NCADP Director lays out priorities, challenges for abolitionists

NCADP April 01, 2005


Note:NCADP Executive Director Diann Rust-Tierney recently delivered the keynote address before a meeting of Alaskans Against the Death Penalty and members of the Alaska Trial Lawyers Association. Diann was asked to discuss how she came to be a lawyer involved in social justice work, the current debate over the death penalty and challenges we face in the immediate future.

Good Evening. I have always wanted to come to Alaska. I actually grew up on a street named Alaska Avenue - so somehow I've always known that there would be this cosmic connection between Alaska and me. A dear colleague of mine Rachel King led the fight against the death penalty here. And two of my current board members Bill Pelke and Rich Curtner live here.

In any event, I want to thank everyone here for the warm hospitality that you have shown me.

When I asked Richard what he wanted me to speak about this evening and he said that he wanted me to talk about myself and my personal journey. I think that he was somewhat taken aback when I said abruptly, "well that would be boring."

But when you compare my life to someone like Bill Pelke?' or Sister Helen's or some of the other heroes of our movement - it really is pretty average. But maybe there is something to learn by looking at what brought me here to Alaska.

I am a public interest lawyer, an advocate against the death penalty not quite by accident, but you might say more by luck.

As a kid growing up, I went through the usual ever-changing series of career interests, fashion designer, interior decorator (as a kid growing up, my idea of a good time was to do one of the featured crafts in the latest issue of Family Circle Magazines - my parent patiently endured my non-stop efforts to cover every stick of furniture in my bedroom with bright colored fabric and Homers glue.

I had a brief interest in pursuing medicine, but on a student tour of the Howard Medical school, I learned to my chagrin that part of the coursework would require me to dissect cadavers and frankly that creeped me out - so much for my medical career.

As it came time to consider high school I was one of a number of African American junior high school students who was encouraged by a group called the Black Student Fund to consider private secondary education - long-story short I found myself for my high schools years attending the National Cathedral School for Girls, an exclusive enclave for the children of the nation?s power elite. You might not know this to look at me but Jenna and Barbara Bush and I have something in common - We are all polished corners - as in our school song - "Lord thy daughter pray thee fit us one and all for the polished corners of thy temple wall. Strong because united..." At the high school I settled into what would become one of my lasting interests and for a time what I thought would be my career. Acting - it turned out that NCS and Saint Albans had a phenomenal theatre program - and there I nurtured my love and interest in the craft.

The best summer of my life I spent doing summer stock with our own theatre company call Shakespeare & Company.

At school, every Friday we went to chapel - I actually liked it - I loved the beauty of the Cathedral. I enjoyed the high Episcopal Service. But it was Bishop Walker who in the day had a great influence on me. Bishop Walker was the Bishop of the Washington Dieses of the Episcopal Church. He was an African American man leading a largely white, traditionally conservative flock. Bishop Walker preached about the weak among the powerful. He brought new force to meaning of nobles oblige.

I learned another lesson those years as well - the lesson of quiet faith, sacrifice and simply doing what's right. Doing what needs to be done when you have your priorities straight.

A little story: When I was encouraged to apply to attend a private secondary school, the idea was that scholarship money would be available. My parents were middle class - but a private school education was definitely not in the budget.

I was originally wait-listed at NCS and was not accepted into NCS until the summer. By that time the scholarship money had already been given out. If I was to attend that school, my parents would have to do it themselves - and they did that first year. Even when financial aid became available my parents continued to stretch to pay their portion of my expenses.

I'll never forget my mother repeating to me something that the headmaster said her. Looking back, it was sort of arrogant and somewhat patronizing but my mother took it as a source of pride. The headmaster just shook his head and said he just could not figure out how it was that my parents could afford to send me to that school - he knew from the financial aid forms that my parents probably made a third of what the other parents made in that school.

When my mother told me that story it was the first time that I understood my parent's faith and sacrifice. It was about priorities - they organized their finances to accommodate the priorities. We didn?t take the expensive trips - but at least as kids we always had vacations.

We did not have the fanciest most lavish house on the block - but my parents had me to decorate. And I always thought my Dad enjoyed the challenge of keeping a car in running condition for as much as 20 years.

But it was Bishop Walker's words that I believe ultimately brought me here to you today. You see during that summer doing Shakespeare, I took the bus to rehearsal every morning - I actually took two buses. I caught the S2 bus half a block from my house - middle class upper northwest Washington D.C. I would transfer to take the 96 at 16th and U. This area at the time is what my kids would say was a little sketchy. The poverty and hopeless was evident on the faces of the people waiting for the bus - getting off of the bus and on the street.

