I know very little about James Clayton beyond the fact that he was killed by George W. Bush on May 25, 2000, making him the 130th prisoner to be executed in Texas during Bush's tenure as governor.
Clemency is an issue Bush swears has little to do with him. Whenever you write to Bush asking him to grant clemency to a death row inmate, you get back a conservatively compassionate letter saying, in effect, that Bush feels duty-bound to honor the vow he evidently believes he took as governor promising to kill as many prisoners as he can; and that, in any case, he does not have the power to grant clemency on his own.
The latter claim, though not technically false, is the moral equivalent of an outright mendacity, the kind of misleading statement that only a politician could try to pass off as "true" in any meaningful sense. As Alan Berlow pointed out in the May 11, 2000 issue of the online magazine Salon, in an article titled "The Hanging Governor":
Under Texas law, Bush can only commute a death sentence if he receives a recommendation to do so from the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. Absent such a recommendation, Bush's legal authority is limited to granting a 30-day reprieve.
Bush has used this legal technicality repeatedly to suggest that he actually has no power to stop an executionŠ. Following the execution of Karla Faye Tucker, Bush said, "Despite the call being sounded around the country and world, I could not convert Karla Faye Tucker's sentence from death to life in prison." And shortly before Betty Lou Beets was executed last February, Bush's office issued a press release with this afterthought: "Note: Governor Bush does not have the independent authority to stop the execution of Betty Lou Beets."
In reality, no one honestly believes that Bush could not have stopped the execution of Tucker, Beets or any other death-row inmate had he seen fit to do so. "One of the myths in Texas is that the governor doesn't have any power," says David Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston. "All the governor has to do is communicate his wishes to the members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles who are, after all, his political appointees, and they will do exactly what he wants." Dow notes that in the one case where Bush commuted a death sentence to life in prison—serial killer Henry Lee Lucas—the governor made it clear what he thought and the board carried it out.
(The Hanging Governor)
Other than the method of Clayton's death and who is responsible for it—George W. Bush—I know, as I have already said, very little about James Clayton. This much I do know: on Tuesday, August 1, 2000, as the GOP convention got underway four miles to the south, I read Clayton's name out over a microphone to a crowd gathered near Philadelphia's city hall as a bell tolled in memoriam. This was part of a demonstration against the death penalty that I was taking part in. I do not know what crime James Clayton was convicted of; I do not know the legitimacy of the guilty verdict against him (though actual guilt or innocence, it is abundantly clear, is of little concern to Bush and his like-minded friends in both major parties).
But I do know that, regardless of what he may or may not have done, Clayton did not deserve to die. And George W. Bush had no right to kill him.
I also know that, although 130 corpses sounds like a large enough pile of bodies, the names of eight more human beings who died at the hands of George W. Bush had to be read off by other demonstrators before the roll call of the dead was complete for the day. Moreover, were the list read today, it would have to include two more names: on August 9, 2000, George W. Bush again had his way, presiding over the execution of two more human beings. One was mentally retarded.
Other than going to Disney World (and maybe offing a few tourists while there), what better way to celebrate your recent nomination as Republican candidate for the office of the Presidency?
My participation in this ritual of broadcasting the names of those whom Bush had "texecuted" was not intended as an act of callousness or disrespect to anybody who may have been a victim of James Clayton's; nor was it meant to be disrespectfuk to anybody who may have suffered directly or indirectly as a result of any crimes Clayton may have committed. I merely wanted to add my voice to the growing chorus of voices that is gathering strength to say, now even more forcefully and more clearly than ever, that the politics of cruelty—including the ultimate cruelty of state-sanctioned and -sponsored killing—must end if we truly want to call ourselves civilized human beings. Killing people should not be an option any more than torturing them should be; if political leaders like Bush who have the power to remove that option from the table refuse to do so, people of conscience will take matters into their own hands and force the issue.
I was not advocating murder, or rape, or assault; I was not advocating lawlessness, torture and chaos. No one at that protest was. This fact, while self-evident to anyone who listened to what was said that day, still needs to be made explicit; mainly because the demonstration I attended was also a rally in support of Pennsylvania death row inmate Mumia Abu Jamal.
Mumia Abu Jamal was found guilty of killing a Philadelphia police officer, Daniel Faulkner, over 18 years ago, and has been on death row since that time. Listening to those who want to see Mumia killed (a well-funded and -organized group that includes Faulkner's widow), you would think that a mob of know-nothing Hollywood actors and adle-pated, confused, easily-manipulated and -misled "radicals" and fellow travelers had whisked Jamal away to an umbrella drink and a Club-Med vacation instead. The kill-Mumia people are livid over every single day Mumia lives to see; they are enraged at each passing moment that does not see Mumia's being strapped to a gurney and injected with poison—to these people, his being alive at all is an outrage against their blood-thirsty concept of "justice".
