California Innocence Project: Join the March!

Hard-working anti-death penalty campaigners in California may still be nursing some disappointment at the outcome of the SAFE California initiative, but there are many reasons to be optimistic about the future of death penalty abolition.  After all, who could have predicted Richard Viguerie and Bill O'Reilly would join the cause?  More seriously, Amnesty International cites seven significant steps toward abolition that were made in 2012 including abolition in the state of Connecticut.

Maryland may be next, and Sister Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking) is on the case, linking Maryland's progress on marriage equality and immigration reform to death penalty abolition for the hat trick,

On the heels of an election that affirmed the Free State's desire for equal opportunities and protections under the law for everyone, we see a path to another victory for fairness and justice. It's time for Maryland to abolish the death penalty.

Maryland is on the cusp of putting an end to this failed experiment in orchestrated killing. Like the coalition that crossed faith, political, racial and economic boundaries to pass the Dream Act and marriage equality, a similarly strong alliance is emerging to end the death penalty and to replace it with a conviction of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

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By willfully taking human life, the state imitates the worst of human impulses. Extinguishing a light, however dim, is never a path to greater illumination. Ending this unworkable, immoral, failed aspect of our justice system is the right thing to do. And now is the right time to do it. Maryland, let your light shine.

Urge your friends in Maryland to take action here.

Californians can study this new infographic from the California Innocence Project and reserve the dates for CIP's Innocence March this spring,

On April 27, 2013, the California Innocence Project will march from San Diego to Sacramento with clemency petitions for 10 of our clients who are innocent yet remain incarcerated. We invite you to join us at any of the 3 public walking days, or the rallies we will host along the way. Please read our client’s stories and come out to march with us!

Keep on walkin'!

Yes on 34 with Sister Helen!

Nun-activist extraordinaire Sister Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking) and death row exoneree Kirk Bloodworth (in not-so-subliminal DNA tie!) make the case for California's Yes on 34 campaign to end the death penalty in the video above. Prop. 34, the SAFE California Act, will replace California’s death penalty with a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole as the maximum punishment for murder. This means convicted killers will remain behind bars forever – with no risk of executing an innocent person. Why support Yes on Prop 34?

• Savings: Many people think that the death penalty is cheaper than life without parole. That is just not true. The Legislative Analyst's official report on Prop. 34 says California taxpayers will save $130 million each year without releasing a single prisoner. 
• Accountability: Convicted killers will be held accountable and pay for their crimes. Prop. 34 requires persons convicted of murder to work and pay restitution into a victim’s compensation fund. 
• Full Enforcement: The SAFE California Fund* takes $30 million a year for three years in budget savings and puts it into the investigation of unsolved rape and murder cases. Our limited law enforcement dollars should be used to solve more crimes, to get more criminals off our streets, and to protect our families. 

Momentum is building to end the death penalty and find better ways to fight crime. Sister Helen also spoke recently to The Oregonian about the movement to abolish the death penalty (Oregon may be the next state to attempt a referendum):

Q: Since 2007, there have been five states that have abolished (the death penalty) and now California's voters will decide … Do you think that this wave of states abolishing capital punishment is going to continue … and where do you see it happening next?  

A: Yeah it is… There are a number of states. Kansas is close to doing it. California is actually close to doing it… You know Americans are practical. So let’s take this death penalty thing that’s supposed to deter violent crime. So let’s look at the states that are practicing the death penalty the most. And we see roughly states that do have the death penalty have double the homicide rate of states that don’t have the death penalty... Then another factor is the money. All states are under budget crunches. ... And so like California spends $185 million a year to keep their death penalty machinery in place. The average waiting time for an execution is 20 years. I bet you Oregon is close to that because you don’t actually practice it. So it’s almost like you’re holding this symbol in place, a political symbol. That’s basically what it boils down to because (for) politicians, it’s the easiest symbol in the world to say ‘I’m tough on crime.’ It ‘s got nothing to do with dealing with the roots of crime and violence.

Learn more and get involved with the SAFE campaign today!

Hector Tobar Visits Rights Readers!

