1st Feb 2010
The quarterly meeting of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP was held in Montgomery on January 30th.
As is usual at these state conventions, there were training sessions on various issues and reports from many good people about what they were doing in their particular chapters.
The highlight for me, besides exchanging with people I have come to value over the years, was to be in the company of Patrick Jackson, our student representative and Marc McMillan, Patrick’s right hand man.
I have seldom, if ever, seen such strong and intelligent participation in workshops or meetings. If there was a question that needed asking, they were not afraid to ask it, if there was information to be taken down, you can be sure that they did just that. They listened closely, interacted when appropriate, and from my observation, there was not a crumb of information that was lost and that will not be put to good use by the Tuskegee chapter.
Fortunately the plan for the chapter to write letters to the Governor on behalf of Robert. B. Melson is no longer necessary. Instead, the focus will be on letters to legislators on behalf of the death penalty bills filed.
As I observed and exchanged with both Patrick and Marc I realized that if there was one thing I knew, it was that there is hope for the future.
No Comments
13th Jan 2010
It was a cold night but that did not deter 50-60 students from attending their chapter meeting last night to learn about the injustice of the death penalty and what they could do about it. The president of the chapter, Patrick Jackson, who is also the Student Representative for phadp, had obviously done a great job of getting the word out. It was encouraging to hear intelligent questions and concrete plans of action.
A letter writing campaign to the Governor on behalf of Robert Melson is in the works. Students Yasmeen Salaam and Marc McMilian will spread information about the death penalty in their dorms.
We are very grateful for the enthusiasm and dedication of Patrick Jackson who is planning a face book presence for phadp.
For a while now we have wondered how we could reach the coming generation. Finally, it would seem as though we have hit the jackpot! And it all started with the NAACP!
Esther
No Comments
7th Jan 2010
Birmingham News Commentary
Opinions, Editorials and Letters to the Editor from The Birmingham Newsletters »
YOUR VIEWS: State should end wasteful, unworkable punishment
By Letters from our readers
December 24, 2009, 5:30AM
A new report makes it clear: The death penalty is on the decline, and it’s time for Alabama to abolish it. According to the Death Penalty Information Center’s 2009 Year End Report, we are spending billions of dollars a year to maintain our death penalty system, when only about 100 people were sentenced to death in 2009 and only 11 states carried out executions.
It’s simply too expensive. In the middle of a national economic crisis, Alabama should join New Mexico, New York and New Jersey in abolishing the death penalty, rather than cut funding for essential services like police and schools.
The report also notes a survey of police chiefs makes it clear: Law enforcement doesn’t need the death penalty to keep us safe. It needs more funding for police, victims, better equipment and more training. Alabama shouldn’t continue this wasteful, unworkable punishment. Let’s end it in 2010.
Esther Brown
Lanett
No Comments
29th Dec 2009
The Board of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty is pleased to announce that Patrick Jackson has joined phadp as our official Student Representative. Patrick is the president of the Tuskegee student chapter of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP and comes to us with a reputation for organizing and getting things done. We have been most impressed by his enthusiasm, ideas and desire to work for justice. We look forward to working together and ask you to join us in welcoming Patrick to our family.
Esther and the Board at Holman
No Comments
30th Nov 2009
Hi Esther,
I hope all is well with you and that you had a nice Thanksgiving. I also want to thank you again for all of your help in making our recent weekend in Alabama a great success. And I hope we were able to give anti-death penalty efforts in your state a bit of momentum.
Take care . .
Kurt
Kurt Rosenberg
Executive Director
Witness to Innocence
P.O. Box 34725
Philadelphia, PA 19101
Tel. 215-387-1831
Fax 215-386-7288
witnesstoinnocence@gmail.com
www.witnesstoinnocence.org
No Comments
13th Nov 2009
Friends,
On behalf of all of us of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty I would like to thank all the men of Witness to Innocence who came to Alabama from states as far away as CA, TX, IL, MI, LA, PA, TN, OH, FL, MD, OK, MO, VA, NM and our own Gary Drinkard and Randal Padget to tell Alabamians that a moratorium on executions is long overdue in our state.
We are deeply grateful to Senator Hank Sanders who came all the way to Birmingham to speak at the press conference this afternoon. Words are will never be adequate to express what his decade long leadership means to us. We also thank Rep. Merika Coleman who came to address the group this morning. Thank you! The men were very appreciative of both of you.
