It takes a lot of fortitude for the family member of a murder victim to oppose the death penalty. Here's one mother's letter, published in the Boston Globe:

Change of heart on death penalty
Letter to Editor: Boston Globe

12/28/2003

HAVING LOST my 19-year-old son Brian to a brutal murder in 1989, I know the hate, rage, and need for revenge victims' families can feel (''Death for Sampson,'' Page A1, Dec. 24).

But in the past 12 years I have changed my mind about the death penalty. I know that if my son's murderer had been put to death, it would not have eased my pain, nor would it have brought closure.

It certainly would not have brought Brian back. No one has the right to take a life, and that means the state.

Spending the rest of one's life in prison is a more suitable punishment. I would not want anyone put to death in Brian's name. I want only positive things to happen in his name, such as the memorial award we give out each year.

And I would rather dwell on the wonderful memories we have of Brian and not on someone's being put to death for his murder.

PHYLLIS HOTCHKISS
Saugus

This story ran on page D10 of the Boston Globe on 12/28/2003. Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation is a group comprised of many such family members. We hope their message spreads.

The Boulder Daily Camera has a good editorial on the death penalty today. It notes three growing trends in the country:

• Executions were fewer in number.
• Capital punishment was confined more narrowly to one region.
• The integrity of the death-penalty system was challenged by elected officials in a position to do something about it.

Conclusion:

That's progress — one year of progress toward the day when Americans decide at last to abolish the death penalty.

[Thanks to George W. Brooks, J.D., Director of Advocacy, Kolbe House, Chicago, who every morning emails us the day's leading articles on the death penalty. We don't thank him often enough.]

U.S. courts exonerated 10 death row prisoners in 2003. Since 1973, when capital punishment was reinstated by the Supreme Court, 112 death row inmates have been exonerated in 25 states. It's time to end our flawed system of capital punishment by declaring a national moratorium.

Continuing the work started by former Gov. George Ryan, Illinois legislators passed an extensive death penalty reform package this fall, although a moratorium on executions remains in place. In North Carolina, senators voted to impose a moratorium while examining that state's capital punishment system for flaws, and the bill may come up for a vote in the house next year.

The death penalty also became an issue in Congress this year when the House passed a modified version of the Innocence Protection Act, a measure providing funds for DNA testing and improved legal representation in capital punishment cases. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the Senate may consider the legislation in 2004.

But in the end, the system cannot be fixed. It is inherently flawed. As long as governments continue to put people to death, they run the risk of executing people innocent of murder.

To support a national moratorium, visit the Moratorium Campaign. Donate generously.

The Washington Post assesses the death penalty in an editiorial, 2003: The Year in Death:

In 2002, 65 percent of executions took place in only three states -- Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri. This year Texas alone accounted for 24 executions. The top three states -- Texas, Oklahoma (which killed 14) and North Carolina (seven) -- together carried out 69 percent of the executions nationally. Add in Georgia, Florida, Ohio and Alabama, each of which killed three, and 88 percent of the executions have been accounted for. Only 11 states -- along with the federal government -- carried out executions, the lowest number since 1993. In other words, even as the number of executions holds relatively steady, fewer states are doing more of the dirty work.

This is good news for those who believe, as we do, that capital punishment ought to be abolished. Right now the political consensus in most states does not exist to get rid of it. Politicians are committed to the death penalty, and solid majorities of the public support it as well. The best prospect for long-term change lies in the ongoing demonstration that the death penalty isn't necessary or effective and carries great dangers. States with moribund death penalties can evolve over time into states without death penalties with no great disruption to their criminal justice systems or to the expectations of their electorates. The fewer states that execute people regularly, the more exceptional become those like Texas and Oklahoma -- which insist on using capital punishment as a routine instrument of justice.

Serious reform and ultimate abolition of the death penalty will take time. That's okay. So long as it gets here. And it seems the tide is turning, if ever so slowly:

Capital punishment in America will not disappear all of a sudden. But if serious reform efforts continue and the penalty becomes ever more regional in its application, it could begin to fade away.

