Conference Focuses on Small
Victories, New Tactics
Oct. 1, 1999
By Robert Anthony Phillips
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Robert
Anthony Phillips/APBnews.com
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Bob Allen
protests outside the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office
with a 15-foot skeleton.
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PHILADELPHIA
(APBnews.com) -- Ken Robison knows he is not going to get much
sympathy if his son, Larry, is executed for beheading one man and
butchering four other people in Fort Worth, Texas.
He and 184 anti-death penalty activists gathered here from around
the country know they have not yet unplugged the electric chair in
Florida, stopped the lethal injections in Texas or convinced all the
states that teenagers who murder should not be executed.
And they know that at least 70 percent of Americans are in favor
of capital punishment and that the United States may be on its way
to a record number of executions this year.
Yet Robison came here all the way from Texas, anyway. He says his
son doesn't deserve a death sentence because he is "crazy."
Trying to 'tame the beast'
He and the other activists are here for the annual conference of
the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP).
They are the people on the front lines of the battle to end the
marches to death chambers around the United States, and although
they don't have any grand illusions that the executions will soon
end, they feel they have work to do.
They are meeting to plot a countrywide strategy, network and do a
little bit of old-fashioned civil disobedience -- protesting. And
many agree that in order for the movement to succeed someday, they
must reinvent themselves so that mainstream America hears them.
"We don't have to kill the beast, we just want to tame it," said
Steven Hawkins, the Harvard-educated lawyer who is the executive
director of the NCADP.
And that beast, according to Hawkins, is the death penalty.
Made 'martyrs' of convicted killers
Whether the anti-death penalty movement is using the proper sword
in their quest to slay it has become a matter of debate in some
quarters.
The movement has been criticized for lacking creativity and
focus. And Andrew Hammel, a Texas criminal lawyer who handles
appeals for death row inmates, has even called the anti-death
penalty movement "a resounding, cataclysmic failure" that has made
almost no headway.
Hammel believes the abolitionists have made numerous mistakes
that have made most Americans distance themselves from the movement.
Members have backed convicted killers who were guilty and made
"martyrs" out of them, he said. They have also allowed too many
fringe groups to join the movement, further confusing the message,
Hammel said. He says anti-death penalty groups have failed to reach
influential people.
"There's a lot of preaching to the choir," said Robison.
Screaming doesn't work
Standing on a street corner and screaming for the end of the
death penalty for moral reasons just isn't reaching mainstream
America, Hammel believes. Besides that, most of the people on death
row "are guilty," he said.
Some criticism has even come from other reform movements.
In a death penalty strategy conference earlier this year in
Chicago, leaders of other reform movements were asked to take a look
at the way capital punishment abolitionists were doing things. The
conference concluded that the movement was "in danger of dying" if
new strategies and energies were not brought in.
New strategies, new focus
Hawkins, 37, has heard the criticisms, although he does not agree
with them all. He said that the movement is changing and will become
more focused.
"There are many roads in the abolitionist movement," Hawkins
said. "You are going to see more sophisticated approaches. We are
using focus groups, polling, bringing up fairness questions and
bringing up the pocketbook issue [the cost of trying a capital
case]."
He also said the NCADP will target states where they have a
chance of some success in whittling away at the death penalty. For
example, Nebraska lawmakers passed a moratorium on executions until
the judicial process could be studied. However, the governor vetoed
the new law. In Montana, a new law forbids the execution of anyone
who committed a murder under the age of 19.
The legislation in both states shows movement on the death
penalty issue and promises fertile ground for more campaigns there,
Hawkins believes.
Targeting politicians, placing ads
In order to reach out to more politicians in key areas, Kentucky
abolitionist Patrick Delahanty, a Catholic priest, said his group in
the upcoming weeks will be placing anti-death penalty ads in
newspapers in the areas where members of the state senate's
judiciary committee live.
And in Virginia, Henry Heller, director of the Virginians For
Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said that rather than just
shouting for an end to executions, abolitionists would like to see
those serving life in prison be forced to make restitution to
victims.
Polls show about 74 percent of Virginians favor the death
penalty. However, Heller said that seven consecutive years of
polling show that when Virginians are given the alternative of life
with no possibility of parole for a minimum of 25 years, combined
with restitution to the victims' families, support for the death
penalty is cut in half, with 40 percent supporting capital
punishment and 58 percent supporting alternatives to execution.
Activists to press for moratoriums
In addition, Hawkins said he expects anti-death penalty groups to
push for moratoriums on executions around the county.
Activists said that even if they get a local city council to pass
a resolution calling for the state to halt executions, it is a small
victory and represents some movement on the issue.
Hawkins said the coalition is also working to bring more
conservative groups into the fold. "I had lunch with Pat Robertson,"
he said. "We look at the longtime view and have patience."
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Robert
Anthony Phillips/APBnews.com
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Steven
Hawkins
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Hawkins said that those who argue that the movement has been a
failure simply because it has not ended all executions are not being
fair. "There will be defeats in all of this. Sometimes we'll be a
step forward and then two steps back."
Protests end in arrests
But while strategy meetings were going on at the conference and
there was talk of the movement putting on a suit and tie and hiring
professional pollsters to zoom in on target groups, there was still
time for a bit of civil disobedience to make a point.
And there was Bob Allen, right in the middle of it.
He was inside a 15-foot-tall puppet, complete with skeletal face,
standing across from the Arch Street office of Philadelphia District
Attorney Lynne Abraham.
He was among about 40 activists who kicked off the conference by
rallying against what the coalition believes is Abraham's excessive
use of the death penalty as punishment for murder.
Ten protesters were arrested when they sat down on the steps of
the building. They were charged with obstructing an entrance to a
highway or building, then handcuffed, booked and released within
several hours.
The NCADP and a local abolitionist group in Pennsylvania have
targeted Abraham, calling her one of the deadliest prosecutors in
America.
Allen said he was not a member of the coalition or any death
penalty group in Pennsylvania. He said he has protested the U.S.
bombing of Iraq and the former Yugoslavia.
Did he think he was accomplishing anything in taking part in the
protest?
"The absolute worst thing to do is to remain quiet," he said.
