A recent study by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review suggests that Carlos DeLuna, who was executed by the state of Texas in 1989 for the murder of Wanda Lopez, was actually innocent. The study concluded that a man named Carlos Hernandez actually committed the murder. In other words, the so-called justice system had convicted the wrong Carlos.

According to the report, Hernandez “was well-known to police and prosecutors at the time and had a long history of violent crimes.” In fact, Hernandez was arrested for another murder while DeLuna was on death row, and died in prison in 1999, after having admitted that he killed Lopez.

Nevertheless, the report states, “After [police] arrested DeLuna, they were so sure they had the right man, they never bothered to ascertain his height, weight or age or to compare them to the information from eyewitness Baker. Their commanding officers never requested that information, either. In fact, DeLuna was … younger than the man [a witness] described.”

“On evidence we pulled together on this case, there is no way a jury could have convicted De-Luna beyond a reasonable doubt, but they could’ve convicted Hernandez beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Columbia Professor James Liebman, who conducted the study along with his students.

Perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that this isn’t the only case we know of in which Texas probably executed an innocent man.

The most famous such case is that of Cameron Todd Willingham, who made headlines in 2009 when The New Yorker published an investigative article on the case. Willingham was executed in 2004 for setting a fire that killed his three daughters. However, a forensic review of the case led to the conclusion that “a finding of arson could not be sustained.” In other words, the fatal fire for which Willingham was executed was probably just an accident.

A decade before Willingham’s execution, Ruben Montoya Cantu was put to death in Texas for a murder that occurred when Cantu was 17 years old. According to Wikipedia, “During the years following the conviction, the surviving victim, the co-defendant, the District Attorney, and the jury forewoman have all made public statements that cast doubt on Cantu’s guilty verdict and death sentence.”

In 2009, Texas executed Reginald Blanton despite numerous flaws in the prosecution’s case and the trial itself. Blanton had been convicted of fatally shooting his friend, Carlos Garza, and then stealing $79 worth of jewelry from Garza’s home, where the murder took place. According to Randi Jones of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, “Reginald’s case exemplifies serious prosecutorial misconduct. They systematically excluded African Americans from the jury pool.” Jones also noted that there was no physical evidence linking Blanton to the crime, and that Blanton was forced to rely on an incompetent public defender who failed to present evidence of innocence at the original trial.

This is not justice.

The legal system is run by human beings, and human beings make mistakes. And they can make mistakes in matters of life and death, as in the cases described above.

Is this not sufficient reason to abolish the irreversible punishment that is the death penalty?

The full Columbia report on the DeLuna case can be found online at: http://www3.law.columbia.edu/hrlr/ltc/

On April 25, with a stroke of the governor’s pen, Connecticut became the 17th U.S. state to abolish the death penalty – and the fifth state to do so in five years. This reflects a growing momentum to end capital punishment in the U.S., which is the only major industrialized Western nation that still claims for itself the “right” to kill its citizens. The death penalty has already been abolished in all European countries except for Belarus. In fact, today over two-thirds of the world’s nations have ended capital punishment in law or practice. This global trend towards abolition of the death penalty reflects the growing awareness that there are alternative punishments that are effective and which do not involve state-sponsored killing.

By retaining the death penalty on a federal level and in many states, the U.S. finds itself aligned on this issue primarily with known hotbeds of human rights violations such as Afghanistan, China, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan. This is the company we keep.

But there are better reasons to abolish the death penalty nationwide – and worldwide – than just following the trend.

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. That’s not justice, it’s discrimination.

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.

Some people argue that the death penalty is the only way to bring closure to a murder victim’s family. But not all such families agree. In fact, so many families oppose the death penalty that some have formed organizations such as Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation and Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, through which they actively work to abolish the death penalty. As noted on the latter organization’s website, “MVFHR members have come in different ways and times to the understanding that the death penalty does not help us heal and is not the way to pursue justice for victims.”

Amnesty International describes the death penalty as “the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights.”

And, for those of you who subscribe to a Judeo-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?

Like several other states, Pennsylvania now has a voter ID law, which requires voters to show a photo ID before they will be permitted to vote. While the new Pennsylvania law doesn’t take effect until the November elections, voters for the April 24 primary were asked for ID as a “dry run“, although lack of an ID at the primary did not disqualify anyone from voting.

