by Paul Eliefrom Georgetown University
Busboys & Poets Against the Death Penalty
Washington, D.C., is not a City for Life – not yet. Neither is Takoma Park, Maryland – not yet. But on Monday night the Busboys & Poets on the D.C. - Maryland border was a café-bookshop-event-space for life, and against the death penalty, as three activists against the death penalty spoke about their efforts, joining with activists in 2,000 cities, from Berlin to Venice, Florida.
Cities for Life/Cities Against the Death Penalty is an initiative organized by the Community of Sant'Egidio and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. On November 30, 1786, Tuscany became the first modern state to abolish the death penalty; and with that in mind, the last day in November is marked in cities which, by one or another form of decree, have become Cities for Life / Cities Against the Death Penalty.
I was invited to moderate the event because I wrote the afterword to 13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty, by Mario Marazziti, who has a central role in both Sant'Egidio and the World Coalition. Truly, it was humbling to be in the company of the people there.
Brian Stolarz, a lawyer based in Alexandria, worked for eight years to exonerate Dewayne Brown, a man in Texas falsely accused and wrongly convicted in the murder of a police officer. On stage at Busboys & Poets, he showed us the decisive piece of evidence – a phone record, substantiating Brown’s alibi, that the detective investigating the case had obtained from the phone company and hidden in his garage.
Dani Clark, who works with the World Bank in Washington, corresponds with Ivan Cantu, a man on death row in Texas who she (and many others) is convinced is innocent. She brought some of their letters with her – “about half,” she said – and there were enough to fill a large Rubbermaid storage container.
Art Laffin, a member of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker community on Rock Creek Church Road, was always against the death penalty – but was moved to deepen his commitment after his younger brother was murdered by a mentally ill patron of the soup kitchen in Connecticut where he was volunteering.
Art pointed the event outward in two directions, in my hearing at least. His presence put in mind the efforts of Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker’s foundress,who died November 29, 1980 – thirty-five years ago last Sunday. And his insights about “restorative justice” connected opposition to the death penalty with the Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis, which begins formally on December 8. By maintaining a “death row,” where prisoners’ time with other prisoners and with visitors is strictly limited, the state seeks to place them beyond mercy – beyond the encounters with other people that can be restorative for all concerned. But it doesn’t work, and the activists at Busboys and Poets make that clear through their very personal encounters with people submitted to this frankly barbaric practice.
Moral Revulsion Alert: Execution Described in Grisly Detail Here
“The curtains opened,” reports Mauricio Martin, who was there.
It was not a play, or a concert, or a magic show. It was an execution: the execution of convicted murder Joseph Wood in Arizona.
“The medical staff checked the man’s veins. He said his last words – `God forgive you all’ – and the lethal drugs began to flow, at 1.52pm. James Wood appeared to fall asleep, albeit strapped down to a table, and he looked straight ahead at the wall. The first 10 minutes went according to plan.
“Then, a hard gulp. I looked over to my left: the priest praying the rosary. To my right: the family watching on. Then dead ahead: the side of Wood’s stomach appeared to move, even after the Arizona state prison’s medical staff had announced he was sedated.
“I saw a man who was supposed to be dead, coughing – or choking, possibly even gasping for air. I knew this because Wood’s stomach moved at the same time, just like it would if you were lying down and trying to breathe. Then another of those gulps – those gasps for air, movements just from the throat area and sometimes from the stomach, too.
“I started looking at the priest’s watch to keep track of time. Five, 10, 20 minutes … an hour had passed. I started to wonder: Will this get called off? Will this ever stop?
“I continued to scribble on my state-issued notepad, counting the gulps and gasps of the man on the gurney. I counted 660. This went on for over an hour and a half.
“During that time, medical staff checked Wood six times in total, looking at his eyes, feeling for a pulse on his neck, informing us over the loud speaker that he was still sedated. His eyes were still closed.
“My eyes turned to Wood’s attorney, Dale Baich, as he handed a lady a note and she left the witness chamber. I wondered what the lawyer had written, and as the door opened, it let in a bright light, for just a quick moment.
“What seemed like an eternity passed – 20, 30, 45 minutes more, looking straight ahead – and finally the gulps and gasps started to slow, from about every five seconds or so, to about one per minute. Finally, the gulps and gasps stopped. A few minutes more went by. At last, the killing had stopped, too. A medical staff member checked Wood again one last time. Another few minutes still, and the warden pronounced the killer dead, at 3.49 pm, one hour and 57 minutes after the execution had began.”
The full story – as if it could be any fuller than that – is on the Guardian’s website. The AP’s story includes this remark by the brother-in-law of one of the murder victims: “`This man conducted a horrifying murder and you guys are going, "let’s worry about the drugs,”’ said Richard Brown. `Why didn’t they give him a bullet? Why didn’t we give him Drano?’“
Why not? Because that would be cruel and unusual, and the distinction between cruel and unusual acts as crimes and cruel and unusual acts as a form of putative state justice is a distinction worth making.
Mario Marazziti can explain this better than I can. With the Community of Sant'Egidio, he has led the challenge to government acquisition of the lethal drugs used in executions. His book Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty will be published soon.
Meanwhile, there are 2347 comments on the Guardian site. Things are changing with the death penalty in the U.S. It will be history soon enough.