America Is Abolishing the Death Penalty—but Let’s Fix the Criminal Justice System

(TakePart)  Earlier this week, Nebraska became the first conservative state in 40 years to abolish the death penalty. The Republican-controlled legislature in one of the deepest-red states overrode the veto of Gov. Pete Ricketts, also a Republican, effectively dismantling what has been a cornerstone of conservative criminal justice policy for much of the last half-century. Nebraska lawmakers also voted to make life without parole the highest criminal penalty in the Cornhusker State.

With seven states in as many years abandoning the death penalty—for a total of 19 abolition states and 31 remaining death penalty states—it is heartening to see America moving toward an end to capital punishment. However, we must urgently, and smartly, fix the underlying issues that still drive people into the criminal justice system.

The Boston bomber should not be put to death

(The Progressive)  No human being deserves the death penalty, not even the Boston bomber.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found guilty of conspiring with his older brother Tamerlan in the Boston Marathon bombing and its violent aftermath. Even though his crimes are horrific, he should not be executed.

Capital punishment, with its troubling origins, and the corrupt, unjust, capricious and racially biased manner in which it is administered, has been a bad American habit through history.

If Hillary wants our vote, she has to start being more vocal on our issues

(theGrio) Hillary can run, but she can’t hide from the issues that concern us.

On Sunday, Hillary Clinton — the former Secretary of State and First Lady — announced her candidacy for the White House.

This time around, it is reported that the idea is for voters to meet the “real Hillary,” the warm and fuzzy candidate who will meet in virtual one-on-one, small group settings and address the problems of the middle class.

Jimmy Dennis: A System Not Designed for Innocence

(Huffington Post) Jimmy Dennis has been a prisoner on Pennsylvania death row for 23 years. Dennis was convicted of the 1991 fatal shooting of Chedell Ray Williams, 17, a student at Olney High School in North Philadelphia, at a bus stop over a pair of $450 earrings. He was sent to death row in 1992. And his case reveals a great deal about a hopelessly broken system that administers the law, but does not necessarily dispense justice.

On August 21, 2013, the City of Brotherly Love witnessed one of those rare moments in time when the criminal justice system was forced to confront itself, its flaws and abuses, the corruption of public servants that send the innocent to prison, sometimes for decades, and sometimes to death. Judge Anita Brody, a federal district judge, wrote a damning 46-page opinion in which she granted Dennis' petition for habeas corpus. Throwing out his conviction and death sentence and ordering the state to retry Dennis within 180 days or release him, Judge Brody declared that Dennis "was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to die for a crime in all probability he did not commit."

Huffington Post: A Final Farewell to Greg Wilhoit, Who Survived Oklahoma's Death Row

America's community of death row survivors bids a farewell to another one of its own. Gregory R. Wilhoit, who had spent five years on Oklahoma's death row after being wrongfully convicted for the brutal murder of his wife, died in his sleep on February 13.


LINK

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn Must Pardon Randy Steidl Now

Gordon "Randy" Steidl is a survivor and a hero.

He survived 17 years in the Illinois prison system, 12 on death row, for a crime he did not commit.  That is something few of us can fathom.  Now he is fighting against the death penalty as the board chairman of Witness to Innocence, the national organization of exonerated death row survivors and their loved ones.  Randy helped bring about the repeal of the death penalty in his home state of Illinois, when Gov. Pat Quinn signed an abolition bill into law.

Now all Randy is looking for is a pardon from the Governor.  And he's been waiting for an answer for 11 years, since he first filed his petition.  Is it so much for an innocent man to ask?

Steidl and co-defendant Herbert Whitlock were convicted and sentenced to death for the 1986 double murder of Dyke and Karen Rhoads, a newlywed couple in Paris, Illinois, in the rural Southern part of the state.  The couple had been brutally stabbed to death in their bedroom.

Meanwhile, the miscarriages of justice plaguing Randy's case provide us with clear reasons as to why the death penalty is a problem.  In essence, Randy Steidl was framed by the police and the prosecutors.  His wrongful conviction was secured through the "creation" of two sketchy witnesses, who came forward years after the fact to claim they witnessed the murders, and later recanted.  There was fabrication and suppression of evidence.  In fact, no physical evidence linked the men to the crime.  Further, Randy suffered from an inexperienced lawyer who couldn't get the job done, didn't ask the right questions, and failed to look into the prosecution's manufactured case against his client.

Randy was resentenced to life in 1999 based on an ineffective defense counsel claim.  And in 2003, a federal judge overturned his conviction and ordered a new trial, stating it was "reasonably probable" that a jury would have found him not guilty if provided with all the evidence.  In 2004, he was a free man, the 114th innocent person released from America's death row since 1973.  Whitlock was release four years later. Randy's story was featured in the British film project One For Ten, a series of documentaries on innocence and the death penalty.

In 2002, Steidl filed a petition for a pardon when George Ryan was governor. His petition has been pending through successive administrations, and is now the longest pending pardon awaiting a decision from the current governor, Pat Quinn.  Recently, lawyers from the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University Law School and the People's Law Office wrote a letter to the governor requesting a pardon for Mr. Steidl.