Our thanks to the Executive Director, Kurt Rosenberg and the rest of the hardworking staff of Witness to Innocence for choosing Alabama for your annual conference. Our state needs all the help we can get and you were very good to us!
I had traveled to Birmingham yesterday afternoon, which gave me the opportunity to meet and talk with many of the men informally, so that when I had the privilege of addressing the group this morning I was already among friends. Thank you for coming! Thank you for surviving! Thank you for caring for your brothers and sisters still on death row. We hope to keep in touch and see you again!
Esther and the Board of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty
No Comments
12th Nov 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Kurt Rosenberg
November 11, 2009 215-609-9462 (cell)
215-387-1831 (office)
Death row survivors come from across U.S. to speak out
Exonerated from death row, they call for moratorium on Ala. death penalty
BIRMINGHAM – One of the largest gatherings ever of exonerated death row survivors from across the United States will take place here this week, starting with a November 13 news conference in downtown Birmingham. Twenty-five men who were released from death rows across the United States, including three from Alabama, will join with legislators, attorneys and activists to demand a moratorium on executions in the state.
Traveling to Alabama from as far as California, Michigan, New Mexico and Pennsylvania, members of Witness to Innocence who spent a combined total of almost 200 years on death row for crimes they did not commit will appear at 2 p.m. Friday at the Mel Bailey Criminal Justice Center, 801 Richard Arrington Jr. Blvd. North.
The news conference will kick off a three-day gathering sponsored by Witness to Innocence, a national organization composed of exonerated death row survivors and their loved ones. Among the speakers at the news conference will be Alabama State Senator Hank Sanders, who has introduced moratorium legislation in the Senate for the past decade, and State Representative Merika Coleman, who has introduced similar bills in the House.
Other speakers will include Gary Drinkard, who spent six years on Alabama’s death row before his exoneration in 2001; Ray Krone, the 100th person exonerated from death row in the United States (Arizona, 2002) and Freddie
Lee Pitts, who spent nearly 10 years on Florida’s death row for a crime he did not commit.
“If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone,” said Drinkard “Innocent people have been sentenced
to death right here in Alabama, and that is simply unconscionable. Something needs to be done about it before
another innocent human being is sentenced to death – or executed.”
Alabama has one of the most egregious records in the United States when it comes to capital punishment. The state ranks seventh in executions (43) since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 and is eighth in death-row exonerations (6). The six executions it has carried out in 2009 leave Alabama second only to Texas (the two states have carried out more than half of the executions in the United States this year). Alabama has the fifth largest death row in the nation, with 207 people awaiting execution.
In 2007, more people were sentenced to death in Alabama than in Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, Kansas and South Carolina combined. Alabama has the highest death sentencing rate in the country, six times greater than the death sentencing rate in Texas.
“It’s clear that while most states are moving away from carrying out the death penalty, Alabama is out of step with the rest of the country,” said Kurt Rosenberg, executive director of Witness to Innocence.
“Alabama’s death penalty system is broken and measures need to be taken immediately to ensure that not one
more person is executed until that system is thoroughly evaluated and fixed – if indeed it ever can be fixed.”
NOTE: Members of Witness to Innocence are available for telephone or face-to-face interviews prior to or after the news conference.
###
No Comments
27th Oct 2009
The NAACP Limestone County Branch was a very gracious host in Decatur last weekend at the 57th Annual State Convention. We appreciate all your hard work which made the convention a success!
We had three days filled with meetings, wonderful performances, meals with exciting guest speakers and time with friends.
We said goodbye to Edward Vaughn in his capacity of State Conference President. We of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty owe Ed so much! He created a Death Penalty Moratorium Committee of the Alabama State Conference NAACP as a way of lifting up our issue. Ed never missed an opportunity to speak out against the death penalty, which he called uncivilized. He was and continues to be our friend.
We congratulate the new Alabama State Conference President, Bernard Simelton and look forward to working with him and all those elected last weekend.
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to say how hopeful I am for the future. I am hopeful because of the young people I met at the Youth Luncheon, hopeful because they are about action. Several have already been in touch with me wanting to help. They want to help create a better world and that is good because it will be theirs. I dedicate this note to them with our thanks! You give us hope!