That Jamal spends 23 hours a day in a cage on death row for a crime he may very well not have committed; that he has limited access to visitors, including his family; that any attempt he makes to communicate to the outside world is monitored, denied, denounced, and frequently out-and-out censored (he is dogged by those who want him dead; they demand he be censored even when he talks on topics that have nothing at all to do with his own case): the very fact that he is alive and can still talk at all drives these people into a frenzy of irrational, Old Testament-style anger.
Truly, Mumia's is no Club-Med life; it is not even the kind of country club minimum security prison life to which political criminal acquaintances of George W. Bush, PA Governor Tom Ridge, or George W.'s father would be sentenced (that is, when they do not manage to have themselves pardoned or fail to get off on a technicality for their mass murders, as, to take one instance, drug-dealer/mass murder-facilitator Oliver North did).
Mumia has never even been released from jail pending appeal, as routinely happens with the politically well connected. But the fact that Mumia experiences, every day, the harrowing reality of death row in a maximum security prison, not life on a Caribbean island or some equivalent, does not stop the kill-Mumia fanatics from claiming that Mumia's not being dead right now is one of the worst injustices of recent memory.
Some who attend Mumia rallies merely oppose the death penalty, and may or may not have an opinion about Mumia's guilt or innocence—indeed, some may think him guilty, but yet believe the state of Pennsylvania has no right to kill a human being. Others believe that Mumia did not get a fair trial the first time, but think it is at least possible that Mumia shot and killed Officer Faulkner. Still others think Mumia absolutely innocent—they view him as a political prisoner—and demand his immediate release. There is obviously a lot of overlap between these categories, but generally, these are the ones most people fall into.
I have attended a few Mumia rallies, and I also subscribe to a couple of pro-Mumia e-mail lists; but the one type of supporter I have never seen or heard from is the type that supports Mumia out of a belief that killing cops is fine—even admirable—and we all should be doing more to support the unconditional release of those we know have killed cops precisely because shooting cops should not be illegal—in fact, there should be more of it. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough; many, especially in the media, seem to spot this type daily. I suppose it is theoretically possible that this type lives and breathes. But I haven't seen a specimen. Or heard one.
Yet that is how those who want to see Mumia killed categorize all of us who support Mumia to one degree or another. Any support for Mumia is portrayed as support for the (as far as I can tell, non-existent) pro-cop-killing agenda. I personally fall into the anti-death-penalty category, as well as the Mumia-has-not-had-a-fair-trial category. However, I think it is at least possible that Mumia was involved in one way or another in the shooting of Daniel Faulkner. So let's grant him a new trial—a fair one, this time—and find out. This to me is the height of reasonableness.
Yet I too must be lumped by the kill-Mumia group in that mythical pro-cop-killing category. To them it is evidently the only one that exists.
It makes sense that those who want Mumia dead would set up this straw man. Even though I am not convinced that Mumia is totally innocent, I am convinced that the prosecution would be woefully, possibly even comically, unable to meet its burden of proof in a fair trial—in a trial not presided over by a hostile, overtly racist, capital-punishment-mad judge; in a trial in which the prosecution would not be allowed summarily to dismiss without cause any juror of color; in a trial in which Mumia would not be saddled with an ineffectual, incompetent and under-funded defense attorney; in a trial that Mumia himself would not be barred from attending (Sabo removed Mumia from the courtroom for over half the trial and made no attempt to keep Mumia apprised of what was happening in this trial for Mumia's own life); in a trial in which witnesses (especially police witnesses) would not be allowed to perjure themselves unchallenged; in a trial in which the prosecution would not be allowed illegally to withhold exculpatory evidence (e.g., many witnesses (pre-police coercion) maintained that another man did the actual shooting; the prosecution scoffed at this phantom man, and continues to scoff, even though in 1995, 13 years after the trial, it was revealed that Officer Faulkner had on his person at the time of his death the driver's license of a man whose possible presence at the scene the prosecution was unable to account for and whose presence, if established, would ruin the prosecution's version of what occurred and lend support to Mumia's (and to many witnesses'); accordingly, the prosecution knowingly withheld the indisputably relevant fact of the existence of this evidence from the defense).
The above represents merely a partial list of problematic issues—there are many more examples of the unfairness of the original trial.
