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Death Penalty Clinic,University of California, Berkeley, School of Law and Elisabeth Semel
Lighting the Torch Award
The People of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
Accepting the award will be Edgardo Manuel Roman Espada
General Coordinator, Puerto Rican Coalition Against the Death Penalty
Special Recognition for Outgoing NCADP Board Chair
Bill Pelke
Natasha Minsker, Abolitionist of the Year
Like many in the anti-death penalty community, Natasha Minsker is an attorney whose career has traversed a bridge between public defender work and abolition work. The job title she holds today – Death Penalty Policy Director for the ACLU of Northern California – is a natural progression from the years she spent in the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office, doing everything from basic research to representing clients in all sorts of cases – misdemeanor, felony and juvenile.
While a student at Stanford Law School, Minsker first landed a job in the public defender’s office. “The very first day, they took us to watch the penalty phase of a death penalty trial,” Minsker recalls. “The woman who raised the defendant was on the stand and the defense lawyer was asking her how she would feel if the State of California executed the defendant, someone she considered her son.
“I was shocked,” Minsker continues. “I could not believe that, in our legal system, twelve random people would be asked to judge whether another human being deserves to continue living. How would they ever be able to make such a decision? I felt very immediately and profoundly that the death penalty was a blight on our legal system and that it had to do.”
The ACLU of Northern California, with more than 55,000 members, is the nation’s largest ACLU affiliate. And given the enormity of California and the size of its death row, Minsker knows she has her work cut out for her. She responds to California’s unique situation by adopting a multi-disciplinary approach – working toward abolition of the death penalty while at the same time working on reforms and other measures that would lower the rate of capital sentencing.
“There’s ‘good’ and ‘bad’ to be learned from the California experience,” Minsker explains. “The ‘bad’ lesson is that slowing down the process and making the death penalty incredibly costly does not necessarily translate into public opposition to the death penalty. We have the most dysfunctional death penalty in the country, but that is not enough to convince people it is time to get rid of it. We have much more work to do to translate frustration into opposition. Hopefully, the ‘good’ lesson is that there are effective strategies for reducing use of the death penalty and moving us closer toward abolition that can be implemented locally, in any state, regardless of the political climate in the legislature.”
Minsker is also challenged by the sheer size and cultural divide that permeates California – a divide that increasingly is not defined by “northern” and “southern” California but rather by inland areas and coastal areas. “One of our greatest challenges is the incredible size of the state,” Minsker says. “We do not have the resources to work effectively in the entire state and we have much work still to do even among groups that should be open to our point of view. Thus, we are focused on building greater support in regions that are most likely to be receptive. The size of the state and the reality of referendum politics in California force us to be creative. We cannot do things the way other states do – we have to find our own ‘California’ version of abolition.”
Minsker lives in Oakland and enjoys doing yoga to stay sane and hiking with her partner David.
NCADP 2008: (Co) Abolitionist of the Year
Stefanie Faucher, Abolitionist of the Year
Stefanie Faucher is the program director for San Francisco-based Death Penalty Focus. Her career in anti-death penalty work has spanned nearly a decade -- since she was a student at the University of California at Berkeley, where she created and taught a class on capital punishment through the Democratic Education at Cal Program.
She is frequently interviewed and quoted by state and national media outlets, including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Bee and National Public Radio.
Faucher says she is attracted to anti-death penalty work because she believes in the principle that “with great power comes great responsibility.” “Individuals in power should do more than just enforce laws,” she says. “They should act as role models and exemplify the very best of human behavior. Their response to wrongdoing should be fair, thoughtful and tempered. The calculated, state-sponsored killing of another human being lowers society to the level of the killer by repeating the very act that we claim to abhor. It is a fundamental contradiction and I think we can do better.”
Faucher, true to her sense of humor, often references a scene from the movie Batman Begins. In the scene, Bruce Wayne is asked to execute a man who has committed murder. He refuses, responding, “I’m no executioner.” He is challenged by another character who says, “Your compassion is a weakness your enemies will not share.” But Wayne replies, “That’s why it is so important. It separates us from them.”
