Austin American-Statesman Year in Pictures Includes Photo of Protest of David Powell’s Execution

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The Austin-American Statesman has a slide show containing their staff’s best photographic work of 2010 covering major stories. Included in the slide show is a photo of one of the demonstrations we held at the Texas Capitol to bring attention to the case (the photo appears at minute 4:53 in the slide show). The Austin-American Statesman agreed with us writing in an editorial that life without parole would be a fairer sentence for Powell.

We spent considerable time working with his supporters and lawyers last summer trying to stop the execution of David Powell, who posed no future danger to anyone and whose sentence should have been commuted to life in prison. Click here to watch news coverage of the press conference we organized with Powell’s family, friends and lawyers. Powell was an asset inside the prison walls whose behavior and interactions with other inmates contributed to creating a less violent, more humane environment on death row.

As his execution date approached, Powell apologized to Ralph Ablanedo’s family, writing a four-page letter dated Dec. 31 in which he took responsibility for “the evil I have done.”
He also granted a May interview with the Austin American-Statesman — after years of declining to sit with reporters — in which he also apologized to the residents of Austin.
“Thirty-two years ago, I was responsible for an enormously evil act, and it must have affected most or all people who lived in Austin and their level of comfort, the way they saw themselves and their neighbors,” he said. “And no apology I could give would be powerful enough to express my regret for that.
“But every person is more than the worst thing they have ever done, and I am no exception.”

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