Press Release

FROM CITIZENS UNITED FOR ALTERNATIVES TO THE DEATH PENALTY (CUADP)

MEDIA ADVISORY

For Immediate Release: 28 February 2003

CONTACT: Abe Bonowitz
800-973-6548
abe@cuadp.org

DEATH PENALTY FOUNDATIONS CRUMBLING
Activists to Mark 156 Years Without Death Penalty

Dozens of anti-death penalty organizations throughout the United States are organizing around Saturday, March 1st, in celebration of International Death Penalty Abolition Day, the 156th anniversary of the date in 1847 when the State of Michigan officially became the first English-speaking territory in the world to abolish the death penalty.

FOR A LISTING OF EVENTS SCHEDULED ACROSS THE UNITED STATES, as well as background information, please visit http://www.cuadp.org and click on the Abolition Day Banner.

"Americans are beginning to take a hard look at how our criminal justice system is failing," said Abe Bonowitz, Director of Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "As a registered Republican, a fiscal conservative, and a former supporter of the death penalty, it is clear to me that anyone who examines the system from a non-emotional standpoint will find that economically, socially and morally, the practice of the death penalty is bad public policy."

Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (CUADP) notes the following very current events which point to a crumbling of the foundations of the death penalty in the modern era:

• Conservative voices and policy makers continue to acknowledge at least the need for a Time-Out on executions in the form of a moratorium on the death penalty pending review and reform of legal systems throughout the nation.
• Error rates in death sentencing continue to be exposed as unusually high, putting at risk all confidence in the accuracy and efficiency of our legal systems.
• Since 1972, more than 100 prisoners have been exonerated due to actual innocence and released from death rows in the United States. Others awaiting legal proceedings will be released shortly.
• The US Supreme Court continues to take and decide potentially landmark cases. In the past year the Court outlawed the execution of the mentally retarded and confirmed the role of judges and juries in death sentencing, and in the past week in a surprising 8-1 vote, determined that the role of racism in the process of jury selection must be considered when determining if a defendant has had a fair trial. These decisions dramatically alter the way the death penalty is used in this country, and affected hundreds of death row prisoners.
• In January, after lifelong support of the death penalty, after killing one prisoner and signing a death warrant for another, after instituting a "Time-out" on executions in his state and establishing a commission to examine its death penalty system, Illinois Governor George Ryan saw no other choice than to clear his state's death row by commuting 167 death sentences, and pardoning four others.
• On February 26, 2003, Kenyan President Kibaki freed 28 death row prisoners and commuted to life imprisonment 195 others condemned to die.
• As tensions mount between Europe and the United States, the United States risks losing its observer status at the Council of Europe if it fails to take steps toward abolition of the death penalty.
• And more. It's getting difficult to stay on top of it all....

Organizers of "Abolition Day" events point to the State of Michigan as an example that viable alternatives to the death penalty exist. "They got rid of the death penalty because they found that they could not trust themselves to use it fairly, and they learned too late that they had killed an innocent man," said Bonowitz. Michigan has been without the death penalty for 154 years. The first act of their new legislature when Michigan became a state was to abolish the death penalty.

"Politicians owe it to the people of this country to take a serious look at the alternatives to the death penalty already in use across this country," said Bonowitz. "Violent criminals can be punished, and society protected, through the use of long-term prison sentences before a convicted person can be considered for parole. It works in Michigan and in other states like California, which has the oldest 'Life Without Parole' (LWOP) statute in the country. Not one of the people sentenced to LWOP has been released. We are saying to the people our country, 'Don't make us become that which we deplore. Don't kill in our names. We can do better.'"

FOR DETAILS ON THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL DEATH PENALTY ABOLITION DAY, PLEASE VISIT http://www.cuadp.org and click on "Abolition Day."

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For more information, please contact Abe Bonowitz at 800-973-6548. Free information is available to the public from Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (CUADP), a Florida-based national organization working to increase the level of informed dialogue about viable alternatives to the death penalty. CUADP may be reached toll-free at 800-973-6548 or on the internet at http://www.cuadp.org.

POSTED BY:
 
Abraham J. Bonowitz
Director, CUADP

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