steinbeck

 

from film portrayals of lennie small 

in john steinbeck's of mice and men -

adapted for film several times,

also for stage and radio.

pleas for justice fall again upon deaf ears as the state of texas executes a developmentally disabled man named marvin wilson who had an i.q. of 61.

robert mackey with the new york times reports that john steinbeck's family has expressed outrage that a texas judge used of mice and men to support the decision to take marvin wilson's life.  thomas steinbeck, the writer's son, released a statement reading, in part:

On behalf of the family of John Steinbeck, I am deeply troubled by today’s scheduled execution of Marvin Wilson, a Texas man with an I.Q. of 61. Prior to reading about Mr. Wilson’s case, I had no idea that the great state of Texas would use a fictional character that my father created to make a point about human loyalty and dedication, i.e., Lennie Small from “Of Mice and Men,” as a benchmark to identify whether defendants with intellectual disability should live or die.

My father was a highly gifted writer who won the Nobel Prize for his ability to create art about the depth of the human experience and condition. His work was certainly not meant to be scientific, and the character of Lennie was never intended to be used to diagnose a medical condition like intellectual disability. I find the whole premise to be insulting, outrageous, ridiculous and profoundly tragic. I am certain that if my father, John Steinbeck, were here, he would be deeply angry and ashamed to see his work used in this way. And the last thing you ever wanted to do, was to make John Steinbeck angry.

 

mr. mackey continues:

In 1937, the novelist himself told The New York Times that the model for his character, a killer who did not comprehend his own actions, was shown leniency by the American legal system of the time. “Lennie was a real person,” Mr. Steinbeck said. “He’s in an insane asylum in California right now. I worked alongside him for many weeks. He didn’t kill a girl. He killed a ranch foreman. Got sore because the boss had fired his pal and stuck a pitchfork right through his stomach. I hate to tell you how many times I saw him do it. We couldn’t stop him until it was too late.”

the following youtube was released by democracy now! the night before mr. marvin was executed, and includes discussion with mr. wilson's attorney, lee korvarsky, and richard dieter, executive director of the death penalty information center, a nonprofit group working to educate the public about capital punishment.

mr. dieter says that texas is disturbingly experimenting with humans in new ways to execute death row prisoners, and that they are purchasing various drugs for execution indirectly from european companies that did not manufacture the drugs for this purpose.  

the european nations - which have outlawed capital punishment - are expressing outrage that these drugs are being used to execute people in the united states.

the texas tribune reports that prior to mr. wilson's execution, and amidst an outcry of objections, 

State Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, on Monday wrote to Gov. Rick Perry seeking a stay of execution on Wilson's behalf. Human Rights Watch also decried the planned execution.

“Texas is circumventing the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment,” said Antonio Ginatta, U.S. advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

window

wikileaks announces a window of opportunity for donors formerly blocked by visa and mastercard, and via carte bleue. 

The French credit card system, Carte Bleue, is coupled with the VISA/MasterCard system globally. VISA and MasterCard are contractually barred from directly cutting off merchants through the Carte Bleue system. The French non-profit FDNN (Fund for the Defense of Net Neutrality- Fonds de Défense de la Net Neutralité) has set up a Carte Bleue fund for WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks advises all global supporters to make use of this avenue immediately before VISA/MasterCard attempts to shut it down.

also, the australian reports today that australian officials have at last responded (in part) to a 6/30/2012 10 page letter from julian assange's legal team. in that letter, barrister burnside requests information on australian government communications with the u.s. government, including whether an indictment has already been prepared by the u.s.  the paper reports australian officials stating yesterday that u.s. officials had not given them any indication (one way or the other, i gather) whether mr. assange would be extradited and charged.

julian assange asserts that the case is about freedom of speech and the press.  he expresses fear that if he were extradited to the united states from sweden, he would be charged with espionage and terrorism related offenses and held under the same deplorable conditions as bradley manning;  he could also be held punishable under the death penalty where capital punishment may still apply to espionage charges in the united states. 

mr. assange has requested asylum in ecuador.  he is presently staying at equador's embassy in london while ecuador considers his request.

below, bewareofyak shares a live update on private manning's case from court reporter alexa o'brien.

ecuador

julian assange seeks asylum in ecuador.  he is presently in equador's london mission where he will remain while the equadorian government considers his application.  per huffpost, equador's foreign minister reports that assange argues that

"the authorities in his country will not defend his minimum guarantees before any government or ignore the obligation to protect a politically persecuted citizen."

