I
am writing an essay to rebut what the Anti-Death Penalty Activist, Lily Hughes
wrote on Wednesday 28 November 2012: Why the SAFE Act failed. I will blog on what she wrote and how I disagree
totally.
P.S. The Campaign to End the Death
Penalty (CEDP) has been critical of the conservative approach taken by
abolitionists in the handful of states that have recently abolished the death
penalty. In the case of the California measure, the CEDP said this in a
statement released in late October:
The California measure is in many ways similar to the legislation that has passed in states across the country, and especially the recent death penalty repeal in Connecticut. Life without parole has been promoted as the just alternative to the death sentences, and tough-on-crime and cost-cutting language has been put at the forefront of the public campaign in favor of the initiative.
REBUTTAL: LWOP is a lie. As a former opponent of the death penalty
myself, I thought that life without parole means inmates will die behind bars,
but now I know that LWOP will be the next target for abolition. The public do
not trust LWOP, please see this quote from Thomas Sowell. At the same time,
California on 30 September 2012 has just ended LWOP for juveniles. It means
that if someone commits murder, under the age of 18, he can have a chance to be
released and go free to murder again. William Splanger is a good example. He murdered when he was young, being paroled and killed two before killing himself.
P.S. A big part of the argument for cutting costs and staying tough on crime
was the championing of life without parole as a just alternative to the death
penalty. On its website, the authors of the SAFE Act explain, "This means convicted killers will remain behind
bars forever--with no risk of executing an innocent person."
What they don't say is that those people who are
innocent on death row are now serving a life sentence without the possibility
of parole. Because LWOP doesn't have the guaranteed state-funded appeals that
come with a death sentence, prisoners are left with very little means to prove
they are innocent. But for proponents of the SAFE Act, this means the
elimination of "costly" appeals.
REBUTTAL: The innocence argument is just a propaganda tool for
abolitionist. See DA Michael Ramos who stated that the District Attorneys were
extremely careful about who they select for the death penalty. As mention with
the above example of LWOP is a lie, an innocent person is more likely to die
behind bars than to be wrongfully executed. Timothy Cole is a great example. I
am never surprise if the next argument is LWOP is too expensive too.
P.S. Death row prisoner Kevin Cooper has exhausted his appeals despite the
mountain of evidence pointing to his innocence, and is in line for execution if
and when they resume. In his statement about the SAFE Act, Kevin decried the
fact that the sponsors of the bill had failed to reach out to prisoners, and he
discussed his opposition to LWOP, because of the lack of access to appeals and
because of the inhumane nature of this harsh sentence. As Kevin stated:
Please don't get me wrong, as I have my say concerning this SAFE California Act. I am not "for" capital punishment either! But I do know that there has to be a better way to end capital punishment within this state than the SAFE California Act.
REBUTTAL: As usual, Kevin Cooper is guilty! DNA evidence does point to
his guilt. Do not make murderers look like gentle innocent lamb, Kevin Cooper
is just like another Stanley Williams who wants to get out of prison. I am glad
he ignored the Anti-Death Penalty activist himself. If Gary Gilmore, the first man
executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, was alive today and
requested to be put to death, he will ignore the SAFE Act for sure. He once
told those abolitionist in Utah:
"They always want to get in on the act. I don't think they have ever really done anything effective in their lives. I would like them all — including that group of reverends and rabbis from Salt Lake City — to butt out. This is my life and this is my death. It's been sanctioned by the courts that I die and I accept that."
P.S. ANOTHER DISHEARTENING facet of the campaign for the measure was the
appeal to law enforcement, in particular through a fund that would have
funneled millions of dollars directly to police and prosecutors in an effort to
"prevent" crime. The CEDP lambasted this tactic in its recent
statement on the SAFE Act:
Putting
more money into law enforcement's hands in order to "save lives" is
one of the most backward parts of the SAFE Act. It's hard to imagine that the
families of Alan Blueford, James Earl Rivera Jr. or Oscar Grant (all innocent
men of color killed by police in California) would feel safer with more police
on the streets.
REBUTTAL: If you want to have less police, please expect more homicides
in the State. The money will be later use to spend on welfare of the criminals
rather than Law Enforcement Officials, this is what prisoner-rights want. As French Philosopher Joseph once said:
“All grandeur, all power, and all subordination to authority rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears.”
Law
enforcement and prosecutors are on the front lines of what Michelle Alexander
calls the "New Jim Crow" which is responsible for locking up 2.3
million people behind bars, disproportionately African Americans and Latinos.
We want to end this injustice, not help strengthen it.
REBUTTAL: I do not think the death penalty is racist. If it is, fix the
system not end the death penalty. If prison is racist, why not we release
everybody from prison and expect more chaos in the State.
