Columbia Tribune: Execution order driven by misfortune, systemic racism

[Stefanie Faucher]

http://www.columbiatribune.com/opinion/oped/execution-order-driven-by-misfortune-systemic-racism/article_bdcb9efc-4119-59ff-b2fa-4e3c0d5de767.html

Execution order driven by misfortune, systemic racism

By MARY RATLIFF and JEFF STACK

Sunday, November 16, 2014 at 12:00 am

Executions snuff out human beings with the vast potential to be positive role models for fellow prisoners and to promote healing for crime victims. Missouri officials risk again creating an agonizing societal void if they execute Leon Taylor as planned early Wednesday morning.

Taylor would be the 11th person executed by our state since last November — the most in any year since 1899. Beyond issues of modernity and morality — we do oppose any murder by the person or state — citizens should be troubled by issues of racism and freakish legal misfortune in his case. We should appreciate Taylor’s spiritual transformation, rising as he has from a nightmarish childhood and street crime to become a foundational leader of the Christian community within the Potosi prison.


Taylor has long accepted responsibility for his wrongdoing in 1994 when he fatally shot Robert Newton during the robbery of a gas station in Independence. Many years ago, Taylor wrote to Astrid, Newton’s widow, apologizing for his actions and the grief he caused her and her family. She has accepted his remorse as sincere and has forgiven him. They eloquently share those heartfelt reflections in the documentary “Potosi: God in Death Row.”

Jim Hall was deeply touched by the film, which publicly premiered last month — seven months after Jeffrey Ferguson was executed for his role in the rape and murder of Hall’s 17-year-old daughter, Kelli. Ferguson, Taylor and two other men incarcerated in the Potosi prison speak with shame of their crimes.

Our society traditionally erects a figurative wall between offenders and those who have been offended — in addition to appropriate physical barriers for public safety — that can impede prospective healing. Hall never had the opportunity to see and hear Ferguson, much less interact with him while he was alive. He wasn’t emotionally ready to initiate contact. Hall and his family had publicly expressed support for the death penalty, including just after the execution. However, the execution has compounded rather than eased the family’s suffering. As Hall explained during recent public programs where he spoke against Taylor’s execution, family members realize they and many others are grieving the death of Ferguson.

Leon Taylor would be the second black man executed in Missouri in nearly as many months sentenced to death by an all-white jury for murdering a white victim. At least four other black men have similarly been convicted by all-white juries in Missouri and executed since 1989.

A racially mixed jury convicted Taylor of murder but was unable to unanimously agree to a death sentence, so the judge imposed it. On appeal, the sentence was reversed because the prosecutor made improper statements during closing arguments. The prosecutor at Taylor’s subsequent 1999 sentencing dismissed all six blacks from serving as jurors. The all-white jury recommended a death sentence. The judge, even while expressing concerns about the racial dynamics, affirmed their recommendation and imposed death.

In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Ring v. Arizona that judges could no longer sentence someone to death when jurors had not unanimously agreed to the sentence. The next year, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled the Ring precedent should be applied retroactively. The courts then commuted to life imprisonment the sentences of about a half-dozen inmates. The courts refused this remedy for Taylor. As one of his co-counsels has lamented, “If the prosecutor had not made improper argument at the 1995 sentencing, Leon Taylor’s original death sentence would automatically have been commuted to life. Instead, due to the prosecutor’s misconduct, he is now awaiting execution.”

Over the past two decades, Taylor has been a foundational leader of the Christian community in the Potosi prison, according to many accounts. He could continue to dwell as a positive influence if he were incarcerated and not executed.

His stand-up character is especially remarkable given his nightmarish childhood. Taylor’s 2005 habeas petition notes his mother, Mary, was a chronic alcoholic who gave her children alcohol beginning with Leon at age 5. “Many of the children watched as she stabbed and shot at least three of her boyfriends. ... Leon watched as Mary shot and killed her husband, Sammie Owens.”

She choked and beat all of her children, particularly when she was drunk, using her fists, switches, extension cords and other objects, the document notes. “She focused much of her anger and abuse on Leon” because he was the oldest and was expected to care for his siblings. “Strange men had access to the children; a 20-year-old male neighbor sexually abused Leon when he was five years old.” Attempts by other adults to intervene failed. The petition reports Taylor was removed from the home a few times.

The document cites a police record years after Leon was sent to another juvenile facility, noting, “nine other children were removed from Mary Owens’s home. The conditions in the home were horrendous. Mary was staggering drunk and cursed at the police. ... The children slept on urine-soaked mattresses, chairs or sofas. The house was full of spoiled food, and alcohol and Excedrin were available to the children. Insects crawled all over.”

Contact Gov. Jay Nixon’s office. Urge him to halt Taylor’s execution and commute his death sentence. Call 573-751-3222 or write via email at https://governor.mo.gov/get-involved/contact-the-governors-office.

On Tuesday, join “Vigils for Life,” remembering all murder victims and urging no more executions, from noon to 1 p.m. outside the Governor’s Office, second floor of the Capitol in Jefferson City, and from 5 to 6 p.m. at the Boone County Courthouse in Columbia. Call 573-449-4585 for more details.

Mary Ratliff is NAACP Missouri State Conference president, and Jeff Stack is coordinator of the Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation.

© 2014 Columbia Daily Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Posted in Oped, Opinion on Sunday, November 16, 2014 12:00 am.



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Stefanie Faucher
Communications Director
8th Amendment Project
sfau...@8thamendment.org
Mobile 510.393.4549
8thamendment.org