Join us at the DCODP booth at Newark Community Day!

Sunday, September 18th from 11am to 4pm.

Spend some time talking with visitors to the booth about death penalty issues, handing out information, and signing up new members!

Booth #325 University of Delaware Green near Mitchell and Hullihen Halls.

Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims

http://sites.google.com/site/delawarevrtf/home/day-of-remembrance-for-murder-victims

September 22nd, 2011 Doors open at 6:00 PM,

Event Starts at 7:00 PM

Location: P. S. DuPont Elementary School Auditorium

701 W. 34th St., Wilmington, DE

In solidarity with the National Day of Remembrance, held in September, the Delaware Victims’ Rights Task Force holds a memorial event in Wilmington, DE to honor the memory of murder victims.  The event is to honor their memory and recognize the impact homicide has on surviving family members, loved ones, and our communities.

The event includes an opportunity for survivors to memorialize their loved one. We invite family and loved ones to be a part of this event by decorating memorial bags, posting writings and artwork on the memorial wall, and adding a photo to the memorial video played at the event.   Bags and wall space are available the night of the event.

Delaware Citizens Opposed to the Death Penalty

DEATH PENALTY PROTEST ACTIONS

DCODP is sponsoring the following events prompted by the execution of Robert Jackson scheduled for July 29, 2011, and in protest of Delaware’s continued use of capital punishment.

(In case of a stay, all events will be canceled.)

Join us and demonstrate your opposition to the death penalty. All are welcome.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

·       4 to 5 pm. RALLY on the Front Steps of First & Central Presbyterian Church, 1101 N. Market Street, Wilmington, DE 19801.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

·       7:30 am to 5 pm.  CONTINUOUS VIGIL on the front steps of First & Central Presbyterian Church, 1101 N. Market St, Wilmington, DE 19801. Signs protesting the death penalty will be available or bring your own. Stay all day or just for an hour.

·       2 to 3 pm.  RALLY at Legislative Hall in Dover. Legislative Hall is located at 411 Legislative Ave, Dover, DE.

·       8 pm.  INTERFAITH SERVICE at Limestone Presbyterian Church, 3201 Limestone Rd, Wilmington, DE 19808. To get directions, go to http://www.limestonepresbyterian.org/map.htm.

·       11 pm. VIGIL on the grounds of the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center, which continues until the official pronouncement of death some time after midnight. Carpooling is recommended. To carpool, meet at the Smyrna Rest Area, 5500 Dupont Pkwy, Smyrna, DE, between 10:00 and 10:30 pm. We will follow a State Police Officer to the prison. 

For further information, call 302-656-2721

WHEN: Sunday, May 22nd,    3:00-5:00 P.M.

WHERE: Rodney Square, 1100 North Market St

Presented by the Delaware Victims’ Rights Task Force

 and the Delaware Victims’ Rights Task Force, visit: http://sites.google.com/site/delawarevrtf/home

“Lethal Injustice: Death Penalty and Harsh Sentencing”

A Free program with

Mark Clements

At the young age of 16 years old, Mark Clements was tortured by the Chicago police, under the supervision of Jon Burge, the chief of police who was recently convicted and given a four and a half year sentence for participating in the torture of as many as 100 (largely young, black) men . Mark served 28 years in prison as an innocent man, including many years on death row.  Just a year and a half after his release, he now works tirelessly as a dynamic activist in the movement against the death penalty, serving on the staff of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty in Chicago, IL.

and

 Amir Varick

Amir was 23 years old when he was similarly tortured by the police in New York City and sent to prison on a drug charge carrying a 25-year sentence under the harsh Rockefeller drug laws.  Innocent of the drug charge for which he was convicted, Amir served nearly 20 years of this sentence before finally being released in March 2010 from the New York State Correctional System.  Now a student of Sociology, Social Work, and Public Policy in New York City, Amir is working on developing a curriculum for high school students and has plans to eventually open his own school.

Thursday, February 17, 7 pm

 The Christ Center, Inc.

939 Vandever Avenue

Wilmington, DE 19802

This program, which is free and open to the public, is co-sponsored by The Delaware Chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty and Delaware Citizens Opposed to the Death Penalty in conjunction with Pacem in Terris and graciously hosted by the Christ Center, Inc.  For more information, contact Sandy Jones at jonessa@rowan.edu or call 302-545-7023 or 302-656-2721.

