USA: Final hour of the death penalty?

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Rick Halperin is in Norway to tell us about the anti death penalty work in the USA. I meet him on a cold October morning, one day later than agreed. His plane to Oslo had been delayed because of engine trouble. However, traveling abroad after 11.9.2001 may prove something of an ordeal in many ways for human rights activists:

- One year ago I was arrested for the second time by federal police outside the Supreme Court building in Washington DC and because of that, my name is listed in the federal criminal records. I had participated in a demonstration to mark the 25 years of the reintroduction of execution of people on death row since 1976. Consequently, every time I go abroad I have to go through an intimate and humiliating check far stricter than the check of ordinary passengers.

The greatest democracy in the world?
To a Norwegian it is quite shocking to hear what human rights activist may encounter in the USA. Halperin tells me about threatening e-mails, social exclusion, fired from jobs because of his political opinions, arrests, detention and harassment. – Being a human rights activist in the greatest democracy in the world has its prize. In spite of all this, Halperin is still an optimist:

- In October the federal court of Alabama suspended the execution of Larry Nelson because execution by lethal injection might be considered to be a painful and cruel means of punishment. This is the first time a US court has challenged this method, a method introduced by most states over the last years because they feared that other means of execution, like the electric chair or the gas chamber might be declared illegal.

Justice undermined
Halperin questions the impact of the federal judiciary regarding the abolition of the death penalty. Instead he thinks we should aim our efforts at the local judicial authorities.
- The abolition of the death penalty will have to take place locally, within the states rather than by a Supreme Court ruling that capital punishment is unconstitutional. An increasing number of conservative judges have made the courtroom a less safe place for ordinary people to seek social justice. If you look at the Supreme Court judges each and every one of them has at one time sentenced people to death. Even though some US Supreme Court judges are hesitant about executing children and mentally retarded they are in principle supporters of killing as a means of punishment. That is why I think the process has to start by changing the attitude of ordinary people and local politicians.

Commitment against indifference
How can Norway contribute to this process?
- Frankly, I think US politicians are quite indifferent to what other nations think of the death penalty. Still, Norwegian activists may make a difference through their local authorities. Norway and the USA have long lasting formal relations of twin cities. You can lobby your municipal authorities and ask them to put pressure on their colleagues in their twin city to abolish the death penalty. Stavanger is the twin city of Houston in my home state Texas. This is a large city in the state that kills more people than anywhere else in the USA! Local politicians in Stavanger should be encouraged to raise their concern with their colleagues in Houston, communicating to them that the death penalty is totally unacceptable.

Do you think that we will ever see the abolition of the death penalty in the USA?
- There has been a change of attitude over the last years. Attempts have been made to marginalize our views, but slowly they have become more acceptable. It is important that you carry on with your work, Halperin says. Participate in campaigns, lobby your politicians and authorities, write letters! So, the answer to your question is yes. I even hope to see death penalty abolished in my own lifetime.

• Check if your hometown has a sister city in a state that upholds the death penalty – and put pressure on your local politicians: http://www.sister-cities.org
• Rick Halperins home page, with news and links about the death penalty: http://people.smu.edu/rhalperi/