McVeigh and Sankofa
Two standards of justice
By Greg
Butterfield
George W. Bush and John Ashcroft: defenders of death-row
prisoners' rights?
The federal death machine's gears ground to a sudden halt on
May 11, five days before Timothy McVeigh's scheduled execution.
McVeigh was sentenced to death for his role in the right-wing
terror bombing that destroyed Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah
Federal Building on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people.
It was to have been the first federal execution in 38
years-a river the Bush administration is eager to cross.
Attorney General Ashcroft postponed McVeigh's execution
until at least June 11 after the FBI said it had failed to turn
over 3,000 pages of evidence to McVeigh's lawyers. The
postponement is meant to give the defense team time to study
this new material.
"Today is an example of the system being fair," said
President Bush, who was responsible for the state-sponsored
lynchings of more than 140 prisoners when he was Texas
governor.
Ashcroft said the postponement was necessary for "the
integrity of the nation's system of justice."
All sides admit there's little chance of uncovering
significant evidence in the newly released documents. But both
officials said they couldn't go forward with McVeigh's
execution in good conscience until his legal team had a chance
to review the paperwork.
What about Shaka?
Bush and Ashcroft didn't show such concern for fairness and
integrity last year.
On June 22, 2000, Texas Gov. George W. Bush brushed aside
world leaders, religious figures, celebrities and nervous
members of the capitalist establishment, who had all appealed
to him to delay the execution of Shaka Sankofa/Gary Graham.
Bush pushed that execution forward despite a mountain of
evidence pointing to Sankofa's innocence.
Professor Lawrence C. Marshall, legal director of the Center
on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of
Law, said that execution was "based on the weakest evidence I
have seen in the last 30 years."
Sen. John Ashcroft, like Democratic President Bill Clinton
and Vice President Al Gore, didn't utter a single word of
protest.
So what's different now?
McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran and Ku Klux Klan sympathizer, is
white. His racist, anti-women, anti-gay ideology has much in
common with some of the far-right groups that backed Bush's
presidential candidacy and Ashcroft's attorney-general
nomination.
In an unusual arrangement-sealed under Clinton and continued
under Bush-- the U.S. government agreed to turn over every
document concerning McVeigh's role in the Oklahoma City bombing
to the defense.
Sankofa-a juvenile at the time of his arrest for murder in
1981-was an impoverished African American youth. His trial was
marred by judicial misconduct and suppression of evidence.
After his conviction, he became a revolutionary political
activist and prisoner-rights leader.
During nearly a decade of appeals, Sankofa couldn't get a
single court to hear his case, even after many eyewitnesses
came forward to contradict the testimony of the witness who had
fingered him. His defenders had uncovered this new evidence
without any help from local, state or federal authorities.
Double standard
The Bush administration's sudden concern for a death-row
prisoner's legal rights shows that the capitalist state has two
standards of "justice": one for its ultra-right stooges,
another for the oppressed people and impoverished workers who
make up the vast majority of the 3,600 people on death row.
Foes of the death penalty oppose McVeigh's execution. They
know the government's real aim is not to punish the racist far
right but to shore up waning public support for legal
lynchings.
What about the thousands of African Americans, Latinos and
other poor people on death row who never received a real trial,
much less full disclosure from the government?
Death-penalty foes, anti-racists, unions and community
organizations must mobilize to put the Bush administration's
feet to the fire and demand that the same standards of full
disclosure and legal rights be applied to all death-row
prisoners.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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