
{"id":2805,"date":"2008-06-12T07:39:36","date_gmt":"2008-06-12T15:39:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=2805"},"modified":"2008-06-12T07:39:36","modified_gmt":"2008-06-12T15:39:36","slug":"death-penalty-opponents-remain-vigilant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2008\/06\/12\/death-penalty-opponents-remain-vigilant\/","title":{"rendered":"Death penalty opponents remain vigilant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href='http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/stevedear061208.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/stevedear061208.jpg\" alt=\"Stephen Dear (left) and Amanda Lattanzio, executive director and community organizer (respectively), form the backbone of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, a nonpartisan, nonprofit, interfaith organization that seeks to inform and inspire all citizens to actively oppose the death penalty in the United States. Photo by Jordan Timpy.\" width=\"150\" height=\"92\" align=\"left\"\/><\/a><strong><em>by Taylor Sisk<\/strong><br \/>\nStaff Writer<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Stephen Dear, executive director of the Carrboro-based People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, is keeping a close eye on Raleigh.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, the North Carolina House of Representatives passed the Racial Justice Act, which, if approved by the Senate, will allow a person accused of a capital crime to request a court review of whether race played a role in the prosecutor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s decision to request the death penalty or in a defendant subsequently being sentenced to death.<br \/>\nDear and other proponents of the bill argue there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s substantial reason for concern that race is a contributing factor in who gets sentenced to death in this country.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nA study of the death penalty in North Carolina conducted at UNC in 2001 found that defendants who killed a white person were three and a half times more likely to receive the death penalty than those who killed a person of color. <\/p>\n<p>The Washington D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center reports that since the death penalty was resumed in the U.S. in 1977 after a 10-year moratorium, 238 people have been executed for committing an interracial murder. Of those cases, 223 involved a black defendant and a while victim; only 15 involved a white defendant and a black victim.<\/p>\n<p>Should the Senate pass the Racial Justice Act (it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s uncertain whether they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get to it in the current session), Dear will welcome it as an important step in what he believes to be an incremental \u00e2\u20ac\u0153eroding away\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the death penalty in America.<\/p>\n<p>Executions have currently been suspended in North Carolina (the state is one of 36 that still have the death penalty). Last year, in response to a challenge to the state\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s use of lethal injections, the N.C. Council of State approved changes to execution protocol that included a statement assuring that a doctor would be present at executions to monitor the condemned inmate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s essential body functions. But less than a year prior, the N.C. Medical Board issued a policy statement affirming that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153physician participation in capital punishment is a departure from the ethics of the medical profession,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and that while doctors could be present at executions, they could not participate in any manner. The medical board is now appealing a ruling against its position.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, five death-row inmates have filed suit on the grounds that their attorneys weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t allowed to present evidence to the council when it was considering the new protocol.<\/p>\n<p>Dear isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t confident either of those cases will be won. Should they be lost, he says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We could have an unprecedented number of executions in 2009.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>People of Faith Against the Death Penalty (PFADP) was formed in 1994 by a group of five clergy and lay people (Chapel Hill resident Tye Hunter, executive director of Indigent Defense Services, was among them. Bob Seymour, for whom Orange County\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Robert and Pearl Seymour Center is named, was very early involved.) Dear came onboard in 1997. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Our mission,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Dear, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is to educate and mobilize faith communities to act to abolish the death penalty in the United States.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>He and Amanda Lattanzio, a Jesuit volunteer serving as a community organizer, comprise the PFADP staff. About 60 percent of funding comes from foundations, 40 percent from individuals.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exist,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Dear, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153People of Faith Against the Death Penalty should not have to exist at all. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a tragedy that we exist and that our mission is to educate and mobilize faith communities to do what they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re formed to do.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The mainline Christian churches have been opposed to the death penalty since the 1950s and they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know that \u00e2\u20ac\u201c their own local pastors don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that and certainly the people in the pews don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Reminding them is Dear\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s task. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m talking about the mainline churches,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dear says. He doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t spend much time with fundamentalist churches.<br \/>\nDear\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s theory, he says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is that if we could just get the people who agree with us mobilized, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll win. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll end the death penalty. But they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not mobilized because they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know that they have all these resources.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153When we started, I think we were seen \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and to some people still are seen \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as the people who protest on the nights of executions.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not what Dear is asking people to do though: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In fact, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want people to come to vigils if they haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t done other things. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come protest when somebody is being executed. Call your senator; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d rather you do that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Relatively speaking, the anti-death penalty movement in North Carolina is pretty strong. Dear calls organizational efforts here relative to South Carolina, for example, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153polar opposites \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re where North Carolina was in the early sixties.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thanks to people like the late Rev. W.W. Finlator of Raleigh, a longtime member of PFADP\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s board of advisors and a founder, in 1965, of North Carolinians Against the Death Penalty, which in 2003 changed its name to the North Carolina Coalition for a Moratorium. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Faith based<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So what role does the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153faith\u00e2\u20ac\u009d play in PFADP\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work? <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The way one of our local organizers put it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dear says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re comfortable with us, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re comfortable with you \u00e2\u20ac\u201c whatever the word [faith] means to you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Dear grew up attending Catholic school and going to mass on Sunday at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church in Potomac, Maryland, where, he says, he would look up at an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153enormous crucifix of this sickly thin Jesus,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d contemplating the man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fate. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never understood how Christians could support the death penalty when our savior was born homeless and killed as a death row prisoner. I just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand that. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still scratching my head after 11 years with People of Faith.