MISSION

AWOL is a student-run independent progressive magazine that seeks to ignite political and cultural discussions on campus.  By providing a space for students to question the structural and social framework of American University, AWOL envisions a more egalitarian and socially conscious campus community. The publication serves as a resource to grassroots movements by analyzing and reporting on campus, national, and international topics. We strive to bridge gaps and make connections between people of different regional and political backgrounds. Providing extensive, in-depth reporting on issues that do not make the headlines of mainstream publications while creating a forum for activists to write, analyze, and organize, AWOL is a publication that works toward a more progressive future without compromising issues of today.

Editor in Chief: BOBBY ALLYN

Managing Editor: JEFF LAMBERT

Layout Editor: JESSICA TAICH

Chief Copy Editor: MAEG KEANE

Section Editor: CHRIS LEWIS

Photography: JESSICA KANTOR

Copy Editors:

JACOB LOCKE <duloque@gmail.com>
KATE LITVIN   <klitvin@comcast.net>

Contributing writers:

RANDALL COLEMAN
<r_coleman22@yahoo.com>

JACOB LOCKE
<duloque@gmail.com>

SUZANNE MONSIVIAS
<sm4847a@student.american.edu>

AVA PAGE
ap4290a@american.edu

RICHARD PHILLIPS
rp7282a@american.edu

ELIZABETH TSENG
et3882a@american.edu

IAN VALENTINE
<iancvalentine@gmail.com>

Like a story? Hate a story? Want to join AWOL? Write to us:
awolau@gmail.com

Support/Affiliations:

AWOL is made possible through the support of Campus Progress, a project for Center for American Progress. www.campusprogress.org

I’ve never been JAMed, so I set out to hear the stories of those who have been through system for both minor and major offenses. This is not an exhaustive report, rather a glimpse into the world of jams from those most affected by it: the students. Some of the names of those interviewed have been changed to maintain their anonymity.

The jams system is composed of three different bodies, all with specialized tasks and varying degrees of sentencing. The firstgtier is Mediation. According to the jams Web site, mediation “provides an alternate forum for the resolution of conflict.” Mediators are recruited from the student body, staff and faculty. They’re used to resolve disciplinary disputes of a minor nature.

Most folks are familiar with the Judicial Affairs portion. There are two kinds of judicial procedures at AU. First, there is a hearing process. This is pretty simple: the student goes to a hearing with jams Director Katsura Kurita Beltz. The student gives his or her story and Beltz determines the punishment.

When this happens, the student, most likely, will end up in Heads Up, the mandatory class for those caught drinking or taking illegal substances. The more dangerous option is a trial, where the student goes before the Conduct Council. In trial, students can lose their scholarship or housing or be expelled from the University. jams can convict with a “reasonable preponderance of guilt,” which typically translates to 60 percent certainty.

Laura Taylor is a model student—on scholarship, distinguished through community service, activism and academic achievement. Yet, the AU junior is facing pending jams charges. The reason? Standing next to the Border Patrol table at the AU Career Fair.

Last fall, Taylor and a friend stood next to the patrol representatives with a sign detailing human rights abuses committed by the Border Patrol. When Public Safety complained she was “impeding free speech,” Taylor replied she too had a right to speak and that she was only standing next to the table. After nearly two hours of deliberation, Public Safety told her to move ten feet away. She complied; the ordeal presumably ended. Several weeks later, Taylor and her friend received a jams notice for “disobeying public safety.” Her hearing with Beltz is pending. When Laura called to complain, Beltz said that Laura did not have constitutional rights on campus; the chilling reality of a private institution—constitutional exemption.

My most common encounters were with students caught drinking. The dry campus rule has dogged many AU students.

Jason Farthing was charged with drinking in the dorms and disrespecting an RA. He didn’t hit him, he said, but it’s an offense merely to be surly to an RA. Jason was able to beat the disrespect charge, but not the charge for alcohol.

“I admitted to drinking, though I never apologized. I’m too hard headed for that,” he said, adding that the system’s response was overblown and arbitrary.

“I had a class during Heads Up, so I was forced to do work independently, which was a lot more than anyone else,” Farthing said. “Plus, there was no acknowledgement of completion. I never knew when I was done.”

Reid Rosenberg was also caught drinking. Unlike Farthing, he attended the Heads Up classes. “No one took it seriously, including the teacher,” he said.

