Sept. 26 TENNESSEE: Man gets death sentence in girlfriend's slaying A man who gunned down his former girlfriend 2 years ago at the Raleigh nursing home where she worked was sentenced to death Saturday. The Criminal Court jury of seven women and five men deliberated about 2 hours before reaching its decision in the case of defendant Franklin Fitch. Judge James Beasley Jr. set an execution date of March 25, 2005, but automatic appeals will stay the execution. Fitch, 43, was convicted Friday of 1st-degree murder for the shooting death of Angela Denise Carroll on Feb. 28, 2002, at the Spring Gate Nursing Home on Old Covington Pike, where she worked as a nursing assistant. Carroll, 31, was shot 5 times inside the nursing home, where she ran from a hall to a restroom near a nurse's station screaming for help and trying to elude Fitch. Prosecutors said Fitch was angry at Carroll, who had recently ended their 4-year relationship and because he suspected she had a new boyfriend. State prosecutor Lee Coffee said Fitch was a candidate for the death penalty because he endangered others at the nursing home and because he committed a prior crime of violence in 1991 by beating another former girlfriend with a 2-by-4. "He put other people's lives in danger - employees, patients, family members - when he fired those 10 shots inside the nursing home," Coffee said. "There were a vast number of people, some who were in the direct line of fire, whose lives were in danger. There were bullets going everywhere." (source: Commercial Appeal) ***************** Woman is convicted of murders at Captain D's The families of 3 slain Smyrna Captain D's employees will have to wait at least until tomorrow to find out if LaTonya Taylor will be sentenced to die. Taylor, 27, was found guilty yesterday on nine of 10 charges she faced from the July 2000 robbery deaths of Scott Myers, Bryan Speight and Troy Snell. She was found guilty of 3 counts of 1st-degree murder, 3 counts of felony murder, 2 counts of especially aggravated kidnapping and 1 count of especially aggravated robbery. The jury found her not guilty of the kidnapping of Snell, whose body was found in his car behind a nearby Kmart. The sentencing phase of the trial is scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. Monday. Taylor's defense attorneys asked Rutherford County Circuit Judge Don Ash for a delay in the sentencing phase of the trial so they could talk to witnesses the state had planned to call to secure a death sentence. Rutherford prosecutors are using Taylor's conviction earlier this month for aggravated robbery and kidnapping at a Donelson Arby's restaurant as an aggravating factor to stiffen her sentence. Ash said he granted the delay because "I only want to do this once,'' a reference to his effort to avoid trial errors that could result in the convictions or sentencing being overturned on appeal. He explained that to jurors - selected and brought here from Chattanooga - before sending them back to their hotel about 3:30 p.m. yesterday. The families of the victims said they did not mind waiting a couple of days for the proceedings to resume. "We've waited 4 years for the trial," said Daphne Speight, Bryan Speight's mother. "So, no, I don't mind waiting a few days. I want everybody to be sharp, so this may be a good thing." Elinor Myers, mother of Scott Byers, and Billie Snell, mother of Troy Snell, both said the nine guilty verdicts Taylor received were enough for them. "The sentence really isn't that important to me anyway," Myers said. "A sentence won't bring the boys back." Charged along with Taylor is Percy Lee Palmer, 24. The 2 are being tried separately. Palmer's day in court has not been set. ****************** A closer look at the Captain D's case Her story According to court records, LaTonya Taylor implicates co-defendant Percy Palmer in the triple murder on July 12, 2000. Palmer, likewise, has his version of the story. He will be tried separately. Taylor did not take the stand to testify in her own defense, but here's what she told investigators about the events surrounding the day three Smyrna Captain D's employees where shot to death: Taylor said that on July 11 she spent the evening at her sister's Smyrna apartment. There she and some friends, including Percy Palmer, talked, drank beer, took cocaine, smoked marijuana, played cards, listened to the radio and took Xanax anti-anxiety pills until after dark. As she and Palmer bought more beer at a BP station, she mentioned to Palmer that Troy Snell, a worker at the Captain D's next door, owed her $400. Palmer responded that he would "take care of business," Taylor said. "I assumed that to mean he was going to get my money." She said she watched Palmer go into Captain D's. "I saw Percy with a gun with Troy in front walking toward the kitchen area." In Taylor's version of the story, she never went into Captain D's that night and stayed outside in the parking lot. She heard 2 gunshots and began to walk away. She looked back and saw Palmer and Snell get into Snell's car and drive away. She continued walking, and Palmer caught up with her. He was carrying a blood-soaked T-shirt. "Percy told me that he took care of business," she said. "He was laughing and saying how good of a job he did. He said that he made them get on their knees and had Troy tie them up. I think they were tied up behind their head. He said he had Troy put them in the freezer. He said that he did Troy in. He said he shot them in the back of the head. I said I didn't want to hear any more. He told me he had the money." A violent night The triple homicide at the Captain D's at 402 N. Lowery St. is the worst in Smyrna's 135-year history. Here is what happened in the early morning hours of July 12, 2000, according to witness and interviews and other court records: Captain D's workers Troy Snell and Scott Myers went into a nearby BP gas station just after 11 