- Join me in Cambridge, MA, on Sept 16 for a showing of Dead Man Walking. We'll have a talkback after the showing. http://bit.ly/d3q4nk #
It’s a long while since I last saw the movie of Dead Man Walking, so I’m looking forward to watching the movie with a group of people getting together at a special showing in Cambridge, Massachusetts in September.
This is a special event. It’s being organized jointly by the Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty (MCADP) and the Dead Man Walking School Theatre Project, aka the Play Project. All the proceeds from the night will go towards the Play Project.
The MCADP has become a major sponsor of the Play Project, enabling it to reach more students, more colleges and more communities across the country. Harvard, Yale, Marshall and a bunch of smaller colleges and high schools will be participating in the coming year, using the power of art to open up deep thought and discourse on the death penalty.
If it’s been a while since you saw Dead Man Walking or if you’ve never seen it or if you’d simply like to come along and join the discussion, here are the details:
Where: Brattle Street Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA
When: Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 7pm
(Click the image on the right to get a copy of the event brochure.)
After the screening, we’ll have a talk back session where I’ll be joined by the Play Project’s director, Steven Crimaldi. I’ll also be signing copies of Dead Man Walking and The Death of Innocents.
Won’t you join me?
- From Radelet study: results indicate odds of receiving death sentence in a Black victim case average 97.3% lower than in White victim case. #
Here, the results indicate that the odds of receiving a death sentence in a Black victim case are on average 97.3% lower than are the odds of a death sentence in a White victim case (i.e., 1-.027 or 97.3 %), controlling for the other variables in the analysis.
- Glenn L. Pierce & Michael L. Radelet, “Death Sentencing in East Baton Rouge Parish, 1990-2008” [to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Louisiana Law Review]
Again, from a new study to be published soon in the Louisiana Law Review, yet another confirmation about how racism fuels the death penalty.
If only the Supreme Court in their jurisprudence would weigh practical consequences of their death penalty decisions. Along with the Framers’ intent, historical context, textual interpretation and precedent, there’s also “purpose” and “practical consequences” to consider.
The 14th Amendment clearly calls for “equal justice under law” – yet here in East Baton Rouge Parish in the Deep South former, black-lynching slave state, is this whopping, blatant, crying-to-heaven pattern of so valuing the lives of White victims over the lives of African Americans. That the chances of prosecutors seeking the death penalty for the murderers of Black people is virtually nil. A 97.3 per cent value discount rate is very large, indeed.
In practice it says your-life-doesn’t-count-for-beans, so we’ll hardly ever seek the ultimate penalty for anyone who terminates your (miserable, troublesome, not-worth-the-trouble) life.
What’s the original purpose of the death penalty, what did it set out to achieve when it was put in place 30 plus years ago? So , how is it actually playing out in practice on the ground?
If justices on the United States Supreme Court would remove their ideological blinders in “interpreting” the Constitution to include practical consequences, they would end the death penalty tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM.
Here it is August and I’ve been in the writing cave since June. I always underestimate what writing a book entails.
“River” tells of the spiritual journey that brought me to death row, which is about my coming to grips with real Christianity and what it entails. I mean the radical inclusivity, embracing and fighting for the despised ones, the ones mainstream society shuns and abhors and terminates without batting an eye.
Believe me, it’s an interesting experience to witness my own soul searching and growing toward a more authentic life and to see the threads way,way back in childhood of myself-me. Like the confidence I had from the beginning from all the good, lavish love of my Mama and how she’d be rocking me to sleep and feel me relax, my head under her arm like a chick under a ma chicken’s wing, and she’d start to get up to put me in my bed and hear from under her arm the command: “Rock!”