LETTER FROM THE BOARD PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Dear Friends,

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Never has that statement resonated with us as it does now
that we are marking the 20th Anniversary of Death Penalty Focus. For two decades, the staff and Board of this organization have worked to educate the public about the brutality and injustice inherent in the death penalty system, and to mobilize people to
fight for human rights.

In this document, you will find information about the heroic men and women who make our work possible, as well as several exciting new projects we’ve launched to carry us toward the inevitable achievement of our goal of abolition.

Our longtime board member and friend, Rabbi Leonard Beerman, sometimes offers a bit of Rabbinic wisdom at board meetings to lift the mood:

A traveling merchant noticed a man sitting on the roof of a synagogue and called to him asking what he was doing. “I am waiting for the Messiah,” said the man confidently. “This must be very difficult work for you,” sympathized the merchant. “Well,” said the man on the roof, “The pay is low, but the work is steady!”

We’re thrilled to report that recent developments suggest our work is becoming unsteady. Thank you for your support throughout the years!

In peace,

Mike Farrell, President

Lance Lindsey, Executive Director

Mike Farrell, President of Death Penalty Focus

On Saturday, May 10, actor/activist Mike Farrell (M*A*S*H) set out on an 8000-mile, 25-city book tour to promote the publication of the paperback edition of his memoir, Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist (Akashic Books). As the presidential race kicks into even higher gear, Mike is driving himself across the country and back, networking with the human rights and social-justice organizations sponsoring each event along the way. Following are his tour dispatches.[TO READ ALL THE DISPATCHES IN ONE PLACE CLICK ON HERE]

Happy Mother's Day, sweetheart!

The day begins with an old friend. Rick and I grew up together and when I joined the Marines as a buck private he had the audacity to get an appointment to West Point. We stayed in touch for a while but lost contact over 30 years ago, only to reconnect because he heard mention of my being there and sent a message to the manager of Changing Hands, the bookstore last night.

A couple of hours over orange juice makes for a quick race through 30 years, but I've got to make tracks for Tucson. Now living in a house he built in the wonderfully named Carefree, Arizona, he seems to be doing well. Rick still has that same off-beat sense of humor I remember as a kid. And now that he knows of the yearly reunions of the club that protected and sustained us through our school years, he'll try to make it to the next one.

Back on 10E out of Phoenix, I'm reminded that the sheriff of Maricopa County is that cheap self-promotion machine, Joe Arpaio, the media-hog who dubs himself "America's Toughest Sheriff." I spent a day at his prison a few years ago with the old Bill Maher show and found him to be every bit the "megalomaniac, liar and bully" Harper's Magazine labeled him. Popular with the voters because he plays on their fears, his bluster and bravado keep his name in the press and get him re-elected. It's like Cheney and Bush playing the fear game with terrorism. Given to heaping abuse on those under his control, Arpaio plays into the idiotic notion that you can correct the behavior of inmates through humiliation and brutalization while diverting potential law-breakers with the threat of dehumanization. Scorned by human rights groups and those who champion decency, Arpaio is a blight on the very idea of "corrections" and an insult to intelligent law enforcement, just one step out of the cave and moving in the wrong direction.

Leaving the Superstition Mountains behind, I head down the long, flat highway through the Sonoran Desert toward the sharp, sawtoothed Santa Catalinas and, beyond them, Tucson. Along the way the occasional slopes to each side are dotted with a huge population of what to the casual observer might look like strange, tall beings waving hello. The Saguaro cactus is said to appear nowhere else on earth but in this southwestern desert.

I figure the least one can do is wave back.

Suddenly this car, to which I'm only slowly becoming accustomed, begins a rhythmic beeping. Alarming enough because a sudden outburst of beeping can't mean anything good as one is racing down the highway, it becomes even more frightening as the beeps speed up, becoming closer and closer together! In the movies, this means a bomb is about to go off. Frantic, I look around and see no signs of distress or alarm on the dash or anywhere else; I check my cell phone, though I know that's not it; and I begin to slow and pull over as the beeps reach a crescendo and, just as suddenly as they began, stop.

Goddamit! This car is messing with me! This is unnerving as hell. Then, panic subsiding, I move back into the lane and resume speed as I go over everything I can think of that might be responsible. Finally, on the far right side of the dash I see a red light indicating that the passenger seatbelt isn't fastened. No one being in the seat, I hadn't thought to fasten it, even though I did set one of my bags there. It's a light bag, but could that be it? And why, if so, did it wait until now to yell at me? Did it let me know when I started out and I somehow missed it? Was it stewing about it all this time and then suddenly decided to give me hell? Man, this car is one temperamental sucker! I'm going to have to be careful.