p.m. July 11 and bought a few things. They were filmed by a BP security tape. Also, at some point that night, Troy Snell clocked out of the restaurant, but court records do not say at what time. Investigators believe the slayings took place between 12:06 and 12:40 a.m. July 12. At 2:30 a.m., a garbage truck driver saw someone in a car parked behind a nearby Kmart. Police arrived and found Snell dead of a gunshot wound in his purple Mazda Protege. At 3:30 a.m., a pest-control worker found the bodies of Myers and Bryan Speight in the walk-in cooler at Captain D's. Myers lay on his side, his hands apparently tied behind his head, while Speight's body was found in a kneeling position. All three victims had been shot in the head with the same .22-caliber handgun that police have never found, according to a report from investigators. Investigators discovered that an undisclosed amount of money had been taken from the restaurant. Also missing was a set of store keys that belonged to Speight. Death penalty sought Charged: LaTonya Taylor, 27, of Nashville, was charged in Rutherford County with 3 counts of 1st-degree murder, 3 counts of felony murder - a charge levied when someone is accused of murder while committing another felony - 3 counts of especially aggravated kidnapping an1 count of especially aggravated robbery. The prosecution tried to convince jurors that Taylor killed the men with intent and premeditation and is seeking the death penalty, using a recent restaurant robbery conviction in Nashville as an aggravating factor. The defense has maintained that Taylor had nothing to do with the slayings. Suspect's background: Taylor has a history of a troubled childhood and criminal activity. She has been arrested on drug charges before and was found guilty of aggravated robbery, especially aggravated kidnapping and 2 counts of kidnapping in a robbery at an Arby's restaurant in Donelson. Bail: Taylor has been held without bail at the Metro Detention Facility, 5115 Harding Place. Key events after slayings May 2001 - Television show America's Most Wanted airs a segment about the slayings. July 2001 - LaTonya Taylor is arrested in Nashville on unrelated charges. Aug. 2, 2001 - Percy Lee Palmer is arrested at the Blue Spruce Motel in Aurora, Colo., where he has been living with his mother, stepfather and their 3 small children. Nov. 6, 2001 - Palmer and Taylor are indicted in the triple homicide. Police say America's Most Wanted helped to solve the case. (source: The Tennessean) SOUTH CAROLINA: Sevierville pair could face death penalty In Knoxville, a federal judge yesterday ordered a Tennessee couple returned to South Carolina to face charges that could carry the death penalty in the fatal carjacking of a Greenville businessman. U.S. Magistrate Clifford Shirley ordered David Wendell Edens, 34, and Jennifer Annette Holloway, 27, transferred to federal court in Greenville, S.C. The Sevierville residents were was arrested Thursday in connection with the Sept. 14 disappearance of retired Sara Lee executive James D. Cockman, 71. Authorities found Cockman's body in a freezer in a storage shed near Sevierville. Officials said Holloway told the FBI that she and Edens went to South Carolina to steal a 1996 GMC Suburban that Cockman was selling privately. They met him at the vehicle, pushed him inside, duct-taped his mouth and returned to Tennessee. When they got home they found Cockman dead, and Edens hid the body in the freezer, Holloway told authorities. Under the federal carjacking law, they could face the death penalty if convicted because of the fatality. South Carolina also filed kidnapping charges. More charges could come after an autopsy today. Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Cook said the two would be taken to South Carolina this weekend, and face a detention hearing Tuesday in Greenville. (source: The Tennessean) NORTH CAROLINA: Lethal injections Is death by lethal injection as practiced in North Carolina cruel and unusual punishment? One might think so after reading Steve Ford's Sept. 19 column "Painful subject for the condemned," which cited testimony from an out-of-state physician who claims that the method of execution used in this state may cause severe pain, leaving the individual awake and paralyzed while slowing suffocating to death. [The physician is Mark J.S. Heath, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Columbia University in New York, whose medical degree is from UNC-Chapel Hill.] This is a powerful, gut-wrenching, sensational and profoundly disturbing claim. It is also highly unlikely to be true. Simply put, there is little or no evidence to support Dr. Heath's specious claims. Remember, these very same agents -- sodium pentothal, pancuronium bromide and even potassium -- are used safely and painlessly every day in the course of a general anesthetic. Anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists who are well-versed in the pharmacology of these agents, and who understand the massive overdosages involved in the lethal injection mixture, say the potential for experiencing pain, while remaining conscious and paralyzed, is exceedingly unlikely. Although one could argue about the optimal sequencing of the drugs used, the doses used to induce unconsciousness are more than 10 times the normal amount! Furthermore, drug blood concentrations measured at autopsy do not accurately reflect the blood levels in the brain, let alone indicate whether or not consciousness occurred. But what if Heath's assertions are true? Could the composition of the lethal cocktail be improved? I happen to think so. Adding large doses of morphine, a potent pain-reliever, and eliminating the muscle relaxant from the mixture would address all of the hypothetical concerns raised in the column. There are many compelling reasons to oppose the death penalty, but this is not one of them. Sadly, this is yet another example of science being politicized; an all-too-common occurrence in our society today. David Hardman, M.D., Assistant professor of anesthesiology, Duke Medical Center (source: Letter to the Editor, News & Observer) INDIANA: Inmate has overcome anger while serving time----Convicted in 1985 murder, inmate had her death sentence overturned. Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him. (Proverbs 22:15) In 1985, at age 15, Paula Cooper fatally stabbed 78-year-old Ruth Pelke in Gary. In 1986, she was sentenced to death, but 3 years later, her sentence was reduced to 60 years in prison. She is eligible for parole in 2015. Recently, Cooper reflected on her experiences in prison, first as an angry juvenile on Death Row and later as a hard-working prisoner, and the impact that the death sentence had on her as a teenager. The crime for which Cooper was sentenced outraged the public. Mrs. Pelke was a neighborhood Bible teacher when Cooper and 3 girlfriends robbed and stabbed her 33 times. Still, the death sentence surprised Cooper. "I was mostly shocked because when my judge sentenced me, he gave me the impression he wasn't gonna give it to me," said Cooper, now 35, who spoke with Y-Press at Rockville Correctional Facility, the minimum-security facility where she is being held. "I mean, it really didn't set in until I actually got to prison, which was days later." The sentence ultimately received international attention. While Cooper spent the rest of her adolescence on Death Row at the Indiana Women's Prison in Indianapolis, human-rights activists -- including Pelke's grandson, Bill Pelke -- tried to reduce Cooper's sentence by making public appeals in the United States as well as in Europe, winning the support of Pope John Paul II. In 1989, the Indiana Supreme Court overturned Cooper's sentence after the Indiana legislature changed the law, limiting the death penalty to people at least 16 years old when their crime was committed. But other juveniles have not been so lucky. Since 1976, 22 people -- though none in Indiana -- have been executed for crimes committed as juveniles. In 2002, Indiana barred death-penalty consideration for youth who are under age 18 when they commit a capital offense. According to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, 74 juveniles were on death row in 2003 in adult facilities in the United States. 14 states allow the death penalty for juveniles ages 16 and above; 5 allow it at age 17. How effective is it? But is capital punishment an effective deterrent for juveniles? Proponents of the death penalty argue age does not matter when it comes to perpetrators of violent crime. Opponents say young people don't have the same mental faculties as adults, and that the death penalty is ineffective in reducing violent crime. "There is some evidence that it has been implemented arbitrarily and capriciously, and also some innocent people have in fact been executed," said Ira Schwartz, Temple University provost and law professor who has researched juvenile justice extensively. "The adult criminal justice system is entirely inappropriate for young people," he said. "I don't think that juveniles ought to be tried as adults and bound over to the adult courts and placed on Death Row. I just don't think that that's an effective strategy. You know, there's not much evidence that such behavior would work or would serve as a deterrent." Cooper agreed the death penalty is not appropriate for children. "I think that it's a revenge sentence. I think that people should serve time to realize what they've done, even if you have to spend the rest of your life in prison." According the American Bar Association, 60 % of youth currently on Death Row had been abused or neglected. "Clearly, young people who have troubled histories are far more likely to act out, to be delinquent, to commit crimes. There's no question about that, particularly if they have been juveniles who have had a history of prior out-of-home placements in their childhood," Schwartz said. Cooper fits this profile. She was abused as a child, used drugs and alcohol and had an unstable family life. "Part of my growing up, I had a single parent home. Part of it, my mother and father were married, and there was a lot of fighting in the house, abuse and alcoholism." Also, children don't have the same mental capability, Schwartz said. "A study was done here at Temple University that shows that young people who are under the age of 16, even when rights are read to them, don't understand the significance of waiving their right to counsel." This, he said, "shows that young people still do not have all the faculties that adults do and should receive special protections." Cooper's experience bears this out. She was confused during the trial and still angry and violent after her sentencing. "I didn't even know (the judge) had given (the death sentence) to me until after I turned around and looked at my attorney and then looked back at the judge, and he was gone," she said. "And I asked my attorney what did he say, and he said he gave me the death penalty." Cooper spent three years in solitary confinement after attacking a guard. "I was very bitter and angry, so I was in a lot of trouble," she said. "I hated it. But I learned to adapt eventually." As she matured, Cooper started to take advantage of opportunities at the prison. "I decided for myself it was time to really sit down and buckle down and get it because it wasn't gonna always be there. I went to school, and I got my GED. I started college correspondence, and I just kept busy. I was very hopeful. I never believed the sentence would be carried out, so it wasn't something that I pondered over day and night," she said. While Cooper has reconciled herself to long years in prison, Schwartz says such long terms are not effective in rehabilitating juvenile offenders. "The results on the follow-up