SPEAKING OF THE DEAD

"There's only one thing worse than speaking ill of the dead--and that is not speaking of the dead at all"

--Author Unknown

  One of the most popular reasons given for upholding the "Death Penalty" is its value as a deterrent to violent crime. Those well-worn statistics have proven that not to be the case. Most often, within a very short time after someone is sentenced to death, the public no longer remembers who the condemned person is , cannot readily name even the victim or circumstances of the crime. Following are two of the many people murdered by the state of Texas. How many will remember these men or their alleged victims? Have the murders of these men has any deterrent affect at all on violent crime? (see my article "The Death Penalty")

Luther Hill: Luther Hill was tried and convicted of pouring gasoline on his wife, setting her on fire and burning her to death in 1941. He was murdered by the state on July 5, 1942. Considering that Luther was an African American man living in the South in the 1940s, one can easily assume that the only reason he ever made it to the inside of a courtroom and then to a prison cage, was because his alleged victim was an African American woman. If he had killed a white woman, or even been accused of or merely suspected of it. Luther would have found himself swinging from the limb of a tall oak tree! That was and still is what is proudly called by some, "Justice--Texas Style." One needs only to recall the atrocity enacted in 1998 in Jasper, Texas, when James Byrd was tortured to death at the hands of a few young white Ku Klux groupies to realize that not much has changed.

Raymond Hamilton: I know many people probably recognize Raymond's name because he was a partner with Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, but not because his execution has served as any kind of deterrent to murder or made the world a safer place. Few, if any, will remember the actual crime for which he was sentenced to death or the name of his victim, or that he killed a guard during an escape from the infamous Eastham Unit. Raymond is also remembered by some for having escaped death row at the Walls Unit on July 22, 1934. In October 1934, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed his appeal "because he escaped from prison, and did not return voluntarily, and was not recaptured within 30 days of his escape." He was captured eventually, though not in time to fall under the "30-day rule" and benefit from any appeal on his death sentence. ("Texas is awfully fond of 30-day rules.") He was executed on May 10, 1935.

  These are only two men who have been executed. Since the death penalty was abolished in 1972 because the form of execution (The Electric Chair) was considered cruel and unusual punishment, and then reinstated in 1976 after the new form of murder became Lethal Injection (as if there is really a humane and just way to murder someone--that is insanity)

D.R.I.V.E.

DEATH Row INNER-COMMUNALIST VANGUARD ENGAGEMENT