Georgia's Death-Penalty Process Criticized by Justice Stevens

I don't have much time to post today, but I wanted to point people to an interesting article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Hu Jia receives the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought

Hu Jia has won the prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, which is awarded by the European Parliament. European Parliament President Pottering said, "By awarding the Sakharov Prize to Hu Jia, the European Parliament firmly and resolutely acknowledges the daily struggle for freedom of all Chinese human rights defenders." Human Rights Watch has a useful chronology of the Hu case. In late 2007., Hu provided telephone testimony on China's human rights abuses to the European Parliament. For this testimony, Hu and his wife were arrested, tried and convicted of subverting state power. He was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison.

Hu has been a peaceful worker on behalf of Human Rights and environmental issues for many years. The Sakharov prize will hopefully help to return focus on his plight as a prisoner of conscience. Amnesty International is still encouraging people to write on his behalf (link is to a PDF).

Policeman who Tortured Suspects Charged with Perjury and Obstruction of Justice

Twenty years ago, Jon Burge was a police officer in Chicago's South Side. He is alleged to have taken part in torturing primarily black suspects in order to elicit confessions. He and other involved officers are reported to have subjected the suspects to the following forms of torture. They were beaten "with telephone books, suffocated with plastic typewriter covers, burned with cigarettes, threatened with mock executions, and suffered electric shocks to their genitals." Burge was acquitted on brutality charges, but was still fired by the Chicago Police Department. Allegations of torture were investigated, but the statute of limitations prevented charges from being filed against Burge.

Burge is now facing a federal indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice based on a deposition he gave in a civil suit by one of his victims. Burge may finally get the justice he so richly deserves.

Burge's place in history, though, is not just limited to some cases in the South Side of Chicago. It was in part due to his actions that Governor George Ryan cleared Illinois' death row after he became concerned about how some people were convicted. His tactics were also part of the impetus behind Barack Obama's proposal that all Police interrogations should be videotaped, which he made while a state legislator in Illinois. The case was even brought before the United Nations. Guantanamo and Abu Graib may be our country's most notorious examples of the use of torture, but it is unfortunately not the only one. We have to be vigilant not only on the international front, but close to home as well.

The Death Penalty for Crimes against Children

Among some supporters of the death penalty, there has been a call to expand the death penalty to crimes against children. Perhaps the most visible advocates have been Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie, who both spoke out in support of expanding the death penalty to include child abductions, rape and other horrific crimes against minors. These ideas don't reside only in Hollywood, however. Recently, Detroit City Council President Monica Conyers made the news when she called for the death penalty for anyone who killed a child.

The idea that crimes against children deserve a more harsh punishment is appealing on many levels. Jolie sums up the argument made most often: If it was my kid, "I'd want to go after" the killers. The rage we feel against those who perpetrate crimes against children is understandable. However, the revenge motive is not a motive for justice, and it does nothing to protect children. Putting someone to death for a crime against a child does not provide a deterrent, and the idea that getting the perpetrator off the street is served just as well by a life sentence as by a death sentence. We need to vigorously resist all calls to expand the death penalty, even in such emotional cases as crimes against children. Instead, we need to work on abolishing the death penalty while finding ways to reduce violence in our communities. That is the real way to keep children safe.

White House Approved Harsh Interrogation Tactics

I haven't posted in a long time, but I needed to write something about this article in the Washington Post. Officials in the White House and in the CIA have confirmed that the Bush administration gave written approval of harsh interrogation techniques, including water-boarding, in not one but TWO separate memos. The first was written in 2003 at George Tenant's request. The second came in 2004, also at Tenant's request, but after his departure from the CIA. In both cases, the CIA made a case to the administration that such techniques were the only way they could get information they needed out of the apprehended Al Queda suspects. Under pressure, the administration agreed to give them "cover" so that the White House couldn't distance itself from the CIA should a backlash against the tactics arise.

As we know, such a backlash did arise, and the administration has repeatedly attempted to distance itself from the harshest tactics used to question the detainees. They continue to down play and hide behind classified information while they continue to deny habeas corpus to the detainees. The revelation of these memos doesn't really tell us anything we didn't know before. However, it does attach certain people--most notably, Condi Rice--to the tactics. Such explicit knowledge should preclude Rice from any public service position for the rest of her life, if it doesn't land her in jail! Any aspirations to become President of the U.S. are now gone. She will forever be linked with this dark chapter in U.S. history.

Rice is not the only one besmirched by our countries willingness to torture. Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, and Gonzales will all be judged harshly by history, and rightfully so. But perhaps the biggest casualty of this whole sick affair, apart from the victims themselves, is to the reputation of the United States. We can no longer hold our standards up as those to be emulated, unless we want our own soldiers tortured, that is. We can no longer claim the moral high ground. All we can do is to try to rebuild our reputation in the coming years and decades. That is George Bush's legacy.

Chinese Torture Methods used in Guantanamo

The New York Times reports a shocking story today: American Soldiers and CIA members were trained to use methods employed by the Chinese military during the Korean War. These methods were considered to be torture at the time, and it was known that the methods elicited false confessions. The chart used in the training was taken verbatim from the original report on Chinese Torture methods, with only the title removed.

Can it be more clear that at least between 2002 and 2005, the U.S. Government was actively using torture in the name of homeland security? As Senator Levin notes in the article, “People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.” Torture is not a reliable source of information, and if that were the only argument against it, it would be enough to consign torture techniques to the dustbin of history. But there are many more reasons to oppose torture. From any moral standpoint, the intentional infliction of harm on another human should be opposed. Torture not only inflicts terrible physical and mental suffering on the victim, it is also psychologically damaging to the person who inflicts the torture. A torturer must learn to see the human being that they are harming as something less than human. The torturer, in the act of torture, turns into a monster. Both the torturer and the tortured become animalistic.

Using torture is simply not how we want our society to work. We don't want to be remembered by history as a society of torturers. We need to tell our leaders in no uncertain terms that all torture must end. It doesn't work. It causes irreparable harm. It must be stopped.

The President and Congress are not above the Constitution

The Supreme Court gave a stinging, if narrow, rebuke yesterday to President Bush and congress regarding detainees at Guantanamo. By declaring that detainees have the right to seek their release in our standard court system, the Supreme Court should have finally put an end to Bush's flaunting of the constitution in the name of the "war on terror." Amnesty hails the decision but calls it "a limited victory for human rights." Scotusblog looks at some of the scenarios that may play out in the White House, the Pentagon and the court system. There is, of course, a multitude of other coverage.

It seems to me, though, that the real tragedy of this is how long it has taken. Bush has essentially shown that the courts move so slowly on issues like this that a president can get away with more than 6 years of human rights and constitutional abuses. Worst of all, there are no repercussions for these actions. The President and the Congress are not above the Constitution, but for long periods of time, they can act as if they are.