As I was showing the poll worker my driver’s license to vote in the Pennsylvania primary, I asked her if many people had shown up without a valid ID. She said no. She said that there had only been a few people who had left their IDs in their cars and had to go back to get them.

But we agreed that this was no indication of how things will go in November. For the primary, the polling place was practically empty, compared to November of 2008, when I got there at 7:00 a.m. and the line was already an hour long.

Opponents of the voter ID law say that it will disenfranchise voters who don’t drive and don’t have an easy way to obtain a government-issued photo ID. And they point out that those people most likely to be disenfranchised also tend to vote Democratic. They also point out that cases of actual polling place fraud are extremely rare.

And this primary test run showed me another problem with the new law: It takes more time to check in at the polling place. Previously, I would just have to give my name, wait for the poll worker to find me alphabetically in the registration book, and then sign by the “X”. This time, in addition to that, I had to dig my wallet out of my purse, dig my ID out of my wallet, wait for her to look it over and then write something down about it, put the license back into my wallet, and put the wallet back into my purse.

And I thought about how I waited in line for an hour to vote for Obama in ‘08, and how much longer that wait would have been if everyone had had to deal with the extra step to prove our identities.

I can only hope that the turnout this November is as good as it was back then, so everyone can see this extra problem caused by this unnecessary new law.

After all, you don’t have to produce your ID until you’ve made it to the front of the line.

In recent years, the religious right have moved even farther to the right – to the fringes. Some have even expanded their war on women’s reproductive rights to where they are condemning contraception. They even held Congressional hearings on the subject. This is despite the fact that 99 percent of American women who have ever had sex have used contraception, including 98 percent of Catholic women.

When policies were passed that require insurance companies to cover contraception (which, by the way, saves the insurers money, as birth control is a lot cheaper than pregnancy and obstetric costs), they screamed that the government is interfering with their religious freedom.

That is nonsense.

What government is really interfering with is the right’s ability to impose their own religious beliefs on those of us who believe differently. What the government is doing is what freedom is really all about.

Freedom of religion in this country means freedom for all religions – not just the religion of the most vocal contingent. And it is also meant to protect us from tyranny of the religious majority. After all, it is that kind of religious tyranny that this nation’s Founding Fathers sought to escape when they cut ties with England and spelled out specifically in the First Amendment that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

In other words, while the Christian right are free to exercise their own religious beliefs, so are those of us who see things differently. Their right to practice their religion ends at my own right to reject their religion in favor a different set of views. Still, they try to shove their own so-called values down our throats in the name of Jesus, who would surely be rolling His eyes.

Freedom of religion means going to your church and observing your own religious customs while allowing others the same liberties – even (indeed, especially) – if their beliefs and customs are different from yours.

Freedom of religion means not using birth control – or having an abortion – if you think it is wrong, but respecting the fact that those who do are breaking no law (and deserve no shaming).

Freedom of religion means building your church on one corner and tolerating a temple, synagogue, or mosque that might spring up across the street (even in lower Manhattan).

And freedom of religion means facing the fact that no religion is perfect, and that every religion has its saints and its sinners. It is unfair to blame all Muslims for the 9/11 attack, just as it would be unfair to blame all Christians for the 1996 Olympic Park bombing. For every Osama bin Laden, there is an Eric Rudolph.

As a wise man once put it, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

By now, most people who pay attention to the news are likely aware of the Kony 2012 film and campaign. Launched by the non-profit organization Invisible Children (IC), the campaign shines a light on Joseph Kony, a leader of the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group that has terrorized Uganda since 1986. The LRA kidnapped children from their homes, and turned the girls into sex slaves and the boys into child soldiers. According to Wikipedia, “[a]n estimated 66,000 children became soldiers and two million people have been internally displaced since 1986″ under Kony’s brutal reign in Uganda.

In 2005, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Kony for war crimes, but he has yet to be captured. Kony is believed to currently reside in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, or Southern Sudan.

Through the Kony 2012 campaign, IC hopes to raise Kony’s profile worldwide in hopes of finding him and bringing him to justice. And opinions on this tactic are diverse.