In this theoretical trial of the future, it is difficult not seeing reasonable doubt, at the very least, being established. Having obtained the unfair conviction eighteen years ago, the Philadelphia DA's office and all those who live to see Mumia killed have little choice but to resort to straw men and characterizing this blatantly unfair trial as fair. They cannot allow a new trial. Since they cannot guarantee that the cards will be stacked in their favor this time, they are afraid they would lose. They would never see the day they live for—the day they would get to "legally" kill Mumia Abu Jamal. Perhaps equally intolerable as a possible not guilty finding is the prospect of a public airing of accusations of the seemingly endless list of dirty tactics employed by the police and the DA to secure the first conviction—and the likelihood that a fairly selected jury would believe the accusations.
The organizers of the rally on August 1 had a permit from the city for their demonstration; but somebody in the city government with a bizarre sense of humor granted this permit for a pro-Mumia, anti-death penalty rally for the plaza across from city hall where a newly-erected statue of Philadelphia's corpulent ex-mayor, ex-police chief and most famous local fascist, Frank Rizzo, gives his modified Nazi salute to the passing traffic. Someone noted that in death, Rizzo must be seeing the error of his ways or must at least be attempting to work off the bad karma of his last beefy incarnation; for his statue was holding, in its out-stretched hand, a sign that said "Honk 4 Mumia."
As the demonstration began, the plaza was quickly surrounded by mounted police on one side and various combinations of bike cops, foot cops, cops in cars, in vans, in busses—and in just about every other conceivable mode of land transportation. At one point, a chorus-line of bike cops rode into the plaza, zoomed right past the front of the make-shift stage (not bothering to let anyone looking the other way know they were coming, and consequently crashing into a few protesters), then lined up to the left of the stage, staring menacingly at the peaceful and lawful protestors. They did this for no reason I could discern other than to intimidate. Then, after sitting in the plaza for 15 or so minutes, they filed out—again choosing unnecessarily to bull their way through the crowd at the front of the stage—having succeeded in accomplishing exactly nothing. Even the speakers on the stage ignored them.
It was not very long after the speakers took the stage that the protesters in the street began to lay themselves down and block traffic. The plaza crowd quickly abandoned the speakers so they could bear witness to what was occurring on the street. As the police began to drag people out of the street and into the vans and busses, the crowd greeted them with chants of "Let them go!!" or, when the police got particularly rough with some of the nonviolent protesters, "The whole world is watching!"
The chants came from those on the streets as well as those who had rushed to the periphery of the plaza to try to make sure that the police knew that, should they decide to engage in the same type of repressive and abusive tactics that police in DC and Seattle employed, there would be hundreds, if not thousands, of witnesses to the abuse.
I myself did not witness anything that could be characterized as abusive or unnecessarily violent behavior being committed either by the police or by the protestors.
Quite possibly the prospect of their behavior being caught on video—the Philadelphia police had been caught on tape mere weeks before the GOP convention mercilessly beating a car-jacking suspect—played a role in the authorities' decision to save their most egregious human and civil rights abuses for after they were able to get arrested protestors behind closed doors, far from other witnesses and, most important, out of the line vision of the media's cameras. For very soon after the first protestors were jailed, credible reports began to emerge, thanks to independent media sources like www.phillyimc.org, that prisoners were being sadistically and repeatedly abused in the jails.
It is perhaps an indication of how far things have deteriorated in Philadelphia (and elsewhere) that it was considered a law enforcement and public relations triumph that the Philadelphia police managed not to be filmed beating the living snot out of someone—that they managed to wait, for the most part, till they were out of the glare of the media's cameras before they committed their multiple abuses upon helpless nonviolent protesters. It is perhaps a measure of how far the local Philadelphia media has gone in abdicating their responsibility to report abuses that they took the fact that little abuse was actually filmed for proof positive that little or no abuse occurred. The Philadelphia Inquirer buried accusations of abuse far down in most articles (when they bothered to report them at all) and reserved the front page for articles praising the police and the Philadelphia officials responsible for the handling of the GOP convention.
That the standard the Philadelphia media almost invariably invoked when assessing the performance of the local police was that set by the Seattle and DC police is a significant indicator of how debased the frame of reference concerning citizens' right to protest has become. True, many initially maintained that the level of abuse committed by the Philadelphia police was below that committed by the DC and Seattle cops—but it did not seem to occur to those pontificating in the media that this is not much of a compliment. After all, compared to a Hitler or a Stalin or even a Suharto, Pinochet is not such a bad guy—as mass murderers go. But the question the media consistently ducked is whether it is really a triumph to have achieved nothing more than a slightly lower level of repression. "Come to Philadelphia, the cradle of Liberty! Our guys beat fewer people—and less severely—than those other guys!"