I would board the bus at 16th and U and travel finally to the site of the Cathedral passing through neighborhoods with houses larger than I could ever imagine. You literally traveled in three worlds. The interesting thing is depending on where you boarded the bus and got off you might never know the other worlds existed. Only the housekeepers and I who made the whole journey were fully aware of the landscape that we had crossed.

It was on one of these trips that I began to think about this journey and think about my life's work, I knew how hard we all worked to put on the best production. In addition to the acting I also loved the sewing and making the costumes. We would often stay late to make sure we?d get it right. We would sacrifice our normal free time as teenagers because the show had to go on.

Maybe it was Bishop Walker speaking to me when I thought - that maybe if we worked this hard - all together - on issues of poverty and unfairness and injustice - we might be able to get something done. And so that summer I made up my mind - that I would become a lawyer and work for social justice. And so I focused on that objective - not really knowing that the death penalty would make up the bulk of my life?s work - but always deeply offended by the prospect that the state would take a life. While the State has the power and indeed the obligation to punish, the limit must be drawn at exacting death. After all, the state can not take what it has not given - and indeed every human being, even those of us who have done the worst things, are made in the image and likeness of the creator and are capable of change and affirming their good.

So it is these childhood lessons of faith in the goodness of people, faith in the ultimate triumph of good over evil, belief in the importance of setting priorities that I bring to this issue.

I have shared this personal story not because it is particularly noteworthy, as I have said, but more because it is not. I suspect that when you think back on your own childhoods and life experiences you will have learned these lessons too from different parents, teachers, and Bishop Walkers.

And these lessons are what bring you here tonight. We have been called to this struggle by different names and different voices, but we are called here just the same. And applying these lessons collectively to the struggle we are meeting with success.

We are advancing on every front. Opposition to the death penalty and abolition is no longer an idea on the margins. It is moving squarely to the middle of American politics. Just last week the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced its campaign to end the death penalty in the United States - stepping up the efforts of the religious community against the practice.

We have advanced in the courts. We have advanced in the state legislatures. We have advanced in the public opinion arena. We hold the upper hand in the cultural expression of society's feelings toward the death penalty.

Let's look at the Courts - while we still face considerable barriers to having serious constitutional claims heard on the merits, particularly in federal court, we see the Supreme Court continuing to limit the categories of people who can face the death penalty. Juvenile offenders may no longer be sentenced to death; people with mental retardation may no longer be sentenced to death. And based on the Court's reasoning the groundwork has been laid, I think, to argue for narrower and narrower application of the punishment.

In the short term, recent rulings may save an estimated 200 to 400 people currently under death sentence. Meanwhile, courts are looking more closely at such questions as ineffective assistance of counsel, bias in jury selection, and consideration of mitigating factors during sentencing.

In the state legislative arena, bills to abolish the death penalty advanced out of House committees in four states in the past few years - Illinois, Connecticut, Montana and New Mexico. In New Mexico, an abolition bill was approved by the House of Representatives and died in a Senate committee by a single vote. It is perhaps a sign of our progress that we reacted to this vote as a defeat - just two years ago, our movement would have proclaimed it a victory that we got out of the House at all.

In Kansas and New York, there is no death penalty, thanks to hard work on the ground by our movement's smartest organizers. The media has not caught on to this, but the result is that there are now 36 states with the death penalty, not 38.

And I've really only touched the tip of the iceberg. Hundreds of reform measures have been debated by dozens of state legislatures. In the next month or so, Texas may well pass a life without parole law, which would certainly result in a decrease in the number of death sentences. Illinois has passed a sweeping set of reforms, requiring better legal counsel at trial, forbidding convictions based on the testimony of jailhouse informants, providing better access to DNA testing. North Carolina may well pass and send to the governor a bill establishing a moratorium on executions. California has created a study commission that will recommend reforms. New Jersey is expected to enact both a study commission and a moratorium, and could be just a year or two away from outright abolition.

What is just as important is what has not happened. No state since Kansas in 1994 and New York in 1995 has reinstated the death penalty. And understand, this is not for a lack of effort! Reinstatement bills have failed in Alaska - thank you, Alaska! - and in Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, West Virginia and Wisconsin. So our opponents have tried to reinstate the death penalty in almost every state that doesn?t have it. And they've failed, not just once or twice or three times, but every single time they've tried in the past nine years. Meanwhile, our side continues to advance. Why? Because we now occupy the middle ground.

