Nov. 28 TEXAS: Cantu case as Texas benchmark----Many more like him I am actively opposed to capital punishment. For the past 10 years, I've written to and visited men on Texas' death row and have gotten to know them and their families. If asked and when I'm able to, I try my best to assist their attorneys. Thus, I was especially intrigued by the responses I've heard to the Chronicle's reports about the possible wrongful execution of Ruben Cantu. For example, one common response is to ask how someone can be sentenced to death based largely upon the testimony of one witness who didn't get a good look - a case where there was no solid physical evidence, some minor circumstantial evidence, and based mostly on the testimony of one understandably scared and confused witness. This is a great question. However - and in no way to diminish the horror of Cantu 's possible wrongful execution - there are many men on Texas' death row who were sentenced to death under similar circumstances: no solid physical evidence, questionable circumstantial evidence and no eyewitnesses. Their death sentences were based solely upon the testimony of motivated jailhouse snitches. WARD LARKIN - Houston *** All capable of error Congratulations to the Chronicle for its fine Nov. 23 editorial, "Death penalty doubts / The case of Ruben Cantu may provide the smoking gun capital punishment opponents have sought in Texas: the execution of an innocent man." Too bad it is still too early in Texas to advocate abolition of the death penalty, since that is the only sure way to avoid the killing of the innocent. Prosecutors, defense lawyers, witnesses and juries, like other people, all can make mistakes. DALE HARRISON - The Woodlands (source: Opinion, Houston Chronicle, Nov. 27) **************** Execution in 1993 raises serious issues Did the state kill an innocent man when Ruben Cantu was executed for capital murder on Aug. 24, 1993? Houston Chronicle reporter Lise Olsen raised serious questions about the San Antonio case in recent news stories on the 1984 crime for which Cantu was executed. Cantu, who was 17 at the time of the crime, claimed he was framed but no one believed him. Now, more than 12 years after his death, an eyewitness has recanted, saying he was pressured by police to identify Cantu. A co-defendant claims Cantu was not with him the night of the murder, but he allowed his friend to be falsely accused. Prosecutors lacked physical evidence tying Cantu to the crime. Sending a defendant to his death based on such evidence seems incredible, but it happens more often than we would like to think. Inadequate DNA testing and faulty eyewitness identification have been two principal factors in many of the cases that have resulted in the release of wrongfully convicted felons and death row inmates over the last several years. In June, Gov. Rick Perry appointed a nine-member Criminal Justice Advisory Council to review the Texas criminal justice system. Its mission is to make recommendations on improving the system to protect victims and those falsely accused of crimes. The report is being finalized and will be presented to the governor by the end of the year. Texas Criminal Court of Appeals Justice Barbara Hervey of San Antonio, a member of the commission, said one of the areas of the law the report will address is eyewitness identification and procedures. She said she has been closely following eyewitness identification procedure changes in other states that call for double-blind identification, where the person presenting photos to a witness is unaware of the suspect's identity. The commission also is asking for tweaking of the state law giving convicted felons in prison easier access to DNA testing, she said. The 151,443 prisoners in the Texas prison system, including the 410 inmates on death row, make the work of the commission extremely important. Texas' criminal justice system is far from perfect and is in dire need of some reform. Still, the recommendations the commission will make to the governor are going to be just that - recommendations. During the last legislative session, there was little support in this tough-on-crime state for the re-creation of a state innocence commission to review wrongful convictions. But in a state with one of the most used death chambers in the country, state officials cannot continue to ignore the problems. The justice commission's report will be coming out just as the political season in Texas begins to heat up for the spring primaries. We urge the governor and lawmakers not to use the commission's work as merely campaign fodder. These issues, as the Cantu case illustrates, need serious attention. (source: Editorial, San Antonio Express-News) USA: Death row: Does personal reform count?