Book discussions don't get better than this! Congratulations to our Loyal Readers (especially mastermind Stevi) for luring author Hector Tobar to our discussion The Barbarian Nurseries. The novel is both layered with complex characters and at the same time covers quite a bit of Southern California terrain, exploring issues of family, race, class, immigration, culture, media, justice and more (see this post for more). Stevi shares,

Not only did we learn that the
Torres-Thompson children are based on Hector’s own sons and daughter, but that the gritty, very real people and descriptions come from Hector’s experiences as a reporter for the LA Times. He is a writer who enjoys his characters, their experiences and the settings in which they find themselves.

Currently, Hector’s working on two more books, one a historical novel about the trapped Chilean miners and another about a man who wanted to write a novel so he lived the life of a novel but was never able to write the novel. Both books sound like they are right down our Amnesty alley.

Yes, I feel certain this is not the last time we will be reading this author's books, and meanwhile, we strongly recommend this great novel which is both thought-provoking and fun to read! The novel has already won the California Book Award for fiction this year and congratulations to Hector who just became the most recent recipient of UC Santa Barbara's Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature. Well-deserved!

Cut This!

Courtesy of the ACLU of Northern California, timeout for a little PSA aimed at our California readership (though the argument is really applicable in all death penalty states) regarding maintaining the death penalty in a time of budget crisis. You can take action at the ACLU's site:

Cut This: The Death Penalty from aclunc on Vimeo.

Bonus inspirational video from Amnesty-France:

Global Day of Action for Troy Davis

Head on over to the AIUSA Troy Davis page Finality over Fairness or go directly to the action: Support Clemency for Troy Davis. You can also keep up with the latest developments on the Troy Anthony Davis website.

And while I'm at it, some recent 'must reads' for Californians:

'Dysfunctional' death penalty racks up 28-year, $5-million tab (LA Times)

Can Californians afford to keep the death penalty? (Sacramento Bee)

California Still the Highest Spender on the Death Penalty (ACLU)

Divided appeals court upholds death sentence (San Francisco Chronicle)

More Death Penalty Discussion Context

Just discovered that Death Penalty Focus now has a blog. In addition to my previous post, Browsing their site should provide some added context for our discussion of Finding Freedom by Jarvis Jay Masters and the future of the capital punishment in California.

Since we are also on the eve of the inauguration of a new president and a new congress, do check out these links on what we may have in store on the federal side. From WaPo 'Webb Sets His Sights On Prison Reform' and from Capital Defense Weekly 'Eric Holder as Attorney General' and 'Holder on Opt-In.'

Our January Author: Jarvis Jay Masters

The first stop to supplement your reading of Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row by Jarvis Jay Masters, must be his support committee's website: freejarvis.org particularly the material they have explaining the current status of his appeal.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation provides this site with overview and stats on San Quentin. The department provides a set of pictures of death row, as well. Marin County provides us with a fascinating San Quentin photo album from its historical archives. Hulu.com has full espisodes from the MSNBC series Lockup, including Inside San Quentin. It's very guard-centric and focused on the sensational, but it's one way to get inside and look around.

San Quentin in the news: Don't miss this July 2008 NPR report (with illustrative photography) of the overcrowding at San Quentin. Then there is former warden Jeanne Woodford's LAT editorial from October 2008,

I worked in corrections for 30 years, starting as a correctional officer and working my way up to warden at San Quentin and then on to the top job in the state -- director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. During those years, I came to believe that the death penalty should be replaced with life without the possibility of parole.

The police chief of Newark, CA has also recently expressed concerns that the death penalty hurts public safety and his budget concerns are echoed by at least a couple of California lawmakers.

Under the direction of writer Tobias Wolff, San Quentin has recently revived its prisoner produced newsletter. Copies can be downloaded here. Highly recommended! Of course this reminds me of another favorite book of mine, Life Sentences: Rage and Survival Behind Bars, by Ron Wikberg and Wilbert Rideau, which is sadly out of print, but worth a look in your library. It contains articles from the Angolite, the newspaper of Angola prison in Louisiana. Samples of Rideau's writing can be found here. Other sources for prison writing include PEN American Center's Prison Writing Program and this Canadian site contains links to the writing and art work of more California death row inmates.

