Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty
 
Founded in 1928, MCADP is the oldest active anti-death penalty organization in the United States.
 


Detail of Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco from the cartoon of a mural by Ben Shahn © Estate of Ben Shahn /Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

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Martina Jackson,
Executive Director
PO Box 51920
Boston, MA 02205
Telephone:
617-523-3951

email:
mcadp@earthlink.net

Contact your legislators to make your opinion known!

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last update 3/22/08

MCADP in 2008

Presidential Candidates and the Death Penalty

The death penalty has not been a significant issue to date in the 2008 presidential campaign.  If you want to know where the remaining candidates stand on the death penalty, the Pew Forum has conveniently compiled their positions. 

Go to the Pew Forum Website www.pewforum.org/religion08/ to see the presidential candidates positions on all major issues.

Sadly, all of the major candidates support the death penalty in one way or another. 

The only candidates opposed to the death penalty are Senator Mike Gravel and Representative Ron Paul. 

We urge you to write to the other candidates and urge them to reconsider their positions. Nothing works better than the comments of potential voters and constituents.

Politicians need to know there is strong opposition to the death penalty and that people who oppose the death penalty support candidates who oppose the death penalty as well.

Last year was a good year for MCADP and for the anti-death penalty movement in general.

 On November 7, 2007, the Massachusetts House of Representatives voted down the latest effort to reinstate the death penalty by 112-46, the largest margin ever.  Representative Steven D’Amico (4th Bristol) gave his maiden speech during the floor debate opposing the death penalty.  Click this link to read his speech.  

Thanks to MCADP Executive Director Martina Jackson for her lobbying effort and for her coordination of the testimony against the death penalty at the hearing on the bill.  Click this link to read MCADP President James Rooney’s testimony against the bill.

In December, New Jersey became the first state since 1976 in which the legislature passed a bill abolishing the death penalty.  Governor John Corzine signed the bill “with pride” saying, “It's a day of progress for the state of New Jersey and for the millions of people across our nation and around the globe who reject the death penalty as a moral or practical response to the grievous, even heinous, crime of murder."

 In 2008, MCADP plans to build on this progress and seize the opportunity to work for even more results on the anti-death penalty front.  If you have not done so already, please help the effort by renewing your membership for this year.

Boston North Chapter reports on their:

Frozen
5th Annual
Good Friday Silent Vigil
March 21, 2008
Reading Town Common

Link to Articles of Interest

Recent additions :

BOSTON GLOBE Op-ed:
April 25, 2008
On capital punishment, a message for all
NEARLY THREE decades ago Massachusetts abolished the death penalty. The Commonwealth did not rush to judgment. For more than 300 years the state executed men and women convicted of murder. [continued]

New York Times Editorial: 
Unnecessary Harm
The trials of six detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, will proceed under deeply flawed procedures that violate this country’s basic fairness.
February 13, 2008 [download as pdf]

New Yorker Magazine: Annals of Law
Death In Georgia
The high price of trying to save an infamous killer’s life.
by Jeffrey Toobin
February 4, 2008 [download as pdf]

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Your membership will help continue our fight against the death penalty in Massachusetts!
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