Illinois moratorium accelerates anti-death-penalty activity
across U.S.
By Gloria
Rubac
Houston
After years of struggle by the families, friends and
supporters of death-row prisoners to abolish the inhuman and
racist system of executions, huge cracks have appeared in what
was a ruling-class united front for the death penalty. A
moratorium on executions issued by Illinois Gov. George Ryan on
Jan. 31 has given renewed hope to the national campaign to end
the death penalty.
The governor was forced to take the action after a 13th
death-row prisoner was exonerated. Twelve people have been
executed in the state since 1990. Ryan now says he can no
longer defend the system.
The racism of the cops, courts and the juries, the district
attorneys' misconduct, the frequent incompetence of underpaid
court-appointed attorneys, the politicians who cut funding for
attorneys and pass laws that limit appeals, and the fact that
the death penalty is reserved for the poor--all this has been
put on page one by the Illinois moratorium.
Since Ryan's shift on Jan. 31, death-penalty abolitionists
from all corners of the country as well as the establishment
media have called for a reexamination of the death penalty.
The death-penalty process in Illinois is by no means unique.
In the 27 years since capital punishment was reinstated, court
reviews have released 85 people from death rows nationwide.
This means that for every seven executions, one person on death
row has been found wrongly convicted or sentenced.
There is no way to determine how many innocent people have
been executed.
In recent years, anti-death-penalty activists have helped
prove the innocence of many on death row. This plus the
constant protests and vigils when executions were carried out
has finally had an impact on the capitalist political
establishment.
Fully one-third of the 611 U.S. executions have taken place
in Texas. One single county--Harris County, which includes
Houston--has executed 61 people. That is more than any entire
state except Texas and Virginia.
Now a new coalition of Houston activists including
Houstonians United for Mumia, the Nation of Islam, the Texas
Death Penalty Abolition Movement, the Pedro Oregon Justice
Coalition, La Resistencia, and SHAPE Community Center plan a
Feb. 11 news conference to announce their campaign for a
moratorium on the death penalty in this state.
Big-business media question
death penalty
As the establishment media have finally focused on the issue
because of the Illinois moratorium, some of the more blatant
injustices and racism in this country's capitalist legal system
have been brought to light.
A Feb. 1 New York Times editorial read: "Illinois is not the
only state with a capital justice system so flawed that it
cannot ensure that innocent people are spared. ... It is time
that other pro-death-penalty governors--including Gov. George
W. Bush of Texas--acknowledge the flaws and stop what Justice
Harry Blackmun once called the 'machinery of death.'"
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorialized that Pennsylvania
Gov. Ridge and his fellow chief executives in the 37 states
with a death penalty, "including Gov. George Bush in Texas,
would do well to follow Gov. Ryan's courageous example."
"Actual Innocence," a new book by activist lawyers Barry
Scheck and Peter Neufeld who run the Innocence Project, and New
York Daily News columnist Jim Dwyer, is due out Feb. 15. It
tells the stories of 10 men exonerated after years of
imprisonment and recounts how investigators and prosecutors who
accuse the wrong person can win convictions.
Then there are judges who focus largely on procedural
problems. The authors draw from an outrageous statement by
Chief Justice William Rehnquist--"A claim of actual innocence
is not itself a constitutional claim"--for the title of their
book.
Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin has asked President Bill
Clinton to suspend federal executions. According to Feingold,
sponsor of a bill to abolish the federal death penalty,
"federal courts have sentenced 21 people to die and 75 percent
are minorities."
On Feb. 11, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, ranking member of
the Senate Judiciary Committee, will hold a Capitol Hill news
conference to introduce a package of reforms to address the
growing national crisis in the administration of capital
punishment. Joining him will be a former state supreme court
justice, a person freed from death row as a result of DNA
testing, and a DNA scientist.
Last year Nebraska lawmakers passed a moratorium on the
death penalty, but Gov. Mike Johanns vetoed it. At least five
states are considering a moratorium on capital punishment this
year.
A recent editorial in the San Francisco Examiner mentioned
that in California, Gov. Grey Davis has already been asked by
San Francisco Supervisor Sue Bierman and others for a
suspension of all executions, as in Illinois. "As society's
executioner," said the paper, "the state shouldn't be allowed
to make a single mistake. If anyone doubts that, let them be
the first to wait as an innocent person on death row."
The Christian Science Monitor editorialized: "If such errors
are surfacing too often in Illinois, how free of them are the
other 37 states with the death penalty? ... Can the justice
system ever be 100 percent right? Not likely. Then how can it
administer punishment that's 100 percent irreversible?"
Lawyer Stephen B. Bright, director of the Southern Center
for Human Rights in Atlanta, was quoted in the July 1999 issue
of the Champion, magazine of the National Association of
Criminal Defense Lawyers: "Someone condemned to die in Texas
can face a process that has the integrity of a professional
wrestling match.
"An accused may stand virtually defenseless, facing the
death penalty, as his lawyer sleeps through trial; be condemned
to die without any adversarial process to determine guilt and
punishment; and be denied any post-conviction appeal because a
lawyer misses a deadline or fails to raise any issues. So much
for Texas law. Texas isn't alone--just by many measures the
worst example of death-penalty craziness in the extreme."
Not all capitalist politicians are moving away from the
death penalty, however. In Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush seems anxious
to compete with his brother George in Texas. Legislation was
just passed to speed up that state's execution process. It
reduces the length of time between sentencing and execution to
five years, even though most successful appeals have taken
longer than that.
Florida leads the nation in the number of inmates--20--who
have been released from death row. It ranks behind only Texas
and Virginia among states that have carried out the most
executions.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, running for the Senate in New York,
has announced her support for the death penalty.
Activists gearing up
As in Texas, many activists and organizations are gearing up
to demand a moratorium.
In 1997 the American Bar Association called for a moratorium
due to the unfairness of the application of capital
punishment.
Recent movies such as "The Green Mile" and "The Hurricane,"
both depicting innocent prisoners, have garnered national
attention.
All this, coupled with the activity in the aftermath of the
Illinois decision, underscores how the winds have shifted to
allow a broader struggle against the death penalty.
Marxists and working-class activists fight the death penalty
not in the abstract, but because it is a repressive tool in the
hands of the capitalist state.
The death penalty must be fought not only because it is
cruel and unjust, but because it is inherently biased against
the poor and in the United States is inevitably racist, as the
new books and new revelations confirm.
This opening for the struggle should be used by activists to
build a mass movement that will put capital punishment in the
United States in the dustbin of history where it belongs.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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