Activists Taking on America's Death Penalty | Abraham Bonowitz & Alli Sullivan

In this episode, Neil sits down with Ali and Abe from Death Penalty Action — two frontline advocates working to end executions in the U.S. We talk about wrongful convictions, billion-dollar death rows, execution methods you won’t believe, and why the system may be more broken than you think.

Death Penalty Action

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Approche Production.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to Secrets of the Underworld. I am Neil the
Muscle Cummings and in this episode I speak to Ali
and Ipe, advocates at Death Penalty Action, a group fighting
executions across America.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Everything I believed about the Death Party of the Truth
was the opposite. The question I asked is, well, why
are you asking me to spend my tax dollars getting
your vengeance. Donald Trump became the most executing president since
Roosevelt with thirteen executions in six months. They changed their
primary method of execution just this year to firing squad,

(00:45):
but then they got to build a whole new facility
just for firing squad executions, so they got to spend
a million dollars in about a year, which is crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
I just want to thank you all for coming on
my podcast because this was when I came across your
page on Instagram. It was kind of intriguing, and I've
always been intrigued with all this kind of stuff with
movies that I've seen and also on the news, and
as I've just said before to Elie, like I looked
up on Google and I couldn't believe what I came

(01:18):
up against with this so I don't know too much
about your organization, so that's what I want to know about,
and also get into depth about other things too, So
if you want to tell me before we get going
and everything else, a bit about your your organization, the
Death Penalty Action, and then we'll take it from there.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
So manage it. Bonnoletts and I live in Ohio and
in twenty seventeen, we looked around and realized that Donald
Trump was about to be inaugurated to his first term
as president, and we realized that that meant that there
were going to be federal executions. Again, we had not
had any federal executions since they were like two thousands

(01:56):
when George W. Bush was president. So, you know, we
looked around the movement and didn't see any organization that
would be ready and able to stand up and provide
opposition to that the way we feel it should be done,
which is visible and vocal and provide methods mechanisms for

(02:17):
activism for anybody who wants to get involved. So that's
why we created Death Penalty Action, myself and several other friends,
and then it's just grown from there. It very quickly
became evident that there was help the kind of help
that we can offer organizing and creating events and making
sure that there's protests around every execution that was needed

(02:40):
at the state level too. In fact, as we were
still figuring out how we're going to launch this, the
state of Arkansas realized that it's execution drugs we're going
to expire, and therefore set eight execution dates to take
place over a two week period, over eleven days really
to per night on four different nights in order to

(03:02):
use up the execution drugs before they expected. And that
was in Arkansas. So I called up the director of
the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish a Death Play and I said, hey,
can we help? Would you like us to come? And
she said please. So that became our coming out and
we actually launched our organization around within that campaign, and
we took on and we're tasked with making sure that

(03:26):
there were protests outside the prison and outside the governor's
mansion and helping them with all kinds of visibility tools buttons,
t shirts, signs. We helped put together a rally and
helped gather over two hundred and fifty thousand signatures in
a very short period of time that we then walked
into the Governor's office, and that was our coming out. Meanwhile,
we kept watching for what was happening with the federal executions.

(03:49):
It took them several years. It took them until twenty nineteen,
and suddenly Attorney General Barge just sort of announced the
execution dates for actually the week of December tenth, Human
Rights Day. So we started to build around that, and
that got postponed due to legal challenges, but by July
the next year they were ready to go, and they
had said they ended up doing thirteen executions in the

(04:11):
last six months of the first Trump administration, and Donald
Trump became the most executing president since Roosevelt with thirteen
executions in six months. Roosevelt had sixteen executions over thirteen years,
and some of those were spies during World War Two.
So in any case, we just kept growing and going

(04:31):
and going, and then around those executions that were on
December tenth and eleventh, in twenty twenty, suddenly somebody we're
still not sure who, tweeted out one of our petitions
and literally over the weekend we had grown up to
about twenty seven thousand people on our email list, and

(04:53):
between December tenth and December fifteenth that expanded over two
hundred and fifty thousand, and by the time the Federal
execution SPERID was over, more than a million people had
signed our petition, many of whom had joined and our
email list and made donations, and that changed our whole world,
and that is what created a space where we can
actually hire full time people, pay ourselves. My co founder,

(05:16):
his name is Scott Langley. He and I were able
to for the first time to pay all of our
bills and pay ourselves and continue to do the work
but on a much more professional level, and we hired
more people to help us, and that has created for
us the opportunity to be present to every execution, and

(05:37):
also it put us on the map in terms of
the organizations that function in this world. And now you know,
several organizations have had to stop doing this work and
even close their doors altogether. We're the only secular, single
issue anti death part of the organization in the country
that works on a national basis. Most of the others

(05:58):
are going to be like state organizations in Florida or
Texas or Alabama have their own state group. We work
all of them, but we're the only ones doing this
work from a seculary point of view, although we are
often people of faith coming together around this and sometimes
our events sound like a worship service or something like that,

(06:18):
although we always take care to make sure it's into faith.
But at the end of the day, our focus is
no matter how you come to your opposition or the
death penalty, there's a space for you within what we're doing,
and we're providing stuff that applies to all of us.
So somewhere along the way, my friend and colleague here
and myself and started volunteering. We started seeing her posting

(06:40):
a lot around some of the stuff on our Facebook
page and other social media, and she and I got
on the phone and talked a little bit. I said,
I see what you're doing. Are you're looking for a
way to engage with us, And she said yes, and
she became a volunteer, and then when we had some money,
we started paying her. And I mean I literally said,
I mean now I was doing assisted living stuff for

(07:02):
people that are medically need since in their homes. And
I'd say, well, what were to take for you to
be able to do what you're doing with us full time?
Or as does that being your job? So we'd have
to wait for you to get done with your job
and then in school and then be able to do this.
And she told me and we made it happen. And

(07:22):
Ali has been our communications coordinator ever since.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Wow, it's good, congratulations. Can I just ask have you
both been against it all your life? Or you've been
for it? Because it's like I'm sitting on the wall,
you know what I mean, because I see this side
of it and then I see that side of it.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
So I guess when I was very young.