“While some see compassion as a weakness, I see it as our greatest strength,” Faucher says. “I believe that all human beings are fallible and that a person is more than the very worst thing he or she has ever done. We try to label people and fit them into little boxes because it’s easier if we can think of people as either “good” or “bad,” but it’s never that simple. If we fail to provide a child with a good education, healthcare and a safe home to grow up in, we should not be surprised if that child goes on to make bad choices. As a society we reap what we sow.”
Faucher has been involved in a number of issues beyond the death penalty. Over the past fifteen years, she has mentored high-school students, cared for homeless children, and provided information about HIV, STDs and birth control to teenagers.
In her free time, Stefanie enjoys traveling around the world. She has visited more than thirty countries so far.
Bill Pelke
Special Recognition: Outgoing Board Chairman, National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
One of the best known and most beloved leaders within abolition circles is Bill Pelke, outgoing chairman of the NCADP Board of Directors. Pelke has served on the NCADP Board of Directors since 1996 and has been board chairman since October 2004, in addition to the countless hours he has served as executive director of The Journey of Hope….From Violence to Healing.
In 2003, Pelke authored a book that mirrors his organization’s name -- Journey of Hope...From Violence to Healing. The book details the May 14, 1985 murder of his grandmother Ruth Pelke, a Bible teacher, by four teenage girls. Paula Cooper who was deemed to be the ringleader was sentenced to die in the electric chair by the state of Indiana. She was fifteen-years-old at the time of the murder.
Pelke originally support the sentence of death for Cooper, but went through a spiritual transformation in 1986 after praying for love and compassion for Paula Cooper and her family. He became involved in an international crusade on Paula's behalf and in 1989 after over 2 million people from Italy signed petitions and Pope John Paul II’s request for mercy, Paula was taken off of death row and her sentence commuted to sixty years.
“The answer is love and compassion for all humanity,” Pelke says. “The death penalty has absolutely nothing to do with healing. It just continues the cycle of violence and creates more murder victims’ family members. We become what we hate. We become killers.”
Looking back on his tenure with NCADP, Pelke sees both an organization and a movement that has matured and grown more sophisticated. “The NCADP had a lot of goals and dreams when I joined the board,” he recalls. “We have seen the NCADP grow to the point where many of those dreams have become realities. The funding is much better, the work with affiliates has greatly improved, the staff has grown and continues to grow and the NCADP has taken the leadership role in the abolition movement. The movement itself has changed with the new voices of victims’ families, death row families, exonerated death row inmates and prosecutors, wardens, police chiefs and other activists being heard.”
Pelke, a retired steelworker, has dedicated his life to working for abolition of the death penalty. He shares his story of forgiveness and healing, and how he came to realize that he did not need to see someone else die in order to heal from his grandmother’s death. He also helps organize Journey tours nationally and abroad. Pelke has traveled to over forty states and ten countries with the Journey of Hope and has told his story over 5000 times.
Although Pelke relinquishes the NCADP board chairmanship this month, he by no means is walking away from abolition work. In addition to directing The Journey of Hope…From Violence to Healing, he also sits on the board of the Justice and Reconciliation Project and he hopes to be more involved with the restorative justice process in the future. “I plan to continue to walk through any open door in keeping with my commitment to God on Nov. 2, 1986 – the night my heart was touched with forgiveness for Paula Cooper,” Pelke says.
The People of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
Lighting the Torch Award
Puerto Rico is not a likely candidate to be on the front lines of the struggle against the death penalty. After all, the Commonwealth first abolished the death penalty in 1929, and then followed that up by drafting a Constitution in 1952 that specifically banned the use of capital punishment – a document that was approved by the U.S. Congress.
But the Bush Administration had other plans.
Just as it has pursued death sentences in the jurisdictions that do not have the death penalty -- 13 states and Washington D.C. – the U.S. Justice Department is relying on federal statutes to aggressively pursue death sentences in Puerto Rico. Five times it has sought death sentences in the Commonwealth; five times, jurors have refused to comply. Death sentences currently are being sought in an additional three cases, and as many as 11 people awaiting trial are at risk of having their cases certified as capital punishment cases.
Still, Puerto Ricans have remained strong and have begun to aggressively organize. The Puerto Rico Coalition Against the Death Penalty, which plans to send almost a dozen delegates to NCADP 2008: Reaching for the Dream in San Jose, now consists of 42different groups and more than 400 individuals. The group’s coalition approach to building strength has brought in the ACLU, the Puerto Rico Bar Association, the island’s Civil Rights Commission, students from across the Commonwealth and religious leaders across the spectrum.
Because of the Commonwealth’s determination to resists the federal government’s efforts to impose the death penalty against its will, NCADP has selected the people of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico as the joint recipient of this year’s Lighting the Torch award.
“We’re very excited about the Lighting the Torch Award and it is important for us to be in San Jose,” explains Osvaldo Burgos, an attorney and co-chair of the Puerto Rico Coalition Against the Death Penalty.
Burgos notes that Puerto Rico is hardly alone in its struggle against federal efforts to impose the death penalty against the Commonwealth’s wishes. After all, states from Vermont to Michigan to Iowa to North Dakota all face similar challenges – each of these states has now seen federal death sentences handed down even though no state death penalty statutes exist. And the federal government has tried twice, unsuccessfully, to pursue death sentences in Washington, D.C., a jurisdiction also without a death penalty statute of its own.
“We want to convince people there are others facing this issue and others in the same situation we are in,” Burgos says. “We have a lot to learn from them and a lot to teach them.”
NCADP 2008: Legal Service Awardees
We were unable to get online yesterday due to the crush of conference business. But today we're back with our NCADP 2008: Reaching for the Dream awardees. Today we recognize three recipients of the annual Legal Service Award. They are David Kendall, Elisabeth Semel and the Death Penalty Clinic of UC Berkeley and the law firm Morrison & Foerster. Descriptions are below:
Please chech back Saturday and Sunday, as we will conclude our series of NCADP 2008: Reaching for the Dream awardees.
David E. Kendall, William & Connolly
Legal Service Award
David Kendall never met a civil rights challenge he didn’t like.
Whether it was defending an incumbent president against what many saw as an overly zealous prosecution by congressional Republicans set on impeachment or whether it was getting arrested in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964 while registering African Americans to vote, Kendall has earned his stripes as one of the country’s top civil rights lawyers.
Along the way, Kendall, now a partner with Williams & Connolly, has left his indelible mark on the death penalty debate. In the landmark 1977 case Coker v. Georgia, Kendall convinced the U.S. Supreme Court that capitol punishment for rape is unconstitutional. He also was involved in fighting the first two post-Gregg executions – Gary Gilmore and John Spenkelink.
Kendall opposes the death penalty but not just because of its inherent immorality. After Timothy McVeigh was executed for his role in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Kendall suggested that executing McVeigh was an insult to the surviving family members.
“I think Timothy McVeigh should have been locked up, and the key thrown away,” Kendall said. “I think that, unfortunately, to execute him – my own, personal view – will not bring any of his victims back and that somehow executing him almost trivializes the atrocities he’s committed because it suggests that there’s somehow an equivalence between what society has done to him and what he’s done.”
Indeed, Kendall’s longstanding opposition to the death penalty is based on his belief that it not only does not serve as a deterrent to crime, but it also demeans society. “I think the death penalty is kind of a barbaric atavism,” he says. “In part, it’s been preserved politically, and I regret that the Democrats, I think, are on the wrong side of the issue. It eventually will wither away. I think the death penalty is an inefficient way, a counterproductive way to try to deal with violent crime.”
The death penalty, Kendall adds, “doesn’t really have very much to do with the people being executed; it has to do with what we as society think is the right way to treat these people.”
While Kendall is among the nation’s top anti-death penalty lawyers, the trail he has blazed through the nation’s courtrooms is but a part of his legacy to the civil rights community.
He has appeared in trial courts in 22 states and has argued appeals in 6 federal courts of appeal, 7 state supreme courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He has been married to Anne L. Kendall, a psychologist with the Wake Kendall Group, since 1968, and they have three children. He presently works on diverse matters such as intellectual property, criminal investigations, and the Clinton Library foundation. His notable clients have included AOL, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Washington Post, the National Enquirer, and the Baltimore Orioles, among many others.
Death Penalty Clinic, University of California, Berkeley,
School of Law and Elizabeth Semel
Legal Service Award
After graduating from UC Davis School of Law, Elisabeth Semel became a deputy public defender. In 1980, she entered private practice and, in 1983, formed the firm of Semel & Feldman. Semel has defended criminal cases in the state and federal courts with an emphasis on representation at the trial level, including homicides and capital cases. In 1997, Semel left private practice to serve as the director of the American Bar Association Death Penalty Representation Project, in Washington, D.C.
Semel joined the Boalt faculty in 2001, as the first director of the Death Penalty Clinic. In that capacity, Semel represents clients under sentence of death in states such as Alabama and California and engages in on related litigation such as amicus curiae briefs, petitions for writs of certiorari, clemency petitions, and pretrial motions in capital cases. Semel and her students have prepared amicus curiae briefs that were filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in several death penalty cases, including Miller-El v. Cockrell, Miller-El v. Dretke, and Snyder v. Louisiana (all dealing with race discrimination in jury selection).
Semel has written numerous articles about criminal defense practice, including: "The Lone Star State is Not Alone in Denying Due Process to Those Who Face Execution" (July 1999); "Racial Injustice: Work to be Done Outside the Courtroom" (June 1998); "Talk to the Media About Your Client? Think Again" in The Champion (with C. Sevilla, November 1997); "Breathing Life into Batson" (2003); "The Good, the Bad and the Evil: News from the Hill" (1997); and "Victims' Rights: New Amendment to the Federal Constitution?" in the California Criminal Defense Practice Reporter (1996). Beginning in 2003, her annual annotated summaries of cases dealing with Batson v. Kentucky (race or gender discrimination in jury selection) have been posted electronically and included in various criminal defense publications. Semel frequently provides commentary in the mainstream media on issues relating to the rights of individuals accused of crime, particularly those facing the death penalty.
Semel has received many awards, including the Distinguished Alumni Award (UC Davis School of Law, 2000), John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service (Bard College, 1997), the Marshall Stern Award for Legislative Advocacy (NACDL, 1996), the Civil Rights Award (San Diego League of Women Voters, 1995) and the E. Stanley Conant Award for Protecting the Rights of the Indigent Accused (Defender Programs of San Diego, 1982).
Morrison & Foerster
Legal Service Award
With more than 1,000 attorneys and 18 offices around the world, the San Francisco-based law firm Morrison & Foerster has a longstanding commitment to pro bono work and has helped tens of thousands of people who otherwise would have been denied access to the justice system. The firm’s efforts have focused on civil rights and civil liberty cases, children in poverty and school education issues, international human rights and political asylum, environmental issues and housing issues.
On the death penalty, Morrison & Foerster was honored by Death Penalty Focus after it was successful in having the death sentence of James Lee Spencer of Georgia overturned. Spencer was moved off of death row after he was found to be mentally ill.
Morrison & Foerster attorney Charles Patterson has worked on two notable California death penalty cases, including Manuel Babbitt and Clarence Ray Allen, And James J. Brosnahan of Morrison & Foerster is the author of: the “California Death Penalty Fairness and Fiscal Responsibility Study Commission Act,” which includes a resolution calling for a moratorium on executions and the appointment of a study commission to determine the following information:
Last but not least, the firm is currently helping to incorporate “California People of Faith working against the death penalty,” making it into a non-profit.
