Exonerees Leading March to Abolish the Death Penalty

Death row exonerees Gary Drinkard, Ron Keine and Shujaa Graham leading the 2010 March to Abolish the Death Penalty. marchforabolition.org
Upcoming Executions

Upcoming Executions

Click for a list of upcoming scheduled executions in Texas.
Innocence

Innocence

The death penalty puts innocent people at risk of execution.
Todd Willingham

Todd Willingham

Todd Willingham was wrongfully executed under Governor Rick Perry on February 17, 2004.

EJUSA Chooses Texas for Special Anti-Death Penalty Retreat in Texas

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As many of you know, a group of Texas organizations working against the death penalty recently put together a team to apply for a retreat sponsored by Equal Justice USA in order to strategize about a way forward to stop executions in Texas. Today, we received some good news from EJUSA. An excerpt from their email follows:

Dear friends in Texas,

After looking through the application from Texas and seeing your unique situation, EJUSA wants to give you all some special attention and offer your team a different opportunity than this year’s Training and Strategy retreat. We’d like to tailor a special strategy, skill-building, and planning meeting/retreat specifically for the movement in Texas. This will allow more people than just the five of you to be involved and will also give us the opportunity to adapt an agenda specifically for your needs.

We hope that this will be ‘more bang for your buck’ so to speak and will really allow us all to make progress in building both capacity and support in Texas.

I’m really looking forward to working with you all and learning more about the movement and possibilities in Texas!

on behalf of the entire EJUSA staff,
Sarah Craft

Pictures from Kenneth Foster Protest at Governor’s Mansion on Aug 21

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The following is reposted from The Austin Independent Media Center. The original posting is here.

Report and pictures from Tuesday’s emergency rally for Kenneth Foster Jr.

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Nydesha Foster, Kenneth’s 11-year-old daughter.

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August 21, 2007

Governor Perry Unwilling to Face Family of Death Row Inmate Kenneth Foster

About 200 members of Kenneth Foster’s family, friends, and supporters rallied today in Austin to demand that Governor Rick Perry hear the Foster family’s pleas for clemency. At the south Capitol gate at 5 p.m., Bryan McCann, a leader in the Austin-based Save Kenneth Foster Campaign, reminded the gathered crowd, “Every judge in Texas, every prosecutor, every politician, and even Governor Perry all agree on one thing: Kenneth Foster killed no one.”

Then McCann read from a letter from Kenneth Foster. In the letter, Foster vowed that he and Joe Amador (whose execution is scheduled for August 29) would engage in “passive non-participation” in the preparations for his execution, including a hunger strike to begin August 22.

Foster wrote, “Texas will surpass 400 murders this year. If we are to be unjustly taken then we do not want to go silently. We will not walk to our executions and we will not eat last meals. We will not give this process a humane face.”

It was in this spirit that Foster’s supporters marched from the Capitol to the Governor’s Mansion, where Nydesha Foster (Kenneth’s daughter), Tasha Foster (Kenneth’s wife), and Lawrence Foster (Kenneth’s grandfather) presented the assembly with three personal letters they had written to the Governor.

In her remarks, Nydesha Foster said she was asking the Governor to spare her father “because I love him very much.” She also called attention to the injustice of the Law of Parties and called on the Governor to give the family justice.

In a dramatic turn, six activists sat down to block the gates of the Governor’s mansion in a physical demonstration of solidarity with Foster’s non-cooperation with the criminal justice system. In June 2000, a dozen activists were arrested during a similar protest of the execution of Gary Graham (a.k.a. Shaka Sankofa).

On Tuesday, however, the police held back as protesters chanted, “Governor Perry, take these letters!” Repeated ringing of the doorbell on the gates went unheeded. Demonstrators chanted, “Save Kenneth Foster!” and “It’s Not Justice, It’s a Lie! Kenneth Foster Must Not Die!”

In the face of the State’s unwillingness to engage the Foster family and other supporters, the crowd spread out across the street, blocking traffic for forty-five minutes. Tasha Foster, Nydesha Foster, and other activists took turns on the bullhorn, calling on Perry and his representatives to respond.

They did not. Then the activists sitting across the Governor’s mansion’s driveway addressed the crowd. “It is clear that the Governor has no interest in being accountable to the people and that he does not care that an innocent man awaits his execution,” said Katie Feyh, who had been among those sitting in.

McCann, who also had been obstructing the driveway, stood and called on those present to continue to make themselves heard all the way up to the time of Foster’s scheduled execution. Noting the growing public pressure and extensive media coverage of the case, McCann said, “We’ve given Perry every reason to do the right thing. We will not be silent until he does.”

