Struggle grows to stop legal lynchings
Texas plans post-election killing spree
By Gloria
Rubac
Houston
This year alone, Texas Gov. George W. Bush has executed
mentally ill people, juveniles, a battered woman and
revolutionary activists. Thirty-three prisoners have been put
to death in this state so far this year. Seven more are
scheduled to die before yearend--but not until after the
November presidential election is past.
In fact, four executions are scheduled during the 10 days
following the presidential election. Another three are set
for December, with three more slated to follow in
January.
During the presidential debates, Vice President Al Gore
said he supports the death penalty and has no quarrel with
Bush's record of 144 executions. Gore refused to call for a
moratorium despite many studies showing how the death penalty
is used disproportionately against people of color and the
poor.
Three Texas prisoners whose cases are receiving public
scrutiny are Calvin Burdine, a gay man; Miguel Angel Flores,
a Mexican citizen; and Johnny Paul Penry, who is mentally
disabled. Flores and Penry are among those scheduled to die
in November.
Court: sleeping lawyer okay
Burdine was tried in 1984 and represented by a
court-appointed attorney, Joe Cannon. According to several
jurors and the court clerk, Cannon often fell asleep. In
fact, Cannon reportedly dozed while prosecutors
cross-examined Burdine--a grilling that took up 72 pages of
the court transcript.
As a result, Cannon said nothing during this
cross-examination, even when Burdine was asked clearly
prejudicial questions about his sexuality.
One year ago a federal district judge overturned Burdine's
death sentence. The judge ruled that this was a no-brainer,
noting that reversal should be automatic when a defendant's
attorney sleeps during the trial.
But in a shocking 2-1 ruling on Oct. 27, the Fifth U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that it is impossible to
determine that counsel slept during "a critical phase" of
Burdine's trial.
One of the two judges who voted against Burdine is Edith
Jones. George Kendall, a staff attorney with the NAACP Legal
Defense and Education Fund in New York, noted that "Jones is
on every short list I have seen for Gov. Bush's possible
Supreme Court nominees."
Njeri Shakur, a leader of the Texas Death Penalty
Abolition Movement in Houston, told Workers World, "The Oct.
27 ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is saying that
he didn't prove that his attorney slept during the
'important' parts of his trial and therefore no harm was
done.
"This ruling is a total mockery of anything related to
justice," Shakur stressed. "Calvin Burdine should be released
from death row."
Burdine's attorney is appealing this ruling to the full
Fifth Circuit Court and to the U.S. Supreme Court if
necessary.
High profile case draws support
Despite a string of outrageous court rulings,
death-penalty foes and immigrant-rights activists are waging
a struggle to stop the Nov. 9 execution of Miguel Angel
Flores, a Mexican citizen on death row in Texas.
Flores' attorneys and family have taken his case to the
international community and the U.S. State Department, as
well as to Bush and the Texas Board of Pardons and
Paroles.
In a formal protest to the State Department on Oct. 19,
Mexican government officials said that they didn't find out
about the charges against Flores until nearly one year after
he had been sentenced to death. They asked that the sentence
be commuted to life. And they requested that the State
Department intercede with officials in Texas.
Three European diplomats joined Mexico in appeals to Bush
and the pardons board to halt the execution of Flores.
The French consulate in Houston reported on Nov. 4 that
French and Swedish ambassadors to the U.S., and the head of
the European Union's Delegation of the European Commission,
sent a letter requesting a stay of execution. Their letter
cited provisions of international law under the Vienna
Convention on Consular Relation that should have allowed
Flores to contact Mexican officials.
Anti-death penalty activists held a militant protest at
Bush campaign headquarters here on Nov. 3. Campaign workers
were so upset that they called the Houston police. The cops
responded with seven squad cars to handle the 20
protesters.
Many members of the Flores family attended the
demonstration and spoke to the crowd and to reporters.
Another demonstration is planned for Election Day.
Film highlights Flores case
On Oct. 23, the film "La Espalda Del Mundo" ("The Back of
the World")--winner of the prestigious International Critics
Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival--premiered in
Texas.
This moving film highlights the effects of Texas
executions on prisoners' families. Each member of the Texas
Board of Pardons and Paroles received a videocassette of the
film.
The film includes a series of interviews with Flores'
family. In one of them, his grandfather Tomas Rangel says,
"If Miguel is given a date of execution I would rather be
dead. I don't want to be alive for his execution because I
don't think I could deal with it."
One of the central issues raised by Flores' current
attorneys in the film is the failure of his original trial
lawyer to call any members of his family to testify on his
behalf during the penalty phase of the trial.
Flores' lawyers are urging Bush to direct ly intervene in
Flores' clemency appeal.
These attorneys cite a little-known provision of Texas law
that allows the Board of Pardons and Paroles to investigate
and consider a recommendation of commutation of sentence in a
case based on the governor's written request.
A third scheduled execution drawing attention is that of a
mentally disabled man, Johnny Paul Penry, who is set to be
killed on Nov. 16.
Penry, who has the mental abilities of a 6- or 7-year-old
child, has supporters around the world. They charge that the
execution of a mentally disabled prisoner is a violation of
human rights and international laws.
'Change is coming!'
The last year has been a tumultuous one for the 3,600
people on death row in the U.S., as well as for the growing
movement of anti-death penalty activists.
In January, the governor of Illinois called for a
statewide moratorium on executions. This set off a chain
reaction of events that have exposed the raw racism and
blatant injustice of capital punishment being carried out in
the U.S.
Over 30 U.S. cities have now called for a moratorium on
executions.
The dam of public questioning about the use of the death
penalty burst forth into public criticism and outrage around
Texas and the world with the June 22 killing of Shaka
Sankofa, also known as Gary Graham.
The failure of Bush and the courts to stop the execution
of a man whose many supporters argued was innocent--a man who
never had the opportunity to have a court consider all the
new evidence in his case--caused reactions from skepticism to
militant outrage.
From that day forward, every time Bush said that Texas had
never executed an innocent person, his credibility waned.
Since Sankofa's legal lynching, the pace of executions has
slowed down considerably in Texas. There have been only two
this fall. Bush had averaged one execution for every two
weeks he was governor.
For Bush to have executed a Mexican citizen and a mentally
disabled man before the election would have caused even more
scrutiny of his state's assembly-line death machine that has
already become a public embarrassment.
'A national embarrassment'
But now Texas is set to break its own state record of 34
executions in one year, set in 1998.
In a broad critique of capital punishment in Texas, an
October report by the Texas Defender Service concludes that
the state's death penalty system is in dire need of change.
The report cites prosecutorial misconduct, racial bias, phony
experts and inadequate lawyers for poor defendants.
This report follows another critical study, presented last
month by a committee of the State Bar of Texas, that
described the state's system of providing legal
representation to the poor as "a national embarrassment."
Shakur observed, "The movement to stop the racist,
anti-poor death machinery is growing, especially in the poor
and oppressed communities where we feel the direct effect of
the prisons and these legal lynchings.
"The murders this year of Kamau Wilkerson and Shaka
Sankofa, two revolutionary African men, will not be
forgotten. We will avenge their deaths.
"No matter who is the next president," Shakur concluded,
"we will be in Washington on Jan. 20 to protest his
inauguration. There we will demand freedom for revolutionary
political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and we will demand that
all executions be stopped."
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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