The Indiana Information Center on the Abolition of Capital Punishment (IICACP) exists to expose the injustice associated with the application of the death penalty in Indiana. IICACP is open to anyone who is opposed to the death penalty.

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INDIANA ABOLITIONIST
Quarterly Newsletter of the Indiana Information Center on the Abolition of Capital Punishment
Fall 2006
Volume 6 Number 4

SISTER HELEN TO SPEAK AT ANNUAL MEETING

by Chris Hitz-Bradley, IICACP President

On Saturday, November 11, 2006, Sister Helen Prejean will be the keynote speaker at IICACP’s annual
meeting. Sister Helen will speak at noon in Shelton Auditorium at the Christian Theological Seminar,
1000West 42nd Street, Indianapolis.

For registration information and details of the annual meeting program, please see the notice elsewhere in this newsletter.
Information for the following is from Sister Helen’s website, www.prejean.org.

Sister Helen Prejean was born in 1939, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille in 1957.
Sister Helen began her prison ministry in 1981 when she dedicated her life to the poor of New Orleans. While living in the St. Thomas
housing project, she became pen pals with Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers, sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana's
Angola State Prison.

At Sonnier's request, Sister Helen began visiting him and became his spiritual advisor. The visits opened her eyes to the Louisiana execution process. Sister Helen turned her experiences into a book that was on the 1994 American Library Associates Notable Book List, and was nominated for a 1993 Pulitzer Prize. “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States” was number one on the
New York Times Best Seller List for 31 weeks. It also was an international best seller and has been translated into ten different languages.

The book was developed into the 1996 film starring Susan Sarandon as Sister Helen and Sean Penn as a death row prisoner. Produced by Polygram Pictures, the film was directed and written by Tim Robbins. The movie received four Oscar nominations including Tim Robbins for Best Director, Sean Penn for Best Actor, Susan Sarandon for Best Actress, and Bruce Springsteen's "Dead Man Walking" for Best Song. Susan
Sarandon won the award for Best Actress. The book became the basis for a new opera, which the San Francisco Opera premiered in October 2000. Terrance McNally wrote the libretto and Jake Heggie composed the music.

Sister Helen and “Dead Man Walking” have been the subject of media stories and reviews in the U.S., Canada, Spain, Holland, England, Scotland, France and Australia. She has been featured in numerous reports and interviews in newspapers and on television and radio. Sister Helen has received honors from innumerable abolitionist and social justice groups from around the world for her advocacy for an end to executions.

Fifteen years after beginning her crusade, the Roman Catholic sister has witnessed five executions in Louisiana and today educates the public about the death penalty through lecturing, organizing and writing. As the founder of "Survive," a victim's advocacy group in New Orleans, she continues to
counsel not only death row prisoners, but the families of murder victims as well.

Sister Helen served on the board of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty from 1985–1995, and chaired NCADP’s Board from 1993–1995. She is also a member of Amnesty International and an honorary member of Murder Victim Families for Reconciliation.
She presently is the Honorary Chairperson of the Moratorium Campaign, a group gathering signatures for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty. On December 18, 2000, Sister Helen, Amnesty International board member Paul Hoffman and Mario Marizziti, representative of The St. Egidio Community in Rome, Italy presented Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the U.N. with 2.5 million signatures from people all over the world calling for a moratorium on the death penalty.

Sister Helen’s second book, “The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions,” was published in December 2004. In it, she tells the story of two men, Dobie Gillis Williams and Joseph O’Dell, whom she accompanied to their executions. She believes both of them were innocent. In The Death of Innocents she takes the reader through all the evidence, including evidence the juries never heard due to either the incompetence of the defense lawyers or the rigid formalities of court procedure. Sister Helen examines how flaws inextricably entwined in the death
penalty system inevitably lead to innocent people being executed and render the system unworkable.

CHALLENGES TO LETHAL INJECTION

By Angie Grogan, IICACP board member & president of LSACP

(Editor’s note: The following is a shortened version of a yet to be published law review article)

The lethal injection protocol used in most states that have a death penalty is being challenged across the country. In 2005, the British medical
journal, The Lancet, published a study that indicated 43% (21) of the 49 toxicology reports from executed prisoners they examined showed a level of anesthesia that was consistent with being awake during the execution. Though this study has been criticized, it sparked the current debate over lethal injection.

