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From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Workers World
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 9:37 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [BRC-NEWS] Racism Rules in U.S. Courts and Prisons
Workers World News
June 22, 2000
NEW STUDIES PROVE BEYOND SHADOW OF DOUBT:
RACISM RULES IN U.S. COURTS AND PRISONS
By Monica Moorehead <[log in to unmask]>
The controversy surrounding the application of the death
penalty inside the United States has finally reached the
mass media. This debate will certainly help to bolster the
efforts of the anti-death-penalty movement -- especially as
it continues organizing to stop the executions of political
prisoners like Shaka Sankofa and Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The use of state-sanctioned, legalized murder has emerged
as the number-one political issue in the country. With
Sankofa's execution scheduled for June 22, major commercial
newspapers including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times
and Chicago Tribune have printed front-page articles along
with editorials finally admitting that indigent people,
especially those who are Black and Latino, are the main
victims of the death penalty.
Texas Gov. George Bush, the frontrunner for the Republican
presidential nomination, has been put on the hot seat by
death-penalty opponents and the media for executing more
people -- 132 -- than any other governor. Democratic
presidential frontrunner Al Gore is also pro-death-penalty.
Anti-death-penalty activists are making plans to confront
these two candidates and their parties at their respective
conventions this summer.
LIEBMAN STUDY PROVES INJUSTICE OF DEATH PENALTY
This controversy has been intensified by the most far-
reaching study ever on the death penalty. It was conducted
by a group of lawyers and criminologists at Columbia
University, led by Professor James S. Liebman.
The study, just released, focused on 5,760 appeals in
capital-punishment cases from 1973, when the death penalty
was reinstated, until 1995.
It found that more than two-thirds of those verdicts, or 68
percent, were overturned due to flaws and errors within the
criminal-justice system.
Three hundred thirteen executions were carried out within
this time frame. The study concludes that the death penalty
system is "collapsing under the weight of its own mistakes."
The report is titled "A Broken System: Error Rates in
Capital Cases, 1973-1995." It cites three major areas of
concern in these reversals of capital appeals: ineffective
counsel, prosecutorial and police misconduct -- especially
the withholding of crucial evidence from the jury, and
targeting people of color in overwhelmingly
disproportionate numbers.
Homophobia was also a factor in some convictions.
The study was based on a review of the court records of the
cases during three legal stages before they reached the U.S.
Supreme Court: state direct appeal, state post- conviction
and federal habeas corpus.
Some 47 percent of the death sentences were reversed by the
state appellate courts. Federal reviews found all kinds of
flaws in 40 percent of the remaining cases.
Liebman pointed out that the number of errors as well as the
number of cases that have gone undetected since 1995 is due
in great part to the speeding up of the execution process,
mainly by the executive branch.
President Bill Clinton's signing of the 1996 Effective Death
Penalty Act, an amendment to the Anti-Terrorism bill, made
it virtually impossible for death-row inmates to have their
death sentences overturned by federal appellate courts.
Under this law, federal judges are not obligated to review
the state courts' findings. In fact, the law put a one-year
time limit on federal appeals following the state appeals
process.
Since Clinton signed the law, a number of states have
eliminated public-defender offices that had helped death-
row inmates with their appeals.
ERROR RATES AS HIGH AS 100 PERCENT
Examination of the court appeals in 26 death-penalty states
showed that three -- Kentucky, Maryland and Tennessee -- had
an error rate of 100 percent.
California was 87 percent. Texas has an error rate of 52
percent, Pennsylvania 57 percent and Virginia 18 percent.
The states in the Deep South had the highest rates of error
compared to other regions. Twenty-four of these states had
rates of 52 percent or higher.
The study also found that when verdicts in capital cases
were overturned, 75 percent of former death-row inmates
received lighter sentences and 7 percent were found not
guilty.
The death penalty issue first drew renewed national
attention in February when Illinois Gov. George Ryan,
a pro-death-penalty Republican, signed a moratorium on
executions. A Northwestern University class had discovered
suppressed physical evidence that exonerated 13 death-row
inmates in Illinois.
Since then, a number of city councils, including Philadelphia's,
have passed non-binding resolutions calling for a moratorium
on executions because of wrongful convictions.
The New Hampshire state legislature then passed a moratorium
-- the first time a state legislature had done so. The bill
was vetoed by the Democratic governor, but her action could
not turn back the roaring tide of anti-death- penalty
sentiment.
A number of doctors are putting pressure on the American
Medical Association to vote for a moratorium on executions,
including the right to DNA testing to prove innocence. Some
legislators in Texas are promoting a bill requiring DNA
testing.
The issue of the death penalty is helping to shed a lot of
light on the deepening repression against people of color
and the young. A recent "60 Minutes" TV segment focused on a
13-year-old African American male with the mental capacity
of a 6-year-old who has been sentenced to seven years in a
maximum-security prison for juveniles for murder. He had
been tried as an adult at the age of 11. This schoolchild
was shown being brought into court with shackles on his
wrists and ankles.
Trying juveniles as adults is a violation of international
law as well as a crime against humanity.
SHOCKING FIGURES ON DRUG BUSTS
Human Rights Watch recently released a study exposing the
war against drugs as nothing more than a convenient cover
for the U.S. government's war against Black America.
Federal statistics indicate that whites outnumber Blacks as
drug users five to one. Yet Black people compose 62 percent
of the prisoners incarcerated on drug charges, while whites
make up only 36 percent. The study is based on 1996 figures
from 37 states.
Black men are sent to state prison at a rate 13 times higher
than white men. Out of every 100,000 Black men, 482 enter
state prisons compared to just 36 out of every 100,000 white
men. Black people are officially 13 percent of the overall
U.S. population.
In Illinois -- a state where hundreds of thousands of union
jobs in heavy industry have disappeared in the new economy,
leading to steep economic decline in the Black communities
-- Black men have been sent to state prison for drug
convictions at a rate 57 times higher than whites.
Black people compose 90 percent of all prison admissions for
drug charges in that state -- the highest percentage in the
country.
These tragic statistics indicate that there are all kinds
of methods of carrying out racist genocide, from lethal
injection to imposing long sentences for drug addiction.
MILITANT ORGANIZING IS THE ONLY WAY
As much as these studies have been helpful in exposing the
racist and anti-poor character of the death penalty, the
progressive movement must not let down its guard. The
movement must use this information to its advantage by
putting mass pressure on the government and not rely on
the media to do the organizing.
The mainstream media are controlled by big business,
which had pushed to reinstate the death penalty -- not for
the rich, of course, but for the poor. Now, however, big
business is concerned about its tarnished image worldwide,
since the United States is becoming notorious for having
executed more people than any other industrialized country.
The capitalist system is inherently racist and anti-poor,
and its laws reflect this reality.
These studies did not stop the right-wing U.S. Supreme
Court from issuing another outrageous ruling on June 12.
The decision makes it more difficult for death-row inmates
to win some kind of federal intervention when state courts
deny them their right to defend themselves from prosecution.
The only way to abolish the death penalty and all aspects
of the prison-industrial complex is to organize the masses
in the streets into a powerful movement to demand money
for jobs, education and drug rehabilitation -- not to
incarcerate, execute and criminalize the poor, youth
and people of color.
-END-
(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
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