Why we must oppose ALL executions

Houston

In 1988 a man on Texas death row asked me to witness his execution. I did not even know him, so I asked him, “Why me?” He wanted me to write about it for Workers World newspaper! This paper was and is widely read and circulated in Texas prisons, including on death row, and he told me it was the best paper around.

I never did witness for him, because he received a stay of execution and is still alive today. In fact, we have written and visited for over 35 years now and are best friends and comrades today.

The death penalty is one of the most racist and biased tools of the ruling class against workers and the oppressed, and Workers World Party opposes it in all cases. It’s right up there with entrenched poverty, hunger, lack of health care and housing and brutal police.

So-called “crime” in the U.S. is caused by capitalism. Period. Whether a person robs or rapes or steals or murders — the cause is capitalism. No one is born with the inclination to commit these acts, which in this country are committed because of the conditions we live under. If all babies were loved, well-fed, educated, had decent health care and as adults were properly employed, there would be little to no crime. Mental health is very often determined by conditions.

Many of the actions that land people in prison are committed by  individuals using drugs or having anger issues or untreated mental illness. If the system took off everyone on death row today who had these issues, along with the 8% of death row prisoners who are factually innocent, there would be a radical drop in the death row population!

Considering the racist cops who lie as easily as they breathe, prosecutors who cheat and hide exculpatory evidence, judges who are not impartial and juries who are not the peers of the accused, then the whole criminal legal system needs to be thrown out, including the death penalty.

Examples of injustice

I have witnessed the executions of two of my friends. The first was a dear friend named Carlos Santana, obviously not the famed singer. This Carlos was a poor man from the Dominican Republic. He had lost his job in Houston, and his spouse was pregnant. So, he went with a man he barely knew to commit a robbery. He was surprised when the other man killed someone.

Both were sent to death row. In Texas this is known as the law of parties. Two, three or even more people can all be given a death sentence for one murder.

My friend Erica Sheppard is one of those impacted by this law. She was hanging out with a man who decided to rob and kill a woman. Erica had not helped plan this or even realized it would happen until it did. Erica was 19 when Houston city courts sent her to prison. She turned 51 last month. Erica finally has good lawyers, and I hope I can soon be with her in the big city instead of talking with her behind a glass barrier in a stuffy prison three and a half hours by car from my home in Houston.

Another example is my late friend Joseph Nichols, who went to rob a delicatessen with a friend. Joseph left after the robbery. He later heard on the news that his buddy had gone back to the deli and killed the owner. One gun, one bullet, one shot. But Joseph was sentenced to death and executed in 2007.

Jeff Wood was outside in his pickup truck when his buddy went into a convenience store and wound up killing the clerk. Jeff heard the shot and entered the store. His friend told him to destroy the video camera, or he would kill Jeff’s daughter. Jeff did that and has now been on death row for over 25 years.

The other person whose legal lynching that I witnessed was Sam Bustamante. Sam and I knew each other but only casually. I asked him why he wanted me to witness his execution. He said that because the prison system hated me, he wanted to piss them off one more time. I smiled and figured that was a good reason.

Sam had so many mental health issues from the abuse he suffered as a child. He had severe PTSD from being locked outside of his house all night many times and from facing starvation even though there was food in the house. He never got treatment for this abuse.

Many reasons to abolish the death penalty

The facts about the death penalty are quite clear. Executions do not deter killing. If they did, Texas would have fewer murders than any state, as it leads the country with 591 of the 1601 executions since 1976 — and executions continue.

Executions are unbelievably expensive. There are a lot of appeals in capital murder cases. Appellate attorneys are expensive. Expert witnesses are expensive. And prosecutors have unlimited money available to them to pursue convictions, which they spend freely, draining the tax base.

The death penalty is racist. Over half of those on death row are people of color. Almost half of those executed are people of color. The former confederate states account for 1,306 of the 1,601 executions carried out since 1976. The death penalty is a continuation of the lynchings in this country that began centuries ago, through the years when Black people were enslaved, during Reconstruction, through the many years of horrific Jim Crow laws.  And it still continues.  The only thing is that now executions, or legal lynchings as we call them, are just that: legal.

About 76% of district attorneys are white. (zippia.com/)

More than 6.3% of all death sentences imposed since 1972 have been reversed for prosecutorial misconduct or resulted in a misconduct exoneration.

A handbook for the Dallas District attorneys used to read: “Do not take Jews, [Black People, Italians], Mexicans or a member of any minority race on a jury.” In 1969 one of the Dallas DA’s top assistants wrote a training manual warning against picking, among others, “free-thinkers” and “extremely overweight people” and said, “You are not looking for a fair juror but rather a strong, biased and sometimes hypocritical individual who believes that defendants are different from them.”