It’s really more a matter of whether you think it can be reformed or scrapped altogether. I’d say a good scraping is in order. But realistically, the administration should look into seriously revamping the system; the current process is unfairly arbitrary and simply unreasonable.

Everyone has a favorite jams story, the one told by a roommate, a friend, or perhaps yourself. The number of students who have passed through the jams system is innumerable. But after a while the tales begin to sound the same. There are outliers like Taylor who are railroaded. More often, though, it is just kids who forget to lock their doors when they’re drinking. It’s a minor detour, but an ineffective and annoying one. Few have anything good to say about jams. Probably fewer have sworn off drugs and alcohol due a couple of Saturday morning lectures and administrative threats.

AU creates institutions like jams to protect the student body, from themselves and each other. But a system that is profoundly unreasonable protects neither. While anarchy on campus isn’t probable for the near future, American should reconsider whether the judicial system in place is serving the students it purports to protect. If not—and that seems likely—perhaps a change is in order.

Sophomore Ava Page and senior Emily Noll want to change that perception. The duo co-founded the campus group Justice Not Jails last semester, aiming to shatter preconceived notions about crime, educate people about the brutalities of prison life, and create a campus movement around prison activism. Their mission is simple: change the crime paradigm.

“Too often, we rely on fear and ignorance to justify the mass imprisonment of millions of people, so it is often hard to create an alternative discussion and school of thought in the face of mass hysteria crime campaigns by politicians and media,” said Page, who feels the system is now discussed only in terms of crime control.

Page and Noll became interested in criminal justice reformation after taking part in an Alternative Spring Break trip to San Francisco last year. They returned to AU as witness bearers, educators and advocates.

“After the Alternative Break Prison Justice Trip, I felt that the understanding the issue of incarceration in the United States was extremely important in trying to eradicate many other social inequalities like racism, classism, and sexism,” said Page, a Law and Society and Women and Gender Studies major.

“I wanted others in the AU and D.C. community to gain the same understanding I had about an issue that is so immense but rarely discussed in American society,” she said.

Found just last year, Justice Not Jails has already done quite a bit to expel misconceptions about prison and the justice system on campus. Sanho Tree, of the progressive think-tank Institute for Policy Studies, spoke about the international and domestic effects of the U.S. war on drugs for the club’s kick-off event for the school year. In November, the club hosted a panel on the incarceration of youth, which examined the practice of trying youth as adults and featured representatives of the Free Minds Book Club, Campaign for Youth Justice and other formerly incarcerated young people.

Just a month or so after their start, Justice Not Jails members organized a campus-wide book drive, collecting donated books and setting up libraries in local jails, institutions that have been bookless for years. To wrap up 2007, the group sponsored a coat and warm clothing drive to help relatives of those incarcerated in D.C.

While Justice Not Jails may not have overthrown the criminal industrial complex in their brief existence, the club’s mix of educational events and direct community action fosters solidarity and understanding between such socially stereotyped groups as colligates and convicts. Exposing the flaws of the justice system, while affirming the similarities among all humanity, the club is working to change the most unjust and unyielding of jail cells.

We relentlessly pursue romantic relationships for personal fulfillment because it is such a deeply engrained cultural theme. Having found one, we cling to it beyond rationality, placing greater — and often impossible — demands on our partners and accepting their treatment of us unquestioningly. Consider that thirty-one percent of American women report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend, according to a 1998 Commonwealth Fund survey. And this from the Bureau of Justice: 588,490 women were victims of intimate partner violence in 2001, accounting for nearly eighty-five percent of the victims of that category of crime. Too often, a person will remain in an abusive relationship out of a fear that it is better than nothing, that she would be lost and alone without the abusive partner, or worst of all that she actually deserves such treatment. When a society measures ultimate fulfillment by finding a mate, and simultaneously drums the importance of possession and ownership into our heads, it can’t be all that surprising when such ugly perversions of human love become commonplace.

In this way, partners become ensnared in emotional, psychological, and often physical traps set by their abusive loved ones, their own minds, or a combination of both. Too afraid of the unknown alternative, or too scared to face up to our own failings and abuse of those we say we love, we remain in these snares for years and even whole lives. Marriage, the venerable institution, has helped to keep people trapped in destructive relationships through threats of social exclusion and even eternal damnation for centuries. However, legal marriage does lend to a desirable level of social stability and personal fulfillment, but tying the knot frequently leaves people trapped — personal fulfillment at a high cost.

