[CUADPUpdate] 9 Death Penalty Abolition Activists Arrested at U.S. Supreme Court

[Abraham J. Bonowitz]

TO CUADPUpdate and a few others....

9 Death Penalty Abolition Activists Arrested at U.S. Supreme Court
Action punctuates news coverage of the day....


Greetings All!

Visit http://www.abolition.org/jan17-2007.html to see the initial 
report and links to coverage of the action in the New York Times, the 
Washington Post, and the Legal Times.  Photos and reflections of the 
participants will be posted shortly -- after Scott and others get 
some well deserved rest.  They were freed shortly before 6pm after 
more than 30 hours under arrest in the notoriously nasty DC 
system.  CUADP congratulates the 9 who were arrested (see below) and 
all those who supported them and helped make the action possible.

I note that when we did this action in 1997 (18 arrested) and 2002 (7 
arrested), the court was not in session and there were other big 
stories going on.  Due to a confluence of factors, the timing of this 
action was perfect to allow for images that were used by major news 
agencies to punctuate articles about the goings on in the court on 
that day.  This action would have happened regardless of the SCOTUS 
schedule.  That it worked so well in so many ways this year is just 
further evidence that while Abolition is still down the road, the 
road is getting both shorter and flatter.  Amen to that!

ALSO - Amnesty International on Tuesday issued an in depth reflection 
on 30 years of executions in the United States.  Check it out at 
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510112007

Yours in the Struggle,

--abe

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MEDIA ADVISORY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
17 January 2007

CONTACTS:
SHEILA STUMPH or SCOTT LANGLEY
214-226-0503 (mobile)
high resolution photos available for publication

****************************************************
9 Death Penalty Abolition Activists Arrested at U.S. Supreme Court
to Commemorate 30th Anniversary of First Execution in 1977
****************************************************

WASHINGTON -- Thirty years after the first execution under 
contemporary laws of Gary Gilmore, nine members of the Abolitionist 
Action Committee were arrested at the U.S. Supreme Court on 
Wednesday.  The group unfurled a 30-foot banner that read "STOP 
EXECUTIONS!" on the stairs of the Court.  All nine members were 
arrested and jailed for more than 30 hours before being released by a 
Superior Court judge late Thursday afternoon.  They have a court date 
set for March 5.

Participants from North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Kansas 
and Vermont were there to peacefully and visibly call for an 
immediate cessation of all executions in the United States through 
civil disobedience and the risk of arrest.

"Whether by lethal injection, electrocution, hanging, or firing 
squad, the death penalty has proven to be a complete failure to the 
victims, to the families of the executed, and to our society as a 
whole. It is time for us all to recognize this and act upon it. We 
have tolerated a broken death penalty system for 3 decades too many," 
said Rachel Lawler, founding member of Vermonters Against the Death 
Penalty who was arrested outside the Court.

Thirty years ago on this day, in 1977, the State of Utah shot to 
death Gary Gilmore, who "volunteered" to be killed in revenge for his 
murder of Ben Bushnell and Max Jenson.  This state-assisted suicide 
was the first execution under the Supreme Court's upholding of the 
death penalty in 1976.

In 1997 and 2002, on the 20th and 25th anniversaries of that first 
state-sponsored killing, a total of 25 arrests were made of death 
penalty abolitionists for unfurling banners at the top of the stairs 
leading to the front doors of the U.S. Supreme Court.

At the time of the arrests today, 1059 executions had taken place 
since Gilmore, with another scheduled in Texas on the evening of January 17.

"Public and legal opinion in the U.S. is strongly against 
executions.  In 2006 we saw Maryland, California, Florida and New 
Jersey all stop lethal injections in their states, and in the last 
seven years, we have seen a dramatic decrease nationally in both 
death sentences and executions. Now is the time to end this practice 
once and for all," said Scott Langley, Abolitionist Action Committee 
organizer for the January 17th action.

The Abolitionist Action Committee is an ad-hoc group of individuals 
committed to highly visible and effective public education for alternatives
to the death penalty through nonviolent direct action.