Speaker 4 (07:44):
I grew up in a very homogeneous, white, very privileged
suburb north of Phoenix called Anthem in Arizona, and social
issues like this were never really talked about. I didn't
really hear about the death penalty or any other social
issue until I left Arizona, moved to Texas, and then
moved to Oregon. But I remember when I was in

(08:05):
third grade, we were learning how to write persuasive essays,
and I wrote a pro death penalty, little baby third
grade essay. I really don't recall the arguments that I
used in it. It was so long ago, but I
know at that time I was pro death penalty. But
I think it was just because I didn't know any better. Ye,

(08:26):
as soon as I left and I started being introduced
and exposed to just how problematic our entire criminal legal
system was, the just deplorable history of racial violence in
this country.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
That continues to this day. Like there was no way
I could before it anymore.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Okay, what about you remember? What were you always against the.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
Four My elast memory about this was watching the news
with my dad when I was perhaps twelve or thirteen,
and somebody had just been sentenced to death and the
TV news was reporting on it, and I remember his saying
to my dad, well, because they came back from the
courthouse to the anchor man, and he said, but of
course they won't kill him for years. And I remember

(09:09):
saying to my dad, well, that's wrong. They had to
take him out back and shoot him in the morning.
That was my gut reaction. And fast forward to once
I was out of school, I had the opportunity to
go to a meeting of a group called Amnesty International.
You probably heard of them. They worked to free prisoners
of conscience, people in prison for the belist religion, language,
skin color, that sort of thing, identity, who haven't used

(09:30):
radivocated violence, And I certainly thought that was cool. I
went to the meeting. I hadn't read the Fine Prince.
I was surprised when the speaker at that meeting on
the campus for Ohio State University was talking about the
death penalty, and I argued with her. I said, eye
for and I said, this is the United States. We
have the best justices to d the world. If that
includes the death penalty, fine with me. I'll pull the

(09:50):
switch myself. I said that, And how little I knew
how wrong I was right. I set out to try
to prove those people wrong, and in trying to prove
them wrong, I found out how wrong I was. Everything
I believed about the death party, the truth was the opposite.
I thought we had a system that always gets it right.
I thought we had a system that was fair. I

(10:11):
thought it costs less to kill them than to keep
them alive in prison. And I was mistaken about all
of those things. And it was the fact that changed
my mind was learning that in Ohio, the state that
I live in, and generally across the country, in order
to even possibly get the death penalty, you have to
kill somebody in a county, a municipal structure that can

(10:36):
afford a death party trial. If they can't afford the
money it costs to have a trial where somebody's risking death,
then it's not possible unless the state puts in extra money.
For example, in Ohio, only eligible for state assistance if
the crime happens in a state institution. That's the way
the state will help, unless they passed special legislation, as

(10:59):
they did. There was a massacre one family attacked another
over some drug deal on bad or something in Pike County, Ohio,
which is all the way down south on the Ohio River.
It's one of the most poorest counties in the state,
and the state had to pass legislation to create a
four million dollar fund for the prosecution of those people.

(11:21):
And that whole case has been over now for about
a year. And even though they use the death penalty
as a threat to get them to plead guilty and
avoid a trial, not one of those people ended up
getting a death sentence right. So for me, it was
the fact that geography matters more. Where the crime happens.
What's the budget of the county where the crime happens.

(11:43):
Does that prosecutor in that county who was an elected official,
Are they even willing to seek a death sentence if
they have the budget to do so. So it was
that County thing that changed my mind. But then it
was meeting people that have been directly touched by this issue.
Murderic family members who reject the death penalties, and no
amount of killing is going to equal the value of

(12:05):
I loved one and I don't want to be putting
somebody else's mother through the pain. I count understand you.
So victim family members, death row family members, the families
of people facing execution, the families of the executed, death
row survivors, even people who have been executioners who then
leave that work and join our movement. Those are the

(12:26):
people that are traumatized by this issue, That are the
collateral damage, if you will, of in the aftermath of murder.
And it was meeting those types of people and seeing
how they stand in opposition to the death penalty. For me,
I've never been directly touched by violent crime, so I
don't know what it feels like. I always love one

(12:46):
to murder, but here are these people who have been
sucked into it unwillingly. They didn't ask for it, And
I was standing up and saying, this is not what
I want as a person touched by this issue. The
facts changed my head. The journey and meeting all these
people on the journey changed my heart. Wow.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
So what happens then if a victim's family does approach you,
if you're at a rally or whatever. Is that difficult
or do they see where you're coming from.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
It's not typical that at a rally somebody will come
up and say, what you're talking about my loved one
and I want the death penalty and go to help.
If we don't have that kind of encounter, however, you know,
we often meet people who say, well, you'd feel different
if it happened to you. I affirm that. You know,
I can't say how I would feel because it hasn't
happened to me. However, let me share with you the

(13:36):
story of my friend Bill Pelke, or George Wider, Susanne Bosword,
or any number of other folks who are murderic and
family members who work with us, to share their stories
about how they came from this terrible situation that happened
to them. Our board chair is Reverend Charon Mussure. Her
mother and two cousins were among those who were murdered

(13:56):
by a white supremacist in the Charleston church shooting in
twenty fifteen. She has come to forgiveness for him and
has been advocating that he not be executed. We don't
want to see them free. We don't want to see
them not held accountable. But we don't think that for
whatever reason, people come at it from faith. As a
victim family member, I don't want to be told I

(14:17):
need to wait a couple of decades when they get
around of killing the person before I can have my healing.
That's one of the challenges. So when somebody comes at
me and says I support the death penalty, I've learned
that the best response is to acknowledge that and then
start asking questions, how do you feel why do you

(14:38):
feel this way? Invariably, when you say why do you
feel this way, they'll tell you something that gives you
the opportunity to plan to see of doubt about where
they're coming from. Unless the desire is purely vengeance. Okay,
But even then the question I ask is, well, why
are you asking me, as a taxpayer, just pending my

(14:59):
tax dollars getting your vengeance? Why is that fair? Especially
if fewer than one percent of the people who commit murder,
who are caught, who are death eligible where they seek
a death sentence, where they win a conviction, and a
death sentence where it goes all the way to the
point of execution. That's fewer than one percent of the
people who are death eligible. So not all murders can

(15:22):
be punishable by death, but when you get to those,
that can be fewer than one percent. If the balm
for the wounds of victim families is an execution, why
are we using it in fewer than one percent of
the cases where we could be And how are we
deciding which case? So, why is your loved one more
valuable than all these others? And if you can get

(15:44):
that far into conversation and help people see that, it's
so few people that could be executed that get to
the point of execution in the United States, and the
way we pick them often has little to do with
the severity of the crime and more to do with
the money and raise it the victim especially, and the
politics of who's the county prosecutor or do they have
the budget? All of those things matter more than the

(16:06):
severity of the crime. How do we pick and choose
why the killer of your loved one and not the
killer of these other ninety nine people's loved ones. That's
where people can begin to question, do we really need this?
Are we being fair? You know? Carved into the face
of the US Supreme Court building other words equal justice
under law, And anybody that's ever encountered the criminal or

(16:29):
civil legal system in this country, probably in every country,
knows the thing that matters most is how much money
you have in your pocket walking into the courthouse, because
if you can hire the right attorneys or grease the
right palms, then your justice is different than that of
people who don't have money. See.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
I was always been an eye for an eye. If
someone's going to kill somebody, then I've always done it,
same with pedophiles. But I do agree with the fact
that if you're going to go on death row, then
you shouldn't be on there for you know, six a years.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
Six or eight years. That's nothing. We're executing people. We've
been there for thirty forty The guidage schedule to be
executed on June twenty fifth, that was sentenced to death
in nineteen seventy six. Wow, he's been there almost fifty years.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Yeah, that's Anthony Floyd. Is that Anthony Floyd? The next
one is scheduled?