P.S. This kind of thinking leaves aside the fact that
both lawmakers and the general public have been hugely affected by questions of
innocence, as exemplified by the battles against executions in high-profile
cases like those of Stan Tookie Williams in California and Troy Davis in
Georgia.
Innocence is the biggest factor in
the decline of support for the death penalty nationally over the last 10 years.
Dozens of people have been exonerated from death row and from prison, and polls
show that most people believe that innocent people have been and will continue
to be executed.
The recent release of Anthony Graves
from Texas death row and the scandal surrounding executed prisoners in Texas
like Cameron Todd Willingham, falsely accused of setting an arson fire that
killed his three children, have had a massive impact on the death penalty
debate. Innocence was also determining factor in the abolition of the death
penalty in Illinois in 2010, and was at the center of the struggle to save the
life of Troy Davis in Georgia in 2011.
The Troy Davis case also shined a
spotlight on the pervasive racism endemic in the death penalty and the whole
justice system. Racism plays a huge role in how innocent people land on death
row. For example in Illinois a police torture ring specifically targeted black
men in Chicago, resulting in dozens of false confessions.
REBUTTAL: Innocent get executed? I cannot think of one, when facing a
capital trial, they have massive safeguards to protect the defendant. You are
not telling the public that they are ten times more likely to get innocently
murdered by repeat offenders, serial killers, terrorists and prison killers. Dennis Stanworth is the latest example of a repeat offender who had been spared from
the death penalty and went on to murder last year.
<< Racism plays a huge
role in how innocent people land on death row. >>
You forget to mention that on the
day when Troy Davis was executed for the murder of a White police officer in
Georgia, Texas executed a white supremacist, Lawrence Brewer for the murder of
an African-American. Please my blog post on I AM NOT TROY DAVIS & I AM NOT LAWRENCE BREWER.
P.S. IT'S THESE kinds of struggles around innocence and against racism and
police and prosecutorial misconduct that will ultimately galvanize the whole
abolitionist community. Abolitionists and justice system reform activists in
California could have united together around a measure that took up these
issues and that put prisoners, former prisoners, family members of prisoners
and victims in the front lines of a campaign against the death penalty.
We have seen the
impact that campaigns around single cases can have on the way that people view
the death penalty. Fights like the movement for justice for wrongfully executed
prisoner Stan Tookie Williams in California show us the way forward in our
struggle.
Going forward, the
fight to prove Kevin Cooper's innocence should be a centrepiece campaign for
those in California who want to continue the struggle for abolition, as well as
other death penalty cases like those of Darrell Lomax and Correll Thomas.
Uniting the abolition movement with struggles against racism and for reform in
the criminal justice system is also key.
REBUTTAL: It is the fault of the abolitionists to try to mislead the
public into frightening the public of racism and miscarriages of justice.
Better be careful of who you call innocent on Death Row. Please see these
articles on Stanley Williams. There is one of the legally ‘innocent’ man,
Joseph Green Brown, who was freed from Death Row, killed his wife on 14
September 2012.
P.S. California activist Cameron Sturdevant summed it up this way on the day
after the election:
To end the death penalty in California, the abolition movement needs to put the fight for humanity at the center of the struggle; recognizing that the death penalty is racist, it kills the poor, it condemns the innocent, it's cruel and unusual, and the death penalty doesn't deter crime.The best lesson to take from the defeat of Prop 34 is that the movement must put fighting the racism of the death penalty at the heart of the struggle, not budget "savings." The worst lesson would be to continue the bad strategy of the just concluded "yes on 34" campaign that embraced a lock 'em up, penny-pinching, law-and-order, right-wing 'framing' of the issue. I am unalterably opposed to the death penalty and I look forward to continuing the fight to end it.
Uniting the death
penalty movement with fights against harsh punishments like LWOP, against
barbaric prison conditions, racism, police brutality, the war on drugs and mass
incarceration will not only broaden our movement. It could inspire a new
generation of activists to take up a principled cause for social justice.
REBUTTAL: Social Justice? Reading what was above tells me that the
abolitionists obviously value the lives of guilty murderers more than the
victims and their families. To them, even LWOP is inhumane as well.
P.S. In the end, our
movement is not simply about ending the death penalty. It's about fighting
against injustice and for the humanity of all people, whether behind bars or
not. Winning abolition is our goal, but our fight doesn't end there. As Martin
Luther King said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere"--and that includes the millions of victims of the racist
criminal "injustice" system.
REBUTTAL: There is more injustice if you end the death penalty. You
will allow evildoers to grow in numbers. I supported the Vote No to Proposition34 Campaign and just take a good look at Illinois after the abolition of the death
penalty, homicide rates had risen by 60%!
Ancient
Greek Philosopher, Socrates once said:
“What is in conformity with justice should also be in conformity to the laws.”
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