The Abolitionist New  
Vol. 1, No. 9
September 2013
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Abolish the death penalty now!

by Fr. John Dear, S.J.

 

            The death penalty--our national barbarity--strikes me most sharply whenever I travel to Europe. There the people I meet loquaciously express dismay at American notions of justice. Especially in Italy. Catholic groups in Italy regularly hold conferences and prayer vigils against our capital punishment. Every time someone is executed, the lights of the Coliseum in Rome are illuminated all night. Here is a symbolic gesture to set us blushing, a censure lighting the dark: namely, American jurisprudence bears resemblance to the savage Roman Caesars'.

  

            With their dour appraisal, I readily subscribe. Capital punishment can claim nothing to commend it. It will not bring healing or justice or restitution. It offers no hope for a nonviolent society. It reinforces the heart-rending cycle of violence; it lays the burden of yet another murder. Execution gives death as social purpose ever greater sway. When a nation decides who lives, who dies, it becomes small potatoes indeed for it to manipulate who enjoys full civil rights, who doesn't, who partakes of the fat of the suburbs, who subsists in the crumbling cities. And of course who goes off to war to fatten the American way of life, and who remains home to pluck the fat fruit and pursue affluent careers.

 

            More, capital punishment is freighted with inconsistencies. Behind it lies an illogical maxim: we kill those who kill to show that killing is wrong. If we really believed that killing was wrong, the state would set an example; official killing would be banished.

 

            Capital punishment is freighted too with the burden of racism. Nationally, 50 percent of murder victims are white. But in cases in which the murderer was found and executed, about 80 percent of the murder victims were white. There emerges a chilling picture. The whiter one's victim, the more likely the court will consign the murderer to death row.

 

            The need for revenge and closure, some insist, makes execution necessary. Victims' families will rest easier, they say, when the murderer breathes his last. But such a notion is not widely true. Many families of victims see no use in putting the assailant to death, and many oppose executions publicly.

 

            The group Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation tours the nation regularly, points out inconsistencies and speaks out against capital punishment. They declare that killing those who killed their loved ones will not end the violence. It will, they say, mitigate violence not a bit.

 

            Jesus opposed all killings. He taught forgiveness, justice and reconciliation. When religious leaders condemned a woman in the court of the Temple (a condemnation according to the Law, no less), a frenzied mob formed, reaching for stones, ravenous for blood. Jesus intervened, the air charged with peril, and dared say to them: "Let the one without sin be the first to throw a stone at her."
 

            The spell broken, they drifted away. We're inclined to say admiringly, Jesus saved her life. But more, with a sentence, he destroyed capital punishment's legitimacy. He struck the stone--the pyre, the noose, the chair, the firing squad, the death chamber -- from authority's hands.

 

            But authorities, those who deploy death in service to their lofty status, do not abandon their trump card so easily. Jesus sided with the condemned, and in the end was forced to join them. He himself was led off to the via dolorosa of capital punishment. And as for the law, there was nothing irregular in the legality of the proceedings. Not many troubled consciences. An open and shut case.
 

            As Jesus' followers, we should be able to take the unvarnished look. We should be able to regard matters without ambiguity and to declare some patent truisms: God sides with all victims; God does not want us to execute one another; God calls us to be people of nonviolence; God invites us to live and let live.

 

            We, like Jesus, should feel free to side with the condemned, forgive those who hurt us, who injure or kill those we love, and in this way put an end to wheel of violence that keeps going around. And as Christians we should feel free to utter: the death penalty is immoral, evil and sinful.

 

(Editor's Note: Fr. John Dear is a worldwide advocate for peace and non-violence. Nominated by Bishop Tutu for the Nobel Peace Prize, Fr. Dear is a lecturer, columnist, peace activist, and author. He has written 28 books, including his newest work, The Non-Violent Life, slated to be published this month.)

 

 AFL-CIO Logo 2 AFL-CIO Calls For U.S. Prison Reform

  

            Over the past three decades, a philosophy has developed in this country that private industry can deliver services more efficiently and with less cost than government. One glaring example of this idea is the privatization of prisons.
  
            A huge industry has developed feeds on a justice system that dispenses lengthy sentences even for non-violent crimes. In fact, these companies lobby for stricter sentences because they need their facilities at full capacity to turn a profit. Statistics show that these laws unevenly affect minorities.
  