Meet U.S. District Court Judge John Gleeson, appointed to the federal bench in 1994 after a long career as a tough prosecutor. Among his convictions was that of John Gotti. So, hardly your liberal judge. Gleeson presided over the recent Flatbush trial of a crack dealer and murderer in which Ashcroft had overruled the local prosecutors and insisted on seeking the death penalty. The jury returned a verdict of life. Gleeson denounces Attorney Ashcroft's death penalty push in a law review article in the Virginia Law Review:

Indicted or not, former Illiniois Governor George Ryan remains a hero to a lot of people, including African-Americans in Illinois. He's one to us as well:

WVON-1450 morning talk show on Tuesday were asked who they would have picked as Time magazine's "Person of the Year." Although several African-Americans have played critical roles in national and international issues this year, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, one man's name was mentioned several times--and he isn't black. At least three callers named indicted former Gov. George Ryan, Kelley told me.

Ryan's insistence on a death penalty moratorium and his blanket clemency of Death Row inmates, has guaranteed that -- at least among most African-Americans -- his legacy would not be buried under federal corruption charges.

Obviously, three votes as "Person of the Year," is not enough to gauge the sentiments of an entire ethnic group. Still, given that Ryan is a Republican and one is hard-pressed to find a handful of black Republicans in the Chicago region, I would say Kelley's callers are expressing a widely held sentiment.

Ryan has been honored by both the local NAACP and Rainbow/ PUSH Coalition. These civil rights groups aren't likely to abandon him now in his battle to stay out of prison.

USA Today correctly notes in an editorial that John Lee Malvo's life sentence in the sniper case reflects justice, not vengeance. Try as they might, prosecutors trying to blame the verdict on a sympathy factor borne of the holidays, are wrong. The jurors affirmatively stated the holidays never entered their discussions:

Plainly, capital punishment is a crapshoot. Across the nation — even within aggressive death-penalty states such as Virginia — juries, prosecutors and judges apply it in an arbitrary fashion. This reflects the public's abiding equivocation, which often produces the erratic application of justice and, in some cases, death sentences for those who have been wrongly convicted.

In Malvo's trial, jurors landed on the more appropriate alternative — life without parole. No risk of mistaken execution. No risk of release. Indeed, one pro-death juror said she changed her mind because she believed that spending 60 to 70 years behind bars was a harsher sentence.

That's not exactly the Christmas spirit. But it shows how even those who endorse the death penalty can find comfort — even vengeance — in a sentence that ensures certain punishment and avoids uncertain justice.

A Brooklyn, NY jury has rejected Attorney General John Ashcroft's push for the death penalty and returned a life sentence for a crack dealer convicted of murder.

The capital case, only the third in three decades in Brooklyn's federal district, drew attention last year after Ashcroft overruled local prosecutors' decision to seek a life term.

As we reported here, the defense told the jury in closing:

``This death penalty prosecution was ordered by John Ashcroft,'' defense attorney Richard Levitt told jurors. ``You don't have to listen to John Ashcroft.''

And at least one of them didn't. For more on how Ashcroft has been pandering the death penalty--even over the objections of his prosecutors--go here and here and here and here.

Dr. James Grigson, the Texas forensic psychiatrist whose testimony for the state helped send scores of defendants to the death house during the past 40 years is retiring:

Dr. Grigson, 71, has been known throughout the jurisprudence system as "Dr. Death" because of his tenacious and authoritative belief that seldom can murderers be rehabilitated. In more than 100 of the 167 capital cases in which he was involved, he testified strongly that a defendant would kill again if given the opportunity — a continuing threat to society, in other words. Jurors routinely admitted his testimony was the motivating factor for them to assess death instead of a lesser term.