The typical lethal injection protocol calls for a series of three injections. The first injection is sodium thiopental, which is an ultra-short acting
anesthesia. This is followed by an injection of pancuronium bromide, also known as Pavulon, that is a paralytic agent. The final injection is potassium
chloride, which ultimately causes the death of the prisoner. Based on The Lancet study, attorneys for condemned prisoners are arguing that the first
injection of anesthesia is wearing off before the final lethal injection, but, because the prisoner is paralyzed, s/he is unable to communicate the fact that
s/he is awake before receiving the final injection. The Lancet article also stated that, if the Lethal Injection prisoner was awake during the last injection, s/he would experience massive muscle cramping, asphyxiation, a severe burning sensation, and ultimately, cardiac arrest. Attorneys for condemned prisoners argue that this horrific pain constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

In 1977, Oklahoma became the first jurisdiction in the world to use lethal injection as a means of execution. In a letter, an Oklahoma senator, Dr.
Stanley Deutsch, the then-head of the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Oklahoma, recommended a lethal injection protocol, calling it an “extremely humane in comparison to either electrocution or execution by the inhalation of poisonous gases.” Dr. Deutsch recommended using an
injection of anesthesia, Thiopental, and a paralytic agent, Pancuronium, to cause death. Based on this letter, the state senator introduced a lethal
injection bill which was quickly enacted into law. Texas quickly followed suit and became the first state to use lethal injection in an execution. The
third drug, Potassium Chloride, was added at some point to the protocol but it is not clear how and when this occurred. Nearly thirty years later, we are still using the same protocol.

With the judicial eye being turned on lethal injection protocols, the problems and inconsistencies with lethal injection are being questioned. Courts are having a hard time reconciling the notion of a “need” for the death penalty with the mounting evidence that the lethal injection process is not as humane as once believed. Even though the United States Supreme Court recently decided that inmates had another procedural avenue in bringing a challenge to the lethal injection process, the decision did not rule on the legality of the injection process itself. It is unlikely the Supreme Court will ever decide that lethal injection is a “cruel and unusual” punishment because the Court has not found other methods of execution unconstitutional, such as electrocution, despite evidence of its documented inhumanity.

Some courts have found the arguments against lethal injection compelling. For instance, Kentucky and Tennessee courts have found the fact that no medical consultations were done when creating their respective state lethal injection protocols troubling. One court noted that, once Oklahoma created the process, all other states seemed to just copy the process without seeking outside medical advice.

Another point that some courts have found persuasive is that the American Veterinary Association has banned the use of Pavulon during the euthanasia of animals because of the possible pain and suffering it may cause, yet most protocols call for its use on a condemned human being. This point alone should give us all pause. How is it that we care more about the possible pain and suffering of an animal than we do about a fellow human being? I am reminded of a question my four year old son asked me after I came home from work one day. I was telling him that I had gone to a jail to try and help someone and he asked me, “Are jails where they keep all of the people in cages?” I started to try and correct him, explain that they were called cells not cages, but then I stopped. Deciding that he had a more accurate description, I said. “Yes, that is where they keep people in cages.”

Please come to IICACP’s Annual Meeting on Saturday, November 11 to find out more about lethal injection. The morning panel discussion will be about the lethal injection debate and there will be information handed out.

ENDNOTES:

1 Leonidas G. Koniaris, et al., Inadequate Anaesthesia in Lethal Injection for Execution, Lancet 2005; 365:1412-1414.

2 Baze v. Rees, No. 04-CI-0109, Franklin Circuit Ct, Div. 1, KY 7/8/2005.

3 Most of the information used in this article can be found in: Deborah W. Denno, When Legislatures Delegate Death: The Troubling Paradox Behind State Uses of Electrocution and Lethal Injection and What it Says About Us, 63 Ohio St.L.J. 98 (2002).

MEMBERSHIP DUES REMINDER

IICACP depends on your membership dues to continue abolition work, including educating the public and the legislature, publishing this newsletter and sponsoring public events, such as Sister Helen Prejean’s November visit, the Death Row Art show and the numerous death penalty related events planned for February 2007. We’ve obtained office space which will provide us a place for meetings and central storage of literature.
All of this requires money. Please take a few moments, fill out the form on the next page and renew--or start--your membership today. And please
feel free to donate more than the suggested membership amounts. Thank you for your continuing generosity.

Membership form

2006 ANNUAL MEETING REGISTRATION

This year IICACP’s annual meeting is in Indianapolis at the Christian Theological Seminar 1000 West 42nd (just east of Michigan Road). The $25 registration fee includes a continental breakfast and lunch. We STRONGLY suggest that you register early as the meeting may be crowded due to Sister Helen’s appearance as keynote speaker. Registering early also helps us with planning, so please fill out the form
below and send in your registration as soon as possible.

