Dec. 8
NORTH CAROLINA:
Death Row Conversion
Traditional opponents of capital punishment have gained powerful and
unlikely allies: American Catholics, many of them conservatives defending
a "culture of life."
ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI CHURCH IN RALEIGH, North Carolina, is nothing like
the grand cathedrals of Catholicism past. With its cinder block walls,
translucent windows, and exposed-beam ceiling, the 9-year-old structure is
about as plain as a Quaker meetinghouse. The design is intended to put the
focus on those who attend, says Father Mark Reamer, head pastor at the
church, rather than on statues and stained glass. To that end, the pews
are staggered, an arrangement Reamer calls "confrontational seating," so
parishioners have nowhere to hide. "We are not distracted by our
surroundings," he says. "Instead, we're confronted with one another."
Perhaps the most pronounced expression of this philosophy - in evidence at
a late-morning Mass in September - is the practice every Sunday of asking
the congregation to "pray for Jeff Meyer," a parishioner who was found
guilty of murder and condemned to death in 1988, as well as "for those who
live with him on North Carolina's death row, and for the victims of
violence." At the September service, the congregation replied dutifully,
"Lord, hear our prayer." The moment passed quickly, with no discernible
reaction among those gathered. Yet the presence of the Meyer family at St.
Francis has led the church to become one of the most active Catholic
congregations in the country in opposing the death penalty. "We said,
'This is one of our own, a good person who has done a horrendous thing,'
Reamer recalls. 'We need to stand by our family.' That conviction has
vexed some and converted others among the 14,000 parishioners who call St.
Francis their spiritual home. It has spurred a range of social and
political activism at the parish and helped nudge North Carolina toward
the nation's 2st legislated moratorium on the death penalty in modern
history. "What they are doing down there is quite remarkable," says Frank
McNeirney, national coordinator of Catholics Against Capital Punishment, a
Maryland-based group devoted to abolishing the death penalty. "They are
really in the forefront of the Catholic movement."
St. Francis is further along than most parishes in its commitment to the
cause, but by no means alone; similar efforts may soon be commonplace.
Last spring, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops - the public face of
the Roman Catholic Church in the United States - launched an unprecedented
education drive aimed at churches and schools, as well as a lobbying
effort in state legislatures and the halls of Congress, to end capital
punishment nationwide. "It used to seem so daunting to even think about
trying to end the death penalty," says Andy Rivas, policy adviser for the
conference. "Now we see that it can happen, and it will, sooner rather
than later."
Anti-death-penalty sentiment has long been a staple among liberals within
the church, many of whom also support abortion rights. But the growing
opposition is being fueled in large part by churches like St. Francis,
among congregants who are likely to follow the teachings of Pope John Paul
II. Until his death last spring, the pope argued to Catholics around the
world that an end to the death penalty is an essential part of a "culture
of life" that would also halt birth control, stem-cell research,
abortions, human cloning, and euthanasia.
The pope's approach established common cause between Catholics and
fundamentalist Christians, who are similarly inclined on "pro-life"
issues, except - and it is a deeply held exception - the death penalty.
"God himself instituted capital punishment as a remedy for certain crimes,
at the very least murder," says Barrett Duke, vice president for public
policy and research for the Southern Baptist Convention. "All life is so
sacred that anyone who takes it is required to pay the same penalty." Duke
says he is well aware of the Catholic Churchs anti-death-penalty push and
that Southern Baptists have "respectfully agreed to disagree."
For the 1st time in years, the bishops' annual Respect Life Month mailing
in October included a discussion of the death penalty and featured a
letter of opposition from Denver archbishop Charles J. Chaput, one of the
church leaders who, during the presidential campaign, urged parish priests
to deny communion to Catholics who favor abortion rights, including John
Kerry. The "respect life" letter does not call for similar sanctions
against politicians who back capital punishment, but the bishops were
planning at their annual gathering in November to draft their first
statement against capital punishment in 25 years.
As more Catholics question the death penalty, the split from their
brethren on the Christian right is becoming more pronounced, changing the
politics of a bedrock issue. It presents a particular challenge for
parishes like St. Francis, where many congregants consider themselves
conservative and struggle to follow the churchs teaching on capital
punishment. "With the death penalty, the argument is that they weren't
innocent," Reamer says. "They chose to commit a murder, and we're talking
about the innocent unborn." But, echoing the language of the late pope,
Reamer says the solution is not an either/or approach. "We need to look at
all of the creation of life together," he says. "We can't really separate
one from the other." Versions of that thinking have appeared on the
national political stage. Whether the effect is attributable to idealism
or political calculation, some prominent officials appear to have been
swayed. Senator Rick Santorum, a conservative Republican from Pennsylvania
and a devout Catholic, leads a catechism class for his colleagues on the
Hill (nearly 30 percent of all members of Congress are Roman Catholic). He
is an outspoken defender of the death penalty but this spring qualified
his support, saying there "probably should be some further limits on what
we use it for." Santorum's comments were soon followed by those of Senator
Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a fellow conservative Catholic, who told U.S. News
& World Report that "if we're trying to establish a culture of life, it's
difficult to have the state sponsoring executions." He suggested
eliminating taxpayer funding for abortions and executions.
"Not so long ago you couldn't get anyone to express doubts about the death
penalty," says Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information
Center and himself a Catholic. "Then you have this Catholic voice coming
in, and coming in loudly, and saying, 'This is our issue, too, and we are
firmly against it.' It sounds like something you might hear from the left
wing, but Pope John Paul was hardly a radical. And so the debate changes.
It becomes about the merits of the issue rather than some fringe idea."
Death-penalty abolitionists seem willing to accept the rightward tilt of
these potential adherents. "The church brings a strong moral voice to the
issue," says Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National
Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "It is welcome and it is timely.
This is the time to push."