studies on juveniles who've been incarcerated are not very promising, particularly juveniles who've been confined for long periods of time," he said. "The data that we've got shows that juveniles who commit serious violent crimes, while they may need to be confined for public protection, those periods of confinement should be for relatively short periods of time, as short as possible. And then they ought to be reintegrated back into the community as quickly as possible." Stop trouble early Instead, Schwartz says, the key to curbing juvenile crime is to improve the child welfare system. He recommends a three-pronged approach: "First of all, we've got to do a much better job providing services to troubled young people early on, and far earlier than the time at which they reach their teen years. Also, particularly for abused and neglected children, they need to be in stable environments. One of the problems with the foster care system with children who are abused is that they get moved around and bounced around from one foster home to another." Finally, more services need to be available to youth in prison, he said. "We need to equip the juvenile correctional system with the resources that it needs to provide better services to these young people because the adult criminal-justice system is basically warehousing." Cooper supports early help for troubled youth. "When kids are going in and out of juvenile centers, going in and out of boys' and girls' schools, that's when they need to really start working with them. I mean, I had been in juvenile detention over 10 times, and nobody ever did anything for me. I believe that everybody incarcerated needs therapy. "Adults don't understand kids sometimes," she continued. "They don't understand that when kids start getting in a life of crime and doing things, they're crying out for help." For Cooper, all the pain and suffering of adolescence led to wisdom. In 2001, she received a bachelor's degree in humanities from Martin University, and she is now helping train dogs as companions for the disabled. As an adult who has spent more time inside than out, she gives advice to all juveniles in trouble: "Everybody has a responsibility to do right or wrong, and if you do wrong, you should be punished. Rehabilitation comes from you. If you're not ready to be rehabilitated, you won't be." (source: Indianapolis Star) USA: Snitches' testimony undermines justice -- Convictions When Scott Fawell testifies for the prosecution at former Illinois Gov. George Ryan's upcoming federal trial, he will do so under what a government informant in another case memorably called "the influence of freedom." In exchange for Fawell's testimony, prosecutors have agreed to slash his own prospective prison time by almost half --from 11 years to 6 years -- and let off his girlfriend and co-conspirator, Alexandra "Andrea" Coutretsis, with no prison time. Welcome to the snitch system. It might seem that the quid pro quo violates the federal bribery statute, which provides that "whoever directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value" to influence the testimony of a witness in any legal proceeding is guilty of a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. How can prosecutors make such a deal without running afoul of a criminal statute that they would vigorously enforce against anyone else? The answer, alas, is that the word "whoever" in the statute refers not to everyone, as lexicographers have always assumed, but rather to everyone except prosecutors -- this according to the leading case on the issue, U.S. vs. Singleton, which was decided in 1999 by the 10th U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver. Prosecutors, the court held, are "the alter ego of the United States exercising its sovereign power of prosecution'' -- they are the nation. The nation being "an inanimate object," it follows that, if Congress had intended the statute to cover prosecutors, it would have used "whatever" instead of "whoever." This isn't theater of the absurd. There being no federal appellate opinions to the contrary, the Singleton sophistry is the law of the land, which is hardly surprising. Snitches have been firmly embedded in the justice system from the common law forward, and appellate courts are reluctant to disturb the status quo. In modern times, the system has spawned insider slogans glibly reflecting the reality of the system: "Don't go to the pen -- send a friend" and "If you can't do the time, just drop a dime." To infer from such dark humor that snitches, as a class, are rotten human beings, would be unfair. Often they have merely succumbed to a veritable form of torture that few among us could withstand. Fawell's situation makes the point. After his sentencing last year, he insisted that he had "no bomb" to drop on Ryan. When asked point-blank if the former governor had done anything wrong, he shot back, "No, absolutely not," adding, "I'm not going to go in there and make up stories about him just to save myself." What changed? In the words of his lawyer, Jeffrey Steinback, Fawell felt "morally responsible" for dragging Coutretsis into the scandal. She faced 18 months in prison for fraud and perjury, but, as part of Fawell's deal, she'll stay home with her 2 children. Although jurors in the Ryan trial surely will be made aware of Fawell's prior statements contradicting his latter version of the truth, experience shows that jurors tend to believe even the most odious government snitches. Prosecutors are prohibited from explicitly vouching for witnesses' credibility, but they do so implicitly. And, because juries are the arbiters of witness credibility, convictions based on snitch testimony are seldom set aside by trial judges or overturned on appeal absent DNA or other physical evidence establishing innocence. In political corruption cases, of course, there is no DNA. Hence, documented wrongful