Annual Meeting Program Schedule

8:30 -9:00: registration & continental breakfast

9:00--10:10: lethal injection panel discussion:

-Dr. David Orentlicher, professor of ethics at both the IU med & law schools

-Angie Grogan, LSCAP president and author of a law review article on lethal injection

-Brent Westerfeld, capital defense attorney who represented Marv Bieghler in his lethal injection challenge

10:15-11:00: business meeting, election of officers

11-12:00: lunch

12 noon: Sister Helen Prejean

The Death Row Art Show will be on display throughout the weekend. The Show continues to grow and change as we continue to receive submissions from prisoners on both the Indiana and federal death rows. Even if you may have seen the Art Show before, this showing will
be different than all previous ones.

GOVERNMENT’S SANITIZED MURDERS CONTINUE

by Wesley I. Purkey

(Editor’s note: Wesley I. Purkey, who is a prisoner on federal death row in Terre Haute, wrote this essay as 3 of his fellow prisoners were scheduled to be executed this past May. Those executions were stayed pending judicial review of their challenges to lethal injection as a means of execution. IICACP welcomes submissions from readers but reserves the right to edit submissions for style, content and length. The views expressed in reader submissions are not necessarily those of IICACP, its board or member groups.)

Capital punishment is as fundamentally flawed as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty. --Henry Ford

On May 8th, 10th and 12th, 2006 at approximately 2 am, Richard Tipton, Corley Johnson and James Roane respectively will be executed by the Federal Government at the United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute, Indiana. Intravenous tubes attached to their arms will carry the instrument of death, a toxic fluid designed specifically for the purpose of killing human beings. The witnesses, standing only a few feet away, will behold Tipton, Johnson and Roane, who no longer are defendants, appellants or petitioners, but are human beings strapped to a gurney, seconds away from execution. These sanitized murders will be committed under the guise of justice, pellucid with futility and permeated with glaring inequities, but that will not stop them from happening.

Supposedly, these individuals, as the hundreds before them who have senselessly forfeited their lives in the sorrow-filled execution chambers throughout this country are the “worst of the worst” deserving this “just punishment.” This spurious, worst of the worst,
claim is quickly debunked for what it actually is through casual scrutiny: a facade to justify these senseless killings. Out of the hundreds of people
convicted of murder every year, only a handful are actually subject to the death penalty. Some people may actually be under the illusion that only the most horrid of murderers receive the death penalty, but this deception is realized through an abundance of evidence to the contrary. There is absolutely no “meaningful basis” distinguishing the few cases where the death penalty is imposed from the many more where it is not. No legitimate evidence exists to justify the arbitrary selection of who is to die and who is not based on this fraudulent “worst of the worst” claim. The only discernible evidence for this arbitrary selection process is a mixture of racism and poverty, with heavy emphasis on race. The visible signs of racism and prejudice are obvious to anyone with reasonable intelligence, with the exception of those who choose to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to it. Denying that it exists does not make it less real!

It should not be surprising that the biases and prejudice that permeate our society would also play a substantial role in determining who will be subject to the death penalty and who will not. The intuitive nature of this affinity is palpable to most people, but as noted above, even intelligent people seek
solace through ostracism to these facts. The racism infecting the death penalty has been documented through highly reliable and respected research. The “Bolus Study” showed that “[b]lacks who kill whites are sentenced to death at least 22 times the rate of blacks who kill blacks and more than 7 times the rate of whites who kill blacks.” McClesky v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1978). Because of the ‘nature of racism’ permeating the death penalty, reverse discrimination was introduced to disguise the biases and prejudice. The reverse racism remains alive and well today, despite numerous challenges of such in the courts. This malicious effort to disguise the biases and prejudice in the death penalty selection process was
like stacking ‘dog shit on top of ape shit,’ trying to hide the stench of one form of bigotry with the repugnant stench of another. Despite the overpowering stench of racism infecting the death penalty there are still those who choose to hold their noses and deny that the stench exists.

One individual who remains obstinate and oblivious to the biases and prejudice of the death penalty is a man of stature, race, and position, someone who you would imagine would be highly poignant to these issues. But, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas denies the very existence of any biases and prejudice in this country’s death penalty scheme. Instead, he finds dubious support for his death penalty dogma through twisted and pitiful reliance on 4,000 year old obscure biblical text and 200 year old antiquated legal philosophy. He shared these views in Morgan v. Illinois, 504 U.S. 719 (2005), stating in relevant part:

‘[W]hoever has committed murder must die....Even if a Civil Society resolved to dissolve itself with consent to all its members....The last murderer lying in the prison ought to be executed before the resolution was carried out. This ought to be done in order that everyone may realize the dessert of his deeds...’ (I. Kant, The Philosophy of Law 198 (1786). In support of this declaration Justice Thomas cited Exodus 21:12 [H]e that smiteth a man so that he dies, shall surely be put to death.”
This precarious reasoning by a man of Justice Thomas’ stature and race is not only sad, but demonstrates the hardhearted position that he uses to determine issues of the death penalty in cases presented to him by the court. Based on this untenable and unbelievable reasoning, a member of our country’s highest court justifies the most severe punishment there is. It is not hard to imagine how many other members of society
find support for the death penalty through similar twisted logic and reasoning.