Speaker 1 (17:20):
No, Richard Jordan.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
I looked up and it said Anthony Floyd Waynewright.

Speaker 3 (17:26):
He's one of the next to be executed. Yes, Anthony
Waynwright and also Gregory Hunt, both on June tenth, just
one hour apart from each other. And first Waynewright in
Florida and then an hour later Hunt in Alabama. But
now this guy is Richard Jordan and Mississippi is scheduled
to be killed on June twenty fifth, Wow, with three

(17:47):
other people in between those first two that I mentioned.
So we have in June one, two, three, four, five,
six execution scheduled.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
So them's out of them six? Would they all go
through or would they be stopped last minute? How would
that go?

Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah? It really depends the issues in case.

Speaker 4 (18:05):
But what we have been seeing, especially the last several years,
is that the US Supreme Court, the way it's been
restructured under Donald Trump during his first term, it has
greased the rails into the execution chamber where there is
almost nothing that will stop these executions, no matter how
important the issues in the case are, No matter the

(18:27):
competency of their attorneys. They can have the best attorneys
right now, and those executions it's possible in many cases
that they will still go through.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
Basically, when you get to a point where they said
a date, usually that's it. And part of the problem,
as Ali was saying, is the courts have basically set
up procedural bars. So if you have any issues to
raise in the case, by this point, it's too late.
It's just prohibited because we've missed the mark, the opportunity
to raise those issues, or they were raised at a

(18:58):
time a decade or two ago when all the evidence
hadn't been fully developed. And that's the problem. When new
ever is developed, even evidence of innocence, it's often too
late to bring it in because they're more interested in
finality than in accuracy or in making sure all the
facts are on the table. We're not lawyers, you know,

(19:20):
we don't do litigation work. What we'd end up doing
is in some ways hold in the hands of the
families that are involved in this. Right now today we're
helping raise funds for the funeral of them, and that
was executed a few days ago because that family doesn't
have enough money and if they can't come up with
enough money, he's going to be buried in the prison
cemetery rather than have a loving funeral, or they choose.

(19:42):
So there's so many different ways we could talk about this,
but I can tell you all six of these people
scheduled to go in June have nothing in the way
of stopping their execution. Which is not to say that
their attorneys won't try. But one of the things that
started to happen is the courts are actually saying to
the attorneys, if you're raising issues that you know are
not going to work, that's frivolous and you might be

(20:03):
helped and contempt because I'll watch you wasting the court's time,
and you have to balance, Okay, how do I represent
my client and what novel idea can I try to
see if that will stick, if a judge will grant
to stay, and even if you do get a judge
to say, yes, this person shouldn't be executed, or at
least we need to actually evaluate this new evidence. The

(20:25):
state then appeals that, and if they get up to
the US Supreme Court level, more often than not they'll
just throughout the appeal. I think it was something like
nineteen of the last twenty three people executed had issues
that could be liticated and were not because the court's
just refused.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
Wow, so only six will be done by lethal injection?

Speaker 3 (20:47):
Correct, no, we are you using that?

Speaker 4 (20:50):
So the beginning of last year, Alabama became the first
state to implement nitrogen suffocation executions. Every single one of
those that has happened thus far has been nothing like
what the state alleges.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
They've been nothing short of her horrific.

Speaker 4 (21:05):
We also have in several states firing squad as a
viable method. It's only been used in South Carolina recently.
The last firing squad execution until this past year was
in Utah fifteen years ago.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
But we've now had two.

Speaker 4 (21:21):
Firing squad executions in South Carolina because the guys think
that it'll be quicker and less suffering than lethal injection.
Of course, many of them do happen by lethal injection.
That has been the primary method for the last several years,
but that is slowly starting to change. Louisiana became the
second state to implement nitrogen hypoxia. The same day that

(21:44):
Louisiana carried out their first nitrogen execution, Arkansas authorized it legally,
so we suspect at some point in the not too
distant future that we are going to start seeing those
in Arkansas as well, and a number of states. Electric
chair is still on the books, although folks are trying to.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
Not choose that method if at all possible. But that
is also something that is available in a couple of states.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
So at the executions, are they still letting family members
of the victims watch these or is they kept closed
those now?

Speaker 3 (22:16):
I think in every case the victim family is invited.
They not always choose to do so, but they're invited
to the execution. I'm not aware of a state where
that's not the case. Now the person's attorneys are always
able to be present. There is a challenge in Indiana,
for example, there was an execution here a few days ago.
In Indiana, their second one in fifteen years. They just

(22:39):
started executing again in December, and the media is barred
from them. So victim families do get to watch it.
Invariably they come out and say, well, gall what he deserve,
but it was too easy, and a few days later
they realize there's still that empty hole. There's always going
to be that empty chair at the table. And the
family gathers. Maybe they're happy that the person got killed,

(23:00):
but it took decades, and why should it take decades
but a few sentences death by incursor, in other words,
throw away the key life in prison without the possibility
of parole. Then at least you can begin your healing
process at that point rather than a couple of decades
from now. But just to circle back real quick on
your question, June tenth, we have a gas suffocation execution

(23:21):
in Alabama and a lethal injection in Florida. Then in
June twelfth, we have a lethal injection in Oklahoma. Then
June thirteenth, this date was just said in South Carolina
that prisoner two weeks ahead of his execution on the thirteenth,
we'll have to choose between the electric chair, lethal injection

(23:42):
or firing squad. And the last two people in South
Carolina chose firing squad, and the last one his autopsy
showed that they all missed. Actually the three shooters missed.
Then you're going back to lethal injection in Florida and
lethal injection in Mississippi. So those are the upcoming executions.
I just want to comment also on your statement of

(24:03):
an eye for an eye. That's what I said. Yeah, life,
and I too. So if you're gonna and this takes
us on a bit of a different path, but I'll
just say this, are you Jewish?

Speaker 1 (24:13):
No?

