A landmark study has been released which challenges the steadfast notion that the death penalty brings satisfaction and closure to murder victims’ families. It is the first systemic inquiry dealing directly with homicide survivors about whether obtaining capital punishment affects their healing. The study used in-person interviews with a randomly selected sample of survivors from four time periods to examine the totality of the death penalty process and its longitudinal impact on lives of murder victims’ families. It compared survivors’ experiences in Texas, a death penalty state, and Minnesota, a life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) state. In Minnesota, survivors of adjudicated cases show higher levels of physical, psychological, and behavioral health.

Marilyn Peterson Armour and Mark S. Umbreit, Assessing the Impact of the Ultimate Penal Sanction on Homicide Survivors: A Two State Comparison, 96 Marq. L. Rev. 1 (2012).

Read the study here: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr/vol96/iss1/3/

Prof. Joel Devine of Tulane University conducted a survey that examined over 500 jury trials in Jefferson Parish and found that in an incredible 80% of criminal trials, there was no effective black representation on Jefferson juries. Read more here.

These trends are found in capital prosecutions throughout the state. Most recently, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that a Caddo prosecutor had excluded an African American man on the basis of race (State v. Robert Coleman, 2007) and overturned Mr. Coleman’s capital conviction. In 2008, the United States Supreme Court found that an African American man had been excluded by Jefferson Parish prosecutors on the basis of his race in State v. Allen Snyder.

Robert McCoy Trial, 2011

In 2011, jury selection in two capital trials saw African-Americans excluded from the jury pool in large numbers. Around 40% of African-American people were excluded from jury service for stating a reluctance to impose the death penalty in both cases.

The table above provides a snapshot of what happened in the McCoy case. African-Americans were 3 times more likely to be removed by the Court because they opposed the use of the death penalty than White jurors. The state used its peremptory strikes to cut 80% of qualified African-Americans from the jury, leaving one African-American juror to be seated with eleven White jurors.

In State v. Mickelson, 96% of African-American potential jurors were excluded from jury service through the course of the jury selection process. Though more than half of the jurors called for questioning were African-American, only two were seated on the jury.

The exclusion of minorities creates problems that go beyond the unacceptable and unlawful denial of people’s civil right to serve on a jury. It threatens the integrity of the entire justice system.  Read more here.

After two Jefferson Parish capital convictions were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Louisiana Supreme Court because prosecutors had used race-based reasons to exclude black jurors during jury selections, a study called Black Strikes: A Study of the Racially Disparate Use of Peremptory Challenges by the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office revealed that these cases were symptomatic of the larger problem of race-based exclusion.

A sample of 390 felony trials prosecuted by the District Attorney’s Office in Jefferson Parish between 1994 and 2002 showed that prosecutors use their peremptory strikes to remove African-Americans from juries three times more often than they removed whites.

In the immediate aftermath of a murder

Crime Victims Guidebook: For Those Who Have Lost Their Loved Ones to Violence, by Rose Preston

In 2003, Rose Preston’s husband and mother-in-law were brutally murdered. The Crime Victims Guidebook is a product of her experience, a resource for victims’ families as well as victims of crime. Rose has kindly made this book available for download in PDF format.

Here’s what Rose has to say about this book:

You can download the Crime Victims Guidebook here.

While most immediately designed to be a resource for those who have lost someone to violence, the Guidebook also contains useful information for those who have been victims of rape, sexual assault, theft and burglary, aggravated assault and hate crimes and while the guidebook focuses on legal proceedings and resources in New Orleans, much of it will be relevant no matter where you live.

If you have lost someone to violence, we hope this book will be of use to you.

If you know someone who has recently lost someone to violence, please download this book and print it out for them.

Interfaith Prayer Service Hosted by Archbishop Aymond

Interfaith Prayer Service

In March, 2012, Archbishop Gregory Aymond hosted an interfaith prayer service to end state killings at the historic St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. The service included guest speakers:

• Tom Lowenstein, who lost his father to murder
• Calvin Duncan, who was wrongfully incarcerated for 28 1/2 years for murder
• Sr. Helen Prejean

Representatives from the Archdiocesan Respect Life Office, Catholic Charities Office of Justice and Peace, Loyola University’s Jesuit Social Research Institute, the Vincentian Peace and Justice liaison, the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Loyola Institute for Ministry, the Moratorium Campaign, and the Jesuit Province were all involved in the creation of the Louisiana Catholics Committed to the Repeal of the Death Penalty in 2010.

