InCASE in 2010

2009 was a great year for InCASE (read about it here!) but we've set our sights higher yet for 2010. Here are a few of the key goals for the year:

50 events around the state of Indiana (see where we've been)
Getting the word out to communities across the state and educating Hoosiers about the flaws of our death penalty system remains our top priority.

Double our membership to 1,000
It will take a broad base of volunteers and supporters around Indiana to achieve a moratorium on execution. We will continue to build our base by doubling our membership in the year 2010.

Train 25 grassroots leaders
Leadership must come from the grassroots. To help communities be an effective part of the moratorium movement, InCASE will put on local trainings for volunteers to become grassroots leaders, teaching them how to put their passion to work.

We need your help to reach these goals!
Make a tax-deductible donation today to ensure that we have the needed resources to carry out this mission.

Read InCASE's 2009 Annual Report!

Our annual report detailing InCASE's progress over the past year is out! Click below to flip through it or head over to our website to read about InCASE work in 2009.

Exoneree Juan Melendez speaks to Indianapolis crowd

The 99th death row exoneree in the United States, Juan Melendez, spoke to students, professors, and community members at IU School of Law - Indianapolis yesterday. He gave a passionate recollection of his wrongful conviction, the nearly 18 years he spent on Florida's death row for a crime he did not commit, and called for a stop to the death penalty in Indiana and around the world.

Later in the day, a documentary about Juan's experience, Juan Melendez 6446 was screened and a Q&A session was held with the audience.



139 innocents have been freed from death rows around the country.

South Bend Tribune calls out Indiana's death penalty

An editorial in today's South Bend Tribune called on the General Assembly to "either set aside [the death penalty] once and for all, or figure out how to make it right":

There are other reasons to discontinue the death penalty — or at least to impose a moratorium on it. For one, it costs a third more to execute a convicted murderer than it does to incarcerate him for life. For another, it isn't needed to protect Hoosiers; Indiana courts can impose a sentence of life without chance of parole.

But the best reason is justice. Wrongly execute a convicted murderer and there's no righting the wrong — no justice for either the defendant or the crime victim.

You can read the whole piece (and I recommend that you do) here.

Scheck vs. Colbert on the death penalty

Too rarely in all the serious discussion about the death penalty is there a chance to learn and laugh. Fortunately, last night's debate between Stephen Colbert and Barry Scheck, co-founder of The Innocence Project, is one of those opportunities:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Fatal Subtraction - Barry Scheck
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

Here's hoping sane discussion of the death penalty gets the legendary Colbert bump!

Leading Legal Thinkers: We Can't Fix the Broken Death Penalty

The American Law Institute, an independent institution which drafted the Model Penal Code and is comprised of prominent legal thinkers, has given up its efforts to intellectually justify the death penalty.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times writes:

Instead, the institute voted in October to disavow the structure it had created “in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment.”

That last sentence contains some pretty dense lawyer talk, but it can be untangled. What the institute was saying is that the capital justice system in the United States is irretrievably broken.

A study commissioned by the institute said that decades of experience have proved that the system cannot reconcile the twin goals of individualized decisions about who should be executed and systemic fairness. It added that capital punishment is plagued by racial disparities; is enormously expensive even as many defense lawyers are underpaid and some are incompetent; risks executing innocent people; and is undermined by the politics that come with judicial elections.

That such an expansive and austere body would collectively reach this conclusion is a significant milestone in the public debate over the death penalty.

Happy Holidays from InCASE!

"Execution presents opportunity to debate issue"

Jerry Davich of the Post-Tribune of Northwest Indiana rightly brings up that we need to reflect on our personal stances on the death penalty, particularly in light of last week's execution:

Outside the prison, at the intersection of justice and mercy, I pondered capital punishment, an issue I've debated in my mind for decades.

As always for me, it begins with questions from multiple angles, including personal, legal, societal, moral, and spiritual. Would Wrinkles' execution bring back his victims, or deter other criminals from committing murder?

Is this "God's law, taking an eye for an eye," as one death penalty supporter told me at the 1997 vigil? Or does God instead preach forgiveness? Does the bible teach both?