Philadelphia Mayor John Street was quick to point out that, of the hundreds of people arrested, only 17 or so were from Philadelphia; the rest belonged to that evidently still useful left-over-from-the-'60s bugbear group, the "outside agitators." Apparently the mayor wants us to believe that he was shocked and taken aback that a little local shindig like the Republican National Convention would be of interest to anyone outside a 50-mile radius of the city. How did all these outsiders learn of it? It was barely even mentioned in the papers!
We must assume the mayor thought the First Union Center was populated with delegates from the South Philly Camaro-Lovers club, the local Rotarians and perhaps filled out with a few local knitting guilds. That might explain the absence of riots there: certainly there were no outsiders at the GOP convention.
The local media reported Street's ridiculous "outside agitators" accusation with straight faces and without comment.
The mayor and the Philadelphia DA, Lynne Abraham, quickly promised to prosecute the demonstrators to the fullest extent of the law. Before the demonstrations in Philadelphia, few people knew what the penalties were for such violent and subversive activities as walking down a center city street in a suspicious manner or making puppets and banners.
But DA Abraham knew and was ready. The war on the puppet-makers—around 70 of them were arrested for no particular reason—and others of similarly dangerous ilk began at the bail hearings where prosecutors asked for, and got from compliant Philadelphia judges, outrageous bails for the protestors—typically between $15,000 and $45,000, with two cases of bail being set at a million dollars. (One of the millionaires' club, John Sellers, was literally doing nothing more than walking down the street on the day before the demonstrations, but was arrested anyway for being "a ring leader" of something that had not yet occurred.)
This is how DA Abraham gets tough on crime; or on the suspicion that a crime might be on the verge of being contemplated. Of course, Abraham only cracks down on certain kinds of crime and certain types of criminals.
When she ran for re-election to the office of district attorney the last time in 1997, she used the quaint slogan "one tough cookie"—a label given her by none other than Frank Rizzo. Abraham has stated publicly her love for the death penalty; she has also opined that the disproportionate number of blacks in prison should not be attributed to any failing or unfairness in the criminal justice system or society in general—but rather to the fact that blacks just naturally commit more crime.
During that same 1997 campaign, Abraham released a 10-year-old videotape of her opponent, Jack McMahon, formerly of the DA's office, tutoring junior ADAs in the subtle (and illegal) art of getting blacks excluded from juries in order to make conviction more certain. (McMahon was giving these seminars at around the same time that Mumia Abu Jamal—whose attorneys had argued the DA illegally struck black jurors even before the DA released the video—was being tried.) Abraham claimed, unconvincingly, that she released the decade-old tape for "ethical" reasons, not as election year spin control. (The DA's own racist views were well known; the safest strategy was to portray her opponent as an even worse racist—and thus reassure the electorate that, though not necessarily a good choice, she truly was the lesser of two evils.)
It is unclear how long the DA knew of the tape's existence; but it is clear that McMahon's strategy was often employed by prosecutors, and that McMahon was not, as Abraham claimed, a "rogue prosecutor", but actually more the epitome of Philadelphia-style "justice". I am unaware of any case in which McMahon or his minions employed this strategy to secure conviction being overturned on appeal.
In 1995, literally hundreds of convictions secured by Philadelphia prosecutors, under Abraham and her predecessors, had to be overturned when it came to light that a number of police officers from the city's 39th district were not merely corrupt, but brazenly so. Human Rights Watch reported:
Philadelphia's police are grappling with the latest of the corruption and brutality scandals that have earned them one of the worst reputations of big city police departments in the United States. The persistence and regularity of the cycles indicate that between the front-page news stories the city and its police force are failing to act to hold police accountable. The result is an undisturbed culture of impunity that surfaces and is renewed with each successive scandal, as each new generation of police officers is taught through example that their leadership accepts corruption and excessive force. As a result, police officers who should not have remained on the force have unlawfully injured and killed citizens, the city has paid enormous sums in settlements and awards to victims of police misconduct, and many minority communities are distrustful of police officers who too often act like criminals. The shortcomings of the department are reinforced by a police union that tirelessly defends officers accused of human rights violations and fights efforts at independent oversight.
