On the Execution of Frances Newton in Texas!

I want to start with a quote I saw the other day by long time death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean (she wrote "Dead Man Walking").

"I am comparing the death penalty system to the levees in New Orleans. They told us they would work, but they didn't."
-Sister Helen Prejean, Chicago Tribune, 9/9/05


I want to expand her point a bit, so as to leave no doubt- it was no oversight that these levees didn't hold up- that information was known for years and was purposely ignored by those in office- and the same holds true for the death penalty in this country. Despite the overwhelming statistics that would make it impossible to deny the discrimination that takes place in capital cases, despite the 121 exonerees that have walked off death row in the last thirty years, and despite the numerous people still on death rows across the country with clouds of doubt hanging over their cases (a few of which I'll discuss in a moment) that information is consciously overlooked by those in office. By no means was New Orleans a passive, oblivious accident to politicians, and by no means are politicians misinformed about who is being sent to death row. But that's precisely the point- it's a policy based on inequality, it's a policy based upon injustice, where you blame the poor for their problems instead of creating a society that helps alleviate the poor from its problems. Where prisons are built at a higher rate than schools. And this racist, concerted policy equals a death sentence for hundreds of Black and poor people in this country.

I want to throw out some numbers from the Death Penalty Information Center to paint a clearer picture of the nature of the criminal justice system in the US.

Although blacks make up only 13% of the general population, they make up half of the prison population.

The current population of blacks on death row is 1400, 42% of the total.

According to an Amnesty International report, even though blacks and whites are murder victims in near even numbers of crime, 80% of people executed for murder involved white victims.

Since 1976, 202 people were executed in cases involving a black defendant with a white victim.

The cases in which there was a white defendant and a black victim only numbered 12.

And more than 20% of black defendants who have been executed were convicted by all white juries.

So what politicians advocate as a "fair system" by which the punishment fits the crime obviously doesn't apply to you if you're white, or can afford adequate counsel to get you off. Then there's the innocent, the 121 we know of, the dozens remaining on death row pushing to get their evidence heard, and the countless that remain unknown. "Beyond reasonable doubt" obviously had no place in their cases.

As many of you may know by now, Frances Newton was executed last night. Frances was convicted in 1987 for the murder of her husband and two small children. Evidence that was not presented at her trial, but later examined would have raised serious doubt, if not acquittal in her case. There was no blood found on Frances Newton's clothing, gun, hands, or car, despite the fact that the victims had been shot at close range. No gunpowder residue was found on her hands or sweater. There was also no evidence that someone had tried to clean up the apartment. Frances also had the misfortune of being represented by court-appointed lawyer Ron Mock, who did absolutely nothing for her trial, he didn't interview anyone, nor did he do any investigation.

Ron Mock was also the lawyer for Shaka Sankofa, who was executed in 2000. Shaka's case was one of the most disgusting displays of injustice I've ever witnessed. There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, and ballistic tests proved that the murder weapon couldn't have been the gun that was found on him when he was apprehended. Shaka's only crime was being black in Texas. Shaka was convicted on the testimony of one, ONE, eyewitness who caught a "glimpse" of the killer in poor lighting. Furthermore, there were six eyewitnesses to the crime that said Sankofa was not the murderer, all of whom were never allowed to testify in court. Jurors have since come forward saying that they would have never convicted Shaka had they known this information.

Ronald Mock has since been barred from handling capital punishment cases.

Many of you may also know about the case of Stan "Tookie" Williams, whose profile has risen in the last year after the release of his autobiographical movie 'Redemption' starring Jamie Foxx. The main evidence against Stan was the testimony of jailhouse informants who claimed that he had confessed to them. All of these informants were facing serious felony charges, therefore giving incentive to make a deal with the police. None of the physical evidence found at the two crime scenes, fingerprints and a boot print, matched Stan. And in a blatant display of racism, his trial was moved from Los Angeles to Torrance, a predominantly white area. All the African Americans in the jury pool were dismissed, and Stan's case was heard by an all-white jury.


In 2000, Illinois' Governor Ryan put a moratorium on the death penalty and pardoned four people completely after it was exposed that the Chicago police department routinely tortured people into giving confessions to murders that they never committed. Governor Ryan did not wake up one day with a change of heart- it was the hundreds of activists across the country, made up of family members, students, and workers- that came knocking at his door and forced him to wake up, forced him to look at the injustices that were being committed.
It's time for a new civil rights movement in this country- so that there won't be any more needless deaths- whether it be from a hurricane- a hurricane that the richest nation in the world couldn't protect its citizens from because they were black and poor, and that somehow didn't matter. Or at the hands of the state in prisons across the country. We must demand an end to the racist, barbaric death penalty for good. And I urge you to join the Campaign to End the Death Penalty to be a part of a movement fighting for those demands.

I'll leave you with the last words of Shaka Sankofa:
"We must continue to move forward and do everything we can to outlaw legal lynching in America. We must continue to stay strong all around the world, and people must come together to stop the systematic killing of poor and innocent Black people. We must continue to stand together in unity and to demand a moratorium on all executions. We must not let this murder/lynching be forgotten."