The Death Penalty Is Not a Deterrent - DP Awareness Week

-- please forward to local list serves --

DEATH PENALTY AWARENESS WEEK
February 27 to March 3

To view events happening across the country and how you can get involved, go
to our website at http://www.nodeathpenalty.org

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FIVE REASONS TO OPPOSE THE DEATH PENALTY

One of the Campaign's earliest brochures highlights five reasons to oppose
the death penalty--it's racist, it targets the poor, it kills the innocent,
it is not a deterrent, and it's cruel and unusual punishment.
During this national week of action, our CEDP list serve will highlight
one reason for each day--and highlight events held by our CEDP chapters.

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DETERRENCE AND THE DEATH PENALTY

"I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the
death penalty experiment has failed."
-- Justice Harry Blackmun, 1994

Supporters of the death penalty cling to "deterrence" as a major reason for
their support. The logic goes that the death penalty will give a killer
pause before they take a life. But the claim is really built on sand.
Recent statistics show that in 76 percent of murders, the offenders were
known to the victims. Recent studies also show that most murders are
precipitated by an argument.
A few studies done since 1995 claim to conclude that capital punishment
has a deterrent effect. But researchers who have looked at how these studies
were conducted have concluded that their methods were dubious, and their
outcomes unconvincing.
Other Western countries do not have the death penalty, and their level
of homicides are far lower. Within the U.S., states that have the death
penalty--especially Texas, the state that uses it more than any other--have
higher murder rates than those that don't have capital punishment.
Politicians offer a false solution when they clamor for the use of the
death penalty, pretending that it will have a deterrent effect. The death
penalty does not deter. All it does is make more victims.
It's time to recognize that "the death penalty experiment has failed,"
as Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun put it. We aim to get rid of the
death penalty, and as we fight to do so, we want to challenge elected
officials to alleviate the effects of poverty, racism and alienation.
Clarence Darrow, one of the great lawyers of all time, gave a speech to
Cook County prisoners in 1902, in which he said,

"I will guarantee to take from this jail, or any jail in the world, five
hundred men who have been the worst criminals and lawbreakers who ever got
into jail, and I will go down to our lowest streets and take five hundred of
the most abandoned prostitutes, and go out somewhere where there is plenty
of land, and will give them a chance to make a living, and they will be as
good people as the average in the community.
"There is a remedy for the sort of condition we see here. The world
never finds it out, or when it does find it out, it does not enforce it. You
may pass a law punishing every person with death for burglary, and it will
make no difference. Men will commit it just the same. In England there was a
time when one hundred different offenses were punishable with death, and it
made no difference. The English people strangely found out that so fast as
they repealed the severe penalties, and so fast as they did away with
punishing men by death, crime decreased instead of increased; that the
smaller the penalty the fewer the crimes.
"Hanging men in our country jails does not prevent murder. It makes
murderers.
"And this has been the history of the world. It's easy to see how to do
away with what we call crime. It is not so easy to do it. I will tell you
how to do it. It can be done by giving the people a chance to live-- by
destroying special privileges...Make fair conditions of life. Give men a
chance to live."

Darrow's speech is available in a small book titled, "Crime and
Criminals." It can be purchased for $7 from the CEDP. To get a copy, send a
request to Julien at Julien [at] nodeathpenalty.org

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HIGHLIGHTED EVENTS FOR FRIDAY, MARCH 3

** CHICAGO: Film screening of "The End of the Nightstick," a documentary
exposing police torture in Chicago. With an introduction by director Peter
Kuttner and special guest Madison Hobley, former death row police torture
victim and current CEDP board member. At 6 p.m., at the University of
Chicago, School of Social Service Administration Room V-1, 969 E. 60th St.
at Ellis. For more information, contact Julien at Julien [at] nodeathpenalty.org

** AUSTIN, Texas: Party and fundraiser for CEDP. At 9 p.m. at 21st Coop.
Music and refreshments for a small donation.

** MORAGA, California: Theme of the day's tabling is "The death penalty is
not a deterrent." From 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. at Dante Quad.

For a complete listing of Death Penalty Awareness Week events, go to
http://www.nodeathpenalty.org/events.html