The Erickson Report, Page 4: The death penalty is the death of justice

The death penalty is the death of justice

On Thursday, March 5, the state of Alabama legally murdered Nathaniel Woods, again showing that the US legal system cannot be trusted to deal with matters of life and death.

In 2005, Woods was convicted of felony murder in the killings of three Birmingham, Alabama police in June 2004.

There are two undisputed facts here: One, Woods was there. Two, he didn't fire the shots, a man named Kerry Spencer did. After that, it of course gets hazy as police and prosecutors claim Woods "masterminded" the killing and "lured" police to the location. But Spencer, who admitted to being the shooter, claiming it was because he saw cops aiming their guns at him so he was going to shoot first - a defense he was not allowed to raise at his trial - said Woods was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and ran away when the shooting started.

There are more things here that are undeniable, however: It is undeniable that Woods received grossly inadequate representation, so much so that one attorney actually abandoned him in the middle of his appeals and he turned down a plea deal of 20 to 25 years at least partly because he had been misled into believing he couldn't be sentenced to death since he wasn't the gunman.

It is undeniable that two sisters of one of the slain cops openly opposed the sentence, declaring that Woods was not guilty of murder and the sentence was in the words of  one "so unjust."

It is undeniable that Woods was condemned without a unanimous jury vote, something that is possible only in Alabama.

It is undeniable that The Appeal, a nonprofit news organization that covers the criminal justice system, found Woods to be “actually 100 percent innocent.”

And it is also, in my opinion, undeniable that Woods was rushed to execution as punishment for his refusal to cooperate in his own official murder. Death Row inmates were told to choose which of two methods by which they wanted to be killed, lethal injection or the experimental method of nitrogen hypoxia, where the victim is starved of oxygen. Woods refused to make a choice, after which his execution date was scheduled ahead of some others who had been on Death Row longer.

By the way: Among those whose date for execution has not yet been set is Kerry Spencer.

Nathaniel Woods

There is more, more here that I find truly offensive, such as Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey's reprehensible refusal to intervene, justified later by a statement that was nothing more than echoing the prosecution's story along with calling Woods "a known drug dealer," a crime for which as far as I can determine he was never convicted or even formally charged - but then again, the after-the-fact smear of a dead black man is hardly new.

But ultimately what is most offensive is that we still, we still, we still pursue the death penalty, this remnant of medieval brutality, this paean to blood vengeance.

It is, happily, hopefully, slowly dying out: Last May, New Hampshire became the 21st state to abolish the death penalty. Since 1976, there have been 1516 executions in the US but just one state - Texas - accounted for 37% of that total and just five states - Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, Florida, and Missouri - accounted for nearly two-thirds while 15 states executed no one in that time.

Sadly, last August the Tweetie-pie White House announced an intention to bring the grim reaper back to federal jurisprudence, but Rep. Ayanna Pressley and Sen. Dick Durbin are in their respective chambers the primary sponsors of bills that would eliminate the death penalty at the federal level. While the case of Nathaniel Woods is not a federal one, obviously, it can be hoped that it will spark others - Are you listening, Nancy Pelosi? - to act.