CATHERINE JUN First-year student Jimi
Naftalin protests the death penalty in front of Kerckhoff
Hall Wednesday afternoon.
Dexter Gauntlett
Daily Bruin Contributor
Makeshift tombstones lined the Meyerhoff Park lawn Wednesday,
drawing attention to the fate of 24 people who were put to death by
lethal injection this year.
The demonstration, by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty,
sought to remind passersby that the United States is the only
industrialized nation still using the death penalty.
The tombstones were inscribed with the name, age and date of
execution of each of the 24 people.
“We’re just trying to get people to be aware of the
situation and for them to see what the government is doing,”
said fourth-year history student Evan Garcia, a member of the
campaign.
The protest raised ethical issues involved in capital
punishment.
“You don’t kill people to show that killing people
is wrong,” said second-year international developmental
studies student Seth Cohen.
Organizers of the demonstration said a large number of people
who were put to death were later found innocent, and that racism is
prevalent when it comes to the death penalty.
Brian Jones, a citywide coordinator for the campaign,
distributed flyers on Bruin Walk and accumulated signatures to show
support for the abolishment of capital punishment.
Garcia and other members of the campaign read the final
statements of death row inmates whose pleas were not enough to save
them from the lethal injection of chemicals that would slow down
their heart and eventually kill them.
The last statement of Shaka Sankofa (formerly Gary Graham)
began: “I would like to say that I did not kill Bobby
Lambert. That I’m an innocent black man that is being
murdered.”
Sankofa, who was 17 when he was arrested, was executed in Texas
on June 22, 2000, but proclaimed his innocence up to that day.
From its first execution in 1982, Texas, under then-Gov. George
W. Bush, escalated to the national leader in the use of the death
penalty.
Jones said racism is a major factor that puts African Americans
especially at risk in capital punishment cases.
“When you round up black men and kill them based on flimsy
evidence, that used to be called lynching,” Jones said.
The 1972 Furman v. Georgia U.S. Supreme Court case abolished the
death penalty for four years on the grounds that capital punishment
was rife with racial disparities.
Since its reinstatement in 1977, the death penalty has been
under scrutiny by activists.
The event was less than a month before the scheduled execution
of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who was
responsible for the 1995 explosion that killed 168 people and
injured more than 500.
Attorney General John Ashcroft recently made it possible for
approximately 250 family members of the blast’s victims to
watch McVeigh’s execution by lethal injection via closed
circuit satellite.
“They’re going to find that killing (McVeigh)
won’t bring their loved ones back,” Garcia said.
But third-year political science student Mikey Victoria said the
death penalty does have its place in society.
“Families need reparations and for a person living after
committing such a crime, it’s a constant stigma of the crime
that person has committed,” Victoria said.
Fourth-year political science student Scott Mosier commented on
the value of human life.
“There are some things that should be held in respect,
such as human life, and if you violate that respect, you forfeit
all rights to living,” he said.
According to those at the demonstration, 89 percent of the
people on death row could not afford a lawyer in their capital
case.
In such states as Alabama Louisiana and Mississippi, state
appointed defense attorneys are paid a flat fee of $1,000 to
represent their client, according to literature passed out at the
demonstration ““ about $5 an hour for most lawyers .
In a highly publicized program at Northwestern University, law
and journalism students along with professors and a private
investigator examine death row cases on an annual basis.
Most notable among the cases studied by the students was the
case of Anthony Porter, who came within two days of being put to
death in Chicago in 1999. The investigative team videotaped an
interview in which the real murderer admitted his guilt, setting
Porter free after serving 17 years on death row for a crime he
didn’t commit.
His release marked the 10th time a death row inmate in Illinois
was set free since the state reinstated the death penalty in
1977.
Also disclosed in literature at the rally, were statistics that
more than 75 percent of those on federal death row are non-white.
Of the 156 federal death penalty prosecutions approved by the
attorney general since 1988, 74 percent of the defendants were
non-white.
Nearly 500 people have been put to death since 1976 and more
than 3,500 are on death row, as of Oct. 1, 2000, according to the
NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.
The Campaign to End the Death Penalty is holding a screening of
CBS’s “48 Hours” about a case similar to
Porter’s. The screening, followed by a discussion will be
held today at 6 p.m. in Royce Hall room 156.