Some are criticizing the campaign as being another case of the white man trying to save black people. (The filmmaker and narrator is a white man, with his prominently featured little blond-haired boy.) IC addresses this by pointing out that 95% of IC’s leadership and staff on the ground are Ugandans, not white people from America.

Raising other issues is Victor Ochen, director for the African Youth Initiative Network (AYINET) – Uganda, and himself a survivor of the LRA’s war in Uganda. In a recent article, Ochen suggests that the problem is not as straightforward as IC’s film might imply. He says that “much more needs to be done.”

“In particular,” says Ochen, “there is a need for much greater protection of civilians in South Sudan and the DRC and Central African Republic where the LRA is now active. Furthermore, many of the devastating effects of the war between the LRA and the Government of Uganda have still not been addressed in northern Uganda, even though the LRA has not been active here since 2006. These include the most serious physical and mental health effects, the weakening of key social and protective services, the nearly complete absence of remedy for harms suffered, and an utter lack of accountability.”

“Second,” Ochen continues, “as someone whose brother and cousin were abducted and who are among the thousands of disappeared whose fate is unknown, I join with other Ugandans who hope our relatives are still in captivity and will come back home alive. Any advocacy aimed at military bombardment of the LRA rebels remains therefore very sensitive throughout northern Uganda, and I imagine the DRC and South Sudan and Central African Republic as well, because thousands of children and adults have been abducted and have still not come home yet. My own father is deeply traumatized due to my brother and cousin’s abduction, and every time he hears about any report of killing LRA rebels he is not sure whom they have killed and wonders if people are celebrating his beloved son’s death. These are the feelings many families have. I agree that Kony must be stopped as soon as possible. However, it must be done in a way that avoids further civilian casualties and the loss of the lives of innocent children. Raising potentially false expectation such as arresting Kony in 2012 will not rebuild the lives of the people in northern Uganda. Rebuilding communities and rehabilitating victims is what we need. The stronger survivors become, the less Kony remains an issue. Restoration of communities devastated by Kony is a greater priority than catching or even killing him.”

On the other hand, Human Rights Watch makes the point that “[a]rresting Kony and other LRA leaders would reaffirm that those who commit mass atrocities will face justice, and it would end the scourge of one of Africa’s most brutal groups.”

Amnesty International has addressed one of Ochen’s concerns by stating that any efforts to arrest Kony must respect human rights. “Anyone joining the Kony 2012 campaign should insist that efforts to arrest Joseph Kony must respect human rights,” said Erwin van der Borght, Amnesty’s Africa director. “It is also vital to make sure that any action ensures the protection of civilians in the surrounding areas.”

So clearly there is more to the problem than just finding Kony by making him famous, as IC hopes to do. But, if finding him and bringing him to justice are done carefully and properly, supported by recovery efforts to aid his victims, it would be a huge step forward for the people of central Africa who have suffered long enough.

If you’ve been following the 2012 presidential campaign season at all, you’re probably aware that religion is playing a big part in it. Combine a widespread distrust of Mitt Romney’s Mormonism with Rick Santorum’s rabid Catholicism and the still-ongoing whisperings about President Obama’s true religious leanings, and it sometimes seems as though the campaign is more about religion than it is about unemployment and the economy.

This is, of course, despite the fact that Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution states that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

So a diverse coalition of national religious organizations has issued an Interfaith Statement of Principles, calling on all candidates for public office to honor our nation’s religious freedom and avoid stirring up religious controversy.

An excerpt:

Candidates for office bear the primary responsibility for setting the proper tone for elections. Anyone who legitimately aspires to public office must be prepared to set an example and to be a leader for all Americans, of all faiths or of no faith.

What is ethical is every bit as important as what is legal. Therefore candidates for public office should:

• Attempt to fulfill the promise of America by seeking to serve and be responsive to the full range of constituents, irrespective of their religion.

• Conduct their campaigns without appeals, overt or implicit, for support based upon religion.

• Reject appeals or messages to voters that reflect religious prejudice, bias, or stereotyping.

