Death Penalty is

A Texas man who faces execution after jurors at his trial consulted the Bible when deliberating his fate should have his death sentence commuted, Amnesty International said on Friday [October 9, 2009].

Khristian Oliver, 32, is set to be killed on 5 November after jurors used Biblical passages supporting the death penalty to help them decide whether he should live or die.

Amnesty International is calling on the Texas authorities to commute Khristian Oliver's death sentence. The organization considers that the jurors' use of the Bible during their sentencing deliberations raises serious questions about their impartiality.

A US federal appeals court acknowledged last year that the jurors' use of the Bible amounted to an "external influence" prohibited under the US Constitution, but nonetheless upheld the death sentence.

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By John Sullivan

Call it the ultimate deterrent; call it retribution, or closure, or simply an “eye for an eye,” Americans have historically supported capital punishment with strong resolve and a clear national conscience. Recently, however, this mandate has weakened as pressures for reappraisal and change kick against the goad of tradition. A national wave of death row exonerations, sparked by nonprofit watchdogs such as The Innocence Project, and former governor George Ryan’s mass commutation of all pending death sentences in Illinois, caused the nation to pause and wonder: How many innocents are housed on death row, how many have already been executed, how many more will die by mistake? Or worse yet, through malfeasance? Horror stories — of blatant racism in jury selection, shoddy, underfunded legal counsel and mentally ill inmates medicated merely to better comprehend their fate and legally qualify for execution — have eroded public confidence in this allegedly objective system that collects, organizes and weighs evidence, convicts perpetrators and puts them to death, all so very righteously.

So many cross-purposes, so much pain: Where is justice here? Click for slideshow

The American Southland has pushed back against this trend but Texas remains most adamant, maintaining its huge lead in executions over all other states, and refining its version of capital punishment to ensure a due process “speedier than the grave.” While most states outside the South have stopped executions, a form of de facto abolition, Texas continues at a pace that leaves the state many furlongs in front of its next competitor, Virginia, 439 to 103. And the bulk of these executions have occurred within the span of two recent governors, George W Bush (152) and Rick Perry (200), who both disdained the standards of international law, the European Union, other American states and many communities of faith. In the words of David Dow, professor of law at the University of Houston and a defense attorney in many capital murder cases, “the day is not far off when (for procedural, political and philosophical reasons) essentially all executions in the United States will take place in Texas.”

To counter what many consider this ultimate abuse of human rights, Amnesty International USA (AI) developed urgent action campaigns supporting appeals for clemency and reform of state laws and procedures that stack the deck against both the accused and the convicted. Much of that national effort focuses on Texas and, most especially, Harris County, which has become ground zero in the American struggle for abolition.[1] Recognizing the power of personal story to convey how messy, ambiguous and conflicted both sides of this issue can be, AI Group #23-Houston launched the Eye & Tooth Project: a series of performance pieces and workshops, some in an interactive, Forum Theatre format based on Augusto Boal’s “Theatre of the Oppressed.” The series is focused on the injustices and cruelties of capital punishment, Texas style. In 2003, the first Forum process began with an intensive weekend workshop culminating in a Monday performance at Houston’s Main Street Theater. An hour before the show, Texas inmate Robert Lookingbill was executed and so the performance began with five minutes of stark silence: a single candle flickering on-stage in an otherwise dark theater to solemnize his passing.

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By Daniela Turß (author of the article) and Insa Nieberg (translation) - both Amnesty International Magdeburg

On Thursday the 14th of May 2009 the „Journey of Hope“stopped in Magdeburg. Three speakers from the United States shared their personal experiences with the death penalty with the audience at the Otto-von-Guericke University.

Bill Pelke is a relative of a victim, Terri Steinberg the mother of a man sentenced to death whereas Ray Krone was released from death row after he was proven innocent.

The event was organized by the local group of the NGO amnesty international under the patronage of the Initiative against the Death Penalty. This lecture was the only one in the federal state of Sachsen-Anhalt and the group experienced a rush on the seats available in the lecture room.

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