Showing posts with label Death penalty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Death penalty. Show all posts

Friday, March 1, 2024

Death penalty on trial as Racial Justice Act hearing begins

By Kelan Lyons

In 1968, days after the Ku Klux Klan marched through Black neighborhoods in Benson following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., five young Black adolescents tried to burn down the Klan’s meeting hall in the Johnston County town. The fire did not travel past the doorway. The boys, all of whom were between the ages of 16 and 20 and did not have criminal records, were each given 12 years of imprisonment and hard labor, harsher than the sentences meted out to white defendants who were found guilty of similar crimes in the county.

Tuesday, December 19, 2023

Is the death penalty dying? Sentences, executions remain low

 The number of executions in 2023 rose to 24 from 18 a year earlier. Texas (8) and Florida (6) made up 60% of the total.

The number of states imposing or performing executions in 2023 was at a 20-year low, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that complies such statistics.

Polling indicates that public skepticism of the fairness and propriety of the death penalty continues to increase. And increasingly, bipartisan coalitions in legislatures are pushing to abolish it in states that haven’t already, the year-end report said.

The U.S. Supreme Court is one institution, however, that seems to be out of step with the growing march against state-sponsored killing.

He’s on Louisiana’s death row, his attorneys say, for a crime that didn’t happen

A Netflix documentary calls into question the methods of forensic examiners in the case

“Definitely, the system in Louisiana is broken.”

That’s the frank assessment of Matilda Carbia with the Mwalimu Center for Justice, one of the organizations representing Jimmie “Chris” Duncan. He’s among more than 50 people incarcerated on death row for whom Gov. John Bel Edwards has used his clemency power to push for state parole board reviews in order to switch their execution sentences to life in prison. 

Critics of the death penalty point out 11 people facing the electric chair or lethal injection have been exonerated or had their convictions reversed in Louisiana since it reinstated capital punishment in 1976. Over that same period, 28 people have been executed. 

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Stop the execution of Kevin Johnson


Josh Mayfield, November 21, 2022

On Aug. 25, the Missouri Supreme Court set Kevin “KJ” Johnson’s execution date for Nov. 29. Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death when he was 19 years old for the shooting and killing of a police officer. There is more to the story, however, both in regards to Johnson and the racist nature of the death penalty in the United States. 

A troubled upbringing

Kevin Johnson grew up in an environment of severe poverty, abuse and neglect. His father was incarcerated when he was a little over a year old, and his mother developed a severe crack addiction, which would continue throughout his whole childhood. He and his older brother Marcus were eventually removed from their mother’s care and sent to live with extended family. They were made to sleep in a converted garage at the ages of 3 and 4 years old respectively, often having to scavenge for food, and even going so far as eating roaches that found their way into the garage. While staying with his aunt, he suffered severe neglect, frequently wearing soiled clothes and only receiving full, decent meals at school.

Johnson also spent many years in various foster homes and group facilities, in which he experienced physical and sexual abuse. He eventually aged out of the child welfare system, one of many children that fall through the cracks of the very scarce resources provided to mentally unwell and troubled youth in this country. A 2016 psychological examination of Johnson concluded that he was “born into a violent, abusive and neglectful environment, with a genetic predisposition to mental illness,” facts which indicate that the Missouri execution would violate international law which prohibits executing individuals with psychosocial disabilities and “limited moral culpability.”

As reported by the Associated Press, on July 5, 2005, police arrived at Johnson’s home in Kirkwood, Missouri, to serve a warrant for his arrest, for allegedly violating probation. As Johnson saw police arrive, he woke his 12-year-old brother “Bam Bam,” who ran over to their grandmother’s house. Bam Bam, who suffered from a congenital heart condition, collapsed upon arriving at the house and began to have a seizure. Johnson testified in court that the police kept his mother from entering the house to aid Bam Bam, as well generally acting apathetically. Although EMS did arrive, it took 18 minutes to get Bam Bam to the hospital, where he tragically passed away shortly after arriving.

This severely traumatizing event, coupled with a life of poverty and abuse, pushed Johnson over the edge. When one of the officers who was at the scene of his brother’s death came back to the neighborhood later to investigate an unrelated incident, Johnson pulled out a gun, shouted, “You killed my brother,” and shot Officer William McEntee, killing him.

Race a ‘decisive factor

Johnson received two trials. Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty note that the first trial had a mixed jury of white and Black jurors, which ended up being a hung jury with 10 jurors in favor of second-degree murder and two in favor of first-degree murder. This decision was heavily influenced by Johnson’s attorneys introducing into evidence his life of abuse and neglect and the tragic circumstances of his brother’s death.

A second trial would be required, one in which prosecutor Robert McCulloch sought to guarantee a death sentence. McCulloch himself has a long history of racist prosecutions, with the most high profile being his refusal to prosecute the cop who killed Mike Brown in the case that would set off the Black Lives Matter movement. McCulloch ensured an all-white jury would determine the outcome of Johnson’s second trial, and the attorneys failed to introduce the mitigating evidence that had played a crucial role in the first trial. Johnson was sentenced to death in 2007. 