Credit where due, I did discover something very interesting about the car - actually very cool. In the middle of the dash is a screen that, if you mess with the buttons around it, gives you all kinds of confusing information, complete with even more confusing diagrams. It'll tell you how much mileage you're getting at any given moment; it offers a very complex picture of the power train, apparently explaining the system by which the car is sometimes powered by battery and sometimes by the regular-old-fashioned-internal-combustion-engine. These things are just obscure enough to drive a newcomer to the world of hybrids a bit crazy, yet intriguing enough to pull your attention away from the road and get you killed. But that's not the cool part. The cool part is when you pull up the funky little plastic knob on the short stick and put the car in reverse (after, of course, putting your foot on the brake), the screen in the center of the dash becomes a picture of what's behind you! So you can see where you're going as you back up! Very cool! Though because the picture is a bit distorted I still prefer to turn and look out the back window. But it is cool.

Coming into Tucson I make my way to the Barnes and Noble Bookstore where I'm to do my thing - this one an afternoon gig. Since it's Mother's Day I doubt there will be a large crowd, but one never knows. Being a bit early, I check in and then go to a bar across the parking lot to watch most of the first half of the Lakers/Jazz fourth game. Tied at the half by one of Kobe's impossible shots. (I later learn we lost in overtime.)

Back in the store I was surprised to find a very nice crowd of over a hundred people, including some from the Coalition of Arizonans Against the Death Penalty and a few others with whom I had worked in the Sanctuary movement in the '80s. The movement, started by John Fife, minister of Tucson's Southside Presbyterian Church, a Quaker named Jim Corbett and a few nuns, priests, other clergy and lay-people, believed that those coming across the border fleeing murder, torture and mayhem in El Salvador and Guatemala deserved to be treated humanely and given shelter - as international law requires - rather than labeled 'communist' and sent back to their deaths. The Sanctuary movement became a modern version of the 'underground railway' from the days of slavery, ultimately involving more than 500 churches and synagogues nationwide. And for their trouble, these simple, decent people were arrested, tried, convicted and, probably because of embarrassment on the part of authorities forced to carry out the Reagan Administration's paranoiac anti-communist zealotry, sentenced mostly to five years of probation.

Today, John Fife and many of these people are still at it, having formed the Samaritan Patrol, part of the No More Deaths movement. They go out and provide food, water and sometimes directions to impoverished people attempting to make their way across the desert in search of work. The goal is to protect these poor folks from death by dehydration or starvation and occasionally to provide witness and help them avoid confrontation by Minutemen and others inspired by the racist raving of the Lou Dobbses, Bill O'Reillys and Tom Tancredos intent on saving America from "mongrelization."

Again, we spend an hour and a half or so talking about my book, Hollywood, the death penalty, politics, this bloody awful war, and a lot about M*A*S*H.

Mike Farrell, President of Death Penalty Focus

On Saturday, May 10, actor/activist Mike Farrell (M*A*S*H) set out on an 8000-mile, 25-city book tour to promote the publication of the paperback edition of his memoir, Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist (Akashic Books). As the presidential race kicks into even higher gear, Mike is driving himself across the country and back, networking with the human rights and social-justice organizations sponsoring each event along the way. Following are his tour dispatches.[TO READ ALL THE DISPATCHES IN ONE PLACE CLICK ON HERE]

Well, this isn't the way it was supposed to work.

This marathon tour, this 8,000-mile drive across the country and back to promote the paperback release of "Just Call Me Mike; A Journey to Actor and Activist," was supposed to be a great adventure that Shelley and I would share, a month-long odyssey of laughing and looking, seeing new places and old ones, meeting new people and old friends, and just loving being together.

But it wasn't to be.

The timing had been perfect; we'd take off just a week after my son Michael married his sweetheart, Peggy, in our back yard. It would be tight, yes, working out all the craziness of a large wedding and the logistics of this trip (not to mention Shelley's inevitable all-night pre-trip packing frenzy), but nothing could stop us.

Not so fast, Johnson!

A few days before the wedding, while outside hosing off the side of the house to make it more presentable for the soon-to-be-gathering multitude, Shelley was startled by an unexpected squirt of water in the face, lost her balance and fell.

Paramedics, the ER, the X-Ray, the news of a badly broken hip, admission to the hospital and hip-replacement surgery soon had my head spinning, reconsidering everything. The wedding must go forward, of course, but could Shelley be there? Unfortunately, as it turned out, she could not. (Though a sweetly generous gesture by Peggy, who swept into the hospital room in her wedding gown, and a cell phone placed in front of a speaker during the ceremony made Shelley very much a part of it.)

And what of this long, well-organized, meticulously planned book tour, with dozens of appearances scheduled, commitments to stores carefully arranged and a raft of co-sponsoring political and social-justice organizations committed? Could it be canceled, delayed, adjusted?

Yes, of course, said the good people at Akashic Books with a gulp; they'd figure something out. Not a chance, said Shelley! She'd be fine. She'd be up and doing her physical therapy, she'd be supported by my family and our friends, and I had to get the hell out of town.

Well, of course it was more complicated than that, but that's the gist of it. And here I am.

DAY ONE - Saturday, May 10, 2008

After picking up a rented Prius at LAX - the insane price of gas demanding a hybrid - and quickly throwing everything I could think of into a couple of bags, I took off this morning for the first stop: Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, AZ, just outside of Phoenix.

Driving east on Interstate 10 quickly takes you into the incredibly frightening air of the San Gabriel Valley. I keep thinking the smog in the San Fernando Valley is scary, but at least it gets blown away periodically. This stuff you can cut with a knife.

Past orchards of windmills and into the desert the haze thins out and the landscape grabs you. I've never been one to appreciate the particular beauty of the desert, but today it impresses. It is so clearly harsh, so openly hostile to all but the most hardy adventurer, that it proclaims itself with an impressive hauteur that has, I have to admit, a kind of arrogant beauty. "Don't fuck with me, pal," it seems to be saying.

As I careen along, trying to figure out what means what on the odd dashboard in this strange car - this is my first experience with a hybrid - I keep watching the gas gauge, remembering that the last time I came this way I had to stop and fill up in Desert Center, a particularly hot and unforgiving place that one in need of fuel is strangely happy to discover (but doesn't want to use the facilities). But the gauge doesn't seem to have moved, making me wonder if I'm looking at the right thing. That does appear to be a little gas pump on it, I reassure myself, so what else could it be?

What else could it be, indeed? It could be any damned thing, I tell myself, recalling that when I first got in the car I couldn't figure out how to start it, much less make it go. Embarrassed, I had to go find an attendant to show me how to make the bloody thing work.

It doesn't even have a key! Who knew you had to stick the square thing in the hole and push? And there's no gearshift! There's just a little kind of funky plastic knob on a stick - a short stick, at that - that kind of wiggles up and down. And a button you push for Park. I assume that means the gear, Park, which means you stand still, but I was already standing still. I wanted to go!

So, like I'm an idiot, the attendant shows me that you push in the square thing, then you have to push the button that says "Power." (Now, of course, being able to read I had already tried that, but nothing seemed to happen.) Ah, but you have to step on the brake when you do it! Uh-huh. Then, as he points out, the dashboard lights go on and with them a little red thing that says "Ready!"

Uh-huh. But when I step on the accelerator, nothing happens. That's because it's not in gear. Uh-huh. How do I get it in gear?

You jiggle the funky little plastic knob on the short stick. Up to go backward, down to go forward. Uh-huh. But nothing is happening. That's because you're not stepping on the brake. Huh? I have to step on the brake to shift? Right. Uh-huh.

So, despite the fact that I can't hear an engine running I step on the brake, pull the funky little plastic knob on a short stick down, step on the gas and….

Here I am.

Bing! One of the little squares on what looks like it must be a gas gauge goes away, telling me that some gas in being used. This I can understand because it's like the one on my motorcycle. But, like the one on my motorcycle, I'm not sure how much gas each little square represents. Oh well, on I go.

And you know what? Less than six hours after leaving home I'm through Phoenix, turning into the motel in Tempe, and there are still two little squares on that line. All the way from Los Angeles to Phoenix on one tank of gas! I'm impressed.

The event at Changing Hands is astonishing. Over a hundred people are there to say hello and hear me, including people from Code Pink, the Coalition of Arizonans Against the Death Penalty (CAADP) and Veterans for Peace. As part of the introduction, I'm presented an award by Veterans for Peace: a beautiful statuette of a hand giving the peace sign. Though I'd been warned to expect something, this is a huge and very moving surprise.

The discussion, mostly Q&A, goes on for quite a while and covers a broad range of subjects, from the war to the death penalty, prisons, M*A*S*H, Hollywood, politics, kids, values, my personal life and how we take back our country. The first question, though, was about Shelley, which gave me an opportunity to tell them why she wasn't here, as planned.

Nice people. A lovely evening.

For updates on Mike's journey, click here.

Azim Khamisa and William Baldwin at DPF's 2008 Awards Dinner

I must report that we have not resolved the important question of whether Alec Baldwin or William Baldwin is more charming. Let's hope they both come to our 2009 Awards Dinner and you can all judge for yourselves.

And in the interest of full disclosure, I must also report that nothing (not even André Braugher, DPF Board member Kevin Kilner, Jordan Baker and my friend Julia Sweeney at my table!) gave me more pleasure than DPF honoring my father, Arthur Zitrin, M.D., for his work keeping doctors out of the state killing machine.