At the January DCODP meeting, we created sub-committees to take action on specific issues. We would love to have your input. The sub-committee meeting dates/times/locations are below. Please feel free to atttend any or all.

DCODP Sub-Committees & meeting dates & times:

1) Coalition Building -- Friday, Jan. 21, at 4 pm at the Pacem in Terris office, 3rd floor, 1304 N. Rodney St., Wilmington, DE 19806-4227 This committee will focus on Building coalitions with other organizations, connecting with faith communities, and using national resources such as the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

2) Communication/Media -- Tuesday, Jan. 25, at 5 pm (same venue) This committee will focus on communicating with members and the media and using the media for public education.

3) Family Advocacy -- Thursday, Jan 27, at 4 pm (same venue) This committee will focus on supporting families of those on death row, families of murder victims, and working with individual death penalty cases and pending executions in Delaware.

4) Legislative Comm. -- Friday, Feb 4, at 4 pm (same venue) This committee will focus on building relationships with legislators and finding ways to support legislation related to the death penalty.

2010 DCODP Year-End Report

Tonight those of us who are opposed to the death penalty have reason to be encouraged.  In 2010, there continues to be progress toward eradication of the death penalty both globally and in the United States. 

More than two-thirds of the countries in the world have abolished the death penalty either in law or in practice.  Europe and Central Asia are now virtually death penalty free.  In the Americas, only the United States consistently executes.  And, in fact, out of 192 countries in the world, only 13 of those countries have carried out executions every year for the last five years.

Before the end of the year, the United Nations General Assembly will discuss a resolution for a moratorium as a step toward total abolition by 2015.  And, just in the last week, we have learned that the British government has placed an immediate ban on the export of sodium thiopental, a drug used in lethal injections in the United States.  The US is running short of the drug, which is used in the execution protocol, but the British government declared that exporting the drug to be used for this purpose was immoral.

Here in the United States, death sentences, executions, the number of states that have the death penalty and the size of the population on death row have all continued to decline in the last decade.  Legislation to abolish the death penalty has been recently introduced in many states, and 139 people on death row in this country have been exonerated, largely as a result of new DNA evidence.

Even in Texas, where there as been a high level of support for the death penalty, only 8 new death sentences have been handed down in 2010, whereas the previous annual average was 48.  Since 1976, Texas has executed 466 people; 17 in 2010.

One of the most comprehensive polls ever conducted concerning the views of Americans on the death penalty indicates that public support is decreasing.  The majority of voters (68%) voiced concern about the high costs, innocence, uneven and unfair application of death sentences, and the fact that studies show the death penalty is not a deterrent and does not make them safer. 

Of course, here in Delaware, there is much work still to be done, and 18 people remain on death row.  Executions in Delaware had been on hold since May of 2006, when a lawsuit alleged that the state’s method of execution presented an unnecessary risk of pain and suffering by the condemned; however, in January of this year, the US 3^rd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld execution in Delaware as constitutional. 

During 2010, Delaware Citizens Opposed to the Death Penalty has grown.  We’re happy to have added active new members and made new online “friends.”

Thanks to Kristin Froehlich, we have greatly enhanced our “social media presence” by having a Facebook page and a google group in addition to our DCODP website.  Kevin O’Connell set up the DCODP booth on Main Street in June for Newark Nite and again in September on the university campus for Newark Community Day, where we polled and interacted with hundreds of our neighbors.

Barbara Lewis, Ann Coleman, Sandy Jones, Kevin O’Connell and Sally Milbury-Steen continue to be in demand as panelists and speakers at local colleges and universities and even at international events, such as the World Day Against the Death Penalty.  We continue to support Sandy in her work with the family members of those sentenced to death in Delaware.

John Beer has kept us in touch with the Armband Protest against the death penalty and has begun sending letters to governors, pardon boards and newspaper editors on behalf of DCODP.  We are now participating in monthly conference calls organized by the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Kristin attended a two-day Abolition Leadership Training Institute in DC in August hosted by NCADP, and Tom Eleuterio and maybe others will attend the NCADP annual conference in Chicago in January.

