GHOSTBUSTERS CLUB: DEATH PENALTY
All 3 of James Byrd's murderers link to white supremacists, 2 of them recruited while in prison for burglary.
California Governor Pete Wilson blocks prison brutality and mismanagement probes. Wilson and Attorney General Dan Lungren ignored 7 deaths and 43 injuries from corrections officers' assault rifles. The prison guard union, Wilson and Lundgren campaign contributors since 1989, was allowed to block attempts to question key prison officers.
Ghostbuster Thomas Thompson dies a week before proof of his innocence would be presented in court. We rise again from warm beds to hand ghostbuster Jaturan Siripongs his copy of Handbook for the Newly Dead as courts refuse to hear evidence of his innocence. California A G Bill Lockyer wants Hanes and Cooper dead before proof of their innocence is presented. How Lundgren of him. Huntsville's assembly line continues. Courts refuse to hear witnesses or evidence that could save your life. Most condemned prisoners have no familes to see that this evidence is pursued even after executions take place, put egg on the state's face and take the state to the cleaners.
1996 Effective Death Penalty Act limits Federal appeals to evidence from lower courts, excluding even that clearing us. Evidence of innocence is discarded, mishandled and suppressed while evidence against us, all lies, is planted and presented again and again, scaring off support. With the system at their disposal they make up anything they want and it sticks. They retire on fat pensions, still at large, believed and upheld, hollering when a Viet Nam War veteran on death row gets his Purple Heart and when inmates receive visits or mail or earn money with books or screenplays. There's no protection for ghostbusters.
Texas man "confessing" to murder, convicted and sentenced to death was cleared after proving he was in Florida during the murder. "I'm innocent, I'm innocent," said ghostbuster James Herrera, slipping into death. The Herrera Act legalizes execution of innocent people as long as proper court procedures are followed. Governors gladly oblige Death Row inmates asking for execution. Pennsylvania man leaves Death Row when evidence suppressed deliberately during his original trial is presented in a new trial.
TEXAS March 14, primary election day. A hidden, flawed Warrant of Execution can't stop injustice. "I won't cooperate with your act of murder," said Ponchai Kamau Wilkerson, refusing to sign papers requesting witnesses to view the execution. He would not sign away his remains or cooperate with procedures. When guards came to take him from Terrell Unit in Livingston to Huntsville's death house Wilkerson refused to leave his cell. A SWAT team, standard procedure with defiant prisoners, gassed and hogtied him with chains. As drugs flowed into Wilkerson he whispered, "The secret, as of Wilkerson" and spit out a key used on prison handcuffs and shackles. Entombed in resistance proof high-tech Terrell fortress Wilkerson and fellow inmate Guidry in February took a guard hostage 13 hours to dramatize their righteous anger over brutal prison conditions and railroading to death row. Releasing the guard unharmed they shook Texas' prison system and helped draw attention to moratorium demands. Abolitionists wrote in Wilkerson as Republican president.
Executed truck driver Orien Cecil Joiner said, "Sooner or later whoever did this crime will be caught and they'll have to do this again. They'll realize they executed an innocent man."
IAC protesters reminded Gov George Bush at the NAACP convention that people remember he murdered an innocent man, Shaka Sankofa (Gary Graham) Audience members applauded chanting protesters. Graham's case, provoking international protest, is typical of worldwide injustice plaguing the death penalty.
Janet Reno said capital cases need lawyers, tests and investigations before conviction. Al Gore wants a moratorium on executions in states with criminal justice errors. DNA tests of persons already executed show no link to the crime.
28 wrongly convicted former Death Row inmates wept and hugged each other, urging capital punishment's end. 26 men and 2 women onstage at Northwestern University law school put flowers in a vase and read similar statements. "Illinois tried to kill me for a murder I didn't do. I went to Death Row in 1989. I was released in 1994. If Illinois had its way I'd be dead." The audience cried, giving the former prisoners standing ovations. In the 1900s 400 people were wrongly convicted, 32 executed.
Italy protests the death penalty: Colosseum white lights are gold 48 hours for anyone spared from execution. Surveys show eroding death penalty support. U S states with no death penalty: Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachussetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Washington DC.
Ghostbusters! You stayed home alone and went to bed early could you prove it in court?
The state had the wrong man when they convicted Rick Walker, John J. Tennison, Oscar Lee Morris. Nationwide, prosecutors had the wrong man in 112 capital murder cases, forcing innocent defendants to spend years on death row if not executed for crimes they did not commit. The case of Kevin Cooper, 45, raises numerous death penalty questions. The system is seriously flawed and dangerously unjust.
A Santa Clara Law Review study exposes over 80 deficiencies. Reforms called for include standardized, independent, adequately funded forensic and DNA testing; standards for lawyers handling capital cases; requirements that police pursue all inquiry whether it points towards or away from the suspect, and videotaping police interrogations of suspects. None of these reforms are in place. The system is irresponsible and tragic. Require beyond shadow of doubt, not just reasonable doubt.
Prolonged standing ovations blocked audience view of Sister Helen Prejean, supporting the opera because "music takes us where words can't go." Death-penalty opponents outside kept a candlelight vigil, handing out fliers.
Woodwind-dominated with pop inflections. 2 pop hits played on the car radio for the opening murder scene. Quintet of victims' relatives including a father singing of his lost daughter closed Act I, the parents verbally attacking Sister Helen. Act II Sister Helen and de Rocher duet drawing on Elvis Presley tunes. Towering ensemble for soloists and chorus built on Our Father, kind of the score's finale. Music stops when de Rocher is strapped into the death chair, resumes when Sister Helen resumes We all Gather Round. Movable sets: slate-grim Angola Prison reality. Swift blackouts and other emotionally charged lighting effects. K-mart working-class costumes.
Philadelphia Daily News and Inquirer. Much parallels Mumia's case. Original trial judge - Albert "I'll help them fry the nigger" SABO
U S District Judge J Curtis Joyner ruled that former South Philadelphia gas station attendant Otis Peterkin, convicted in 1982 of murdering his boss John Smith and co-worker Ronald Presbery to cover up the $4,200 robbery of a Sunoco gas station at Broad and Catharine streets Nov 29, 1981, must be retried within 90 days or released from prison. D A Lynne Abraham's spokeswoman had no comment. Joyner faulted city prosecutor Roger King for trial misconduct. King overstepped his bounds during sentencing telling jurors what victims' testimony would be if they had lived, how painful their deaths were, and that "mercy has no part" in their death penalty deliberations. Joyner faulted Peterkin's trial lawyer for not questioning alibi witnesses and a character witness, and city trial judge Albert Sabo for mistakes depriving Peterkin of a fair trial.
Fire drill: Amnesty International report: China carried out nearly 2/3 of the world's executions last year explaining why Nanning police practice on mock prisoners.