For January: Finding Freedom by Jarvis Jay Masters

For January, we have chosen Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row by California death row inmate Jarvis Jay Masters:

Finding Freedom is a collection of prison stories - sometimes shocking, sometimes sad, often funny, always immediate-told against a background of extreme violence and aggression, written by a prisoner on death row who has become a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism.

Visit with Senator Boxer's Staffer

On October 15 four of us from AI Group 22 met with Mr. Corey Jackson from Senator Boxer's Los Angeles office. We discussed our group's work on Eritrea prisoners of conscience, the AI special focus case of Shi Tao, and the Darfur crisis. Corey told us that input from constituents would be very helpful, so we're asking all you California folks to go to Senator Boxer's official web site and let her know that you're concerned about one or more of the three topics. For information on Eritrea POCs, see our sample letter to Boxer or visit the AIUSA Eritrea page or learn about imprisoned Eritrean journalists. Here's AIUSA info about Shi Tao, and here's the country page for Sudan/Darfur. We hope to report next month on what progress we've made toward obtaining Senator Boxer's help in these issues.

Preventing Wrongful Convictions

The LAT has a couple of excellent editorials today, one drawing attention to the 'Benghazi Six' - a case concerning the death sentences of health professionals who have been convicted of deliberately infecting 426 children with HIV in Libya which we featured previously, and another pointing out the company we keep in maintaining our allegiance the death chamber,

The spectacle of state-ordered death has been on display across the world this week — in the sentencing of a Los Angeles serial killer whose case revealed that another man had been wrongly convicted for several of the crimes; in the dispiriting case of a Georgia man set for execution despite the shaky evidence against him; in the abrupt killing of a Chinese official by a government more interested in image than justice; in the stoning of an Iranian man for violating his nation's moral code; in the sentencing of six almost-certainly innocent foreign medical workers in Libya. Which of these is more barbaric?

These editorials follow on an op-ed, Doing time for no crime, by Arthur Carmona, a young man wrongfully convicted of robbery and sentenced to 17 years in prison, serving three before gaining his release. Carmona is now campaigning for criminal justice reform and recommends legislation that will prevent wrongful convictions,

Senate Bill 756, sponsored by Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles), would require the state Department of Justice to develop new guidelines for eyewitness identification procedures. For example, guidelines in other states limit the use of in-field show-ups like the one that led to my wrongful conviction.

Senate Bill 511, sponsored by Elaine Alquist (D-Santa Clara), would require recording of the entire interrogation, including the Miranda warning, in cases of violent felonies. Electronic recording of interrogations would not only help end false confessions but also discourage police detectives from lying during interrogations — as they did in my case by claiming to have videotaped evidence of me.

Senate Bill 609, sponsored by Majority Leader Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), would prevent convictions based on uncorroborated testimony by jailhouse snitches.

These bills were crafted in response to the findings of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice which will issue an opinion on the ultimate fairness of the death penalty in the near future. See our sidebar for information on contacting Gov. Schwarzenegger and your state legislators with your views on these measures to prevent wrongful convictions.

Meanwhile, congrats to Rwanda! They abolished the death penalty this week.

Death Penalty Update

Just a couple of brief updates on our on-going anti-death penalty work: Amnesty International USA Executive Director Larry Cox has released a statement regarding proposed changes to California's lethal injection procedures,

These attempts to tinker endlessly with the mechanism of execution are both misguided and futile. The real problems that plague the death penalty system transcend the method by which a person is put to death. No matter how "sanitized" the execution process, the death penalty remains racially biased, carries the very real risk of executing the innocent and is arbitrary and capricious at its very core.

Also, you can take action online on behalf of Texas death row inmate Cathy Henderson here. Her supporters' website reports on new medical evidence in the case and has other action suggestions.