Additionally, we focus on our romantic relationships to the exclusion and detriment of the wider society, and thus to the detriment of the social stability and happiness marriage purportedly seeks to create. Notwithstanding, divorce rates remain as popular as ever. Even gays and lesbians, who have so often been the vanguard questioners of social assumptions, now clamor to be let into that ‘sacred’ institution. Marriage, however, was historically a contract in which ownership of the woman was transferred from father to husband. Many Marxists, anarchists, and other radical voices denounce modern marriage as a continuation of such arrangement, designed to keep women subservient and everyone lulled into complacency. We ignore the needs of broader society because we are wrapped up in the needs and wants of our partners, our families, and ourselves. We work until we drop to afford the biggest, safest cars for our families, while ignoring and even deriding public transportation. We slave away to pay off student loans to save money for our children’s educations, yet we ignore the dire attention that should be placed on the accessibility of education to people of all socioeconomics stratums. We become a society bereft of social responsibility and civic duty.

Despite all this, with all the talk from politicians, especially on the right, you would think man-woman marriage was the cure-all for society’s ills. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, hero of the conservative right, encapsulated the modern marriage ethos when she said:

“There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.”

The attitude of every person for themselves, and for their families, leaves us all behaving as if old Maggie had it right. However, we mustn’t allow ourselves to fall into the mind-trap manufactured by consumer society. We can neither treat each other as consumer goods, nor our relationships as means of selfish fulfillment. We must not, above all, allow ourselves to become robots working only for ourselves, believing what we are told by our drab consumer culture of compliance: keeping our heads down and mouths shut just to survive.

“I’ve seen the lowest of low and been the highest of high, but when it’s all over something inside you dies. I could be a coward, lower my head and cry, crawl into my cell then lie down and die. But I know life’s not over; my heart tells me to fight; if I look hard enough I see my freedom in sight. Though I am behind these bars, I’ll start my life anew. Despite these walls around me, my sun will still shine through.”

Miller, like the room’s other young poets, is a juvenile who has been charged as an adult in the District’s criminal justice system. Denied access to even the limited rehabilitative programs offered to incarcerated adults, these young men cultivate their hope for a better future through an organization called Free Minds Book Club, learning to resurrect the “something inside” lost in the cramped corridors of this Southeast edifice of concrete and florescent lighting.

Former television reporters Tara Libert and Kelli Taylor founded the Free Minds Book Club after doing extensive reporting on the plight of juveniles in adult prisons. While they noted the lack of educational, vocational, and social rehabilitative resources available to youth behind bars, it was the death of Taylor’s friend Glen McGinnis that moved the duo from observation to action.
McGinnis, an inmate on Texas’s Death Row whose capital sentence stemmed from a crime he committed at 17, was executed in 2000. The execution ignited Taylor’s “desire to do more than just report on the problem.”

Two years later, the Free Minds Book Club began offering incarcerated youth in D.C. an emotional support system and a unique academic experience. Most importantly, through the Book Club, inmates gained the chance to reclaim themselves—through the evocative power of written and spoken word; they navigated their history of poverty, violence, and pain, using paragraphs and stanzas to build a better future.

Today, Free Minds serves more than fifty young men who are charged and incarcerated as adults at the D.C. Jail and has served over 200 youth since its start. In the District, as in many states, children as young as 15 can be prosecuted as adults, making juveniles offenders eligible for life imprisonment and the death penalty. Dozens of 16- and 17-year-old boys are currently incarcerated in the D.C. Jail, and are often transferred to federal adult prisons in Ohio and Virginia after they reach legal age. According to Free Minds’ Web site, the group’s members are 92 percent African American and 8 percent Latino. The majority of these youth come from D.C.’s most crime-stricken neighborhoods—neighborhoods where nearly half of the children live below the poverty line.

Products of these neighborhoods, many of them 16- and 17-year-old children, read at a fifth grade level. Most of them have completely disengaged, if not dropped out from school. More than half of the youth involved in Free Minds have parents or other close family members who have been incarcerated, and many have children of their own.

Studies have shown juveniles incarcerated in adult facilities are more likely to remain entangled in the criminal justice system throughout their lives, although those who have access to support programs like the Free Minds Book Club are less likely to end up behind bars again.

By engaging in intellectual discussions, penning essays and poems, and corresponding with pen pals, Book Club members reconnect to the creative and expressive facets of their personalities repressed by failing school systems and difficult personal histories, according to the Free Minds Web site.

