Supreme Court ignores fatal flaws, OKs executions

By Gloria Rubac
Houston

Starting in May executions in the United States will resume after a seven-month de facto moratorium that began last September, when the Supreme Court agreed to hear a Kentucky challenge to the constitutionality of lethal injection procedures.

On April 16 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a splintered opinion, ruled 7-2 in Baze v. Rees that the three-drug protocol used in the state of Kentucky did not violate the 8th Amendment to the Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

Responding to the ruling, Harvey “Tee” Earvin wrote from Texas death row: “The Court’s determination to kill us must be met by our determination to end the killing. Death row prisoners must commit today to organizing ourselves, our families and our friends. We need them in the streets with the activists who are fighting the death penalty.

“The mood on the row has changed drastically since the ruling. The men here become friends, we are a community. When something bad happens to one it affects us all. And when there’s good news, we are all happy. But this court ruling negatively affects every single one of us,” he continues. Earvin is a founder of the Texas prisoner organization, Panthers United for Revolutionary Education (PURE).

Seven out of nine justices wrote separate opinions in the case, which indicates that the court is far from a consensus about how to resolve additional challenges that are likely to arise, both around lethal injection protocol and the death penalty itself.

But the court totally ignored the fundamental facts of the death penalty (DP) itself—that it is racially biased, meted out only to the poor, and that innocent people are often convicted and likely to be executed.

Garcia White writes from Texas death row: “How is it that everything concerning the DP is a hurried-up and rushed thing? What’s the rush when we see and know that there are all kinds of flaws in the whole system?”

The American Veterinary Association forbids putting down animals with the three drugs now used in lethal injections. Prisoner Quinton Jones told Workers World: “It’s a damn shame when animals are put down with a higher standard of care and decency or the handlers must answer to the highest court. Now the Supreme Court has approved a lower standard for human beings.”

During the seven months that no person in the U.S. was executed, several significant events occurred:

New Jersey abolished the death penalty.

The Supreme Court ruled that the use of the electric chair is unconstitutional, which left the state of Nebraska with no effective death penalty since electrocution was the only method used there.

The American Bar Association called for a national moratorium on executions and the United Nations voted for an international moratorium, reflecting a worldwide trend limiting executions.

Also during the last seven months, hearings in California and Tennessee have studied their respective death penalty systems, and New Mexico and New Hampshire have raised constitutional questions regarding application of the death penalty in those states. Wrongful convictions have led to releases in Dallas. Ongoing crime-lab woes and district attorney scandals in Houston continue to make headlines in Texas.

The last person executed in the U.S. was Michael Richard in Texas last Sept. 25. Texas’ highest court had decided to close at 5 o’clock that day instead of waiting 20 minutes for an appeal for Richard based on the Supreme Court’s acceptance of the Kentucky case just hours before Richard’s execution.

As of April 29, there are 11 executions scheduled in the U.S. with dozens more likely in the coming months. It is no accident that 10 of these 11 scheduled are in Georgia, Virginia, Louisiana and Texas, all former Confederate states where capital punishment has historically been a legal alternative to lynching.

While the Supreme Court responded to one state’s question about its lethal injection method, many more questions about capital punishment remain unanswered.

Justice John Paul Stevens, the court’s most senior member, took aim at the entire system of capital punishment, writing in an opinion that it was a “pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes.”

It is the first time 87-year-old Stevens has called on states to stop executions entirely.

Many on death row in Texas have communicated with Workers World:

Ronnie Neal says: “This ruling affects us all, not just those given immediate dates. The fact is the door is open. The death chamber is once again operational. Any number at any time can be called. Yours or mine.”

Juan Reynoso proclaims: “I will fight to the death. What else is there left? I’ll never give in, until my last damn breath.”

Milton Mathis, whose family in Houston is concerned about the issues of his limited mental abilities, said: “This ruling affects me because I have had a date once already and at any time my number can be called. As I brace myself for the fear of the unknown, my only hope is that there will be someday justice for the poor and the have-nots.”

Activist Howard Guidry, also with PURE, wrote from his death row cell in Livingston, Texas: “With the recent ruling comes a wave of urgency and desperation for most of the men on Texas death row. It is difficult to interpret the tension here. Executions are being scheduled. Men are grasping desperately for relief from the appeals courts. Some men have resigned to planning their funerals. We are going to be herded into the slaughter pen. Four brothers here in Texas are already in the so-called death watch cells. Men are talking about raising money for their own funeral. They are talking about the law. They are desperate. It’s fight or die and fight we must!”

The writer is a Houston organizer of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement.

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