Abolish 'legal' lynchings!
Lesbians & gays on death row
By Anya
Mukarji-Connolly
On Feb. 7, the state of Missouri executed Stanley D.
Lingar, a gay man convicted of killing a teenager in 1985.
This execution of Lingar and that of disabled African
American lesbian Wanda Jean Allen in Oklahoma are two of the
four recent death-penalty cases that have received national
attention due to the severe homophobia that permeated their
trials.
In the case of Stanley Lingar, the only issue raised in
the sentencing phase of his trial was the fact that he and
his co-defendant were involved in a consensual same-sex
relationship.
An attorney representing Lingar said that the aim of
telling the jury about the defendant's sexuality was to
"inflame a homophobic jury from a rural area with prejudicial
evidence that Lingar was a practicing homosexual, a fact that
the prosecution believed the jury would find morally
offensive."
Lingar appealed to the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals,
which refused to overturn his conviction. The court held that
the introduction of his homosexuality to the jury was "harm
less" and "did not contribute to the jury's death
verdict."
In Texas, the case of Calvin Burdine has gained national
publicity. Burdine's original trial attorney slept through
portions of the trial. And when the lawyer was awake, he
remained silent when the prosecutor made homophobic arguments
to the jury.
The most outrageous of these remarks was the prosecutor's
urging the jury to sentence Burdine to death rather than life
imprisonment because sending "a homosexual to the
penitentiary certainly isn't a very bad punishment."
The jury was made up of a number of jurors who had
expressed anti-gay views before being chosen. This was also
not objected to by Burdine's original attorney. During the
trial, the prosecutor used a 1971 "sodomy" conviction
resulting from a consensual sexual relationship to argue that
Burdine was likely to commit criminal violent acts in the
future.
In 1999 Burdine's conviction was overturned, not based on
the homophobia that dominated his trial, but rather on the
denial of his right to counsel. The court reasoned that
unconscious or sleeping counsel is equivalent to no counsel
at all. An appeals court then voted to reinstate the
conviction. Now on appeal to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of
Appeals, the court has held that the case must be
reheard.
In the case of Wanda Jean Allen, an African American
lesbian who was executed on Jan. 11 by the state of Oklahoma,
the prosecutor labeled Allen as the "man" in the relationship
in order to persuade the jury that she was more capable of
being violent.
Allen and Lingar, both recently executed, suffered from
brain disabilities. Allen suffered from severe developmental
disability resulting from skull traumas. Lingar's attorney
also argued that his client was borderline developmentally
disabled.
The fourth of these recent death penalty cases involving
gay and lesbian defendants is the case of Gregory Scott
Dickens in Arizona. Dickens, along with his co-defendant and
former boyfriend, were charged with the 1991 robbery and
murder of two people.
Dickens, who did not pull the trigger, was sentenced to
death, while his co-defendant who testified for the
prosecution was sentenced to 55 years in prison.
Dickens' attorney argues that he did not receive a fair
trail because the judge was homophobic. Judge Cole, who
presided over Dickens's trial, had written several letters to
his own gay son saying things such as, "I hope you die in
prison like all the rest of your f----t friends."
Judge Cole maintains that he was capable of handling
Dickens's case fairly.
In this society the death penalty has been used
arbitrarily to punish members of oppressed communities. It is
used disproportionately against the poor and people of
color.
Over 3,200 individuals--disproportionately people of
color--sit on death row in the United States. None of them
are wealthy. Prior to 1976, the Supreme Court held that the
death penalty was illegal because of its racist use.
Today, it is clear that the death penalty is also used to
inflict severe punishment on gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgender people.
Capitalist society is built on a foundation of racism,
sexism and anti-lesbian/ gay/ bi/trans oppression. It is no
accident then that this ideology pervades the criminal
injustice system and its laws--both created to protect
private ownership of wealth and property, not the lives of
poor and working people.
It's time to wage a large-scale fight to abolish the
racist, bigoted use of the death penalty--a weapon of terror
in the hands of the capitalist state.
And lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people of all
nationalities have been in the forefront of this struggle,
particularly in the battle to save the life of death-row
political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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