But there were so many stars -- stars of our movement to end the death penalty, stars of the struggle for human rights, and stars from the Hollywood entertainment biz all came out for Death Penalty Focus at our beautiful annual Awards Dinner in the Hills of Beverly last Thursday.

We celebrated the twenty years of great work and national leadership by DPF, and thanks to the work of all of our members, friends and supporters, we could glimpse the future where we'll put ourselves out of business by getting our government out of the death business.

Civil Rights hero Julian Bond and novelist John Grisham, who wrote his non-fiction best seller The Innocent Man about a wrongfully convicted man on death row, were among the headliners honored at the dinner at the grand Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Both spoke eloquently about the importance of this work we are doing together. John Grisham spoke about exoneree Greg Wilhoit, who was at the dinner, and how his strength and support and friendship gave Ron Williamson the will to go on when they were both innocent but imprisoned on Oklahoma's death row.

Alec Baldwin, gracious and friendly to everyone - and a lot of people wanted to talk to him, believe me - is truly committed to human rights (check out his blogging at HuffingtonPost.com) and a great supporter of DPF. He presented the honor to Julian Bond. William Baldwin is tall and attentive, and wore the evening's most interesting plaid suit as he presented the award to Azim Khamisa.

Azim Khamisa's talk was the most moving part of the evening for me. His eloquence and grace in the face of overwhelming grief at the death of his son is inspirational. Azim has joined with the grandfather of the boy who killed his own boy, in a message of hope, forgiveness and redemption.

There were more stars.

Actor André Braugher, who works in Hollywood (think "Homicide: Life on the Streets") but lives in New Jersey, presented the award honoring our east coast colleagues who have lifted our spirits and our hopes - not to mention our expectations for 36 more states. New Jersey State Senator Ray Lesniak, who introduced the bill to abolish the death penalty, accepted on behalf of New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, and Celeste Fitzgerald accepted on behalf of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, who have worked long and hard for their great victory.

Hollywood heroes Sid Sheinberg, and DPF Board members Ed Redlich and Sarah Timberman, all TV producers, received long deserved honors. Jane Olson of Human Rights Watch, herself a civil rights hero, honored her colleague Sid Sheinberg. Ed and Sarah were honored by a San Francisco star, District Attorney Kamala Harris, who was elected on a platform of being "smart on crime" without sending anyone to a useless, expensive and dehumanizing state execution.

Melody Ermachild, an investigator who has devoted decades to working on death penalty cases, and Henry Weinstein, who has written persuasively and courageously in the LA Times about the death penalty and criminal justice, were both recognized by our own star and hero, Board President Mike Farrell. The terrific success of the evening was made possible by DPF's exceptional staff, led by Executive Director Lance Lindsey, Program Director Stefanie Faucher, Development Director Alison Powell and Office Manager Yoko Otani-Spurlin.

As a DPF Board member I am grateful to all of these very busy and very dedicated people for their commitment to justice and the intelligence and inspiration of their work and their words.

Mike Farrell

Please forgive this unusual message, but it's an unusual time. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court gave its blessing to lethal injection in the United States. The decision was not a surprise, frankly, but I keep telling myself there's reason to hope... I knew what they'd do but clung to the thought that they might still be moved by the clear tide
of reconsideration that's taking place in our country with regard to state killing.

Nope, tone deaf. Deaf to New Jersey's abolition of the death penalty; deaf to the Gallup poll showing that most Americans prefer Life Without Parole to the death penalty; deaf to the growing chorus of concern about the current direction of our country when more than a million of our citizens are behind bars - one in one hundred American adults, one in 36 Hispanic adults, one in 15 African-American adults, one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34. Deaf. And Dumb.

In the face of this senselessness, I chair an organization made up of hopeful people who, like you, believe we can do better. Like many of you who put your minds, energies, efforts and resources toward creating a better world for future generations, the people of Death Penalty Focus are committed to making a difference in the way things are done, to making a contribution that helps us realize that goal of a fair and
just world.

Today's news hits home because this year is the 20th anniversary of Death Penalty Focus. And while we've clearly made astonishing progress in those two decades, the Supreme arbiters of law sit in their lofty posts and give the back of their hands to the ideals we all cherish.

Well, despite them, we carry on. On April 24th at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, DPF will host its 17th annual Awards Dinner, honoring heroic individuals whose lives and works epitomize the human rights values that sustain us - Governor Jon Corzine and New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Julian Bond, John Grisham, Sid Sheinberg, Ed Redlich & Sarah Timberman and Azim Khamisa will be honored at what is always appreciated as a different and very special evening.

In this unusual time, certainly because of the shaky economy, probably because of the writers' strike, maybe because of the difficult political scene, the event has not attracted the degree of support we had hoped for and counted on. So if you are able to help us celebrate our 20th year working for alternatives to the death penalty by giving a gift of any size, we will be incredibly grateful.