IN 1995, SHORTLY AFTER REAMER arrived at St. Francis as an associate
pastor, he was sent across town to visit some inmates on North Carolina's
death row. As he was led deeper into the prison, a feeling of dread and
isolation overcame him. "My 1st time going in was just horrifying," he
says. "All these sally ports, it was really kind of scary, not knowing
what I was getting into, who these people were." One of the first
condemned men he met was Jeff Meyer, a "calm and peaceful man," Reamer
says, "who was eager for human interaction." Reamer returned frequently
and eventually began celebrating Mass once a week for a small group of the
condemned. As time went on, Reamer became an important link between Meyer
in prison and his family at church. Though Reamer is allowed physical
contact with Meyer, the inmate's family is not. "I can touch Jeff, hug
him, shake his hand," Reamer says. "I can embrace him, and I can embrace
his mother, but they cant embrace each other."
The priest knew nothing of Meyer's crime. "I never ask the men on death
row about their cases," he says. "I guess I'd rather know them for who
they are." Meyer was sentenced to death in 1988, before Reamer arrived at
St. Francis. But when a violation of courtroom protocol led to a new
sentencing trial in 1999, Reamer sat with the Meyer family during the
proceeding. He learned that in December of 1986, Jeff Meyer and a fellow
soldier stationed at the U.S. Army base in Fayetteville, North Carolina,
disguised themselves in ninja suits and broke into the house of an elderly
couple, intending to rob them. Startled by the husband, Meyer shot him
with a blowgun and then stabbed him to death with a butterfly knife. The
pair then stabbed the victims wife to death and fled with jewelry, credit
cards, and a television. "It was very painful to hear about," Reamer says.
But sitting in the courtroom as the case unfolded, Reamer was certain that
the communitys pain would only be compounded by executing Meyer. When the
jury imposed a death sentence, Reamer was despondent. "I remember
thinking, how could 12 people do this?" he says. "I certainly don't
advocate opening the prison doors and letting everyone out, but this was
real hard for me."
In most polls of the general public, between two-thirds and 3/4 of
Americans say they support the death penalty. Until recently, it was
generally believed that Catholic sentiment mirrored those figures. Then,
last year, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned its own
poll, which brought back astonishing results: Catholics split about evenly
on the issue, with just under half opposed and a nearly identical number
in favor (a small percentage were undecided). Furthermore, most of the
respondents who opposed the death penalty were regular churchgoers, and
2/3 of Catholics who attend daily Mass said they oppose capital
punishment.
According to some analyses, these traditional Catholics, who are likely to
subscribe to the entire "culture of life" approach, were responsible for
George Bushs reelection last November. By posing its arguments within the
matrix of the abortion debate, the church has enlisted in a favorite cause
of the left without becoming itself more liberal. The bishops' conference
is counting on these traditional Catholics to lead the abolition effort at
the grassroots level, especially because the campaign comes at a sensitive
time for the church as it struggles to recover its moral authority in the
wake of the priest sex-abuse scandal. "The one thing we feel very strongly
about is that when people talk about the death penalty, we win," says
Rivas. "We have the moral arguments that can change people's minds."
Nowhere is that effort more crucial than in the South, which carried out
nearly 75 percent of the nations executions in 2004. North Carolina's
death row is the 7th largest in the country, housing 177 offenders. North
Carolina is also home to the nation's 3rd-largest concentration of
Southern Baptists, who play a significant role in state and local
politics. In this environment, religion is a crucial factor in the push
for abolition, says Stephen Dear, director of People of Faith Against the
Death Penalty, based in Carrboro, North Carolina. "We can't, and never
will, abolish the death penalty in the South unless we have religious
communities involved," says Dear, who is Catholic. "We need to talk the
language and culture of the South." Catholics are particularly well suited
to the task, says John C. Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on
Religion and Public Life. "Southerners are culturally conservative, and
many of the Catholics who are appearing in the South are culturally
conservative as well," he says. "Because of that conservatism, in some
respects they fit in very well with the ethos of the region. That gives
them an opportunity to effect change in other areas."
North Carolina's Catholic population is small (just 4 % of the total), but
it more than doubled in the 1990s and continues to burgeon, reflecting a
larger trend of the migration of Catholics from the Northeast and Midwest
and Latin America to the South and Southwest. St. Francis of Assisi, an
affluent parish on the outskirts of Raleigh, has gone from a small church
and a couple of outbuildings in 1987 to a rambling, 35-acre campus, a
staff of 30, and an elementary school with nearly 600 students. Judging
from a packed house at a recent Sunday Mass, most of its members are
white, and the social-justice language employed in the parish bulletin
suggests a liberal bent. ("We reach out in a special way to those who
hunger and thirst for human dignity: the poor, suffering, and oppressed
people in our community and in our world.") But Reamer, like many of his
parishioners, is uncomfortable with party labels. "I'm not a Republican,
I'm not a Democrat," Reamer says. "It's too complex to fit into a
category."
Shortly after Jeff Meyer's trial, Reamer worked the case into one of his
homilies. "Many parishioners were surprised," he says. "They knew we were
praying for Jeff, but back then we didn't say why, so many people assumed
he had AIDS." Reamer and the other priests at St. Francis agreed to
clarify the prayer and include the other inmates on death row. That
version did not sit well with some congregants, who felt it ignored the
victims. They, too, are now included in the prayer. As the prayer evolved,
so did the congregation, grappling with an issue that Reamer says goes to
the very core of his mission as a Franciscan friar. "One of our
imperatives is to embrace society's outcasts," he says. "Those who are on
death row are being judged by one act in their lives. They are seen as
disposable, and therefore we execute them. They need our compassion."
