Just a few days ago we reported on Governor Brown’s decision not to build the new death row, commenting that abolition would save even more. Today, Death Penalty Focus is circulating a cost-centered petition to Governor Brown to abolish the death penalty.
Please read and sign. This is our chance to take this crisis and galvanize it into something positive.
The SF Chron reports:
Gov. Jerry Brown announced today that he is dropping plans to build a new $356 million Death Row at San Quentin because of the state’s budget crisis.
In a released statement, Brown said canceling the project – which has been in the works since 2003 – would save the state hundreds of millions of dollars. He said spending that money on a new Death Row while making budget cuts in other services would be “unconscionable.”
“At a time when children, the disabled and seniors face painful cuts to essential programs, the state of California cannot justify a massive expenditure of public dollars for the worst criminals in our state,” Brown said. “California will have to find another way to address the housing needs of condemned inmates.”
The new Death Row would have been able to house up to 1,152 condemned inmates. There are less than 700 people in state prison who have been sentenced to death.
Faithful readers may recall some twists and turns with the plan to rebuild death row. The construction was given the green light by former governor Schwarzenegger, but these plans were then halted through the efforts of progressive lawmakers that argued against the expenditure. The question is, of course: What now? Sixteen states have abolished the death penalty, several of them recently for cost reasons (humonetarianism at work here.) Governor Brown, would you like to save more money for our children, disabled and senior citizens? Join those states and abolish the death penalty.
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Props to Christoffer Lee for the link.
Two years ago we covered Troy Davis’ probably wrongful conviction and his impending execution and participated in a day of action on his behalf. About a month ago, the Supreme Court rejected Davis’ appeal. Richard Stack, who has been helping Davis and his family, has asked to share this blog post, inviting you to join the petition to the Governor of Georgia to save Troy’s life.
Please sign the online petition and forward it to friends and colleagues. We may still be able to prevent a terrible, irreversible, tragic miscarriage of justice.
Things are a’changing for the death penalty. After the good news from Illinois, we recently learned that Ohio is discussing an abolition bill. Thinking of the prospect of such developments in California brings on some reflection on the hearts that could be won for the cause, and how that might be achieved.
A common misperception is that, in the American context, public opinion about the death penalty tends to follow the political republican/democrat divide. With regard to politics, this is inaccurate, albeit not completely untrue, as data from a Gallup Poll show. The death penalty is supported by a majority of both Republicans and Democrats, but while it is endorsed by 80% of Republicans, support rates for Independents and Democrats are 65% and 58%, respectively. Similar patterns hold for conservatives, moderates and liberals. Moreover, the common perception that religious Americans support the death penalty – brought about by lumping the death penalty with social conservatism – is a blanket statement that requires some nuancing. People who attend religious services are slightly less likely to support the death penalty. Support for the death penalty is more pronounced among Protestants than among Catholics or those without preference. It is important not to go into generalizations: Many religious organizations oppose the death penalty, or at least offer a nuanced view of it. And several religious leaders are actively involved in anti-death-penalty activism; here’s a recent example from Georgia.
These findings disprove a common assumption among progressive seculars that the “blame” for the death penalty can be squarely placed upon the shoulders of religious conservatives, and that their collaboration in abolishing it can only be bought using arguments of cost or technology. People’s intellect and moral judgment should be respected and appealed to; it is a mistake to settle for technical arguments, like costs or the machinery of death, just to ensure a broader coalition. I agree with Justice Blackmun that doing so cheapens us all.
Which is why I love what the Church of the Holy Comforter in Virginia did this Easter weekend. The church held a modern-day trial for Jesus, with participation of real DAs and PDs, and included a death penalty phase.
There is much to like about the enterprise. Of course, setting what was essentially a political trial in a Roman colony in the context of the American criminal justice system does not do justice to historical context; however, the trial was used as an educational device not only with regard to the Passion story, but to modern American criminal justice. Jesus qualified for a public defender, as would many indigent clients; his role was played by a young African American man, depicting the overrepresentation of minorities in the criminal process. I find this particularly evocative because of the persistent whitewashing of Jesus’ image in art and culture. It’s also interesting that the jury chose to convict; I think there are good arguments of Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment violations that could be made, including the use of an informant (though new archeological findings may shed new light on such arguments.)
I particularly appreciated the perspective of Mark Osler, the prosecutor who organized the trial. Osler’s personal conviction against the death penalty was formed through a religious experience:
“They read John 8, about stoning the adulteress, and I’m like everyone else – when I hear a story like that, I put myself in the role of Jesus. A lot of prosecutors who are Christians who talk about that will say, ‘Jesus said go and sin no more.’ And what I came to eventually is, ‘I’m not Jesus. I’m part of the mob. I’m somebody with a stone in my hand.’