In October, DCODP, in conjunction with Pacem in Terris, held an outstanding Forum on the Costs of the Death Penalty.  The event was held on the campus of Widener School of Law, and speakers were Richard Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, and John Roman, Senior Research Associate at the Justice Policy Center of the Urban Institute, both of whom have written and testified extensively on the topic.

Tonight we remember the 3,261 individuals currently on death row in the United States, especially those in Delaware.  If you are not already a member of DCODP, we would be happy to have you.  We are also interested in forming closer alliances with other like-minded organizations and encourage you to visit our website and to look for us on Facebook. 

Rosemary Haines

DCODP Board Co-President

Annual Meeting of Delaware Citizens Opposed to the Death Penalty

Double Feature

by award-winning film-makers Roger Weisberg and Vanessa Roth

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010

Grace Hall at Westminster Presbyterian Church

1506 W. 13th Street, Wilmington, DE 19806

Free and Open to the Public

Preliminary film - AGING OUT – 5:30pm

AGING OUT profiles three teenagers, including RISA BEJARANO, who "age out" of the foster care system and suddenly discover they're on their own. Although they become parents, battle drug addiction, experience homelessness, and land in jail, they also use the resiliency they developed from years of abuse to take control of their lives. Ultimately, this emotionally complex documentary becomes a deeply affecting portrait of the struggles of three young people to overcome the scars of their troubled childhoods in order to realize their dreams of independence and fulfillment.

 Enjoy Free Pizza between the Films

Feature Film - NO TOMORROW – 7:30pm

NO TOMORROW focuses on the murder of Risa Bejarano, the principal subject of AGING OUT, our film about teenagers leaving foster care. NO TOMORROW explores how the film about Risa’s last year of life unexpectedly became the centerpiece of a homicide investigation and a trial that would determine whether the alleged killer would live or die. JUAN CHAVEZ, a young man who had suffered the same traumatic childhood experiences as his victim, went to trial for capital murder in Los Angeles Superior Court. NO TOMORROW makes viewers question whether the administration of the death penalty is too imperfect, costly, discriminatory, and arbitrary to be a legitimate public policy.

Co-sponsored by ACLU of Delaware and Pacem in Terris

For more information go to www.enddeathpenaltyde.org or call 302-656-2721

The Death Penalty: Can We Afford It?

An account of presentations by Richard Dieter and John Roman

(These talks by Richard Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, and John Roman, Senior Research Associate at the Justice Policy Center of the Urban Institute in Washington, were given on October 19, 2010 at a forum held at the Widener University School of Law on the cost of the death penalty that was organized by Delaware Citizens Opposed to the Death Penalty and co-sponsored by Pacem in Terris.  This article is based on the extensive notes taken by Mary Starkweather-White.)

Although cost may seem irrelevant to your position on the death penalty, costs are a central issue to the discussion of the death penalty in the United States.  We have heard more about it in our present economic crisis, but the crux of the matter--issues of innocence, representation, deterrence, and morality—all relate to costs.  You may say that we cannot put a price on justice, but we can put a price on public safety, saving lives, good or wasteful government programs.

At the Death Penalty Information Center, they gather, review, and post studies.  What they are finding is that the issue of costs is essential and that it is increasingly coming up in the news.  In Missouri the Sentencing Commission told judges that when they are sentencing defendants, they are to explain the costs.  They are to take them into account, for example, weighing the cost of  probation against that of imprisonment.  This has sparked lots of discussion and opened up the debate in the country about using costs in the criminal justice system, because many of the obvious costs are considerable.  In Missouri trying the cost to sentencing has been done in criminal cases, but is has not yet been applied to the death penalty cases in Missouri.

In Connecticut the trial of the multiple offenders in the egregious murder case of the family of Dr. Petit is going on.  The trial of the first offender has just been concluded with a conviction.  The defense attorneys asked the judge if they could raise the issue of costs in the sentencing phase.  However, the judge considered their request, but denied it.  The issue keeps creeping in because of the economic crisis.

