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Winter 2000
| Why a Moratorium? | DP Opponents & Proponents Agree |
| Reaching 2K in Y2K | Notes from the Field |
| Cultivate Hometown Pride & Do Justice | Organizing Contacts |
Why a Moratorium?
by Tony Amsterdam
Some of us believe that every human life is sacred, and that in killing any human being the state commits an outrage against the providential gift of life.
Some of us are appalled at the arrogance and irresponsibility of the state presuming to commit an act whose nature and whose consequences it cannot pretend to know.
Some of us regard the death penalty as a sin against intelligence – as a perverse lashing out in fear and rage against a few scapegoats whom the public imagination makes the monstrous effigies of its own clandestine love affair with violence – a stupid, futile ritual of blood-letting that distracts society and diverts its scarce resources from the vital work of finding real, effective ways to control violent crime.
Some of us have seen the death penalty used as an instrument of oppression of groups or castes of people deemed dangerous to those in power, or have seen the death penalty exploited by self-serving demagogues who seek to rise to power by promoting popular hysteria about crime and pandering to that hysteria with blood and circuses.
Some of us believe that the policy-makers and public officials who administer the death penalty are making a genuine, conscientious effort to do it fairly and evenhandedly, but that very belief leaves us troubled by the inability of these sincere and dedicated professionals to change the fact that capital punishment everywhere and always continues to fall with unequal harshness upon racial and ethnic minorities, the poor and the unpopular, outcasts and pariahs – people who have never had a chance to make a place in the society that is so quick to seize on them to kill when they commit crimes punished less severely on the part of others who were able to form stronger roots in the community because they were more welcome to it in the first place.
Some of us are worried about the execution of innocent people through mistake, given the fallibility of human judgment; the recondite issues of truth and probability that have to be resolved in the trial of capital prosecutions; the competitive, steeplechase atmosphere that surrounds the investigation and prosecution of community-arousing crimes of violence; and the fact that 84 cases of capital convictions of innocent men and women have been documented in the U.S. alone in recent years – although this number does not reflect an increase in the phenomenon, but only a recent increase in our attention to it.
And some of us are concerned with what the death penalty does to societies and systems of law that use it – with how it distorts and erodes the fabric of our moral and our legal norms as those must be twisted and emptied of meaning in an effort to justify taking human life on the basis of procedures that we know to be fallible, error-prone, and inescapably responsive to the urgings of vengeance, prejudice, and primal rage.
Some of us simply are sick of the insidious hypocrisy that is the necessary price of pretending that imperfect human institutions are good enough to make decisions about who should live and who should die and get them right.
If any of these reasons finds an echo in your soul, then there is room for you in the house of the moratorium movement.
We are not all of one mind about what should happen in the longer-range future; and we need not be. Some of us believe that the human race should put the death penalty behind it forever. Some of us want to preserve at least the possibility of turning to the death penalty under extraordinary and unforeseeable future conditions. Some of us want to see the death penalty restored to use if and when sufficient safeguards have been put around it to assure that it will not be applied arbitrarily and discriminatorily or with too much risk of error or procedural unfairness.
But those are questions for tomorrow; and today is today; and the people who are being put to death today are not the products of a capital punishment system that has been purged of arbitrariness and discrimination and error-proneness and unfairness. The people who are being put to death today in this country include children – and mentally retarded persons – and persons who never had a decent trial with a competent lawyer or adequate resources to defend them – and persons whom there is overwhelming evidence to believe are innocent – and persons whom there is overwhelming evidence to believe were sentenced to death as a result of race prejudice. These are the people who are being killed today – with the U.S. having executed 98 persons in 1999, the highest number in any year since 1951. And whatever else we can agree or disagree about for the future, we can all agree that the killing of these people has to stop and it has got to stop now.
We need a moratorium to end the trench war in which the struggle over the death penalty is now bogged down. In the U.S., the death penalty has become deeply entrenched not simply as an institution but as a competition sport for prosecutors and a mandatory loyalty oath for politicians.