"Certainly, there is enormous public support for Randy's pardon based on innocence.  Governor Quinn, this matter has lingered for far too long. Please do the right thing now, and allow this innocent man to clear his good name," the letter said.

"At a bare minimum, please do Randy the honor of sitting down with him, face to face, and explain to him why you have decided so many other pardon petitions during your tenure in office -- including 65 grants of clemency this past Friday -- but have repeatedly passed over his," the October 16 letter continued.

Randy Steidl is an innocent man, this is certain, and Governor Quinn has the power to grant him a pardon today.  Nothing can erase what Randy has experienced, and nothing can return to him all he has lost.  But let the man officially clear his name and his record, something which is curiously difficult for many among the wrongfully convicted.  What else is there to discuss?

Jimmy Dennis and Pennsylvania's Grave Miscarriage of Justice

Jimmy Dennis has been on Pennsylvania's death row for two decades, and a federal judge calls it a "grave miscarriage of justice" by the Commonwealth.

Dennis was convicted of murder for the October 1991 fatal shooting of Chedell Ray Williams, 17, a student at Olney High School, at a SEPTA stop over a pair of $450 earrings. He was sent to death row in 1992.

Granting Dennis' habeas petition, Judge Anita Brody threw out his conviction and death sentence, and ordered the state to retry him within 180 days or set him free.

In a scathing and damning 46-page opinion, the judge concluded that Dennis "was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to die for a crime in all probability he did not commit." Brody noted that Dennis had no criminal history, other than a single conviction for possession of a controlled substance.

His defense counsel provided a paltry defense, and didn't interview a single eyewitness -- including a witness who pointed the finger at Dennis, and whose felony assault charges against his pregnant girlfriend in another case were miraculously dropped. And a girl who was with the victim said she knew the killers and their nicknames.

The prosecution failed to disclose evidence pointing to his innocence, including statements implicating three other men in the murder, and evidence undermining the reliability of the police investigation.

"Dennis' conviction was based solely on shaky eyewitness identifications from three witnesses, the testimony of another man who said he saw Dennis with a gun the night of the murder, and a description of clothing seized from the house of Dennis' father that the police subsequently lost before police photographed or catalogued it," the judge said.

According to Judge Brody, the prosecution of Jimmy Dennis was based "on scant evidence at best." As a result, the Commonwealth covered up evidence that pointed to someone other than Dennis. "It ignored Dennis' own explanation for where he was at the time of the murder. ... It allowed a witness who saw Dennis on that bus to give incorrect testimony about what time that interaction occurred. Police never recovered a weapon, never found the car that witnesses described, and never found the two accomplices," she added.

The jury deliberated fewer than five hours, with only over three hours for the presentation of evidence in the penalty phase of the trial.

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, who has not decided whether he will appeal, said he was disappointed in Judge Brody's "acceptance of slanted factual allegations" and "a newly concocted alibi defense."

Death row exonerations are far more common than one would think. Jimmy Dennis would become the 143rd innocent person in the U.S. released from death row since 1973, and the seventh in Pennsylvania. With 1,348 people executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, one innocent person has been freed for every nine that have been executed. The stakes are so high -- literally life and death -- and yet the error rate is so high as well. Certainly a factory would be shut down if every ninth or 10th product coming off the assembly line was defective. And we're not including the countless innocent people who may still languish on death row, or even worse, were already executed.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Witness to Innocence, the only national organization of exonerated death row survivors in the U.S. On October 8, in WTI's home base of Philadelphia, Sister Helen Prejean and Danny Glover will help the organization celebrate a decade of leading the charge against the death penalty. And the death penalty is costly, arbitrary, unjust and unevenly applied, with prosecutors exercising broad discretion to seek death, with accountability only to the voters.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Philadelphia County has the third largest death row population in the nation. Yet, it ranks lowest in the state in paying attorneys who represent death row inmates. According to a new report from DPIC ("The 2% Death Penalty: How a Minority of Counties produce Most Death Cases At Enormous Costs to All"), a small percentage of counties in the U.S. -- only 2 percent -- account for a majority of America's death row population and recent death sentences.

Only 15 percent of the counties have provided all state executions since 1976, and the 3,125 inmates on death row come from a mere 20 percent of the counties.

Further, those counties with the most death penalty usage -- such as Philadelphia -- suffer the most reversals and abuses. For example, Maricopa County, Ariz., which had four times the number of pending death penalty cases per capita as Los Angeles or Houston, recently had its district attorney disbarred for misconduct. And when a particular New Orleans prosecutor was in charge, four death row prisoners were exonerated due to misconduct in the D.A.'s office, resulting in repudiation from four U.S. Supreme Court justices.

Meanwhile, more Jimmy Dennises are created when bad lawyering, human error and malfeasance prevail, all in the name of rushing people to their deaths. The exonerated death row survivors of Witness to Innocence have called on the Philadelphia D.A. to issue a moratorium on new death penalty prosecutions. After all, you can release an innocent man or woman from prison, but not from the grave.

