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Death Penaty Action’s Weekly Newsletter
On Friday , May 7, we anticipate some major announcements regarding new support for the Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act of 2021. While we can’t share all the details, it is imperative that you write your Members of Congress today to urge them to support HR 262/SB 582. The simple on-line letter writing tool is here.
When President Biden was sworn into office in January, we had actionable intelligence that an Executive Order was in the works declaring his intent to abolish the federal death penalty and commute the death sentences of those still on federal and military death rows. Death Penalty Action created our “Abolish & Demolish” campaign and added a call for the President to order the actual demolition of the death house in Terre Haute. Thousands of you signed that petition, and we continue to gather signatures. We recognize that President Biden must prioritize other pressing political matters — the COVID-19 response, gun violence in America, an influx of asylum seekers at our borders — and still we join others in the movement in keeping the call for clemency alive.
Charles Keith, DPA’s Impacted Communities Liaison, featured
Charles Keith has been featured in two local news stories this week. In these feature stories, Charles discusses his work with Death Penalty Action and how he uses the knowledge gained from fighting for his brother’s life in the struggle to end the death penalty both federally and in Ohio. Charles is also lending his experience as a murder victim family member and the brother of a man wrongly sentenced to death to help others facing similar situations. Have a look at Death Penalty Action’s new “Impacted Communities” support program.
Canton man’s new mission: Eliminating Ohio’s death penalty
“[Abe] Bonowitz said Keith has the ‘voice of experience,’ both as an abolitionist and as a victim due to the murder of his brother Durad, whose killing remains unsolved.
‘Charles inspires us more than anything else because of his brother’s case — his tenacity in how he approaches it, and whatever he can do to help raise awareness of the case and the issue more broadly,’ Bonowitz said.”
One Canton Man Wants To Death Penalty To Be Abolished
A Descending Spiral
Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays by Marc Bookman
Powerful, wry essays offering modern takes on a primitive practice, from one of our most widely read death penalty abolitionists
“The reality is that capital punishment in America is a lottery. It is a punishment that is shaped by the constraints of poverty, race, geography, and local politics.” — Bryan Stevenson
As Ruth Bader Ginsburg has noted, people who are well represented at trial rarely get the death penalty. But as Marc Bookman shows in a dozen brilliant essays, the problems with capital punishment run far deeper than just bad representation. Exploring prosecutorial misconduct, racist judges and jurors, drunken lawyering, and executing the innocent and the mentally ill, these essays demonstrate that precious few people on trial for their lives get the fair trial the Constitution demands.
Today, death penalty cases continue to capture the hearts, minds, and eblasts of progressives of all stripes — including the rich and famous (see Kim Kardashian’s advocacy) — but few people with firsthand knowledge of America’s “injustice system” have the literary chops to bring death penalty stories to life.
Enter Marc Bookman. With a voice that is both literary and journalistic, the veteran capital defense lawyer and seven-time Best American Essays “notable” author exposes the dark absurdities and fatal inanities that undermine the logic of the death penalty wherever it still exists. In essays that cover seemingly “ordinary” capital cases over the last thirty years, Bookman shows how violent crime brings out our worst human instincts — revenge, fear, retribution, and prejudice. Combining these emotions with the criminal legal system’s weaknesses — purposely ineffective, arbitrary, or widely infected with racism and misogyny — is a recipe for injustice.
Bookman has been charming and educating readers in the pages of The Atlantic, Mother Jones, and Slate for years. His wit and wisdom are now collected and preserved in A Descending Spiral.
Watch Free: The State of Texas vs. Melissa
Melissa Lucio has spent more than a decade on death row for the alleged murder of her two-year-old daughter, Mariah. In 2008, Lucio became the first Latina woman sentenced to death in Texas. In July 2019, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned a Texas court ruling and found Lucio’s right to a “complete defense” had been violated in her original trial. In February 2021, a sharply divided en banc Fifth Circuit reversed the 2019 grant of relief by a vote of 10 to 7. Lucio’s hope for exoneration and freedom now lies with the U.S. Supreme Court.