“Free Minds has changed my life,” said Lamarz Wilson, a member of the Book Club since 2004. “I’m no longer the thug I used to be but a loving and kind person.”

Wilson, now a free man, still remains involved in the organization. He described his experience with the group as “amazing, generous, and loving” during a panel discussion at AU.

In addition to the Book Club, Free Minds runs reentry and continuing support programs for former members. Many credit the group with their personal success after their release.

Wilbert Avila began participating in Free Minds when he was just sixteen and incarcerated in the D.C. Jail.

“Free Minds has inspired me,” Avila said, during a talk at AU. “I understand myself better. [The organization] showed me that in my moments of my anger and sadness I can look at life in a different way. Even though I may feel at the bottom, I can reach out for my goals.”

After leaving the D.C. jail, Avila participated in Free Minds reentry program and now attends University of the District of Columbia on scholarship. A mechanical engineering student, he excels academically while still maintaining a part-time job.

Programs that help juvenile members after their release give inmates like Avila opportunities to stay on the outside, and not return to the habits that originally brought them to incarceration.

“It’s very hard for [these youth] to change their lives when they face an array of obstacles,” Libert said.

The average incarceration rate of inmates is four years, and once out, they are faced with a daunted structure: the work force.

Compounding the difficulty of getting a job with a felony conviction and little education or life skills, recently released inmates also deal with issues surrounding affordable housing, lack of family support, peer pressure, and low self-esteem, according to Libert.

“Free Minds connects released members to the people, programs and services in the community that will help them to achieve their new educational and career goals,” she said.

More than jobs, Free Minds has connected inmates to the world outside 1901 D St. SE. Poetry created within those walls has gone on to literary readings and library displays, praised for its ability to convey the experience of youth behind bars.

Free Minds’ candid verses are a salient reminder of the pervasive inequalities that lead youth to prison and the dehumanizing nature of an institution that saps away the vestiges of individuality. With so many people trapped in isolation behind bars, can a society truly be free?

How long will we as citizens, sisters, brothers, friends, parents, spouses, and children of the 2,258,983 people imprisoned in the United States stay complacent in the face of such a broken system?

“If you don’t resolve the problem, the consequence will last eternity,” says 17-year-old Free Minds member Raphael Ward.

Armed with ink and creative vigor, the young men of Free Minds demonstrate humanity’s capacity for change and the dire need to question the power structures behind prison institutions.

For more information on the free minds book club & writing workshop, or information on how you can support the organization, visit freeemindsbookclub.org, or contact by telephone at 202.468.4809 or by email at mail@freemindsbookclub.org.

Since there were no WMDs in Iraq and the claim that Iraq was an imminent threat no longer flies, the revised objectives of the war are about bringing democracy to the people of Iraq. Meanwhile, in our nation’s capital, residents who pay tax dollars that fund the war—D.C. has the second highest per capita tax rate in the nation—and who risk their own lives to fight the war—D.C. residents have fought in more wars per capita than residents of any state—are denied the right to elect the Congressional leaders who make decisions about the war. As we pay lip service to the importance of democracy overseas in Iraq, over half a million people in D.C. are denied democratic participation here at home.

But, of course, this is an imperfect analogy. Iraqi citizens are being freed from a violent and oppressive dictator and some would argue that District residents already live in a prosperous democracy that values individuals’ rights and opportunities. So what’s the big deal? Why should Congressional representation matter to D.C. residents?

To answer these questions fully is impossible in this space, but one example of the cost of the District’s disenfranchisement is its lack of budget autonomy. The District’s budget must be approved each year by Congress, which has the power to overrule democratic decisions made by D.C. residents. For example, gun control laws and needle exchange programs that residents have supported to address problems specific to their community have been overruled by Congress for political reasons. Congress prevents D.C. from spending its own local tax dollars on programs that taxpayers have deemed important, affecting public services and limiting the ability of local government to address issues of poverty, homelessness, health care, education, and crime prevention in our community. But perhaps more important, especially to those of us who are in D.C. because we want to participate in our nation’s political process, is the hypocrisy of a nation that claims to be a beacon of democracy while denying citizens in its capital the right to participate in the federal government.