Maryland Death Penalty article in The Nation

Check out my latest article in June 3 edition of The Nation magazine on the abolition victory in Maryland:

Click HERE for more.

Building the Grassroots Foundation to Abolish the Death Penalty

The following are excerpts of a presentation I made at the Amnesty International USA Human Rights Conference in Washington on March 23, 2013. I spoke on a panel called "Abolishing the Death Penalty in Our Lifetime."

It is a pleasure to be here, and I want to thank Amnesty International for inviting me to join this panel.

I'm the Executive Director of Witness to Innocence. WTI was founded 10 years ago, originally as a project of Sister Helen Prejean of the book and the film Dead Man Walking. The mission of WTI is to empower exonerated death row survivors and their loved ones to become effective leaders in the movement to abolish the death penalty. WTI is the only nonprofit of exonerated death row survivors and their families. Our members spent an average of 10 years on death row for crimes other people committed. Since 1973, 142 death row prisoners in the U.S. have been released due to innocence.

Witness to Innocence has two purposes: First, we serve as a support network for former death row prisoners, and seek justice for the wrongfully convicted, including state and federal compensation. Second, our members work with state abolition groups across the country, testify before legislatures, and speak to audiences across the nation about their experiences and the compelling issue of innocence and the death penalty. WTI and its members were involved in repeal efforts in New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Illinois, Connecticut and most recently Maryland. And we're involved in Delaware, Colorado, Montana, Kansas, Arkansas, Alabama and other death belt states.

I'd like to provide some thoughts on how groups such as Witness to Innocence can help build the grassroots foundation necessary to win and sustain abolition.

Innocence. There are many important reasons to favor death penalty abolition. WTI categorically opposes the death penalty, and we emphasize the innocence message as a compelling reason. Innocent people were almost executed in the U.S., and innocent people such as Troy Davis,Carlos DeLuna and Cameron Todd Willingham certainly were executed. It is hard to debate a man such as WTI's advocacy director Kirk Bloodsworth, an innocent man and a death row survivor from Maryland, about the death penalty. Just ask Stephen Colbert.

Of the audiences who have listened to a Witness to Innocence speaker, 74 percent either maintained their position against the death penalty or shifted their opinion from favoring capital punishment (or being undecided) to being against the death penalty. More importantly, 46 percent shifted their positions from being in favor of capital punishment or undecided to being against the death penalty.

Coalition building.There is strength in numbers. To ensure that we are not merely preaching to the choir, and to broaden support for our cause, we must reach out to other people and organizations with common interests.

WTI is a U.S.-based death penalty abolition organization that belong to three coalition groups, including the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, the Innocence Network (the umbrella group for all the innocence projects in the nation), and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, which is based in Paris.

We also reach out to communities of faith, such as United Methodists, evangelicals, Catholic and Jewish groups, as well as communities of color, civil rights groups and legal organizations. In Philadelphia, where we are based, we are assembling a coalition of organizations to pressure the D.A. to issue a moratorium on seeking death penalty prosecutions.

Media. Typically WTI members speak at universities and churches, to audiences of a hundred or more at a time. But what if they are able to speak to audiences of thousands or millions at a time, such as when Kirk was in the New York Times or on the Colbert Report?

The way to permeate the public conscience and change the climate of public opinion is through media, such as press releases, op-eds, cable TV news, radio, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Put together a media strategy, publicize your campaigns and events, and increase your visibility and name recognition. View media as a part of your advocacy and activism.

Finally, make the death penalty relevant to people by framing the issue within the broader context of criminal justice and human rights. Some people don't care about the death penalty, or not as much as the people in this room. Some are too busy with their daily lives. Change that.

Death penalty abolition groups are focused on a single issue. But that issue invokes so many others.

The death penalty is the tip of the iceberg of an unjust criminal justice system, in which America, the world's largest jailer, throws away its perceived problems as a matter of social policy, rather than invest in people and communities, jobs and education.

The subject of innocence and wrongful convictions is tied to prosecutorial misconduct. Then there is the issue of racial justice, as people on death row are disproportionately of color, while the legal profession--including prosecutors, judges and defense lawyers -- are 90 percent white. Further, the race of the victim determines a death sentence, as 80 percent of executions involved a white victim, although whites are only half of all murder victims nationwide. Meanwhile, the all-white jury is a reality, as some prosecutors illegally exclude black people from jury service. In the South the practice is widespread. White jurors are 20 percent more likely to vote for the death penalty than their black counterparts.

Capital punishment also implicates questions of economic justice, class and inequality, since many on death row are poor and could not afford justice. And the solitary confinement that death row prisoners face--locked in a prison cell for 23 hours a day, awaiting execution without human contact-- is a form of torture as recognized under international human rights standards.

Our challenge is to help the public understand how the death penalty relates to all of the other pieces in the puzzle. We must demystify the death penalty and challenge the public's assumptions, give them the facts and educate them.