No Comments
8th Oct 2009
1
URGENT – PLEASE RUSH
Guildhall Chambers,
5-8 Broad Street,
Bristol BS1 2HW.
UK.
Governor Bob Riley,
State Capitol,
600 Dexter Avenue,
Montgomery,
ALABAMA 36130
By fax 001 334 353 0004 and email
7 October 2009
Dear Governor Riley,
MAX L PAYNE
I hope that you will find time to read this letter as a matter of urgency because I write to ask you to
stay the execution of Max Payne that is due to be carried out tomorrow, 8 October 2009.
I am a barrister (trial attorney) living and practising in Bristol, UK. I first heard about Max Payne’s
case through my wife’s aunt, Esther Brown, who devotes her life to campaigning against the death
penalty in Alabama through Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty. We met recently at a family
gathering and, on learning of Esther’s work and the forthcoming execution, I promised to write to
you.
The death penalty was abolished for murder in Great Britain in 1969 and in Northern Ireland in
1973. It remained on the statute book for certain other offences, e.g. piracy with violence, until being
finally abolished in 1998. In fact the last execution in this country took place on 13 August 1964
when a man called Peter Allen was hanged. So for over 45 years the UK has been free of what the
2
majority of people regard as a cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. Looking at the Death
Penalty Information Center website, it appears that the United States may be edging towards a
similar conclusion. I see that a total of what is now 16 States have voted to abolish the death penalty,
with the most recent being New Mexico in March of this year. I also see that your State of Alabama
has the fifth highest murder rate per 100,000 people (7.6 in 2008) but that the statistics show that in
2008 the average murder rate in States that have the death penalty was 5.3 whereas in States without
the death penalty it was 3.3. That evidence of the death penalty not having the deterrent effect that
some might think it has may hasten abolition in other States including yours. In any event a decision
by you to show clemency towards Max Payne would, in my respectful opinion, be a step in what
many would regard as the right direction for your State and your Country.
I know nothing about the crime or crimes of which Max Payne was convicted but I can imagine. Nor
do I know anything about the circumstances of his conviction. But what I do know is that, while I
am personally opposed to capital punishment because it is dehumanising of both victim and those
responsible for his execution, one powerful weapon in the abolitionist’s armoury is the fact that it is
possible to execute the innocent. I refer to the case of the British lawyer Sally Clark which you
might have heard of. She was convicted of murdering her two infant sons on the evidence of an
eminent paediatrician related to the chances of two children from the same family suffering sudden
infant death syndrome, as their mother claimed. That evidence was later discredited; Sally Clark’s
appeal was allowed by the Court of Appeal; and she was released but not before spending over 3
years in prison. She never recovered from the ordeal of losing her sons and being wrongly convicted
and imprisoned for their deaths, described by the Court of Appeal as one of the worst miscarriages of
justice in British legal history, and it is widely believed that she took her own life. If that poor
woman had been a citizen of Alabama then she might have been executed before she was able to
prove her innocence.
For those reasons I ask you to spare the life of Max Payne.
Yours sincerely,
William Batstone
No Comments
5th Oct 2009
Dear Gov. Riley,
You have said that addressing a pending scheduled execution is the most important decision you as governor address. I presume that statement is based on what we both understand to be the critical moral issue of taking a human life.
Whereas you say as governor your duty is to uphold the laws of the state and nation, I plead with you, Gov. Riley, to see your role as governor as a much larger one in which you provide essential leadership for new laws and lead our state and even to some extent our nation away from the current “declining spiral of violence” in which capital murder returns killing for killing, modeling killing as a way to solve societal problems.
I do believe in your heart you can take no pride in the fact that in the last five years Alabama has sent more people to death row than any other state and that in this year 2009 we have killed more inmates than in any year since 1949.
This is the week when you will either allow the scheduled execution of Max L. Payne to proceed or you will stop it. May it be that this week you will be constantly weighing this most important aspect of your job and as a result determine that now IS the time to halt all executions and call for implementation of a three year moratorium to study and rectify injustices in Alabama’s system of capital prosecution.
While providing such leadership before leaving your position as governor, you could set our Southern state on a new path toward justice that would be heralded throughout the country and around the
Earth. I pray this will be your choice, Gov. Riley.
Earnestly, Judy Collins
No Comments
« Previous Entries