Mary Shaw On January 11, the Illinois state legislature passed a bill abolishing the death penalty in that state. The bill was then sent to Governor Pat Quinn’s desk. Whether or not he will sign it into law, however, is still uncertain.
According to the Chicago Tribune, “Quinn said he supports ‘capital punishment when applied carefully and fairly,’ but also backs the 10-year-old moratorium on executions.” (Former Governor George Ryan had declared a moratorium on the death penalty in 2000.)
There are numerous reasons why Governor Quinn should sign the death penalty abolition bill.
The first reason arises from Quinn’s own words, as quoted above: that he supports execution “when applied carefully and fairly.” Human nature being what it is, there is no way to guarantee that the death penalty is applied carefully and fairly. In fact, there is too much proof that the opposite is the case.
Studies in several states have shown that the death penalty is applied in a discriminatory, arbitrary, and uneven manner, and is used disproportionately against racial minorities and the poor. For example, a 1998 study of death sentences in Philadelphia found that African-American defendants were almost four times more likely to receive the death penalty than were people of other ethnic origins who committed similar crimes. Where is the justice here?
In addition to its biased application, the death penalty is demonstrably not a deterrent. According to Amnesty International, “FBI data shows that all 14 states without capital punishment in 2008 had homicide rates at or below the national rate.”
Also, execution is irreversible, which is a huge problem, given so many cases of death row inmates who have been exonerated after conviction, based on DNA or other evidence. How many other innocent persons were not lucky enough to be proven innocent prior to their executions? We know of at least a few.
On a more philosophical note, Amnesty International describes the death penalty as “the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights.”
For those of you who follow the Christian faith, consider the commandment that “Thou shalt not kill.” That commandment bears no caveat indicating that it’s acceptable to kill a killer.
Clearly, the death penalty does not represent justice. It represents revenge — sometimes misdirected revenge.
Shouldn’t we as a society be above that sort of thing?
Shouldn’t the State of Illinois be above it?
I hope Governor Quinn will ultimately agree.
Mary Shaw In his final week as Governor of Pennsylvania, Democrat Ed Rendell sent some mixed signals regarding the death penalty in this commonwealth.
First, on a positive note, Rendell noted on January 14 that there are flaws in the capital punishment process. However, being a death penalty proponent, he seemed more concerned about the time it takes for capital cases to work their way through the court system than the actual justice-related issues that worry death penalty opponents, such as the very real possibility of wrongful convictions.
Nevertheless, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Rendell “called on the General Assembly either to streamline the process or do away with capital punishment.”
To me it seems like too little too late. And the “streamlining” part of it concerns me.
First of all, in 2003, when Rendell was new in his Governor role, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System called for an immediate moratorium on executions, citing “strong indications that Pennsylvania’s capital justice system does not operate in an even-handed manner.” In fact, research showed that that black defendants in Philadelphia were four times more likely to receive the death penalty than non-blacks charged with similar crimes.
Armed with the proof of racism in the system and the Supreme Court Committee’s recommendation, countless concerned citizens petitioned the governor to implement a moratorium. But Rendell seemingly ignored it all. Some attributed that to the fact that as a former Philadelphia District Attorney, Rendell himself had convicted many of the Commonwealth’s death row prisoners.
Then, to add insult to injury (or vice-versa), Rendell signed six death warrants on January 14 of this year, the same day that he questioned the system, with one foot out the Governor’s office door.
In other words, one of his last acts in office was to issue orders to kill six people under a broken system that he concurrently criticized.
Rendell had eight years to fix the system if he really wanted to. Now he will be leaving it in the hands of his Republican successor, Tom Corbett, who, according to a spokesperson quoted by the Associated Press, believes that “[t]here’s nothing you can do about it.”
Nothing you can do about it?!
Tell that to the six exonerees who have been released from Pennsylvania’s death row since 1973, who may have been dead today if the authorities in charge also believed that “there’s nothing you can do about it.”
And tell the six exonerees that the process should have been “streamlined”, where streamlining could have deprived them of the opportunity to prove their innocence.
Where lives hang in the balance, shouldn’t true justice matter more than expediency?
Mary Shaw I am writing this on the third Monday of January – Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the U.S. It is a day set aside each year to honor the birth, life, and legacy of the great civil rights leader.
And, on this day, I wonder how the Reverend Dr. King would feel about today’s American politics if he were still alive.
Surely he would be delighted by the fact that an African-American family now occupies the White House. This is something I didn’t think I’d see even in my own lifetime.
But surely, too, he would see the backlash.
He would see the racism on display at tea party gatherings, with signs sporting slogans such as:
and
“Obama-nomics: Monkey See, Monkey Spend!”
and
“Obama – What you Talkin’ about Willis! Spend My Money?”
and
He would hear Glenn Beck of Fox News accuse President Obama of being a reverse racist with “a deep-seated hatred for white people” – despite the inconvenient little detail that Obama’s own beloved mother was white.
He would hear right-wing blowhard Rush Limbaugh say things like:
“[I]n Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering.”
and
“How do you get promoted in a Barack Obama administration? By hating white people or even saying you do.”
and
“[T]hey’re finally hearing me. ‘He’s an angry black guy.’ I do believe that about the president. I do believe he’s angry. I think his wife is angry.”
Dr. King would hear Limbaugh entertaining his radio listeners with a tune called “Barack The Magic Negro“.
He would see the rampant xenophobia exposed by Arizona’s draconian new immigration law, nicknamed the “Show Your Papers” law.
