Black Panther Party defends Shaka Sankofa

By Jeff Franks

Houston, Texas, June 16— The debate over the pending execution of Shaka Sankofa (Gary Graham), a black man who many believe was wrongly convicted, heated up on Friday when a dozen gun-toting black militants staged a protest outside the Texas Republican Party’s state convention. The protest turned into a brief confrontation when one of the members of the New Black Panther Party, who arrived at the protest in an open-top Hummer stretch limousine, shoved a convention delegate who shouted that the protesters were “evil persons.”

The militants, most of them wearing black military style uniforms and carrying rifles or shotguns, demanded that Graham receive a new trial and that Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, declare a moratorium on capital punishment. Displaying guns in public is not illegal in Texas except in certain instances.

“We demand an immediate moratorium on the white supremacist, racist and classist death penalty in the state of Texas and across the country,” said Quanell X, the group’s leader.

Graham, 38, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Thursday at the Texas death chamber in Huntsville, Texas. He was condemned for fatally shooting a man while robbing him outside a Houston supermarket in 1981.

Graham supporters, who include actor Danny Glover and singer Kenny Rogers, say he should be retried because new witnesses could exonerate him. He was convicted largely on the testimony of one woman who identified him as the shooter.

While X spoke to a hoard of reporters outside the convention hall where 16,000, mostly white Texas Republicans were meeting, convention delegate A.J. McClure tried to shout him down.

“Our lord and master is God almighty, not evil,” an agitated McClure bellowed. “You are all evil persons from hell.”

When X turned to confront the elderly McClure, a member of his entourage shoved McClure to the ground. Police intervened and X led his group back to the limousine and drove away through downtown Houston.

Bush has said he will take no action in the Graham case until the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles makes a recommendation on a request for clemency from Graham.

Bush has granted only one execution stay and commuted only one death sentence since taking office in 1995. During that time, 134 people have been put to death in Texas, which leads the nation in capital punishment.

Source: Reuters

National uproar over Texas death machine

By Gloria Rubac

Houston, Texas, June 20— As the execution date for Shaka Sankofa (Gary Graham) nears, the struggle in Texas over the death penalty has become white hot.

“The June 22 scheduled execution of Gary Graham is based on the weakest evidence I have seen in the last 30 years,” Professor Lawrence C. Marshall told a packed press conference here on June 12. “Of the 684 men and women who have been executed in this country, I am aware of none who was executed in the face of such overwhelming doubt of guilt.”

Marshall is Legal Director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago.

The Center on Wrongful Convictions held the press conference in the Moot Courtroom at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law to highlight the fallibility of eyewitness identifications in criminal cases and to ask Gov. George W. Bush to stop the execution of Sankofa/Graham.

“There’s no blood, no hair, no gun, no fingerprints, no confession, not even any circumstantial evidence linking Gary Graham to the crime,” said Marshall. “His death sentence rests entirely upon the uncorroborated testimony of a sole witness, who initially expressed doubts that he was the man and provided information for a composite sketch that bears no resemblance to him.

“Gary Graham will be killed on procedural technicalities because he had a lawyer who was incompetent and the new evidence was discovered too late. The Supreme Court says that the safety net in situations like this is the governor and executive clemency. That’s what we’re asking for today. Mistakes happen and it is the governor himself who can remedy this mistake.

“On behalf of our center, we are asking Governor George Bush to stop this execution.”

The auditorium was filled with local and national news media as well as supporters of Sankofa. Silence filled the room as each of 12 former prisoners stepped to the podium, gave a brief synopsis of their conviction and prison time, and then declared: “I am living proof that eyewitnesses can and do make mistakes.”

Curt Bloodsworth had been identified by five eyewitnesses at his 1985 trial. He was convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to death. Three DNA tests exonerated him in 1993. Bloodsworth said, “We can no longer trust the death penalty. Since 1986, 87 people have been released from death row. The system is falling apart. I don’t want Gary Graham to die. One person is being released from death row for every seven executed. The 12 of us sitting here today are living proof that the system is not working.”

Anti-death penalty activists gave the 12 a standing ovation.

Rape victim picked wrong man

You could have heard a pin drop as Jennifer Thompson told her electrifying story of being raped when in college and then, with absolute confidence, mistakenly identifying an innocent man as the rapist. As a result, Ronald Cotton spent 11 years in a North Carolina prison before DNA exonerated him.

Thompson was in tears as she told of the guilt she felt. “It’s the hardest thing I ever did —to admit I made a horrible mistake.

“I took 11 years away from this young man. You can’t do this to Gary Graham,” she said. “If there’s ANY doubt, then you can’t kill him, you just can’t do it! He has 10 days left on this planet. I beg Governor Bush to view this evidence. The people can’t let the execution of Gary Graham happen. They just can’t.”

Elnora Graham, Sankofa’s stepmother, thanked Thompson for speaking out about her mistake and joining with the wrongfully convicted in asking Bush to stop her son’s execution. “I thank God she has the courage to stand up and admit she made a mistake. I wish Bernadine Skillern could do the same thing,” Graham said.

Skillern is the only eyewitness the district attorney called to testify against Sankofa, even though she saw the killer for only a few seconds, at night, in a poorly lit parking lot, through her windshield from about 30 to 40 feet away. There were seven other witnesses, most of whom were much closer and saw the killer for a much longer period of time, but they were never even talked to by Sankofa’s court-appointed attorney. Their description of the killer did not resemble Gary Graham.

How cops rig lineups

Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle and the nation’s leading authority on eyewitness testimony, said that the eyewitness procedures employed in the Graham case were flawed.