If you've gotten this far, I deeply appreciate it. As said, it's an unusual time.

With love,

Mike

Darryl Stallworth

Recently on Perspectives - KQED Radio
Wed, Apr 16, 2008 -- 7:37 AM
Death Sentence

Darryl Stallworth had no problem with the death penalty, until he prosecuted a high-profile East Bay murder case that changed his perspective.  Stallworth, who is the new Law Enforcement Outreach coordinator for Death Penalty Focus, was recently featured on  Perspectives - a KQED Radio series.

DPF spokespersons did several interviews discussing a package of bills aimed at speeding up and expanding the death penalty in California. Here are a few of the stories:

Capital Public Radio

Sacramento Bee

La Opinion

San Bernardino Sun

DPF's new Law Enforcement Outreach Coordinator, Darryl Stallworth, was also recently featured on KPFK radio in Los Angeles. 

Follow That!

Last night. I performed at Cobb's for a benefit against the death penalty. I thought it hilarious that when everyone wished us good luck, they said it like this. "Go out there and kil...break a leg!" Here was the order of the line up:

Sandy Stec, as host and MC for the night.

Aundre the Wonder Woman. She also sits on the board and works with project innocence. They take another look at people convicted and sentenced to death. As we continue to learn, a lot of the people sentenced to death turn out to be innocent of the crime they were convicted of.

Then it was Brian Copeland. A local celebrity who gained fame with his one man show, Not A Genuine Black Man.

Paula Poundstone, icon and huge supporter of this cause.

Then, me.

Benefit or not, the one thing all comics have in common is our ego's. In a week, I went from being first up on the bill, to the headliner. Not because I wanted to, but because I had the least amount of clout to say where I wanted to be in the line up. I will admit that the idea of following an icon like Paula, especially because she is a master riffer, made me more than a little nervous. But a glance at the evenings program left me with something else to be worried about. After Paula, there was an award ceremony I had to follow.

It's not exactly the raffle at a room in Modesto, but it's this crowds equivalent.
Paula, who said she didn't want to close because she had to leave early, ended up doing 35 minutes instead of the allotted 20. I don't really care. I go long all the time too. But I do it when I am last, not when there is an award and another comic after me. Finally, she gets off the stage to thunderous applause.

James Cromwell, from Six Feet Under, L.A. Confidential and a thousand other movies gets on stage. James Cromwell!

All I can think when I see him is, "You shot Kevin Spacey in L.A. Confidential!"

This isn't just an award they are presenting to Aundre for all her service, it's a reminder to everyone exactly what this is a benefit for. In a very dramatic, professionally trained voice, Mr. Cromwell reads a long dissertation on the horrors of the death penalty and Aundre's impressive list of accomplishments. The room is utterly silent with respect for her and disgust for the death penalty. A few people wipe tears from their eyes. When Mr. Cromwell finally comes to end and presents this award to her, the room explodes in not only a resounding wave of applause, but they rise to their feet!

To read more, go to: Follow that!

Antoine Goff, recipient of the Freedom Award

Last week was the inaugural awards dinner for the Northern California Innocence Project at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. What a beginning! They raised more than ONE MILLION DOLLARS!

An audience of more than 600 people listened to Barry Scheck, co founder of the national Innocence Project in 1992, deliver the keynote address. The group bestowed a number of awards to deserving people in the innocence movement.

The Leadership Award was presented to Frank Quattrone, the investment banker who had been found guilty of obstruction of justice and later had his conviction over turned in March 2006. The Justice Award was presented to former state Attorney General John Van de Kamp, the Media Award was presented to Dana Nachman and Don Hardy. Exoneree, Antoine Goff, received the Freedom Award on behalf of all those who were exonerated.

The Northern California Innocence Project is a program at Santa Clara Law School to help wrongfully convicted prison inmates to gain their freedom. A number of exonerees attended the dinner. They also provided the evening's most moving moment: when they all stood on stage holding a sign with their prison number. One by one they approached the microphone, stated their name, their prison number and the state and the number of years that had been stolen from them. When they finished, in unison, they ripped up their prison number signs and tossed the pieces into the air.

The evening left us all feeling even more committed to ending the injustice of wrongful convictions.

With comedians Paula Poundstone, Brian Copeland, Aundre the Wonderwoman, and Joe Klocek, MC Sandy Stec and special guest James Cromwell (of Babe, Six Feet Under and The Queen), Sunday's benefit event for Death Penalty Focus was a great success. Over 250 DPF supporters attended, to show their support for the death penalty abolition movement. James Cromwell also presented the 2008 Stand Up for Justice award to Aundre Herron, DPF Board Member and attorney with the California Appellate Project.