With a membership estimated as high as 67 million, Roman Catholicism is
the largest religious denomination in the United States, accounting for
about 25 percent of the population. Within that group exists a great deal
of contention on a wide array of morally grounded issues. Some Catholics
advocate a social-justice approach to faith, rooted in a '60s-style
community activism and aid for the poor and disadvantaged; others espouse
a focus on introspection. "It's very difficult for the Catholic Church to
speak for all of its parishioners, because they are very likely to
disagree," says Green. "Not only with the church but with each other."
That sort of disagreement is apparent at St. Francis. "There are many,
many good people in this world," says Vince Clark, a retired marketing
executive who has been a member of St. Francis for 15 years.
"Unfortunately, there are also evil people, and those evil people need to
be executed." The Catholic Church traditionally condoned executions, most
infamously by burning heretics at the stake. In the 13th century, Pope
Innocent III ordered naysayers to sign a document declaring, in part, that
"the secular power can, without mortal sin, exercise judgment of blood."
Those who refused faced excommunication and death. Even now, official
church teaching stops short of prohibiting the death penalty, saying that
it is permissible in rare cases when the safety of society is threatened.
This exception causes some Catholic abolitionists great dismay. "The
wording leaves the theoretical exception there," says Dear. "People drive
a truck through that hole. It needs to be unequivocal."
Clark would much prefer it if the church put its energy into ending
abortions. "They're roaring proactive to prevent executions," he says.
"But they're not proactive in preventing abortions. This is my upset-ment
with it."
Such dissension notwithstanding, the death-penalty issue could prove a
critical unifying force for the Catholic Church. This is especially true
in new communities like St. Francis, where Catholics from a range of
traditions are attempting to create a new and cohesive approach. Around
the time of the second Meyer trial, St. Francis welcomed a new parishioner
named Walter Winiewicz, an IBM employee who had moved to Raleigh.
Winiewicz was a lifelong death-penalty supporter. "The 1st time I came to
church here, we prayed to end the death penalty," Winiewicz says. "I said,
'I can't say that,' so I stopped repeating the words." Then Winiewiczs
wife, who joined the church choir, discovered that Meyer's mother was a
choir member too. "That started it," he says. "Talking to my wife, I think
it helped both of us strengthen our decision to change."
Winiewicz had lived in Texas during the governorship of George Bush and
supported him when he ignored pleas for clemency from the pope and other
religious leaders. (Bush presided over 152 executions, more than any other
governor in modern U.S. history.) By 1999, when the governor of Missouri
granted the popes request for clemency just before an execution, Winiewicz
was starting to come around. "I wasn't there yet, but it was beginning to
sink in," he says. "Today I can tell you that I'm not so sure it deters
crime, and I'm becoming more concerned about human life."
The same year, another St. Francis parishioner, Mary Pollard, went to hear
a talk by Sister Helen Prejean. Pollard was what she calls "passively
opposed" to the death penalty. She had seen the Academy Award-winning film
based on Prejean's book Dead Man Walking and was curious to see what the
nun was like in real life. "She just blew me away," Pollard says. "She
talked about the unfairness of the system, that it was a punishment for
poor people and for black people. I left that day, and I thought, this is
definitely a problem in North Carolina, and what can we do about it?"
She soon got her chance. Pollard was working as a product liability
lawyer, and her firm was tapped to assist on a capital appeal (it's common
practice in communities that are short on death-penalty defense lawyers to
seek out deep-pocketed corporate firms for help). Pollard persuaded the
partners to accept the case, which she took on as her own. Her client,
Alan Gell, had been sentenced to death for the robbery and murder of a
retired truck driver. Pollard soon discovered that he had either been out
of the state or in jail at the time of the killing, and found a taped
statement from one of the witnesses confessing that she had made up her
story. 4 years later, Gell was a free man.
The case so convinced Pollard of the immorality of the death penalty that
she quit her job and went to work for the Center for Death Penalty
Litigation in Durham. "The part of Catholicism that I embrace is the
appeal for justice, the responsibility to the least of us, forgiveness,
and turning the other cheek," Pollard says. "The church should play a role
in remedying these things in society, waking people up to the injustices,
to the things we can fix."
In the nearly 4 years since Pollard turned to death-penalty work
full-time, North Carolina has executed 15 men. This fall 3 more of the
condemned who have exhausted their appeals face execution. Their only
chance for reprieve is clemency from the governor, Mike Easley, a former
district attorney and a Catholic who, since becoming governor, has signed
off on 21 executions and granted clemency twice. One of this fall's cases,
that of Elias Syriani, particularly troubles Pollard. In this instance,
she says, its clear that the only justification for the punishment is
state-inflicted revenge.
On a warm September morning, Syriani, clad in a red prison-issue jumpsuit,
his hands cuffed in front of him, sat behind thick iron bars and
bullet-proof glass and reflected on his dimming prospects for survival. An
Assyrian from Jordan who worked as a tool-and-die machine operator in
Charlotte, he was sentenced for stabbing his wife to death with a
screwdriver in front of two of their 4 young children. That was almost 15
years ago. Syriani is now 67, the 3rd-oldest person on North Carolinas
death row. He apologized for the sweat he continually mopped from his
forehead, explaining that it is a symptom of his diabetes. He referred to
his crime as "my situation" and talked about his love for his wife, and
for his children, who are now grown. Until last year, only one of them had
contacted him. Last summer, all 4 came to see him, intending to confront
him. They wound up forgiving him and now want the state to spare his life.
"I learned to live with not having a mother," says Janet Syriani, the
youngest of the 4 children, who was eight when her mother was stabbed. "I
don't know if I'm going to be able to handle having another parent
murdered. Enough is enough."
In a mournful, Middle Eastern waver, Syriani sang a song that he wrote for
them in Arabic, 1 verse of praise for each child. He shared photos they
sent, including 1 of his older daughter, who is due with his first
grandchild in the spring, a child Syriani is not likely to see if his
execution is carried out as planned. "I leave everything to God," Syriani
said. "Maybe he has a miracle. I leave everything in his hands."
