Updates

29 Years for 13 Seconds

January 17, 2018 by Dennis Seavers

Special performance of “29 Years For 13 Seconds: The Injustices of Justice”, sponsored by Interfaith CommUNITY Spiritual Center and Death Penalty Alternatives of Arizona.

At 16 years old, Vance “Duke” Webster witnessed two friends commit a crime. When refused to “snitch” he was sentenced to life in prison. A one-act play based on a true story, “29 Years For 13 Seconds” is less about Webster’s time in prison and more about how women, religion and social services have created wild waves that he rides without the slightest hint of resentment. Don’t believe it? Come check it out. One night only, 7 p.m., Friday, January 19, 2018, 952 E. Baseline Rd, #102, Mesa, AZ.

NOTE: A suggested love offering of $10 will be collected the night of the show. You may also pre-purchase tickets

Arizona ends automatic solitary confinement of death-row inmates

January 5, 2018 by Dennis Seavers

From the Death Penalty Information Center:

Several months after Arizona settled a lawsuit over the conditions of confinement on the state’s death row, the state has ended the practice of automatically housing condemned prisoners in solitary confinement, and prisoners and prison officials alike are praising the changes.

Carson McWilliams

Carson McWilliams (pictured right), Division Director for Offender Operations in the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC), told the Arizona Republic that the new incarceration conditions provide an “atmosphere where [prisoners] can socialize,” resulting in “reduce[d] anxiety” that, in turn, “adds to safety control” of the prison. And, prison officials say, it has reduced institutional costs.

Prior to the lawsuit, death row had meant 23-hour-per-day confinement in a concrete cell the size of a parking space, shuttered by a steel door with a perforated slot through which the prisoners would receive their meals, and with a bench bed and a sink attached to an uncovered toilet. Prisoners had no contact visits with families or lawyers, were handcuffed behind the back and subjected to body-cavity searches whenever they left their cells, and were restricted to showering or exercising three times a week. They also were denied prison jobs and educational opportunities. About the solitary conditions, McWilliams remarked, “The more you’re restricted inside a cell, the more likely you are to have depression, to have anxiety, to have other types of mental problems that could lead to some type of problem inside the system, whether its self harm, or suicide, or aggression towards a staff member or towards another inmate.”

One death-row prisoner who was interviewed by the paper said, “It’s hard to explain the deprivation. . . . It weighs on your mind.” McWilliams said it now requires fewer officers to manage death row because officers no longer have to deliver individual meals or individually escort each of the 120 prisoners. Kevin Curran, who has been a prison warden at various facilities run by the ADC, said that he “feels safer among the death-row men than among the career criminals and gangsters in the general population.” Under the new conditions, prisoners are able to socialize with each other in activities such as playing basketball, volleyball, or board games, and can eat meals together. One ADC corrections officer told the Arizona Republic that he was “apprehensive” at first about the changes, but the transition has been “very good” with only a “few minor incidents,” which were “a lot less” than he expected.

(M. Kiefer, Arizona death row comes out of solitary, giving convicts more human contact, socialization, Arizona Republic, Dec. 19, 2017.)

World Day Against the Death Penalty

October 13, 2017 by Dennis Seavers

10 reasons to end the use of the death penalty

No state should have the power to takes a person’s life.
It is irrevocable. No justice system is safe from judicial error and innocent people are likely to be sentenced to death.
It does not keep society safe. It has never been conclusively shown that the death penalty deters crimes more effectively than other punishments.
It is unfair. The death penalty is discriminatory and is often used disproportionately against people who are poor, people with intellectual or psychosocial disabilities, and from racial and ethnic minority group. In some places, the imposition of the death penalty is used to target particular groups based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or religion.
Not all murder victims’ families want the death penalty. A large and growing number of victims’ families worldwide reject the death penalty and are speaking out against it, saying it does not bring back or honor their murdered family member, does not heal the of pain of the murder, and violates their ethical and religious beliefs.
It creates more pain. The death penalty inflicts pain on the families of people on death row and causes great pain to the family members of people who have been executed.
It is inhuman, cruel and degrading. Conditions on death row inflict extreme psychological suffering, and execution is a physical and mental assault.
It is applied overwhelmingly in violation of international standards. It breaches the principles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that everyone has the right to life and that no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. On six occasions, the United Nations General Assembly has called for the establishment of a moratorium on the use of the death penalty (resolutions 62/149, 63/168, 65/206, 67/176,69/186 and 71/187, adopted in December 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016).
It is inefficient. It diverts time and money from other more efficient law enforcement measures.
It denies any possibility of rehabilitation for the criminal.

Details at http://www.worldcoalition.org/worldday.html

Former Arizona Supreme Court chief justice to speak at quarterly meeting April 8 in Tucson

April 4, 2017 by Dennis Seavers

Former Chief Justice Stanley Feldman

Hon. Stanley Feldman: Arizona death penalty beyond repair

What: Hon. Stanley Feldman, speaking at Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona quarterly meeting
When: Saturday, April 8, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Where: Monterey Court, 505 W. Miracle Mile, Tucson
How much: Free and open to the public
More information: (602) 357-4848

Former Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Stanley Feldman is the featured speaker at the quarterly meeting of Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona. The program, which will feature dignitaries including the Hon. Ron Barber and Rep. David Bradley (D-Tucson), will begin at 11:30 a.m., Saturday, April 8, at Monterey Court, 505 W. Miracle Mile.

Feldman served as an Arizona Supreme Court justice for 21 years, from 1982–2002, including a five-year term as chief justice (1992–1996). As chief justice, he was active in the National Center for State Courts and the Conference of Chief Justices. He retired from the court in 2002 and still practices law at the firm he helped form in 1968, Miller, Pitt, Feldman & McAnally.