Let's look at public opinion. Years ago, we often felt defeated because public support of the death penalty was so high, 75 to 80 percent. But even then as NCADP's Communication Director points out, maybe we asking the wrong questions and looking at the wrong numbers. Even then, there was a distinction between support for the death penalty and what the public favors - even when death penalty support was at an all time high, polling demonstrated that when given the choice significant numbers often a majority chose the alternative - usually life without parole.

Now support for the death penalty is down and we see even stronger numbers that Americans favor alternatives.

When asked whether Americans favor life without parole or the death penalty, we choose life without parole almost every time. Polls conducted in recent years in California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Virginia and West Virginia all concluded that people prefer various alternative sentences to the death penalty. Even in Texas, the execution capital of the U.S., it is a close call. A recent poll shows 44 percent of Texans favoring a moratorium on executions.

Other state polls are more lopsided. In New York, a poll conducted last month found that 56 percent of respondents said they favor life without parole while 29 percent of respondents say they favor the death penalty. A poll in Maryland, also conducted last month, reported similar findings.

This is not to underestimate the magnitude of our struggle. The psychology of the death penalty is deeply entrenched in our society - but it does suggest that if we continue to concentrate on meeting the public's concerns about accountability and fairness we can change public policy on pragmatic grounds even as we continue to wage the moral battle against the death penalty.

These numbers suggest that we in the abolition movement face an important challenge: To inform the public that yes, alternatives to the death penalty do exist, alternatives that protect the public and enhance public safety.

I'd like to briefly address the cultural aspect of this issue. Back in the mid-1990s, Sister Helen Prejean was featured in Dead Man Walking. The movie received four Oscar nominations and Susan Sarandon, who played Sister Helen, won the coveted award for best actress.

Since then there have been other movies, good and bad, and there have been hundreds of books published about the death penalty - so many these days it is difficult for our communications team to keep track! There have been rap songs, spoken word poetry, traveling art and photo exhibits.

But at NCADP, we are seeing the effect of this renewed cultural emphasis in new and different ways. Calls from potential interns are skyrocketing. Traffic to our web site will surpass 100,000 visitors this year alone - and could well double that. Our email activist list, which was at 2,000 a year ago and 6,000 in September, doubled in six months to 12,000. And at its current rate, it will pass 25,000 this calendar year.

Clearly, a breakout is about to happen.

So: I leave you with this question and - hopefully - the beginning of an answer. My question is this: How do we take full advantage of the momentum we have, of this advantageous political environment? How do we capitalize? How do we seize the moment and do across the nation what you so proudly have done in Alaska?

How?

I don't pretend to have all the answers. But I have some ideas which might help us get to those answers. Let's go back to basics - lessons that you and I both learned as children - some later as adults

Belief in the inherent dignity and worth of the individual - even those who disagree with us.

Now I'm sure that most of you will say, "Of course: isn't that why we are all here?" We know that a murderer is never as bad as the worse thing he or she has ever done.

But I'm not talking about people on death row. I'm talking about Republicans (if you are a Demoncrat) and Democrats ( if you are a Republican). I'm talking about former prosecutors and sitting prosecutors. I'm talking about murder victims family members who may not agree with us on the ultimate question of the death penalty. For people who are pro-life I'm talking about pro-choice anti-death penalty people and for people who are pro-choice, I'm talking about pro-life anti-death penalty people.

I'm not trying to be funny - well I am a little - but I'm trying to make a point: To change public policy we've got to build a broad public consensus - and we may have to move outside our comfort zone to build that consensus and to find common ground. We must find common ground without sacrificing our basic principles. Yes, it will be challenging. But we must do it.

We can find common ground on the issue of fairness. We can find common ground by speaking about the needs of victims of violence.

The effort to pass an abolition bill in New Mexico was a very interesting and important effort. Because the leadership for that legislation came from long-time advocates for victims. The repeal measure in New Mexico was coupled with a serious effort to use the resources that the death penalty drains from the system to provide concrete support and assistance to victims. That effort should have succeeded, but for that state's ambitious Governor who continues to read the politics on the issue in the old frame.

We have to bring in, and emphasize, new voices in our movement.

The voice of the victim or the victim's loved ones must be paramount. The other side has tried to paint us abolitionists as people who don't care about crime, don't care about the victims. You and I know this is not true; but we have to show the truth through our actions. And one action is to elevate the voices of Murder Victims Family Members for Human Rights, Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation, The Journey of Hope and other groups to the forefront of our movement and couple our advocacy with advocacy for services and support for victims. The public favors alternatives to the death penalty, alternatives that support and promote victims. We can be part of the solution.

