was able to “release his fist,” he tried to validate his support and reasoning for the death penalty in every way he could.

First, he did it from a faith perspective, but if he professed to be a Christian, Jesus had said in the New Testament, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies, and pray for those that persecute you … .”

White had a degree in economics, and when he added up the costs for the death penalty, it was far too expensive. Getting a death sentence is like a whole new trial in itself. He said, “As a good fiscal conservative, there’s no way I can support the death penalty.”

The death penalty is not a deterrent, either. After having talked to numerous people convicted of murder, White said most people simply assumed they wouldn’t get caught, or they weren’t in their right mind in the first place. In fact, there was a highly publicized execution 10 days in nearby Georgia before White’s wife was murdered. So it certainly didn’t deter that killer.

Another issue he said that hit close to home was “what if an innocent man was convicted?” If he had gotten the death penalty, he wouldn’t be telling his story today. He said, “Now folks, I don’t know a whole lot of things absolutely, but I do know that an innocent man can be convicted of something he didn’t do in this country. It happened to me.”

There was no reason he could fathom to support the death penalty, except for vengeance. “I believe in accountability, I believe in responsibility, but that’s not the question,” White said. “The question is: what do we do with that individual? And as a society, how do we respond?”

White talked about his children briefly, the ones that had loved him unconditionally when others had abandoned the “convicted murderer.” His son Tom went to college on a basketball scholarship. Tom and his wife gave him George, his first granddaughter, 27 months ago.

His daughter went to college on a volleyball scholarship, and got a degree in criminology. “Wonder where that came from?” White asked with a grin. She married in November, and he learned three weeks ago that she was expecting a child.

White still has angry days, and says that only makes him a normal human being. For years, White said he couldn’t remember his wife except through the last image of her death.

“And no one should ever have to live like that,” White said. “But today, by the grace of God, I can look into the faces of my children, Tom and Christie – and into my grandbaby now – and I can see it reflected there, the legacy of Charlene White: life, and love. And most days, I can smile.”

The death penalty -- it's unworkable

The American Law Institute, instrumental in structuring the model statutes on which most death sentences are based, has withdrawn its support of such laws.

By Michael Traynor
Michael Traynor is president emeritus of the American Law Institute.

Nearly 50 years ago, as concern grew in the country about the fairness of death penalty laws, the American Law Institute published a "model statute" aimed at helping state lawmakers draft laws to ensure that death sentences were meted out fairly and consistently.

Last fall, the institute withdrew its support for the model death penalty law. The decision was a striking repudiation from the very organization that provided the blueprint for death penalty laws in this country.

The institute, with a membership of more than 4,000 lawyers, judges and law professors of the highest qualifications, is the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify and improve the law.

In the decade after the institute published its law, which was part of a comprehensive model penal code, the statute became the prototype for death penalty laws across the United States. Some parts of the model -- such as the categorical exclusion of the death penalty for crimes other than murder and for people of limited mental abilities -- withstood the test of time. But the core of the statute, which created a list of factors to guide judges and jurors deciding when to sentence someone to death, has proved unworkable and fostered confusion and injustice.

Now, after searching analysis by our country's top legal minds, the institute has concluded that the system it created does not work and cannot be fixed. It concluded that we cannot devise a death penalty system that will ensure fairness in process or outcome, or even that innocent people will not be executed.

I am speaking for myself, not as a representative of the institute, but I can say with certainty that the institute did not reach these conclusions lightly. It commissioned a special committee and a scholarly study, heard various viewpoints and debated the issues extensively. A strong consensus emerged that capital punishment in this country is riddled with pervasive problems.

The death penalty cannot balance the need for consistency in sentencing with the need for individualized determinations. Its administration is unequal across racial groups. There is a grave lack of resources for defense lawyers. The law is distorted by the politics of judicial elections, and it consumes a disproportionate share of public resources.

California's death penalty exemplifies these problems. Portions of California's law were copied from the institute's model statute. The system now is on the verge of collapse. There are about 700 people on death row in California, and it can take 25 years for mandatory appeals to be completed. Since 1978, California has executed 13 prisoners, while 72 have died of old age or other causes.

Resources are woefully inadequate. More than half of the people on death row don't have access to a constitutionally-required lawyer. A statewide commission found that there remains a serious risk that the state will execute an innocent person. And then there is the cost. Housing a prisoner on death row costs taxpayers $90,000 a year more than if that prisoner were held in another type of high-security prison. The total additional cost for housing all of California's death row inmates is more than $60 million a year.

These problems are entrenched in the death penalty system, both in California and nationwide. The cumulative result: Executions remain as random as lightning strikes, or more so, and that is the very problem the institute's model statute intended to fix. In addition, across the country, at least 139 individuals have been released from death row after establishing their innocence.

The institute's action comes at a time of widespread reevaluation of capital punishment. Fifteen states have abandoned capital punishment, including three in the last three years. In 2009, the country saw the lowest number of death sentences since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

We now have decades of experience, which the institute lacked when it proposed its model statute almost 50 years ago. Life without the possibility of parole, now an important alternative in nearly every state, was then virtually untried. To the extent that society needs to punish murderers severely, it can do so far more effectively using tough yet fair prison sentences rather than through an ineffective and extravagant death penalty.

The American Law Institute could have chosen to do nothing. But having laid the intellectual and legal groundwork for the modern death penalty, it concluded that it had a responsibility to act now that the system's fatal flaws have fully emerged.

The withdrawal of the model death penalty statute recognizes that it is impossible to administer the death penalty consistently and fairly, and it therefore should not remain a punishment option in this country. The institute could no longer play a role in legitimizing a failed system. How much longer can any of us?

Taken from the LA Times