Tag: death penalty

Despite Popular Opposition, The Death Penalty Marches on Unabated

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April 23, Rick Halperin, director of the SMU Dallas Human Rights Program, for a commentary about the history of the death penalty in the U.S. Published in History News Network under the heading Despite Popular Opposition, The Death Penalty Marches on Unabated: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/185486

Twenty five years ago, on a beautiful day in late April, 1998, I witnessed a lethal injection execution in the death chamber in Huntsville, Texas. At that time, Frank McFarland was the 458th condemned inmate to be put to death in the United States after executions resumed in January, 1977.  McFarland was the 150th condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas, which resumed state killings of inmates on December 7, 1982.

The world in general, and this country in particular, were very different in many ways. But one of the pathetic constants still in effect in America today is the barbaric practice of executing condemned inmates across the nation.

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Lethal Injection Was Once Considered a “Less Barbaric” Form of Execution. Now It’s Clear It’s Inhumane

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Jan, 13, Rick Halperin, director of the SMD Dallas Human Rights Program, for a piece that condemns capital punishment and the practice of lethal injection in Texas and elsewhere. Published in Texas Monthly Magazine under the heading Lethal Injection Was Once Considered a “Less Barbaric” Form of Execution: https://tinyurl.com/hphv5j27

​More than 40 ago, during the first week of December in 1982, the U.S. executed its first prisoner using lethal injection. On December 7 of that year, six years after the death penalty was revalidated by the Supreme Court, Charles Brooks Jr., who had been convicted of murder, was executed in Huntsville, here in Texas. To date, 1,380 others have been executed via lethal injection, comprising nearly 90 percent of all death row executions. In 2023, eight more Texans will be executed by injection.

Just days ago, on January 10, Robert Fratta, who was sentenced for hiring two men to kill his estranged wife, was put to death in Texas’s first execution of 2023. He was part of a lawsuit brought with three other inmates alleging that the execution drugs used in Texas are long past their expiration dates, thus forcing the condemned to suffer inhumane and painful executions. Texas courts have consistently rejected all such inmate claims, despite a history of botched and painful executions in this state, and they let Fratta’s execution proceed.

 

 

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50 Years Ago, a SCOTUS Decision Placed a Moratorium on Executions. It’s Time to Revive it, Permanently

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June 28, Rick Halperin, director of the SMD Dallas Human Rights Program, for a piece recalling a brief period 50 years ago when the U.S. was without the death penalty. Published in History News Network under the heading 50 Years Ago, a SCOTUS Decision Placed a Moratorium on Executions. It’s Time to Revive it, Permanently: https://bit.ly/3OOlj4A

Fifty years ago in 1972, as spring faded and summer arrived in late June, America (and the world) was a vastly different place.

The United States was still entangled in the quagmire of the Vietnam War, and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of individuals still marched on city streets and on university campuses demanding an end to the bloodshed that would ultimately claim the lives of over 58,000 American soldiers and 3 million Vietnamese.

On May 15, Alabama Governor and presidential candidate George Wallace was shot (and paralyzed) by Arthur Bremer in a parking lot in Laurel, Maryland. Within 2 weeks, there would be two failed break-ins at the Watergate complex in Virginia, a crime that led to the downfall and resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974.

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America should honor MLK’s vision by halting the death penalty

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Jan. 16, Rick Halperin, director of the SMD Dallas Human Rights Program, for a commentary advocating that the U.S. should follow the belief of Dr. Martin Luther King and end capital punishment. Published in the Dallas Morning News under the heading: America should honor MLK’s vision by halting the death penalty: https://bit.ly/3GHjtP4

On Monday the nation will pause, perhaps too briefly, to remember and pay tribute to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., arguably the leading U.S. (and global) civil and human rights activist who was the voice of reason and conscience during the onset and growth of the modern civil rights struggle in this country between 1955 and 1968.

As America reflects on King’s life, oratory and inspirational vision of what this country could, should and is still struggling to become, I would urge us all to remember another anniversary commemorated on the same day. On Jan. 17, 1977, Gary Gilmore, a convicted felon on death row in Utah, was executed by a Utah firing squad and thus became the first condemned inmate to be put to death in this country in 10 years — a mere six months after the U.S. Supreme Court, on July 2, 1976, upheld the legality of the death penalty in the case of Gregg vs. Georgia.

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Is Virginia’s Move to Abolish the Beginning of the End of the Death Penalty in America?

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Feb. 28, Rick Halperin, director of the SMU Dallas Human Rights Program, for a piece chronicling the history of capital punishment in the U.S. following the news that the Commonwealth of Virginia was soon to abolish the death penalty. Published in History News Network under the heading Is Virginia’s Move to Abolish the Beginning of the End of the Death Penalty in America?: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/179360

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Given all the crises the nation has been dealing with in the last year, it is easy to overlook a major human rights accomplishment and advancement that is occurring right before us.

The impending abolition of the death penalty in Virginia is indeed an historic moment in this country’s human rights history.

It continues a long trend over several decades in which numerous states throughout the country reached similar conclusions to end the barbaric practice of state-sanctioned executions.  Of course, as a Southern state and the former capital of the Confederacy, Virginia’s move is all the more noteworthy. I do expect the trend to abolish the death penalty in America to continue, but not anytime soon in other Southern states.

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How the death penalty fails Texas

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Dec. 1, Rick Halperin, director of the SMU Embrey Human Rights Program, for a piece along with co-author Roger Barnes about Texas being “ground zero” in the U.S. for carrying out capital punishment. Published in the Dallas Morning News:  http://bit.ly/37XAwM4

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Thus far in 2019, there have been 20 executions carried out in the United States.

Eight of them have been in Texas.

There are four more executions scheduled in the country by year’s end, and one of them is to be carried out in Texas. Since the death penalty in the U.S. was reinstated in 1976, there have been a total of 1,510 executions. A staggering 566 of them have been in Texas.

In other words, Texas has been ground zero for capital punishment for over 40 years. . .

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