Child Life Without Parole

At our last non-virtual meeting we discussed California Senate Bill 999, legislation to reform criminal sentencing which can result in life without parole sentences for children. The author of the bill, Senator Leland Yee, explains the legislation in a press release here. The introduction of SB 999 is great news following on Amnesty International's recent report on this issue. The effort to pass the bill has its own website childrenwithoutparole.org where you can learn more and check out a list of organizations supporting this reform including Amnesty International. Then take action!

Write/email your state senator to let him/her know that rehabiliation should be the primary mission of our penal system and that children are the most receptive to our efforts in this regard! See links above for additional arguments and statistics to make your case.

Look up your state senator here or see the sidebar box for contacting your legislators and send them an email.

Amnesty International Southern California Mini-Conference

Coming up on Saturday, March 31-- its the Amnesty International Southern California Mini-Conference at Calstate Fullerton featuring guest speakers, workshops, networking and more. Details including directions to the venue can be found at this page. The event is free and open to the public.

Finding Freedom

A brief follow-up to our non-virtual discussion yesterday: The San Francisco Chronicle reports on good news in the case of California death row inmate Jarvis Jay Masters (author of possible future Rights Readers selection Finding Freedom),

The California Supreme Court, in an unusual step, has ordered state prosecutors to respond to defense lawyers' claims that new evidence shows a San Quentin State Prison inmate is innocent of the 1985 murder of a prison guard that sent him to Death Row.

Jarvis Masters' appeal is still a longshot in a court that upholds more than 90 percent of the death sentences it considers. But the circumstances of the Feb. 14 order signed by all seven justices have given Masters' lawyers a glimmer of hope that their 45-year-old client will be vindicated.

LA Event: Child Trafficking Conference

Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking and several other area organizations are sponsoring "Hiding in Plain Sight: Finding and Protecting Child Victims of Trafficking A Southern California Conference for Advocates," on Wednesday, September 20, 2006, from 9:30 am – 5:00 pm at The Center at Cathedral Plaza (555 West Temple St. Los Angeles, 90012). Keynote Speaker for the event will be Kevin Bales, President of Free the Slaves and author of the highly recommended Rights Readers selection Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy). Conference flyer and registration form can be found here.

Tags: slavery, events, Kevin Bales

Lethal Injection Update

Let's start with this thought from Anna Quindlen,

The question isn't whether executions can be made painless: it's whether they're wrong. Everything else is just quibbling. And most of the quibbling simply boils down to trying to make the wrong seem right.

That said, after several months respite, lethal injection is back in the news here in California now that a hearing in the Michael Morales case is coming up later this month.  Here are a few resources to bring us up to speed: Death Penalty Focus has a page running down the various pending legal cases in the state.  For a national perspective check out the Death Penalty Information Center's resource page on the subject.

Worth remembering while the lethal injection issue progresses is that the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice continues its work of examing the causes of wrongful convictions and making recommendations to insure the fairness of the administration of criminal justice in the state.  The commission has already issued three reports and some of its recommendations are being implemented via the legislative process (see for example the recent bill to require electronic recording of interrogations of individuals charged with serious offenses now sitting on the governor's desk).  In addition to these reforms, ultimately, the commission will weigh in on the fairness of the death penalty itself and this judgment could be far more important to the retention of this practice than quibbling over the method we use to kill.  Let's not lose sight of that goal.

Tags: death penalty, California, lethal injection, criminal justice,

Our August Author: Naomi Hirahara

A quick introduction to our August author, Naomi Hirahara (Summer of the Big Bachi). She has her own website with a Q&A for reading groups that's worth a look and I also recommend browsing the nonfiction books section to get a feel for how grounded her work is in California history. She's written a book Green Makers: Japanese American Gardners in Southern California which gave me a flashback to an exhibition I saw a few years back at the Japanese American National Museum.

She also contributes to a group blog, Murderati, with a post each Wednesday. Language geeks take note that at the end of each post she explicates a Japanese word from one of her books, for example,

WEDNESDAY’S WORD: monku (SUMMER OF THE BIG BACHI, page 87)

To complain or a complaint. Once upon a time in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, there was a shoe store that sold T-shirts that read, "Monku, Monku, Monku." In this record-breaking heat in Southern California, monku is plentiful. But considering the unstable situation our world is in, a little heat is easy to bear.