Cases like Syriani's lay bare the cruelty of execution, Pollard says. "You
cant say you're doing it for the victims, because they have forgiven him,"
she says. "You cant say youre doing it to protect society, or even the
other inmates," because Syriani is old and unwell. "What you're left with
is vengeance."
THE CONVERSION OF ST. FRANCIS CHURCH has progressed beyond the sanctuary
and the prison cell to the halls of political power. Mary Pollard, while
she was litigating to free Alan Gell from death row, joined a group of St.
Francis parishioners lobbying state legislators to curtail capital
punishment. Their efforts are loosely coordinated by Paul Amrhein,
director of Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Ministries. (His
title used to be director of Social Concerns, until he got one too many
calls seeking help with wedding plans.) It is his job to employ an
education-driven approach to changing minds, both within the parish and
within the legislature. On execution nights, he joins the protest vigils
outside the prison gates. "From a spiritual perspective, inability to
forgive is the major impediment to peoples conversion on this issue,"
Amrhein says. "We try to work on ways to get that sense of forgiveness."
>From time to time, he organizes Sunday-morning signing stations around the
St. Francis campus, with postcards and colorful helium-filled balloons and
volunteers standing at the ready to answer questions and urge support.
After one particularly successful campaign, an effort in 2001 to ban
execution of the mentally retarded, Amrhein, Pollard, and several other
parishioners showed up with a stack of 600 postcards at the office of
North Carolina senate speaker Marc Basnight, often called the most
powerful person in North Carolina politics. "He was very
pro-death-penalty," says Amrhein. "We were very calm, collected, and
prayerful."
Basnight seemed unmoved. After a short while, he got up to go, leaving the
supplicants with one of his aides. The aide pulled them into a side
office, Pollard remembers, grasped their hands, and asked them to pray
that the senator would change his mind. "It really seemed genuine,"
Pollard says. We took it as a good sign." In the spring of that year, the
North Carolina legislature voted to end execution of the mentally
retarded. Basnight voted in favor of the measure. A year later the U.S.
Supreme Court (over the objections of Antonin Scalia, a Catholic and an
outspoken death-penalty supporter) found such executions "cruel and
unusual." The Court cited an amicus brief written by the bishops'
conference as evidence of "evolving standards of decency" when it banned
the practice. In 2005, the Court followed a similar line of reasoning when
it ended execution of juveniles.
In recent years, grassroots efforts such as those at St. Francis have been
key in the Catholic Churchs attempts to soften the hardline
pro-death-penalty stance that dominated the U.S. political arena for
nearly a quarter century. When Governor George Ryan of Illinois in 2003
famously removed all 167 inmates from that state's death row, after
declaring a moratorium on further capital sentences, he was hailed
nationally but excoriated by many of his constituents. Church leaders
stood by him, providing constant public affirmation of his action. Local
Catholic activists, including Amrhein and others at St. Francis, organized
letter-writing campaigns and protests in support of many of the 121
condemned inmates who have subsequently been exonerated nationwide. In
2004, the bishops' conference played a key role in getting Congress to
pass the Innocence Protection Act, which provides convicted offenders
greater access to DNA testing and helps states improve the quality of
legal representation in capital cases by establishing national standards.
Although President Bush remains a death-penalty supporter, he spoke in his
State of the Union address in January of the need for "dramatically
expanding" DNA testing for capital defendants. In April, when John Paul II
died, Bush became the first president in history to attend a popes
funeral. In Florida, his brother Jeb, who converted to Catholicism before
becoming governor and has repeatedly called the signing of death warrants
the hardest part of his job, publicly fretted over whether to delay an
execution in honor of the pope - before going ahead with it.
Of the 38 states that currently permit the death penalty, bishops have
identified a handful as likely candidates for abolition. This summer state
church leaders successfully testified against a bill to reenact New York's
death penalty. Similar efforts came close to succeeding in Connecticut and
New Mexico and have also targeted Kansas and New Jersey. In North
Carolina, the goal is less sweeping: a pause to study the issue. In 2003,
the North Carolina Senate passed a moratorium measure after Basnight
experienced a dramatic change of heart during a debate on the issue on the
Senate floor. Amrhein believes the visit from the parishioners helped tip
the scales. Their efforts were not as successful in the House, where the
measure failed to come to a vote, but Amrhein says it is just a matter of
time and patience before they bring enough legislators around to pass a
moratorium. "You can't force a person's conversion," he says. "It has to
be a heartfelt, deep-gut thing."
Death by increments is the way that the death penalty is most likely to
meet its demise, says the Pew Forum's Green. "It would be very difficult
to abolish the death penalty in one fell swoop," he says. "Public opinion
isn't there. I do think that the emphasis the Catholic hierarchy has
placed on this issue is likely to inspire a lot more activism, which
presents real opportunities for change." Richard Dieter concurs: "The
death penalty is not going to end because of a moral revolution," he says.
"People arent going to swing over to the Catholic side. Most Americans
don't think that way. But theres an openness to consider it now, which the
Catholic Church has made possible. I'm not morally weak for opposing the
death penalty. I'm morally strong. That is a big change."
INSPIRED BY THEIR CHURCHS TEACHING on the death penalty, a group of St.
Francis parishioners decided in the spring of 2004 to perform an
adaptation of Ernest Gaines A Lesson Before Dying. Their ambition for the
project was modest: one free performance, in the churchs sanctuary. To
everyone's surprise, 700 people showed up, and the play seemed to strike a
deep chord. "We kept getting calls from all these people saying, 'When can
you perform it at our church?' says Megan Loughlin Nerz, executive
director of the project. 'When can you perform it at our school?"
