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Death Penalty

Biden Should Commute All Current Death Sentences To Life In Prison

December 5, 2024 Matt Bruenig, People's Policy Project. , , ,
Two days ago, President Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden for any federal crimes he committed in the last eleven years. Biden promised multiple times that he would not issue any such pardon. But as he enters the twilight of his presidency and his life, he apparently decided that protecting his family was more important than maintaining a certain kind of abstract legal system legitimacy. Regardless of what one thinks of the merits of the Hunter Biden pardon, the act vividly highlights that Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the US constitution gives the President broad authority to unilaterally alter the fates of individuals convicted of federal crimes.

The 22nd Annual World Day Against The Death Penalty

October 11, 2024 Victoria Valenzuela, Scheer Post. , , ,
Today marked the 22nd anniversary of the World Day Against the Death Penalty, amidst a year that saw 19 executions in eight states. It is a day when activists, political leaders and lawyers unite in solidarity from around the world to call for the universal abolition of capital punishment. World Day Against the Death Penalty was established in 2002, following the first World Congress at the European Parliament in France. The movement has grown to over 170 organizations in more than 60 countries in all regions of the world. However, the U.S. lacks their progress. At a time where 112 countries have fully abolished the death penalty, the United States took a step back this year by introducing lethal gas as an execution method for the first time in 100 years.

Missouri Decided To Execute An Innocent Man

September 25, 2024 People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
Marcellus Williams has maintained his innocence since the murder of Felicia Gayle in 1998. He was convicted of this crime without evidence, with the case against him resting upon two unreliable witnesses. Recently, DNA testing has confirmed that Williams’ DNA was nowhere to be found at the crime scene. Yet at 6 pm today, the State of Missouri is set to execute Williams for a crime that he did not commit. In January of 2024, prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County Wesley Bell asked to vacate Marcellus Williams’ murder conviction based on “clear and convincing evidence” of Williams’ innocence. As stated in Bell’s motion to vacate, “DNA evidence supporting a conclusion that Mr. Williams was not the individual who stabbed Ms. Gayle has never been considered by a court.”

Stop The Imminent Execution Of Innocent Prisoner Marcellus Williams

September 19, 2024 People's Dispatch. , , , ,
Marcellus Williams, 55 years old, is set to be executed by lethal injection in less than a week for a crime that he did not commit. Activists and supporters are fighting tooth and nail against the Missouri court system to save the life of a man who has been proven innocent by DNA evidence. In January of 2024, prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County Wesley Bell asked to vacate Marcellus Williams’ murder conviction based on “clear and convincing evidence” of Williams’ innocence. But despite this evidence, St. Louis County Judge Bruce Hilton denied Bell’s request to vacate and the state of Missouri is set to move forward with Williams’ execution on September 24.

Activists Call On Biden To End The Federal Death Penalty

August 14, 2024 Victoria Valenzuela, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
Now that Joe Biden is a lame duck president, activists are holding him accountable to make good on his promise to end the federal death penalty during his remaining six months as president. Biden’s election campaign in 2020 had pledged to end the federal death penalty and incentivize the remaining 27 states that still allow executions to do the same. While he made history as the first president in the United States to openly oppose the death penalty, there has been no movement to actually end federal executions during his nearly four years in office. With six remaining months in office, activists are calling on Biden to close Terre Haute, the federal execution facility in Indiana, and commute the death sentences of the remaining 40 people on the federal death row.

Assange’s Draconian Prosecution

March 5, 2024 Mary Kostakidis, Consortium News. , , , , ,
In the final moments of the hearing on Feb. 21, Ben Watson KC representing the U.K. home secretary, admitted additional charges could be laid against Julian Assange in the U.S. that carry the death penalty, such as aiding and abetting treason. Asked by the judge whether there is anything that can be done to prevent a death penalty being imposed, he replied: “It would be very difficult to offer assurances to prevent the death penalty from being imposed.” (Since Assange is charged with a federal and not a state crime he could get a death sentence no matter if the state he is tried in, in this case Virginia, has a death penalty or not.)

White Man’s Justice Is Black People’s Grief: A Black History Month Truth

February 4, 2024 Kevin Cooper, Scheer Post. , , , , ,
“It’s not whether you win or lose that counts, but how you play the game that matters.” That’s what my people are often told. But we are not told that this so-called game is rigged, and it’s rigged against us even before we are born. This “game” is life in the divided states of America. This is especially true in the system of criminal justice, a system that has been rigged against Black people since its  inception. There Is no better example than this country’s morbid use and fascination with the cold-blooded and premeditated imposition of the death penalty against poor people and its disproportionate use on Black people.

The Urgent Fight To Stop The Execution Of An Innocent Man

December 23, 2023 Victoria Valenzuela, Scheer Post. , , ,
Marcellus Williams, who has spent 24 years of his life on death row for a murder DNA evidence proves someone else committed, could have an execution date set as early as next month following Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s decision in June to lift his stay of execution and dissolve his innocence investigation. Williams, 54, was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1998 death of Lisha Gayle, a St. Louis Post Dispatch reporter, who was stabbed 16 times during a robbery in her home.