At another time and place, over two centuries ago, the purpose of the death penalty was put into context. In The King’s Court v. Smith, 99 Eng. Rep. 39 (K.B. 1782), the court held in consideration of executing mentally deficient individuals that “marginal satisfaction of blood lust and vengeance secured through the execution of a cognizable moron is far outweighed by the need of mercy and higher justice.” The King’s Court identified the quintessential purpose behind the ignoble and cowardly executions of its citizens, that being amongst other things, “[t]o satisfy societies’ [blood lust] and [vengeance].” Put into perspective, the court held, as our highest court did two hundred years later, that “executing morons
only served marginal satisfaction of blood lust and vengeance,” in comparison with killing someone who has their full faculties about them. In this context, the death penalty of today serves no different purpose than what The King’s Court proclaimed in Smith: to satisfy society’s blood lust. The difference is that The King’s Court had the backbone to identify the purpose the death penalty served two hundred years ago, in contrast with this country that continues to hide behind a cowardly facade of dubious and twisted reasoning for the sanitized murders committed under the guise of justice.

For a minute, let’s forget about the biases and prejudices that permeate our society and that of the death penalty as well. Even absent these valid
considerations, the most sophisticated death penalty scheme cannot eliminate human error from condemning and executing the innocent. Because it is so morally reprehensible to think that an innocent person may be executed, we deceive ourselves into believing that the checks and balances in our judicial system will prevent such an atrocity. The evidence, though, does not support this deceptive thinking, particularly in light of the large number of death row prisoners whose convictions have been overturned based on DNA evidence, eyewitnesses recanting their testimony, the prosecution withholding of exculpatory evidence, law enforcement use of fabricated evidence, including trumped up jail house informant testimony, and an
array of other factors. Justice Thomas and others would have us believe that executing the innocent is acceptable under the death penalty scheme, as long as they received all of the processes due them under the law. What a sad proclamation for anyone, let alone a Supreme Court Justice. This type of death penalty dogma was reflected in 1900 by Charles Dickens in his book “Bleak House,” where Dickens wrote, “it is better to hang some feller than no feller.” Another legal epigram of substance here is “there is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thought to the law, would not deserve hanging ten times over in his lifetime.” Michael Eyquem Demontaigue, Philosopher - Essayist, 1592. The number of individuals sentenced
to death that have been exonerated after spending many years on death row, definitively dispels any illusions that innocent people have not been executed and will not continue to be executed as long as the death penalty in this country exists.

Recently the state of California executed a 76-year-old man who suffered from numerous crippling infirmities, including blindness and dementia. Allen
v. Ornoski, U.S. Supreme Court, 05-865 (05A646). He had to be taken to the execution chamber by way of a wheelchair. It is awful hard to imagine what legitimate reason served society by this unconscionable killing of a 76-year-old blind man! I will tell you exactly what purpose this unthinkable killing of that old man served...NONE WHATSOEVER...that is, beyond providing further senseless killings for societies’ insatiable appetite for blood lust and vengeance. This country has already murdered, in its execution chambers, over 1,000 men and women since reinstatement of the death penalty. Tipton, Johnson, and Roane will be added to this number without purpose served beyond that reality identified by The King’s Court. How many more sanitized murders must be carried out in this country’s sorrow-filled execution chambers until society readily recognizes the vivid futility of these murders and says “Enough is enough!” Enough would have been enough over a 1,000 sanitized murders ago!

PRODUCTION OF “THE EXONERATED” AT TERRE HAUTE COMMUNITY THEATER

On October 26, 27 & 28, the Terre Haute Community Theater will present “The Exonerated,” a play based on the stories of men and women who, despite their innocence, were convicted and sentenced to death. As the name implies, their convictions were eventually overturned, sometimes after they had spent many years on death row. Following each performance, which begins at 7:30 pm, will be a panel discussion focusing
on the death penalty. On October 26th & 27th the panels will feature Harold Wilson, who was exoneratedin 2005.

Coming soon: “Not In Our Name: A Community Conversation On the Death Penalty.”

During the last week of February and the first week of March 2007, IICACP, Christian Theological Seminar and Butler University are sponsoring a series of events focusing on the death penalty, including films and speakers as well as a public debate and an opera.

Look for more information in the next edition of the newsletter.