• Engage in vigorous debate on important and disputed issues, without deliberately encouraging division in the electorate along religious lines, or between voters who characterize themselves as religious and voters who do not.

Abiding by these principles, candidates for public office help ensure decency, honesty, and fair play in political campaigns, and they honor America’s oldest and most fundamental values. Likewise, voters who insist on adherence to these principles contribute to the protection of our religious freedom.

The statement was signed by the following organizations:

American Islamic Congress
American Jewish Committee
Anti-Defamation League
Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty
Interfaith Alliance
Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)
Hindu American Foundation
Muslim Advocates
National Council of Churches USA
Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF)
Sikh Coalition
Union for Reform Judaism
The United Methodist Church – General Board of Church and Society
United Church of Christ, Justice and Witness Ministries

Will this statement make a difference? Quite possibly not. But it needed to be said, and so I applaud these organizations that made it happen.

To read the full statement on the Anti-Defamation League’s website, go to: www.adl.org/main_Interfaith/Interfaith-Statement-of-Principles.htm

On February 13, Johnnie Kamahi Warren died after a police officer used a Taser on him at least twice outside an Alabama bar. The police had been called when Warren became disorderly and combative at the bar.

Warren’s death raises the Taser-related death toll in the U.S. to at least 500.

Warren was unarmed. And that is not uncommon. In fact, a 2008 report by Amnesty International (AI) examined data on hundreds of deaths related to police Taser use and found that an alarming number of those who died were unarmed.

According to the report, “Tasers are frequently deployed in situations where firearms or other weapons would not be an option. For example, police have used Tasers on unarmed people who fail to comply immediately with instructions, who struggle while they are being handcuffed or who try to run or walk away from minor incidents. People who are intoxicated or verbally disruptive, but not committing, or threatening to commit, a serious crime have also had Tasers used against them.”

More recently, AI cited the case of Roger Anthony, who last November “fell off his bicycle and died after a police officer in North Carolina shot him with a stun gun. The officer reportedly shocked Anthony – who had a disability and hearing problems – because he did not respond to an order to pull over.” Anthony, too, was unarmed.

In the wake of the grim new milestone of 500 Taser-related deaths, AI is repeating its call for tighter limits on police use of lethal weapons. “Of the hundreds who have died following police use of Tasers in the United States, dozens and possibly scores of deaths can be traced to unnecessary force being used,” said Susan Lee, Americas program director for AI. “This is unacceptable, and stricter guidelines for their use are now imperative.”

AI is calling for strict national protocols for police use of Tasers and similar stun weapons that would effectively replace local police policies that permit a wider use of the weapons, often in situations that do not warrant such a high level of force.

While law enforcement agencies defend the use of Tasers, saying that they save lives and can be used to subdue dangerous or uncooperative suspects, AI contends that the weapons “should only be used as an alternative in situations where police would otherwise consider using firearms.” Indeed, as we’ve seen at least 500 times now, Tasers can be just as lethal as firearms. And too often misused.

And so I contend that the unnecessary overuse of Tasers against unarmed and unthreatening individuals can only be called lazy and cowardly at best.

As I write this on the holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I reflect on King’s vision of a world in which our children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

And it saddens me to see how – despite having our first African-American president living in the White House – racism still abounds.

Racism against African Americans is not as blatantly obvious as it was during the Jim Crow era. The GOP even had a black RNC chairman from 2009 to 2011, and a recent but brief campaign by an African-American presidential hopeful. But that’s like denying racism by saying “some of my best friends are…”

The real truth was exposed for all to see on racist signs at tea party rallies in recent years.

And the real truth is exposed in GOP efforts to pass voter ID laws that would disproportionally disenfranchise thousands and thousands of minority voters – who tend to vote Democrat.

Consider also that brown is the new black. Old-fashioned racism against blacks has morphed into shameless bigotry against brown-skinned people. See the war on Latino immigrants. And see the anti-Muslim bigotry that seems to hold all Muslims in the world responsible for the actions of a handful of radical extremists on 9/11. If we were to similarly hold all white Christians responsible for the actions of domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph, the bigots would call it anti-American.

