Witness to Innocence: the US must abandon "justifiable homicide". SJ
Dodgson. MJoTA 2013. V7n2 p1009.
Breathing when 62, as I do,
is an accomplishment in the United States. This means I have dodged
the nation’s main killer: cardiovascular disease in all its manifestations, also cancer,
car smashes, and homicide by irate spouses and annoyed children. And “justifiable
homicide”, a chilling term that describes the results of police officers or
armed citizens deciding in a split second that whoever they are pointing a gun
at needs to be dead.
Dodging all internal and
external calamities, and being legally employed for decades brings rewards for
reaching 62. Social security payouts start, New Jersey transits charges half
for train and bus fares.
I was ceremonially
awarded my PhD in Physiology & Pharmacology at the University of New South
Wales in Oct 1978, and then hopped on a plane that took me into Malibu for a canyon fire,
attempted beach rape and nearly driving over a cliff south of Ensenada. After that, for 35
years I have more or less lived quietly in and near Philadelphia.
During this time I married,
gave birth 4 times, changed careers and husbands several times, and become
excruciatingly familiar with family courts, bad business models, and police with guns.
I have been accused by men
with guns of being a driver for a
robbery in South Jersey, being homeless in NJ295, being a terrorist at the
Washington DC Convention Center, of being a stalker in East New York when I
went back to collect my belongings. In East New York, 8 months later, I was
even arrested by men with guns and detained for 8 hours, released when the
arresting officer told me my accuser was “full of s**t”. Everywhere I turn I
see cops with lethal force hanging nonchalantly on their hips. And all I can
ask is “why?”
Why have I not been shot,
as was Trayvon Martin by a stalker out to shoot a black kid, as was Miriam
Carey by cops who were out to shoot a young black mother who made a wrong turn,
as was Jonathan Ferrell by cops who were out to shoot a black man who had
survived a car smash.
Why am I less scary than
any of these martyrs? Because I am breathing while pale? Shame on America. This
country has guns all over the place.
American politicians like
NJ Governor Chris Christie refuses to sign into law bills passed that keep guns
out of the hands of small children and mentally ill. Good God. He has hiked
state taxes for New Jerseyans, forced jobs out of the state, laid off thousands
of educators and turned New Jersey from a winner state to a loser state. And
refuses to make guns and bullets less accessible to anyone.
When cops have the right to
“justifiable homicide” of unarmed young black adults, then they have the right
to shoot everyone. I drove through a
barrier at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Why was I not shot? Why was I asked if I was
ok, and did I need an ambulance? Shame on America. We are either at war with
our citizens, or we are not. If cops are out to kill our citizens, they need to
shoot all of us.
Or we could do something
revolutionary. Take guns and bullets away from cops. Take away from them the
right to “justifiable homicide”. Give them nonlethal force that instantly
immobilizes. And get governors to sign gun laws that lead to outlawing assault
weapons, and preventing children and mentally ill having hunting guns, and the
prosecution of parents whose children have been caught with illegal guns.
I had the enormous
privilege of being witness to the tenth anniversary celebration of Witness to Innocence last night at the
Quaker Meeting House at 1501 Cherry Street.
The grounds also house the
worldwide headquarters of the American Friends Service Committee, an organization
that was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the British Friends Group in
1947. This is the week that the annual Nobel Prize is awarded, so I was
especially delighted at being in the building to hear women and men of faith
and of peace talk about the importance of removing the major human rights
violation that is the death penalty.
Last night we heard from men who had
been accused and convicted of murders they did not commit, and who were
snatched off death row by the efforts of this group, Witness to Innocence.
One man told us that his
high school guidance counselor did not advise him to get himself on death row
for a decade so he could become a motivational speaker and talk about his
experiences. But that is what he is doing.
One man told us he was on
death row for decades because when he was 18, a man was murdered, and he
believed that the system would look through the lies and free him, and the
system would believe the men who had murdered and confessed and that the system
would see that even though he had been forced to confess, he had not done it.
We heard from 2
high-profile opponents of the death penalty, a movie star named Danny Glover,
and an author and Roman Catholic nun Sister Helen Prejean. They both spoke of
the horror of innocent men being shoved through the judicial system, of
prosecutorial and police misconduct and of the “justifiable homicide” by police
in jail executions rooms. Sister Helen told us that if all American citizens
knew how barbaric the death penalty is, and how expensive it is, we would stop
it.
Since March 2013, I have
been involved in prosecutorial and police misconduct. Except not in the United
States, this is happening in South Africa. The men told me themselves they were
targeted for “justifiable homicide” but were not killed because the trap set
for the brother of the President of Congo had not yet caught him. South African
undercover police, heavily armed, under the pretense of being government
officials hiring anti-rhino poachers, drove 19 law-abiding South African
residents, all sons of Congo, north of Pretoria, and then at gunpoint, made
them give up their cell phones and wave some flags, before arresting them all
the next morning under a hail of bullets.
I was struck by the
similarity of what I am doing, and what Witness to Innocence is doing, except I
am coming in at the beginning, and they are rescuing men at the very last
minute. We need Witness to Innocence to expand, put a journalism class in each
court, interviewing each young person accused of a crime.
We need to change the
prosecutorial system. And we need to stop “justifiable homicide” in all its
forms. Immediately.
May God continue to bless and give strength to all the good
people associated with Witness to Innocence.