----A clemency request in California revives the debate over rehabilitation's role. Exactly 229 death-row inmates have been granted clemency since the United States reinstated capital punishment in 1976, and the list of reasons is short. The 16 governors who have given such pardons cited just 3 reasons: lingering doubt about guilt, a governor's own philosophical opposition to the death penalty, and mental disability of the accused. Starkly absent from the list - notable because of a high-profile clemency request now pending in California - is character reform of the guilty. As in the 2000 Texas case of convicted murderer Karla Faye Tucker, who experienced a death-row religious conversion and became a model inmate, the case of Stanley "Tookie" Williams is reviving the debate over rehabilitation and its role in the US penal system. Mr. Williams, cofounder of the notorious L.A. street gang the Crips and a 4-time murderer, has been in prison since 1981. Since then, he has become an antigang crusader whose work earned him several Nobel Peace Prize nominations. His appeal for clemency on the claim of personal redemption poses a personal, political, and philosophical dilemma for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), who must decide before Dec. 13 whether Williams will live or die. Like governors before him, notably George W. Bush of Texas, who proclaimed one such decision "the most agonizing part of being governor," Mr. Schwarzenegger is finding that clemency cases can ignite intense passions - and often leave large blocs of voters feeling aggrieved, no matter how the decision comes down. A high-profile clemency decision also immediately confronts Virginia Gov. Mark Warner (D). He has denied such petitions from 11 other death-row prisoners, but activists working on behalf of Robin Lovitt say the fact that DNA evidence in his case was improperly destroyed - and might have exonerated him - is enough to merit a commutation to a life sentence. If the execution proceeds as scheduled Wednesday, Mr. Lovitt would become the 1,000th person to die under death-penalty laws since 1976. Grants of clemency have declined in the past 25 years, with about 1,000 death-row inmates having sought it and 229 receiving it. Of those, 167 came from one governor in one act in 2000: former Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, who called the death-penalty system in his state "arbitrary and capricious and therefore immoral." His action has since been excoriated by victims' families and lawmakers, even as it is lauded by death-penalty opponents. "We as a country have been dramatically changing our notions about clemency and the death penalty in the past half decade," says Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment and analyzes death-penalty trends. After 2 decades of meting out death sentences at a steady rate of about 300 a year, the nation has seen that number fall by one-third since 2000. Much of that shift can be attributed to advances in DNA testing and other technology, which have exposed shortcomings in the legal proceedings that put people on death row, say Mr. Dieter and others. The decision awaiting Schwarzenegger is complex since Williams has aimed to both cast doubt on his conviction and persuade the governor that he has become a changed man behind bars. "This is a terribly difficult decision - not just because of all the competing considerations, from the political to the spiritual - but because there are no clear guidelines given to governors," says Robert Batey, professor of criminal law at Stetson University College of Law in DeLand, Fla. Laws differ in the 38 states with clemency provisions. Some require boards or commissions to make recommendations or to act in tandem with the governor. In other states the governor alone decides, with no legal, ethical, or moral criteria spelled out for guidance. "Governors ... can decide not only whether a person is redeemed or not, [but] they can decide [inmates] have changed and put them to death anyway," says Professor Batey. "In the case of Mr. Schwarzenegger, it's up to him to create his own reasons." The origin of clemency in the US predates the Constitution and was considered a necessary corrective to the severity of the criminal-justice system of the day. It has been revisited and sharpened regularly ever since. "Clemency is an act of grace," wrote Chief Justice John Marshall in 1833, and Oliver Wendell Holmes said in 1927: "[It] is part of the Constitutional scheme. When granted it is the determination of the ultimate authority that the public welfare be better served by inflicting less than what the judgment fixed." Exactly how to define and weigh the public welfare is Schwarzenegger's prerogative, experts say. Beyond the consideration of Williams's personal fate, the governor must weigh the consequences, symbolic and otherwise, to others. "If he goes ahead and puts to death a man who has clearly shown he has turned himself around, [and] is not the man he once was, what does that say to all other prisoners who are similarly incarcerated and are trying to reform themselves - that personal reform doesn't matter?" asks Jan Handzlik, a member of Williams's defense team. Similarly, what message does a commuted death sentence send to prosecutors and law-enforcement officers, who daily work to fulfill the requirements of the legal system to obtain proper prosecutions? Or to victims' families and other convicts? "It sends the worst signal to the criminal element if you commute someone," says Michael Paranzino, who runs a nonpartisan research group dedicated to crime victims and their families. "What are