The performers obliged and, with Pollards help, were able to persuade
exonerated death row inmate Alan Gell to speak after one show about his
ordeal. St. Francis parishioner Tim Throndson, a partner at
PriceWaterhouseCoopers, attended that performance and was deeply moved.
"It was incredible to see Alan standing there in front of you," Throndson
says. "Here was a man who was near execution. It was extremely powerful."
Seeing Gell, he says, solidified his opposition to the death penalty.
Throndson describes himself as a "compassionate conservative." He opposes
abortion and euthanasia and is a supporter of President Bush. He had no
background in theater, but he decided to get involved. He joined the board
of what had become known as the Justice Theater Project, an arts advocacy
group.
He was dissatisfied when, after the Gaines play, the theater project moved
in other directions, putting on one play about the working poor and
preparing for a production of Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath. One morning
last spring over coffee, he and another board member suggested they chuck
that plan and return to the death penalty. "It was a painful decision,
because we had to give up what wed been working on," Throndson says. "But
we did some serious evaluation, and we said, lets go back to what matters
most. Its a critical issue, one where we think we can make a difference,
probably more than ever."
The projects creative leaders agree. "I was talking to one of my
neighbors, and she said, 'Anybody that kills anybody, just fry 'em,'" says
the project's artistic director, Deb Royals-Mizerk, who often sings
alongside Jeff Meyer's mother in the church choir. "It slammed me right in
the face. I started thinking of Judy Meyer. My response to her was, 'If we
in the state of North Carolina were going to kill your son, would you feel
the same way?'"
Now the theater project is deep into an 18-month original production based
on interviews with people who have been directly involved with death row
and with executions. The goal, says Nerz, is to bring the debate back to
what the Catholic Church believes is the core issue: not innocence,
frailty, incompetence, or poverty, but mercy and forgiveness. "If we talk
about the death penalty in the terms of the exonerated and the poor and
minorities, are we saying that if we could right those things it would be
okay to kill?" she says. "We hope to take the debate to a different
level."
The theater project participants, and many others at St. Francis, are
exactly the kind of Catholics that the U.S. bishops' conference is hoping
to inspire: those who are willing to move beyond receiving wisdom to
creating it. "I have a lot of Catholic friends, as well as non-Catholic
friends, I have talked to and debated about this," Throndson says. "And
every time we talk about it, I say, 'If you really believe this person is
guilty, would you be the person to push the plunger and watch that person
die? How would you feel about that?' And thats when it starts to shift."
(source: Mother Jones, November/December Issue)
ARIZONA:
State high court 'clarifies' sentencing in death penalty cases
The Arizona Supreme Court clarified ground rules for death penalty cases
Thursday, ruling that jurors should decide whether mitigating evidence is
sufficient to warrant leniency without trying to weigh that evidence
against circumstances supporting a death sentence.
Individual jurors have the obligation to make their own assessments about
whether circumstances in death penalty cases are sufficient for leniency,
the court said. It rejected proposed jury instructions offered by the
defense and prosecution in a Maricopa County murder case.
The state's senior death penalty lawyer did not immediately return a call
for comment, but a lawyer who advocates against the death penalty said the
ruling could help some defendants.
The ruling controls sentencing practices used by trial courts under a law
enacted in 2002 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that jurors, not
judges, must make fact-finding decisions on whether circumstances of a
case should subject a defendant to a death sentence.
The state's death penalty law requires a jury to impose a death sentence
if it finds that so-called aggravating factors existed in a case and if
there are no mitigating circumstances "sufficiently substantial to call
for leniency."
Aggravating factors include the age of the victim, a particularly cruel or
brutal manner or death or the existence of multiple victims. Examples of
mitigating circumstances include duress and the defendant's age.
In the case decided Thursday, the justices rejected prosecutors' request
to have jurors instructed that defendants have the burden to prove that
mitigating circumstances are sufficient to warrant a life term in prison
instead of death.
Instead, the ruling said, state law requires individual jurors to decide
in each case whether mitigation evidence proved by the defense is
sufficient to warrant leniency even if aggravating factors support
imposing a death sentence.
The Supreme Court said it's own past rulings have referred to jurors
"weighing" mitigating circumstances against aggravating factors. However,
that's an approach that could confuse jurors and that should not be
included in their instructions, the ruling said.
"Each juror must determine whether, in that juror's individual assessment,
the mitigation is of such quality or value that it warrants leniency,"
Judge Rebecca White Berch said.
That could help some defendants because a judge's reference to "weighing"
sentencing evidence effectively puts a burden of proof on the defense to
show that mitigating factors are greater than aggravating factors, said
attorney Marty Lieberman, president of the Arizona Death Penalty Forum.
"This sort of levels that out," said Lieberman, whose group advocates
against the death penalty. "I do think it's significant."
The ruling also rejected a defense-backed jury instruction that said a
jury should impose a life sentence if jurors had doubt whether death was
the appropriate sentence.
The ruling came in the case of William Christopher Baldwin. He was
convicted of first-degree murder in 2004, and his case now goes back to
Superior Court for sentencing.
*source: Associated Press)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Appeals court to hear Mumia Abu-Jamal case
In Philadelphia, a federal appeals court has agreed to hear an appeal from
death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther convicted in
the 1981 murder of a white Philadelphia police officer.
In the most significant ruling in the case in 4 years, the 3rd U.S.
Circuit of Appeals said it would consider 3 of Abu-Jamal's claims.
Abu-Jamal, 51, a one-time radio reporter, was convicted in 1982 of
shooting Daniel Faulkner, 25, after the officer pulled over Abu-Jamal's
brother in 1981.
Abu-Jamal's attorney, Robert Bryan, did not immediately return a call for
comment.
Prosecutor Hugh Burns called the decision a blow to Abu-Jamal's defense
because the court dismissed dozens of other claims claims from the inmate
as frivolous. "The case is moving after 4 years, which is good," he said
Thursday.