Aundre Herron, who accepted this award on Sunday, once said, "The death penalty finds its truest and most sinister meaning... as this country's way of destroying the evidence of its failures, its hypocrisy, its shame. It is the last relic of America's worst legacies-- slavery, segregation, lynching, racism, classism and violence. We must be unwavering in our resolve to end the death penalty once and for all. We must not settle for temporary reprieves or lip service to justice. The courtroom battles are critical. The moratoria are critical. But abolition is the main event."

Stand Up for Justice 2008 celebrated all the amazing individuals who fight every day in this country for human rights-- with the subversive power of humor, with legal advocacy, with public education and grassroots activism. Thank you to all who attended, and see you next year! 

Death Penalty Focus star Aundré Herron had a busy week. In addition to appearing at DPF's Comedy Night and receiving the Stand Up for Justice award after having us all rolling in the aisles, she was more in her role as capital defense lawyer as she shared the podium with filmmaker Rachel Lyon and journalist Claire Cooper on Thursday evening at the new downtown campus of San Francisco State University.

They were there for a screening of Rachel Lyon's extraordinary documentary, Race To Execution, which examines racial bias in the American criminal justice system. The film examines bias in the death penalty system and the role of the media in promoting racial stereotypes. It features personal stories of two death row inmates and testimony defense attorneys, prosecutors, scholars, media experts and family members. It's a chilling exposé and a stirring call to action.

The screening room was full to overflowing and there was a great discussion between the expert panel and the audience. The event was cosponsored by the SF State Center for Integration & Improvement of Journalism, Amnesty International, the USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism and The Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

If you are interested in organizing a screening, contact Active Voice, www.activevoice.net.

Nancy Oliveira

As the Chair of the San Francisco Chapter of DPF, I will be posting on this blog from time to time to update you on the chapter's exciting work.

At our last meeting held on March 11th, we had a great conversation about drawing more people to our monthly meetings.  We decided to invite guest speakers to discuss current death penalty issues and/or to do mini-workshops on letter-writing, how to speak on the death penalty, and other topics each month. 

I'll be keeping you posted about future meetings and upcoming speakers.  You can also check our calendar for meeting dates. 

The next meeting is April 9, 2008 from 6:00pm - 7:00pm at 870 Market St., Conference Room 838, San Francisco, CA 94102.

I hope to see you there! 

These two letters to the editor by our board member Nancy Oliveira really hit the mark.

San Francisco Chronicle
Doesn't add up
03/17/08

Editor - Can someone please explain to me why our teachers are getting pink slips and San Quentin gets a new death chamber? Our death penalty system costs taxpayers more than $114 million a year beyond the cost of simply keeping the convicts locked up for life.

Nancy Oliveira
San Francisco

San Jose Mercury News
Teachers cost less than death penalty
03/16/2008

Editor - How can our state government send teachers pink slips and do nothing to end the outrageously expensive death penalty system in our state? The use of executions is far more expensive than simply locking the convicts up for life. We should all be ashamed.

Nancy Oliveira
San Francisco

Pilgrims from all over the world filled the historic Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome as the quarterly meeting of the Steering Committee of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty was held at the Communità di Sant'Egidio on St. Patrick's Day.

Jonathan Solomon

On the night of Thursday March the 6th, the state of Pennsylvania did not execute John Eichinger. He joined a growing group of men and women on death row whose executions have been stayed pending the Supreme Court decision in the case of Baze v. Rees. Each time one of the these lives have been, at least temporarily, spared, Americans have been spared fully confronting the moral implications of capital punishment.

If the court's decision in Baze v. Rees finds that execution by means of lethal injection - specifically the use of a three drug "cocktail" - constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, the fate of capital punishment will be thrown into even greater limbo than it is presently. Eventually, due to challenges to its various components, it may be eliminated entirely. But if capital punishment ends only because of these sorts of challenges and not because of a national reckoning with its full meaning, ironic as it may be, Baze v. Rees and cases like it will have let our nation off the hook in a way that cheapens our claim to being a judicious people.

As a result of repeated exonerations, 58% of Americans, according to a poll by the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization that provides analysis on capital punishment, agree that a moratorium on executions is necessary until the possibility of wrongful convictions is addressed. There is also wide support for limiting the scope of capital punishment as evidenced by the Supreme Court abolishing the practice for juveniles and the mentally retarded and referring to "evolving standards of decency." But for most of us, reaching the first conclusion is obvious and the choosing the second position is relatively easy.

But what if inequity or prosecutorial misconduct of any sort could be eliminated, all the accused had sufficient counsel, there was no possibility of wrongful convictions, no juveniles, or mentally retarded or disabled executed, none with extenuating circumstances? Clearly, this is not possible - but what if it were? For or against, is it right to put a man or woman to death for their crimes? For those who consider it mandatory to have a position on the Iraq war, human rights, the guarantees of the constitution or Roe v. Wade in order to claim to be an engaged citizen, answering "yes" or "no" to his question is mandatory as well.