To say that the death penalty is accepted, even popular, today is only half the story. The other half is that the death penalty is accepted and popular in the way that professional baseball and professional football are accepted and popular: as a spectator sport to the fans and a competitive agon to the players and a symbol of the American way to everybody. Capital prosecutions and the countdown dramas that precede executions are a perennial Olympiad in which prosecutors strive to win their laurels and to take their places beside John Wayne and the Marlboro Man on the billboards of the American soul. Capital defense lawyers and abolitionist advocates in this country can no more defeat capital punishment by winning cases or winning legislative debates than the New York Yankees can put baseball out of business by winning the pennant. It’s a game, folks; and after playing it nonstop for more than a third of a century, let me tell you that it is a game that feeds on itself and feeds on itself and ceases to have any rationality or any meaning except to win and prove that you can win – and can win big by killing somebody or stopping somebody from being killed.
As long as the U.S. tried to play the death-penalty game by the rules – by respecting due process of law and taking seriously the equal protection of the laws; by demanding the observance of constitutional rights; by insisting on fair trials and competent lawyers for capitally-charged defendants, and on full and fair hearings of the appeals of capitally-sentenced inmates – no death sentences could be carried out in this country. That’s how the U.S. got its 10-year, judicially-imposed moratorium, between 1967 and 1977.
So, because death-sentenced inmates and their lawyers were consistently beating prosecutors and political proponents of the death penalty in a high-stakes competition played according to the rules, the prosecutors and the politicians and the judges changed the rules. The prosecutors and the politicians began berating the judges in the public media, and there were some judges, including Justices of the Supreme Court of the U.S., who were only too happy to agree that the rules had to be changed to make room for capital punishment.
Thus the courts in the U.S., while continuing to say that capital punishment could be exacted only if it was administered with equality and rationality and fairness, soon began to change the definitions of "equality" and "rationality" and "fairness" so that these concepts were diminished to the measure of whatever death-sentencing procedure any state legislature chose to enact. And when that alone did not suffice to start executions up again – because too many death-sentenced inmates were still able to come to court with tenable claims of constitutional injustice based on aberrant proceedings in their individual cases that could not be squared with fairness or equality or rationality even as these concepts had been watered down to accommodate the states’ capital sentencing procedures in general – then the courts and the legislatures changed the rules again so that these claims of constitutional injustice could not be heard in court at all.
Judicial remedies for even the worst defects of the death penalty machinery in this country are not going to be restored unless and until there is a major change in climate. A moratorium can enlist the support of a multitude of people who are not abolitionists, for a multitude of good reasons that do not depend on being convinced that the death penalty itself is an evil or that it should be abolished.
A moratorium would take the death penalty, for at least a time, out of the realm of competitive athletics. It would suspend the agonistic ethos that, at present, fires the fighting instincts of every ambitious prosecutor and politician and makes them blood-mad to trounce defense lawyers and bleeding-heart liberals and to vie with one another to win the grand sweepstakes of death. I have fought against these people bitterly for upwards of 35 years but I tell you that I have more faith in their capacity for decency and humanity and wisdom than they themselves can have in themselves, under the blindingly savage competitive conditions in which they now function. Stop the killings, give them space and time for reflection.
Why Death Penalty Supporters and Detractors Can Agree
"I oppose the death penalty in all circumstances. Why should I support a moratorium?"
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"I support the death penalty. Why should I support a moratorium?"
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Since its start in 1997, the Moratorium Now! campaign has been striving to recruit 2,000 resolutions by the end of the year 2000. To date we have collected over 660 endorsements of the Moratorium Now! campaign. As we enter into the final 11 months of this organizing push, we should take a moment look at what has worked and where we should go from here.
We have had great success in recruiting faith-based organizations to pass resolutions. Indeed, 43% of our endorsements have come from faith communities, congregations and Catholic religious communities. Most of these groups already have a position against the death penalty, so their support for the moratorium came early.
Justice and Peace groups represent the second strongest category on our National Tally (14%). It is time for the campaign to go to new places, and its beginning to happen.
Last fall the first county joined the moratorium movement. Orange County, North Carolina passed a resolution after a wave of three cities in its jurisdiction had called for a Moratorium. Orange County was the sixth municipality to join the call!
What have we learned about collecting resolutions?
While the collection of endorsements that we have to date is good, it is not enough. In order to reach our goal of 2,000 by the end of this year, we need your help to increase our organizing efforts.
Where should we go from here?