Kenneth Foster, Jr. has been on Texas’ death row since 1997 for the shooting death of Michael LaHood, Jr. Foster did not shoot the gun that ended LaHood’s life, but was driving the car carrying the actual triggerman, Mauriceo Brown. Foster was convicted and sentenced to death under the Law of Parties, which allows the state to seek convictions for those present at the scene of a crime as if they committed it. Since Foster’s original trial, the other men in the car that night have testified that Foster had no idea LaHood would be shot. Since Foster received his August 30 execution date, a coalition of family, friends, and other supporters have organized to save his life. The August 21 event follows news that the Court of Criminal Appeals denied Foster relief. At present, the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign, along with Foster’s legal team and thousands of people around the world, are petitioning the Governor and Board of Pardons and Paroles for clemency. The case has received considerable local, regional, and national media attention and public support for Foster has been pronounced.

– – – –

The Save Kenneth Foster Campaign was established on May 30, 2007 to organize a campaign to halt the execution of Kenneth Foster, Jr. It meets weekly in Austin, Texas, next on August 22 at 7 p.m. at the Carver Library.

Online: www.savekenneth.blogspot.com
More information on the Kenneth Foster case is available at www.freekenneth.com

Video of Houston Protest of 400th Texas Execution

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The Houston Chronicle is increasing the use of video on their website. Here is a link to their video of the protest in Houston of Texas’ 400th execution.

The protest was sponsored by the the Organizing Committee for the 8th Annual March to Stop Executions on Oct 27 and the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement.

Text of Declaration by the European Union on the 400th execution in Texas

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Most news articles did not reprint the actual statement from the EU on the 400th execution in Texas, so here it is.

The European Union notes with great regret the upcoming execution in the State of Texas which would be the 400th since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. Therefore, the European Union strongly urges Governor Rick Perry to exercise all powers vested in his office to halt all upcoming executions and to consider the introduction of a moratorium in the State of Texas.

The European Union is unreservedly opposed to the use of capital punishment under all circumstances and has consistently called for the universal abolition of this punishment. We believe that elimination of the death penalty is fundamental to the protection of human dignity, and to the progressive development of human rights. We further consider this punishment to be cruel and inhumane. There is no evidence to suggest that the use of the death penalty serves as a deterrent against violent crime and the irreversibility of the punishment means that miscarriages of justice – which are inevitable in all legal systems – cannot be redressed. Consequently, the death penalty has been abolished throughout the European Union.

In countries that maintain the use of capital punishment, the European Union seeks the progressive restriction of both its scope and the number of offences for which capital punishment may be employed, as defined in several human rights instruments.

In this regard, the European Union welcomes the United States Supreme Court rulings of June 2002 and March 2005 declaring the execution of persons with mental retardation and the execution of juveniles respectively, to be unconstitutional. The European Union urges the US authorities to extend these restrictions, in particular, to the execution of persons with severe mental illness. The European Union welcomes the US commitment to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR). However, the European Union regrets the US decision to withdraw from the Optional Protocol of the VCCR, which gives the ICJ jurisdiction over disputes arising from the convention.

The EU appreciates and values its co-operation with the US on a wide range of human rights concerns around the world. The European Union therefore takes this opportunity to renew its call for a moratorium to be placed on the application of the death penalty, by both the US federal and state authorities, in anticipation of its legal abolition.

The Candidate Countries Turkey, Croatia* and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia*, the Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and the EFTA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, members of the European Economic Area, as well as Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova, Armenia and Azerbaijan align themselves with this declaration.

* Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.

Texas Executes 400th Person

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Texas carried out its 400th execution today since 1982, when the state resumed executions after an 18-year moratorium.

Houston Chronicle:

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Convicted killer Johnny Ray Conner was executed Wednesday evening for the slaying of a Houston convenience store clerk during a failed robbery 9 1/2 years ago.

The execution was the 400th in the nation’s most active death penalty state since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. Texas resumed carrying out executions six years later.

Conner asked for forgiveness repeatedly and expressed love to his family and his victim’s family, who watched him through windows in the death chamber. Before he began he speaking, he asked the warden his name, for permission to speak longer than the usual two to three minutes allotted and to have his victim’s daughter pointed out to him.

He specifically asked one of his victims’ relatives to look at him, but she didn’t and remained turned to the side with her hands clasped in prayer.

“This is destiny. This is life. This is something Allah wants me to do,” he said in his lengthy statement.

“I want you to understand,” he said. “I’m not mad at you. When I get to the gates of heaven I’m going to be waiting for you. Please forgive me.”

“What is happening to me is unjust and the system is broken,” Conner said.

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