Feldman has said the capital punishment system is broken beyond repair. Feldman, who sits on the Advisory Board of Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona, would rather see offenders sentenced to life instead of death.

Maricopa County is a death-penalty “outlier”

September 1, 2016 by Dennis Seavers

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery

A Harvard Law School report identifies Maricopa County as an outlier in its use of the death penalty. As the Phoenix New Times reports:

“Too Broken to Fix: Part I: An In-Depth Look at America’s Outlier Death Penalty Counties,” by the school’s Fair Punishment Project, identifies Maricopa as one of 16 “outliers” among the nation’s 3,143 counties or “county equivalents,” for having sentenced five or more defendants to death during the period 2010-2015.

You can read the full news article by clicking here, or you can read the report itself by following this link (PDF).

Why does Arizona have one of the largest death row inmate populations?

August 22, 2016 by Dennis Seavers

ABC 15 offered a comparison of Arizona to other states with the death penalty and asks why Arizona has one of the largest death-row populations? The article also offers statistical information on the death penalty.

For more information, click here to see the full story. (The link will take you off the Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona website.)

Arizona’s death penalty faces uncertain future

June 25, 2016 by Dennis Seavers

The Arizona Department of Corrections has removed the controversial midazolam from its lethal-injection protocol. And because it doesn’t have the other drugs in the protocol for carrying out executions, the Department can’t conduct any executions in the near future.

As a result, the death penalty in Arizona is on hold for the “foreseeable future.”

For the entire news article on this development, please click here to go to the Arizona Republic website.

Giving on Tuesday Boomed, Early Estimates Show

December 10, 2015 by Dennis Seavers

We are so grateful for your participation in #GivingTuesday! It’s a great start into our year end fund raising effort – we hope to secure donations of $50,000 in December to launch us into the most active and ambitious year of our history.

We began an initiative and are collecting signatures to remove the death penalty from Arizona Revised Statutes replacing it with life in prison without the possibility of parole. As you can imagine securing 175,000 signatures – the amount we estimate necessary to have the required number of valid signatures – demands both work and substantial funding. Volunteers are requested to assist in gathering signature, but we realize volunteers alone won’t be able to obtain all the signatures so we will employ paid petition gatherers. We will also need money to hire an executive director and a field organizer to manage the campaign. When we are successful, the initiative will be placed on the ballot and Arizona can join Nebraska, Maryland, Connecticut, Illinois, New Mexico, New Jersey & New York (7 states which have recently stopped executions) and the other 16 states which don’t execute! 23 states do not kill!

While gathering the necessary signatures is a huge task, it is certainly not all that is required. Getting the initiative on the ballot is just the start and will mean little if it is not passed by the voters. The number of citizens favoring executions is at the lowest point in years. While it still hovers around 60%, the number drops below 50% when those polled are offered the option of life without the possibility of parole. It will be our task therefore not only to gather the signatures, but also to educate the public and explain why state executions are bad public policy and how they don’t serve society.

Those who advocate state sponsored killing claim it is a deterrent – there is no proof that this is true, in fact see the opposite – states which execute have a higher capital crime rate… violence begets violence. Some claim it is a closure for the victims friends and family members, yet many will acknowledge that there is no “closure” and peace comes with forgiveness, not with vengeance. Only 2% of the nations 3,143 counties account for the majority of the executions in our nation, unfortunately Maricopa and Pima counties are ranked among the leaders. Let us not forget the costs – not only financial (estimated to be 4 to 7 times more expensive than life incarceration) but also emotional as the pain that survivors experience in our broken system is heart-wrenching. Lastly, we risk killing the innocent – studies show an estimated 4% of the prisoners on death row are innocent and sadly we have killed innocent people.

As a youngster Mom always told me I would be known by the company I kept. As long as we practice state killing we are keeping company with China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and North Korea. Have these nations not been identified as “The Axis of Evil”?

Please join with us – you have an opportunity to make a real difference in our society as you donate your time, talent and resources.

Many thanks,
Bob Hungerford, President

Giving Tuesday

November 30, 2015 by Dennis Seavers

Hopefully you saw the CBS 60 Minutes program Sunday November 29th which featured the July 23rd 2014 botched execution of Joseph Wood. It clearly illustrated the work that must be done in Arizona. When he was questioned about Arizona’s illegal purchase of drugs to kill Jeffery Ladrigan in 2010, Attorney General Mark Brnovich stated he wasn’t the AG at that time and assured us that during his tenure as AG Arizona would adhere to all state and federal laws relating to the procurement of drugs to be used in executions. After the interview was conducted it was learned that illegal drugs purchased in India were seized at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix.

#GivingTuesday, now in its fourth year, is a global day of giving fueled by the power of social media and collaboration. Observed on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving (in the U.S.) and the widely recognized shopping events Black Friday and Cyber Monday, #GivingTuesday kicks off the charitable season, when many focus on their holiday and end-of-year giving. Since its inaugural year in 2012, #GivingTuesday has become a movement that celebrates and supports giving and philanthropy with events throughout the year. We hope our affiliation will launch a drive permitting us to hire staff and move forward with an ambitious plan to end capital punishment.

#GivingTuesday harnesses the potential of social media and the generosity of people around the world to bring about real change in their communities; it provides a platform for them to encourage the donation of time, resources and talents to address local challenges. It also brings together the collective power of a unique blend of partners— nonprofits, civic organizations, businesses and corporations, as well as families and individuals—to encourage and amplify small acts of kindness.

As a global movement, #GivingTuesday unites countries around the world by sharing our capacity to care for and empower one another.