October 10: World Day Against the Death Penalty Through the Eyes of a Death Row Survivor
by Stanley Howard
My name is Stanley Howard. I am a Chicago police torture survivor who spent 39 years of incarceration in Illinois - 16 years of which on death row for crimes I did not commit before being pardoned in January 2003.
Stanley Howard sitting at his desk at the Uptown People's Law Office.
In 1998, while I was still facing the executioner, Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Mose Harrison II wrote:
"My colleagues turn aside [a condemned man's] constitutional challenge with the observation that the American criminal justice system is one of the best in the world. The sentiment has a pleasant and reassuring tone, but it overlooks an important fact... the U.S. is now the only well-established democracy that has not abolished the death penalty expressly or in practice... Innocent people are being sentenced to death. Examples of innocent people who were arrested, tried and convicted of capital offenses are numerous and well documented....the only conclusion I can draw is that the system does not work as the constitution requires it to. If [the innocent] dodged the executioner, it was only because of luck."
We know that the death penalty is racist, punishes the poor, condemns the innocent to die, is cruel and unusual punishment, and does not deter violent crime.
There is absolutely no difference between the lynching of yester-year...
..and today's modern day form of lynching.
As a matter of fact, there's no real difference between the lynch-mob of yester-year and the lynch-mob that lynched Marcellus Williams in Missouri despite evidence of innocent, objections from the prosecutors and the victim's family.
We must continue the fight to finally KILL THE DEATH PENALITY.
Stanley Howard (he/him) is a survivor of police torture who spent 39 years in Illinois prison, including 16 on Death Row. He currently works as a paralegal with the Uptown People’s Law Center. He has worked as a jailhouse lawyer, organizer, and social justice advocate for over 30 years. He is an accomplished author who has written about his experience both in a solo performance piece and in his book, Tortured by Blue.