other criminals supposed to think ... that if you suddenly write poetry, say all the right things, and find a champion on the outside that you get a 'get out of jail free' card?" Because of all this, "clemency is a very lonely decision," says Margaret Love, former head of the pardon office in the US Justice Department. "It is a question of how to blend mercy with justice, the human and the legal in light of all circumstances before you, with life on the line." States' clemency rules - 33 states give their governors exclusive, unconditional power to grant pardons or reduce prison sentences. -- Alabama, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, and Texas have stripped their governors of the power to pardon and instead established clemency boards, whose members are appointed by the governor. -- In 9 states, the governor can only consider clemency recommendations issued by a clemency board. -- In Nebraska, Nevada, and Utah, the governor sits as a member of a pardoning board, making clemency decisions in cooperation with board members. (source: Stateline.org) (source: Christian Science Monitor) FLORIDA: There's no evidence executions make society any safer -- Re: The death penalty's fatal flaws, editorial, Nov. 23. The upcoming 1,000th execution since the states began to kill again in 1977 gives us pause to take a good look at our imperfect and expensive death penalty system. Since 1973, we have exonerated 122 people off our death rows due to evidence of wrongful convictions. Florida has exonerated more than 20. As in the Ruben Cantu case, evidence is growing that innocent people have been executed. In Florida we have the alternative of life without the possibility of parole. When a mistake is made, we can at least give the wrongfully convicted some of their life back. Once we kill them, it is too late. There is no "instant replay rule" for executions. There is absolutely no proof whatsoever that killing a few already locked-up prisoners makes us any safer. What message do we send when we legitimize and praise the virtue of unnecessary killing out of anger and revenge? We Floridians spend millions of dollars every year over and above the cost of permanent incarceration just to perpetuate our hugely expensive death penalty system. We contract and pay dearly for these few state killings. This money would be much better spent on providing real help and assistance to murder victims' families. These millions could also provide for more law-enforcement officers and other proven crime-prevention resources that would truly make us, our families and our communities safer without the risk of executing an innocent person. -- Mark Elliott, Clearwater *** Death penalty raises many questions ---- Re: Death penalty's fatal flaws, Nov. 23. Your editorial regarding the death sentence and subsequent execution in Texas of Ruben Cantu, who was a teenager when convicted, certainly should provoke serious thought in the minds of those who claim to support execution. Many years ago, I came to grips with the reality that because of the inequities in the criminal justice system, a death sentence and execution will always raise some doubt. Even a resonable doubt is too much doubt when taking someone's life. I am aware, however, that many actual murderers have been executed for their crimes and this has brought some measure of closure for the victims' families. I have to ask, though, how authentic can justice be if the wrong person is executed? As a juror, could you live with the reality you may have voted to have the state kill someone who did not commit the crime? These are the harsh realities of a penalty that has no "do over." The point of my letter is not to debate whether the death penalty is right or wrong for society, but to raise questions about how and why it is implemented in such an arbitrary manner. If the system can be so sure that an individual is guilty that it would take his life, how then can so many doubts be raised years later? There is no room for an "oops" when the state practices taking away the God-given gift of life. -- Floyd L. Watkins, Tampa *** A miscarriage of justice ---- Re: The death penalty's fatal flaws I read the investigative report on the Cantu case in the Houston Chronicle. It is a travesty of justice that the San Antonio police intimidated a witness to get revenge on Cantu for shooting and wounding a police officer in an unrelated incident and getting away with it. This case was a miscarriage of justice, and the citizens of this country must do all they can to make sure that persons sentenced to death deserve that fate. However, I am more concerned about the innocent people who are killed by murderers who are not executed and eventually get out of prison to kill again. This occurs hundreds of times for each person executed in error. -- David Meyer, Bushnell *** Torture deserves condemnation -- Re: We mustn't lose ourselves in the face of this danger, Nov. 20. Congratulations to Martin Dyckman for his excellent article on torture. It takes courage to tell it like it is. In addition, some Christians who hesitate to voice a strong condemnation of torture, thinking it might make the world a safer, freer place, need