Abolitionist straight talk

From the annual conference of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, here are the astute comments of David Dow, "one of the smartest lawyers among those who represent people on death row.":

Number 1: Do not attempt to appropriate the mantle of innocence.

If the death penalty is immoral, as I believe it is, either in theory or in practice, it has nothing to do with the issue of innocence... [W]e do not want to have a contest with a death penalty supporter over whose list of innocent victims is longer, because we lose that contest seven days a week...

I do not think my clients should be executed, but those of them that have committed murder are not morally equal to their innocent victims. By representing death row inmates, I am not saying that they are.

In saying this, I think I am saying what many in the abolitionist community already say, and so I am not proposing a radical idea. What I am suggesting is that this truth be loudly acknowledged. I think this truth was embraced in Helen Prejean’s first book, Dead Man Walking, and even more so in the film adaptation of the book. But in recent years, the abolitionist movement has, for tactical reasons, begun calling attention to innocent people on death row, and to innocent people who might have been executed.

There has undoubtedly been some political value in this emphasis. But most people on death row are not innocent, and the excessive attention that this issue has received has crowded out the moral question of whether the state ought to kill. It has crowded out the fact that we have a system that favors the rich over the poor, and the white over the black and brown. It has crowded out the fact that constitutional violations mar virtually every case. The excessive focus on innocence has allowed some people to say that if we can just tweak the system to protect against error, then the machinery of death will have been repaired.

Executing someone who is innocent is wrong, but it is no more wrong that executing someone because of his skin color or the thickness of his wallet or the mistakes of his lawyers. I believe that we as a community have not succeeded in making that point...

We must say as a community that we know that murder is wrong; and we must say, simultaneously and just as loudly, that our death penalty regime is unjust, and that it is wrong for us, for our nation and our state, to kill.

Like the Abolish the Death Penalty blog says, "wow."