Repealing death penalty a vital first step

Last week in the News Journal, a young African-American reporter wrote a column titled “History proves justice for us is hopeless.”

He was responding to a story about a Dover Police Department officer who was caught by his dashboard camera kicking a suspect in the head, breaking his jaw and leaving him unconscious.

He called for justice but wasn’t expecting any. “Please excuse me if I don’t hold out any hope,” he wrote. “I don’t have any left.”

His attitude is understandable. Our country’s history of racial justice is bleak.

But when the reporter wrote about losing hope, I couldn’t help thinking about Bryan Stevenson, a Cape Henlopen High School graduate who has spent his career, his entire adult life, seeking justice for the most despised members of society, those condemned to death row.

Speaking in December at the Eagle’s Nest Fellowship Church near Milton, Stevenson emphasized the importance of hope.

“Injustice prevails where hopelessness persists,” said Stevenson, who heads the Equal Justice Initiative in Birmingham, Ala.

“We can’t create justice unless we are hopeful.”

Hopefulness has brought Stevenson a long way. A recent issue of Time magazine counted him among “The 100 Most Influential People,” with tennis great Serena Williams providing a write-up about why he was picked.

That hopefulness helped him, just last month, free an Alabama man who had spent nearly three decades on death row. (Stevenson was able to disprove the only evidence against him.)

And that hopefulness brought him once again back to Delaware, where I met him downstairs in Legislative Hall in Dover. He had come home, briefly, to speak to legislators about repealing the state’s death penalty.

He had arrived in Delaware the night before, and was leaving later that day to present a speech in New York City. He squeezed me in between sessions with state representatives.

Like last session, a bill repealing capital punishment in Delaware has passed the state Senate with bipartisan support, including two Sussex County Republicans, Sen. Gary Simpson of Milford and Sen. Ernie Lopez of Lewes. Last time around the bill died in committee, never making it to the floor for a vote.

That could happen again.

But there are reasons, as Stevenson might say, to be hopeful.

For one, Gov. Markell, after a protracted silence on the issue, has said he would sign the bill. This is new.

Second, it has become clear - even painfully obvious - that our system of justice is badly flawed.

In July, Delaware’s chief medical examiner was fired for his office’s mishandling of evidence.

Worse, the country’s most respected crime lab, the FBI’s vaunted forensic unit, provided “flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence over more than a two-decade period before 2000,” according to a Washington Post article. (My italics.)

The cases included “those of 32 defendants sentenced to death.” Supposedly, scientific hair and bite mark comparisons were largely bogus.

Sadly, it gets worse. For years, these problems were kept secret. Prosecutors and defendants alike weren’t notified.

This is the system of justice we trust to carry out the ultimate punishment?

But Stevenson sees reason for hope. Maryland has abolished the death penalty; Pennsylvania’s Gov. Tom Wolf recently issued a moratorium on executions.

Now it’s Delaware’s turn. “Because I’m from Delaware,” Stevenson said, “I have a deep interest in our state taking a step forward.”

He doesn’t consider death penalty repeal as an end in itself, despite its importance. He sees it as a beginning.

“I’m really worried, to be honest, about the lack of progress on racial justice, generally, in the state of Delaware,” he said.

“Our state has not evolved very much when it comes to racial justice,” Stevenson said. “There are no people of color on the appellate bench. Wealth still matters more than culpability in criminal trials.”

Delaware, he said, has not dealt with its past. “We’ve never said or done anything to really change this history that begins with slavery and continues through lynching and segregation,” he said.

And when he talks about slavery, he’s not just talking about enforced servitude.

He’s talking about the narrative that justified slavery, the narrative that held blacks were inferior.

The 13th Amendment ended slavery, but not the narrative supporting it.

But that can change.

“Repeal of the death penalty is a really important first step to say we are going to create a new future, when it comes to how we manage inequality and poverty,” Stevenson said.

At 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, a rally will be held outside Legislative Hall in Dover to show support for repealing the death penalty, featuring Black Thought of Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show.”

At 11 a.m., the House will convene a hearing on Senate Bill 40, which would end capital punishment.

Bryan won’t be there in person, but his spirit of hopefulness will.

“If it gets to the floor, I think it will pass,” he said. “And that’s why I think it’s an exciting time in the state. If you put the death penalty behind us you can focus on other issues.”