to look in the mirror and repeat one of their favorite slogans: What would Jesus do? -- Beverley Thorpe Combs, St. Petersburg (source: Letters to the Editor, St Petersburg Times) VIRGINIA----impending execution Group Urges Virginia Gov. Mark Warner Not to Reward Unrepentant Killer Robin Lovitt with Clemency from Death Penalty Contact: Michael Paranzino of Throw Away The Key, 202-253-4863, [email protected] Throw Away The Key, an education and advocacy group that works to reduce crime rates, today urged Virginia Gov. Mark Warner to resist calls from wealthy advocates trying to protect the life of convicted and unrepentant killer Robin Lovitt. Lovitt killed pool hall worker Clayton Dicks in Arlington, Va. on Nov. 18, 1998 with a pair of scissors during a robbery. He then went to his cousin's house where they broke open the stolen cash drawer and divided the money. The scissors were found between the pool hall and the cousin's house, and an eyewitness testified he was 80 percent sure it was Lovitt he saw stabbing Dicks to death. Parolee Lovitt, caught red-handed with the cash drawer, claimed he stumbled upon the stabbing, saw the cash drawer and grabbed it and ran. A jailhouse informer claimed that Lovitt admitted killing Dicks because Dicks could identify him, since Lovitt had worked at the pool hall. Another pool hall employee testified that Lovitt had showed her how to use scissors to open the cash drawer months earlier. "Gov. Warner must decide whether he is on the side of the working families of Virginia who face violent crime in their neighborhoods, or on the side of an unrepentant killer," said Michael Paranzino, president of Throw Away The Key. "By executing Lovitt for his cold-blooded killing, Virginia will demonstrate that Clayton Dicks mattered, even though he was just an 'Average Joe,' and also that murderers and other thugs are not welcome in the Old Dominion State." Lovitt has lost round after round of court appeals, despite receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of pro bono work from some of the nation's leading attorneys. Now, his attorneys are trying to seize on the accidental destruction of the murder weapon after the trial, in a last-ditch effort to confuse the Governor about Lovitt's guilt and win a reprieve for a killer. Other Governors have faced such situations. Then-Gov. Bill Clinton refused clemency for a killer with similarly well-heeled advocates, and went on to serve eight years as President of the United States. Former Governor Michael Dukakis furloughed a killer before his failed presidential run. Paranzino added: "If Governor Warner is considering granting clemency in this case, he should at least have the courage to make the announcement standing beside Clayton Dicks' tombstone, as Lovitt granted Dicks no clemency. Governor Warner should stand with crime victims and deny clemency to this killer." To learn more about the nonpartisan, nonprofit Throw Away The Key, visit their website at http://www.throwawaythekey.org. (source: U.S. Newswire) ************* Challenges greet panel overseeing state lab The state forensic lab approaches a milestone Tuesday as members of a newly created scientific advisory panel gather for the 1st time. Its imperative that the panel function as more than a rubber stamp. Only then will it bolster confidence in a lab recently dogged by controversy, despite its reputation as a national leader in the field. The General Assembly created the scientific group in the wake of evidence that the lab mishandled DNA in the case of exonerated death-row inmate Earl Washington Jr. Despite insistence by lab director Paul Ferrara that no error occurred, a seven-month audit by a national accrediting agency affirmed that the lab incorrectly eliminated a convicted rapist as the source of genetic material left on the victim's body. A subsequent review by an audit team selected by Appeals Court Judge Robert Humphreys, at the governor's request, looked at the lab's work in dozens of other cases. That less-intensive, 3-month review recommended a number of procedural improvements but detected only a single substantial error. One of the first items of business for the new panel will be reviewing the second audit. Here are two omissions that ought to be addressed: First, the auditors failed to detect what some experts say was a glaring error in the case of Leon Jermain Winston, sentenced to death for a Lynchburg double murder. In 2002 an analyst at the lab tested genetic material on a gun and a glove against the DNA of Winston and several other people. Consistent with lab policy at the time, she included a random sample from a convicted offender, whose genetic profile she did not know. If the test results for the random sample correctly matched the profile for the convicted offender, then that would bolster confidence in the accuracy of the overall findings. But when the analyst encountered problems with the random-sample results, she deviated from accepted scientific practice in two ways. At a couple of points, rather than re-test to resolve discrepancies in the random-sample results, she simply marked the results on Winston and the others "inconclusive." Even worse, according