New York Times: A Death Penalty Fight Comes Home

From the New York Times: 

Kirk Noble Bloodsworth, a beefy, crew-cut man whose blue T-shirt read “Witness to Innocence,” took the microphone in a church hall here and ran through his story of injustice and redemption one more time. Twenty years ago, he walked out of a Maryland prison, the first inmate in the nation to be sentenced to death and then exonerated by DNA.

Link

Violence Begets Violence in America

So, what do you make of a country where a third grader brings a gun to school to ward off bullies?

In Inkster, Michigan an 8-year old boy brought a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun to his elementary school two days in a row for protection, and to scare off three girls who were bullying him. The weapon was in the boy’s backpack and belonged to a relative. And surely somewhere in this nation of unacceptable levels of violence and gun worship, there are those who think that is a good thing, to arm children to protect themselves. More guns will make us all safer, right?

After the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, America, it seems, is waking up to the need to stem the tide of violence in this country. But there is nothing new here. Whether we look at the shooting sprees and mass murder of young white men in the affluent suburbs or rural areas, or the epidemic of gun violence in communities of color in Chicago and elsewhere, violence is part of the fabric of America. 

From the beginning, this country has used violence to solve its problems. Years of dehumanization of others will do that to you. And this was always the case, from the enslavement of Africans to the genocide of the indigenous population, and from the regime of lynching in the Jim Crow South and elsewhere, to the acts of terror waged against civil rights workers, antiwar protestors and organized labor.

Speaking out against the Vietnam War in 1967, Martin Luther King said “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.” Dr. King’s words are even more relevant today than when he spoke over four decades ago.

The U.S. has the most powerful army, accounting for 58 percent of the military expenditures made by the top 10 military powers. With high gun accessibility and the highest rate of gun ownership in the world, America leads in deadly gun violence. Nearly 70 percent of U.S. homicides are committed with guns, and 70 percent of the weapons seized in drug war-ravaged Mexico are traced back to the U.S. Gun proliferation is bolstered by an anachronistic and obsolete Second Amendment, and promoted by gun manufacturers, who bribe lawmakers and hold the public hostage in the process.

Further, America’s love affair with violence extends to its overly-punitive, disproportionate system of justice. With one quarter of the world’s prisoners, the U.S. is the largest jailer in the world. Prisons are the largest repository for the mentally ill, with more people receiving mental health treatment behind bars than in hospitals or treatment centers. As budgets for education and social services are slashed and jobs are scarce, the American way is to lock up and even kill our perceived problems rather than to build up people and rehabilitate them.

Moreover, our continued reliance on the death penalty in the U.S. is a prime example of what happens when a society perpetuates a vicious circle of violence. While capital punishment was long cast aside in Europe,Canada, Australia and elsewhere, the barbaric practice still finds a welcome home in America - at least for now. The U.S. is part of an unsavory alliance of nations who lead the world in executions - including China, Iran,Iraq, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen. But the winds of change are blowing.

For a nation conditioned by violence, it is hard to break extremely old and equally bad habits. After all, people are comfortable with what they know, comfortable with what they were raised on. America can break the cycle of violence - however normalized it has become - and yet it must if it wants to break from its troubling past and become better than it was.

Maryland death penalty repeal

From Huffington Post:

With the death penalty a hot topic of discussion in Maryland these days, lawmakers in that state have a golden opportunity to repeal an outdated, cruel and unjust practice.

Death penalty repeal is in the air. At the urging of the NAACP, Maryland CASE and others, Gov. Martin O'Malley and state lawmakers are paving the way for a repeal vote in the legislature. When it comes to government-sponsored executions, Annapolis needs to let it go, and apparently is about to do so. And the reasons why they should are clear.

Click HERE for more.

Why is Anthony Fletcher on Pennsylvania's Death Row?

There was no movie made about Anthony Fletcher, but there should be one.

Although we don't know for certain how many innocent people sit on Pennsylvania's death row, we do know that six innocent men have exonerated in the Keystone state over the past 30 years.  Those who are condemned to death in Pennsylvania are disproportionately from Philadelphia, and overwhelmingly black and Latino, with the highest proportion of racial minorities of any death row population in the U.S.

One of those Philadelphians is Anthony Fletcher, prisoner #CA1706, who has been on death row for two decades.  Fletcher should be a free man today.  And if there is justice, he will be a free man.

An honorably discharged Army vet who had learned to box in Germany and became a lightweight prizefighter, Anthony "Two Guns" Fletcher came from a boxing family.  His uncles were fighters, and his mother Lucille was the first African-American female boxing judge in Philadelphia.  Anthony was the sparring partner for Sugar Ray Leonard in preparation for his win over Marvin Hagler, and made a name for himself by beating such greats as Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini, Harry Arroyo, Johnny Bumphus, Jimmy Paul and Livingstone Bramble.  But a detached retina and a bout with Bell's Palsy slowed down his career.