The fact is that Manifest Destiny was an easy excuse to steal this nation from its original native inhabitants. And the white man’s arrogance continues as he desperately tries to defend this stolen land from “the other”. Even if “the other” is here because his ancestors were kidnapped from Africa and enslaved 300 years ago. And even if “the other” immigrated here legally to enjoy our religious liberty and other great freedoms.

Bigotry has its roots in insecurity, and in fear of the unknown. Might does not make right. But I continue to shudder at the possibilities of what can happen as these frightened white men – the 1% – continue to control our country’s wealth and power.

Things will only get worse for the 99% unless Washington wakes up and supports us – We The People – not the corporate 1%. But – with all due respect to the Occupy movement and last year’s efforts in Wisconsin – the alarm clocks are apparently being ignored as the powerful keep snoozing.

I hope I am mistaken.

On December 31, when most U.S. citizens were distracted with New Year’s holiday plans, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law. This law authorizes the President of the United States to order the U.S. military to arrest and imprison terrorism suspects indefinitely, including U.S. citizens, without charging them or putting them on trial. In other words, the President could now arbitrarily strip you of your right to due process.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the bill also contains provisions “making it difficult to transfer suspects out of military detention, which prompted FBI Director Robert Mueller to testify that it could jeopardize criminal investigations.”

Obama issued a signing statement expressing “serious reservations” regarding some of the provisions of the bill. But he signed it anyway. He did not veto it, as he could have done.

Anthony D. Romero, the ACLU’s executive director, summarized the danger that this new law presents: “The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.”

“We are incredibly disappointed that President Obama signed this new law even though his administration had already claimed overly broad detention authority in court,” said Romero. “Any hope that the Obama administration would roll back the constitutional excesses of George [W.] Bush in the war on terror was extinguished [with the signing of this bill]. Thankfully, we have three branches of government, and the final word belongs to the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on the scope of detention authority. But Congress and the president also have a role to play in cleaning up the mess they have created because no American citizen or anyone else should live in fear of this or any future president misusing the NDAA’s detention authority.”

Romero promised that the ACLU “will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally.” I hope they are successful.

In the meantime, however, the new law can only do further damage to our reputation in the world – a reputation that Obama initially seemed to be repairing quite successfully.

And the world will now see that even Obama – a former Constitutional law professor – cannot be trusted to uphold universal human rights standards and the rule of law.

On December 1, Martina Davis Correia lost her long battle with breast cancer. Correia was the sister of Troy Davis, who was executed by the state of Georgia on September 21 amidst worldwide protest.

Georgia went ahead with the Davis execution despite compelling evidence suggesting that he was innocent of the murder for which he was convicted. Davis’s original trial was flawed. Most of the witnesses have since recanted or contradicted their stories, with many claiming that they had been pressured or coerced by police. And there was no physical evidence linking Davis to the crime. His conviction was based solely on that questionable testimony by witnesses.

Despite her own medical concerns, Correia fought tirelessly for justice in her brother’s case, and against the death penalty in general. Correia was chair of the Steering Committee for the Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) Program to Abolish the Death Penalty, and served for 11 years as AIUSA’s death penalty abolition coordinator for Georgia. In 2010, Amnesty’s Irish section presented Correia with the Sean McBride Award for Outstanding Contributions to Human Rights. She was an inspiration to those of us in the human rights community who knew her, or knew of her.

Curt Goering, chief executive officer for AIUSA, issued the following statement upon the news of Correia’s death:

“Our hearts are breaking over the loss of this extraordinary woman. She fought to save her brother’s life with courage, strength, and determination, every step of the way. She was a powerful example of how one person can make a difference as she led the fight for justice for Troy Davis, even as she endured her own decade-long battle with cancer. And despite the terrible blow of his execution, she remained brave and defiant to the core of her being, stating her conviction that one day his death would be the catalyst for ending the death penalty. Even as Martina’s health failed, she was making plans to continue her work against the death penalty in her brother’s memory, as he urged his supporters to do just before he was put to death. She was a tenacious fighter, a graceful inspiration to activists everywhere, and a true hero of the movement for human rights. At this sorrowful time, we at Amnesty International offer our profound sympathy to her family.”

RIP, Martina Davis Correia.

May her legacy live on and touch many more lives.