to her lab notes, when she obtained results that didn't match the profile of the convicted offender, she plugged in findings obtained from a different test run. Thats a serious scientific no-no. "Every science teacher will tell you, if your control fails, you repeat the test," said Betty Layne DesPortes, a Richmond attorney who chairs the jurisprudence section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, a national organization of forensic science professionals. The audit should have picked up the problem, she said. Humphreys requested a response from the audit team weeks ago but hasnt yet gotten one. Since the chair of the team, DNA identity expert Arthur Eisenberg of North Texas University, sits on the scientific advisory panel, an explanation of why the team didnt address the issue should be easily available Tuesday. Second, the panel should address the way scientific evidence gets presented in court. The audit team wasnt directly asked to extend its review to the courtroom and didnt. But the case of Robin Lovitt, scheduled for execution Wednesday, illustrates why that's a problem. A lab analyst tested scissors presumed to be the murder weapon and a jacket worn by Lovitt. The tests revealed an extremely remote possibility that a stain on the scissors came from Lovitt; there was much stronger, though inconclusive, scientific evidence that blood on the jacket came from Lovitt himself, not the victim. Yet the prosecutor got away with intimating that Lovitts sweat stained the scissors and that the blood on the jacket was the victims. Did the analyst play a role in creating the misconceptions? Given the life-and-death stakes, that's a legitimate inquiry. In many ways, Virginia's state forensic lab deserves its reputation for quality, but high standards demand constant vigilance. Every organization benefits from oversight. The scientific advisory panel has a solemn duty to make sure that the lab gets it. (source: Virginian-Pilot) CALIFORNIA: NAACP Steps Up Efforts to Save Stanley Tookie Williams----California Gov. Schwarzenegger is asked to grant clemency to former gang leader who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize Bruce S. Gordon, President & CEO, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said today that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should spare the life of Stanley Tookie Williams, who is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on December 13. Williams, who maintains his innocence, has been nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize and four times for the Nobel Prize for Literature for his series of acclaimed childrens books. Gordon said: "The NAACP asks Gov. Schwarzenegger to act with courage and exercise the power of his office to grant clemency to Stanley Williams." Gordon said the NAACP will lead a multi-city two-week crusade to convince Schwarzenegger that Williams should live to continue his work in helping young people make positive choices and avoid the gang life that he once lived. Williams, a co-founder of the Crips gang, has won international and national recognition for the 10 books he wrote urging youths to stay away from gangs. In a series of rallies, prayer vigils and news conferences in California from San Diego to Sacramento, the NAACP will focus public attention on the Williams case. Schwarzenegger has agreed to meet Dec. 8 with Williams' lawyers, Los Angeles County prosecutors and others involved in the case to consider whether to grant clemency. He has refused to meet with the NAACP. Gordon said: "I am convinced that our community is best served if Stan is alive and contributing to the guidance of our youth. He is a one-of-a-kind human asset who needs to exercise his unique ability to touch the lives of young people." On Saturday, Gordon met privately with Williams for 2 1/2 hours at the San Quentin prison death house where he has lived since 1981. During the meeting, Gordon said Williams committed to working with the NAACP to reach young people who might be influenced to join gangs. Gordon, who became president of the NAACP in August, said reaching out to young people is a key priority in his administration. "He is our new partner," he said. "He's our secret weapon in the fight to help young African Americans reject gangs. Williams will have a powerful impact not just in Los Angeles, not just in California, but throughout our nation." The NAACP has long opposed the death penalty and has called for a moratorium on executions until questions about the reliability and fairness of capital punishment have been answered and it is certain that the process does not discriminate. There are documented cases that show the death penalty has been applied differently depending on the race of the offender and the victim. Gordon said that based upon the assessment of the NAACP legal staff; there is sufficient reason to question Williams' guilt. "We believe that race impacted the trial that convicted Stan and sentenced him to death," said Gordon. "However, at this point, the NAACP bases its support for clemency on the value of Stan's life to the communities the organization represents. We want to save Stans life so he can save the lives