Speaker 3 (24:13):
Okay? Well, if you're putting your support for the death
penalty on the Hebrew scriptures, then I think it's important
to recognize how the only people that actually adhere to
the Hebrew Scriptures in dictating how they end of their
life are Jews for centuries, for millennia, actually for more
than two thousand years. Basically, Jews are not fundamentalists. We

(24:37):
don't go by the literal word of the Torah, of
the five Books of Moses. It's a much bigger thing.
And basically Jewish law is based on the current rabbinic interpretation,
which for over two thousand years has been The death
penalty exists in Jewish law, but it's not for us
to use it. And in order to assure that, the
rabbis have put in place more than two hundred and

(24:58):
thirty preconditions that must be in place in order to
have a death sentence and an execution of to Jewish law. Now,
those are things like, before you commit the crime, you
have to be warned by two different people who are
not related to each other, or the victim or the
potential killer. If you do this, you might get the
death party, and then they have to witness that. You

(25:18):
have to no idea of being If somebody is capable
of warning somebody, then you know, how are they going
to allow somebody to go ahead and carry out a murder?
If you do, then you have to have a conviction
by a unanimous twenty three rabbi court a sen on
hundred and twenty three rabbis have to be unanimous. Try
to get twenty three Jews to agree on anything, it's

(25:39):
not going to happen. So, I mean, these are just
a couple of the preconditions more than two hundred and
thirty that have to be in place if you want
to go by the hebrewscriptures. But if you're going to
pick and choose, I mean, you know, Leviticus nineteen says
judge your neighbor fairly, do not defer to the wealthy. Well, right,
there sets aside the death party, because we have an
unfair system. And it is true that if you have

(26:01):
more money you get a different level of justice. There's
all kind of other things in there. I mean, for example,
if you like to play football, American football, it's made
with a pig skin, and touching the skin of a
dead pig is pardiciable by death. Working on the Sabbath
pardicable by death. Assassing your parents punishable by death, according
to the same Hebrew scriptures that say and I for

(26:23):
an eye, which by the way, was supposed to be
a limitation, not equal measure. But take no more than
an I for an eye, because it used to be
you kill my loved one, I come back and kill
your whole family. We're not living in the age of
that kind of so called justice. And by the way,
I have to give credit to the Islamic countries are

(26:46):
using the death penalty. There is a mechanism for victim
families to say I don't want this person killed, and
to forgive them, and to actually have that say adhere to.
In the United States, I mean, they get a choice
in the town with a talband. If you're the victim family,
you can actually help kill the person. But in the
United States we only give freedence to the victim family

(27:07):
if it helps the prosecutors desire. If he doesn't, you're
a bad victim and they don't even help you deal
with the issues that you have as a victim family
member sometimes. So I will say to you this, when
you say and I for and eye, that it takes
a little bit longer to spell that out. But if
you've got to base yourself in Hebrews scriptures, then go
by how the Jewish interpretation is. But if you're a Christian,

(27:29):
are you a Christian? Yes, okay, then well Jesus said,
you've heard it said and eye for an eye, And
I tell you different. And let Hugh was without sin
cast the first stone. And according to what I understand
about Christianity, you're all born sinners, right, Jesus has died
for your sins. So I think the teachings of Jesus
are pretty clear. We work very closely with a group

(27:50):
called Red letter Christians, who you know, in some Bibles
the words of Jesus are written in red letters, and
they want to live by the words of Jesus. And
you know that's the word of Jesus, is that he
was without sin cast the first stone.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
I think what I'm trying to get at is the
fact if someone's going to say someone made us somebody
and then they're going to go to life in prison.
Sometimes people don't mind going to jail. They live happily
in there. They've got the TV to get the food.
They live in the life, and they are because here,
I guess I've got some people who've been in prison
here and they'd rather be in prison in your country.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
Maybe here it's a shithole. I mean, Ali, you want
to talk about prison conditions.

Speaker 4 (28:35):
Yeah, there is nothing easy about prison conditions in this country.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
They are absolutely deplorable.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
Not only the conditions themselves are deplorable, but they are
severely understaffed, meaning that folks can't even get access to
very basic necessities, whether it's showers, recreation time. The conditions
of prisons in the United States also make it such
that it's not surprising that violence propagates in prison. When

(29:04):
you make so many people fight for a very finite
amount of resources. There's a lot of violence in prison,
and I think that is somewhat by design, but it
is not surprising that that happens.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
But don't get me wrong, but our prison's here. There's
a lot of the same here. But the thing is,
what I'm saying is for a family to see someone
who's killed their loved one and do life in prison.
But he's still living, he's still talking, he's still doing
his thing, and yet he's killed my loved one. That's
what I would be looking at. You're still in prison,
you're still living your life. Even though you're in prison,
you're still getting food, you can still see your loved

(29:39):
ones come and visit you. That's my perspective as trying
to get, you know, sitting on the fence. But then
I did look up the situation on Larry Griffin who
was convicted in eighty one and executed in ninety five,
and they reckon he was innocent when he was executed.
So I did look up that I'm trying to look
at out of the picture what loved ones will be

(29:59):
saying too.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
Well, let's talk about innocence in a moment. But I mean, yes,
you're right. You get to still have some level of
relationship with people that you know once you're on death row.
But visits are in many cases behind glass or if
you're able to have an in person contact visit, if
you will mean you can hold hands, you shackle to

(30:22):
the floor, But in many states the visits are through
glass and over a telephone or now just you know
through the internet. But you want to go get your
favorite sandwich, you got a hankering for a pizza. Forget
that for the rest of your life. Walk barefoot on grass,
open a window by yourself, open a door by yourself.

(30:44):
That's not life, that's misery. It's actually worse to have
to live out your life in prison. Even if you
can have decent food, which it's not decent food, even
if you can have even conjugal visits, which they don't get.
It's hell. And especially in southern prisons, they're not even
air conditioning people living in one hundred and ten one

(31:06):
hundred and twenty degree environment and the law here says
anything over eighty five degrees is too hot. And people
are living and dying every summer in Alabama and Florida
and Texas and Georgia because of heat exhaustion and heat
stroke because they don't air condition some of these prisons

(31:27):
and it's getting hotter. Life in prison is hell. And
we have passed bills to abolish the death penalty in
New Jersey, New Mexico, in An, Connecticut, Maryland, Nebraska, New Hampshire,
Colley out of Virginia, Washington, Delaware. One of the things
that wins us votes with people who's to think they're
in favor of the death penalty is helping them see
that life in prison is worse and these people that's

(31:48):
what they want is the worst thing. So oh, once
they come to that realization, they're willing to vote against
the death parloty because they want it to be worse
for the prisoners. I don't agree with that. I'll take
the vote because I'm trying to get rid of the
death penalty. But I do believe there are some people
as they presently exist, you should never be free, could
never be trusted to be free. Doesn't mean they need

(32:08):
to be held in torturous conditions. But for most of
the people that commit murder, especially, you know, murder is
mostly a crime of passion. It's mostly something that's not planned. Therefore,
it's a crime of circumstances. And if a person has
their needs met in society, they're not committing crimes like this.

(32:29):
If we know that there are a threat to go
down a path on violence because they're addicted or other
issues around that, we can intervene in their lives beforehand
if we can catch them in that But Ultimately, what
we know is that I think most of the people
who commit murder, who are caught, who get a sentence
of imprisonment, can become productive citizens again after a period

(32:52):
of time and with help re entering society. And it
used to be that a life sentence meant you could
get paroled in fifteen or even ten years, and that
is no longer the case. If you're facing the death,
it's either death by incarceration or imprisonment. Either way, it's
going to suck, it's going to be miserable. You know,
you give up having any kind of physical relationship with

(33:16):
somebody that you want to be with. Yeah, sure you
got baba, Okay, you know, if that's what excites you.
But I think that that is not the ideal life
that anybody would want, really had something.