Now Fletcher is in the fight of his life, a fight to prove his innocence, and a fight against an out-of-control justice system.  And for years in Fletcher's hometown of Philly, under the reign of the infamous district attorney Lynne Abraham, that system kept tallies on expendable black men, aiming to win rather than seeking true justice.

Fletcher, then 37, was sentenced to death in 1993 for the robbery and murder of Vaughn Christopher.  Christopher, 26, a crack addict, suffered two gunshot wounds.  Fletcher does not deny that he was at the scene, but maintains he was railroaded.  The devil is in the details, and those details point to a grave injustice.

Based on the account by Fletcher and people close to the case, Christopher had robbed Fletcher at gunpoint for $50.  Weeks later, Fletcher saw Christopher from a distance while driving in his car, confronted him regarding the stolen money and punched him.  Vaughn pulled out a gun from under his shirt.  Fletcher quickly placed his hands on Vaughn's forearm in an act of self-defense.  The gun discharged, two bullets struck Vaughn in the thigh and abdomen and he fell to the ground.    

Christopher's injuries were not life-threatening.  Yet he bled for hours in the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, and died because his mother, a Jehovah's Witness, refused a blood transfusion.

The D.A. said it was a homicide, and sought the death penalty for Fletcher.  Lynne Abraham, who was known as "America's Deadliest D.A." for her overzealous use of the death penalty, did not pass up the opportunity in what was at best a case of self-defense, and as worst a simple assault if not an accident.

Fletcher maintains this was payback, given that Abraham wanted Fletcher to testify at a murder trial, in which a member of the Junior Black Mafia was tried for firing into Fletcher's car and killing his cohort.  Anthony--who ducked to save his life and says he never saw the shooter-- attended the trial but changed his mind about testifying.  

The prosecution painted Fletcher as a coldblooded drug dealer who murdered Christopher over a drug debt.  Their case rested on the eyewitness testimony of Natalie Renee Grant, a self-professed addict who had a long criminal record.  She testified that the incident stemmed from a drug deal and that Fletcher murdered Christopher execution-style and fled the scene.  Anthony's bungling defense failed to challenge Grant's unsubstantiated hearsay testimony.  Meanwhile, Grant--who faced with prostitution and theft charges--was given probation in exchange for her testimony.

Fletcher's witnesses were barred from testifying.

No gunpowder test was performed on Christopher's clothes, which the police misplaced, and his weapon was never admitted as evidence to prove it contained Anthony's fingerprints.  Surely, had there been fingerprints, the prosecution would have used such evidence against him.

There were other problems with the case.  For example, Fletcher and his supporters maintain the prosecution used as evidence falsified hospital records and an autopsy report containing photos of two African American men purported to be Vaughn Christopher.

In addition, the prosecutor claimed Anthony's nickname was "Two Guns' because he carried two guns on the street, a fallacious claim his defense lawyer failed to challenge.  The defense also declined to allow his client to take the stand.

Further, the prosecution claimed Fletcher shot Christopher once in the thigh and once in the back, which does not square with the autopsy report.  And Hydrow Park, the Chief Medical Examiner who conducted the autopsy, did not testify because the D.A. said he was unavailable and failed to notify him of the trial date.

Park's underling Ian Hood-- who was unlicensed in Pennsylvania and disciplined by the state board for pretending he was a licensed medical doctor- took the stand instead.   Hood, who testified there was no physical struggle despite the bruise on Christopher's chest, recanted his testimony in 2003.

Meanwhile, Common Pleas Judge John Milton Younge vacated Anthony's sentence in 2004 and ordered a new trial, citing as prejudicial the failure of Dr. Park to testify, Dr. Hood's erroneous testimony-- which was contradicted by the autopsy report that proves Fletcher's innocence-and ineffective defense counsel.  But the retrial never occurred, as Judge Younge pursued a Superior Court seat and the court failed to find a replacement judge.  The D.A. appealed the decision, and four years later, the state Supreme Court ruled against Anthony Fletcher.  

Allegations of missing and fabricated evidence, sketchy witnesses, prosecutorial misconduct and crappy lawyering.  Don't forget racial overtones.  These are some of the essential ingredients of the death penalty.  And this is what put Anthony Fletcher and others on death row in Philly and elsewhere around the country.    

California's Prop. 34 Will Stop the Execution of the Innocent

Proposition 34, the important ballot initiative in California, would eliminate the death penalty in that state. With 725 people on death row, including 19 women, California has the most death row prisoners in the nation, and one quarter of America's death row population. So, if the Golden State repeals its death penalty, the change would be historic, and provide an example for other states to follow.

There are many reasons to oppose the death penalty. For example, executions are barbaric, outdated, and fly in the face of international human rights law. The death penalty is expensive, provides no deterrent effect, and represents pure retribution -- a visceral bloodlust that invokes a violent American past. But most of all, the death penalty -- as practiced in California throughout the U.S. -- is irretrievably broken.

Some of the most effective spokespeople for the Yes on 34 campaign are those who have experienced the evils of the death penalty firsthand. They are five of America's 141 death row survivors, innocent people who spent an average of nearly 10 years on death row. Over the past several months, they have spoken to audiences in the Golden State about their traumatic experiences.

