On Saturday, February 20th, I participated in a lively event at the University of Texas in Austin sponsored by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. I thought you would be interested in this review from the CEDP website. I didn’t have time to deliver the last few paragraphs of my talk in Austin, so here they are:
Most Americans don’t understand how the integrity of the criminal justice system is undermined by these abuses. Furthermore, they don’t want to learn. The recitation of statistics, while valuable for those already convinced, won’t change the folks on the other end of the ideological spectrum.
The new civil rights movement will be fueled by true stories rooted in actual cases as they unfold. We can no longer restrict our focus to judges and appeals courts; our target audience must be mainstream white America. Like it or not, these folks control public policy. If you can’t win over a sizable chunk of this group you cannot succeed.
We can raise money and motivate the faithful by pimping the culture war and repeating the usual talking points; but those who change America in the next decade will be the people who tell the best stories.
To tell stories you have to hit the streets and live with the hurt. It’s hard work. It calls for a high degree of social flexibility. It means living a heartbeat away from despair. It means making common cause with people who don’t think, believe or behave like we do. But if we’re looking for stories that can fundamentally alter the American debate, there is no other way.
Austin’s Tour Stop went great!
The Lynching Then, Lynching Now Tour came to Austin, Texas on February 20th. The event featured Alan Bean from Friends of Justice, a civil rights organization active in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. University of Texas Associate Professor Edmund Gordon participated as well. Dr. Gordon has been active in getting a new Department for African and African Diaspora Studies at UT. We also had Sandra Reed, mother of Texas death row prisoner Rodney Reed. And the event was rounded out by a live call in from Stanley Howard, a member of the Death Row 10 in Illinois, who is still in prison, despite his death sentence having been commuted.
Our event began with a workshop in the late afternoon, featuring Alan Bean and Lily Hughes of the CEDP. Over 40 people attended this workshop, which laid out in depth the history of racism, lynching and the death penalty in the US, and talked about the role racism still plays in the (in)justice system today. This session had a good amount of time for question and answer from the audience.
The evening panel featured all the speakers mentioned above. The speakers were very moving, especially Stanley Howard, who mesmerized the crowd during his live phone call. Dr. Bean also has many incredible stories of injustice to share. For anyone looking for a tour speaker, consider Alan Bean, because the work he is doing speaks directly to this issue and his way of sharing these stories and giving a call to action is powerful and persuasive.
After the event, many people commented that it was really different to hear race discussed so in depth and tied so concretely to the justice system – as one attendee said “you never hear frank discussions of racism these days”. Both Dr. Bean and Dr. Gordon commented on how President Obama has had to avoid overt discussion of racial problems, especially with the use of the death penalty and in the justice system. So folks really appreciated being able to talk at length about this issue.
Especially now, with the death penalty in Texas under constant fire, it is important for abolitionists to take on all aspects of what is wrong with our system and expose politicians, like our current governor Rick Perry, for their role in the continued shameful practice of death penalty, and in hiding the truth about who the justice system is targeting and why.
A great success in the “belly of the beast”, and we thank Alan Bean and all the speakers for participating in this important event.
Friends of Justice 
With a great deal of inner pain, I voted today in the Republican primary in Swisher County, Texas. The chief reason I voted in the Republican primary was to cast my ballot for Paul Holloway over incumbent Judge Ed Self in the 242nd judicial district in Texas. Paul Holloway is an honest and ethical lawyer who represented some of the defendants in the Tulia Drug Fiasco. Judge Self was the presiding judge for most of those trials. He knew, early on, that Tom Coleman was not a credible witness, and Tom Coleman’s testimony was the only real evidence for the prosecution. Ed Self could have stopped those trials and preserved the defendants’ rights to due process, saved Tulia and Swisher County from nationwide disgrace, and saved Texas and Swisher County untold thousands of dollars, an especially critical element in our county with its shrinking sales tax revenues.
While voting for Paul Holloway, I also held my nose and voted for one of Governor Perry’s opponents in the primary, voted against all the Texas Republican Party’s culture war ballot proposals, and voted for a reasonable voice on the Texas Board of Education.
But in doing all this, I had to say that I am a Republican. May God forgive me for this duplicity.
My party switch was in vain. My friend Paul Holloway was defeated by Judge Ed Self about 58 to 42%. I thought Medina might force a runoff between Perry and Hutchinson, but the anti-Washington tide in the Texas GOP gave Perry more than enough to avoid a runoff. My vote for the more reasonable incumbent Craig over his way out opponent did prevail. As expected, all the initiatives on the Texas GOP ballot passed by wide margins. The GOP in Texas is way out.
The following AP article appeared in the Dallas Morning News. Here are two men, convicted of capital murder, eligible for death sentence, but sentenced to life instead, exonerated. A post- execution exoneration would be a bit hollow. A strong argument for against the death penalty. Non Texans please note, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is notoriously stingy in overturning convictions.
A Texas appeals court has agreed to set aside the convictions of two Dallas men wrongly imprisoned for capital murder.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a ruling Wednesday agreeing that 39-year-old Christopher Scott and 54-year-old Claude Simmons Jr. were innocent. The men were serving life sentences for the 1997 slaying of Alfonso Aguilar until their release last year.
Prosecutors say another man confessed to the crime in a sworn videotaped statement from prison and implicated an alleged accomplice, who was arrested in October and charged with capital murder.
Too bad Ed Self won. Too bad Paul Holloway didn’t win. But the people deserve the kind of justice they vote for. They should all hold onto their hats. The ride for the folks under the jurisdiction of Self continues to be bumpy one.