An innocent person is executed
By Brandon Astor Jones
Tens of thousands of black men, women and children were hanged, burned, shot, or tortured to death by mobs in the United States between 1882 and 1986; of these crimes, only the tiniest fraction were ever investigated by grand juries. — New Yorker Magazine, February
I found the words above beneath a photograph that was taken nearly 70 years ago in Marion, Indiana.
Alas, it shows two African Americans (Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith) hanging by their necks from two separate branches of a tree. It should be no great surprise to the Green Left Weekly reader that there is also a large gathering of Anglo Americans milling about beneath the tree, in the aftermath of the lynchings.
Not all, but certainly many Anglo Americans derive a kind of perverse pleasure from the killing of African Americans. Evidence of that pleasure is clear on the faces of at least two young women who had — according to the New Yorker — "... ripped swatches of the victims' clothing [off their dead, hanging bodies] as 'souvenirs'."
You see, it does not matter if the location was a dark, Indiana field long ago, occupied by a self-righteous lynch mob, or in the grounds surrounding this prison during an execution. In either case a disturbingly large number of whites will proudly celebrate the macabre killing(s) in a bloodthirsty state of obscene gaiety and smugness that is unique to lynch mobs.
I have seen live televised news accounts of several executions here in which Ku Klux Klanspeople, fully dressed in their trademark white sheets and dunce caps, have been allowed to stagger about drunk, high on their own special brand of alcohol, prejudice and racism.
I was born in Indiana and I have seen this photograph (and a host of others like it) too many times. My experience, which is the product of many years of close observation throughout my confinement on Georgia's death row, tells me that the only significant difference between the lynch mob that hung those two young African-American men 70 years ago and those judicial mobs that condemn men, women and children to death in Georgia today is honesty.
The lynch mob did not hide behind a thoroughly corrupt judicial system, nor did it pretend not to be filled with bigoted racists.
US lawmakers in general, and Georgia legislators in particular, are among the world's greatest pretenders. For example, this week, Georgia changed its method of execution to lethal injection, but only because it feared that the United States Supreme Court would soon force an end to all executions in Georgia if it continued to use the electric chair.
Rest assured that the sudden change was not a humane act. It was designed for the sole purpose of keeping the death penalty alive and well in Georgia. As reported in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's March 16 issue, "Senate Minority Leader Eric Johnson [a Republican, from Savannah] said execution does not need to be torture and that society has been moving 'on a path of being more sensitive'. He noted that electrocution was introduced in the early 1900s as a more humane alternative to hanging. 'I don't care how we execute them, let's just execute them'."
Unlike his Republican colleague up north, the governor of Illinois, who has recently declared a moratorium on capital punishment in that state, it is clear that Johnson will not care if and when an innocent person is executed.
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He welcomes letters commenting on his columns (include your name and full return address on the envelope, or prison authorities may refuse to deliver it). He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G3-77, Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA, or e-mail <BrandonAstorJones@hotmail.com>. You can visit the author's web site at http://www.BrandonAstorJones.com>>.]