Apr 99

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

To Repair our Society

Byron Rushing has served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives since 1983, representing Boston's South End, Fenway, and Lower Roxbury. The following are notes for remarks delivered to the NAACP New England Area Conference, March 20, 1999.

In the statement on the "Opposition to the Death Penalty," by the religious leaders affiliated with the Massachusetts Council of Churches, we find these five sentences:

"Capital punishment is subject to error by fallible judges and juries. It is not a demonstrated deterrent to violent crimes. In fact, the society that sanctions official vengeance may be setting an example of the brutal devaluation of life that it wants to deter. One of our most serious concerns about the death penalty is the well-documented fact that the color of one's skin, the size of one's bank account to purchase legal services, and the skills of legal counsel, often have much to do with who actually is executed. This discrimination against ethnic minorities and the poor is a chief reason for eliminating capital punishment."

The death penalty is a punishment which has never been equal in the history of this country even with all the protections people have attempted to add to the capital punishment institution. They have never been able to take out the inequality; and the inequality is an inequality that exacerbates the prejudices that exist at any moment in our society.

Now, of course there are a lot of processes that are like that, that come with built-in inequality. There are a lot of institutions that as much as we can provide for objectivity in their administration, nevertheless prejudices come into play in their effectuation-we know that nothing is perfect and we proceed with these imperfections. But the uniqueness of this punishment is that if we make a mistake, there is an ultimate inequality we can never undo. We can never say a few years later, "Oh! We're sorry, you should not have been chosen for this punishment. We made a mistake."

The inequality of it. We are familiar with inequality, but here that inequality is ultimate. Here the results of that inequality can never be undone. We take away a life; and if we make a mistake, that is it, there is no way that can be undone.

What are the arguments against this bill, the arguments against reinstituting the death penalty in Massachusetts? [The Massachusetts legislature is scheduled to vote on reinstating the death penalty in the Commonwealth as early as March 29.]One argument against this bill is named Christian Amata; one argument against this bill is named Ella May Ellison; one argument against this bill is named Frank Grace; one argument against this bill is named Christina Hill; one argument against this bill is Lawyer Johnson; one argument against this bill is Bobby Joe Leaster; one argument against this bill is named Louis Santos. These "arguments" are all people who were convicted of murder (convicted, not only charged), convicted of murder in our courts in this Commonwealth of Massachusetts and all of them were subsequently found to have not committed the crime of which they were accused, and of which they were found guilty. These people were able to leave their places of incarceration. They were able to leave their places of incarceration because we had no death penalty that might have been used against them.

This bill is wrong because it does not deter crime. This bill is wrong because we have no evidence that a person who commits murder is thinking five minutes, an hour, a week before they commit that murder, "Does this state have the death penalty? If I commit this murder and get caught, will I risk dying?"

The history of the death penalty in this country and its impact on race is well known inside the black community and is being more frequently and publicly documented. Between 1882 and 1964 a total of 4743 persons were legally executed in the US; of these, 3445 or 72.7% were African Americans. According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, since 1930 nearly 90% of those executed for the crime of rape in the US were African-Americans. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty, Whites have had death sentences commuted at a rate of 20.2% compared to African-Americans at 11.6%. (E.M. Johnson, "Executions and Commutations in North Carolina," 36 Social Forces 165, 167, 1957)

Even though African-Americans constitute only 12% of the US population, since 1976 39.8% of all executions in the US have involved African-Americans. Additionally, statistical studies that compare the race of the perpetrator and victim demonstrate that the death penalty is reserved almost exclusively for murders of white people.

Would Massachusetts be any better equipped to mete out this irreversible penalty impartially? In 1994 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's "Report on Racial and Ethnic Bias in the Courts" confirmed a fact which was evident to many African-Americans in this state: "the existence of considerable racial and ethnic bias both direct and subtle in the Massachusetts court system." If you look at the number of people executed in Massachusetts until the 1940s when execution ended, almost half of those people were immigrants, over half were Roman Catholics.

Throughout American history, the death penalty has fallen disproportionately on racial minorities. Currently, about 50% of those on the nation's death rows are from minority populations which comprise only 20% of the country's population.

Will everybody who commits the horrendous crime of murder be sentenced to death? No.

Name me the persons from the top five percent income in America who have been executed, name me the rich and the famous-rich and famous before they were accused of the crime-who have been executed.

This is a punishment for the poor; this is a punishment for the working class, this is a punishment that reflects our prejudices at any particular time because of its innate inequality.

It is not necessary for this state. We do not need a death penalty. It will not deter, it will make our prejudices and inconsistencies dead final. Not only is it probable that innocent people will die, it is certain that our prejudices will be exacerbated and the time of our societal repair delayed.