The Maryland Commission on the Death Penalty has held a series of hearings. I attended the hearing on September 5 in Annapolis in the Joint Hearing Room of the Legislative Services Building , 90 State Circle . Benjamin R. Civiletti is the chair. I signed up to testify, but the session closed before anyone from the general public could testify. Below is my intended testimony.
My name is Max Obuszewski, and I am a pacifist and abolitionist. For whatever reason, members of the Maryland State Police were spying on me because I am involved in protesting war and seeking to have the death penalty repealed. I also suffered the indignity of being placed on a terrorist/drug running watch list.
Nevertheless, I am here to urge this commission to call for the repeal of Maryland ’s deeply flawed death penalty. Flawed as we all are, no person has the right to kill another person. And we cannot kill a person to teach that killing is wrong.
I still agonize because I killed a mouse when I was a child. I cannot imagine how any executioner, from the governor on down to the guard who straps in the prisoner, is unaffected.
I have protested all five executions starting on May 17, 1994 with John Thanos through December 5, 2005 when Wesley Baker was given lethal injection. And when I stood outside the death house, each time I remembered the victims: Billy Winebrenner, Gregory Allen Taylor, Melody Pistorio, Vincent Adolfo, Christine Doerfler, Dawn Marie Garvin, Patricia Hurt, Lori Ward and Jane Tyson. As a victim of crime, I have great empathy for the families of the victims.
However, if a prosecutor wants to be "tough on crime," s/he should work assiduously to end poverty. The resounding commonality on death rows is prisoners usually come from backgrounds that include poverty and abuse. And as experts have testified, the system is tainted by racism.
The justice system will always make mistakes, so Maryland must join with the civilized world and abandon capital punishment. Those who seek vengeance should realize it never brings back the victim, grants closure to the victim's family or reduces crime.
I am reading Eric Foner’s book Reconstruction America ’s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877. It is startling to come across the laws which were passed to deny free blacks any notion of justice. Today, no one would argue in favor of such injustice. Yet intelligent people try to justify capital punishment, which is actually an anachronism. Eventually, it will be repealed in Maryland and all of the United States . Scholars, students and others will look back in disbelief to think that State-sanctioned executions once were legal.
If we recognize those on death row as fellow human beings, then we should be able to see them as troubled people who need help. We cannot claim to be a civilized state when we, by law, execute human beings. Be aware that Mary Dyer was executed legally on June 1, 1660 by the State of Massuchsetts for being a member of the Religious Society of Friends.
In 1957, Albert Camus wrote a classic essay REFLECTIONS ON THE GUILLOTINE. It was written years before France abolished the death penalty. The Nobel prizewinner recognized the futility of the death penalty: “Rather, it is obviously no less repulsive than the crime, and this new murder, far from making amends for harm done to the social body, adds a new blot to the first one.” He ridiculed the thought of capital punishment being a deterrent: “the blind hope that one man at least, one day, will be stopped from his murderous gesture by the thought of the punishment and, without anyone’s ever knowing it, will justify a law that has neither reason nor experience in its favor.”
Camus admitted being a believer in the death penalty. After careful study and dialogue with dissenters, he recognized the folly of his thinking and joined the abolitionist movement. I have to believe that anyone who favors executions is also capable of change and will one day reject the death sentence.
Abolition of the death penalty is inevitable. The question in Maryland is when will it happen? I hope the legislature will put aside the petty politics of appealing to a mob mentality by repealing the death penalty in 2009. Today we praise the former Republican governor of Illinois , George Ryan, who commuted the death sentences of 167 prisoners because of a corrupt judicial system.
I have been inside the room where Maryland ’s executions take place, and I saw the gas chamber there as well as the equipment used for lethal injection. Maryland politicians once thought it was right to use the gas chamber to kill. Before that, hanging was used. It is simply ludicrous to try to find a “humane” way of killing a human being.
Today, experts question the efficacy of lethal injection. Dr. Edward Brunner [THE SUN, May 6, 2001], a practicing anesthesiologist, had this to say: “We know that in about 40 percent of the cases where lethal injection has been used, there has been mistakes in one way or another, and it has taken as long as 45 minutes for the person to die.” Regarding the executioners, he said, “They turn to people who are untrained and who have no business using these drugs.” He added that the drugs used have never been tested for use in killing people: “What they are really doing is experimenting on humans, much like the German doctors did in concentration camps.”
I think you, as distinguished members of this commission, realize that the eyes of the world are upon you. Please recommend an end to this barbaric and primitive practice. Refuse to promote further State-sanctioned executions, and history will reward you.
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Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center , 325 E. 25th St. , Baltimore , MD 21218 . Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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