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Shouting from the Rooftops: In 2006, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Scalia wrote that
there has not been “a single case—not one—in which it is clear that a person
was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in
recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be
shouted from the rooftops.” But the execution of a man in Texas in 2004 seems
to fulfill the definition of the “single case.” Cameron Todd Willingham was
accused of setting his house on fire, and that fire caused the death of his
three children. The fire investigators’ report, in addition to neighborhood
interviews and a police interrogation, concluded that the arson was planned
and Willingham was charged with the murder of his children. Too poor to afford adequate counsel, Willingham refused
the prosecution’s offer of life in prison if he would plead guilty. He said
he was innocent and would not be reduced to pleading guilty to a crime he did
not commit. A woman who was a participant in a prison pen pal
program became interested in his case and began to investigate it. Finding
conflicting testimonies from eyewitnesses and talking with people who knew
him and believed that he was innocent, she convinced Dr. Hurst, a famous fire
expert, to review the case. After many experiments, Dr. Hurst found the fire Using Judge Scalia’s phrase, the National Coalition to
Abolish the Death Penalty has implemented a “Shouting from the Rooftops”
campaign in an effort to make Todd Willingham’s story known. An article in
the New Yorker by David Grann,
“Trial by Fire” (Sept. 7, 2009), further uncovered the flawed case that led
to his execution. In spite of this attention, it appears that a similar
situation may occur in Pennsylvania in the case of Daniel Dougherty of
Philadelphia, whose two sons died in a house fire in 1985. Fourteen years
later, in the midst of a bitter divorce, Dougherty’s ex-wife claimed that he
had set the fire. Dougherty’s conviction and death sentence are based on
evidence similar to Willingham’s case—disproven science, prison informants
and questionable eyewitness testimony. A nationally recognized fire expert told ABC News that
the investigator in the case “was so far off base it’s unbelievable that no
one challenged his expertise or methodology.” In her book, The
Death of Innocents, Sr. Helen Prejean gives eyewitness accounts of
two executions that were wrongful. Joseph O’Dell was convicted of murder in
spite of highly circumstantial evidence from a jailhouse snitch, and he was
denied DNA testing he claimed would exonerate him. Dobie Gillis Williams, an
indigent black man with an IQ of 65, was executed in spite of inadequate
counsel by an attorney who was later disbarred. Two years after Dobie’s execution, the Supreme Court
ruled it unconstitutional to kill a man so severely mentally disabled. In
Illinois in January 2000, Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium on
executions in his state after the 13th Illinois death row inmate had been
released from prison due to wrongful conviction. In the same period, 12
others had been executed. Gov. Ryan declared: “I cannot support a system which,
in its administration, has proven so fraught with error and has come so close
to the ultimate nightmare, the state’s taking of innocent life.”. Since 1973, death row exonerations in the United States
have reached a total of 138. From 1973 to 1999 there was an average of 3.1
exonerations per year. From 2000 to 2007 there has been an average of 5
exonerations per year. The people who were released had spent many years in
prison. In Pennsylvania, Nick Yarris,
victim of flawed testimony by a jailhouse snitch, botched DNA testing and
prosecutorial misconduct, was found innocent and released after 21 years on
death row. In the face of conviction and killing of innocent
people, do we really need this “machinery of death”? The phrase is from
Justice Blackmun, who declared after 20 years of supporting the death penalty
that he could no longer “tinker with the machinery of death.” Statistics compiled by the Death Penalty Information
Center show that the death penalty is racially biased, costs more than long
prison sentences, and is ineffective as a deterrent. The 2008 FBI Uniform
Crime Report showed that the South had the highest murder rate, while it
accounts for 80 percent of executions. The Northeast has 1 percent of all
executions and had the lowest murder rate. Two states, New Jersey and New Mexico, have recently
done away with the death penalty, and there is a bill seeking a moratorium in
Pennsylvania. Polls show that 72 percent of Pennsylvanians favor suspending
the death penalty until questions of fairness can be studied. In this state
since 1976 there have been 3 executions and 6 exonerations. There are now
over 200 people on death row—70 per cent of them people of color. Ninety per
cent of them were too poor to afford a lawyer for their initial trial. It is
hopeful that there is a decline in death sentences. Former Philadelphia district attorney Lynne Abraham,
known for seeking the death penalty in 80 percent of eligible murders, in
2003 won only one death sentence in 45 capital trials. City council members
vigorously challenged Abraham about such a large expenditure of public funds
to achieve a single death sentence. Robert Dunham, law professor and Director
of Training in the Philadelphia office of the Federal Defenders Association,
says Abraham attempted to downplay the rate at which her office was
continuing to seek the death penalty in the face of a city council which had
passed a death penalty moratorium in 2000 and again in 2004. In seeking a death sentence, prosecutors often insist
that the families of the victim need to find closure from their terrible
grief and loss. They need to know that justice will be done. But many
families do not agree with this point of view. One of them is Vicki Schieber,
whose daughter Shannon, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania,
was murdered in Philadelphia in 1998. Vicki and her husband, Sylvester, have
testified against the death penalty, written op-ed pieces for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Washington Post, and are very active
speakers for the Murder Victims Families for Human Rights (MVFHR) and the
Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty. Vicki says, “We want
the world to remember Shannon and to know what kind of person she was... For
us, the death penalty is not the way to honor our daughter’s life.” Other families of victims who speak against the death
penalty include Art Laffin, whose brother was
murdered; Bud Welch, whose daughter was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing;
and Marietta Jaeger Lane, whose 7-year-old daughter was kidnapped from a
family campsite and not found until a year later. Marietta speaks about how
she had to work and pray to overcome her grief and rage and how she only
found healing and peace through forgiveness. All three continue to work for
the elimination of the death penalty. As she accompanies them to the execution chamber, Sr.
Helen Prejean helps us see Patrick Sonnier, Robert
Lee Willie, Joseph O’Dell and Dobie Williams in all their humanity. Guilty or
innocent, she reminds us, they deserve to be treated with dignity as human
beings. Locked up for 23 hours out of 24, they suffer mental torture as they
anticipate their coming death and see others going to be executed. There are also accounts of transformations of people on
death row. Karla Fae Tucker is one well known
example. Another not so well known is Dominique Green, whose life has been
recorded in Thomas Cahill’s “A Saint on Death Row.” Imprisoned at nineteen
for a murder committed during an armed robbery, Dominique deals with the
solitude and privation of his incarceration and becomes a person who
transforms his own life and the lives of those around him. His story becomes
known in places as far away as Italy, where Cahill tells the San’ Egidio society about him. When Desmond Tutu comes to
visit him, Dominique is pleased to meet his hero, whose books he has read.
After the visit, the archbishop repeats again and again that Dominique is “a
remarkable advertisement for God,” and later, “I came away deeply enriched
from my encounter with a remarkable man.” Little by little, we seem to be dismantling the
“machinery of death,” but it is a slow process. Desmond Tutu speaks against
the death penalty as do many Catholic bishops. In 1997, the words that would
allow the use of the death penalty in cases of extreme gravity were removed
from the Catholic catechism. On a visit to St. Louis in 1999, Pope John Paul
II spoke firmly for abolition: “I renew the appeal I made most recently at
Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and
unnecessary.” Before we execute any more innocents, or anyone else, we need
to join the movement to shout out from the rooftops that it is time to end
the death penalty.
Phyllis
& Mary Lou Grady |
