DP Awareness Week: The DP is Cruel and Unusual Punishment

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 an event held by one of the CEDP
chapters.

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THE DEATH PENALTY IS CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT

Today, lethal injection is the most common method used to carry out
executions. It's supposed to be the "kinder, gentler" death penalty. But,
earlier this month, questions surrounding lethal injection as cruel and
unusual punishment not only led to a defacto moratorium on executions in
California, but has re-ignited the death penalty debate.

California death row prisoner Michael Morales was scheduled to be executed
on Tuesday, February 21, but his execution was postponed when a federal
judge ruled that a new protocol must be implemented to "protect" Morales
from a painful death. Morales had submitted an appeal challenging the
constitutionality of lethal injections.

The three-drug process includes sodium thiopental, which causes loss of
consciousness; pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes skeletal muscles; and
potassium chloride, which stops the heart. If not fully unconscious, the
person being killed would experience excruciating pain as the potassium
chloride made its way to the heart‹but the second drug that causes paralysis
would mask this pain. For this reason, the American Veterinary Association
has outlawed its use for putting down animals.

In response to Morales' appeal, the judge gave the prison a choice: find a
licensed anesthesiologist to make sure that Morales remained unconscious
during the execution OR forego the usual three-drug process for a straight,
lethal dose of barbiturates. But no medical professionals would take part in
the process and California's system of capital punishment collapsed.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped an execution in Florida to
hear arguments that lethal injection as currently practiced constitutes
cruel and unusual punishment.

A Florida study showed alarmingly low levels of anesthetic in the
bloodstreams of executed inmates, suggesting that the men had, in fact, been
tortured to death.

In California, the inhumanity of lethal injections was even further exposed
by the last two executions at San Quentin. When the state murdered Stanley
Tookie Williams in December 2005, prison technicians missed the vein and
administered the drugs into the tissue of Williams¹s arm, which made it take
longer for him to die. Then in January, the state needed twice the normal
amount of potassium chloride to stop the heart of Clarence Ray Allen, a
76-year-old man who had been revived from a heart attack only four months
earlier.

Thus, Judge Fogel required a trained medical professional to administer the
lethal dose of barbiturates‹the prison¹s second option. No one was willing
to do the job, and the prison was forced to postpone Morales¹ execution
indefinitely. Now, Fogel has called for hearings on the constitutionality of
lethal injection in early May

This is an opportunity for abolitionists in California and nationwide to
expose the death penalty for what it is. The death penalty -- whether it
involves drawing and quartering, hanging, electrocution, gas asphyxiation OR
lethal injection -- is a barbaric relic, an act of state-sanctioned murder
as brutal and premeditated as any act it claims to punish.
a cruel and unusual punishment

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Highlighted events of the day....

From coast to coast, the Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. (The David A.
Clarke School of Law) chapters will host screenings of the documentary film,
Deadline, about the events in Illinois leading to a moratorium on executions
and blanket commutations of all the state's 167 death sentences

E-mail udc.cedp [at] yahoo.com about the screening in Washington, D.C. OR

dana_blanchard [at] juno.com about the screening in Los Angeles.

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