Abolition movement grows in Texas

Texas death-penalty abolitionists are organizing whirlwinds of activity to stop the use of this racist weapon of class terror. Information surfacing about the many people on death row who were unjustly convicted is helping build the movement to stop executions. Yet Texas—the state that leads all others in the U.S. in executions—is continuing to execute prisoners, with 16 legal lynchings already this year and 12 more scheduled.

Abolitionists are organizing numerous activities in Texas for this fall, including the Seventh Annual March to Stop Executions to be held in Austin during the last weekend of October.

There are also plans to protest horrific conditions of isolation on death rows—both at the Polunsky Unit and at the prison in downtown Livingston, Texas.

Texas Death Penalty Abolition Move ment leader Njeri Shakur says: “Every major city in Texas has abolitionists who continue to organize, agitate and educate about the racist and unfair nature of the death penalty. Despite the assembly line of executions, we remain optimistic that even Texas will be forced to stop state killings. We are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. We just can’t get to that end fast enough.”

Shakur recently met in Austin with representatives of other Texas-based anti-death-penalty organizations who are working together to garner funds for a statewide speaking tour and efforts to bring about a moratorium on executions within the next few years.

Three cases propel
abolition demand

The death-penalty abolition movement has experienced momentum from exposures over the last 20 months in major newspapers of evidence that might have exonerated three prisoners already executed by the state.

“These three cases have shaken what was a once solid foundation of support for the death penalty in Texas. Now, many people express doubt that Texas has ‘never executed an innocent person,’ as the state claims,” said activist Joanne Gavin.

In December 2004, the Chicago Tri bune published the results of its investigation of Cameron Todd Willingham, executed on Feb. 17 of that year. The article showed that Willingham had been sent to death row based primarily on arson theories later repudiated by improved scientific methods.

Eight months after Willingham was executed, the same scientific information helped exonerate another man, Ernest Willis, who had also been convicted of capital murder by arson. Willis became the eighth person exonerated while on Texas death row. He had spent 17 years awaiting execution.

In November 2005, a two-part investigative series in the Houston Chronicle cast serious doubt on the evidence used to convict Rubén Cantú, who was executed in 1993. Cantú, only 17 when he was charged with capital murder, had persistently proclaimed his innocence. A key eyewitness in the state’s case and a co-defendant both came forward to say that Rubén Cantú was innocent.

In June , the Chicago Tribune published an in-depth, three-part series on the 1989 execution of Carlos de Luna, who had given the police the name of the person he said he himself saw carry out the robbery and murder for which he was convicted. As de Luna was being executed, he sent a message: “Tell everyone on death row to keep the faith and don’t give up.”

Support gears up
for death-row prisoners

On July 26, Howard Guidry won a new trial date, set for Jan. 29, 2007. A federal judge had ruled that the prisoner had to be either released from death row or retried by the state. Guidry, who has always proclaimed his innocence, is gaining wide support among the progressive community in Houston. Members of the Blackout Artists Collective are performing his poetry—poems written during his decade on death row that are heart-wrenching and acutely political. (www.geocities .com/HowardGuidryJusticeComm)

A federal judge has also thrown out the case against death-row prisoner Martin Draughon—one of three men sent to death row because of the Houston Crime Lab’s inaccurate ballistics testimony. On July 28, Draughon was in a Houston court to accept a deal that could see him leaving death row as early as November. After the papers were signed, Draughon had a wide smile on his face as he turned to all his supporters in the courtroom to thank everyone for being there.

The family of Rodney Reed and the Campaign to End the Death Penalty held a spirited rally at the State Capitol on July 30, calling for a new trial for Reed—a Black man sent to death row for the death of a white woman with whom he had been having a secret affair. Her fiancé Jimmy Fennell, a white cop, was not charged with the murder despite his obvious motive. “Jimmy Fennell twice failed lie-detector tests while being questioned about the crime. That is, on each of those polygraph tests, Fennell had showed deception when asked whether or not he had strangled Stacey Stites,” wrote the Austin Chronicle on May 4, 2002, in an article questioning the verdict.

According to rally participant Barbara Timko, “You could feel the energy and enthusiasm of the rally. It is obvious that Rodney’s supporters will not stop until he receives true justice.” A new film about the case—“The State vs. Reed”—won the Lone Star State’s audience award this year at the 20th annual “South by Southwest” film festival in Austin.

Thomas Miller-El’s retrial will begin on Sept. 5. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 13, 2005, that Miller-El, who is Black, was entitled to a new trial due to evidence of racial bias during jury selection at his original trial. By phone, Miller-El asked Workers World to send greetings to all his supporters and also to his friends on death row. He said he is concerned that he has only seen his court-appointed attorneys three times since he got back to the Dallas County jail last summer.

Miller-El explained: “Within this system there’s no such thing as justice. What happened to being innocent until proven guilty? The district attorney has gone on television and been quoted in the paper many times saying I am guilty, and I haven’t even been retried yet. They use the media to demonize me and prejudice potential jurors. They wanted me to accept a plea bargain, but I refused.”

He can receive letters at: Thomas Miller-El #05069575, 500 Commerce St., North Tower 5-P-12, Dallas, TX 75202.

Njeri Shakur alerted everyone to the Aug. 31 scheduled execution of Hasan Shakur. She quoted death-row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, who said of Shakur, “Prison—and worse, death row—was the place, not just of his nightmarish repression and possible death, but of his rebirth, his becoming a revolutionary, who looks at the collective interests of his people, and all oppressed peoples of the Earth.”

Shakur has joined the New African Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter and was named its Minister of Human Rights. In a recent publication, he concluded: “My legal appeals have taken turns for the worse, and yet, the path of liberation continues to be my vocation, carving out a path for future revolutionaries to follow and carry the torch. I despise the class oppression that is the basis of the capitalist system and the racist national oppression that goes with it.”