Just as one can’t take out the grainy mixture in a packet of Kool-Aid once it is mixed with water, racism is such an integral part of the death penalty that it can never be separated from it.

Innocent people are executed. There have been over 200 people exonerated off death rows in the U.S., because they were innocent. In fact, there are now investigations into executions of people considered likely to have been innocent.

Data show that for every eight executions carried out in the U.S., a wrongfully convicted person on death row is exonerated.

Just this week in Texas, Kerry Max Cook, who was on death row for 20 years, was finally declared innocent of a murder for which he was sentenced to death in 1978. Cook wrote on his Facebook page: “To the promise I made to my mom, dad and brother Doyle Wayne to not give up until I cleared our name, I made it. Today I’m a free and cleared man. Finally.” This took 46 years and a toll on his health.

Although waning, death penalty must be abolished

The death penalty is still on the books but its use is rapidly declining. Of the 50 U.S. states, 27 have the death penalty, but six of those states have governor-imposed moratoriums on executions. Six of the 27 have not executed anyone in more than 10 years.

There are so many new and good facts around the death penalty:  Executions are down, public support is down. Death sentences are down.

But the main fact that is clear is that the death penalty must go. It is a tool of the ruling class to oppress and murder people. The crimes of the ruling class far outweigh any crimes by members of our class.

Recently, within eight days, five executions were carried out in four states — one each in Missouri, Oklahoma and Alabama and two in Texas. Outrage spread around the country as Missouri ignored the facts in the case of Marcellus Khaliifah Williams, including lack of DNA evidence, paid witnesses –  and the victim’s family and even the prosecutor who tried Williams opposed the execution. His innocence was believed by all who examined his case, including The Innocence Project.

The same day, Sept 24, in Texas, Travis James Mullis, who was physically and sexually abused beginning when he was an infant and was declared mentally ill at three years of age when he began banging his head on walls, was executed. His death and Williams’ were an hour apart.

Two days later, another likely innocent man, Emmanuel Littlejohn, was executed in Oklahoma despite the state’s parole board recommending commutation. The  self-proclaimed “pro-life” (anti-reproductive rights) governor did not accept the recommendation, however. The same day Alabama executed Alan Eugene Miller by torturing him to death using suffocation with nitrogen gas.

Then on Oct. 1, my dear friend, Garcia Glen White, was lynched in Texas. After a football injury in college, Big White, as the men on the row affectionately called him, became addicted to pain meds and wound up on crack cocaine. His addiction caused him to abandon his previously mild manner of living and sent him on a violent spree.

Big White spent almost 30 years on death row.  His friend, Howard Guidry, described Big White this way: “This is a difficult one. Big White is more than a friend to most of us. He is an institution of love, compassion, empathy and dignity. He loves effortlessly and through acts of kindness and humility. I’ve seen his effect on the hardest of men. Men are better human beings from the moment they meet Big White. His love is a Redeemer’s love: a love that is warm yet weightless, without pressure or expectation and that forgives without persuasion. Big White’s love is an explosion.

“He’s provided us a source of light, an example of faith and a life worth emulating. He came to our section this morning. He looked up at me, smiled and said, ‘Keep your head up.’ I want to say, man, fuck that. But, it’s Big White, my big brother. He knows me. ‘Keep your head up,’ he said. His clothes were pressed and bright. He smiled.  We said ‘I love you’ at the same time. When he walked out, my anger turned to tears.”

I will attend Big White’s funeral Saturday and wear his favorite color — blue, as his mother Liz suggested. If Big White had received help for his addiction, he would never have wound up killing two girls, and I wouldn’t be wearing blue to his funeral.

It’s a different situation under socialism. I will never forget the collective guilt that people in Cuba felt when I was visiting the island maybe 20 years ago. I can’t remember the exact year, but there had been one murder that year. People were distraught that this had happened. Why? Because after the 1959 Cuban revolution, crime had been almost eliminated. This really hit me. Socialism was the Cuban people’s answer to their problems.

The biggest criminal here in the U.S. is capitalism, and it is up to our class, the working class, to organize, educate and bring an awakening to the real crimes we face. We must destroy the wealthy class above us and put ourselves in power. Then and only then will we be free of executions, the death penalty and the other ills we face.

I hate going to funerals unless it is the one when capitalism dies. Let’s get to work!

Gloria Rubac is a long-time prisoner rights activist and co-founder of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement.