Amnesty International Group 22 Pasadena/Caltech News
Volume XXV Number 11, November-December 2017
UPCOMING EVENTS
NO MONTHLY MEETING FOR
DECEMBER DUE TO HOLIDAYS.
Saturday, December 9, 11:00 - 3:00, WRITE
FOR RIGHTS. Human Rights Day letter writing
marathon at Dog Haus Biergarten, 93 E. Green
St., Pasadena. Drop by to write a few letters
and enjoy the food. (This event replaces our
usual Tuesday letter writing for December.)
Sunday, December 10, 4:00 PM. Holiday
Potluck & Rights Readers Human Rights Book
Discussion Group. This month we read "On
Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the
Twentieth Century" by Timothy Snyder.
NOTE: This month our book group meeting
is combined with a holiday potluck and will
be held at Joyce's house in Montrose. For
information, email aigp22@caltech.edu or
phone 818-249-4056 and leave a voicemail.
COORDINATOR'S CORNER
Hi everyone,
This is Joyce, substituting for Kathy this month.
You're invited to celebrate International Human
Rights Day with Group 22 all weekend Dec. 9-
10! On Saturday you can write for rights and on
Sunday come to my house for a holiday potluck
and book group discussion.
People seemed to enjoy the Dog Haus at last
year's event - something welcoming about those
long tables in the outdoor patio - so we decided
to return this year. As usual, we will provide
case information sheets, writing materials, and
postage. You can learn about the ten cases
featured in Amnesty's 2017 campaign at
https://write.amnestyusa.org.
Hope to see you at one or both events!
Joyce
Next Rights Readers Meeting
Sunday, Dec. 10, 4:00 PM
Holiday Potluck at private home in Montrose
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the
Twentieth Century
by Timothy Snyder
BOOK REVIEW
'On Tyranny' by Timothy Snyder
Carlos Lozada
The Washington Post
[www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-
review-on-tyranny-by-timothy-snyder-20170227-
story.html]
The early cautions that Donald Trump could become
an American strongman, trampling our sad checks
and loser balances, came in the late spring of last year
- and they were both dire and a bit conflicted.
"Trump is an extinction-level event" for American
democracy, Andrew Sullivan declared in New York
magazine, even while wondering if he was
overreacting. And Washington Post columnist Robert
Kagan's broadside, "This is how fascism comes to
America," was as much an attack on a feckless
Republican Party for falling in line behind Trump's
nomination as a surefire prediction of what was to
be.
Now, nine months later, the warnings have become
more specific and resigned, and thus even more
believable. Trump may attract scorn and ridicule -
think of the late-night jokes, low approval ratings
and all that #NotMyPresident stuff - but he elicits
ever stronger fears of homegrown authoritarianism.
In the latest Atlantic, David Frum paints a plausible
landscape of American illiberalism circa 2020, when
voting is harder, self-censorship is rampant,
Congress is submissive, graft is pervasive and truth
is ever hazier. This is the gradual eclipse of liberty,
"not by diktat and violence, but by the slow,
demoralizing process of corruption and deceit," he
writes.
Historian Timothy Snyder does not offer a corrective
to the pessimism of this genre - he is a scholar of the
Holocaust, after all - but begins to illuminate a path
forward from it. "On Tyranny" is a slim book that fits
alongside your pocket Constitution and feels only
slightly less vital. Steeped in the history of interwar
Germany and the horrors that followed, Snyder still
writes with bracing immediacy, providing 20 plain
and mostly actionable lessons on preventing, or at
least forestalling, the repression of lives and minds.
Don't count Snyder among the American-
exceptionalism crowd, at least not as the concept is
usually understood. "Americans today are no wiser
than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to
fascism, Nazism, or communism in the twentieth
century," he writes. "Our one advantage is that we
might learn from their experience." The U.S. political
system, he notes, was designed "to mitigate the
consequences of our real imperfections, not to
celebrate our imaginary perfection."
The author dwells on "the politics of the everyday" to
show the small ways people succumb to or fend off
the encroachment of tyranny. Much of the initial
power granted to nondemocratic leaders is given
freely, via "heedless acts of conformity," long before
popular docility is requested or required. Snyder
recalls how, when Hitler threatened to invade
Austria, regular Austrian citizens looked on, or
joined in, as local Nazis detained Austrian Jews or
stole their property. "Anticipatory obedience is a
political tragedy," the author writes.
The early days of the Trump presidency have seen
acts of subversion by civil servants, including
damaging leaks and social-media rebellions,
signaling opposition to particular policies or actions
by the new administration. Snyder emphasizes that
the professional classes - civil servants as well as
doctors, lawyers and businesspeople - bear special
responsibility when individual freedoms are at risk.
"It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without
lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges," he
writes. "Authoritarians need obedient civil servants,
and concentration camp directors seek businessmen
interested in cheap labor."
Professional associations, with their codes of ethics,
best practices and collective voices, can command
attention, creating "forms of ethical conversation that
are impossible between a lonely individual and a
distant government," Snyder explains.
That hardly means there is no role for that lonely
individual. Snyder devotes several of his lessons to
the power of small decisions in the face of eroding
democracy. "The minor choices we make are
themselves a kind of vote," he argues. "Our words
and gestures, or their absence, count very much."
Make eye contact and small talk with strangers, he
encourages; it is part of being a citizen. ("People who
were living in fear of repression remembered how
their neighbors treated them," Snyder writes.) Defend
American institutions and civil society groups by
joining them, advocating for them or even
supporting them financially, Snyder urges.
("Institutions do not protect themselves.") Beware of
loyalty symbols - be it a sticker or armband, or even a
hat, I imagine - however innocuous they seem,
because they are often used to exclude. ("When
everyone else follows the same logic, the public
sphere is covered with signs of loyalty, and resistance
becomes unthinkable.")
And then there's this ominously concise suggestion:
"Make sure you and your family have passports."
Snyder points to clear and recognizable actions that a
leader or a party can take to suffocate freedom - such
as exploiting terrorist attacks to curtail individual
liberties or enabling the rise of pro-government
paramilitary forces - but he is especially attuned to
the abuses of language. Showing no compunction in
going there, Snyder compares the rhetoric of the
FŸhrer and the Donald to highlight phrasing that
serves the interests of the leader and no one else:
"Hitler's language rejected legitimate opposition: The
people always meant some people and not others
(the president uses the word in this way), encounters
were always struggles (the president says winning)
and any attempt by free people to understand the
world in a different way was defamation of the
leader (or, as the president puts it, libel)."
Snyder warns against the treacherous use of patriotic
expressions and the mindless repetition of political
catchphrases, whether in the news media or from the
government. "Think up your own way of speaking,"
he challenges readers. "When we repeat the same
words and phrases that appear in the daily media,
we accept the absence of a larger framework," and
permit a narrowing of vocabulary and thought that
only empowers the strongman.
The popular understanding and interpretations of
Trump are dominated by his words and phrases -
"Sad!" "Fake news!" - and by his use of those words to
rouse supporters, identify opponents and distort
verifiable reality. "To abandon facts is to abandon
freedom," Snyder writes. "If nothing is true, then all
is spectacle." And Trump thrives on spectacle;
indeed, his rise has been based on it.
A leader's constant repetition of "shamanistic
incantations," as Snyder puts it, and the people's
misplaced faith in an oracular strongman over
evidence and reason - these are ways truth begins to
fade. Throughout history, despots have "despised the
small truths of daily existence, loved slogans that
resonated like a new religion, and preferred creative
myths to history or journalism."
And that elevation of mythology over truth has
consequences. "Post-truth," Snyder writes, "is pre-
fascism."
To break free of the incantations, we must loosen the
hold that our televisions and phones have over us,
Snyder argues. "Get the screens out of your room and
surround yourself with books," he urges, like the
good academic that he is. "The characters in Orwell's
and Bradbury's books could not do this - but we still
can."
It is not an entirely persuasive course, as if television
and online debates did not have the power to
introduce new ideas or vital reporting into public
circulation. In fact, this very book - easily the most
compelling volume among the resistance literature
emerging in response to Trump - took inspiration
from a November 2016 Facebook post by the author.
Perhaps the greatest contribution in Snyder's
clarifying and unnerving work is buried in its
epilogue, and it shows the slippery intellectual path
from freedom to tyranny. After the Cold War, he
writes, we were enthralled by the politics of
inevitability, the notion that history moved
inexorably toward liberal democracy. So we lowered
our defenses. Now, instead, we are careening toward
the politics of eternity, in which a leader rewrites our
past as "a vast misty courtyard of illegible
monuments to national victimhood." Inevitability
was like a coma; eternity is like hypnosis.
"The danger we now face is of a passage from the
politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity, from
a naive and flawed sort of democratic republic to a
confused and cynical sort of fascist oligarchy,"
Snyder concludes. "The path of least resistance leads
directly from inevitability to eternity."
A possible detour from that path may be found in
"On Tyranny," a memorable work that is grounded in
history yet imbued with the fierce urgency of what
now.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Timothy Snyder is the Levin Professor of
History at Yale University and the author of the
books On Tyranny, Black Earth, and Bloodlands.
His work has received the literature award of
the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the
Hannah Arendt Prize, and the Leipzig Book
Prize for European Understanding. He lives in
New Haven, Connecticut.
[www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/246064/t
imothy-snyder]
DEATH PENALTY NEWS
By Stevi Carroll
Governor Brown Pardons Craig Coley
Let's all think back to our lives 39 years ago.
Craig Coley was a night manager at a
restaurant. Rhonda Wicht and her son, Donald,
were murdered. After Mr. Coley's first trial
ended in a hung jury, a second trial found him
guilty of the murders. He is the son of a retired
Los Angeles policeman. And he'd been dating
Ms Wicht for two years. Some of the witnesses
at his trial said he was like a 'second father' to
Donald.
Mr. Coley's case was reopened in October 2016
after a retired detective raised concerns about it.
This caused investigators to look into it where
they found that a key piece of evidence used to
convict him 'contained others' DNA, but not his'
(Mr. Coley's).
After 39 years, Mr. Coley has been pardoned of
the crime. In his statement following the pardon,
Governor Brown wrote, "The grace with which
Mr. Coley has endured this lengthy and unjust
incarceration is extraordinary. It is my hope that
any and all individuals responsible for the
murder of Rhonda and Donald Wicht are
brought to justice."
In a joint statement released by Simi Valley
Police Chief David Livingstone and Ventura
County District Attorney Gregory D. Totten,
they said, "This case is tragic. An innocent
woman and a small child were murdered. Craig
Coley has spent 39 years in custody for a crime
he likely did not commit. The real murderer or
murderers have not been brought to justice."
Fortunately, Mr. Coley was not sentenced to
death.
California and the Death Penalty
Yes, the death penalty is operative in California.
But what to use to kill people is still up in the
air. Governor Jerry Brown's administration has
yet to finalize what drug protocol the State will
use. While the Governor personally opposes the
death penalty, he has a history of enforcing it
when he was attorney general.
Some advocates of the death penalty thought
executions would resume by the end of the year,
but that now seems unlikely. Resumption may
be a year away, but it is coming right along.
Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of
Deputy District Attorneys for L.A. County
believes the finalization of the lethal injection
protocol will be by January. Regarding
executions, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of the UC
Berkeley law school said, "it is just a matter of
time."
We may remember that Governor George Ryan
commuted the death sentences of all of Illinois'
condemned inmates, but Governor Brown is
unable to do this unilaterally. The California
Constitution requires him to have the support of
the California Supreme Court for inmates with
multiple felony convictions on their records.
Lawyers estimate that at least half of all people
on death row have committed two felonies. Four
of the seven California Supreme Court justices
would be needed to commute sentences for
those inmates. Whether Governor Brown would
have enough support for the commutation for
those on death row is uncertain.
Etomidate
In August when Florida executed Mark James
Asay with a new drug, etomidate, I somehow
missed that this drug was being used. I think
this may be because it was used in a three-drug
cocktail: etomidate, an anesthetic; rocuronium
bromide, a paralytic; and potassium acetate, a
heart stopper. Etomidate replaces midazolam,
which became difficult to get because drug
companies didn't want it used in executions.
Even though I tried to find out what drugs were
used in Patrick C Hannon's execution, I've
found no information except for the detail at
Death Penalty Information Center. What I
wonder is if Mr. Hannon was killed using only
etomidate. If so, will etomidate join other single
drug execution protocols?
A New Book
Deadly Justice - A Statistical Portrait of the Death
Penalty by Frank R. Baumgartner, Marty
Davidson, Kaneesha R. Johnson, Arvind
Krishnamurthy, and Colin P. Wilson
In their new book, Deadly Justice: A Statistical
Portrait of the Death Penalty, a team of
researchers led by University of North Carolina-
Chapel Hill political science professor Frank
Baumgartner uses forty years of empirical data
to assess whether the modern death penalty
avoids the defects that led the U.S. Supreme
Court to declare in Furman v. Georgia (1972) that
the nation's application of capital punishment
was unconstitutionally arbitrary and capricious.
Their conclusion: "A reasoned assessment based
on the facts suggests not only that the modern
system flunks the Furman test but that it
surpasses the historical death penalty in the
depth and breadth of the flaws apparent in its
application." Deadly Justice explores an
enormous range of issues-including, among
others, racial, gender, and geographical bias,
innocence, deterrence, mental health, childhood
abuse, length of time on death row, reversal
rates, and execution methods-to determine
whether the death penalty is fairly and
proportionally applied and reserved for the
"worst of the worst." Reviewing the
data, Baumgartner et al. find that the modern
death penalty "is it just as arbitrary, just as
biased, and just as flawed as the pre-Furman
system." Worse yet, they write, "it has added to
these flaws increased levels of geographical
focus on the South, even more concentration in
just a few jurisdictions, astronomical financial
costs unimagined in the earlier period, average
periods of delay now measured in the decades,
odds of reversal well over 50 percent, routine
and often successful last-minute legal
maneuvering even while the inmate is in the
execution room and has been prepared to be
executed, and a medicalization paradox that was
not even imagined in the pre-Furman period." In
an interview with the Houston Chronicle,
Baumgartner says "[t]he key driver in the
system" is not the frequency of homicides or the
nature of the murder but "the choices that
district attorneys make.... There's really no
rhyme or reason to it." He says the biggest
change in public opinion began in the 1990s as
evidence began to mount that "there might be
innocent people on death row. ... The innocence
argument has really shaken people's faith that
you can count on the government to get it right
every single time. ... The system is so tied up in
knots, partly because of the concern of executing
an innocent person. It's really hard to justify or
have enthusiasm about a system so
dysfunctional as the current modern death
penalty, even if you're a prosecutor."
This review is from Death Penalty Information
Center https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/
Posted: November 27, 2017
Recent Exonerations
Evin King - State: OH - Date of Exoneration:
10/17/2017
In 1995, Evin King was sentenced to 15 years to
life in prison for the murder of his girlfriend in
Cleveland, Ohio. He was exonerated by DNA
testing in 2017.
Steven Odiase - State: NY - Date of Exoneration:
10/25/2017
In 2013, Steven Odiase was sentenced to 25
years to life in prison for second-degree murder
in the Bronx, New York. He was exonerated in
2017 when a previously undisclosed witness
statement came to light that identified a
different person as the shooter.
Kerry Masterson - State: IL - Date of
Exoneration: 11/2/2017
In 2011, Kerry Masterson was sentenced to 58
years in prison for murder in Chicago, Illinois.
She was granted a new trial and acquitted in
2017 based on evidence showing that the real
killers falsely implicated her and three
eyewitnesses had mistakenly identified her.
Keith Mitchell - State: IL - Date of Exoneration:
11/6/2017
In 1995, Keith Mitchell was sentenced to 30
years in prison for a murder and assaults that
occurred in Chicago, Illinois when he was 15
years old. He was exonerated in 2017 by
evidence that detectives fabricated his
confession.
Arthur Brown - State: IL - Date of Exoneration:
11/14/2017
In 1990, Arthur Brown was sentenced to life in
prison after falsely confessing to an arson that
killed two people in Chicago, Illinois. He was
exonerated in 2017 after another man confessed
to setting the fire, and evidence showed that
police forced Brown to sign a fabricated
confession, testified falsely about it, and coerced
a witness to lie.
Jose Maysonet - State: IL - Date of Exoneration:
11/15/2017
In 1995, Jose Maysonet was sentenced to life in
prison without parole for a double murder in
Chicago, Illinois. He was exonerated in 2017 by
evidence that he falsely confessed to a detective
who repeatedly beat and tortured him during a
17-hour interrogation.
Stays of Execution
November
9 Jack Greene AR
Stay granted by the Arkansas Supreme Court
on November 7, 2017 on petition raising issue
related to Arkansas procedures for determining
competency to be executed.
14 Scott Dozier NV
Stay granted by the Clark County District
Court on November 9, 2017 to permit the
prosecution to appeal its ruling barring the use
of a paralytic drug in Nevada's execution
protocol.
15 Alva Campbell OH
Gov. John Kasich called off the execution on
November 15, 2017 after personnel of the Ohio
Department of Corrections failed five times to
find a suitable vein to insert an intravenous
execution line.
15 Larry Swearingen TX Stay
granted by trial court on October 27, 2017
because of clerk's error in serving notice of
execution.
December
1 Bobby Wayne Stone SC
Legally premature death warrant. The death
warrant was issued before Stone had been
provided habeas corpus review to which he is
entitled as a matter of federal law. Stay
granted by the U.S. District Court for the
District of South Carolina on November 21,
2017 to permit Stone to pursue federal habeas
review of his conviction and death sentence.
14 Juan Castillo TX
Stay granted by the Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals on November 28, 2017 and evidentiary
hearing ordered on Castillo's claim that his
conviction and sentence were obtained with
false or perjured testimony from a prison
informant.
Executions
November
8 Patrick C Hannon FL
Lethal Injection - 3-drug (etomidate) -
Years from sentencing to execution: 26
8 Ruben Ramirez Cardenas TX
Lethal Injection - 1-drug (Pentobarbital) -
Years from sentencing to execution: 19
PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE
Narges Mohammadi
By Joyce Wolf
Group 22's adopted prisoner of conscience
Narges Mohammadi continues her activism in
prison. The Center for Human Rights in Iran
reported that she recently called on members of
Iran's Parliament to end solitary confinement of
prisoners:
"As a defender of human rights who has been
tortured by this practice, I consider it my duty to take
every opportunity to express my protest against
solitary confinement, the suffering victims of which I
continue to see in Evin Prison," wrote Narges
Mohammadi in a letter from the prison where she is
serving a 16-year sentence for peacefully advocating
for human rights.
https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2017/10/narges-
mohammadi-calls-on-mps-to-end-the-illegal-torture-of-
solitary-confinement-in-irans-prisons/
Group 22 will continue our work for Narges.
We'll make sure to write some letters for her at
our Write For Rights event this month.
GROUP 22 NOVEMBER LETTER COUNT
UAs 24
Petitions (POC and Gao Zhisheng) 2
Total 26
Amnesty International Group 22
The Caltech Y
Mail Code C1-128
Pasadena, CA 91125
www.its.caltech.edu/~aigp22/
http://rightsreaders.blogspot.com
Amnesty International's mission is to undertake research and action focused on
preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity,
freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, within the
context of its work to promote all human rights.