convictions of politicians are extremely rare. But it's a different story when it comes to violent crimes, which frequently involve physical evidence. Hundreds of wrongful convictions have been documented in the state court systems, where most violent crime is prosecuted. The government keeps no statistics on snitches, but I recently reviewed the cases of 98 defendants exonerated after having been sentenced to death during the last quarter of the 20th century. Thirty-nine of those convictions rested to some degree on snitch testimony, showing pretty much what we would expect: that witnesses with incentives to lie are inclined to do just that. How might the rights of the accused be better balanced against society's interest in bringing criminals to justice? One idea would be to allow prosecutors to continue to give or promise anything under the sun to snitches for information, provided the information is solely for investigative purposes -- that is, to point to other, more reliable evidence that could then be used in court. Keeping snitches off the witness stand would avoid the bribery issue because whatever the prosecution provided in exchange for information would not influence testimony. More important, banning snitches from the courtroom would serve the interests of justice. (source: Rob Warden is director of Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions; Chicago Sun-Times) TEXAS: FOR DEAR LIFE Rick Halperin doesn't celebrate his birthday anymore. It's not his age that bothers him. It's the date: July 2. On that day, in 1976, Halperin was sitting down to a creole dinner at the home of friends in Auburn, Ala. The television news droned in the background. The mood was festive. At 26, Halperin was already a seasoned war protester and dedicated human-rights activist. A scholar, too. In a couple of years, he would complete his doctorate in Southern U.S. history at Auburn University. Eventually he would end up back in Dallas, teaching at Southern Methodist University, where he'd received his master's degree. Everything might have been different though if, on a rainy July evening, in the middle of Halperin's birthday dinner, the news that night hadn't come from the steps of the Supreme Court. The death penalty was legal again. Halperin was crushed and enraged. And he did what he says that he was put on this earth to do: He raised his voice in protest. 28 years later, Halperin sits in a metal folding chair with his back to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. It's July 2, "a national day of shame," as he now refers to the date of his birth. He's here, along with others, to demonstrate against the death penalty and for alternatives, he says, that don't condone the "obliteration" of human beings, no matter how detestable they are. This doesn't mean, he stresses, that he'd like to see homicidal felons turned loose on the streets. "Society has a right to be protected. There's no question about that," he says. "This is not arguing that the guilty need to be freed. This is a much bigger struggle. Are we to be a nation which advocates human decency, human dignity and an end to dehumanizing people or are we not? And the current answer with this court on this issue," he says, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder, "is no." At 54, Halperin is, as much as one can be, a human-rights celebrity. Over the past 3 decades, his uncompromising opposition to capital punishment has catapulted him to the forefront of the worldwide human-rights movement. He has served as chairman of Amnesty International USA, the domestic arm of the world's best-known human-rights organization. He has addressed foreign parliaments. A dizzying number of European human-rights groups have invited Halperin to talk about the U.S. death penalty. His travels have taken him to Palestinian refugee camps and the site of death-squad atrocities in El Salvador. And every year, Halperin, who is an authority on the Holocaust as well, spends his Christmas vacation guiding students and colleagues through the sites of Nazi death camps in Poland during World War II. But paper credentials reveal little about Halperin's life -- a life that is focused, to the near exclusion of all else, on ending torture and the death penalty. SMU colleagues describe him reverentially as "uncommonly uncompromising," "saint"-like and "a prophet." Halperin, notoriously self-effacing, won't hear of it. "I don't think there's anything special about me. I'm an average person with a fanatic commitment to the right cause," he says. Or a wrong, deeply misguided, even sick cause, as many of Halperin's critics contend. And nowhere are those critics harsher than in Texas, where the death penalty is arguably more entrenched than anywhere in the Western world. 460 people, including 9 women, are on the state's death row. Since 1982, 326 others have been executed, more than 3 times as many as in Virginia, the state with the next highest number. Here and across the nation, capital punishment is viewed by most people as a just and appropriate penalty for heinous acts. Halperin's hate mail is usually blunt. It comes from people who simply disagree with him -- "You are truly a sick and poor representation of an American" -- to those who have suffered unimaginable losses -- "Wait till they rape and murder your mother or sister like they did mine, then you'll get it . . ." The daily condemnation, and the rare death threats, are a price Halperin willingly pays. But his fervor has cost him personally, too: It leaves precious little time for anything else. "I call him our human-rights monk because he lives such a focused and disciplined life relative to human rights," says the Rev. William Finnin, SMU chaplain. "He has literally given his life to the cause of human rights." "Everything about me, with the exception of when I play ball or go running, centers around human rights," he