This weekend Nomadic Theatre is putting on "The Exonerated", about the experiences of six people who were wrongfully convicted but still lost years of their lives on death row.*
Our justice system, though, is systemically unjust. It is racist, ineffective at deterring crime, often erroneous, and extremely expensive.
And yet... almost all our Democratic candidates -- including every single frontrunner -- support the death penalty. Clinton is a long-time advocate. Edwards believes "some crimes deserve the ultimate penalty". Obama, for all he is touted as a religious and moral man, and for all he believes that the death penalty "does little to deter crime", still would execute prisoners.
Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised, but Kucinich is in the only one on the field who vocalizes what I am convinced is the only appropriate approach. "Morally," he writes, "I simply do not believe that we as human beings have the right to 'play God' and take a human life – especially since our human judgments are fallible and often wrong." Along with him comes Gravel, who has been silent on capital punishment so far in this campaign but was opposed at least back in 1972, when his book Citizen Power came out.
I'm dismayed that once again, it's only the "crazy" and "ridiculously unelectable" candidates who are talking sense. (It reminds me incredibly of that debate where it was only these two who would lower the drinking age so that young people who are called to die for our country could also buy a beer. Yeah.)
Why is that? I think Liliana Segura has it pegged: "They know that as long as no one holds them accountable, it is a political stance that costs them nothing. It’s their “soft on crime” trump card." Kucinich (and to some extent Gravel) can say these things only because he isn't considered a real candidate.
Cynical? Yes. Unfortunately, it also rings true. How crazy is Kucinich really?
*It was a wonderful performance, and one that I suggest you all look into attending before the show ends this weekend.
Posted by Anonymous at 4:25 PM 1 comments
Labels: 2008, clinton, death penalty, edwards, kucinich, obama
Last Thursday, a former death-row inmate delivered one of the best talks I've seen at Georgetown.
Prison Outreach, our campus group that tutors local inmates for their GEDs and in ESL, brought Juan Melendez to campus. He spent nearly 18 years on death row in Florida for a crime he didn't commit, living with incredible depression and in terrible conditions, until he was finally released in 2002. The story he told was incredibly powerful, but far from unique -- he was the ninety-ninth of 123 death row inmates to be exonerated and released since 1973.
The death penalty:
And as far as Democrats and the death penalty?
I'd never formed a coherent opinion on the death penalty. I had been avoiding doing so, despite three years of work with Prison Outreach and the tidbits of information I get from my inmates about their lives in that state-of-the-art detention facility. This speech on Thursday, however, shocked me into awareness. This man was incredibly alive -- and it was just a fluke in our justice system that he still was. The fluke was in the innocent man surviving.
Unless you are from one of the thirteen jurisdictions without a death penalty statue,* consider writing your governors, legislators, and state leaders. Imprisonment is one thing. Death is another.
*AK, DC, HI, IA, ME, MA, MI, MN, ND, RI, VT, WV, WI