Capital defenders have good reason to herald his departure:

Rick Halperin, president of the Texas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, isn't one of Dr. Grigson's admirers. "Just take the case of Randall Dales Adams, innocent and free today and getting on with his life," Mr. Halperin said. Mr. Adams was convicted of murder and sent to death row in 1977, but was released in 1989 when new evidence exonerated him. He later was portrayed in a movie, "The Thin Blue Line." "He wasn't guilty then and hasn't been in trouble since," said Mr. Halperin, "and yet 12 people took the word of Dr. Grigson, who said he was psychopathic and a degenerate."

On Monday, a Brooklyn jury will deliberate on life or death for a convicted crack dealer and killer-- and on John Ashcroft:

There is no seat for John Ashcroft in the Brooklyn courtroom where Emile Dixon, a convicted killer and crack dealer, is fighting for his life. But as the jurors heard arguments last week about whether to impose capital punishment, Mr. Ashcroft, the United States attorney general, was mentioned so often that he might as well have pulled up a chair.

"This death penalty prosecution was ordered by John Ashcroft," Richard W. Levitt, one of Mr. Dixon's lawyers, said in his summation on Friday. "You don't have to listen to John Ashcroft."

Jack Smith, one of the federal prosecutors pressing for execution, mentioned Mr. Ashcroft, too. He told jurors that he had to answer Mr. Levitt. "He's hoping one of you doesn't like John Ashcroft," Mr. Smith said, adding, "Politics have no place here. None."

Here's hoping one juror doesn't like John Ashcroft. For more on how Ashcroft has been pandering the death penalty--even over the objections of his prosecutors--go here and here and here and here.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger already has shown more compassion than his predecessor Gray Davis in parole decisions. But he's about to face a bigger test:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.... is about to face his first decision on whether a notorious killer should be executed or granted clemency.With a Feb. 10 execution date set this week for Kevin Cooper, on death row since the 1983 hatchet slayings of two adults and two children inside a house in Chino Hills, Schwarzenegger must first decide whether to take up Cooper's request for clemency.

If he does agree to consider Cooper's plea to avoid death by lethal injection, the state Board of Prison Terms will hold a public hearing in Sacramento, take a secret vote and make its confidential recommendation to Schwarzenegger.

Cooper's crime was a heinous one, and it is unlikely Gov. Arnie, a death penalty supporter, will show him mercy. Unlike parole decisions, clemency decisions are mostly about mercy. Here's the contrast to date between Gray Davis, who had a blanket policy of rejecting parole for murderers, and Arnie, who has no such policy:

On parole recommendations from the Board of Prison Terms, Schwarzenegger has already upheld four and reversed six. Davis, in contrast, reversed the board's grant of parole for all but eight convicted murderers out of nearly 300 referred to him by the Board of Prison Terms. He was also under increasing fire by judges and others who said he appeared to have a blanket policy against paroling murderers.

We'll go out on a limb here and make a bold prediciton: At least one convicted murderer sentenced to death will have his sentence commuted to life without parole by Gov. Arnie during his term as Governor. We don't think it will be Cooper--but we do expect he will weigh each case individually and find one such prisoner who deserves mercy.

For the fourth year in a row, juries around the country have delivered fewer death sentences:

In its year-end report, the Death Penalty Information Center projects approximately 138 death sentences for 2003, 20 below last year and less than half the number recorded annually during much of the 1990s.

"The public is more cautious about the death penalty, and that is showing," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the anti-capital punishment information clearinghouse. "The revelations of people who were wrongly convicted and now set free, cases of sloppy legal representation, crime labs that were not doing their job -- there were so many dimensions spreading doubt about what is happening here."

Texas, of course, is an anomaly. Of the 65 lethal injections last year, 24 were texecutions.

The Legislature rejected a proposal to add life without parole as a possible sentence in capital murder cases, an option for juries in 35 of the 38 death penalty states. Opponents argued it would result in fewer death sentences.

Only 11 states have carried out executions so far in 2003. The great majority of those -- 68 percent -- belonged to Texas, Oklahoma and North Carolina. All but a handful occurred in the South.

Still...four years in a row of declining death sentences is progress. More people are realizing the system is broken and deciding they don't want to be a part of it.