CLARENCE MABIN / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Thursday, January 11, 2007 6:00 pm
Capital punishment’s many flaws are obvious and well known, opponents said at a panel discussion at the Nebraska Capitol on Thursday.
The death penalty feeds disproportionately on racial minorities and the poor, leaves no room for error, does not deter crime and is often fueled by revenge, they said.
Yet, this method of retribution remains an entrenched part of the American criminal justice system.
“The facts are out there,” said Jose Soto, one of the panelists at the forum, organized by Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty and other opponents of capital punishment. “If we know all these things, the question is, why do we continue” to execute people?
For Soto and others at the forum, the answer is a complex one, but it includes race and racism.
“It’s not just about the death penalty,” said Soto, vice president for affirmative action, equity and diversity at Southeast Community College.
“It’s (about) a society that made a decision that some individuals are more valuable than others. … Execution is an extreme example.”
Frank LaMere, another panelist, agreed. He said society perpetrates capital punishment on individuals with less value as a stark warning to others of the serious consequences of crime.
“I think they use us as something a little less than human,” said LaMere, a Winnebago Indian activist. “They can tell their children, ‘This is what (could) happen to you’” if you break the law.
Fran Kaye, a panel moderator, said the country’s contentious racial history explains much of death penalty’s staying power. The United States is the only western democracy with the death penalty, she said.
“Why in the world does the U.S. have the death penalty?” she said. “There are lots of reasons; one of them is race.”
Organizers had hoped to draw Nebraska legislators to the event. Three attended, though briefly.
Kaye, a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was not disappointed by the number of lawmakers at the forum.
“We knew it would be a three-ring circus (at the Capitol) today,” she said.
Kaye said the group hopes to offer legislators regular lectures on the death penalty this session and plans to do thorough lobbying at the Capitol.
“Now that we’ve got all these new senators, it’s really a wonderful opportunity,” she said. “We want to give them (a) ‘Death Penalty 101’,” education.
In addition to race and the death penalty, other panelists discussed the human costs of the death penalty, lethal injection and religious views of capital punishment.
About 35 people attended the forum.
Thirty-eight states, including Nebraska, and the federal government have a death penalty law, according to information provided by Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty. Some 1,057 men and women have been executed in the United States since 1976, 34 percent of whom were black.
Nebraska, the only death penalty state to rely exclusively on the electric chair, has nine men on its death row. The last person executed by the state was Robert Williams in 1997.
Eric Aspengren, executive director of Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty, said he anticipated the introduction of legislation for lethal injection and, from Sen. Ernie Chambers, legislation to abolish the death penalty.
Reach Clarence Mabin at cmabin@journalstar.com or 473-7234 .