The Bishops of the state have endorsed LCCRDP. Catholic committees in all seven Catholic dioceses have been created to educate and mobilize Catholics throughout Louisiana.

The U.S. Catholic Bishops, in their 2005 pastoral letter “A Culture of Life and the Death Penalty,” reaffirm the teaching of Pope John Paul II, of the Roman Catholic magisterium, and of U.S. Catholic Bishops since 1979, that “the death penalty is unnecessary and unjustified in our time and circumstances.”  Four fundamental points inform their judgement:

• The death penalty violates human dignity especially when—in our contemporary context—it is unnecessary to protect society.
• State-sanctioned death penalty “in our name” diminishes all of us.
• The application of the death penalty is deeply flawed, is irreversibly wrong, highly prone to errors, and biased by race, the quality of legal representation, and location of the crime.
• We know alternatives both to punish criminals and protect society.

You can:

• Read a statement co-authored by a member of the LCCRDP advisory committee.
• Find out more and join your local LCCRDP group, by contacting Sidney Garmon.
• Keep up-to-date with what Catholics are doing nationally through the Catholic Mobilizing Network.
• Read a report released in 2012 on Louisiana’s death penalty from a Catholic perspective.

 Our Favorite Things: 2012 in Review

The LCADP Team has compiled a list of “Our Favorite Things” from 2012 to celebrate this Holiday Season. We hope you enjoyed them as much as we did!

Louisiana Juries Rejected the Death Penalty: Three out of four capital juries rejected death sentences in favor of life-without-parole sentences during capital trials this year. Three of those trials occurred in Caddo Parish.

Damon Thibodeaux was Exonerated: Damon became Louisiana’s ninth person to be found innocent of the crime which landed him on death row. He is the nation’s 141st exoneree, having spent 15 years on Louisiana’s death row. You can see Damon free here.

No New People Were Added to Louisiana’s Death Row: The only trial that ended in a death sentence this year was for a man previously sentenced to death. Robert Coleman won a retrial when the Louisiana Supreme Court found that prosecutors had illegally struck an African-American juror from the jury because of his race. Coleman was sentenced to death a second time.

Three New Staff Members Joined the LCADP Team: Sidney Garmon joined LCADP as our Outreach Coordinator; Beth Compa joined LCADP as our Policy Coordiantor; and Semaj Crumpton joined LCADP as our Outreach Assistant. You can read more about them on our Staff page.

We Developed Relationships with Our Allies: During a statewide conference hosted by the Catholic Diocese of Lafayette, organizations and individuals from around the state who are working to end the death penalty were able to meet and learn from their allies.

Archbishop Aymond Led an Interfaith Prayer Service to End State Killings: With nearly 400 people in attendance, Archbishop Aymond led an inspiring line-up of faith leaders and advocates to implore our state to seek alternatives to the death penalty that better serve the needs of families of murder victims, our justice system and our local communities. More…

Calvin Duncan Took his Message to the National Stage: Speaking at Harvard Law School and  University of Michigan Law School, LCADP’s Education Coordinator Calvin Duncan shared his message about the need for criminal justice reform in Louisiana. Calvin speaks from experience: he was wrongfully convicted of murder and spent 28 1/2 years in Angola Prison.

“I Want to Serve” Group Files Brief at the US Supreme Court : With the support of the Louisiana Interchurch Conference, a group of clergy, excluded jurors and concerned citizens filed an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court to protest the exclusion of people of faith who do not support the death penalty from capital juries. www.iwanttoserve.org

Report on Louisiana’s Death Penalty Published: Though this study addresses the death penalty from a Roman Catholic perspective, its authors demonstrate the ineffectiveness and arbitrariness of our death penalty system as a public policy, including the ways it is unfairly administered across racial, social and economic lines. Download here.