acknowledges. "I feel that I am on call 24 hours a day to this cause. "This isn't something that I do," Halperin says. "It's who I am." Giving all for the cause Halperin works out of the SMU Women's Center, a small white duplex in the middle of the campus. His office, a former upstairs bedroom, exists in a state of permanent dishevelment. A maze of papers covers the floor and buries most of his desk. His many bookcases runneth over with accounts of the Holocaust, genocide, eugenics and lynching, to name a few subjects. But it's the student artwork on the walls -- and spilling out of closets -- that Halperin wants to talk about. Completing a creative project is a requirement of Halperin's undergraduate human-rights class, and after 15 years, he has stockpiled an impressive collection. His favorites include a miniature electric chair sporting an "Out of Order" sign, a canvas symbolically splattered with red paint, and a multimedia work portraying the international symbol for "woman" with the circle doubling as a bull's-eye. Despite the setting, Halperin's mood is consistently cheery. The windowsill near his computer is lined with desk toys. He has taped to his computer monitor dozens of photocopied cartoons about the vagaries of modern technology. He's got a touch of Luddite in him: He didn't have a touch-tone phone until Amnesty International ordered one for him in the early '90s. He still relies on an unair-conditioned 1983 Honda station wagon to get him around town. Halperin's apartment is only 2 blocks away from his office, and he has lived there by himself since he moved to Texas. That wasn't exactly the plan. If you had told him 30 years ago that he wouldn't be married or have children by now, he would have laughed, he says. But giving everything to human rights has left little time and emotion to invest elsewhere. His fanaticism has come "at the cost of his own personal life," says longtime friend Jojo White. "Most people who deal with me know from the very beginning this struggle comes first," he says. "If a byproduct of that commitment was the lack of a long-term personal relationship or a family, that's just the price that had to be paid. A global classroom Halperin grew up in the civil rights era. He displays a pronounced drawl every few words -- "human rots" -- and has a knack for emphasizing an unusual syllable -- SOO-preme Court, DEE-troit. He opens doors for women and still calls the Civil War "the war between the brothers." His mother was strict about certain things. She didn't, for instance, tolerate the word "hate." "You couldn't hate people; you couldn't hate peas," says Halperin. She hammered home the philosophy of activism: "Do good. Keep doing good. And don't find a reason not to do good." Ever since he was 7 years old, Halperin has known that he wanted to study and teach history. The epiphany came one Sunday morning as he read about ancient Greece in the encyclopedia. He was ecstatic then, and his course has never wavered. By age 16, before he could drive, he was a George Washington University freshman in Washington, D.C. It was the 1960s then, a turbulent time for the country and for Halperin. He applied for conscientious-objector status during the Vietnam War but was never called up. He took part in anti-war demonstrations and was arrested in connection with acts of civil disobedience. During his sophomore year, Halperin studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. He was traveling in Prague when he witnessed firsthand the self-immolation of student protester Jan Palach, who killed himself in opposition to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Halperin was close enough to feel the heat of the flames. The incident left him traumatized. He would suffer his own tragedy less than 2 years later. 4 days after the Kent State riots, May 8, 1970, Halperin was standing on the steps in front of his dorm. He was watching protesters flee as police broke up a demonstration. As the chaos grew closer, he turned his head, only to find a canister gun inches from his face and a riot officer shooting acid gas in his eyes. The incident left Halperin partially blind. 34 years later, he remains without peripheral vision and has poor depth perception. He doesn't see colors at all. The dark glasses that he wears indoors and out have become something of his trademark on campus. Halperin's injury didn't prevent him from pursuing his studies, but the going was rough. He reads with a magnifying glass, and his eyes tire easily. Acidic buildup requires that he have his eyes scraped regularly. In the end, Halperin was forced to give up his ambition of a university professorship. Performing the research necessary to publish scholarly articles would have been too physically grueling. Nevertheless, he has made university campuses his professional home. Before coming to Dallas, he taught history at Auburn, Tulane and the University of Mississippi. SMU hired Halperin in 1985, first as a full-time academic adviser and, in 2000, as assistant director of SMU's Office of Leadership and Community Involvement. But he's known mainly around campus as a history professor. The undergraduate seminar that he has taught since 1990, The Struggle for Human Rights, has a reputation for being particularly challenging. It's also always in high demand. Of the myriad awards bestowed upon Halperin, it's the 2 Outstanding Faculty Teaching Awards, voted on by SMU students, of which he is proudest. (They hang on the wall behind his desk, while the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has been relegated to the floor.) Halperin, says Finnin, is "always, always, always available to students . . .. The man lives for students." Indeed, a hand-written note on Halperin's door reads, "People are always welcome in this office." Does Halperin wish he could teach full time instead of part time as an adjunct professor? Definitely. But