In order to make a national moratorium happen we need to show that there is widespread support for it. Each resolution that we collect demonstrates widespread support for the moratorium. You can help by approaching at least one group!
Reconciliation Network: Don't Kill in My Name, the Rochester, NY anti-death penalty group, has gotten over 45 groups to sign a moratorium against the death penalty. Included are the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester, the United Methodist Church (Rochester District), the Greater Rochester Community of Churches, a labor union, the Ibero-American Action League, and many social action and church groups.
We have joined with the Upstate Section of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty in planning a conference from April 28-30 in Binghamton, NY. To attract as wide an audience as possible, there will be a coffee house on Friday night and a reception featuring prison art and photography on Saturday night. Saturday will consist of a plenary session followed by workshops and luncheon speakers. On Sunday morning there will be a prominent speakers and regional strategy meetings. Prior to the conference, local radio stations will have call-in talk shows.
For more information contact Clare Regan at cregan8388@aol.com or call the Judicial Process Commission (716) 325-7727.
Pennsylvania Abolitionists United Against the Death Penalty (PUADP) are continuing to work closely on death penalty hearings in the Pennsylvania State Senate. They also continue to work on more rallies and action events.
Floridians for Alternatives for the Death Penalty, a coalition recently formed, is embarking on a moratorium campaign as one strategy developed at the first meeting. Get involved—call FADP! (Contact info)
The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP) and other abolition groups in Texas are planning a moratorium campaign during the year 2000. It will consist of educating the citizens of the state regarding the realities of the death penalty and getting moratorium resolutions signed by organizations and individuals. There will be a focus both on secular organizations and the faith community. The Catholic Church in the state, which has spoken strongly against the death penalty, will play an important role in the moratorium campaign. It is hoped that a bill for a moratorium on executions will be introduced in the next legislative session in the state, scheduled to start in January, 2001. For more information, contact Dave Atwood of the TCADP (713-520-0300).
Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (VADP) kicked off it's "Moratorium in Virginia" campaign at it's annual conference on October 16, 1999. VADP is calling on all churches, legal associations and organizations to consider presenting moratorium resolutions to their governing bodies. This summer the Virginia College of Criminal Defense Attorneys became the second organization of legal professionals to pass a resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty in Virginia. Last Spring, the Charlottesville- Albemarle Bar Association was the first to pass such a resolution.
VADP is asking anyone in Virginia who is part of a local organization to approach them and ask them to consider passing a moratorium resolution. Please contact us for sample resolutions and further information. (Contact info)
Cultivate Hometown Pride and Do Justice
Get your local government to call for a moratorium!
2000 is the year to bring home the movement for a moratorium!
To date, six local governments have passed moratorium resolutions. Your town, city or county can be the next addition to the ever-growing tally of municipalities calling for a halt on executions!
Bringing a resolution before your local government is probably easier than you think and any resident can do it. Steve Dear of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty was surprised at how quickly resolutions were debated and adopted by three cities and one county in North Carolina. "It has actually proven easier to get local governments to consider resolutions than to get some churches," Dear noted recently.
Public officials want to go on record as supporting basis fairness in our legal system. Here are some easy steps you can take to give yours the opportunity to do just that:
1) Ask a local council person to introduce a moratorium resolution. (A model resolution can be found on our website. Or call us for copies of other municipal resolutions. Add any information that is pertinent to your state or county.) Joe Byrne describes his experience in Mt. Rainier, MD: "All I had to do was contact my council person and ask how I, as a city resident, should present a resolution. I sent her a copy of Equal Justice USA’s sample resolution and latest newsletter. It was on the agenda for the very next council meeting."
2) Line up support! Ask other local residents to come speak in support of your resolution and fill the room when it is debated. Let the introducing council person know that you are lining up support. Encourage people to focus their remarks on issues of basic fairness that underlie the need for a moratorium.
3) Alert the local media if your resolution is passed. "With the adoption of each resolution," shares Steve Dear of North Carolina, "we gained statewide media exposure and new allies." (Call us or visit www.quixote.org/ej for a sample press release.)
4) Make sure that copies of the ratified resolution get sent to state and national elected officials. Legislators pay attention to what local lawmakers are doing.
5) Send us copies of ratified resolutions and resulting news stories so we can add your local government to the national tally.
Alabama