He would see even more rampant xenophobia at play in that same state with the recent prohibition of ethnic studies classes in Arizona schools.
He would see the rampant xenophobia exposed by the protests against a proposed Islamic Community Center in lower Manhattan.
And he would hear the right-wing ignorati refer to the president as “Barack HUSSEIN Obama”, always with a strong emphasis on the Muslim-sounding middle name.
Every step forward for racial justice is to be commended, like the election of President Obama. But clearly we still have a lot of work to do before people will truly be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
And surely Dr. King would want us to keep fighting the good fight.
Someday, I believe, we shall overcome.
Mary Shaw January 11, 2011, marks the ninth anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. That’s the same Guantanamo prison that Barack Obama promised to close in his first year as president. But Gitmo won’t be closing any time soon. Congress has seen to that. And so has Obama.
Just before Christmas, Congress passed a defense spending bill that specifically prohibits the use of defense funding to establish an alternative prison in the United States or to transfer Gitmo detainees to the U.S. And, on January 7, President Obama signed it into law.
There had been reports that some of Obama’s advisors were pushing for him to issue a signing statement rejecting the Guantanamo-related provisions in the bill as intrusions on his constitutional authority. But the statement that Obama did issue amounted to little more than toothless rhetoric, criticizing the provisions and merely promising to “work with the Congress” to mitigate their effects.
And so, at this point, there is no foreseeable end to Gitmo’s legacy of prisoner abuse and unfair military kangaroo court trials.
According to Human Rights Watch, this act of Congress will severely undermine U.S. efforts to fight terrorism. Tom Malinowski, the group’s Washington director, explains: “The Senate vote banning the transfer of Guantanamo detainees is a reckless and irresponsible affront to the rule of law and efforts to protect the US from terrorism,” said Malinowski. “By hindering the prosecution of Guantanamo detainees in federal court, Congress has denied the president the only legally sustainable and globally legitimate means to incarcerate terrorists.”
From a practical perspective, Malinowski pointed out, “The congressional ban effectively prevents the president from bringing to trial those charged with the murder of thousands of Americans nearly 10 years ago… [D]etainees are now just going to sit in Guantanamo indefinitely, and as evidence grows stale, prosecution down the road is only going to become more difficult.”
Obama’s own Attorney General Eric Holder strongly opposed this Congressional measure. Josh Gerstein explains at Politico.com: “In a letter to the Senate leadership dated December 9, 2010, Attorney General Eric Holder warned that this provision would ’set a dangerous precedent with serious implications for the impartial administration of justice.’ The Attorney General further stated that, by restricting the discretion of the executive branch to prosecute terrorists in Article III courts, Congress would ‘tie the hands of the President and his national security advisers’ and would be ‘taking away one of our most potent weapons in the fight against terrorism.’”
Elisa Massimino, President and CEO of Human Rights First, pointed out that by keeping the detainees at Guantanamo and subjecting them to the questionable military commissions, the terrorists are winning, in a way: “The victims of 9/11 and the American public deserve to see justice done, and the best way to achieve that is by prosecuting these men in a credible criminal justice system where the focus will be on their culpability, not on the legitimacy or fairness of the proceedings. Moving these cases out of military commissions and into the federal courts [would be] smart counter-terrorism strategy. It treats the perpetrators as the criminals they are and deprives them of the warrior status they crave. This is an important distinction and [would] help thwart their ability to recruit others to their cause.”
But it seems as though Congress doesn’t care about practicalities in the “war on terror”. They just seem to want to look tough, no matter what the cost.
And Obama just seems to want to make the other side happy, no matter what the cost.
Mary Shaw 2010 was a wild ride.
The year had its share of low points for progressives, like the reelection defeats of Senator Russ Feingold and Representative Alan Grayson, the scrapping of a single-payer health care option, Arizona’s xenophobic new laws, and the extension of tax breaks for zillionaires.
But the year also had some high points.
Here are my 10 favorites political moments of 2010, in chronological order:
1. February 24 – General Motors announced that it would discontinue production of the gas-guzzling Hummer. The planet is grateful.
2. March 23 – President Obama signed the health care reform bill into law. It’s far from perfect, but far better than nothing.
3. May 17 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that juveniles convicted of non-homicide crimes may not be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Every child deserves a chance at redemption.
4. August 4 – Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that California’s Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot initiative which outlawed same-sex marriage in that state, is unconstitutional. There is still a long court battle ahead, but each positive step is worth celebrating.
5. August 7 – Elena Kagan was sworn in as U.S. Supreme Court Justice. For the first time in history, the highest court in the land has three women justices serving concurrently.
6. September 14 – Iran released American hiker Sarah Shourd. Hopefully her two companions, still imprisoned, will join her in 2011.
7. November 02 – Christine (”I Am Not A Witch”) O’Donnell lost the Senate race in Delaware to Democrat Chris Coons, and Sharron (”Second Amendment Remedies”) Angle lost in Nevada to incumbent Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Maybe there really is a God.
8. November 13 – Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was freed after spending almost 15 of the last 21 years either in prison or under house arrest. Often called the new Mandela, she is a symbol of courage and an inspiration to so many of us in the fight for human rights.
9. December 18 – Congress repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, which had prevented gays and lesbians from serving openly in the U.S. military. We’re all a little more equal now.
10. December 22 – The U.S. Senate ratified the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). We’re all a little bit safer.
Happy New Year to all, with cautious hopes for more progress in 2011.