Speaker 4 (33:30):
In terms of talking about prison conditions, we haven't even
started to talk about prison abuses and the fact that
most of the prison guards and wardens are on a
power trip just like, say it what it is, and
they will do nothing, like they will stop at nothing
in many cases to make these guys' lives as miserable
as possible because they have been put in this position

(33:52):
of being told that they are superior to the people
that they control, and we have seen how that dynamic
has played out many times throughout history, and it is
never favorable. This can result in not just physical violence,
like I've had guys that have had their shoulders dislocated
for literally doing nothing because they're slammed on the floor,

(34:12):
their arms are shoved behind their back. I've had people
that have almost died from smoke inhalation because fires have
been started in cells nearby to them, and prison officials
have refused to intervene.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
And these are people who are.

Speaker 4 (34:25):
In solitary cells that can't just walk down the hallway
to get away from the fire. Prison is a hugely
traumatizing place, not just because of this dynamic between prison
officials and prisoners, but the fact that most people who
go to prison abe touched on this. They come from
spaces where their needs haven't been met. They have brain damage,

(34:46):
they have faced terrific abuse and violence, and now they're
being put in a position mentally ill, brain damage, intellectually
disabled where they have to fend for themselves. Some of
them don't even know right from left, up from down,
whether it's morning or night. Of course, their needs go unmet,
and they are propagating for many years. Even if somebody

(35:07):
gets out of prison, whether they're wrongfully convicted or maybe
they've just served their full sentence. And this is especially
true for folks on death threat. When they get out
of prison after serving any significant length of time, they
don't usually live very long past their release because for
years the trauma has weighed on them, and we know

(35:29):
that that is horrible for long term health and mortality.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
Many of them have been exposed to asbestos.

Speaker 4 (35:37):
And other chemicals, many of them develop cancer, many of
them develop trauma related or trauma induced dementia and other
cognitive decline. Even if they're like if they're in prison
for any length of time, I mean, that shortens their life.
That it's not just they're in prison now and they

(35:57):
get out and they're fine. No, they're never going to
be the same again, and it is going to impact
them for the rest of their life.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
A lot of the prison over there are they privately
owned or government.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
Phone not the death row prisons. Okay, but yes we have.
I mean, as one of the things that happened here
when Donald Trump kind oflected and started rounding up immigrants
is all the private prison stock shot up through the roof,
and that's who's getting those contracts. But generally capital cases,
people on death row, those are going to be in

(36:27):
state facilities.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
Okay, all right, So going back to you're going to
bring up the innocence in a lot of this, And
as I said, I read up about Lorry Griffin. Tell
me a bit about that when you come across it.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
Well, I remember the name Larry Griffin. That's an old
case to date and really the best place for facts
and figures in all these issues. We don't even keep
facts and figures ourselves. We point people to the Death
Party Information Center death palty info dot org. Their job
is keeping track of all the facts and figures, but

(37:00):
they are also the keeper of the official list of
people exonerated and freed from death row because they were
innocent or at least because their convictions were thrown out.
That number right now is two hundred people since nineteen
seventy two. One hundred and ninety nine freed one died
in prison before he was exonerated. So you have those,
and then on top of those, you also have people

(37:22):
that took a plea to a lesser offense. In other words,
they're conviction and death sentence were thrown out. Prosecutors as
a face saving move, say well, we're going to retry you,
and that could be a couple of year process, or
there's the door and if you plead guilty to this
lesser offense, we'll let you go on time served and
you can leave today, and you know, if you're looking

(37:44):
at that and there's your family waiting for you outside,
or another couple of years before you might get out.
Some people do choose to take that plea, and sometimes
that's all the option that they have, is to take
a plea or a lesser offense be released on time served,
and then when that happens, then they still have the
faulty conviction of whatever it is that they agreed to
please to and then there's no support or assistance or

(38:08):
compensation for them. In different states have different mechanisms of
compensating people who they wrongly convict, but in more than
half the cases they don't get anything, at least they
haven't so far. So that's a reality. Is Wrongful convictions
is a reality. It's not always the case. There's some
people that put the number of people that are wrongfully

(38:31):
convicted on death row and as high as four percent.
I don't know if that's accurate or not in terms
of who's currently on death row, but I do know
that there's a number of cases right now of people
who they know that they're innocent, and yet the process
makes it impossible to get them freed. Anthony A. Panovitch,

(38:53):
who's on Ohio's death row, his conviction was thrown out
because of a DNA evidence that somebody else committed the rape. Well,
if somebody else raped and Marie Flynn, then and it
wasn't Anthony that did that, and if he didn't do
the rape, he didn't do the murder. Okay. What happened
was the state had asked for DNA somebody and then

(39:17):
it didn't meet their case needs, so they didn't use it.
But they also didn't disclose it to the defense. And
then a decade later somebody found it and said, oh
my gosh, we should have given us to the defense.
They faxed it over and the defense Tony's lawyers got
that and they're like, oh my gosh, that says he's innocent,
and they pursued that and a court threw out his

(39:38):
conviction and his death sentence and the state said, well, judge,
we want to hold him because we're going to try
him again, and the judge said no and released him
with an ankle monitor. Understand that they were going to
bring him back when they were ready to take it
to trial again. Well, the state instead appealed the judges
ruling and because he didn't ask for the DNA, he's

(40:01):
not eligible to use it under Ohio law. That squas
the judge is ruling. And therefore, because that was overturned,
it was as if his death sentence was still in existence,
and they came in got him the next morning. It
was a Friday morning. I'll never forget this because the
lawyers called me on Thursday and said, hey, Tony's case

(40:21):
just got reversed back to a death sentence. I called him,
I said, what's going to happen? He said, I don't know.
The next morning they came and they took him and
there was an evidence here hearing in Cuyahoga County, which
was Cleveland, Ohio, by Lake Erie. Over the weekend, they
had transferred him all the way back onto death row
in a town called Chili Coffee in south central Ohio,

(40:42):
a good three hour drive from Cleveland, they already had
him on death throw. The judge was furious when he said,
where's mister Apanovage, you know, and they said, Judge, he's
back on death row. He made them bring him all
the way back up to Cleveland, and it was a
couple of months of process, and then his hands were
tired and he had to send Tony back to death row.
And that's where Tony sits today. It's been thirty seven

(41:04):
years now, but for two of those years he was
out living with his girlfriend and her children and being
a productive member of that family. Still on an ankle minor,
he couldn't leave his house without permission from the pro officer.
But we know he's innocent. Melissa Lucio was facing execution
three years ago. In April, she was two days from execution.