of others." The NAACP supports the Petition for Executive Clemency submitted by Williams legal counsel on November 8, 2005. Included in the petition is a quote from the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist written in 1998: "the heart of executive clemency - is to grant clemency as a matter of grace, thus allowing the executive to consider a wide range of factors not comprehended by earlier judicial proceedings and sentencing determinations." Four Nobel laureates, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have called on Schwarzenegger to grant clemency for Williams. "Through his work, gang truces have been mediated and long-standing wounds have been healed. Lives have been saved," the laureates said in a letter to the governor. "There is no doubt in my mind that Stanley Williams merits clemency," said Gordon. (source: NAACP - Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. Its half-million adult and youth members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors) ***************** Tookie Williams, Shame and Clemency----Arnold Schwarzenegger's Curious Power Stan 'Tookie' Williams is scheduled to be executed in California next month. Williams helped to found the well-known L.A. street gang, the Crips, in 1971. In 1981 he was convicted of murdering 4 people in 2 separate armed robberies, and sentenced to death row at San Quentin State Prison. While in prison, Williams has written a number of children's books focusing on the perils of gang life; he has written an acclaimed memoir, Blue Rage, Black Redemption; has been nominated multiple times for the Nobel Prize for both Peace and Literature; and has, by some irony that, we may hope, will come to the attention of government officials next month, won a Presidential Call to Service award from George W. Bush in 2005 for his volunteer efforts to help wayward youth. The prosecutor in Williams' trial eliminated three potential African- American jurors, resulting in a nearly all-white jury. The California Supreme Court had twice censured the same prosecutor for discriminatory practices. During the trial, the same prosecutor made several racist comparisons of Williams to an 'animal' stalking in the 'jungle'. One can't help but feel impotent, even ashamed, in offering casual reflections on the death penalty, when it truly is a life-and-death matter for others. At the same time, I am not prepared to lead an insurrection to spring Tookie Williams from his cell, and to simply recite the facts about his case doesn't seem like much of a service. These facts would be largely borrowed from countless other sites where they are already easily accessible. So what's left is 'consciousness raising': a mixture of facts, persuasion, and communicable outrage. But let us begin with the requisite stab at difference-making. By all means, protest. Sign petitions. Help to nominate Williams, again, for the Nobel Peace Prize. Write to governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ([email protected]), or call him in Sacramento (916-445-4821), and implore him to grant clemency. If you get through, you may wish to comment on the injustice of a world in which a vapid body-builder has, largely by marrying up, been catapulted into a position in which he, with full force of law, is to decide whether another human being lives or dies. If you join the campaign to nominate Williams for the Nobel, you might point out that he is surely no less suitable a candidate than Kim Jong Il or Henry Kissinger. These men assuredly have blood on their hands, and have not done much of anything in the way of repentance. The same cannot be said of Stan Williams. (Among those who are permitted to make Peace Prize nominations are "University rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes." If you fall into one of these categories and are willing to co- sponsor the nomination, please send details to Phil Gasper, Professor of Philosophy, Notre Dame de Namur University, [email protected].) I have emphasized repeatedly in this space that the details of a particular death-penalty case should not matter so much in our opposition to it. Whether the person executed is mentally deficient or a genius, whether the crime was premeditated or an act of fleeting passion, whether the prisoner denies the crime or admits it, the death penalty is always and equally a perversion, a malignancy, and it by itself ensures that the United States will remain outside of the civilized world, behind Turkey, Turkmenistan, Cambodia, and Liberia, but in good company with China, North Korea, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Dostoyevsky said that you can tell what a nation is like by the way it treats its prisoners. If this is true, a nation whose government continues to engage in ritual human sacrifice, of victims culled largely from an underprivileged minority, is certainly as open to scrutiny as one that relies on Subarctic labor camps to maintain its iron-fisted grip on power. I am often told that it is a cheap rhetorical ploy to bring up human sacrifice in connection with the death penalty. So allow me briefly to explain just how apposite this description is. The president's annual