Abu-Jamal's writings and taped speeches on the justice system have made
him a cause celebre among Hollywood activists, foreign politicians and
some death-penalty opponents, who believe he was the victim of a racist
justice system.
In 2001, a federal judge overturned Abu-Jamal's death sentence but upheld
his conviction. Both sides have appealed that ruling, and Abu-Jamal
remains on death row.
The appeals court said Tuesday it will consider Abu-Jamal's claims that
prosecutors illegally removed blacks from the jury pool, that a prosecutor
gave an improper summation to the jury, and that the judge in a previous
appeal was biased.
(source: Associated Press)
CALIFORNIA:
Prosecutor has no doubts Williams should be executed----Martin, who
presented case in the 1981 murder trial in Torrance, says the evidence is
still compelling.
The man who put Stanley "Tookie" Williams on death row says he knows the
truth.
Even though Williams almost certainly will never admit it -- and his
passionate defenders look away from it in their focus on redemption -- Bob
Martin knows the truth.
The former Torrance prosecutor, now retired and living in Rolling Hills
Estates, says he knows the truth because he spent months with the evidence
that convicted Williams of 4 brutal murders -- evidence that has survived
more than 2 decades of legal appeals.
As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger conducts a clemency hearing for Williams
today in Sacramento, Martin believes Williams can't hide from what he did
in 1979.
"He absolutely knows that the 'innocence' is a ploy, and he persists in
that," said Martin, 83. "It's worked up until now -- to tell the public
'I'm innocent, parade for me.'"
Unless the governor grants clemency to the 51-year-old co-founder of the
Crips street gang, Williams will die by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m.
Tuesday.
Williams' clemency petition barely mentions the incriminating evidence
Martin presented to jurors in 1981: Confessions to friends, ballistics
tests, eyewitness testimony and an escape plan involving the explosion of
an inmate bus at the Torrance Courthouse.
"This is a petition which seeks to spare the life of one man who has
lifted himself up from the furthest depths, and whose redemption is a
beacon of hope to others," his lawyers wrote.
Williams' supporters -- actor Jamie Foxx, rap artist Snoop Dogg and other
passionate death penalty opponents -- point to his work authoring books
warning children of the dangers of gangs. They cite his efforts to broker
peace among gangs from prison. And his Nobel Peace Prize nomination.
But they rarely revive the details of the case against Williams, the
graphic, intimate details that Martin still lives with today.
Under heavy security, with extra bailiffs physically searching anyone who
looked suspicious, Williams' two-month trial began Jan. 21, 1981. Big and
brawny, Williams remained mostly quiet during a trial that proceeded in
nearly textbook fashion, Martin said.
While some of the witnesses against him were also criminals, they mostly
testified about Williams' own incriminating actions, including his
elaborate escape plan and details only the killer would know.
"There are numerous instances where Stanley incriminates himself in
partial confessions because he's bragging about it -- what he did," Martin
said.
Williams' first victim was 7-Eleven clerk Albert Lewis Owens. The
26-year-old Army veteran and father of two had just started at the Pico
Rivera convenience store.
It was 4 a.m. on Feb. 28, 1979, when Williams and three other men ushered
Owens inside the store from the parking lot, where he was sweeping. At
gunpoint, Williams ordered Owens into a back room and ordered him to lie
face down.
Williams chambered a round into the shotgun, and fired at a security
camera. He chambered another, and twice shot into Owens' back, the muzzle
of the gun nearly touching him.
The group escaped with a bounty of $120.
Alfred "Blackie" Coward testified under a grant of immunity that he,
Williams and two other men went to the store in a Cadillac and an old
brown station wagon. Afterward, Coward testified, Williams laughed
maniacally and said: "You should have heard the way he sounded when I shot
him," and made growling noises.
3 bystanders having nothing to do with the crime backed Coward's
testimony, giving the same description of the cars and the clothes
Williams and his associates were wearing.
Another associate, Tony Sims, has never wavered from his identification of
Williams as the shooter.
Sims is serving life in prison for Owens' murder. After his arrest, Sims
admitted he was involved in the robbery but insisted Williams killed
Owens. He did not testify at Williams' trial, but repeated his admission
from the witness stand in his own trial and in subsequent parole hearings
over the last 2 decades.
Martin points out how Sims had nothing to gain by telling the truth since
he was facing life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Eleven days after Owens' murder, Williams killed Yen-I Yang, 76, his wife,
Tsai-Shai Yang, 63, and their daughter, 43-year-old Yee-Chin Lin at the
Brookhaven Motel they owned at 104th Street and Vermont Avenue in the
unincorporated Athens area, just north of Gardena. Williams stole about
$100.
Williams broke through the door and, as the women screamed, shot Yen-I
Yang before turning the shotgun on his wife and daughter.
Deputies who arrived within 10 minutes found the 3 clinging to life. Yen-I
Yang and Lin held on for a couple hours, but both died at nearby
hospitals.
In all, 5 blasts came from Williams' gun. He was careful to pick up the
casings, but one rolled away. That missed casing became the subject of
repeated forensics tests Martin ordered and one more piece of evidence
linking Williams to the murders.
Along with the casing, investigators recovered Williams' shotgun, which
documents show he purchased in 1974.
The conclusion: Williams' gun fired the expended shell recovered at the
motel.
"That's not junk science," Martin said, answering critics of the case
against Williams.
Martin says Williams didn't keep his crimes to himself for long.
2 days after the motel murders, he asked James Garrett, a friend with whom
he was living, if he heard about the killings.
Williams referred to the victims as "Buddhaheads" and said the killer must
have been a professional because he picked up the shell casings -- a fact
known only by the killer and the police detectives.