The US Supreme Court recently heard the case of Harry Connick, Sr. vs John Thompson which deals with the question of whether a man exonerated of capital murder can sue the prosecutor who convicted him.  John Thompson was on Louisiana’s death row and his conviction was eventually overturned because of DNA evidence and because of prosecutorial misconduct.  After his release, Thompson sued Harry Connick, Sr., the District Attorney, received a $14,000,000 award that has been appealed and made its way up to the Supreme Court.  The verdict in this case, may establish that there is a cost in sending the wrong man to death row.  

John Thompson is one of the persons featured in the play, “The Exonerated.”  Since 1973, a total of 138 people on death row have been exonerated.  Their convictions were thrown out, either because they were retried and found innocent or the charges against them were dropped, often because a lot of mistakes were made. These mistakes are costly and could be prevented with good investigation, good representation, good testing, good prosecutors and good judges.  To rectify all of the above conditions would require more money.  People are against executing the innocent, but they are also against spending a lot of money and time on the death penalty.   They can’t have it both ways. 

The issue of deterrence is about saving lives.  In order to prevent crime, you need more police, better lighting in crime areas, and other measures, but all of these things cost money.  However, these issues don’t exist in isolation, so we need to examine all aspects of the criminal justice budget.  We can handle things more cheaply.

All victims are of primary concern.  These include the murder victim and his or her family and other relatives as well as the families of the perpetrator.  You can’t put a price on their pain.  What victims really want is justice.  They want assurance that the crime will never happen again, that justice will be served, that the guilty to be punished, that no one will ever do it again, and that something is being done about it.  What some victims say is, “What we want is better policing, more crime prevention, counseling, compensation, etc.”   The death penalty is not the only choice in dealing with murder and spending money on capital punishment takes away funding that could be spent on victim services.

Then there is the moral argument.  Some say morality decrees the death penalty.  However, in a broader social and moral sense, morality requires the wise stewardship of resources. You don’t want to spend money on what is ineffective and does not work.  We must consider the cost of the death penalty in this broader moral sense.

It is complicated and the cost is hard to figure out.  For example, what is the cost of a heart attack?  If your heart attack is instant and fatal, in a way its medical cost is nothing.  However, if you survive, in addition to the threat to your health, there are also the costs of the ambulance, the Emergency Room, the hospitalization, etc.  Hopefully, you will get good doctors, nurses, medicine, and so on.  These are costs are expensive, but they are something that society cares about.  However, the costs will ripple out, extending to the expenses of lost work, more medicine, follow-up doctor visits, so the family has to spend more on medical care and has less money for other expenses. 

It is hard to pin down costs.  If we and the medical community said that we had a preventative shot that cost a lot of money, but would protect people from heart attacks, society would have to make a judgment about whether it is a cost we want to make.  What if the cost of preventing a heart attack is $10,000/a shot and everyone in the country gets a shot?  Suppose we discover that only one in a hundred people will actually have a heart attack, then the cost to prevent one is actually 100 times the cost of the $10,000 shot, or $100,000 to prevent a heart attack.  If 1 in 100 gets heart attacks and the cost to prevent one heart attack is $100,000, the real cost is 100 times $100,000, if everyone takes the preventative cure. Then you can start seeing how difficult these questions become about where we should be putting our money. 

An execution can cost the state $10 million.  The actual execution is relatively cheap, since it does not cost that much for the electric chair or the lethal injection, but to get to that point could cost $10 million.  This high price makes the issue of cost an essential part of the death penalty question.

What kind of death penalty do we want— fast, careful, cheap, expensive, fair?  The legal process in a capital case is as follows: pretrial phase; motions; jury selection; guilt determination; sentencing phase; appeals; clemency; execution.  There are typically two attorneys assigned to each side of a death-eligible case instead of the usual  one, so the death penalty case costs more right from the start.  There are motions to consider for psychological evaluation, DNA testing, experts, investigators, and family visits.  In a death penalty case if the judge holds back too much on granting these motions, the decision may well be overturned later on during the appeal process.

Then there is jury selection, which can take up to 1 or 2 months.  The defendant is entitled to a jury at trial and probably in the sentencing phase.   In the jury selection process, the potential jurors will be asked their views (moral, political and ethical) on the death penalty.  If their views are staunchly for or against the death penalty, they can be disqualified from serving and will not be selected for the jury.  Unlike in the typical criminal case, this is the one time that a person’s religious beliefs can prevent them from fulfilling their civic duty of serving on a jury.  It takes a while to learn potential jurors’ moral views, because the prosecutor, defense counsel and judge will all have to probe their views.  The jury selection process becomes expensive and time-consuming; it can take weeks—or months. 