pardoning of a turkey at Thanksgiving is covered in the media as a lighthearted bit of fluff. If there were not actual humans awaiting clemency, this is what it might well be. But in the current American context it is in fact a parody of the strange power vested in governors to decide the earthly fates of death-row prisoners, and it is also an implicit acknowledgement that the killing of these prisoners is a practice that bears real, non-jocular comparison to the ritual slaughter of birds for feasts. (I am not saying that this slaughter of birds is wrong --not here anyway--, but only that the parallel that the president's ritual invites us to notice is revealing.) To riff on Dostoyevsky, our treatment of animals is relevant not just to the well-being of the animals themselves, but to the moral health of a society in general. The range of possible ways of treating animals determines to a large extent our conception of our moral commitments vis-a-vis other humans. Bush's pardoning of one turkey involves an implicit validation of the slaughtering of millions of other turkeys. And it also involves an implicit validation of the parallel system of pardoning the occasional death-row inmate among the vast majority who are not so lucky. Most disturbingly, the parody is an acknowledgment of the arbitrariness of the system of capital punishment. This system has as its raison d'tre not the simple despatching of unwanted human beings, but the ritual killing of them. This might explain the prima facie odd practice of keeping death-row prisoners on close suicide watch. Why bother if the plan is to execute them anyway? The answer seems to be that the aim of capital punishment is not to bring it about that death-row prisoners are dead, but to bring it about that they are, specifically, killed. In this respect, their deaths resemble the slaughtering of sacrificial animals more than the extermination of vermin. Nobody, after all, would object if an exterminator found a method of getting pigeons or raccoons or rats to commit suicide. Of course, it matters very little for Williams whether the work of Schwarzenegger and his collaborators resembles that of an abatteur more than that of an exterminator. But this conceptual distinction may in the long run help the anti-death penalty movement to better frame its argument. We are not dealing with people who simply wish to bring it about that death-row prisoners are dead by whatever route. We are dealing with people who want to kill these prisoners, and who appear implicitly to believe that this is how the order of the cosmos is maintained. Indeed, commitment to capital punishment is incomprehensible except as the expression of a folk belief about cosmic justice, about the need to cancel out violence with violence, etc. Those of us who oppose the death penalty are too ready to resort to utilitarian arguments about the impracticality of capital punishment, its failure to function as a deterrent, etc., as if these got anywhere near the heart of the matter. These arguments are valid and sound, but entirely irrelevant. For proponents of the death penalty understand the issue at an entirely different register. They inhabit an irrational world in which questions of the expected utility of a course of action can play no part, and it is time to stop trying to argue with them in terms they do not understand. If I could, by some miracle, get through to Arnold Schwarzenegger, I would not appeal to his faculty of reason, but to his sense of shame. I do not know if he has either of these, but while I've seen positive evidence of the absence of the former, I am still waiting to discern some deep, buried germ of the latter. Deep down, he must know he is not in any position but a technically --and bizarrely-- legal one to give the go-ahead for the execution of another man. None of us is God, though I can't help but feel that a man whose entire career has been dedicated to self-promotion and the pursuit of power is in even less of a position than others to decide who lives and who dies. And when the man about whom this decision is made is Stan Williams, found guilty in a highly questionable trial, and in any case provably committed, unlike Schwarzenegger, to the well-being of others, the situation is all the more disheartening. And I would take the so-called Christian right to task for its misuse of the label 'Christian'. For the conception of justice that predominates among them is a distinctly pagan conception, and one for which viable alternatives have been available at least since the Gospels were written. Schwarzenegger, perhaps to his credit, is honest about the primacy of this-worldly glory among his concerns, and pays no more lip-service to the religious wing of his party than necessary. But the institution of capital punishment relies on the masquerading of vast numbers of Hammurabic pagans as followers of Christ. To bring to their attention the shame of this masquerade is the best hope we have, at present, of putting this travesty behind us. (source: CounterPunch - Justin Smith is a professor of philosophy and writer living in Montreal) ***************** Arnold's Opportunity If Schwarzenegger is sincere about the