[Ppnews] Strange Bedfellows: The Death Penalty, Mumia Abu-Jamal and the European Parliament
Political Prisoner News
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Tue Oct 12 11:10:57 EDT 2010
Published on This Can't Be Happening
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Strange Bedfellows: The Death Penalty, Mumia
Abu-Jamal and the European Parliament
Created 10/12/2010 - 08:20
by:
Victor Grossman
Berlin -- What do the USA, China, Iran, Iraq,
Saudi Arabia and North Korea have in common?
The answer may surprise you.
The European Parliament answered this question on
October 2nd with passage of a resolution singling
out that seemingly disparate list for criticism.
The embarrassing common thread among these six
countries: an obsession with putting lots of
people to death. The US, its key oil ally Saudi
Arabia, its major trading partner China, its
targeted enemies of Iran and North Korea, and its
puppet ally Iraq all endorse the barbaric
state-sanctioned practice of the death penalty,
and lead the world in applying that terrible and irreversable sanction.
In a long, detailed EU Parliament resolution,
approved almost unanimously by 574 members (only
25 opposed and 39 abstained), the members from
all over Europe named people languishing on death
rows and threatened with execution in several countries.
That EU resolution specifically highlighted two
American death row inmates: Mumia Abu-Jamal in
Pennsylvania and Troy Davis in Georgia. Both of
these black men were convicted of killing white
police officers in trials marred by ineffective
defense and gross misconduct by police and
prosecutors. The twin defects of ineffectiveness
and misconduct are a common feature in many of
the three-thousand-plus persons on death rows
across America, and especially in the nearly 140
cases that have been overturned thanks to DNA
testing or other belatedly discovered proof of innocence.
In the Abu-Jamal and Davis cases, federal and
state appeals courts in America have dismissed
compelling new evidence of innocence and
documented legal improprieties violating the
constitutional rights of these two inmates.
In the Davis case, a federal judge in June 2010
rejected professions from four persons who said
they lied during Davis 1991 trial and also
rejected testimony from three witnesses who named
the real killer, including one witness who
testified to seeing the real killer shoot the policeman.
Both Abu-Jamal and Davis has consistently maintained their innocence.
True, as this EU resolution pointed out, the USA
cannot match China, which killed about 5000
inmates last year, but it is was still near the
top behind Iran, with 402, Iraq at least 77 and
Saudi Arabia with at least 69. In the USA the
number executed was 52. The EU delegates also
voiced regret at the recent executions of Holly
Wood in Alabama and Teresa Lewis in Virginia
despite both women being mentally retarded.
It was noted that 154 countries have abolished
the death penalty completely or almost completely
(with occasional exceptions such as for wartime
treason). In Europe only Belarus has failed to do
so, while the new constitution of far-off
Kyrgyzstan just joined the ranks of those
countries which generally agree, as the
resolution points out, that the death penalty is
the ultimate cruel and inhuman and degrading
punishment, which violates the right to life as
enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, and detention conditions created by the
death penalty decision amount to torture that is
unacceptable to states respecting human rights.
The EU Parliament resolution reports that
various studies have shown that the death
penalty has no effect on trends in violent
crime
whereas evidence shows that the death
penalty affects first and foremost underprivileged people.
That conclusion in the EU resolution concerning
the class nature of the death penalty mirrors
findings of a study on death penalty practices in
the USA released in April 1932. This study by
then noted statistician Dr. Frederick Hoffman
documented how capital punishment was enforced
chiefly against Negroes, aliens and the poor,
while the rich and influential succeed for the
most part in escaping execution. Not much has
changed since then, with 35% of the 3260 people
currently on death row in the US being black and
7% percent being Latino, while nearly all,
regardless of race, are from low-income backgrounds.
The EU delegates, after listing cases in other
countries where pressure is needed, noted that
35 states in the USA still have the death
penalty, although 4 of them have not held
executions since 1976 and that while executions
increased to 52 in 2009, some states have moved
against the death penalty through measures
including a moratorium on executions or its abolition.
The gradual abolition of the death penalty in the
USA relates more to money than morality, as
cash-starved states can no longer afford the
enormous cost of capital prosecutions and
specialized death row prison units. The state of
New Jersey, for example, halted death penalty
proceedings in 2007 upon discovering that it cost
$253 million dollars to secure 60 death
sentences, fifty of which were later reversed by
courts due to various improprieties.
The double reference to the case of Mumia
Abu-Jamal indicates the level of concern in many
European countries about his case, considered
typical for many others. Abu-Jamals case, now 29
years old, is nearing some kind of decision,
possibly a fatal one. On November 9, 2010 the
federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals will
conduct a hearing to determine if Abu-Jamal will
again face execution or will spend the rest of
his life in prison. The court system has already
rejected all of Abu-Jamals appeals seeking to overturn his conviction.
A delegate of Germanys LEFT party, Sabine
Loesing, who was particularly active in getting
this resolution passed, told how happy she was
that so many from a wide range of political
parties had voted for the resolution and added
that she would see to it that the pressure on
Catherine Ashton, foreign minister of the
European body, would not let up so that she
raises the position of the resolution whenever
she meets with leaders of states like the USA
where capital punishment still prevails.
VICTOR GROSSMAN is an American expatriat living
in Germany. He contributes occasionally to ThisCantBeHappening!
----------
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<http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/248>http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/248
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