After the guilt determination, the sentencing phase in a death penalty case usually requires a whole new trial.  There are juries, witnesses, experts on issues like mental retardation, considerations of background, aggravating factors and mitigating factors.    The jury members are supposed to dig deeply into their consciences in order to declare death or life.  It takes a jury a while to decide the sentence, since there is no formula. 

During the appeals, clemency and execution phases of a capital case, there are drama, petitions, and media coverage.  In Texas there is a media day around each execution.  There are direct appeals to the state appellate court and the US Supreme Court.  There are 2 avenues of post-conviction relief: from the state appellate court to the US Supreme Court to the US Supreme Court, and from the US District Court to the Circuit Court of Appeals to the US Supreme Court.  In California all 700 death penalty cases go through the state supreme court.

 The difference in death penalty and non-death penalty cases is that in the former both sets of attorneys are usually paid through taxes. It typically takes 12 years to go through the process, but in California it can take 24 years, and in some of the other death penalty states it can take from 15 – 20 years.  The stakes are high, so a high standard is set for the legal system to prove its case.

Until 2003 the US Supreme Court paid lip service to the fact that a defendant must have effective counsel, but in the Wiggins v. Smith case, it spelled out what “effective” really means.  Justice Sandra Day O’Connor overturned this Maryland case, saying that the defendant’s lawyers did not do enough in the penalty (sentencing) phase to represent Mr. Wiggins, because they were so sure he was innocent that they had put all of their effort into proving his innocence during the guilt phase. There was not enough time spent on investigative examinations, reports, psychological evaluations, family studies, etc.  It turned out that the client had been the subject of severe mental abuse in childhood and this had not been disclosed.  Hundreds of hours of time are necessary to be spent in every case.  The US Supreme Court said that in a Pennsylvania case in which the defendant was a veteran, more should have been said about PTSD.  The US Supreme Court has said that death penalty cases have to be done better, but this costs more money. 

Imprisoning the death penalty prisoner is the most expensive form of incarceration. Each death row inmate has to be in a single cell with food brought to him or her.  At visits from family or attorneys he or she must be shackled and watched by guards.  It costs $90,000 per year to keep one inmate on death row in California and there are 670 people on death row in California.  This means that it costs the state of California $63.3 million per year to keep its current inmate population on death row.

More mistakes in convictions are being discovered all the time. Nine people on death row were exonerated last year; 22 from 1974 to 1982; 24 from 1983 to 1991; 46 from 1992 to 2000; 46 from 2001 to 2009.  Kirk Bloodsworth in Maryland was the first to be exonerated by DNA evidence.  There were no possible special defense arguments that could be made; just that the wrong man was convicted.  Every time some error is found, then the system has to adopt a higher standard and the costs go up.

In dealing with death penalty cases, there is a funnel effect, going from a broad scope down to the actual execution.  The process goes as follows: choosing of death-eligible cases; capital prosecution; trials; death sentence; appeals; re-trials; commutation requests; executions.  We pay death penalty costs even for all those cases which do not end in executions.  The time between sentencing and execution is growing longer.  In California about $137 million a year is spent on the death penalty, even though there have only been 13 executions in 30 years and none in the last 4-1/2 years. 

A Study of the Cost of the Death Penalty in the State of Maryland

An Account of  John Roman’s Presentation on October 19, 2010

At the Urban Institute we set the goal of our study to be proving that it is not more costly to have the death penalty.  John Roman wrote the study with three colleagues.  The study delineated context, prior research, study design and data collection, results and implications.  When the study was completed, he testified before the Maryland legislature about the study.

They were commissioned by the Abell Foundation to do the study in the early summer of 2007 with a completion date set for December 2007.  The Maryland legislature was going to be discussing the death penalty in January 2008 and some wanted pressure brought to bear on a particular senator in a deadlocked vote.