Assange said it was impossible for him to return to his homeland because it would not protect him from being extradited to "a foreign country that applies the death penalty for the crime of espionage and sedition," Patino said in a reference to the United States.

Assange, 40, claims the U.S. has secretly indicted him for divulging American secrets and will act on the indictment if Sweden succeeds in extraditing him from Britain.

I Am Troy Davis

 

Courtesy of Street Art Londgon

Photographer:  Rikki

"Making the Invisible Troy Davis Visible" -

from an installation piece in support of Amnesty International's

efforts to stop the execution of Troy Davis

California prepares another ballot initiative, this one on the death penalty.  Which of course brings back sorrowful memories of the Troy Davis execution and the Kafkaesque manner in which he proceeded to a state-ordained "destiny" of lethal injection, in spite of all evidence and humanitarian and logic-based pleas to the contrary.  Sanity fell upon deaf ears.

The Monterey Herald reports:

For the third time in 40 years, Californians will vote in November on the death penalty, an institution that has had at least as much impact on the state's politics as on its institutions of crime and punishment. Opponents of capital punishment said Thursday they were submitting 800,000 signatures on petitions for an initiative to close the nation's largest Death Row, which has 725 condemned prisoners. The measure needs 504,760 valid signatures to make the ballot.

"California voters are ready to replace the death penalty with life in prison with no chance of parole," declared Jeanne Woodford, who oversaw four executions as warden of San Quentin State Prison. She now heads the anti-capital punishment group Death Penalty Focus.

It was an unusually optimistic statement in a state whose residents have consistently supported the death penalty. The most recent Field Poll, in September, showed 68 percent support — although respondents in the same survey, when asked their preferred sentence for murder, backed life without parole over death by 48 to 40 percent.

The last time the issue was on the ballot, Californians voted by a 71 percent majority in 1978 to expand a death penalty law that legislators had passed the year before over Gov. Jerry Brown's veto. When the state Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972, voters overrode the decision by a 67.5 percent majority

 The court itself was shaken in 1986 when voters unseated Chief Justice Rose Bird and two colleagues who had regularly voted to overturn death sentences. Since then, the California court has had one of the nation's highest rates of upholding death judgments.

Like health care for all, are Californians ready to choose life?

Courtesy of Feministing

U.S. Demonstrators, "I Am Troy Davis"



Memorial

portrait of troy davis, 2011

artist, alex schaefer

courtesy of the grand bastard

Troy Davis' memorial was held in Savannah this evening at New Life Apostolic Temple. 

Jason Ewart, a Washington attorney who spent seven years handling Davis' appeals, fought back tears as he recalled sitting in the second row of witnesses at the execution and watching the life drain from Davis' eyes.

 Ewart recalled many long phone conversations with Davis, never shorter than an hour, in which the men spent twice as much time talking about their families as they did legal strategy. Ewart said his own grandmother had just died, and he pictured her and Davis together at "heaven orientation."

 "She would say, 'Jesus died on the cross not because he was guilty, but because we all were,'" Ewart said.

Media Witness Jon Lewis describes here Mr. Davis' formal last words at an execution community activists have decried as legal lynching or state sanctioned murder.

According to the AP story, many notable civil rights leaders and activists attended.  Rev. Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta recalled to the reporters how Emmett Til's mother insisted on an open casket, hoping people could see the injustice of Jim Crow.   In a similar spirit, Troy Davis' family hopes that opening the funeral to supporters, Saturday October 1st, will help people see the injustice of the death penalty.

Courtesy of The Grio

Former President Jimmy Carter, among the many prominent voices calling for clemency, wrote, "If one of our fellow citizens can be executed with so much doubt surrounding his guilt, then the death penalty system in our country is unjust and outdated. We hope this tragedy will spur us as a nation toward the total rejection of capital punishment."