Wrongfully convicted, Nathson Fields spent 18 years behind bars for the 1984 double murder of rival gang members--11 of them on Illinois' death row--before he was acquitted in 2009. Fields had been the victim of lying witnesses, and corruption, graft and greed on the bench. The judge in his case had taken a $10,000 bribe from his codefendant's lawyer, and was himself imprisoned for 13 years.

An innocent man wrongfully convicted for the murder of newlyweds Dyke and Karen Rhoads, Randy Steidlspent a dozen years on death row, and another five before he became a free man. An Illinois death row survivor, Steidl had been framed by the cops and the prosecutor. And he was also the victim of poor representation, a jailhouse snitch, and witnesses who fabricated testimony. Both he and Nate Fields would become leaders to abolish capital punishment in their state in 2011.

Juan Melendez spent nearly 18 years on Florida's death row, his conviction secured by the testimony of two questionable witnesses, including a sketchy police informant who received $5,000 for his testimony, and a co-defendant who was threatened with the electric chair, but ultimately received two years probation after testifying against Melendez. Despite the serious doubts surrounding the case, the Florida Supreme Courtupheld the case three times on appeal. Meanwhile, the real killer had confessed to at least 20 people, and the transcript of the confession was discovered 16 years after Juan's death sentence.

Meanwhile, Kirk Bloodsworth was the first death row survivor in America to be exonerated through DNA. Bloodsworth spent nine years in a Maryland prison -- two on death row -- for the 1984 rape and murder of 9-year-old Dawn Hamilton. The prosecution had withheld key evidence pointing to his innocence, and police failed to inform his defense about the possibility of another suspect. Meanwhile, the real killer had been incarcerated in a cell just one floor below Kirk's, serving time for unrelated crimes. Prior to his DNA exoneration, Bloodsworth's death sentence had been commuted to two consecutive life terms. The Innocence Protection Act, passed by Congress in 2000, established the Kirk Bloodsworth Post-Conviction DNA Testing Program, which helps states defray the costs of post-conviction DNA testing.

The only woman death row exoneree, Sabrina Butler Porter spent over five years in prison, including three years awaiting her execution. A teenage mother, Butler was convicted of felony child abuse -- the unthinkable crime of murdering her infant son Walter. The baby had not been abused, and Butler had attempted CPR in an attempt to revive him. The medical examiner changed the cause of death to a kidney malady.

Given the threat of executing the innocent, California would be well served to put its death penalty system to death. Capital punishment creates innocent victims, and only perpetuates a vicious cycle of violence. Such circumstances do not make us whole as a society.

And the late Coretta Scott King -- who lost both her husband and mother-in-law to assassination -- said that "An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder."

California voters now have a golden opportunity to break the cycle of bloodlust by ending a broken criminal justice policy. Costing billions of dollars, failing to address or deter crime, and condemning innocent men and women to death, this state-sponsored vengeance simply is not worth the price.

What would be gained if Terry Williams is executed?

There's an execution planned in Pennsylvania, the first one in thirteen years.  Gov. Tom Corbett signed a death warrant for Terrance "Terry" Williams.  Barring intervention from the Governor, the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons, or the Philadelphia District Attorney, Williams will be executed on October 3. 

But the execution should not go forward.

Two things stand out about the case of Terry Williams: First, he suffered a traumatic childhood of sexual and physical abuse, and ultimately killed two of his abusers.  Second, a broad coalition of organizations, religious leaders, advocates and others-- including the widow of one of his victims and several of the jurors who convicted him-- are calling for clemency for Terry.

First raped at the age of six by an older boy in the neighborhood, and coming home crying and with a bloodied backside, Terry Williams just couldn't win from day one.  His childhood was one of poverty, neglect and violence.  Terry was brutally abused by his mother with fists, switches, belts and extension cords, and beaten by his alcoholic stepfather, who would smash through the boy's door to administer the beatings. 

Throughout his youth, Williams was passed around by sexual predators, exploited as a sexual object by middle aged adult men who gained access to their teen prey with money, food and clothes.  A middle school teacher betrayed his trust and repeatedly raped him.  While in juvenile detention for a burglary, Terry was gang raped by two older boys. 

And there was no one to protect Terry.  No one stepped in to help this traumatized boy deal with the anger, shame, confusion, paranoia and self-hatred he experienced from years of manipulation and abuse.  As a result of receiving no counseling or mental health treatment, Terry resorted to self-mutilation by banging his head against the wall, cutting himself and making himself bleed.  Further, he attempted suicide in an effort to make the pain go away, and self-medicated in the form of alcohol and drug abuse.

But in the end, Williams lashed out at two sources of his pain, personified: Herbert Hamilton and Amos Norwood.  Using their status to lure teenage boys, these two middle aged men-- a sports booster and a church leader, respectively-- sexually abused Terry.  At 17, Terry killed Hamilton.  And six months later, barely 18, he killed Norwood the day after Norwood raped him, for which Williams was given a death sentence.   