(41:27):
We ran a campaign on her behalf. A movie was
made by Sabrina van Tassel, an award winning French documentary maker.
She made this film that basically exposes why no crime
actually occurred in that case. One of Melissa's children was
fell down to fly. The stairs may have been pushed
by a sibling, but it certainly wasn't Melissa. There's no

(41:49):
evidence he was ever abusive. She was not a great mother,
and she had some addiction issues, but nobody ever said
she abused her children. When Mariah died and they did
an aaftops since she was covered with bruises, they said
that must be child abuse. And they you know, here's
Melissa being interrogated overnight without pregnant with twins, and eventually

(42:10):
she said I must have hit her, and that was
enough for them to convict her. Turns out there was
no crime. Within two days of being executed, the Texas
Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a stay to the execution
and evidentiary hearing, which put the case back at the
County court in Cameron County, Texas. The Cameron County Prosecutor,

(42:33):
Lewis Sions, finally started looking at the evidence and realized
that they had withheld evidence from her at the time
of the trial that would have helped to quit her
in the first place, and he signed an order with
the defense in December of twenty twenty two saying that
her conviction should be thrown out, and he got sick
of waiting sixteen months later when nothing had still happened,

(42:57):
and he released that draft order to the media, so
they changed the judge. Who do they change it to?
Turned out they changed it to the judge who act
sentenced her to death, and within two days you have
this order signed by the prosecutor and the judge who
sends her to death saying her conviction should be thrown
out and she should be brought back and we should

(43:17):
let her go. Those are my paraphrase of it, but
that's essentially what it means. And here we are. She
is still on death row in Texas to day, right
now as we speak, and she should have been freed
not later than December of twenty twenty two. They know
she's innocent. The prosecutor says she's innocent, The judge who

(43:38):
sends her to death says she's innocent. She's still on
death throw. And there's a couple dozen more cases like
this that we know of that we can talk about.
If not actual innocence, then severe significant demonstrable doubt about
their guilt. Rodney Reid Ali can probably rally off it,
rite off a bunch of names out. We've got a
homeless of them on our web page, people that have

(44:01):
real issues. It could be raised, and he can't raise
them because of procedural bars because of whatever BS is happening.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
When was the When was the last female actually executed?

Speaker 3 (44:11):
And I think that's Amber McLoughlin, who transgender woman in
Missouri and prior to that, do you have that year?

Speaker 1 (44:20):
Lisa Montgomery?

Speaker 4 (44:21):
Of course, Lisa Montgomery was executed in the final week
of Donald.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
Trump's executions free.

Speaker 4 (44:27):
She was a severely mentally ill with schizophrenia. She endured
some of the worst sexual violence you could ever go
through as a child.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
She was trafficked by her family. So she was held
in a women's.

Speaker 4 (44:40):
Psychiatric prison in Texas before they transferred her to the
US Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, where federal executions are
carried out. And so she was executed on January twelfth
of twenty twenty one.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Wow, okay, is it true that at the moment fifty
seventh scheduled for twenty twenty five executions?

Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yes? Yes, So we only list dates that we consider
to be real dates like it's going to happen right now. Yeah,
that's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight nine,
right now. We just got a new one in Florida
the other day. More dates are said on a regular basis.
That's just in twenty twenty five. But then there are
dates like you know where governors have said we're not

(45:25):
carrying out executions, but yet the process at state. So
for example, in Ohio, you have more than thirty pending
execution dates. But Governor Dewined in Ohio a Republican, but
a consistently pro life Republican, keeps reprieving people as their
dates come up, and they'll kick them back to the
end of the line. And we're working to try to

(45:47):
get him to commute all of the death sentences to
life without parole before he leaves office, and he'll run
out of his time in office and somebody else will
be governor, and depending on who that is, Ohio might
resume executions. So we have legislation actually to abolish enough
party in Ohio, which is possible even with Republicans in

(46:07):
charge across the board, just because of the relationships that
we've built in the conversations that are being had. The
problem is it becomes like a bargaining chip you throw
on the table with somebody or not, as the case
may be. But in any case that's so. The reality
is that there might be a couple dozen execution dates
that are on some other calendars, but on our web

(46:30):
page we only list the dates that we think are real.
So that's what we have right now.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Is it the main states that do the death penalty?
Is it that Oklahoma, Texas, and Missouri? Are they the
main states?

Speaker 3 (46:43):
Florida is now doing them every two to three weeks. Wow,
Alabama is doing them with regularity. South Carolina is almost
out of people that are that have a death warn't
how much more. They've got a couple dozen people on
death row, I think, but we knew that they were
going to there were five or six people that were
ready to be executed. Texas is setting dates on regular basis,

(47:06):
so we could see North Carolina start back up, but
that's probably not going to happen. Tennessee just got started
and they're going to be going on a regular basis too,
probably not more than four a year. They announced four
dates for this year. One of the person's date was
already taken away, but there's three others. Louisiana, they tried
to set a bunch of dates and then realize that

(47:27):
those people hadn't finished their legal processes. But there's actually
a whole list of people who have exhausted their appeals
and are ready for a death warrant, and others that
are just in process. So you're going to see more
in Missouri, Indiana. Idaho wants to execute a couple of
people right away. They only got a handful of people
on death row. Utah also, but they're not all through

(47:49):
the process, and those that are. In Idaho, they figured
out that they can't manage a lethal injection, so they
changed their primary method of execution just this year to
firing squad. But then, rather than just set up a
chair in a field and take care of it, they
got to build a whole new facility just for firing
squad executions. So they got to spend a million dollars

(48:11):
in about a year. They think they'll be ready in
June next year, which is crazy. I mean, why are
you going to spend all that money when you got
the guns, you got the bullets, You got people that
can shoot, and frankly, who cares if they miss? They'll
bleed out in a minute or two. But why do
we care if they have pain? Firing squad is the
fastest way to go unless we were to just lop
off your head, which they could do. Nobody's got that.

