Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty

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

Representative Steve D'Amico's
maiden speech, delivered at the
November 2007 legislative debate on the death penalty.

Thank you Mr. Speaker and, through you, to the members.

Mr. Speaker, I might note that my remarks on this subject may differ somewhat from those of the 4th Bristol seat in the past.

Mr. Speaker, I find it curious that those who distrust government the most tend to be the most ardent supporters of the death penalty.

They don’t trust government to collect and spend our taxes, educate our children, or maintain our roads. Yet, they would grant government the power to decide who is to live and who is to die. I find this puzzling.

China, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Pakistan, the United States. What do they have in common? These governments lead the world in executions in 2006. China, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Pakistan. This is not company we want to keep.

I ask the members indulgence to take a moment and look around this chamber. There sits the first division, there the second, and there the third.

Over the last 34 years, 124 death row inmates have been exonerated and set free. If seated here, they would fill the first three divisions and spill over to the fourth.

These are the lucky ones. Larry Griffin, Ruben Cantu, Cameron Willingham, and Carlos de Luna, they weren’t so lucky.

They were put to death before new evidence was uncovered that suggested their innocence. How many more have there been? How many more will there be…

There are those who would say, “It can’t happen here. This is Massachusetts, not Texas.”

I say, remember Charles Stuart who, in cold blood, on his way home from childbirth class, shot his pregnant wife and blamed the ever convenient generic black man.

In the emotionally charged atmosphere that followed, civil liberties and sound police procedures were ignored. 

Scores of African Americans were rounded up and searched at random. An innocent man was arrested and charged amid a chorus of cries to reinstate the death penalty.

It is in these kinds of emotionally charged cases, when careers are on the line and the pressure for arrests and convictions are the greatest, that the death penalty is most often sought, and when the administration of justice is most at risk.

Two thirds of the death penalty trials reviewed by appellate courts between 1973 and 1995 were found to contain serious violations of law. 

This is no accident. It is the inevitable outcome when passion and self interest overwhelm reason and fairness.

At no time is the right to be judged by an unbiased panel of one’s peers more important than in cases involving capital offenses. Here again, the administration of justice breaks down.

The very process of jury selection, where prosecutors engage in extended questioning to determine if potential jurors have moral or religious objections to imposing the death penalty, creates an atmosphere in which guilt is presumed and where jurors often see their primary task to be determining the penalty.

Social Scientists have documented that death penalty qualified juries have a harsher “law and order” bias than the general population.

They tend to identify more closely with the prosecution, worry more about freeing the guilty than they do about wrongly sentencing the innocent, and are more likely to convict than other juries.

Because women and minorities are less likely to support the death penalty, they are under represented in capital cases.

One could argue that no state is less qualified to administer the death penalty fairly than is Massachusetts.

54% of Massachusetts residents supported the death penalty in 2004. While some would see this as an argument in favor of bringing back the death penalty, just the opposite is true.

If we reinstitute the death penalty in Massachusetts, 46% of our residents will be excluded from sitting on juries.  46%.

Trial by a jury of one’s peers in capital cases would not even be a remote possibility in Massachusetts.

For these and many other reasons, too numerous to go into here today, I urge this body to accept the Judiciary Committee’s adverse report on the death penalty.

Let’s reject this remnant from mankind’s barbarous past. This is Massachusetts. We are better than that.

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