However, the jurors were unaware of the history of sexual abuse.  "I was not aware that the victim in that case had been having sex with Terrance other teenage boys," said one of five jurors now supporting life for Williams.  "I also was not aware that Terrance had been abused by other men.  That would have been a factor in my decision."

In addition, the jurors were not instructed that a life sentence in Pennsylvania means life without parole.  Pennsylvania is the only state that does not require such an instruction in first- and second-degree murder cases.  A number of jurors say they would have voted for life rather than death.  "The reason that I opted for the death sentence was because I was under the impression that if we sentenced Terrance Williams to life in prison then he could get out on parole," said another juror.  "If I had known that a life sentence meant life without parole, I personally would have votes for a life sentence, and I think other people probably would have voted for life too."

Mamie Norwood, the widow of the victim in Terry's capital case, wants clemency as well.  She said that she forgave him several years ago after a process of prayer and self-reflection.  "I do not wish to see Terry Williams executed.  His execution would go against my Christian faith and my belief system.  He is worthy of forgiveness and I am at peace with my decision to forgive him and have been for many years.  I wish to see his life spared," she said.

Norwood and these jurors are not alone in seeking clemency for Terry Williams.  Now, 35 child advocates, 36 former judges and prosecutors, 48 law professors, 49 mental health professionals and dozens of religious leaders, including the Archbishop of Philadelphia, have publicly called for a commutation of his death sentence.  They join the European Union and numerous organizations such as Amnesty International, Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, Support Center for Child Advocates, and the Pennsylvania Prison Society.  Moreover, thousands of people have signed a viral online petition at Change.org demanding clemency. 

"With our years of experience in reviewing claims of rape and other sexual violence, we speak out clearly that a crime was committed against Terry, nothing less," wrote the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape. "Under no construction of American law or societal norms, is the sexual exploitation of a 13 year old boy by a 50 year old man a relationship, homosexual or otherwise. It is rape and any suggestion to the contrary is offensive."

Meanwhile, a bipartisan state Senate commission wrote a letter to Gov. Corbett calling for a postponement of all executions. 

Remorseful and a different person, Terry Williams' life is on the line--literally.  What could possibly be gained by his execution?  A star athlete and a freshman at Cheyney University when he was convicted, Terry suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and it got the best of him.  We will never know what he could have been, but we do know that he was an exploited victim of violence, leaving a devastating impact on his emotional and psychological development.   Executing him will only continue a vicious cycle of violence.

Moving Towards a Worldwide Moratorium on the Death Penalty

It was a good day at the United Nations. On July 3, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on member states to abolish the death penalty. And he called for a universal moratorium on the death penalty by 2015.

"The taking of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict on another, even when backed by legal process," he said. "Where the death penalty persists, conditions for those awaiting execution are often horrifying, leading to aggravated suffering."

Mr. Ban gave the introductory remarks at a panel called "Moving away from the death penalty -- Lessons from national experiences" at U.N. Headquarters in New York. The event, a gathering of diplomats, legal practitioners and civil society, focused on those U.N. member states that have made positive steps towards abolition, and the human rights implications of the death penalty in those states that execute. Also presentwere Assistant Secretary-General Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Christof Heyns, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

Speaking at the forum was Federico Mayor, president of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty, an initiative of the Spanish government that is supported by 15 countries. Mayor noted that one of the first steps taken by Spain after the Franco regime was the abolition of the death penalty.

A highlight of the forum was Witness to innocence member Kirk Bloodsworth, who spent eight years in prison, including two on Maryland's death row, for a murder that someone else committed. He was convicted of the murder and rape of a little girl. In 1993, Bloodsworth was the first death row prisoner to be exonerated through DNA testing. And he was released just months after his mother died.


Bloodsworth shared with an international audience the inherent problem of executing innocent people, of his experiences living in the hell that is death row, and the pain of being released from prison just a few months after his mother died.

Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project noted that only 5-10 percent of serious felonies have biological evidence for the purposes of DNA testing and proving one's innocence. Innocent people are sentenced to death for a number of reasons, including police and prosecutorial misconduct, incompetent lawyering, racism in the jury selection process, eyewitness misidentification, and others.

Reasonable people can differ about the death penalty, Scheck said, but no one can differ about the risk of executing innocent people. He also suggested that the U.S. Supreme Court would abolish the death penalty if the states demonstrate a trend towards abolition. The high court would conclude that the death penalty could not stand when limited to a small number of states in one region of the country.

In the past five years, five states -- New Mexico, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut -- have abolished the death penalty, for a total of 17 states that do not execute. And in November, California voterswill have the opportunity to repeal the death penalty in the nation's largest state, thereby eliminating a quarter of America's death row.

Meanwhile, in 2007, the U.N. General Assembly voted in favor of a resolution for a worldwide moratorium. The U.S. voted against it. Over 150 nations have done away with the death penalty or do not practice it. Moreover, in 2011 only 21 nations executed prisoners.

