*Another Small Victory On The Death Penalty Abolition Front- New Mexico Falls

Click on title to link to "Time" online coverage of the New Mexico Death Penalty abolition fight.

Commentary

This week, the week of March 16, 2009, Governor Bill Richardson (you remember him from the Democratic presidential campaign trail in 2008 and as a Obama Cabinet appointment gone awry, don’t you?) signed a bill passed by the New Mexico legislature that abolished the death penalty for capital crimes in that state. New Mexico thus joins New Jersey (2007) as the second state in recent times that has overturned this barbaric practice that had previously been on its books. We will take every, even small victory, on this front that we can get our hands on. Kudos.

As a general political proposition it has become apparent that the way that the death penalty will be abolished, short of an early act of a victorious workers government, is through piecemeal legislation in the individual states. So be it. On the federal level one should expect no positive action as the vaunted “liberal’ President Barack Obama is in favor of its retention (as, to be even-handed in our scorn, were then Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee Massachusetts Senator John Kerry- such is the nature of big time bourgeois politics).

That leaves the United States Supreme Court. Well, let’s move on back to that first paragraph about where the locus of action is on the death penalty question-the individual states. One little note though, some of the Supremes have been making noises (especially Justice Stevens) about abolition of the death penalty as a constitutional question. Well, we have been down that road before. I recall that former Justice Blackmon came out against the death penalty and received accolades and awards far and wide, especially from his brethren in the legal community. The only problem with that tribute from this corner is that he did so AFTER he left the bench. Where was the good Justice he when he could have done something (even in a technical sense like granting stays of execution and other legal niceties) about it though? This death penalty question is a quintessential democratic issue but, once again, don’t depend on the “house” liberals to be in the forefront of its abolition. Abolish The Death Penalty Now!

THE BLACK-ROBED ANGELS OF DEATH RIDE AGAIN

COMMENTARY

ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY NOW!

The United States Supreme Court has just handed down (on April 16, 2008) it latest death penalty-related decision, in this case concerning the mechanics of its application. In a 7-2 decision (with reasoning being all over the place as seven different opinions have been reported) the Court held that the three-stage lethal injection used by Kentucky (and other states) is not cruel and unusual punishment under the U.S. Constitution. No real surprise there because, as I have noted before, this court, filled as it is with original intent constitutional theorists, still has not decided whether drawing and quartering is unconstitutional. I am sure that they do not believe that it is torturous.

In another piece of news on the death penalty front the court also heard arguments that same day on whether child rape is a capital offense and therefore can constitutionally be subject to the death penalty. I would be surprised (but only a little) if the court expanded the number of crimes legitimately subject to the death penalty at this point.

That said, what I really want to discuss here is Associate Supreme Court Justice John Paul Steven’s commentary (and that is all it is legally because it was not germane to the decision in the case) in his separate opinion (in which he supported the constitutionality of the lethal injection application) that he believed that the death penalty itself is unconstitutional. This is the first time in a long time that a sitting justice of the Supreme Court has taken such a position. And that, my friends, is to the good. Here, however, is my problem with all this. What is he going to do about it?

I remember several years ago liberal anti-death penalty advocates fell all over themselves in honoring former Associate Justice Harry Blackmon when he came out against the death penalty. Of course, that was after he had retired so it did not do one death row inmate one damn bit of good. Is this the case here with Stevens? It does make a legal/technical different for the possible fates of current individual inmates. More to the point this development permits me a chance to restate what we should be fighting for-not in the courts (or not solely in the courts) but in the streets. We do not recognize the state’s right to take a life, for the guilty or the innocent. Abolish the death penalty now!

*Sacco and Vanzetti- The Case That Will Not Die, Nor Should It

Click on the title to link to "Wikipedia"'s entry for the Sacco and Vanzetti case, provided ere as background. As always with this source and its collective editorial policy, especially with controversial political issues like the Sacco and Vanzetti case, be careful checking the accuracy of the information provided at any given time.


Commentary/Review

He or she who defends the memory of Sacco and Vanzetti is a kindred spirit whatever our other political differences might be. In the mist of time in my youth a couple of cases came early to my memory. The Rosenbergs and, in whispered tones, the Sacco and Vanzetti case. And in the year of the 80th Anniversary of their execution by the State of Massachusetts it is again worth reflecting on what that case means to a generation confronted with more than its share of abuses of justice and political hysteria. Below is a review of a documentary that came out in 2006 (2007 on DVD) that goes some way to explore and explain just what happened.