(48:34):
I don't think that would pass. I don't think anybody
wants to actually witness that in the United States. But
that truly would be the fastest way to be killed.
Or maybe we can step on you with an elephant.
You know, there's lots of ways. I mean, the truth
is really for us, it's not about how we kill
our prisoners, but that we do so when the system

(48:55):
is so broken. Yeah, you know, that's why we've started
a little campaign. You know, it's be interesting to see
how long this lasts. But you've heard about the Department
Government Efficiency DOGE, right, which Elon Musk was in charge
of and probably still is. If we're gonna have a
death penalty, then let's really take a look at as

(49:17):
an efficient government program. And of course it's not, so
that's the first thing they should be doing is actually
before they get rid of any government agency, actually do
the research and study it. But it wouldn't take long
to figure out that as a public policy, the death
penalty fails us morally, economically, financially, socially. It's just a
failed government program. And that's not me saying if that's

(49:39):
conservatives who have actually evaluated the system. George will is
a famous conservative voice on this issue. That's what he says.
The death point is just another failed government program. If
only they would look at it that way, if only
they would do a full deep analysis like they're talking
about doing in Indiana, multiple other states, Maryland, Illinois, New Jersey,

(50:01):
each of those states actually after having their study, ended
up about the death party because they realized it doesn't
do what we say it's going to do, and it
wastes a lot of resources and we could do better
for all concerned.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
Is it true that it costs the taxpayers one million
for one death penalty in one.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
Execution, Well, that's an estimate. But what we know is
that if a prosecutor decides that he or she is
going to seek a death party, they're going to spend
at least twice as much just on the trial, just
the trial as all the day. So whether you're going
to get a conviction, and then it's a second process
as to whether you're going to get a death sentence,

(50:39):
but you still have to put all the money in.
Even if you do get a death sentence. Half of
all death sentences are overturned during the appeals process. So yes,
all of that adds up to well over a million dollars.
It's going to be a different cost in Missouri than
it is in Mississippi than it is in California. But
either way, wherever they're doing it, they're kind of to

(50:59):
spend more. But yes, some cases have cost millions of dollars.
For example, for all the death sentences that they've had
in Ohio since they're early nineteen eighties, we've spent over
a billion dollars on our death penalty system in Ohio.
Those are and that's according to the Attorney General's numbers.
Two decades ago, in Florida, the Palm Beach Post estimated

(51:21):
that we were spending fifty one million dollars annually on
a death penalty that is hardly being used. In California,
it's again billions of dollars. They've got over seven hundred
people or at least now over six hundred people on
death thrown in California, and they haven't had an execution
in over a decade, and sell they're spending all the money,

(51:41):
we could be doing so much better for victim families
and for crime prevention and for better policing in general.
If we were putting that money into those other kinds
of services rather than this rule of the dice as
to whether we might get an execution a couple of
decades from now.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
Do you actually think the death penalty desay is crime?

Speaker 3 (52:01):
It deters the person that we execute, Sure, you can
equally deter them by throwing away the key. Does the
death penalty to stop somebody from committing murder? We can argue, actually,
it's more likely that the death paralty inspires murder by
people who feel like you know, like suicide by cop.
They want a death sentence. There have been people who've

(52:23):
actually changed the narrative of their crime so that they
could be eligible for the death penalty because they'd rather
get executed than spend the rest of their lives in prison.
And there are a few cases, especially of prisoners who
kill in prison, who are saying, I did it because
I want you to sentence me to death. Does it
stop a person who is committing a bank robbery from

(52:44):
deciding they're going to kill somebody? You don't think about
it in the heat of a moment like that. You know,
people that plan out their murders really well generally don't
get caught or if they do again, they weren't expecting
to get caught. So therefore, even if they were aware
that the death paralty exists in their state and is
used in their state and is a very real threat,

(53:07):
they're not thinking it's going to be that. What is
there really a deterrent is not the severity of the punishment,
but the certainty of the punishment. And if you don't
think you're going to get caught, then you're not worried
about it.

Speaker 4 (53:19):
In addition to what Abe was saying, that a lot
of people who end up on death row and a
lot of people who carry out crime are not these
hyper calculated people that entertainment has.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Made murders out to be.

Speaker 4 (53:33):
A lot of them, as we've already talked about, have
severely diminished intellectual capacities, are mentally ill, are in other realities,
and so this is not necessarily something that folks like
that are going to consider when they're in the heat
of a moment.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
Is there any sites at the moments who are opposed
to the executions in America?

Speaker 3 (53:54):
Yeah, there are twenty three states that don't have the
death penalty.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
I'm not getting pushed to take it. That just I
know they don't want.

Speaker 3 (54:00):
Every once in a while, like a state like Iowa,
which hasn't had the death in a long time, somebody
introduces a bill to bring it back, and it doesn't
go anywhere. They might get a hearing on their bill,
but still, so far we haven't seen any states bring
the death penalty back since we got on this path
of actually the states getting rid of it. Like I said,

(54:23):
in two thousand and seven, we legislatively abolished the death
party in New Jersey in two thousand and nine, in
New Mexico in twenty eleven, in Illinois twenty twelve, Connecticut
twenty thirteen, Maryland twenty fifteen. I think it was New Hampshire,
then Colorado, then Virginia. Virginia the first of the Confederate
states to legislatively abolish the death penalty. And then you

(54:47):
have states like Washington, Delaware, and New York where the
courts have thrown it out, and at least in Washington
and Delaware then passed legislation to scrub the death party
language out of the statute, so it's not even there anymore.
And we're still running a bill in Delaware to prohibit
in the Constitution of the state constitution. Right now, Michigan

(55:07):
is the only state that constitutionally prohibits the death penalty.
Then you have states like, for example, Oregon where the
governor of the last governor before, on her way out
of office, commuted all of the death sentences and they
had already passed legislation to make it so you can
only get a death sentence if you kill a cop,
a police officer. Essentially, it doesn't exist there By the way,

(55:30):
in terms of the murder of police officers, I'll mention
this simply because the last guy the killed, the guy
that was killed this past Tuesday night in Indiana was
the killer of a police officer, okay, and he got
a death sentence. Well, since he was sentenced to death.
Twenty nine more law enforcement officers were murdered in the
line of duty in Indiana. Two of the cases are

(55:51):
still pending, but twenty seven of them did not result
in a death sentence. So how is it fair? But
more important also is statistics bear this out? From the
Officer Down Memorial web page chronicles police officer deaths in
the line of duty all kinds, from car crashes, heart attack, suicide, murder. Right,

(56:13):
you are more likely Rather, it is more dangerous to
be a police officer in a state that has the
death penalty than in a state that doesn't. You're more
likely to be killed in the line of duty if
your state has the death paralty, and even more so
if your state carries out executions. Then the numbers bear
this out. So that speaks to the terrence. It also

(56:34):
speaks to this whole question of fairness and all those
other pieces of the puzzle. At the end of the day,
almost half of all the states don't have a death penalty.
So in nineteen seventy two, but you know, a Supreme
court struck down all the death penal laws, and any
state that wanted to have a death penalty had to
write new laws. Many did. And at what point we're
at thirty six states plus the military and the federal government.

(56:58):
That thirty six is now down to twenty three in
terms of states that have the death party on the books.
How many are executing Well, let's see, it was this
year eleven states have issued death warrants and nine have
carried them out so far in twenty twenty five, but
again in nineteen of those twenty three cases or eighty

(57:18):
two point six percent. The courts could have intervened on
real issues that should have been litigated, and yet they've
done nothing. But to foy answer your question, twenty seven
states have it, plus the military plus the federal government.
This year, so far, nine states have issued death warrants,
and I think seven states have carried out executions.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
Well, since April twenty twenty five, there's two thousand and
sixty seven on death row.