On the day of the U.N. event I had an interesting conversation with two men, diplomats from a Muslim nation. I expressed my unequivocal opposition to the death penalty, and they explained to me why they believed the death penalty was fairly applied in their country -- the concept of blood money.

With blood money, the family of the murder victim can demand a payment from the accused criminal. If the accused is able to pay the amount demanded by the family, that person is spared. Otherwise, he or she is executed. And the family may decide not to accept blood money altogether, and the execution will proceed.

Whether they realized it or not, the two men articulated good reasons for ending the death penalty. If a person may be spared, and another executed for the same crime, then one can argue that no one should have to die.

The U.S. maintains its own arbitrary form of justice, where many murders are potentially death-penalty eligible, but the ultimate decision is made by petty local officials -- district attorneys on the county level, and U.S. attorneys in the federal system. Those who are prosecuted and condemned are typically poor, disproportionately of color, and almost exclusively in cases involving white victims.

Some studies show that universally, executions provide no deterrent effect. Capital punishment represents pure vengeance and retribution operating as public policy. It leaves no room for rehabilitation. Moreover, we cannot bring an innocent man or woman back from the grave.

Surely the day will come when the international community declares a moratorium on executions. The death penalty is the ultimate human rights violation. As long as humankind upholds the sentence of death, it tears down its own humanity.

Georgia wants to execute Warren Hill and violate the Constitution

Georgia is about to execute a mentally disabled man in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, the state of Georgia will execute a man that everyone agrees is mentally retarded.  A state court determined that a decade ago.  The execution would violate the U.S. Constitution if carried out, but apparently that standard is not good enough for the Peach State.

Warren Lee Hill, Jr., who has an I.Q. of 70, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on July 23.  His original execution date of July 18 was postponed due to changes in the state’s execution drug protocol.  Georgia, which once used a three-drug cocktail, has opted for a single drug dosage of pentobarbital—a sedative used to put down dogs and cats that has been banned for export by the European Union.

On July 18, Texas used pentobarbital to execute Yokamon Hearn.  Hearn was a mentally impaired man who, according to his defense, suffered mental impairments due to his mother’s prenatal drinking, and abuse from his parents.

In his order denying relief to Hill, Superior Court Judge Thomas H. Wilson wrote that Hill meets the criteria of mental retardation by a preponderance of the evidence.  In Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court  mandated the states to protect people with mental retardation because there is a “special risk of wrongful execution” because of their disabilities.

Writing for the majority in Atkins, Justice Stevens opined that the mentally disabled should not be executed because it provides no deterrent effect, and that such offenders are not culpable to deserve such a form of retribution.  He added that with reduced capacity, mentally retarded defendants face a risk of wrongful conviction. They are poor witnesses, may give less meaningful assistance to their lawyers, and their demeanor may give an impression that they lack remorse.

“Those mentally retarded persons who meet the law’s requirements for criminal responsibility should be tried and punished when they commit crimes,” Stevens wrote.  “Because of their disabilities in areas of reasoning, judgment, and control of their impulses, however, they do not act with the level of moral culpability that characterizes the most serious adult criminal conduct.  Moreover, their impairments can jeopardize the reliability and fairness of capital proceedings against mentally retarded defendants.”

However, Georgia sees things differently.  Georgia requires defendants to prove they have an intellectual disability beyond a reasonable doubt—the strictest standard in the nation.  And experts agree Georgia is an outlier, as the only state in the Union with such an unreasonably high burden of proof and an impossible standard to meet.  Yet, the state judge believes that Hill does not meet Georgia’s standard, and that Georgia’s standard does not violate the U.S. Constitution.

Many have already spoken out on this case.  Several jurors from the case said they would have sentenced Hill to life without parole if they had the option.  Former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalyn Carter called for clemency, and the victim’s family called for a commutation of his sentence.  Mental health advocacy groups, including the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities, the Arc of Georgia and the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD) have called for a stay of Hill’s execution as well.

Further, the international community has voiced its opposition to the execution.  Christof Heyns—the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions—said Hill’s execution “would be a fatality in violation of international as well as domestic law.”

Georgia has a history of problems in its application of the death penalty, often making big mistakes by playing fast and loose with justice.  In 2005, the state of Georgia granted a posthumous pardon to Lena Baker.  A black maid who was executed in 1945 for killing a white man she said enslaved and beat her, Baker was the only woman executed in Georgia’s electric chair.  Her last words were "What I done, I did in self-defense, or I would have been killed myself ... I am ready to meet my God."

And last September—despite strong indications of innocence, an international outcry and a petition of 1 million signatures— Georgia sent a man named Troy Davis to his death.  The execution of Troy Davis, despite the absence of a murder weapon, physical evidence or DNA linking him to the crime, placed the spotlight on Georgia and the injustices of the death penalty.  This, in a state where five death row inmates have been exonerated.

And Georgia is in the spotlight once again, as it plans to execute Warren Hill, a mentally ill man.   And as the state decides to go it alone— flying in the face of the Constitution— the attention it receives is an embarrassment.