Eventually, Williams admitted he was the killer, and shared more details
-- including how he broke the door down and descriptions of where each
family member was standing when shot.
Another friend, Sam Coleman, who was with Williams when he was arrested,
told detectives Williams gave him a similar account of the motel murders
the day after they occurred.
Garrett and Coleman, though, had some credibility issues. The defense
argued they were both criminals who would say whatever it took to protect
themselves -- even if it meant lying.
Martin, though, stood by their testimony, finding it was all consistent
with the evidence. But it was a jailhouse informant who is held most in
contempt by Williams' defenders.
George Ogelsby, a fellow inmate, told the jury about an elaborate escape
plan Williams had hatched.
Williams' attorneys cross-examined Ogelsby aggressively in an attempt to
portray him as a jailhouse snitch trying to get himself a deal.
But Martin said Ogelsby merely confirmed the escape plan laid out in
Williams' own handwritten notes.
"I can't go to Central Casting for my witnesses, I have to take my
witnesses as I find them," Martin said. "All he did was corroborate the
writings of Williams. Williams' partial confessions is what probably did
him in."
Those notes were verified as having been penned by Williams by a
handwriting expert who testified that nearly every "i" was dotted with his
signature six-point asterisk. The notes revealed that Williams was
"anxious to book" and had friends on the outside procuring dynamite to
help.
The escape plan was elaborate -- 2 friends were going to shoot the guards
as they got off the sheriff's prisoner bus at the courthouse, then
Williams would kill Coward to keep him from testifying against him.
Lastly, they would blow up the bus to cover up which inmates had escaped.
Martin insists the escape plan shows Williams' consciousness of guilt.
Although Williams kept quiet through much of his trial, Martin said, he
revealed his true nature to jurors when they returned with guilty
verdicts, calling them "sons of bitches" and mouthing the words: "I'm
going to get each and every one of you. ..."
The former prosecutor for years also has tried to debunk the defense
charge that he discriminated against blacks in picking Williams' jury.
Martin shows a death certificate from a black man who served on the panel
and a signed, sworn affidavit by another juror, a Filipino man, who said
there was, without doubt, a black man on the jury.
Still, Williams and his defenders persist in the claim he was convicted by
an all-white jury.
For several years after he 1st landed on San Quentin's death row, Williams
was hardly a model prisoner.
2 months into his incarceration, he knelt over another inmate and struck
him in the head with his fists. He threatened guards on several occasions
and twice threw a chemical substance at them.
He was placed in solitary confinement for six years. After he emerged in
1993, Williams said he had an epiphany, found God and decided to transform
himself into a peace activist.
Martin, a World War II veteran and grandfather of seven, retired in 1992.
His last act was to help fight one of the many appeals Williams filed
after his 1981 conviction and death sentence.
"I would say Stanley Williams has had 25 years of numerous judges in state
and federal courts who have given him due process of law," Martin said. "I
can be confident that no person is going to be executed in California who
is innocent and, therefore, I have no qualms about trying death penalty
cases in California."
While the rallies by celebrities and death penalty protesters have reached
a feverish pitch in recent weeks, Martin shakes his head at what they
don't know about the man he prosecuted.
He questions how Williams can claim redemption without admitting guilt.
And he wonders what clemency would say about the criminal justice system
in California.
"Am I gonna celebrate if he gets the death penalty? No," Martin said.
"Am I gonna cry if he gets clemency? No. But I will feel it is a travesty
because the justice system is being laughed at."
(source: Daily Breeze)
*******************
'Tookie' Williams: Gang Founder Versus Nobel-Nominated Peacemaker Crips
Co-Founder's Clemency Quest Is a Battle Between His Dueling Legacies
Stanley "Tookie" Williams' fight for clemency is a battle between his
polar opposite legacies: the co-founder of the notorious Crips gang versus
the Nobel Prize-nominated children's book author who warns against the
dangers of gang life.
Time is running out for Williams, who is scheduled to be executed Dec. 13
for the 1979 slayings of four people in 2 separate robberies. California's
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court both have
rejected bids to overturn his conviction. His last hope lies with Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is expected to meet with Williams' lawyers and
prosecutors in a closed-door clemency hearing today. If clemency is
granted, Williams' death sentence would be commuted to life in prison
without parole.
Williams' case has become a cause celebre because his quest for clemency
has been championed by Hollywood and recording industry notables such as
former "M*A*S*H" actor and longtime death penalty opponent Mike Farrell,
rap superstar and former Crip Snoop Dogg, and Academy Award-winning actor
Jamie Foxx -- who portrayed the condemned inmate in the 2004 FX television
movie "Redemption." Various activists and the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People have held rallies on his behalf.
Williams and his lawyers continue to insist on his innocence. They say his
efforts to steer others away from gang violence show that he deserves to
be spared the death penalty.
"This is a life ... whose message has resonated with children,
particularly with the people of California," said Peter Fleming Jr., one
of Williams' lead attorneys, in a telephone news conference Wednesday.
"This is a man who has not only redeemed himself, but he has sent his
message of redemption and nonviolence to the people of California and all
over the country."
But victims' rights advocates argue that Williams does not deserve mercy
because he has not entirely renounced his legacy as a Crips co-founder and
has never taken responsibility for the slayings.
"There are some people out there who speak of Mr. Williams like he was a
deity, like Jesus Christ," said Jared Lewis, a former police officer and
founder of Know Gangs, which offers seminars and expertise on gangs and
gang culture. "They prop him up as if he was some sort of hero and he's
really not. He's a murderer."
To Save a Life to Save Others
Williams has been on death row at San Quentin State Prison since 1981,
when he was convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection for the
slaying of store clerk Albert Owens during the robbery of a 7-Eleven store
and the shooting deaths of 3 members of the Yang family -- Yen-I Yang,
Tsai-Shai Chen Yang and Yu-Chin Yang Lin -- who operated a Los Angeles
motel.