We must find other voices and raise them up as well - police officers who oppose the death penalty, jurors who demand sentencing reform, religious leaders who offer a moral voice - everyone, one movement, together, all of us.

Priorities

We have to be clear on our objective - ending the death penalty - and seize the center of the debate. We have to understand that at the end of the day for most people it's more about accountability and feeling that people who hurt other people should be punished than mindless vengeance. If the public is persuaded that wrongdoers will be punished - and severely - they can give up on the death penalty - particularly one that is as demonstrably flawed as this one is.

So part of our job is to continue to remind people that there are alternatives - that life without parole is a horribly severe punishment - particularly as we look at juveniles beginning to serve these sentences.

But we can not fight on all fronts at once - and we can not telegraph to our opponents what might be an ultimate end game. We need to stop the killing - and then in the more humane and enlightened space we have created, begin the discussions about life without parole and whether and when it is ever appropriate. And we may have to ride around in that old car for a few years - but if we can drive that car to abolition - we won't forget that our ultimate goal is a more sane and humane criminal justice system.

And, we must be strategic. Every dollar we spend, every movement we make, should be invested where victory is possible. It may mean not only working with people we may not have worked with before, but working differently. If these recent victories in the Courts demonstrate anything it is that every component of our movement and our work must be in accord. The litigation strategy is increasingly dependent on a sophisticated communications strategy and that communications strategy is increasingly dependent on an effective organizing strategy and all of these strategies are tied increasingly to aggressive legislative strategies.

And we need to recognize that the stakes are high and that we may need to call in the experts. The good news is that there are many other social policy issues that have had to move public policy from the obscure recesses of public consciousness or the abyss of public opposition. There are people who do these things everyday.

The bad news is that we in the abolition movement have only rarely had the opportunity to take advantage of these expertise - we've had to do it all ourselves - and our success has sometime led us to believe that we can and must do it all ourselves with the skills set we have in the movement.

Been there done that. When I first started out as a lobbyist in the ACLU Washington office - as senior lobbyist, because we were all one-person legislative campaigns - I read the legislation, wrote the legal memorandum, got it to the Hill, brainstormed the communications strategy to frame the issue, wrote the press release or the op-ed (if I was lucky I might find a talented writer to write the op-ed), called the reporter, cultivated that relationship and lobbied staff and members of Congress on the Hill.

But as the issues became more complex and the volume of bills increased - and the opposition became more active and more organized - that one-woman band operation had to give way to specialized staffing and expertise.

Mark my word: we have had success and frankly the pro-death penalty forces have not been as strong and as organized as they could be. But as we get closer to victory, the other side will wake up - so the struggles will be harder fought and we will need to change our methods of operations as well.

We may need to hire the expert insider and focus on what we do best - telling the story of unfairness, building up our membership numbers and mobilizing to support our agenda and most importantly setting the moral direction for the strategy and the campaign. And we'll need to engage the advertising and marketing experts.

Finally Faith in the ultimate rightness and justness of our cause. We don't oppose the death penalty because we believe that people should literally get away with murder. We don't oppose the death penalty because we don't care for or grieve with the victims of murder - that's the other side's propaganda.

We oppose the death penalty because it is wrong. It is wrong to punish people not for what they did but because of the color of their skin or the color of the skin of the victim. It's wrong to punish people with death because they are too poor to hire a lawyer to competently defend their case.

It's wrong to have a death penalty that doesn't even punish the right people. It's wrong to have a death penalty that punishes people who are mentally ill.

It is wrong for the government to have the power to take a life and to do so with absolute arrogance and in most case without accountability.

And we must not only have faith in the rightness of our cause but in our ultimate ability to win this battle and I am going to say in our lifetimes. In closing: many successful people subscribe to a technique that is called creative visualization - that is the idea that you visualize events as you want them to be as a way of bringing those events into being. Trial lawyers sometimes use this technique, professional athletes use it and so on.

I want you to join me or humor me in closing your eyes for just a moment. Visualize state after state as beautiful as Alaska, visualize the state legislatures of those states passing abolition bills, visualize state courts and the Supreme Court finally striking down the death penalty for the last crime. Visualize yourself smiling with the pride of knowing the part that you played in this historic struggle.

Open your eyes now and remember the words of Dr, King Martin Luther King - "the moral arc of the universe is long but bends toward justice."

If Dr. King were with us today, he might conclude by saying yes, it does bend toward justice - but it will bend a little more quickly if we push on it a bit! So let's push, push, push until abolition is not just the law of the land in Alaska but in Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona and every state in our country!