Texas Moratorium Network would like to thank the Indigo Girls, Amy Ray & Emily Saliers, for advocating to abolish the death penalty. The Indigo Girls are selling Abolish the Death Penalty t-shirts at their concerts this summer. Part of the proceeds from the sales of the t-shirts will benefit Texas Moratorium Network. The Indigo Girls have long supported abolishing the death penalty and we at TMN are proud to to work with them to raise awareness of the injustice of the death penalty.
Check out the tour schedule here and catch a live show.
From the Indigo Girls website:
The second Indigo Girls “Take Action” t-shirt is now available at live concerts during the band’s summer tour. The Abolish the Death Penalty shirt features facts and figures about the death penalty as well as artwork created for the Justice for All? death penalty art show sponsored by the Texas Moratorium Network.
T-shirt proceeds will benefit the Texas Moratorium Network and Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
Citations for the facts on the t-shirt are as follows:
People of color have comprised 43% of total executions since 1976, while comprising only around 25% of the population. (Race and the Death Penalty, American Civil Liberties Union, February 26, 2003).
Common characteristics of death-row defendants are poverty, the lack of firm social roots in the community, and inadequate legal representation at trial or on appeal. Approximately 90 percent of those on death row could not afford to hire a lawyer when they were tried (The Case Against the Death Penalty, American Civil Liberties Union, December 11, 2012, and Furman v. Georgia – 408 U.S. 208 (1972)).
The United States leads the world with the third highest rate of executions, behind only Iran and Saudi Arabia (New data was released by Amnesty International after the t-shirt went to production. The United States trails Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and China in the number of executions performed in 2012 (unofficially in the latter case, because the number of executions is a state secret)).
African-American defendants receive the death penalty at three times the rate of white defendants in cases where the victims are white (Dave Collins, “Yale study: racial bias, randomness mar Conn. death penalty cases,” Associated Press,December 12, 2007).