The disenfranchisement of D.C. residents and persons convicted of a felony means the denial of voting rights to over 6 million people in the United States. A look at the historical roots of this policy offers little clarity; our government is holding onto archaic practices of a “civil death” to all lawbreakers. In medieval Europe, infamous offenders suffered “civil death” which entailed “the deprivation of all rights, confiscation of property, exposure to injury and even to death, since the outlaw could be killed with impunity by anyone.” In England, a person convicted for a felony was stripped of the ability to inherit or bequeath property and considered civilly dead—unable to bring suit or perform any other legal function. English colonists brought these concepts with them to North America, resulting in an unjustified denial of liberties.

As for the justifications behind these policies, some courts have argued that ex-offenders should not be able to vote because they have shown themselves to be lacking the “requisite judgment and discretion” needed to be able vote “responsibly.” Contextualize this statement with the fact that nearly three-quarters—73 percent—of the disenfranchised are not in prison, but are on probation or parole or have completed their sentences, and we see a gross misuse of ‘pure democracy’ to strategically deny rights to large portions of the population. Our criminal justice system is clearly not just “in the business” of restoring justice, but perpetuating the criminalization and incarceration of certain sectors of our population—as deprivation of the right to vote does nothing to promote the reintegration of offenders into society, but further marginalizes them and thus participates in perpetuating the circumstances that caused their crime.

We begin to question our nation’s commitment to democracy for all when we see how democracy is carefully granted to some and denied to others. After the Civil War and passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave blacks the right to vote, southern opposition to black suffrage led to the decision to use numerous ostensibly race-neutral voting barriers—e.g., literacy and property tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses and criminal disenfranchisement provisions—with the explicit intent of keeping as many blacks as possible from being able to vote. Although laws excluding criminals from the vote had existed in the South previously, these and other exclusionary voting regulations laws were used after the Civil War specifically to prevent black citizens from voting.

Over 70 percent of District residents are African American, while the national figure is roughly 25 percent. These 570,000 citizens continue to shoulder all the responsibilities of federal citizenship, from serving and dying in the military, sitting on federal juries, and paying federal income taxes. In D.C., African Americans are incarcerated at ten times the rate of whites. Nationwide, African Americans are incarcerated at a rate of more than eight times higher than whites.

Disenfranchisement has a devastating footprint beyond just the District, a strategic and, at times, permanent denial of rights to 13 percent of the nation’s African American voting population. This is the denial of basic citizens’ rights to former felons; a policy of exclusion both within D.C. and nationally that has a disproportionate impact on the voting power of minorities. Currently 5.3 million people are disenfranchised due to felony convictions and over 2 million of these persons are permanently disenfranchised—silenced forever from the political system.

The word’s derogatory usage dates back to 1811 when it was considered more offensive than the term ‘whore,’ according to the 1811 Dictionary of Vulgar Tongue. Since its demeaning inception, the word has been used as a mechanism to subdue women, to deride women who speak out, and to perpetuate the idea that women are inferior. Describing the word’s deep cultural roots, Joey Horsley of Fembio.org writes, “The bitch-image is ancient, its misogynist associations deeply ingrained; like many assumptions about women, it has so long been a part of the culture; that it’s taken for granted as ‘natural.’” However, jokingly using “bitch” as an insult and society’s conception that women are inferior does not have an apparent causal chain – this is the reason why so many think its usage is harmless; but its repetitive utterance has led to centuries of inequality and oppression. Professor Gay Young, director of American University’s Gender Studies Program, said that oppressive language creates oppressive action. “Using the term “bitch” absolutely constructs real oppression,” she said. “Because language constructs in important ways: both in experience and reality.”

But sometimes its usage can be harmless, or even empowering. As Pamela Meritt, founder of the blog Angry Black Bitch, told NPR last October, “The b-word differs person to person. I don’t want to ban the word or take it out of the public discourse. There are definitely empowered, fierce voices using it in different ways,” Meritt said. Professor Young compares the term “fag” to “bitch,” noting the similarities in usage. “It [the term fag] is deployed the same way ‘bitch’ is used. That is, to keep people in line, maintaining the status quo of dominance and subordination,” she said. It may seem like a double standard for bitch to be accepted in one circumstance but not in another, but it’s really a matter of how the word is used. For example, ‘black’ used to be a word that functioned primary as an insult, but now the word is descriptive more than pejorative, despite the negative connotations the word still carries (e.g. blackmail, black market, black magic). The way words’ connotations morph and become culturally accepted over years of usage is an extremely complicated evolution, but is “bitch” culturally acceptable? Is it acceptable when women use it? How about feminists? Young said the term’s evaluation is not that simple, but admits that its reclamation is possible. “It’s a tough line to walk. I think it’s interesting to raise a lot of questions and point to different perspectives [on the term bitch], but it should be dealt with caution,” she said. “If you claim it in your own terms it can be empowering, but imposing it on someone else is problematic.”

