Give Them Death: Three Leading Democratic Candidates Support Capital Punishment

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Give Them Death: Three Leading Democratic Candidates Support Capital Punishment
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted January 25, 2008.

Opposing the death penalty used to distinguish Democrats from Republicans. Now, across party lines, death is just another day at the office.

...

Politicians like to see moral challenges when it's convenient. The candidates have labeled the war in Iraq, global warming and the economy "moral challenges" before various audiences in the past few months. But there's one topic the leading Dems systematically exclude from their morality crusade, one that begged to be addressed before an African-American audience in a Southern state: the death penalty.

...

It's not news that African-Americans are disproportionately represented on death row. While 12 percent of the country is African-American, more than 40 percent of the country's death row population is black -- and although blacks and whites are murder victims in nearly equal numbers, 80 percent of the prisoners executed since the death penalty was reinstated were convicted for murders in which the victim was white. Study upon study in states across the country have discovered racial bias at every stage of the death penalty process, including one that found that the more "stereotypically black" a defendant is perceived to be, the more likely that person is to be sentenced to death. Add to that the fact that over 20 percent of black defendants who have been executed were convicted by all-white juries, and the racial reality of the death penalty becomes impossible to ignore.

Sure, all three candidates have given nod to our racist criminal justice system from time to time. At the South Carolina debate, Barack Obama acknowledged it as "something that we have to talk about," specifically, the fact that "African-Americans and whites ... are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates receive very different sentences." Edwards, speaking out on the case of the Jena 6, last fall, said, "As someone who grew up in the segregated South, I feel a special responsibility to speak out on racial intolerance." Even Hillary has labeled the incarceration boom that followed passage of her husband's crime bill -- for which she lobbied hard -- "unacceptable." When it comes to criminal justice, she said in Iowa, "I want to have a thorough review of all of the penalties."

Still, not one leading Democrat is about to make criminal justice reform -- let alone the death penalty -- central to his or her platform.

Clinton, Obama and Edwards all support capital punishment. It's a position you'd be hard pressed to find on their websites, and they might not be bragging about it the way they might have in, say, 2000. Or 1996. Or 1992, the year their party's pro-death penalty stance was codified in its official party platform and then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton made a campaign trail detour to Arkansas, where he presided over the execution of mentally damaged prisoner Ricky Ray Rector. Nevertheless, all three hold on to their pro-death penalty stance, as have virtually all leading Democrats running for office in the past 20 years.

....

http://www.alternet.org/rights/74884/

[SheilaT]

1. That's too bad.

So I guess I can't use this to figure out who I should support. Sigh.

I like to point out to supporters of the death penalty that most of the rest of the world (except such humanitarian examples as China and Saudi Arabia) get along somehow without a death penalty.

[Mythsaje]

2. The Death Penalty is SO fucked up

but it's so hard for someone to tell people "we think murderers shouldn't suffer the ultimate penalty."

Personally I happen to think life imprisonment is WORSE than death, especially considering how screwed up our penal system is, but that's just me.

[FrenchieCat]

3. Barack Obama and the death penalty

Obama wrote in his recent memoir that he thinks the death penalty "does little to deter crime." But he supports capital punishment in cases "so heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment."


In proposing changes, Obama met repeatedly with officials and advocates on all sides. He nudged and cajoled colleagues fearful of being branded soft on crime, as well as death-penalty opponents worried that any reform would weaken efforts to abolish capital punishment.


Obama's signature effort was a push for mandatory taping of interrogations and confessions. It was opposed by prosecutors, police organizations and Ryan's successor, Democrat Rod Blagojevich, who said it would impede investigators.


Working under the belief that no innocent defendant should end up on death row an no guilty one should go free, Obama helped get the bill approved by the Senate on a 58 to 0 vote. When Blagojevich reversed his position and signed it, Illinois became the first state to require taping by statute.


"Obviously, we didn't agree all the time, but he would always take suggestions when they were logical, and he was willing to listen to our point of view. And he offered his opinions in a lawyerly way," said Carl Hawkinson, the retired Republican chairman o the Judiciary Committee. "When he spoke on the floor of the Senate, he spoke out of conviction. You knew that, whether you agreed with him or disagreed with him."
http://deathpenaltyusa.blogspot.com/2007/02/barack-obama-and-death-penalty.html

[Orwellian_Ghost]

4. Sounds pretty amorphous

don't ya' think?

[lurky]

5. I'd forgotten about that Ricky Ray Rector thing.

n/t