All the prior research supported the argument that a state with a death penalty has associated costs higher than a non-death penalty regime.  The Urban Institute is a non-partisan, non-profit think tank that does economic and social policy research in DC.  We found that the prior research was poor.  Most studies started with the most convenient data.  They omitted key data, thus underestimating the costs of the death penalty.  They made unfair comparisons between the death penalty and to the cost of life without parole. When a case is pursued as a death penalty-eligible case, additional costs are mandated.

In the Roman study, they considered the possibility that the costs might be driven up by the horrific nature of some murder cases.  They found, though, that attorneys general would spend more time on death-eligible cases regardless of the nature of the crimes. 

The comparison of death penalty cases to life without parole cases is not meaningful.  The judge and jury decide the sentence, not the legislature.  The policy question is: what are the cost differences when the system decides to pursue the death penalty.  As an academic, he had an incentive to find that the costs were not higher, so as to be able to present an original argument and make his reputation.

The problems with prior research included small samples; lack of sampling strategies; not accounting for potential confounders; selection bias.  There were eight stages in the death penalty cases and at most only five had been studied before. 

In Roman’s study of Maryland there were 1,136 death penalty-eligible people who received a guilty verdict between 1978 and 1999.  They found data on 509 (those with an event from 1990 on, when the records were computerized).  

They considered the cost as a factor of price and quantity.  Most of what they considered was the cost of attorney time.  They used the Maryland Judicial Case Search Database and the PACER Database for data on the events.  They used surveys of District Attorneys, Defense Counsel, and Judges.  They asked these how much time they would spend on each death penalty and non-death penalty case, input their wages, and then they validated the results. They asked them what percentage of their time was spent on each kind of case, then summed up the hours and wages.  Roman and his colleagues also considered additional costs: labor; user cost of capital; federal habeas costs; imprisonment; public defenders, etc.

They found descriptive statistics about how the groups differed.  425 cases were non-death penalty cases; 55 were death notice (death-eligible); 29 were death sentence cases. Of the 509 cases, 173 took pleas (out of all the cases); 4 with death notices took pleas; 1 with a death sentence took a plea.  There were differences with racial disparity.  Black defendants with white victims more often received the death penalty.  Also, defendants in cases where the victim was frail were more likely to get the death penalty.  In Baltimore City almost no one received the death penalty; in Baltimore County almost everyone did in death-eligible cases.

Roman and his colleagues tested to see whether there was a propensity for the death penalty to cost more where there were these or similar attributes.  They found that it did not.  The filing of the death notice has the same effect on costs, regardless of the attributes.  The attorney general works just as hard in a death-eligible case, regardless and the filing of a death notice increases costs by $669,000.

The cost to file for the death penalty is $1 million, $3 million by time of execution.  Prison costs are highest for that group of inmates, regardless of execution.  In Maryland the death penalty costs $186 million dollars.  Thus, the debate about the death penalty has to be reset in a fundamental way.  The legislature has to consider not only fairness, but also the value of $186 million worth of fairness, the cost of the death penalty.

 Richard Dieter is the Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, and John Roman is the Senior Research Associate at the Justice Policy Center of the Urban Institute in Washington.  They spoke on October 19, 2010 at a forum held at the Widener University School of Law on the cost of the death penalty that was organized by Delaware Citizens Opposed to the Death Penalty and co-sponsored by Pacem in Terris.  For more information about the Death Penalty Information Center, visit www.deathpenaltyinfo.org and for the Urban Institute, visit www.urban.org   To find our more about Delaware Citizens Opposed to the Death Penalty, go to www.enddeathpenaltyde.org

2010 Newark Community Day Poll Results

 1.         Are you in favor of abolishing the death penalty?

                        Yes = 196 (63%)

                        No = 106 (34%)

                        Undecided = 7 (2%)

2.         Should the State of Delaware be required to tell its citizens how much more taxpayer money it spends seeking the death penalty instead of life without parole?

                        Yes = 269 (91%)

                        No = 26 (9%)

3.         Should a judge be required to give great weight to the jury’s vote in the penalty hearing of a capital case?

                        Yes = 253 (86%)

                        No = 42 (14%)

4.         Is executing an innocent person an acceptable risk of having the death penalty in Delaware?

                        Yes = 33 (11%)

                        No = 254 (87%)

                        Undecided = 6 (2%)