he never, he says, feels sorry for himself. "I see. I function," Halperin says. "I wasn't prohibited from becoming who I am." Constant vigilance Halperin has been working on Texas death penalty issues ever since he set foot in the state in 1985. He's president of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. For more than a decade he has organized monthly anti-death-penalty rallies in downtown Dallas. Early on, he was known for his prodigious output of photocopied materials on the subject, sent to a mailing list of anti-death-penalty allies. "He'd fill as much stuff as he could in a No. 10 envelope, and you'd get two or three of those a week," notes Abe Bonowitz, who directs Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Now Halperin posts those documents on the Web site he administers, Death Penalty News and Updates. His rsum notes that both the Department of State and the Department of Justice have used the site. By the early '90s, Halperin had been anointed an expert. "Anytime an execution was coming up, I finally began to expect for television cameras to be setting up in the office," says Rebecca Bergstresser, who worked with Halperin at SMU for several years. When the Amnesty International USA board made him chairman for 1992-1993, SMU granted Halperin a paid sabbatical -- almost unheard of for someone who's not a full professor, notes History Department Chairman Jim Hopkins. Halperin traveled nonstop, speaking about the U.S. death penalty to audiences throughout Europe and North America. "Much of the horror of the [capital punishment] system had yet to be exposed," he says. In fact, unprecedented attention to the issue would come late in the decade when Illinois Gov. George Ryan placed a moratorium on the state's death penalty; when Texas inmate Karla Faye Tucker's execution was imminent; and when then-Gov. George W. Bush announced his candidacy for president and the national media turned its eye on the Bush record. But as Amnesty USA's top dog, Halperin found himself in demand nonetheless. He appeared on Nightline, CNN and Crossfire, as well as local radio and television. "If you can attach Rick Halperin's name to something, it lends instant credibility in the [anti-death-penalty] community," says Bonowitz. Halperin has, over the years, become something akin to a death-penalty oracle. People from around the globe -- prisoners, their relatives, their pen pals, their supporters -- call or write him for information and for moral and practical support. Immediately after the lethal injection of James Reid on Sept. 9 in Virginia, Halperin did what he always does following executions: He returned to his office that evening to field hours' worth of phone calls and e-mails. "There's a price to pay -- constant vigilance -- to make it happen," he says. Rick Halperin believes it's going to happen. Soon. A question of immorality An orange oblong moon rises from behind the U.S. Supreme Court Building. It's Thursday night, and First Street is relatively quiet. A few Capitol Hill staff members trickle past the marble Corinthian behemoth without looking up. They have been jaded by the grandeur that is central Washington, D.C. Others stand in awe before the nation's highest court. They understand intimately the power it wields. Is this what Halperin is thinking as he strolls across the court's expansive plaza, his head turned upward toward the building's heralded inscription: "Equal Justice Under Law"? On the sidewalk not far away, singer-songwriter Steve Earle commands a spirited discussion about prison conditions with other anti-death-penalty advocates. Earle has just come from playing a solo concert in Senate Park on behalf of the 11th Annual Fast and Vigil to Abolish the Death Penalty. Of the hundred or so concertgoers, a handful have wandered back to the steps of the court to linger at the demonstration site; a few will spend the night on the concrete here. Halperin co-founded the Fast and Vigil with activists Bill Pelke and Marietta Jaeger-Lane in 1994. It commemorates 2 dates: June 29, 1972, when the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, effectively banning it; and July 2, 1976, when the court reversed itself. The 4-day span seemed a natural opportunity for public dissent; why not at the foot of the institution that most symbolizes the struggle? There's no civil disobedience at the vigil. The event is a loosely organized gathering of abolitionists who keep a low-key presence. (Like those who opposed slavery around the time of the Civil War, anti-death-penalty activists refer to themselves as "abolitionists." "We are their ideological descendants," Halperin says). Tabletops are strewn with information. Banners are unfurled. Participants mainly sit and chat while busloads of tourists snap photographs of the Supreme Court Building and leave. The final morning of the vigil is Halperin's birthday. He sits a few feet from the court's steps near a plastic water cooler on which he has scrawled "Celebrate life," one of his favorite mottoes. His shirt reads "I oppose the death penalty. Don't kill for me." He hasn't eaten in almost 36 hours, but the professor appears utterly content. "He's in his element here," says Bonowitz. Halperin can talk for hours about his cause. And, on occasion, he'll advance the oft-stated abolitionist claims -- that capital punishment kills innocent people, that it is expensive, that it is not a deterrent, that it is biased against racial minorities and the poor. But for Halperin those are secondary arguments. His revulsion boils down to one fundamental principal: the immorality, he says, of taking a human life at any time and for any reason. "There is no such thing as a lesser person," he repeatedly insists. "There are different people, but they're not lesser." The fact that the United States is the only Western democracy to maintain the death penalty comes as no surprise