Kenneth Mosley is scheduled for execution on September 24. He has been on death row for the past twelve years. Mr. Mosley was convicted of killing a police officer while attempting to rob a bank in Garland, Texas on February 15, 1997.

Kenneth Mosley

If and when he is executed, Mr. Mosley will be among the 200+ victims of the death penalty under a single Texas governor.

Mr. Mosley has committed a terrible crime, and things look grim for him. He overcame many adversities in his life, but finally a combination of addiction and difficult circumstances led to this tragedy. Still he says:

I’m staying positive and have hope that something good will happen …

Kenneth Mosley grew up in an abusive home. His family was very poor, and racial tensions ran high in the community.  In spite of it all, Kenneth managed to finish high school and a year of college. Unfortunately, he did not have the financial means to continue his education. He left college to work in a Coca Cola Bottling Company. Soon afterwards, he met and married his wife Carol.  They had a baby girl named Amber.

Life was going well for the Mosely family, but things started to fall apart when Ken became addicted to crack cocaine. He and his wife sought treatment from many different clinics, but after losing his job, he lost his health insurance and, with it, any hope of affording treatment for his addiction. His life went into a downward spiral.

One day, with a gun in his pocket, Ken walked into a bank. A police officer, who later paid with his own life, spotted him and attempted to stop him from robbing the bank. They struggled and crashed through a window. During the struggle,  the officer was shot and killed.

During Ken’s trial, the quality of the representation he received was so poor that he may as well have been deprived of his constitutional right to effective counsel.  The lawyers failed to present evidence of several mitigating factors that may have influenced the jury’s decision to impose the death penalty.  For example, despite the fact that Ken suffered a brain injury resulting in permanent damage, his attorneys did not even examine Ken’s medical records.  Nor did they address his debilitating addiction to crack cocaine.  No evidence of either impairment was presented to the jury.

If you wish to participate in efforts to obtain clemency for Kenneth Mosley, see Amnesty’s Urgent Action for Kenneth Mosley. For additional information, visit http://www.kennethmosley.org/.

One year ago today, Dec. 17, 2007, New Jersey Gov. John Corzine signed into law the bill abolishing the death penalty in New Jersey.  It was the first time in 42 years that a state had legislatively ended capital punishment (Iowa and West Virginia did it in 1965), and made the Garden State the 14th abolitionist state in the U.S. 

New Jersey politicians showed real leadership on this issue, and should be thanked.

What has been the result in New Jersey’s first year without the death penalty?  Has violent crime sky-rocketed?  Are wild dogs roaming the streets?  Are murderous zombies now regularly feasting on human flesh?? 

Well, no.  The consensus seems to be that not much has changed at all.  As Richard Pompelio, executive director of the New Jersey Crime Victims Law Center, put it in an article in the Newark Star-Ledger: 

“I don’t think it’s made much of a difference at all other than that some of the cases that were languishing out there are now getting tried. The important thing for crime victims is that the process have an end, and with the death penalty there never was an end.”

Other states, especially those like New Jersey with few on death row, fewer executions, and tight budgets, may be well on their way to repealing their own death penalty statutes in 2009.   Maryland and New Mexico are the most likely candidates, though in every state the value of clinging to capital punishment is being viewed with ever greater skepticism, and in every state, activists are getting organized to push for abolition.

AIUSA has volunteer leaders in most states who are in the thick of this fight.  You can get more information and contact Amnesty’s death penalty abolition leaders by going to our Death Penalty in States map, and clicking on your state.

Manya Menapace, 81, of Pennsylvania, has already started writing letters for the Global Write-a-thon.

Today is a day when I feel especially grateful for all my rights–that I can write this blog entry, that I am free, that I am not in prison just for expressing my beliefs, that I can choose my religion, that I am able to make my own choices about marriage and family, that I have an education, that I can work, that I can rest, and that I can get care when I’m sick.

Human Rights Day is not a happy day for everyone, though. Right this minute, there are prisoners of conscience languishing in cells, people on death row waiting for the end to come, and human rights defenders looking over their shoulders wondering if today is the day the death threats will be carried out. What can I, who am so rich in rights (though no less rich than anyone should be) do to help these individuals?

I can write. I can put pen to paper and tell the authorities why I’m concerned, and push them to do what needs to be done. Thousands of people around the world are doing just that today, and all this week. Today, don’t just raise your glass and toast to human rights–pick up a pen and act!

Recently, lawmakers in Mexico have proposed reinstating the death penalty to deal with rising kidnapping and murder rates.  According to the LA Times, lawmakers will hear arguments regarding this amendment to the constitution next week.  Talk of executing criminals in Mexico has become more frequent by some politicians as the number of unsolved kidnappings, many resulting in murder, soars.  One such lawmaker said, “In Coahuila the death penalty is not the issue, it’s how we should kill (the criminals); by firing squad, slashing their throats, hanging or something lighter, like lethal injection.”

But let’s step back for a minute.  The reality of the situation in parts of Mexico is that the vast majority of these crimes, many the consequence of a violent drug war, go unsolved and some believe that corrupt police are benefitting by bribing drug cartels in exchange for insider information.  And protecting innocent victims becomes impossible when victims’ families refuse to report the crime to a police force they feel can’t be trusted.

Because the current administration under President Calderon is unlikely to pass any amendment to legalize state-sanctioned executions, the lawmakers pushing for such a measure need to address the real problems in the region.  Before they jump to threatening “throat slashing”, legislators need to target the causes of the organized crime wave and the police force, charged with protecting its citizens, needs to regain credibility.  How can the citizens of Mexico trust authorities to carry out justice on death row when they can’t trust them to carry out justice on their streets?

Clinton Smith, a man sentenced to die in 1998 for the death of his daughter, was ordered off death row last week by state Supreme Court judge John Jolly, Jr.  Mr. Smith cannot read or write and has an IQ of less than 70.  He was found to be mentally retarded and, therefore, ineligible for the death penalty, according to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia.   His sentence was changed to life in prison. 

The question remains, however, as to why Mr. Smith’s death sentence was not lessened six years ago after the Court ruled that executing the mentally retarded was cruel and unusual.  And how many other mentally retarded inmates await execution despite a Supreme Court ruling intended to protect them?  Unfortunately, justice for these inmates may be tied up in subjective definitions of “mental retardation”.  Each state has its own definition, many relying on vague qualifiers such as “subaverage general intellectual functioning” and “deficits in adaptive behavior”.  Many also rely on IQ scores, with one point meaning the difference between life and death.