Tags: Naomi Hirahara, California, language

Pasadena Events: Solovky Power, Sister Janet Harris

This Sunday, March 26, at 10:15 AM, Documentary filmmaker Marina Goldovskaya will be speaking about her efforts to document the history of the Soviet gulag and her film "Solovky Power" at All Saints Church in Pasadena (132 N. Euclid Avenue). This event is in Sweetland Hall on the ground floor. Solovky Power is a groundbreaking documentary on the history of a concentration camp that was one of the first to become known as the Gulag. For more information check out this CNN interview with the filmmaker. Amnesty International Group 22 volunteers will be there making the modern-day "gulag" analogy with actions on Guantanamo and the US practice of outsourcing torture.

Also at All Saints this Sunday, Sister Janet Harris, advocate for incarcerated youth, will be speaking, (same time, only downstairs in the "Forum." I blogged a few months back about this case and the story keeps getting better:

Six years ago, a persistent nun persuaded a large law firm to take, pro bono, the case of a young man she believed to be wrongfully accused of murder. In December 2005, Mario Rocho's conviction was overturned. All Saints' Senior Warden Bob Long, a partner at Latham & Watkins, was the lead attorney on the case. Sister Janet Harris was Mario's advocate. This journey to justice attracted a documentary team who captured the story on film, a short segment of which will be shown in this presentation. Harris came to know Mario Rocho at the Inside Out Writing Program she founded at LAÕs Central Juvenile Hall. A former high school teacher and chaplain, Harris has been an advocate for troubled youth in Southern California for 35 years. Come and be inspired by what happens when individuals put their heart for justice together with their education and training and don't give up!

Hope to see a few of you at these events!

For Women's Day: Too Much Time

In honor of International Women's Day I'd like to highlight Amnesty's new report Abuse of Women in Custody: Sexual Misconduct and Shackling of Pregnant. The report surveys laws, policies and practices in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons regarding custodial sexual misconduct and the shackling of inmates who are pregnant or giving birth. If the report is too dry for you, skip to the multimedia presentation, Too Much Time, featuring the photography of Jane Evelyn Atwood and if you're short on time, skip the intro and go to part two of the presentation and just view the photos and listen to the commentary on "Vanessa's Baby." California residents can breathe a sigh of relief that our legislature just passed a law barring the shackling of women in labor, but its just appalling that it took this long... or that it would be necessary in the first place! Note: Atwood's photojournalism is also available in book form- Too Much Time: Women in Prison

Sister Janet's Juvenile Justice Initiative

Today's Los Angeles Times Column One feature is an article about Central Juvenile Hall's Sister Janet Harris and her crusade for a young man she took note of in the detention center's writing program. This should ring bells for our long-time readers who remember one of our favorite books, Edward Humes' No Matter How Loud I Shout. The article points up the legacy of Prop 21 (recall our candlelight vigil outside Juvenile Hall?) and cites Amnesty's recent report The Rest of Their Lives: Life Without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States. From the article:

An initiative passed in 2000 by 62% of California voters gave district attorneys the power to determine whether juveniles accused of certain serious crimes should face adult punishment.

The most severe sentence that can be imposed in Juvenile Court is detention until age 25. Had Rocha not been tried as an adult, his supporters say, he might have been freed by now.

Last year, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office filed 178 juvenile cases in adult court, and 119 juveniles were transferred to adult court after judicial hearings, according to the agency's statistics.

A report published Oct. 12 by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch found that 2,225 offenders are serving life without parole in U.S. prisons for crimes committed before they turned 18. For an estimated 59% of those inmates, it was their first conviction.

The U.S. is one of only a few countries that allow children to be imprisoned for life without parole. Elsewhere in the world, about 12 young offenders are currently serving such sentences, the study found.

By the way, Edward Humes has a website if you're curious what he's been up to lately.