A New CEDP Tour: Live From Death Row!
"These are America's condemned, who bear a stigma far worse than 'prisoner.' These are America's death row residents: men and women who walk the razor's edge between half-life and certain death."—Mumia Abu-Jamal, Live From Death Row
ANNOUNCING...our Fall 2008/Spring 2009 national tour, "Live From Death Row," featuring the voices of death row prisoners, live from their prison cell. Death sentences de-humanize the condemned, justifying the state-sponsored murder of the poor, the innocent and people of color. Death rows isolate those sentenced to die, denying them human contact and hope for justice. In our "Live From Death Row" tour, the voices of death row prisoners will reach from behind the walls to share their stories of loss, injustice, struggle, and hope for an end to the death penalty. At a time when the national chorus against the death penalty continues to grow, these voices are critical for the movement on the outside.
The tour will highlight death row prisoners speaking live over speaker-phone, including:
- Pennsylvania death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, author of numerous books, including My Life in the Party and Live From Death Row
- California death row prisoner Kevin Cooper who came within 3 1/2 hours of being executed before he won a stay of execution
- John Booth-El, on death row in Maryland for 25 years
- Troy Davis, on death row in Georgia, who came within hours of execution last year
- Former death row prisoner and torture victim Stanley Howard, still imprisoned in Illinois, and contributor writer to the New Abolitionist
- Ronaldo Hudson, former Illinois death row prisoner, now sentenced to life without parole
- Tennessee death row prisoner Timothy McKinney whose case was recently heard in the TN Criminal Court of Appeals
Other Tour speakers will include Martina Correia, sister of Troy Anthony Davis, Innocent on Georgia's Death Row; Barbara Becnel, who witnessed the execution of her long-time friend and collaborator California death row prisoner Stanley Tookie Williams; former death row prisoners Lawrence Hayes and Darby Tillis; Yusef Salaam, CEDP Board Member and exonerated in the Central Park jogger case; Derrel Myers, Board Member of the CEDP and Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, and the father of murder victim JoJo White.
Endorsers: Amnesty International USA, Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, Prison Radio, Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Network, the Welfare Poets
UPCOMING TOUR DATES:
- Critical Resistance 10 Conference
Oakland, CA September 26-28, 2008
- Chicago, IL October 1, 2008
Chicago, IL November 8, 2008
**For more information or to schedule a Tour stop in your city, please contact nyc@nodeathpenalty.org.
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Supreme Court Ruling on the Death Penalty Puts the United States on the Wrong Side of History
The ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the Kentucky lethal injection protocol, likely re-starting executions, makes the United States an international pariah, the Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP) said today.
“This ruling puts the United States back in dubious company. China, Vietnam, Iran and the United States carry out the vast majority of the world’s executions,” pointed out Marlene Martin, National Director of the CEDP. “If and when states re-start the execution machine, we will be going backwards as a society. The death penalty is a barbaric relic of the past, and the Supreme Court is on the wrong side of history.”
Justice Denied! Free Mumia!
3rd Circuit Court of Appeals denies Mumia Abu-Jamal a new trialOn March 27, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals refused to overturn Mumia's conviction and instead upheld a lower federal court's decision to vacate his death sentence. Mumia and his attorneys had argued his entire conviction should be overturned citing evidence of racism and corruption by his original trial judge and prosecutors. The Court's decision will force prosecutors to seek a new sentencing hearing if they wish to reimpose a death sentence -- otherwise his sentence will automatically be converted to life in prison.
Mumia was originally sentenced in 1982 by a mostly-white jury for the murder of policeman Daniel Faulkner. National and internationally based human rights groups, after investigation, have denounced Mumia's trial as grossly unfair and biased. An Amnesty International report titled, "A life in the Balance -- the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal," found that prosecutors illegally used political statements made by Mumia as a teenager as evidence against him at his original trial. They also found that politics has played a role in preventing a full and fair hearing of the facts in his case.
Read Amnesty's Report at: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR51/001/2000/en/dom-AMR510012000en.html
For more updates & actions on Mumia's case, see: http://www.mumia.org/ |