to Halperin. It's part and parcel, he says, of his country's abominable human-rights record: from the Founding Fathers' disenfranchisement of anyone but wealthy white males, to the slaughter of the American Indians, to hate crimes against gays. "The study of American history, in a social justice sense, is the study of bigotry, intolerance, segregation and human obliteration of peoples," Halperin asserts. As for the death penalty itself, "it's almost 400 years old. It's not hard historically to see why this has been so difficult to get rid of. We're fighting the longest-running institution in America." It's an institution that at least a couple of his closest friends stand staunchly behind. "I don't know if I'll ever be able to change his mind, and he knows he'll never be able to change mine," says Jojo White. She and her husband, Pat Pope, have known Halperin for 20 years. Their 17-year-old daughter calls him "Uncle Ricky." But White and Pope view the death penalty as a deterrent and as a fitting penalty for the brutal taking of life. And there are some moral lines White, a printing broker, won't cross. She has, in the past, declined to print some of Halperin's anti-death-penalty materials. "You know how much I love you," she's told him, "but some stuff I can print for you and some stuff I just can't." Death is at 6:27 The Struggle for Human Rights course meets Tuesday nights in SMU's Dallas Hall. Halperin has been teaching it for so long that his preparation consists only of photocopying relevant articles from the past week for his students. The class covers a variety of subjects, from the philosophical underpinnings of human rights to the history of lynching, to the death penalty at home and abroad. There are 15 required books in 15 weeks and an option to do community service with one of three local nonprofits. On an April evening, about 40 undergraduates take their seats. The U.S. death penalty is the topic, and Halperin leads them through a legal history of federal court and Supreme Court rulings. After showing a couple videos, Halperin relates to the class his own experience watching a 1998 Texas execution. The inmate had asked Halperin to be there and to use the experience in his classroom. Halperin, who had never witnessed an execution, reluctantly agreed. A week later he drove to Huntsville with the inmate's sister, who was nine months pregnant. As the professor describes it, the scene in Huntsville is both distressing and chilling: the condemned man's family wailing with grief; the straps, needles and seeming indifference of the executioners. "Death is at 6:27," Halperin says, echoing the only statement made in the chamber. "Death is at 6:27." When Halperin is finished, some of the students are visibly moved. And though he insists the class is not "Amnesty 101," the reaction Halperin means to prompt is clear. "We have got to get out of our comfort zone," he says. "The average person doesn't want to be engaged in this issue . . . because it's such a negative, dysfunctional issue to confront. They just know how they feel at a gut level." His students are not granted such a luxury. Says Halperin: "I want to eliminate from my students' vocabulary the most dangerous words in the English language: 'I don't know.'" Hopkins, the history department chair, is comfortable with Halperin's dual role as activist and teacher. "He does not sermonize," Hopkins says. "He invites his students into worlds they've never known, and through challenging reading and writing assignments, and his own experiences, does more than any class I know of to transform their view of the world and their role in it." On Death Row On a clear August day, it takes 4 hours to drive to Texas' Death Row in Livingston, where Halperin is scheduled to visit an inmate. On the way, the conversation veers from human rights. Halperin, it turns out, is something of a sports junkie, especially hockey. And he's shockingly apolitical. He won't vote for candidates who support capital punishment, so he doesn't vote at all. But on certain subjects, Halperin comes off as charmingly naive. He asks whether the car he's in takes leaded or unleaded gas. He wonders if 3-year-olds have their teeth yet. On the other hand, Halperin possesses an impressively up-to-date music collection, thanks to his students. Those who decline to do an art project must fill 2 CDs with human-rights-related songs. Chances are no one else in SMU's history department has lately listened to C-Murder and Trick Daddy's gangsta anthem Watch the Police. Halperin spends 2 hours with the inmate, Robert Fratta, who was convicted of hiring someone to kill his estranged wife. They are separated by thick glass. They talk about Fratta's case, his Web site, his deteriorating eyesight. Inmates ask for a lot from Halperin, and most of the time, he provides. He'll find them attorneys and relay messages to their families. He's even made their funeral arrangements. The only thing he won't do is give the condemned prisoners money. He can't afford to financially help the nearly 3,500 U.S. death row prisoners, he says, "so I won't pick and choose on whose behalf my money will go." Fratta has been on death row for 8 years. Will Halperin's struggles save him? Maybe. After all, Halperin contends, the process to abolish the death penalty has already begun. "I will live to see it abolished, and even if I don't and that statement is wrong and I go to my grave and we are still killing people, I'm still right." It's not simply chance, he says, that the most significant date of what Halperin calls the most significant human-rights struggle should fall on his birthday. He has always believed in some cosmic explanation for it. "I don't think it's a coincidence," Halperin says. "I have known my whole life why I'm here and what my purpose is. "I'll get my birthday back. (source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
