Amnesty International gathers to protest the Death Penalty. SJ Dodgson MJoTA 2014 v8n1 p0414
On a cold March Saturday, Amnesty International groups from Pennsylvania and South Jersey gathered at the Ethical Society in Rittenhouse Square to talk about their efforts in abolishing the death penalty, and their successes. We do have the Federal death penalty, which prosecutors want for the young man left alive after blowing up the finish line of the Boston Marathon one year ago this week. The death penalty has been removed from the list of punishments for crime in New Jersey and in Maryland, but not in Pennsylvania.
My reasons for wanting the abolition of the death penalty are several; I do not want my government to have the power to decide who will live and who will die, the judicial system is so flawed that innocent men and women are frequently indicted and found guilty of crimes they did not commit and the death penalty makes me a murderer.
Kurt Bloodworth had spoken briefly at the Witness to Innocence gathering in OctoberI described below. On the cold March Saturday afternoon, in the upstairs old wood meeting room with sunlight streaming through the windows, we heard his story.
Kurt Bloodworth was the first death row prisoner exonerated by DNA evidence. A 9yo girl had been raped and murdered, and by a complicated set of circumstances, Mr Bloodworth was the man the police decided did it. Eye witnesses who had last seen the girl identified a man much shorter and skinnier, and lacking Mr Bloodworth's bright red hair. That did not matter. A girl had been brutally murdered, and the cops needed to blame someone, have him convicted, and put to death. Fortunately the process of putting someone to death takes years, fortunately DNA analysis was developed and fortunately a clerk who had stored the physical evidence in a closet found it. Mr Bloodworth is a strong man and has always done the best he can with the hand that life has dealt him. But he can never get back his youth, or do what he should have been doing during those years.
All weekend and today, I am gathering with the sons and daughters of Liberia who are outraged that the Korlewalas, two of their own has been accused of shaking down an old lady on April 2nd, 2014.
The same dynamics are in place as were for Mr Bloodworth, a tiny old lady was shaken down and handed over her life savings, and the cops need to blame someone. And the laziest path for the cops was to walk across the road from the Salvation Army campus underneath the elevated train tracks and accuse Vickson Korlewala, the owner of a green car and his wife, Lorpu Korlewala. Because the old lady was shaken down by a couple in a green car. Could not have been easier, or lazier, for the cops. I stood yesterday at the gates of the Salvation Army headquarters and took a photograph of Lorpu's hair salon.
The fact that this son of Liberia looks nothing like the much darker and taller man in the bank surveillance video is completely irrelevant to the cops who have latched onto the Korlewalas like a starving dog onto meat. I was told by witnesses that the Commissioner of Police has "evidence" that not only did Vickson Korlewala accost and throw the 80-year-old lady into his car to drive to the bank, but that he did the same the previous month with a 90-year-old. The facts that he had just had gum surgery on March 31st, and was flat on his back in a hospital bed during the February crime, and that Lorpu was working in her hair dressing salon: according to the cops and the prosecutor, these are irrelevant and the community needs to raise $100,000 as bail to let them out before trial.