The popular feminist magazine Bitch describes how the word can be embraced on their Web site’s About page, “When it’s being used as an insult, ‘bitch’ is an epithet hurled at women who speak their minds, who have opinions and don’t shy away from expressing them, and who don’t sit by and smile uncomfortably if they’re bothered or offended. If being an outspoken woman means being a “bitch,” we’ll take that as a compliment, thanks.” But when it’s used to describe a person who lacks audacity, courage, or strength, it’s undeniably undermining a movement by reaffirming the word’s etymological roots.

It’s important to understand the cultural and historical significance the word “bitch” carries. You might think that using it won’t affect anyone or change anything, but reexamine the way you and your friends use it. Are they using it to celebrate a word that connotes solidarity over derision, or are they using it to silence someone, putting one in a subordinate position? Will the word “bitch” as an insult seem silly and obsolete thirty years from now? Young said there is no way to tell. “I wouldn’t be holding my breath to see the change, but I also wouldn’t count it out; language can be reclaimed and rehabilitated.”

With its development uncertain, deconstructing “bitch” is an important literary exercise. Examining words and the assumptions behind their meanings gives one greater insight into how a seemingly innocuous word can imbed itself into a societal conception. Language is not the sole creator of oppression, but its significance should not be forgotten.

Except, when the concoction doesn’t work as planned. When used together, sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride are known as the three-drug cocktail, used to end the lives of inmates in the majority of death penalty cases in the United States. But with anti-death penalty watchdogs, Supreme Court plaintiffs and even the creator of the current legal injection system raising questions about the trio’s effectiveness, the humane facade of the needle falls away.

During an execution, the first injection of sodium thiopental works to render inmates unconscious and theoretically numb to the lethal effects of Drugs Two and Three. Yet in some documented cases, the chemical has failed to anesthetize prisoners. As the second drug is administered, the conscious but paralyzed inmate suffocates, unable to voice pain.

Aside from chemical malfunctions, the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington non-profit, maintains a list of botched executions. There are countless examples of lethal injections where the inmates were repeatedly poked and prodded because executioners were unable to find suitable veins to use. As a result, the ten-minute process is far more drawn out and painful than any human being should have to experience.

This past December, Governor Corzine of New Jersey recently passed a law ending capital punishment because he is strongly against “state-endorsed killing.” If other states were willing to follow Governor Corzine’s model, the 3,350 inmates trapped on death row documented by the Criminal Justice Project could be given a new lease on life.

Supporters of the death penalty claim it is a permanent solution that makes the world a safer place. In an opinion piece for USA Today, former New York Gov. George Pataki defended his decision to make the death penalty legal because it “put [fear] back where it belongs - in the hearts of criminals.” Pataki also cited that violent crime and murders dropped significantly in the two years since the establishment of the death penalty. To further emphasize his point, he brought up New York serial killer Arthur Shawcross who killed eleven people after he was released from prison for raping and murdering two children. Unfortunately, said Pataki, Shawcross predated the instatement of the death penalty, or eleven lives could have been saved.

While supporters of the death penalty argue that death is the securest method to deal with serious criminals, anti-death penalty activists push for reform of the judicial system so sentences are fair and the accused are fairly represented in court. Along with many other anti-death penalty organizations, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty proposes life without parole as an alternative to the death penalty. Likewise, While Governor Corzine is firmly against the death penalty, he is a strong advocate of life without parole, which is the punishment for New Jersey’s former death row inmates.

In early January, the Supreme Court heard a case on the constitutionality of the lethal injection procedure. As a result of the two death row inmates’ lawsuit, many states have placed a moratorium on lethal injections. The plaintiffs argued that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment based on autopsy records of a 1999 Kentucky execution where the inmate was “awake but unable to cry out” because the anesthesia failed to work properly. In the Kentucky case, as well as in other accounts of mishandled executions, it is clear lethal injection is a fate unfit for any human. To support such punishment would only further encourage a vindictive and biased system when valuable time and resources could be spent in effective reform programs for inmates and restitution programs for victims’ families.