Global Call To End Capital Punishment: World Day Against The Death Penalty

October 11, 2023 Victoria Valenzuela, Scheer Post. , , ,
On Oct. 10 — World Day Against the Death Penalty — activists, political leaders and lawyers unite in solidarity from around the world to call for the universal abolition of capital punishment. Now in its 21st year, the day is meant to recognize the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment and build on the momentum of the current global abolition movement, according to the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. The death penalty is also disproportionately applied to people of color, as over half of the US death row population is Black or Latino, and typically subjects people on death row to harsher conditions than the general prison population.

The Two Types Of Death Penalties

November 29, 2022 Kalonji Changa, Black Agenda Report. , , , , ,
A political prisoner is a person targeted or imprisoned because of their political actions, affiliations and/or beliefs. A political prisoner is also an individual, who while incarcerated, transforms themselves from a social prisoner by gaining clarity, embracing and maintaining political struggle. Thirty-seven-year-old Kevin “KJ” Johnson is scheduled to be executed by the State of Missouri on November 29th; most would not view him as a “political prisoner.”  However, given the poverty, neglect, suffering and abuse that comes with being a captive in domestic colonies and urban enclaves within a capitalist and imperialist state, from the onset Kevin was undoubtedly a victim of US politics and policing. On July 5, 2005, 19-year-old Kevin “KJ” Johnson witnessed his 12- year-old brother, “Bam Bam” collapse while police conducted a search of their grandmother’s home. 

Death Row? Hell No!

October 29, 2022 Gloria Rubac, Workers World. , , ,
Austin, Texas - It was a perfect weather day at the Texas Capitol in Austin Oct. 22, for hundreds who participated in one march and two rallies against the racist anti-poor death penalty. In three emotional hours, love, solidarity, determination, anger, heartbreak and resilience filled the crisp autumn air as activists held the 23rd Annual Texas March and Rally to Abolish the Death Penalty. A carload of people came from the Rio Grande Valley near the Texas-Mexico border and others from nearby cities. The Kids Against the Death Penalty led a loud and militant march around the capitol to the governor’s mansion and through downtown, totally disturbing the peace. Austin’s progressive singer/songwriter Sara Hickman warmed up the crowd early on with her vocals.

Mothers Of The Movement Fight To Abolish The Death Penalty In Illinois

August 3, 2022 Alice Kim, In These Times. , ,
Illinois - The first time I visited Ronnie Kitchen on death row at Pontiac Correctional Center, I drove down with his mother, Louva Grace Bell. Ronnie was one of the cofounders of the Death Row Ten, a group of Black men, all of whom had been tortured by former Chicago Police Department Commander Jon Burge and white detectives under his command, and all of whom had been convicted and sentenced to death on the basis of tortured confessions. When they came together in 1998, the Death Row Ten enlisted the Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP) to be their voice on the outside and together forged a visible grassroots campaign that interrupted Illinois’s death machine and led to the exoneration or release of six of their members.

It’s Time For Biden To Fulfill Pledge To End The Federal Death Penalty

January 27, 2022 Alice Kim, Truthout. , ,
On January 17, 1977, Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad, shot through the heart, at Utah State Prison. He was the first person to be executed after the death penalty had been reinstated in the United States in 1976. This year, to mark the 45th anniversary of this execution, which coincided with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Death Penalty Action and a coalition of death penalty abolitionists gathered in Washington, D.C. calling for an end to the federal death penalty and all executions in the United States. After a 17-year hiatus, the U.S. resumed federal executions a year and a half ago. Between July 2020 and January 2021, the Trump administration executed 13 people who were on federal death row, a number surpassing the total number of federal executions that had taken place over the preceding 70 years (1949-2019) spanning 11 presidential administrations.

Lynchings By Law

December 11, 2020 Aaron Greene, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The U.S. death penalty has always been a symbol of white supremacy and a violation of human rights law.  Having already executed 11 people this year, the Trump administration plans to execute five people (four of them Black) during a lame-duck session. This would be the first time a president has carried out executions during a lame-duck session since the Cleveland administration  carried out the execution of an Indigenous man in 1890. The profound anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells once said: “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” 

Racist Roots: Origins Of North Carolina’s Death Penalty

October 6, 2020 Henderson Hill, NC Policy Watch. , ,
Right now, our nation is in a moment of reckoning with our criminal punishment system. We are finally seeing clearly what should have been obvious long ago: The system has its knee on the necks of Black people. In North Carolina, as we begin a long-overdue conversation about the future of police and prisons, we must confront the punishment that sits at the top of that system, condoning all its other cruelties — the death penalty. When citizens have acclimated to the state strapping a person to a gurney and killing them in front of an audience, it becomes harder to shock them.
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