It should surprise no one that in a country with a long history of lynching, mass incarceration of Black and Brown people and general bias in the judicial system, a case like Johnson’s could have the outcome that it did. However, there are some extra facts and statistics which shed light on the supremely racist nature of Johnson’s sentencing. A study published in September 2020 by Frank Baumgartner, a political scientist from the University of North Carolina, found that the likelihood of a death sentence in St. Louis County was 3.5 times greater if the victim was white, as opposed to if the victim was Black. According to Baumgartner, the impact of the race of the victim “persist[ed] after the introduction of controls for aggravating and mitigating factors … meaning that these disparities cannot be explained by legitimate case characteristics.”

The study covered the years 1991 to 2018, roughly tracking the time in which McCulloch was in office as prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County. To put it another way, the percentage of death-eligible cases where the victim was Black ended in death 4% of the time, while the percentage of cases where the victim was white ended in death 14% of the time. Race is most definitely a decisive factor in death sentence cases. 

Death penalty: kinder, gentler lynching

Though it may sound overly dramatic to compare the modern day death penalty to lynching, the comparison is more than just a sensationalist analogy. According to a 2015 report by Equal Justice Initiative, 42% of inmates on death row and 34% of those executed since 1976 were Black, despite Black people making up only 13% of the U.S. population. The report points out that starting in the 1920s, southern states began to move away from lynchings, as they were seen to be “bad press.” In place of vigilante violence, these states began to shift towards capital punishment in an attempt to sanitize the process of killing and thus disciplining the Black population. Proving further the link between lynching and modern day state execution, EJI points to the fact that 8 out of every 10 lynchings between 1889 and 1919 took place in the South, and 8 out of every 10 state executions since 1976 have also taken place in the South.

Despite advances in recent years due to the Black Lives Matter movement, African Americans, particularly African American men, are still portrayed as a class of criminals and thus they face massively higher rates of incarceration and state sanctioned executions. The racist U.S. judicial system, which was founded on and continues to thrive on white supremacy, will seemingly never have its fill of the blood of Black people.

Stop the legal lynching of Kevin Johnson

All people of conscience should oppose the execution of Johnson and demand that his death sentence be vacated and clemency granted. Johnson is a clear victim of the broken system of capitalism, which produces poverty and leaves those with mental illness with little recourse, letting them slip through the cracks into abusive and traumatizing situations. No humane system would leave an individual isolated, alienated and broken and then execute him for acting out of that same isolation, alienation and brokenness. The case of Johnson, as well as those of the thousands of other Black men imprisoned and executed by the racist U.S. government, is a damning indictment of capitalism. We desperately need a new system, one which provides for the unique needs of every individual and which focuses on rehabilitation, not cruel punishment.

However, in this very moment, it is imperative that we also fight for immediate clemency for Johnson. At this moment, several progressive organizations have mobilized to fight this impending execution, most notably Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. MADP began a clemency campaign for Johnson in September, which seeks to raise broad public awareness and mobilize the people of Missouri to oppose this injustice. More information about the clemency campaign can be found at www.madpmo.org, where people can sign the petition to halt Johnson’s execution.

Photo credits: Miss Nibor, Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty/Jeremy Weis

Originally published November 21, 2022 on liberationnews.org.


Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Hillary wins...and the black vote loses

By Charles Brooks


The South Carolina primary was to be a test of black vote for both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders – and the black vote lost.  Despite Hillary Clinton’s commanding win in South Carolina with record turnout from black voters, the 2016 election cycle is slowly shaping up to be yet another lost opportunity – another disappointment. Exit poll data shows blacks made up 61% of the electorate, voted for Clinton 84%-16% while 82% came from black men and 89% from black women.



There continues to be an obsession with the black vote by the Democratic Party as black voters still have yet to realize the magnitude of their vote. The exit data shows a lock step approach largely driven by whether Hillary Clinton is “electable” or if she’s the “lessor of two evils”.  An approach that sidelines the black voter unable to build any leverage.  So what goes unnoticed is the spectacle the 2016 primaries have become that’s largely driven by two critical issues for the black voter.  The very public display of Clinton’s naked pursuit of the black vote on one hand and on the other hand, a base of black voters whose allegiance to the Clinton campaign shows no signs of eroding.  

Thursday, March 20, 2014

The Blackboard survey - The death penalty


UPDATED JUNE 19th 2014
You may have noticed the death penalty in the news lately especially around what happened in Oklahoma, Florida, and in Tennessee. There was the execution in Oklahoma that went terribly wrong, the Supreme Court decision that ruled against Florida in their use of the death penalty on the intellectually disabled, and Tennessee reinstating the electric chair. Consider that 22 have been sent to their death as a result of the death penalty - two were executed in just the past week in Georgia and Missouri.

On March 19, 2014, Ray Jasper was executed by the state of Texas. He was the 11th person executed thus far in 2014 -all by lethal injection. Since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, Mr. Jasper is the 1,370th person to be executed.

The Blackboard wants to hear from you on this topic. What do you think about the death penalty? Take the Blackboard survey - do you support the use of the death penalty? Are you against the use the death penalty? What role, if any, does race play? Click here to take survey.

Thanks in advance to taking the time to take THE BLACKBOARD's survey on this topic.


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Photo credit: wootom via photopin cc