Speaker 3 (57:46):
Yeah. Wow, that's amazing, and that's actually but that's actually
in twenty twenty four we saw the greatest I think
death row was reduced by about seven percent across the board.
And that's going to include President Biden, on his way
out of office, commuted thirty seven of the forty federal
death sentence. He left three people on death row and

(58:07):
four people on the military death penalty, but thirty seven
people had their sentences changed to death by incarceration. And
that's a whole other conversation. But they one of the
things that Donald Trump wants to do is make their
life in prison as miserable as possible. Setting that aside.
Also in North Carolina, the governor had been asked to

(58:27):
commute all the death sentences. He chose to commute fifteen
of them. So there was a seven percent drop in
the numbers of people on death row in twenty twenty four.
And that also speaks to the fact that where our
movement has been successful is in slowing down new death
sentences and even capital indictments are a regular low in

(58:50):
terms of the trend of how many per year. We
are started to see an increase in executions, but it's
still pretty small. But where we're stopping the death penalty
is upfront before people get sentenced to death, Fewer capital
and dims, meaning they're not even seeking the death probalty
most of the time, and then even when they do
seek it, fewer new death sentences.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
Before we go, tell me the pros and cons of
a death penalty wrongly, like you know what I mean,
like or you've already said it doesn't reduce crime, so
we can wipe that one out. Well, what do you
reckon the pros and cons for this?

Speaker 3 (59:28):
Any prose? How do you have any prose for the
death penalty?

Speaker 4 (59:33):
No, I was about to say that, I think everything
is a con.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
It doesn't support murder victim family.

Speaker 4 (59:39):
Members, it wastes resources. We've talked about this today, but
It takes resources against not only supporting murder victim family
members in the wake of their loved ones being murdered,
but it also takes resources away from crime prevention.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
How can we prevent these murders from occurring in the first.

Speaker 4 (59:57):
Place, simply just responding to them mirror in the violence
that we were trying to prevent.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
I mean, I.

Speaker 4 (01:00:03):
Personally have got and to know many people who have
been executed and their families, and I can't think of
anything more horrific and more soul crushing than getting to
know these people as people, regardless of their guilt or innocence,
and getting to know their families and the people who
have stuck by them all these years, and to see

(01:00:24):
that nothing that they have done in their twenty or
thirty years or even longer on death row to reform
themselves matters.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
That they are still contributing to their community.

Speaker 4 (01:00:34):
Some of them are pastors, many of them are working
to not just drive down prime but to make the
lives around them better. And none of that is worth
anything when you execute them after all of these years,
and just to see just how devastating it is for
their families, Like nobody is the same after a loved

(01:00:55):
one is murdered. But after when you are murdered in
this way by the government that at any point can
decide to turn off and consciously chooses not to at
every point down the road, and then you get to
an execution, which is arguably the most premeditated form of
murder that there is. There's no excuse for that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
I can go on and on. I'll let you finish
answering your name.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
Well, I think I'll address one other aspects that we
haven't really talked about. The death penalty is actually a
two of fascism. You know. It's one thing that we
already seeing you arrests of people that because of their
opinion and because of the president doesn't like their opposition
to them. And it's only a matter of time and
we've seen this, which is why we don't want to

(01:01:41):
go down that path towards authoritarianism and dictatorship. Is eventually
that becomes a tool of government, and that's why government
shouldn't be given the power. We can't trust them with
the power to kill, even in a democracy system where
the courts are actually functioning. And out of twenty three
death warrants in twenty twenty five eighty two percent had

(01:02:05):
issues left to litigate and they were procedurely barred. It
was just too late. Finality is more important. So the
only pro if I can think of any if you're
having a death penalty is actually to the benefit of
the prisoners who don't want to live life without parole,
that they can choose by waiving their appeals to end

(01:02:26):
their lives and not have to live in the misery
of dying in prison. Okay. So that's a pro for them.
And we've had a couple of people this year who've
thrown off their appeals and they said, I don't want
any appeals, I'm sick of this, let me go. And
that's the only way you can get a state assisted
suicide is if you are sentenced to death and wave
your appeals. Okay. So really, the other thing we haven't

(01:02:49):
talked about, which we should just quickly, is what do
we do about it? Okay. On our web page of
Death Penalty Action, we invite people to sign a petition
from anywhere in the world, and if you don't live
in the United States, do two things. One is right
to or communicate with the US ambassador to your country
and say hey, I think you need, guys need to
stop this and also talk to your own version, your

(01:03:11):
own Ministry of Foreign Affairs or state Department or whatever
you call it there and ask them to intervene with
their own colleagues in the United States and say, hey,
we oppose the death ploty as most democracies in the
world do, contact your own legislaters, ask them to put
pressure on us, not just US government officials, but also
US businesses in your countries that are doing business in

(01:03:34):
the United States, especially if it's in a state that
has a death penalty. They have power more than anything
that we could do. If you're spending money in Alabama,
you can say to the Chamber of Commerce in Alabama,
you know, we're thinking about moving to Michigan or another
state that doesn't use the death plalty because we don't
think that that's appropriate. We don't want to be touched

(01:03:54):
by that. So those are another things you can do.
I would also say that right now we are in
a pinch financially and we're inviting people who can to
make donations to help us do this work, and that
can be anything from one dollar to know if a
million dollars would change our world and we're looking for
a game changer who can help us create a whole

(01:04:15):
lot of capacity where we don't have to worry every
day about fundraising and we can be focused on the
work of educating the public about why the death parloty
doesn't work and making sure that every execution gets a
good protest.

Speaker 4 (01:04:28):
I know Abe had just mentioned about how the United
States is one of the only democracies in the world
that carries out executions. When we talk about the company
that the United States keeps, we are always in the
top ten of nations that are executing in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:04:45):
We are usually in the top five.

Speaker 4 (01:04:48):
The company that we keep is Iran, who's hanging protesters,
and China. These are not places that we look towards
as arbiters of human rights, and this is the company
that we're keeping. In many other ways, we have been
positioned in the West to be again these countries for
as long as we can remember, and we are behaving

(01:05:08):
in a way that is equivalent to what they are doing.

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
On this issue. And that is something that people forget.

Speaker 4 (01:05:15):
We can't claim to care about human rights when we
are doing exactly the same thing that they are.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
Well, I want to say This has been a very
fascinating podcast, and you've been everything that I thought you
would be. To now kind of like get me off
the fence a little bit me because I can see
now your point of view, I can see it well.

Speaker 3 (01:05:35):
But I tell people as set aside the concept. There
are certainly people who deserve for whatever they get coming,
but it's not for us to do that. All we
need to do is be safe from people who are
doing us harm and hold them accountable if we can.
But we can't trust our government to function in a
way that's always going to get it right every time,
get it fair every time, do it in an expeditious

(01:05:57):
way every time. It's not going to happen, and therefore
that shouldn't be the ultimate punishment. Well, thank you for
coming on, thank you for having us, Thank you for
having us.