Don't we execute someone for what they did, not who they are now, after they "discover" God, salvation, or remorse? Or should we condemn the sin, not the sinner? Are we, as a society, playing God, by choosing who to execute, and when, or where? Or this is Wrinkles' just reward for taking the lives of others, especially in such a brutal fashion?

Davich also brings up the story of Bill Pelke, an Indiana native who runs an organization called Journey of Hope which is a collection of victims' family members in opposition to capital punishment. Having lost his grandmother to a brutal murder, Bill found peace in forgiveness and not execution.

This issue is far from being black and white. Only by acknowledging and taking on these shades of gray can we decide what is right for Indiana. Keep asking questions.

(Full column at Post-Tribune)

InCASE Executive Director on last night's execution

The following is an op-ed by Will McAuliffe, Executive Director, Indiana Coalition Acting to Suspend Executions (InCASE) that will be running in various Indiana newspapers.:

At 12:39 this morning, Matthew Eric Wrinkles was executed in Michigan City for the murders of Debra Wrinkles, Mark “Tony” Fulkerson, and Natalie Fulkerson.

I doubt that many, if any, Hoosiers across the state of Indiana are waking up feeling safer as a result of Wrinkles’ death. They have reason not to: in a recent study, 88% of top criminologists stated that the death penalty did not serve as a deterrent. Another poll shows that a majority of police chiefs around the country agree.

Lest we forget, Wrinkles had been safely locked away from society for nearly 15 years prior to his execution. He presented no ongoing threat to the people of Indiana. And yet a tremendous amount of county and state resources were used to take him from his cell and into the death chamber. A state study pegs the death penalty as being 38% more costly than the cost of imprisoning a perpetrator for their entire natural life.

Beyond being just an excessive burden on the taxpayer and judicial system, a recent poll showed that police chiefs rank reducing drug abuse and increasing resources for law enforcement as top crime-fighting priorities while ranking use of the death penalty last. Abuse of the drug methamphetamine use played a major role in the murders committed by Wrinkles. Shouldn’t we be examining ways to more prudently deliver justice and fight crime that don’t involve throwing millions of dollars away to execute those who are already incarcerated?

We also have a system that does not live up to our expectations of fairness or accuracy. An American Bar Association study panel found Indiana’s death penalty to be in full compliance with only 10 of 91 protocols for a fair, effective death penalty. Shouldn’t an irreversible punishment that costs so much money be delivered fairly and proportionately?

The most disturbing statistic is that 139 innocent individuals have been found on death rows around the country since 1973, nine this year alone. These are the individuals who were fortunate to be found before their execution day arrived. Shouldn’t we choose life imprisonment without parole over the death penalty to avoid the risk of tragic and irreversible error?

All these facts and figures aside, the children of the victims in this tragic crime, who are also nieces and nephews of Eric Wrinkles, as well as the mother of one of the victims had gone so far as to forgive Wrinkles on an episode of Oprah and have expressed that they did not want him to be executed.

Matthew Eric Wrinkles is gone but the problems that plague our capital punishment system are not. We need to set in place a moratorium on executions until we can answer definitively what the death penalty really accomplishes on our behalf above and beyond the proven punishment of life without parole and whether it is worth the cost to taxpayers, the risk to innocent lives, and the doubt that inevitably lingers in a system prone to error. Until these big questions are answered, let us have the courage to admit our concerns publicly and ensure that they are addressed.

Final Statement of Matthew Eric Wrinkles

The following is the final written statement given by Matthew Eric Wrinkles who was executed last night:

“I wish I knew then what I know now. That is, as Einstein said, ‘only a life lived for others is worth living.’

“Fifteen years ago I took the lives of people I loved, my wife, my friends. I did so voluntarily taking drugs to the extent I became an addict of the worst kind. I caused enormous pain to many. I am not proud of the man I was. But I am no longer that man.

“In the past 15 years I have come to grips with the extent of the harm I caused. Although tonight I pay for my actions w/ my life, it has been the last 15 years that has been the truth punishment. Living w/ the knowledge of the pain I caused was the severest punishment possible.

“Tonight my children lose their natural father. My friends lose me. My brothers grieve. More victims are created.

“As Albert Camus said: To kill a man in a paroxysm of passion is understandable. To have him killed by someone else after calm and serious mediation and on the pretext of duty honorably discharged is incomprehensible.”

(From Evansville Courier & Press)