In fact, that question says as much or more than the other issues about who we are as a people. Particularly, those of us who live with most of our basic needs met. For us, in order to sleep easy while executing another, no matter how brutal or heinous their crime, we must have the talent to distance yourself from that person. Up close, difficult - guards on death row, particularly those involved with the mechanics of the actual execution process, report depression, even PTSD as a result. But safe in our own homes, it is quite possible.

With that talent in hand, we can distance ourselves from others of many descriptions. Executions are not televised; the caskets of soldiers aren't on the news. Similarly, if we can allow for death by commission, we can allow for it by omission. A man dies by lethal injection at San Quentin; an elderly woman dies in an SRO for lack of medical attention. And that, in turn, entails a talent for ranking, each person becoming a point of reference for our own lives. We end up terrified of being an unfortunate and envious of the more fortunate. The driver of the Honda hands a dollar to the man at the top of the off-ramp and redoubles his efforts to own a Lexus. As much as we don't want to see the families still living in squalor in the wake of Katrina, we want to watch the Oscars. To read, even to write, that somehow executing a killer has any relation to a desire to watch a movie star walk down a red carpet can seem absurd, but our society is caught up in the artificial, and the death penalty is impossible without that.

In addition, boiling down the passion for justice that we do have to a necessity for executing one person demonstrates in a microcosm how our politics addresses symptoms rather than causes, thinks short term rather than in the long run and when we get rained on, look down instead of up. One of the unlimited supply of examples: California has been going back and forth on spending as much as $356 million on a new death row facility while the budget for drug rehabilitation programs under its Prop. 36 will be reduced to approximately $100 million in 2008-09.

Finally, what does it say about us when we express our passion for justice by way of retribution rather than compassion?

This video featuring DPF Board Member, Aundre Herron, testifying in front of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice is really great.  It's a little less than three minutes, but it really hits on several good points.

I sat there marveling that this historic event was actually taking place. On February 20, the vast chamber of the L.A. Board of Supervisors had been turned over to the Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice for the sole purpose of examining the death penalty in California. Chaired by John Van de Kamp, this blue-ribbon, independent, non-partisan commission spent the day hearing testimony from experts and comments from the public.

For years, abolitionists in California had dreamed of the day when the system of state killing would be subjected to a searching and comprehensive investigation comparable to the Illinois commission appointed by former governor George Ryan. That commission found 85 serious flaws in Illinois' death penalty. A subsequent study by Robert Sanger found that California suffers from over 90% of the very same flaws and has many other serious flaws of its own.

So here I was watching the culmination of all the efforts to force California to scrutinize its own capital punishment system. Witness after witness gave devastating testimony of how the system is stacked against a defendant, the government possessing extraordinary resources and the defense scrambling to catch up. Of course, prosecutors also appeared to defend the system and reassure the Commission that they would welcome certain reforms so long as they could go on executing people.

As it happened, I was the first person to speak during the public comment period. I came with one purpose in mind: to urge the Commission not merely to recommend reforms (which may never been enacted) but to step up and acknowledge that even if all those reforms were implemented, the system, infected by human error at every stage, posed the grave risk of executing innocent people.

I reminded the Commission of Justice Harry Blackmun's haunting words in Callins v Collins (1994) that "from this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death." And I quoted the Illinois commission which in 2002 unanimously concluded that "no system, given human nature and frailties, could ever be devised or constructed that would work perfectly and guarantee absolutely that no innocent person is ever again sentenced to death."

The California Commission is expected to issue its final report in June. Doubtless it will catalogue the fatal flaws in the system. That will be a tremendous step forward for the cause of justice. The real question is whether the Commission will echo the dire warning from Illinois and thereby strengthen the hands of those of us who want to abolish capital punishment once and for all.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said "The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Never has that statement resonated with us as it does now, facing the 20th Anniversary of Death Penalty Focus. For two decades, the staff and board of this organization have worked to educate the public about the brutality and injustice inherent in the death penalty system, and to mobilize people to fight for human rights.

With an effective stay on executions nationwide while the Supreme Court reviews the legality of lethal injection, it's more clear now than ever that we are winning and we stand in awe of our allies in this fight. On this website, you can find information about several exciting new projects we've launched to carry us toward our inevitable goal of abolition, including California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (www.californiacrimevictims.org), Law Enforcement Outreach, and the Clergy Mobilization Project.

Thank you for your support throughout the years!