The latest scandal, which emerged fully in 1995, involves officers primarily from the 39th District. As of mid-1997, five had been convicted on charges of making false arrests, filing false reports, and robbing drug suspects. ... Officers raided drug houses, stole money from dealers, beat anyone who got in the way and, as a judge trying one of the ringleaders stated, generally "squashed the Bill of Rights into the mud." ... Due to exposure of the officers' actions, thousands of drug convictions were under review as of the end of 1997, with between 160 and 300 cases already overturned because the suspects were arrested by officers known or believed to have been involved in misconduct. ... Following the revelations in the courtroom and press, staff in the police department's Internal Affairs Division (IAD) were transferred, apparently as punishment. No supervisors, and no one from the district attorney's office (which ignored warnings from the city's public defender's office, as early as 1989, that the fabricated justifications given by the officers to enter homes and conduct drug raids were identical in case after case), was held accountable. ... In fact, the district attorney acknowledged in a January 1997 deposition that, "We have changed nothing in the office with respect to trying to guarantee that police officers are all going to be credible."
(Human Rights Watch Report: Shielded from Justice: Philadelphia)
Philadelphia prosecutors know liars when they hear them. Prosecutors know that those who in later court appearances changed their story about what happened the night of Officer Faulkner's death back to their original version—a version in which someone other than Jamal was the shooter—were obviously liars. If witnesses claimed they were coerced or otherwise intimidated by the police into fingering Mumia at the first trial, those witnesses were now lying. Even though the witnesses had nothing to gain from these "lies" and, indeed, had much to lose, as one found out the hard way in 1995, when Judge Sabo had her arrested fresh off the witness stand for daring to tell the truth about why she had agreed to lie for the prosecution in Mumia's original trial. But the DA's office, and all of the prosecutors, were not moved by these recanted testimonies. They knew these witnesses were lying not in 1982, but now.
The prosecutors' infallible ability to spot liars failed them spectacularly for a decade or more when the corrupt officers from the 39th district were routinely lying to help the DA secure convictions against innocent citizens, most poor and/or minorities. It is not in dispute that these officers lied: it is an established fact. But the DA was blind to this despite the fact that the Public Defender's office tried repeatedly to alert them to what was obviously going on. (Philadelphia, unlike George W.'s Texas, has a Public Defender's office. W. vetoed a bill that would have provided funds for a public defender's office in Texas. When questioned as to why he did this if he really was concerned that only people who are genuinely guilty be killed in the Texas death chamber, George W. took a page from Ronald Reagan's playbook and said he did not remember vetoing the bill. In political, and especially Republican, reasoning, an implied therefore I must not have done it seems to follow logically from I don't remember doing it regardless of the empirical evidence.)
Finally, because of the perseverance of one man who was brutalized by the corrupt cops, a few of the 39th district criminal cops went to jail; and over time, hundreds of innocent people those cops helped put behind bars were released. But none of the prosecutors—trained in spotting "liars" (if "liar" can be redefined to mean "witness favorable to the defense")—who were equally responsible for putting these innocent people behind bars, and were equally derelict in duty—not one ever paid in any way for his or her role in falsely convicting these people. The cops lied; the prosecutors were told the cops were lying; yet the prosecutors made sure those hundreds of people went to jail anyway.
When you consider statements, attitudes and actions such as those adumbrated above, it is little wonder that many consider "tough cookie" Abraham to be a baked good of an entirely different kind: a psychotic fruitcake. Claimed blacks commit more crimes than others—"tough cookie" or psychotic fruitcake? Suppressed a video of a conspiracy until its release would do her the most political good—cookie...or fruitcake? Loves seeing the state sentence people to death and then kill them, actual innocence be damned—tough...or psychotic? Make up your own mind.
It is a shame Abraham is a Democrat: she would have been the perfect running mate for George W. Bush. Together, they could perhaps have passed federal laws making puppeteering and puppet-making capital offenses. But of course Abraham could not switch to the Republican Party because she disagrees entirely with the radical right wing agenda of the GOP platform on the following important issues:
So now—the Philadelphia police and DA having made the city's streets safe once again for those with legitimate fears of being assaulted by giant puppets—we can do nothing more than await the Democratic Convention in LA where, thank the powers that be, the police have a well-deserved reputation for openness, tolerance and racial awareness.
Perhaps by the time this article is published all of the Philadelphia protesters will have been released, some to pursue their Constitutional right to assemble in LA and demand to be heard on their opposition to the politics of cruelty of the Democratic party. In all likelihood, though, Philadelphia officials will do their best to keep as many protesters—especially the "ringleaders" and those with a history of wielding deadly puppets—in jail for as long as they possibly can, as a "courtesy" to the free speech-loving mandarins of Los Angeles. And also because denying people food, water, use of bathroom facilities, beating people, denying people sleep—O, for brevity's sake, let's just say torture in general—can be such fun! Imagine how much fun killing them would be. Or, don't imagine: ask George W. Bush.