Al Lawler's monthly musings, for June 2008

We had a fine spring. Unlike in 2007, this year's spring weather included rains, real rains, not a drought, and no blueberry-killing late freeze. (We have millions of blueberries!) No lingering smoke was in the air either. (Most of last spring the Okeefenokee Swamp down in South Georgia/North Florida was on fire!)

We are all enjoying having Karen refugees from Myanmar (formerly Burma) living here with us. They are quiet, industrious folks who are eager students and who join us wholeheartedly in Jubilee worship services. In addition, these folks are not from cities. They know the country well and love to work in our garden.

But not all the news is good.

Jubilee has long had a tradition of visiting prisoners and working against the death penalty. Until May, 2008, no execution had occurred in the U.S. since September 25, 2007. The U.S. Supreme Court had halted executions while it considered the protocol that the states use to do the lethal injections. Then in April, the Supreme Court ruled: it affirmed the existing protocol.

This piece of bad news came in the midst of a pendulum swing against the death penalty. There is much that is encouraging. The moratorium on executions put into place in 2000 by then Illinois Governor George Ryan continues. New York's death penalty statute was declared unconstitutional, and a new statute is not on the horizon, so there are no executions there. Last fall, the New Jersey legislature actually abolished the death penalty, the first state to do so in recent history.

But what is on the mind of the 106 people on Georgia's death row is the bad news. On May 6, with the execution of Earl Lynd, Georgia became the first state to execute a person since last fall. Another execution was scheduled for May 22, but in a rare move, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles commuted David Crowe's death sentence to life without the possibility of parole. Meanwhile, the Georgia Supreme Court has cleared the way for two more men to be executed, lifting stays that had been put in place last fall.

So we appeal for prayer--for these men, for Troy Davis, whose pending case involves a very strong innocence claim, and for all the death row prisoners that Jubilee folks visit: Keith Tharpe, Emmanuel Hammond, Marcus Johnson, Eric Perkinson, Travis Hittson, Michael Cohen, Michael Miller, Mark McPherson, and Ray Ward. Please pray for the more than 3,000 people on death rows in the U.S., their families and friends, the victims' families and friends, court and prison personnel, and the lawyers and activists involved in this issue.

 

 

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