April 17, 2019
CAREERS Special Edition
O PINION
Page 13
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Standing Up Against the Death Penalty
It should be
abolished all
across our land
m arian w right e Delman
California
Gov.
Gavin Newsom re-
cently took the strong
step of declaring a
moratorium on the
death penalty in Cal-
ifornia, saying: “Our
death penalty system
has been, by all measures, a fail-
ure. It has discriminated against
defendants who are mentally ill,
black and brown, or can’t afford
expensive legal representation.
It has provided no public safety
benefit or value as a deterrent. It
has wasted billions of taxpayer
dollars. Most of all, the death
penalty is absolute. It’s irrevers-
ible and irreparable in the event
of human error.”
California now joins three
other states—Oregon, Colorado
and Pennsylvania—with gover-
by
nor-imposed moratoria on the
death penalty and the 20 states
and the District of Columbia
that have already abolished it.
I am grateful to Gov. Newsom
for being the latest courageous
political leader to stand up and
reject the death penal-
ty’s shameful legacy and
continuing toll. It should
be abolished all across
our land.
The Equal Justice Ini-
tiative—led by the Chil-
dren Defense Fund’s
extraordinarily gifted board
member Bryan Stevenson—
continues to be a leading voice
against the death penalty and
studies the death penalty’s his-
torical and ongoing bias.
The group notes how modern
death sentences are dispropor-
tionately meted out to African
Americans accused of crimes
against white victims. African
Americans make up less than
13 percent of the nation’s pop-
ulation but 42 percent of the
2,905 people currently on death
row are black, and 35 percent
of those executed since 1976
have been black. The victim
was white in over 75 percent of
the cases resulting in execution
since 1976 although only 50
percent of murder victims na-
tionwide are white.” They add:
“Prominent researchers have
documented a pattern of dis-
crimination in the application
of the death penalty based on
the race of the victim, race of
the defendant, or both, in near-
ly every state that uses capital
punishment.”
The Equal Justice Initiative
also notes that for every nine
people executed in our country
one innocent person on death
row has been identified and ex-
onerated. They call the death
penalty “a failed, expensive
policy defined by bias and er-
ror” and “a direct descendant of
lynching.”
They are not the only ones to
make this clear connection. One
of the Children Defense Fund’s
much valued colleagues Ndume
Olatushani is a gifted artist and
passionate advocate for justice
who spent nearly 28 years in
prison, 20 of them on death row,
before proving he’d been wrong-
ly convicted.
Here is an excerpt from a let-
ter Ndume asked me to send to
Gov. Newsom:
“I have been given the privi-
lege of being able to share a part
of my story with you, mine is
certainly one of hope. But I want
to first say that I commend your
courage for standing up and do-
ing the right thing and not letting
politics determine who lives or
dies.
It is we who should thank
people like Ndume who share
their stories. His 21st century
deliverance from condemnation
to freedom is a stark reminder
of exactly what is at stake today.
We need more leaders with the
courage to stand up against the
death penalty right now.
Marian Wright Edelman is
founder and president emerita of
the Children’s Defense Fund.
Regular Area Rugs
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