“I think that story is very direct that we don’t have the moral authority” to execute prisoners, Osler said.
These nuanced and important understandings of empathy and morality, rather than arguments of cost and chemical availability, will eventually be those that win more hearts to the abolition cause.
2010 was an odd year for the death penalty in California. Remember our discussion of California’s killer counties? And the interactive map comparing death row inmates per county? As you may recall, 40 people on death row come from Alameda; district Attorneys have spent $16.5 million pursuing death penalty trials since 2000; and, since 2000, Alameda has sentenced 15 people to death. Which is why this evening’s event might be of interest to many.
What? Forum on the Death penalty
Who?
Where? Berkeley City College Auditorium,2050 Center Street,Berkeley, CA 94704
When? Tonight, Tue, April 12, 6:00-8:00
Admission is free. Contact: Ana Zamora: azamora@aclunc.org or (415) 293-6321.
This morning’s New York Times features an article explaining the differences between the different chemicals used for executions.
Opponents of the death penalty object to either drug. Some say thiopental can wear off too quickly, allowing inmates to feel pain. Others object to using pentobarbital, because it is so infrequently used in humans.
In the three-step cocktail common in executions, a barbiturate is given with pancuronium bromide, a paralyzing drug, and potassium chloride, which induces cardiac arrest. Dr. Segal said all three drugs can have lethal effects.
“I’m not sure anyone knows which drug actually kills someone,” he said.
In fact, one can do the job. Ohio has used both barbiturates by themselves in executions.
This discussion comes in the heels of several stays of execution, for reasons unrelated to the technology.
Judge Jeremy Fogel, who ordered executions in San Quentin halted five years ago, toured the renovated San Quentin facilities to assess whether executions can proceed. ABC News report:
The L.A. Times adds:
Whether his concerns have been alleviated by rewriting of the legal protocols guiding the execution process and the physical changes made to the prison venue where death sentences are carried out was not immediately apparent.
The judge asked corrections officials questions about lighting, drug handling, conditions for witnesses and for the inmate’s last hours but gave no indication whether the answers allayed his earlier concerns.
Fogel, leading an entourage of lawyers for the state, Morales and other prisoners facing execution if the practice resumes, went room to room in the clinic-like facility, inspecting the hand-lettered drug vials arrayed on two trays in the infusion room, where the execution drugs are to be mixed and delivered via intravenous tubes threaded through the wall of the adjacent death chamber.
Fogel said he hoped to have a decision about whether executions can proceed “as soon as possible” but set out a schedule for further hearings that will run at least through spring. California has 718 prisoners on death row, though only seven who have exhausted all appeals.
Today, the Texas Forensic Science Commission is holding a meeting assessing negligence and misconduct in the trial and execution of Todd Willingham. Here’s some background on the case from the Innocence Project. The meeting is streamed live right now.
Another source of concern associated with Gascón’s appointment is his recent declaration that he plans to seek the death penalty in cases that “warrant” it. Gascon is surely aware of the meager community support for the death penalty in San Francisco, but I am sure there are currently prosecutors in office who were unhappy with Harris’ policy of not seeking the death penalty who will welcome this change.
As to pursuing the death penalty in politically progressive counties: The ACLU data show (jump to Appendix A) that Alameda county, consistently “blue”, has been well above the California average in death sentences between 2000 and 2009. San Francisco may now face the same fate.
A New York Times article quotes former Justice Paul Stevens as expressing his strong objection to the death penalty.
The actual comments were published in the New York Review of Books, in which Stevens reviewed David Garland’s new book Peculiar Institution. The NYT faithfully summarizes this interesting public declaration as follows:
In 1976, just six months after he joined the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens voted to reinstate capital punishment after a four-year moratorium. With the right procedures, he wrote, it is possible to ensure “evenhanded, rational and consistent imposition of death sentences under law.”
In 2008, two years before he announced his retirement, Justice Stevens reversed course and in a concurrence said that he now believed the death penalty to be unconstitutional.
But the reason for that change of heart, after more than three decades on the court and some 1,100 executions, has in many ways remained a mystery, and now Justice Stevens has provided an explanation.
In a detailed, candid and critical essay to be published this week in The New York Review of Books, he wrote that personnel changes on the court, coupled with “regrettable judicial activism,” had created a system of capital punishment that is shot through with racism, skewed toward conviction, infected with politics and tinged with hysteria.