Two People Were Removed from Louisiana’s Death Row: As a result of prosecutors’ failures to turn over exculpatory evidence in proceedings that later  convinced Juan Smith’s jury that he should be sentenced to death,  a judge threw out Mr. Smith’s  death sentence. In an unrelated capital case, Anthony Scott was found to be intellectually disabled and, in accordance with the Supreme Court’s prohibition on the execution of mentally retarded persons, Mr. Scott was re-sentenced to life-without-parole.

Twenty-five years after the Court in McCleskey refrained from addressing the overwhelming evidence that race, and particularly the race of the victim, plays a role in the administration of the death penalty, with no corrective measures taken to ensure that the worst of the worst offenders receive the death penalty, the death penalty in America is as arbitrary as it ever was.

Ben Cohen suggests that while both the majority and the dissent in McCleskey noted the history of racism in the South, neither confronted the manner in which racism was imbedded in the goal of retribution, nor reconciled the sordid history of lynching with the modern system of capital punishment. A careful examination of death sentences in the modern era reflects that racism arises at a county rather than a state level. Cohen suggests that the history of lynching, especially in the deep south, is inexorably connected to retribution.

Future challenges to the constitutionality of capital punishment should address the validity of retribution as a basis for imposing the death penalty and the impact that desire for retribution has on county-level administration of the death penalty.

The United States Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana calls for further inquiry concerning the role of retribution in supporting the validity of capital punishment. In Kennedy, the Court warned that retribution “most often can contradict the law’s own ends . . . When the law punishes by death, it risks its own sudden descent into brutality, transgressing the constitutional commitment to decency and restraint.”

The full article is available for download from the Social Science Research Network.

The following is a list of faith communities and and a description of their official position on capital punishment. This list was provided by the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life.

American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A.

Since 1982, the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. has opposed capital punishment in the United States.

• American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., Resolution on Capital Punishment

Buddhism

There is no common position among Buddhists on capital punishment, but many emphasize nonviolence and appreciation for life. As a result, in countries with large Buddhist populations, such as Thailand, capital punishment is rare.

• Religion & Ethics – Buddhism and Capital Punishment
• Buddha Dharma Education Association & BuddhaNet, Dharma Data: Capital Punishment

Catholicism

Although the Catechism of the Catholic Church sanctions the use of the death penalty as a last recourse, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has repeatedly called for the abolition of capital punishment in the United States in all circumstances.

• The Vatican, Catechism of the Catholic Church
• United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty
• American Catholic, The Death Penalty and the Catholic Church

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has no official position on the issue and considers the death penalty to be a matter of the state and civil law.

• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Newsroom, Public Issues: Capital Punishment

Episcopal Church

Since the 1958 General Convention, U.S. Episcopal bishops have maintained a position against the death penalty.

• Religious Organizing Against the Death Penalty, Statement of the 1979 General Conference
• The Archives of the Episcopal Church, The Acts of the Convention 1976-2006, Reaffirm Opposition to Capital Punishment

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

In 1991 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America adopted a position statement calling for the abolition of capital punishment in the United States:

• Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Social Statement on the Death Penalty

Hinduism

There is no official position on capital punishment among Hindus, and Hindu theologians fall on both sides of the issue.

• HinduismToday.com, October/November/December 2006, Capital Punishment: Time to Abandon It?

Islam

In the United States, where Islamic law – Shariah – is not legally enforced, there is no official Muslim position on the issue of the death penalty. In Islamic countries, however, capital punishment is sanctioned in only two instances: cases involving intentional murder or physical harm of another; and intentional harm or threat against the state, including the spread of terror.

• Understanding Islam: An Affiliate of Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic Sciences, Regarding the Death Penalty
• bbc.co.uk, Religion & Ethics – Islam and Capital Punishment
• Islamic Supreme Council of America, Mateen Siddiqui, Vice President

Judaism

All of the major Jewish movements in the United States either advocate for the abolition of the death penalty or have called for at least a temporary moratorium on its use. The Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements in the United States oppose the death penalty in all instances. In 2001, Orthodox Jewish leaders called for a moratorium in light of perceived problems in the nation’s criminal justice system, and urged the creation of a commission to review death penalty procedures.

• Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, The Death Penalty and Jewish Value
• Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, A Summary of Standing Policy Positions of the Orthodox Union
• Conservative Judaism, Rabbinical Assembly, 1960: Proceedings of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards 1927-1970 Volume III, p. 1537-1538. Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser (provided by the Progressive Jewish Alliance)
• Reconstructionist Judaism, April 2003, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association (provided by the Progressive Jewish Alliance)
  

National Association of Evangelicals

Since its 1972 and 1973 resolutions on the issue, the National Association of Evangelicals has continued to support the use of capital punishment in cases involving premeditated murder as well as crimes such as hijacking and kidnapping where people are physically harmed.

• National Association of Evangelicals, Capital Punishment 1973

National Council of Churches

The National Council of Churches, which represents 35 mainstream Protestant and Orthodox churches, has advocated for the abolition of the death penalty since 1968.

• National Council of Churches, NCC Supports Moratorium on Death Penalty: A Statement by the Rev. Dr. Robert W. Edgar, General Secretary

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)

Since its first official statement on the issue in 1959, reaffirmed again in 1977 and 1978, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has opposed the death penalty.

• Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Presbyterian 101: Capital Punishment
• Religious Organizing Against the Death Penalty, Presbyterian Church (USA): Continuing Opposition to Capital Punishment
  

Southern Baptist Convention

In 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention issued a resolution in support of the fair and equitable use of capital punishment.

• Southern Baptist Convention, Resolutions, On Capital Punishment

Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

The Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations has called for a moratorium on executions since 1961.

• Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, Washington Office for Advocacy, Summary of Resolutions on Capital Punishment

United Methodist Church

In 2000, the United Methodist Church declared its opposition to the death penalty and encouraged its membership to advocate for the abolition of capital punishment.

• United Methodist Church, Book of Resolutions, In Opposition to Capital Punishment

Experience shows that when you give people solid, accurate information about how the death penalty operates and you then invite them to think about alternatives, most people recognize our current system is unworkable, unfixable and unnecessary.

The trouble is, the vast majority of people have never thought deeply about the death penalty and, because of that, their notions are informed by myths, misconceptions and misinformation. It is therefore vital that those of us working to end executions first educate ourselves and, second, talk about the death penalty to our friends, our family, our colleagues, our classmates and the broader public.

The Louisiana Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty has put together a Member’s Handbook to help you do both these things: learn about the death penalty as it is practiced in Louisiana, and learn how to communicate what you know effectively with others, including the media, legislators and ordinary folk.

When you sign up as a member of LCADP, we’ll provide you with an electronic copy of this excellent resource.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up, bone up and start spreading the word!

National Center for Victims of Crime

The National Center for Victims of Crime is one of the nation’s leading resource and advocacy organization for crime victims and those who serve them.

National Organization for Victim Assistance

National Organization for Victim Assistance promotes rights and services for victims of crime and crisis everywhere.

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Alliance

The Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Alliance is a group of professional and advocacy organizations that have joined forces to provide educational resources to individuals diagnosed with PTSD and their loved ones.

Murder Victims Famlies for Human Rights

MVFHR is an international, non-governmental organization of family members of murder victims and family members of the executed, all of whom oppose the death penalty in all cases.

A report published in November 2010 by the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit that works in Alabama, examined patterns of unfairness in jury selection in eight southern states, including Louisiana.

The report documents instances where prosecutors have provided unlawful or suspect reasons for removing black jurors from venires:

• In a recent Louisiana case, the prosecutor said he removed a juror because he was a “single black male with no children.” (State v. Harris, 2002)
• A Louisiana court upheld a prosecutor’s strike in which the prosecutor said the excluded black prospective juror was “too stupid to live much less be on a jury.” (State v. Crawford, 2004)
• A Louisiana court allowed the prosecutor to strike a black prospective juror because the prosecutor thought he “looked like a drug dealer.”

Research cited in the EJI report shows that all-white juries tend to:

• spend less time deliberating
• consider fewer perspectives
• be less likely to correct inaccuracies
• be more likely to discuss controversial race-related topics in deliberations
• make more factual errors