BIOGRAPHIES OF ARRESTEES
JANUARY 17 DEATH PENALTY ACTION

Beth Brockman, from Durham, NC, is the mother of two children, ages 
10 and 5.  She is a member of People of Faith Against the Death 
Penalty and has been arrested four times in the last year for 
trespassing outside of Central Prison in Raleigh while attempting to 
stop executions from taking place.  She is active in the movement on 
various local and international human rights issues - including 
abolition of the death penalty, nuclear weapons and torture.

Brian Buckley, 34, lives in Charlottesville, VA and he fancies 
himself as a handyman.

Frank Dew is a 55-year old Presbyterian pastor from Greensboro, 
NC.  Frank has been pastor at the New Creation Community Presbyterian 
Church for 21 years and is a member of People of Faith Against the 
Death Penalty, where he served as president of the Greensboro 
chapter.  Frank has also been past president of organizations like 
the Greensboro Habitat for Humanity Board and the Servant Leadership 
School.  He is former chairman of the Greensboro Human Relations 
Commission.  Frank grew up in Lumberton, NC and graduated from Wake 
Forest and Duke Divinity School.

Ron Kaz is a 53-year-old carpenter from Chas, SC.  He is a lifelong 
abolitionist and one of the founding members of Charleston Peace in 
the 1980s.  Ron is also a core member of groups such as Amnesty 
International, CAFE, the SC Progressive Network, and the Secular 
Humanists of the Lowcountry.   Ron was arrested at the Supreme Court 
on January 17, 2002 as part of the action to commemorate the 25th 
anniversary of the Gilmore execution.

Scott Langley is a 30-year old community activist who currently 
resides outside of Raleigh, NC at the Silk Hope Catholic Worker with 
his wife and 3 month-old daughter.  Scott is an active member of 
People of Faith Against the Death Penalty and Amnesty 
International.  He has been working on a death penalty photo 
documentary since 1999 and has had images from the exhibit published 
worldwide.  Scott is a 24 year native of Texas, where he started his 
work as an abolitionist.  Scott came to DC in a car that runs on used 
vegetable oil from a restaurant.

Rachel Lawler lives in Montpelier, VT where she is studying Pre-Law 
at Woodbury College and is a team member of the C.O.S.A. re-entry 
program at the Montpelier Community Justice Center. She is a founding 
member of Vermonters Against the Death Penalty.  Rachel has been 
actively involved against the death penalty in numerous states 
including Vermont, Connecticut, Washington DC, Virginia, and North 
Carolina. She has an undying love for hot sauce.

Thomas W. Muther, Jr. is a 56 year-old psychiatric RN from Topeka, 
KS.  A past vice-president of the Kansas Coalition Against the Death 
Penalty, he first became active in the abolition movement in 1994, 
the year Kansas reinstated capital punishment.  In 1997, he was one 
of the "DC-18" who was arrested on the steps of the Supreme Court for 
peacefully demonstrating against the DP.  He has also been active as 
an opponent of child-abuse -- advocating for legislation that would 
outlaw corporal punishment -- as well as other human rights and 
environmental issues.  He is the proud uncle of 9 nieces and nephews 
and is a movie fanatic.

Jack Payden-Travers is Director of Virginians for Alternatives to the 
Death Penalty.  Since the late 1960's he has been active in the 
movement for peace and social justice.  Since leaving his position as 
a history professor in 2002, Jack has worked solely on the death 
penalty, and also now serves on the Board of Directors of the 
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.  Jack and his family 
presently reside in Lynchburg, VA where he has volunteered with 
Gateway, a residential treatment program for men in recovery and with 
Daily Bread, a local soup kitchen. He is past chair of the Local 
Human Rights Committee of Central VA.

Anna Shockley, a 52-year-old mother of two grown daughters, 
immigrated to this country in 1973 and lives in South Carolina's 
Francis Marion National Forest with her husband and several retired 
farm animals. She works as a research assistant at South Carolina 
State University and is a student at the College of Charleston. She 
is a member of the Carolina Alliance for Fair Employment and the 
Webmaster of Charleston Peace.

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