            The AFL-CIO addressed this issue, along with a wide-range of other penal reforms, at its September 8-11 convention.  The union "criticized the high costs to our communities of locking up too many workers, disproportionately African American, instead of having them at work supporting their families or in school learning."  

 

            The union stated that privatized prisons "in the name of bigger corporate profits, mistreats workers, creates inhumane conditions for prisoners and incentives the incarceration of more and more American citizens in order to make the wealthiest Americans more profits."

 

            Among the numerous recommendations to improve the prison system were:

  • Support policies that end the privatization of correctional facilities and services.
  • Support criminal sentencing policies that are fair, commensurate with the crime and consistent with public safety requirements.
  • Oppose inappropriately long mandatory sentences for nonviolent crimes.
  • Support strategies that assist in reintegrating people into society who have served their time.

 

            To read the full text of the resolution, go to Resolution 17: Prisons and Profits-The Big Business Behind Mass Incarceration.

ABA Studies Shed Light On Death Penalty Inequities

 

            The American Bar Association initiated a study in 2003 on  the administration of capital punishment in the United States. Based upon uniform benchmarks, the studies give the state being evaluated reasons why it needs to reevaluate its death penalty system and the range of topics that should be part of the assessment.

American Justice Scales

           

            The state evaluations are conducted by a team of lawyers who visit the state and and discuss the death penalty with a variety of individuals who have been involved with its application: legislators, defense lawyers, prosecutors, and judges. The evaluators determine if the state is in compliance with 90 standards for fairness and admin-istration of the death penalty set by the ABA.

 

           The ABA's study is ongoing, but to date, eleven states have been evaluated: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia

 

            For more information on this study, including the criteria used in the evaluation, go to Death Penalty Assessments on the ABA website.

Time Continues To Take Its Deadly Toll
 
            In the March edition of The Abolitionist, the names of the men who had been executed in 2013, were enumerated. A challenge was made to work more 
diligently to eliminate the death penalty lest more people be kill by the state.
Broken Clocks
 
            We still have a long way to go to prevent the violent killing of people by the thirty-eight  states that still have the death penalty. Despite repeated studies that show that the death penalty does not deter crime, the headlong rush to execute continues.  
 
             Since March, according to statistics compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center, the following individuals have been executed:
 

Name

Date

State

Method

 

 

 

 

Rickey Lewis

4/9/13

Texas

Lethal Injection

Larry Mann

4/10/13

Florida

Lethal Injection

Ronnie Threadgill

4/16/13

Texas

Lethal Injection

Richard Cobb

4/25/13

Texas

Lethal Injection

Steve Smith

5/1/13

Ohio

Lethal Injection

Carroll Parr

5/7/13

Texas

Lethal Injection

Jeffery Williams

5/15/13

Texas

Lethal Injection

Elmer Carroll

5/29/13

Florida

Lethal Injection

    Elroy Chester

6/12/13

Texas

Lethal Injection

William Van Poyck

6/12/13

Florida

Lethal Injection

James DeRosa

6/18/13

Oklahoma

Lethal Injection

Brian Davis

6/25/13

Oklahoma

Lethal Injection

Kimberly McCarthy

6/26/13

Texas

Lethal Injection

John Quintanilla

7/16/13

Texas

Lethal Injection

Vaughn Ross

7/18/13

Texas

Lethal Injection

Andrew Lackey

7/25/13

Alabama

Lethal Injection

Douglas Feldman

7/31/13

Texas

Lethal Injection

John Ferguson

8/5/13

Florida

Lethal Injection

 
REQUIESCAT IN PACE 
An Explanation From The Editor/Convener
        
Goofy Man
Editor/Convener
            The numbering of publications can be confusing, especially one produced electronically. The last edition of this newsletter was issued in June (Volume 1, Number 6), yet this issue is September (Volume 1, Number 9). There was not an issue produced in July and August due to the editor having knee replacement surgery.

            This means nothing to anyone but an obsessive/compulsive; but, as an amateur historian, I hate unexplained gaps in documents, including the Qumran Scrolls!
 

Ronald T. Clemmons, Editor/Convener
Death Penalty Abolition Action Group  

[email protected]