Using huge blowups of the police photo spread and the lineup that was used to identify Sankofa, she explained how improper police work led the witness to identify Sankofa.

“The photo array shown to the key witness was suggestive because Graham was the only man shown in the array who matched key aspects of the victim’s initial description. Then in a lineup the following day, Graham was the only person whose picture had been in the photo array.

“We know beyond doubt that mistaken eyewitness testimony is the major cause of wrongful convictions. Let’s recognize that scientific truth before we execute an innocent person in ignorance of it,” Loftus urged.

As Marshall ended the press conference, he told the media, “Chances for Gary Graham to live depend in a large part on the people in this room. You folks in the media have a very special opportunity to tell the truth about this case. We hope you make full use of what you have heard today. A man’s life depends on it.”

“The death penalty is fraught with errors. It’s racist, it convicts the innocent as well as the mentally retarded, juveniles, non-citizens and the mentally ill. Bush is lying when he says that everyone on death row in Texas is guilty and everyone had a fair trial,” declared Njeri Shakur of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement.

Under Bush, Texas has executed 134 people since 1995. Activists are feeling very optimistic for the first time. “We are seeing the beginning of the end of the death penalty. It’s on its way out,” Shakur said.

Diana Shorthouse, also with the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, said, “The question now is will this happen fast enough to save Shaka Sankofa and Jessy San Miguel and the others already scheduled to be executed this summer? We now have the focus of the world on Texas and Bush and the Huntsville executioners. I hope this international attention combined with international actions by activists all over the world will stop the death machine in time.”

Source: Workers World News Service: www.workers.org

Anarchists and cops clash in Oregon

By Bill Bishop and Eric Mortenson

Eugene, Oregon, June 19— Police and protesters clashed for the second consecutive night Sunday, as what began as a peaceful gathering marking the first anniversary of a June 18 riot spilled into the streets of downtown Eugene.

After arresting 41 people Saturday night, Eugene police arrested at least 22 more Sunday, most of them on disorderly conduct charges. Police said they knew of no injuries and that minimal damage had been reported.

Witnesses claimed that they saw an officer shoot one man in the legs with rubber bullets half a dozen times; others said they saw officers fire beanbag rounds at two men’s feet before arresting them. Police Lt. Rick Siel said officers fired a total of four beanbag rounds and used some pepper spray in making arrests.

The street action followed what had been a loud and raucous —but nonviolent— anarchist gathering at Washington-Jefferson Park. The event, part of what organizers called a “Carnival Against Capital,” coincided with what anarchist leader Steve Heslin announced to the crowd as “the one-year anniversary of the insurrection that started it all.” A protest against capitalism a year ago led to 20 arrests and firing of tear-gas canisters after protesters threw rocks through several business windows and obstructed traffic.

The event in the park featured various speakers, a puppet show, food and music. Some of the estimated 300 people attending argued loudly among themselves, and one group burned an American flag, but the event was peaceful.

At about 8:30 pm, however, a group of 30 to 40 people left the park and headed east and north into downtown, blocking streets as they went. By the time the crowd reached the park blocks at Eighth Avenue and Oak Street, it had grown to at least 100 people. Police moved in and ordered them to leave.

“This is an unlawful assembly,” police announced over loudspeakers. “You must disperse now or be subject to arrest.”

At that point, police began making arrests, firing beanbag rounds and dividing the crowd. At the park, some officers drove their vehicles across the grass to chase people.

The scene downtown took on a surrealistic air Sunday night as dozens of police in riot gear cleared streets block by block, driving demonstrators before them.

About 80 officers were involved, most of them Eugene police but with Springfield police, state police troopers and Lane County sheriff’s deputies helping.

Patrol cars, blue lights flashing, and loaded front and rear with officers, whipped from street to street as police raced from one hot spot to another. By 10:30, police had dispersed the largest groups of people, but were still tangling with scattered knots of angry protesters, particularly at Fifth and Jefferson.

Some people who gathered to watch the action downtown were baffled by the police response, saying they’d seen no violence on the part of the demonstrators who assembled in the park blocks at Eighth and Oak.

“The worst thing they did was play ‘Red Rover,’” said Michael Hansen, who lives downtown and followed the action for several blocks. “And a couple people were banging on drums, and that was it.”

Protesters reacted bitterly to the police action.

“It makes me want to cry,” said Teri Bortman, 26, who earlier in the day had a role in a puppet show “re-enactment” of last year’s riot. “I really thought we had more freedom than that.”

Bortman said the action reinforced her decision not to have children because she doesn’t want to raise them in such a society.

Others, however, said they thought the police handled the situation well. Ron Thompson, who lives in the Churchill area, said he and his wife saw the police lights as they were driving downtown and stopped to see what was going on.

“I think the cops are doing a wonderful job,” Thompson said. “They’re treating everybody like human beings. I think they’ve got it really together.”

Whiteaker residents Tom Atlee and Karen Mercer strolled into Washington-Jefferson Park to join the rally carrying signs conveying what they believe is the majority community’s view of the conflict: ambivalence.

One side of Mercer’s sign addressed the “honorable Black Clads” and thanked them for making the world unsafe for the Bank of America, “Starrybuck” and other corporate giants.

A lot of Eugene citizens are weary of economic and environmental exploitation, Mercer said. Some are wary of heavy-handed police actions, while others dislike the raucous practices of unruly demonstrators.

“It’s easy to pick out the negatives of both sides,” Mercer said. “The anarchists help us think about what we should be thinking about. The reduction of everything to money is what they’re talking about. That’s where my heart breaks, living in our culture. We’re losing our souls.”

Source: The Register-Guard