I also note that in the summer of 2007 yet another book has come out on the subject, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, The Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind by Bruce Watson. I have not read that book yet but I have read several reviews on it. A disturbing element in that book appears to be the author’s agnostic, if not antagonistic, position on Sacco and Vanzetti’s innocence. One of the reasons the case will never die, although not my reason that it should not, is the periodic attempt to ‘prove’ that one or more of the pair either did the murders or, in the alternative, that they received a fair trial. After I have read this book I will write more on this question. It is the duty of those who defend Sacco and Vanzetti to beat back these attempts to chip away at their legacy despite the overwhelming mountain of evidence in their favor. And to expose a new generation to an understanding of the raw legal and social attitudes of that time (and our time, as well). In the meantime- Honor the memory of Sacco and Vanzetti.

I am reposting that earlier review mentioned above.

SACCO AND VANZETTI- THE DOCUMENTARY

DVD REVIEW

SACCO AND VANZETTI, PETER MILLER, 2006

I have used some of the points mentioned here in previous reviews of books about the Sacco and Vanzetti case.

Those familiar with the radical movement know that at least once in every generation a political criminal case comes up that defines that era. One thinks of the Haymarket Martyrs in the 19th century, the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930's, the Rosenburgs in the post-World War II Cold War period and today Mumia Abu-Jamal. In America after World War I when the Attorney General Palmer-driven ‘red scare’ brought the federal government’s vendetta against foreigners, immigrants and militant labor fighters to a white heat that generation's case was probably the most famous of them all, Sacco and Vanzetti. The exposure of the tensions within American society that came to the surface as a result of that case is the subject of the film under review.

Using documentary footage, reenactment and ‘talking head’ commentary by interested historians, including the well-known author of popular America histories Boston University Professor (emeritus now, I believe)Howard Zinn, the director Peter Miller and his associates bring this case alive for a new generation to examine. In the year 2007 one of the important lessons for leftists to be taken from the case is the question of the most effective way to defend such working class cases. I will address that question further below but here I wish to point out that the one major shortcoming of this film is a lack of discussion on that issue. I might add that this is no mere academic issue as the current case of the death-row prisoner, militant journalist Mumia-Abu-Jamal, graphically illustrates. Notwithstanding that objection this documentary is a very satisfactory visual presentation of the case for those not familiar with it.

A case like that of Sacco and Vanzetti, accused, convicted and then executed in 1927 for a robbery and double murder committed in a holdup of a payroll delivery to a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts in 1920, does not easily conform to any specific notion that the average citizen today has of either the state or federal legal system. Nevertheless, one does not need to buy into the director’s overall thesis that the two foreign-born Italian anarchists in 1920 were railroaded to know that the case against them 'stunk' to high heaven. And that is the rub. Even a cursory look at the evidence presented (taking the state of jurisprudence at that time into consideration) and the facts surrounding the case would force the most mildly liberal political type to know the “frame” was on.

Everyone agrees, or should agree, that in such political criminal cases as Sacco and Vanzetti every legal avenue including appeals, petitions and seeking grants of clemency should be used in order to secure the goal, the freedom of those imprisoned. This film does an adequate job of detailing the various appeals and other legal wrangling that only intensified as the execution neared. Nevertheless it does not adequately address a question that is implicit in its description of the fight to save the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti. How does one organize and who does one appeal to in a radical working class political defense case?

The film spends some time on the liberal local Boston defense organizations and the 'grandees' and other celebrities who became involved in the case, and who were committed almost exclusively to a legal defense strategy. It does not, however, pay much attention to the other more radical elements of the campaign that fought for the pair’s freedom. It gives short shrift to the work of the Communists and their International Red Aid (the American affiliate was named the International Labor Defense and headed by Communist leader James P. Cannon, a man well-known in anarchist circles and a friend of Carlos Tresca, a central figure in the defense case) that organized meetings, conferences and yes, political labor strikes on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti, especially in Europe. The tension between those two conceptions of political defense work still confronts us to day as we fight the seemingly never-ending legal battles thrown up since 9/11 for today’s Sacco and Vanzetti’s- immigrants, foreigners and radicals (some things do not change with time). If you want plenty of information on the Sacco and Vanzetti case and an interesting thesis about it’s place in radical history, the legal history of Massachusetts and the social history of the United States this is not a bad place to stop. Hopefully it will draw the viewer to read one or more of the many books on the case. Honor the Memory of Sacco and Vanzetti.

*Listen Up- Hear Mumia Abu Jamal- 'The Voice Of Voiceless' Is In The House

Click on title to listen to (or read)the essays of the 'voice of the voiceless',Mumia Abu Jamal, journalist and commentator. Free Mumia Now!