A Vote for Bush OR Gore is a vote for capital punishment
I don't doubt that Bob Herbert, a pro-Democrat hack, wants us
to blame this on GWB. But Gore is also pro-death penalty, the
Clinton-Gore administration has expanded the federal death penaly,
and of course before W took over from his predecessor, the "liberal"
Democratic Gov. Richards, SHE held the record for most executions
under a single governor. So the extremely casual use, (or rather, abuse)
of the death penalty in Texas reflects a problem in Texas generally,
and not just in one party or the other. And according to UNICEF,
the Clinton-Gore administration's economic & military actions in
Iraq are directly responsible for the deaths of HALF A MILLION
children under five years old, and 5,000 continue to die each month.
So clearly, Gore is an accessory to murder, no matter how you slice it.
And anyone aware of what's going on in Iraq who isn't horrified, outraged,
and speaking out against the mass infanticide going on IN OUR NAME is--
let me be as blunt as possible--a "good German." No, I take that back: the
Germans who protested were sent to concentration camps. Americans
don't have that excuse for silence, so those who say nothing are far
worse than the "good Germans.".
Dave McReynolds (the Socialist Party candidate, recently retired after
39 years on the staff of the War Resisters League) is and always has
been actively anti-death penalty, and those of us on this list who know
him and have worked with him on anti-war and other issues for years
can vouch for his record and his integrity. His campaign website is at
www.votesocialist.org
Ralph Nader also strongly opposes capital punishment. A search for
"death penalty" on his campaign website's search engine yields many
references driving home the anti-death penalty message.
www.votenader.com
The Natural Law Party (candidate: John Hagelin) has a platform that says:
"Given current levels of crime in America, capital
punishment has gained broad popular support
as a hoped-for deterrent to the most severe crimes.
Unfortunately, experience shows that capital
punishment neither effectively deters crime nor saves
taxpayer money. Although the Natural Law Party
supports a strong penal code, especially for specific,
highly egregious violent crimes, the current effort to
extend the death penalty to include a wide range of
crimes is a desperate public (and highly political)
reaction arising from deep frustration with present,
ineffective crime-fighting strategies."
So they imply clearly that they're anti-death penalty, but they also waffle
and pander, and won't actually come out for abolishing capital punishment.
They claim that the solution to violent crime is Transcendental Meditation.
www.natural-law.org/
The Libertarian Party website says they take no official position on the
death penalty, although the site also includes a report from a pro-death
member of an execution he witnessed! www.lp.org
On the other hand, Howard Phillips of the Constitution Party attacks
Libertarian Party candidate Howard Phillps for being anti-execution
"I discovered during the campaign that Harry Browne
was opposed to the death penalty. We believe that
it's essential in certain cases. We are 100% pro life,
the Libertarians are not."
Now, as some of you know, I'm anti-abortion myself, but I'm amazed
at the cognitative disconnect that allows him to make statements on these
two issues one after the other, without even a paragraph break!
Pat Buchanan favors the death penalty. But you already knew that....
--Jay
[NB: My e-mail server has been acting strangely the last couple of days.
I;ve sent out several earlier versions of this, but it doesn't seem to have
gone through. My apologies if you get this more than once.]
>From the New York Times 10/16/00
Texas, the Death Capital
By BOB HERBERT
here's a new report out today on the
death penalty in Texas.
It's a chilling report, and as I began reading an
advance copy I couldn't help but think of the
governor of Texas, a candidate for president
of the United States, gloating on national
television about executions still to come.
"Guess what?" said George W. Bush, whose home state is already the
champion of the Western world when it comes to executions. "The
three
men who murdered James Byrd, guess what's going to happen to them?
They're going to be put to death."
There was a disturbing, upbeat quality to the governor's tone as
he said
this during last week's debate with Vice President Al Gore. His
face
brightened in a way that was unsettling to much of the nation. He
was so
obviously and inappropriately pleased.
They're going to be put to death.
Actually, only two of Mr. Byrd's killers have been sentenced to
death.
But whether it's one, two or three, and whether a person is for or
against
capital punishment, there is absolutely nothing to be pleased
about when
it comes to the death penalty in Texas.
The new study reads like a horror story in which fairness and
justice are
the first casualties in a system that often seems deliberately
designed
not
to find the truth but to keep the state's assembly line of death
rolling
at all
costs - even at the cost of executing the innocent.
There are myriad examples of grotesque injustices, including the
sentencing of innocent defendants to death, the deliberate
falsification
of
evidence, the execution of profoundly retarded defendants, the
routine
misuse of so-called expert testimony and rampant racism.
One chapter in the study profiles the cases of six men who were
actually
executed despite "substantial and compelling doubts about their
guilt."
One of those men was David Wayne Spence, whom I've written about a
number of times. Mr. Spence was executed April 3, 1997, even
though
he was almost certainly innocent.
The study is the most comprehensive ever done on the death penalty
in
Texas. It was conducted by the Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit
organization, partially financed by the American Bar Association,
that
provides legal representation to condemned inmates and offers
training
and consultation to other lawyers handling death penalty cases.
The study found that "an intolerably high number of people are
being
sentenced to death and propelled through the appellate courts in a
process that lacks the integrity to reliably identify the guilty
or
meaningfully distinguish those among them who deserve a sentence
of
death."
The system is plagued with problems from the beginning to its
irreversible
end. At the trial level there are problems with incompetent and
otherwise
impaired defense lawyers, including some who are unable to stay
sober
and some who are incapable of staying awake. The study noted one
case
in which the defendant "was represented at trial by an attorney
who
ingested cocaine on the way to trial and consumed alcohol during
court
breaks." The defendant was nevertheless convicted and sentenced to
death.
The study details frequent instances of egregious misconduct by
public
officials, including the use of patently false evidence, the
deliberate
withholding of exculpatory evidence and the use of threats against
witnesses to ensure that they will testify falsely.
Those problems are compounded by the state's awful appellate
review
system, a maddeningly dysfunctional apparatus that seldom catches
the
misconduct or corrects the errors that occur at the trial level.
"The big problem in Texas," said Jim Marcus, one of the authors of
the
study, "is that there is not really a stage in the system where we
can be
confident that these problems will be exposed and addressed."
The attorney general of Texas, John Cornyn, has said that Texas
provides "super due process" to defendants in death penalty cases,
and
that the Texas way of administering capital punishment is "a model
for
the
nation."
If he honestly believes that, he's deluded. If he and Governor
Bush are
at
all interested in the truth, they could start by reading the Texas
Defender
Service study, which is titled, "A State of Denial: Texas Justice
and the
Death Penalty."
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