Lucio has steadfastly maintained her innocence in the death of Mariah. “The State of Texas vs. Melissa,” a 2020 documentary by Sabrina Van Tassel, highlights many of the concerning facts around her case. The film is currently winning awards in film festivals around the world, and it is available to watch for a fee on various streaming platforms. Now, in collaboration with Sabrina Van Tassel and with explicit encouragement from Melissa Lucio, Death Penalty Action is making the film available for free viewing on this special platform.
To watch, click here. If you are able to pay the viewing fee, please do. To watch for free, use the code “Action123,” when prompted. Once you register you have three days to start watching it, and once you start watching, you have 24 hours to complete it.
Click here to become a sponsor of this special viewing opportunity. Thank you!
New Book of Essays About Federal Executions Now Available!
Read about this new book in the Terre Haute Tribune Star!
The InterFaith Council of the Wabash Valley (IFC), in conjunction with Chalk and Fire Publishing, has published The Killing Fields of the Federal Government: InterFaith Essays on the Resumption of Executions, a collection of essays in response to the executions of twelve men and one woman at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute’s backyard starting in July 2020.
The book includes seven essays by six IFC authors: Sister Barbara Battista, Bill Breeden, Arthur Feinsod, Terry Gillies-Fear, Crystal Mikell Reynolds, and Death Penalty Action Advisory Board Member, Cantor Michael Zoosman. The tone and content of the essays range from personal narratives, provided by spiritual advisors who witnessed the executions; to impassioned reflections of those who protested the executions; to scholarly analyses that offer perspectives on spiritual issues that surround the executions. The essays are framed by a prologue and epilogue written by editor Sheron J. Dailey and a 2011 poem by William E. LeCroy, Jr., who was executed September 22, 2020.
Abraham J. Bonowitz, Director of Death Penalty Action provided the jacket quote on the back cover, concluding: “Now their passion lives on in these pages — a wake-up call to humanity.”
Orders for From the Killing Fields of the Federal Government: InterFaith Essays on the Resumption of Executions can be placed through Chalk & Fire publishing: chalkandfirepublishing@gmail.com. The cost is only $15.00, which includes free shipping within the United States and a free bookmark with important quotations for mercy and forgiveness and against an eye-for-an-eye thinking which, as Gandhi said, would make the whole world blind. That quotation is on the bookmark, too.
Write your member of Congress and tell them you do not support the federal death penalty!
On April 6, 2021, it was reported that State Attorney General Mark Brnovich has asked the Arizona Supreme Court to issue execution warrants for two death-row inmates in what would be the state’s first executions in almost seven years. Please sign this petition to let officials in Arizona know that resuming executions is the wrong thing to do.
Live in Nevada? Nevadans are still reeling from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. To offset the state’s budgetary shortfall, we urge Governor Sisolak and the Nevada Legislature to repeal the costly and ineffective death penalty. Click here to take action!
South Carolina adding Firing Squad & Electric Chair!
The South Carolina Senate has passed legislation to allow for alternative methods of execution, including burning prisoners to death in the electric chair, or shooting them with a firing squad. The bill has been passed by the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives and is expected to be voted on in the full House sometime soon. Live in South Carolina? Please use this tool to write to your representative in the South Carolina House of Representatives to let them know how you feel.
Live in Ohio? Take action here to support HB 183 and SB 103 to abolish the state’s death penalty!
Help Stop The Next Scheduled Execution!
Quintin Jones is scheduled for execution in Texas on May 19, 2021 for the 1999 murder of his great-aunt, Berthena Bryant. A death sentence is often invoked as providing closure for the victims’ families, but the family of Jones’s victim is opposed to his execution. They have said that executing Jones will only cause them more suffering and that they recognize his remorse and have forgiven him. Your signatures will go to the Texas Governor and the Texas Board of Pardons. Click here to add your name!
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