If you would like to volunteer at the TMN booth at the Texas Democratic Party this summer in Fort Worth June 8-10, please contact us and let us know. We need about 10 volunteers to help us collect petition signatures at the convention. In 2004, we collected more than 1700 signatures at the convention in Houston with the help of a dedicated group of volunteers. In 2004, TMN’s Scott Cobb was on the platform writing committee prior to the convention and was elected to the Platform Committee by SD 14. On those committees, he persuaded the party to endorse a moratorium in the platform. This year, our goal is to keep support for a moratorium in the platform. We need your help though, so please volunteer!

In 2004, a new caucus was formed within the Democratic party called the “Death Penalty Reform Caucus”. At the first meeting of the caucus at the state convention in 2004, TDP Chair Charles Soechting dropped by to tell the caucus that he supported a moratorium.

This year’s meeting of the death penalty reform caucus at the Fort Worth Convention Center is in room 112 on Friday June 9 at 1 PM.

TMN’s Scott Cobb has been appointed to the 2006 TDP Chair’s Advisory Committee on the Platform. The committee’s first meeting is Wednesday, May 17, at 10 AM in the AFL-CIO building in Austin. The official party platform will be drafted and approved by the Platform Committee elected by the senatorial district caucuses at the state convention in Ft. Worth. The advisory committee is an informal group. It is virtually impossible to draft a coherent platform from scratch during the convention between 8 am on Saturday morning and the time the convention adjourns, so the advisory committee is tasked to draft a working document that the elected Platform Committee may choose to consider at the convention.

If any Democrats would like to make suggestions for the 2004 platform, please send ideas to Scott Cobb at scottcobb99@gmail.com.

The 2004 platform endorsed a moratorium on executions.

Texas Moratorium Network is planning a fundraising auction of a lunch or dinner with Sister Helen Prejean. We will announce the details next week. The winning bidder will win an opportunity to have lunch or dinner with Sister Helen Prejean. The winning bidder will have to buy the meal, but Sister Prejean is donating her time. The winning bidder will have a private meal with the country’s most famous opponent of the death penalty and be able to discuss the death penalty at length with Sister Prejean. The winning bidder must be willing to travel to Sister Prejean’s home city of New Orleans for the meal. The winning bidder will have up to nine months after the auction to arrange the date for the meal that meets Sister Prejean’s schedule.

Proceeds of the auction will go to help TMN in our work to stop executions in Texas.

We have posted the images of the artwork that was selected by the jury to be exhibited at Gallery Lombardi May 6-22. In a few days, we will post all the submissions, but for now, check out the images of the jury selections.

Death Penalty Art Exhibit
May 10, 2006, 07:19 PM

Link to video of KXAN story. Look for little red camera picture to start video.

Just last week, five arson experts told Texas officials they may have executed an innocent man in 2004.

The experts said faulty science was used to convict Todd Willingham of arson charges in a fire that killed his children.

Jim Swift reports the case provides some urgency to a new art exhibit about the death penalty at a downtown gallery.

(The following is a transcript of Swift’s story.)

The art show was conceived by the Texas Moratorium Network, an organization that wants a halt to death penalties in Texas while potential injustices are addressed.

Texas Moratorium Network President Scott Cobb says: “Can you imagine sitting there on the gurney, knowing that you had woken up in the midst of a fire and your kids had died and you had, you know, managed to save yourself. And there you are being executed by the State of Texas.”

But just about the time you start to feel sorry for these people, you walk around the corner and find another piece, which includes, among other things, page after page which lays out in excruciating detail the crimes these people are convicted of having committed.

Cobb says: “We put out a call for representation from all sides of the death penalty issue.”

But as it turned out, all but one of the 700-plus submissions from 19 different countries reflected an anti-capital punishment stance.

Show Juror Annette Carlozzi says: “If you don’t examine how you feel about it, what you think about it, and if you don’t find a forum to express that in, nobody loses but you, ultimately, you know. Because other people will make those statements for you.”

For that very reason, Carlozzi encourages people to attend it.

Carlozzi says: “When you leave, you get to ask yourself the question that we avoid asking ourselves most of the day, which is, ‘What do I really think about this?'”

Meanwhile, show organizers say there is still time for pro-capital punishment artists to submit work.

After all, they favor a moratorium, and they know they will never get one unless everyone starts talking.

Carlozzi will give a gallery talk about the death penalty art Thursday at 7 p.m. at Gallery Lombardi at 901 West Third Street.

The exhibit itself runs through May 22.