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>Genesis 9:6 reads: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Whoso sheddeth man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you ask me,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Dear, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a warning: If you live by the sword, you die by the sword. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not saying it is proper for government to kill on God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s behalf. But people seem to want to believe that. And they ignore the numerous examples of where the Old Testament calls for the death penalty for all sorts of sins.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d  Adultery, for example; gluttony. The stoning of children for bad behavior. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This work can change your view of what churches are all about,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dear says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and it makes me think that there are many \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 places that Martin Luther King rightly called \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcirrelevant social clubs.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Dear and Lattanzio tell of having recently experienced a very trying day \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and then Rick Edens, co-pastor of the United Church of Chapel Hill walked in. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He was all excited,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dear says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He has this great idea; and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just engaged.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ten bad experiences are then wiped away, Dear says, and faith is reconfirmed. <\/p>\n<p>Lattanzio says she was concerned coming in that this work might render her irreversibly cynical: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something Steve and I talk about quite a bit when we have hard days. But it hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6. I feel I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned so much this year about the world around me.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Dear talks of just having had lunch with the head of North Carolina Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve met so many incredibly wonderful people who have been through unimaginable horror,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and who are healing themselves and their communities by their work against the death penalty.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Step by step<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Progress, says Dear, has come in increments:<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Eleven years ago, when I started here, I never really thought we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be in the great position of having abolished the death penalty for people with mental retardation and then had five or six enormously important reforms that have really changed the death penalty.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>As examples, he cites district attorneys being given the discretion of whether or not to pursue the death penalty in first-degree murder cases and the founding of the Office of Indigent Defense Services.<\/p>\n<p>Another important development was the creation of the North Carolina Actual Innocence Commission, which provides a forum for prosecutors, DAs, judges, law-enforcement agents and victims\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 advocates to discuss how to decrease the possibility of wrongful convictions. The commission is viewed as a model for other states.<\/p>\n<p>November could be a very critical month in the history of the death penalty in North Carolina. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have a new governor then. And, should the effective moratorium be lifted, we may soon have a backlog of executions. <\/p>\n<p>How will the new governor respond? <\/p>\n<p>If it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Pat McCrory, the Republican candidate, Dear says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have his pens ready to sign [the orders of execution] as fast as he can.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Dear says that in 2000, as mayor of Charlotte, McCrory was the only elected official in North Carolina who actively organized against a PFADP-sponsored moratorium on the death penalty. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He was very passionately pro-death penalty,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dear recalls.<\/p>\n<p>As for Beverly Perdue, the Democratic candidate, Dear says that on April 30, 2003, the day the North Carolina Senate passed the moratorium bill, she, as lieutenant governor, gave a speech in favor of the bill, which passed.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153She has repeatedly since said she supports a moratorium\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6. So we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re very hopeful that Governor Perdue certainly will be a breath of fresh air as compared with Governor Easley.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Dear says he believes support for the death penalty in this country \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is eroding away.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>A 2006 Gallup Poll found that support for the death penalty had declined from 80 percent in 1994 to 65 percent. When respondents were asked to consider life without parole as an alternative, 48 chose that option; 47 percent<br \/>\nchose execution.<\/p>\n<p>This decline in support is probably due in some large measure to deteriorating public confidence in its effectiveness. <\/p>\n<p>The Death Penalty Information Center reports that only one percent of police chiefs polled believe that expanding the death penalty would be an effective detterent to crime, while 31 percent said reducing drug abuse would help and 17 percent listed more jobs and a better economy.<\/p>\n<p>But this decline of confidence in the death penalty might well be primarily attributable to the growing number of exonerations. Since 1973, 129 death row inmates have been exonerated. Eight of those were in North Carolina, three in the past six months.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to wither away,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dear says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure if the death penalty will completely be abolished in America. Because I think for terrorism and some massive crimes it might still be on the books. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153But in terms of street crime, it will be largely taken off the books.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>Over time, Dear believes, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll see fewer and fewer executions, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and people will be making the argument, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWhy do we have this? We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t use it. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really expensive; these trials are incredibly expensive.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 And more politicians will then feel comfortable raising those questions.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Politicians from rural communities \u00e2\u20ac\u201c those in particular are the voices Dear would like to hear raised in opposition. He and Lattanzio travel the state \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to Louisburg, Shallotte and Cullowhee \u00e2\u20ac\u201c addressing gatherings large and mostly small, generally at churches with a sympathetic pastor.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m happy with whoever shows up, Dear says. When only five people turned out in Louisburg, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWe made a few good friends tonight.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll follow up and work with those people.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>So when then will the death penalty be essentially no more? Dear is uncertain.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I came here thinking I was going to be hitting my head against the wall for a few years in a sort of prophetic call to abolish the death penalty: \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMy brothers and sisters in North Carolina, this is completely against what we are about and what we as people of faith should be about.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 And I thought that would be the message I would be working on for however long I was here. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think things would really change. But things have changed; unbelievably. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153So, things could continue to change. They will continue to change. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a matter of how long [it will take].<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I guess I tend to think 10 to 20 years. But I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really know. So much can change in that time.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\n<a href='http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/dear2resized.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/dear2resized.jpg\" alt=\"Stephen Dear and Amanda Lattanzio. Photo by Jordan Timpy.\" width=\"150\" height=\"113\" align=\"left\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Taylor Sisk Staff Writer Stephen Dear, executive director of the Carrboro-based People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, is keeping a close eye on Raleigh. Last year, the North Carolina House of Representatives passed the Racial Justice Act, which, if approved by the Senate, will allow a person accused of a capital crime to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}