McVeigh, a rightist convicted of the 1995 Oklahoma City federal building bombing that resulted in 168 deaths and hundreds of injuries, is to be the first person to be executed under federal jurisdiction since 1963. The government is using the character of McVeigh's attack, called a "cowardly crime against our nation" and an act of "savagery" by Attorney General John Ashcroft, to bolster the federal death penalty laws, which were reinstituted in 1988 and expanded under the Clinton administration.

Ashcroft, a champion of the use of capital punishment, announced April 12 that due to the "special circumstances" of the case, he has approved a closed-circuit televised showing of the state-sponsored killing of McVeigh. Relatives of those killed in the bombing and those Ashcroft calls "the survivors" will view the execution. The viewing will take place in a Oklahoma federal prison by at least 250 people. In Terre Haute, Indiana, where the execution will occur, the government is permitting 10 persons, chosen by lottery among the survivors and victims' relatives, to view the killing.

The Clinton administration was responsible for two major federal laws expanding capital punishment--the 1994 Federal Death Penalty Act, which added 60 federal offenses to the list of capital crimes, and the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which put further restrictions on federal court appeal rights of prisoners in state penitentiaries.

There have been 13 people given federal death sentences since 1988. One has been since overturned. McVeigh waived all appeals of his conviction and urged his execution by lethal injection be publicly broadcast.

The government decision to carry out McVeigh's execution in this way comes at the same time that many working people are raising questions and doubts about the death penalty, and when support for the death penalty is at the lowest point in 19 years, according to public opinion polls.

On March 27 Ashcroft announced that the government may seek the death penalty against Robert Hanssen, a veteran agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation accused of spying for the Russian government over a period of years.  
 
Death row disproportionately Black
There are more than 3,500 people on death row today. Since the death penalty was restored in 1976, more than 700 people have been executed. Approximately 35 percent of them were Black. Blacks make up 12 percent of the U.S. population. A 1998 University of Iowa study showed that in Philadelphia a defendant's odds of receiving the death penalty are nearly four times greater if the defendant is African American. Forty percent of those on death row are Black.

Over the past few years, appeals of sentences based on new DNA evidence and investigations by journalists and students have led to at least 82 people on death row being exonerated. In 2000 the convictions of eight death row inmates were overturned, bringing to 92 the total since the death penalty was reinstated.

Two recent examples are Michael Ray Graham Jr., 37, and Albert Ronnie Burrell, 45, who were set free last December after their conviction for the murder of an elderly couple in 1986 in Louisiana was overturned. Their conviction was based on no physical evidence, but largely on the testimony of a jailhouse snitch known to local cops as "Lyin' Wayne" Brantley, who testified as part of a plea bargain. Burrell, who is retarded, came within 17 days of being executed in 1996.

A Columbia University study published in June 2000 found that two-thirds of appealed death sentences have been overturned, in many cases on the basis of errors by incompetent defense attorneys or the withholding of evidence by police and prosecutors.

Workers locked behind bars have difficulty obtaining any legal counsel. In California, where an average of 33 new inmates are sent to death row each year, half of the 249 death row inmates awaiting their first appeal have no attorney.  
 
Execution of mentally retarded people
Growing sentiment against the execution of mentally retarded people has resulted in a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider its 1989 ruling that such executions do not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The high court is currently hearing the case of Johnny Paul Penry, who has been on death row in Texas for 21 years. Penry, 44, has the intellectual capacity of a first-grader. Thirty-five retarded persons have been put to death since 1976, amounting to 5 percent of all those who received capital punishment.

Facts such as these have engendered a growing sentiment and movement against the death penalty, pressuring Democratic and Republican politicians to try to clean up its tarnished image. While 38 states have capital punishment--in most cases by lethal injection, but in a minority by electrocution--there are now bills for a moratorium on executions in 19 states. More than two dozen municipalities, including Philadelphia, Atlanta, Baltimore, and San Francisco, have adopted moratorium resolutions. Seven municipalities in North Carolina alone have passed such measures. In Illinois, Gov. George Ryan, who supports the death penalty, declared a moratorium in January 2000. The state's Supreme Court has now issued new rules governing the way death penalty cases are handled, a step toward reinstitution of executions in the state.

The 540 people executed by the government from 1991 through 2000 is rivaled only by the 1,667 put to death in the 1930s, a decade of mounting working-class resistance.
 
 
Related article:
Abolish the death penalty!  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home