importance of education and rehabilitation, he will grant Tookie Williams clemency. Anyone who does not know already that Stanley "Tookie" Wiliams is scheduled to die by lethal injection in San Quentin on Dec. 13, 2005, will soon know. A founder of the notorious Crips gang in Los Angeles who has been convicted of four murders, Williams has become a surprisingly effective moral leader to youth in his hometown and around the world. Among the 51,000 people who have signed a petition for Williams' clemency are countless former gangmembers and Desmond Tutu. What happens to his case will have unusually weighty implications for the U.S. and its reputaton abroad. "Education is my passion," Arnold Schwarzenegger has often proclaimed. "Corrections should correct," he has repeated, apparently endorsing the belief that people can change. Is this mere lip service? Is it a glib performance similar to what some parole boards assume they are getting from a prisoner who promises he'll make good? Or is it the speech of a man whose word is his bond? Tookie Wlliams' plea to have his sentence commuted offers Arnold Schwarzenegger a chance to answer these questions. Education has truly been Williams' passion; his learning curve is about as steep as it gets. When the prison chaplain gave him a dictionary, as Tookie tells it, he fell in love with words. He'd write 50 words on one side of a paper towel, put the definitions on the other side and then test himself. Self-education gave birth to his conscience. Some believe Williams should not be granted clemency because he has denied responsibility for the killings that landed him on Death Row. (In fact, he has continued to appeal his conviction.) But Williams does take responsibility for the epidemic reach and murderous legacy of the Crips. When he learned that the Crips had inspired copycat gangs in South Africa and among Somali immigrants in Switzerland, he wrote an apology for "ruining the lives of so many young people," which he delivered to the Congressional Black Caucus. His Protocol for Peace between gangs has been used widely to prevent strife among Crips and Bloods. His "Letter to Incarcerated Youth" insists that they can resist the false lures of gangs and can discipline and educate themselves. (These three documents are posted on Williams' website.) I do not know Tookie Williams personally, but I know some former Crips who have been profoundly transformed by his words and his example. I have known other prisoners on San Quentin's condemned row and nationwide who, like Williams, have come to feel profound remorse for their violence and strive to make some reparation to society. The means of payment they most desire is helping others to avoid their mistakes. Committing himself to trying to repair the harm he has done to young people, Williams has kept his focus and broadened his reach. He has co-authored a series of children's books, called "Tookie Speaks Out Against Gang Violence." Teachers and prison librarians attest to the fact that Tookie's credibility and influence among youth at risk are unsurpassed. Williams' Internet Project, online chats teaching literacy and peer leadership to young Somali immigrants in Switzerland inspried six members of the Swiss Parliament to nominate Williams for the Nobel Peace Prize. As a man who has remade himself more than once -- immigrant, body-builder, actor, politician -- Gov. Schwarzenegger can learn from this teacher. Schwarzenegger has commmendably argued that prisons should return to the goal of rehabilitation. In California's bloated condemned row (648 prisoners) and its vast prison empire (165,000 incarcerated), he would be hardput to find anyone better qualified to embody the meaning of rehabilitation than Tookie Williams. If the governor is sincere about the importance of education and rehabilitation, he will grant Williams clemency. (source: AlterNet - Bell Gale Chevigny is a member of the PEN Prison Writing Committee and editor of 'Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing' (Arcade, 1999). OHIO----impending execution Taft denies clemency for man who killed 2 family members Gov. Bob Taft on Monday denied clemency to a man who strangled his mother-in-law and suffocated his 5-year-old stepdaughter while high on cocaine. John Hicks is set to be executed by injection Tuesday morning at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. Hicks, 49, received the death sentence for the 1985 murder of Brandy Green. Hicks also was sentenced to 30 years in prison for killing 56-year-old Maxine Armstrong and 10 to 25 years for aggravated robbery. Both were killed in Armstrong's Cincinnati apartment. Hicks' attorney, Marc Mezibov, said he was disappointed with Taft's decision and wished that the governor had more carefully considered the case. "As difficult as the facts are in connection with Mr. Hicks' actions, there are nevertheless compelling and legitimate reasons why his life should be spared," he said. Taft could have commuted the sentence to life in prison. However, he cited the rulings throughout Hicks' appeals that found he had been given a fair trial and that there was overwhelming evidence of his guilt. (source: Associated Press)
