cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

What a colossal disappointment.  Remember when Barack Obama was going to severely curtail the use of the “state secrets” doctrine, throw the windows open, and let the sun shine in, dispersing Bushco’s unnecessary secrecy?  Forget about it.  That was just eyewash.

Yesterday in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit the Obama Justice Department astonished the three judge panel by sticking with Bushco’s “state secrets” argument in the case of Binyam Mohamed.  

cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

For most of my life, I’ve been passionately opposed to state killing.  I remember as a child knowing that California’s gas chamber execution of Caryl Chessman was unjust.  I remember hearing with horror about the federal electric chair executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.  And I admit that since I was 10 I have never understood how civilized people could justify state killing.  From the beginning, state killing has appeared to me to be barbaric and horrific.  Yes, there are lots of other barbaric things in the world, you could make a long, annotated list of them, but for one reason or another, despite all of the other terrible things in the world, something about state killing deeply appalled me.  And eventually, the fight to end state killing spoke to me, so I took it up.  That was a long time ago.

It’s probably my feelings about barbarism that are driving me today to try to save the 49 people facing the federal death penalty.  I know we are better than this.  I know we are not killers.  I know we are more compassionate than that.  I know we are more just than that.  It’s my feelings about barbarism that have me writing an essay every day about the same thing.  That’s what has me asking you over and over again to email Attorney General Eric Holder at Whitehouse.gov or at [email protected].  That’s what has me asking you to sign a petition.  In short, I’m appalled by state killing, and I want to stop it.

What’s necessary now in my opinion is to ask Attorney General Eric Holder please to review all of the decisions made by his predecessors in office that directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in federal cases and to determine whether he agrees with those decisions.  If he does not think that the death penalty is entirely appropriate, he should withdraw authority for federal prosecutors to seek death.  It’s really quite simple.  I’m not asking him to dismiss the indictments.  I’m not asking him to drop cases.  I’m not asking him to perform acts of mercy.  I’m just asking him whether the United States can be satisfied asking for a maximum of life without parole and not death in these cases.  That’s all I’m asking for.

It’s not much to ask for.  Really it isn’t.  What, if anything, is the government giving up by not asking for death and asking instead for life without parole?  In my view the government gains in stature and it gives up nothing of value.  What it does give up are things it should have abandoned decades ago.  In my view, by not asking for death, the government gives up some of its inhumanity, it gives up a horrific difference from other civilized nations, it abandons an old harbor for its racism, it leaves behind its most unenlightened, violent, hypocritical aspect.  It emerges wiser, more powerful, more human, more compassionate, and more just.  It acknowledges that humans are imperfect and that there are weapons that should never be used.  

cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

The voice of him that cryeth in the Wilderness

Isaiah 40:3

Ut oh.  Ut oh.  Ut oh.  I’m wondering whether my little, disorganized, spontaneous, repetitive campaign to require the new Attorney General to review the 49 pending federal death penalty cases and to decide that federal prosecutors shouldn’t be seeking the death penalty in these cases, has worn out my readership, my welcome, and any remaining goodwill.  That’s how it is, sometimes, when there’s more persistence than creativity.  But I soldier on, vox clamatis in deserto.

The petition now has 75 signatures, for which I am incredibly thankful.  If you haven’t signed it yet, please do so.  It is a concrete way to ask Attorney General Holder to review all of the 49 pending federal death penalty cases and to decide that his prosecutors have no business seeking the death penalty in these cases.

And many, many people have sent Attorney General emails at Whitehouse.gov or via [email protected], the Justice Department’s email address, encouraging him to review these 49 cases and not to seek the death penalty in them.  Again, please do so, too.

Please join me in the wilderness.  

Evidently, though I’m all fired up about getting the new Attorney General to review all of the pending federal death penalty cases– there are 49 of them– and to forbid prosecutors from seeking the death penalty, not so many others are quite as ignited as I am.  I think I know why.

The petition now has 62 signatures.  Many people have emailed the Attorney General at whitehouse.gov or at [email protected] to request that he review these cases.  I appreciate everyone’s efforts on this.

Please join me in DC, where things are somewhat “different.”

cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

I woke up Sunday thinking that Attorney General Eric Holder could save the lives of the 49 people who are presently facing the federal death penalty.  He could save their lives simply by reviewing the determinations made by the Bush Administration AG’s directing that federal prosecutors should seek death in these cases, and he could decide that death wasn’t an appropriate maximum penalty in these cases.  He could decide, for example, that life without parole was enough.  More than enough.  And this simple decision could save someone’s life.  This simple decision could also put the United States in the main stream of civilized countries in the world that do not impose the death penalty.  Ever.  And it could prevent us in the United States from having even more unjustifiable blood on our hands.  And it would move us slowly, gradually toward ultimate abolition of the death penalty in the United States. What a great idea!

cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

There are 49 people presently facing the federal death penalty.  If we want to, we might be able to spare them.  We might be able to get the new Attorney General, Eric Holder, to review the decisions by the three Bush Administration Attorney Generals to pursue the death penalty in these cases, and if the new Attorney General thought, if there were convictions, that the defendants shouldn’t be killed, he could require prosecutors not to seek the death penalty, to be satisfied with a maximum sentence of life without parole.  This would be a remarkable development.  It would save lives.  The United States would join the civilized world that has stopped state killing.  The essential hypocrisy of an eye for an eye would be abandoned.  It would be a new era.  We would not have these people’s blood on our hands.

cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

Yesterday I wrote about the 49 people facing the death penalty in the federal courts because of decisions made by previous, Bushco AGs, and that these were lives we could save.  This essay continues that discussion.

The Bush Justice Department went far, far off the tracks on torture, rendition, black sites, wiretapping, the federal death penalty, and on and on and on.  It went so far afield that articles about this evening’s expected confirmation of Eric Holder as Attorney General note the gigantic changes expected at DoJ from the new, Obama Administration.  The NY Times, for example, writes:

The Justice Department, probably more than any other agency here, is bracing for a broad doctrinal shift in policies from those of the Bush administration, department lawyers and Obama administration officials say.

Please join me below.

cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

I live in NY-20, the district allegedly represented by Kirsten Gillibrand, and have lived here in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains for more than 22 years.  Maybe that has made me cynical.  It means I lived here when it was part of militaristic Gerry Solomon’s conservative fiefdom.  You remember his most memorable contribution to the nation: a law that if you plead guilty to a non-criminal possession of marijuana for personal use, you lose your federal financial aid for a year.  Great policy, Gerry!  Salute!  And then it was represented by his hand picked, militaristic successor, John Sweeney, him with the DWI arrest with a woman, not his wife, allegedly sitting on his lap. When he ran against Gillibrand it was in the wake of allegations that he (still) beat his wife.  Great politics, John.  Salute!