Since his conviction, Williams has written nine books warning children and
teenagers about the dangers of gang life. He's been nominated for the
Nobel Peace Prize five times and for the Nobel Prize for literature once.
In 1993, he videotaped a message at San Quentin that was shown to 400 gang
members, and he helped broker a truce between the rival Crips and Bloods
gangs during the 1st-ever gang summit in Los Angeles. He also has written
a "peace protocol" to help rival gangs work out disagreements.
Williams, his supporters say, is a living example of the perils of gang
life and can be much more valuable to enforcement officials -- and to
impressionable youth -- if he is spared.
"We would make a huge mistake to take such a valuable asset, such a
brilliant source of expertise and throw that life away," said Bruce
Gordon, president and chief executive of the NAACP. "It'll cause the lives
of others to be lost and that makes absolutely no sense to me."
"He is our secret weapon to help young African-Americans avoid gangs,"
Gordon continued. "We want to save his life so he can save the lives of
others."
Other supporters indicate that Williams' execution would extinguish the
hopes of imprisoned gang members considering reform, telling them that no
one, no matter what they do to change their ways, is worth saving -- that
there is no mercy for the reformed.
"It would send a terrible message if Stan is executed," said Cameron
Sturdevant, an organizer of the "Save Tookie" campaign in California and
anti-death penalty activist. "It would not only send out a message of
vengeance, avenging violence with violence. But also, if someone like Stan
can't get clemency, then who can?"
Opportunistic -- and Unrepentant -- Gang Icon?
Williams' detractors say he is not a model of a convict deserving of
clemency and that some of his supporters are using him -- as they have
other condemned inmates -- to further their own cause. And while Williams
has gained notoriety -- and some nationwide sympathy -- his alleged
victims and their families have almost been forgotten.
"What's troubling is that you have these celebrities who take up this
cause and they don't know anything about the case and they don't know he
victims' names or have never met any of the victims' families," said Jared
Lewis. "The bottom line is that we still have relatives of his victims who
live with what he did every single day. The wounds for them today are as
fresh as they were more than 25 years ago."
Lewis also suggests that Williams is opportunistic, taking credit for his
good deeds while in prison but not his legacy as a Crips co-founder.
"His supporters say he is reformed, but Mr. Williams has never admitted
responsibility [for the slayings] -- he hasn't taken that final step to
full reform. And what I find interesting, that he takes credit for saving
1,500 lives but he doesn't mention anything about the lives lost because
of the Crips," Lewis said.
Williams' lawyers say he has repeatedly apologized for his past in his
children's books and messages to gang members. However, he believes that
becoming a police informant would ruin his credibility with the children
he is trying to help. They would see him as a snitch and not trust him.
"These children are listening to Stanley because of who he is and what he
stands for," said Williams' attorney, Jonathan Harris.
No physical evidence tied Williams to the slayings. Shell casings
connected a gun Williams owned to the crime scenes, but his attorneys have
challenged the efficiency of the ballistics tests used at the time of his
trial. Key prosecution witnesses said that they heard Williams admit to
and brag about the slayings.
However, Williams' lawyers have argued that these witnesses had reason to
lie: one was an alleged accomplice who was granted immunity while the
other was a career criminal. In addition, Williams' attorneys have argued
that the prosecution unfairly dismissed all potential black jurors, making
the jury that ultimately convicted him racially biased.
In the Governor's Hands
All these appellate arguments have failed. Williams' best chance at life
now lies with Schwarzenegger.
A California governor has not granted clemency since Ronald Reagan spared
a prisoner in 1967. Since the United States reinstated capital punishment
in 1976, 1,002 inmates have been executed while 230 have been granted
clemency. But most of those came when former Illinois Gov. George Ryan
commuted the sentences of 167 death row inmates, citing an "arbitrary and
capricious and therefore immoral" process.
California is a state that favors the death sentence, with 648 condemned
inmates on death row. Eleven inmates have been executed since 1977, when
the Legislature reinstated capital punishment. During his 2 years in
office, Schwarzenegger has denied clemency twice despite the inmates'
claims of mental illness, innocence and good behavior behind bars. Though
some pundits have speculated that Schwarzenegger -- who's reeling from the
defeat of four ballot measures he backed in a November special election,
and has seen his popularity drop in the polls -- could grant Williams
clemency to win favor with liberal voters, it would outrage his
conservative Republican base.
While his supporters and opponents have loudly voiced their opinions about
whether he deserves clemency, Williams has remained subdued in what may be
the last days of his life. Over the phone, he has thanked his supporters
at rallies and in interviews for their efforts, but is reluctant to talk
about the execution. Gray-haired and bespectacled, Williams today appears
to be a less menacing figure than the hulking gang founder of the 1970s.
He also insists his heart has changed.
"There is no part of me that existed then that exists now," Williams told
The Associated Press in a recent interview. "The majority of the
detractors and naysayers ... it's difficult for them to recognize the
redemption. They've been unable to stop smoking or drinking or lose weight
and they're looking at me being in San Quentin and they say, 'This man is
on death row convicted of killing 4 people, how can he be redeemed?' They
can't believe that. They don't want to believe that. They would feel
lesser about themselves."
Some believe that if Williams is executed, violence will break out in
black communities. One Los Angeles-based advocate for the homeless would
favor Schwarzenegger postponing Williams' execution in return for a peace
treaty to stop violence in the black community. "I'm willing to stay
Tookie's execution for, let's say, 30 days, whatever. You guys decide,
provided you stop the young black men from killing each other, in your
community," said Ted Hayes. "You do that, [the legacy of] Tookie lives.
You don't do that, Tookie dies. Make the blacks -- African-American
leadership -- responsible."
(source: ABC News Internet Ventures)