Arthur Carmona

Arthur Carmona died Sunday, February 17th, the victim of an apparent murder. He was only 26 years old. At 16 he was the victim of California's criminal justice system. Convicted and incarcerated for a crime he never committed, Arthur spent two years in prison before he was eventually exonerated. As deeply tragic as these two events are - and all of us who knew him are still shaken by this terrible loss - Arthur's short life is an exemplary and inspiring lesson in courage and the invincibility of the human spirit.

From the moment of his release from prison, Arthur joined the struggle to make our criminal justice system less criminal. He passionately spoke out against a system that is plagued by unfairness and injustice, and that far too often results in tragic wrongful convictions like his. He spoke to anyone who would listen, from political leaders to the general public, from young people in schools to our representatives in Sacramento.

"Now, I am fighting to prevent wrongful convictions and to help innocent people still in prison," he would quietly but resolutely declare. And from the deepest of convictions that can only come from someone who has had to live through so much injustice from such a young age, he did.

Here is Arthur's op-ed piece that appeared in the LA Times last year. His voice, his selfless commitment, will continue to be honored by all of us who continue to fight for genuine justice in our criminal justice system.

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Los Angeles Times
July 13, 2007
Doing time for no crime
A young man freed after being wrongly imprisoned argues for three remedies.
By Arthur Carmona

ONE WEEK after my 16th birthday, I was arrested and charged with crimes I did not commit. I remained behind bars in a life unsuitable for any innocent person. After I served nearly three years of a 17-year sentence, the real facts of my case began to emerge and a judge let me go free. My life, however, will never be the same, and I am determined to change the laws that make it so easy for innocent people to be convicted.

On Feb. 12, 1998, I decided to visit a friend. While I was walking down a residential street, a Costa Mesa police officer stopped me at gunpoint. I was handcuffed and surrounded by other police officers with guns drawn. One officer forced a baseball cap onto my head and made me stand on the curb. I did not know it at the time, but witnesses from a robbery had been brought to identify me in what is known as an "in-field show-up," a procedure that is highly likely to produce mistaken identifications. I was arrested in connection with 13 strong-arm robberies.

My mother was able to gather evidence proving that her 15-year-old son was in school during 11 of the robberies. But we had no evidence to prove that, at 2 a.m. on a school night, I was home asleep while someone robbed a Denny's restaurant, and we had no proof that I was home baby-sitting my 11-year-old sister during the time a juice bar in another city was being robbed.

The getaway driver, a parolee with a long criminal record, admitted being involved in the robberies. He first told police he did not know me and that I was not involved. Then the Orange County district attorney offered him a sentence of two years if he would say I was. He took the plea bargain and his story changed; he was freed from prison before I was.

The court found me guilty of two strong-arm robberies, and I was facing 35 years for crimes I took no part in. The judge sentenced me to 12 years in state prison. I was 16, with no criminal record. I would have been eligible for parole in nine years, with two strikes to my name, one strike away from a life term.

Two and a half years later, just before my hearing on getting a new trial based on a writ of habeas corpus, the Orange County district attorney offered me a deal, and after three years of suffering beatings, threats and degradation in a series of juvenile and state prisons, I accepted it. I signed a "stipulation" - a piece of paper stating that I would not sue any city, county or state prosecutors. Orange County Superior Court Judge Everett Dickey ordered me released and my felonies vacated.

Although I could finally go home, I could not go back to my old life. While I was behind bars, my high school class graduated without me. I was no longer the fun-loving teenager I once was. The criminal justice system took my innocence from me. I have not received any compensation, or even an apology. And the two felonies remain on my record, despite the judge's order and the intervention last year of then-Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer.

Now, I am fighting to prevent wrongful convictions and to help innocent people still in prison. I am also supporting a series of state bills that would make it harder for what happened to me to happen to other people. I have traveled to Sacramento in the last two years to urge the Legislature to pass legislation that would help prevent wrongful convictions. Two of these bills passed last year, only to be vetoed by the governor. This year, three bills are being considered.

Senate Bill 756, sponsored by Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles), would require the state Department of Justice to develop new guidelines for eyewitness identification procedures. For example, guidelines in other states limit the use of in-field show-ups like the one that led to my wrongful conviction.

Senate Bill 511, sponsored by Elaine Alquist (D-Santa Clara), would require recording of the entire interrogation, including the Miranda warning, in cases of violent felonies. Electronic recording of interrogations would not only help end false confessions but also discourage police detectives from lying during interrogations - as they did in my case by claiming to have videotaped evidence of me.

Senate Bill 609, sponsored by Majority Leader Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), would prevent convictions based on uncorroborated testimony by jailhouse snitches.

The Legislature should pass all three bills, and the governor should sign them. These reforms are urgently needed to prevent wrongful and unjust incarcerations.

Prison is no place for an innocent man, let alone an innocent kid.

ARTHUR CARMONA testified recently in support of state legislation aimed at preventing wrongful convictions.