Stop the Killing Before It Starts
Don't let the death penalty be reinstated in Iowa or D.C.

Iowa
by Jeremy Price

Capital punishment may be coming back to Iowa - unless we stop it.

On February 3rd, a House subcommittee began work on a death penalty bill. Legislators expect a vote in the House before February 14th.

Last year, similar legislation was defeated in the Senate. But this time, pro-death penalty forces are better organized, and their strategy is more cunning, too.

This bill would allow death by lethal injection only in cases involving class-A felonies, such as rape and murder, or murder by an inmate already serving a life sentence.

The Republican majority hopes this limited bill is one that some liberals can swallow. Of course, for right-wingers like Governor Branstad, it is only a foot in the door.

But anti-death penalty activists are putting up a fight, including protests on the capital steps on February 3rd and 4th.The party of Bill Clinton cannot be trusted to fend off pro-death penalty bigots just like him. We have to do it ourselves!

Stop the Death Penalty from coming to Iowa. Thursday, February 12, Buchanan Auditorium, Pappajohn Building, University of Iowa. Call 319-358-6864 for information.

Washington, D.C.
by Allison Breault

A bill sponsored by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) would return the death penalty to the District of Columbia (D.C.) despite its rejection by both public referendum and the D.C. City Council.

The bill would make the murder of a law enforcement official in the D.C. a federal capital offense thus subject to federal sentencing guidelines and punishable by a death sentence.

When a similar measure was considered by the D.C. City Council, it was rejected without a single vote cast in its favor. At public hearings held on the issue by the council, speakers against the death penalty outnumbered speakers in favor by four to one.

The issue was also put to a vote in a 1992 referendum, in which a proposal to reinstate the death penalty was rejected by a more than 2 to 1 margin.

Such a law would not only be undemocratic, but wrong. Death penalty laws specifically imposed for the murder of law enforcement officials have no more deterrence value than the death penalty as a whole. According to The National Law Enforcement Officers' Memorial Fund, Senator Hutchison's home state of Texas has consistently posted a police officer murder rate in the top five of the fifty states. Texas has also seen its murder rate increase at the same time as it is executing as many as two people a week.

The only way to stop this attempt to impose the death penalty on D.C. is to build a vocal movement opposing the death penalty in D.C. and let the politicians know we plan to stop the killing before it starts.

For more information and to get involved, contact the D.C. Campaign to End the Death Penalty at (202) 965-1417 or (301) 587-1469.

The New Abolitionist - February 1998, Volume II, Issue 2
Campaign To End The Death Penalty, Chicago, IL - www.nodeathpenalty.org