They viewed the vast immeasurable abyss Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild

Pax Christi is a Catholic Peace Organization. We have a meeting Monday, April 28 at 7 pm in the conference room at the St. Mary's Parish Office, 1300 E. Los Ebanos Blvd. The Office of State Representative Eddie Lucio III report to Pax Christi representatives that Rep. Lucio will be present to review death penalty issues. This is open to the public and we encourage you to come. Your presence will not be taken as an indication that you agree with the views of Pax Christi. I will make a presentation with a nifty power-point presentation and my usual good-humored acceptance of people who disagree with me.

I have been practicing jury selection questions about the death penalty with my friends in hopes of getting myself ready for a trial. The responses (from those people who did not simply run and hide from me) have been surprising both to me and the ones I was questioning. In hypothetical questions, people who viewed themselves as anti-death penalty voted for death and some who viewed themselves as favoring the death penalty in the hypothetical questions opted for life without parole. There also seems to be little correlation between views on the death penalty and other political views. There are a lot of pro-life conservatives and pro-death liberals.

Carefully formed intellectual constructs about the death penalty are blown away even when a hypothetical question is posed informally. I am not sure any of us really know what we would do if truly faced as a juror with the decision to kill or not to kill.

So I will offer a hard case for the conscientious objectors among us. (I pray that if the moment of truth every arrives for me I would still find myself among that group--but who knows?) Hard cases are legion. This one is from today's news:

The Birmingham News announced the death by pancreatic cancer of serial killer Daniel Siebert this week. Siebert had been on death row for 22 years and had been one day from death last October, but was granted a stay because of the challenge to the means of lethal injections.

He murdered with slow strangulation and had five victims in Georgia including his girlfriend, a student at the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind, and her two young children and another woman in the apartment complex where they lived. He confessed to another 13 murders nationwide.

Even while on death row, Siebert had been uncommonly odious. He made sexually exploitive and sadistic drawings that were peddled for money on a website devoted to what it called "Murderabilia." This brought a call from the Alabama legislature to find a way to stop the trade for profit of death row drawings.

The children of a victim issued a statement and expressed disappointment that Siebert had died of natural causes before execution.

What am I to make of this?

The law calls the response retribution, and there have been times when I have thought that this was the only argument for punishment that was irrefutable. A desire for vengeance--this, I have experienced and can understand.

My fantasies and sometimes dreams in my sleep of retribution, vengeance against someone who had wronged me (many fewer now that I am getting old) always involved an act by my own hand. Gun, knife, strangling. My imagined wrongdoers to whom I owed a righteous vengeance were always rivals I feared. Another lawyer, maybe, or a politician. Some of those people became my friends as years passed. Maybe my own fear that I have the potential for violence may have been a factor in moving me to a philosophical position of non-violence.

And of course those philosophical world views that we develop for ourselves may or may not survive the anger in the heat of the moment. My Dear Old Dad used to warn me about pacifists: "Be careful, those guys are killers." I am not sure if this was just his love of the paradox or he had some basis for the belief. He claimed he and other surgeons entered the field as a way to direct sadistic impulses--a socially acceptable way to cut people. I can imagine the pacifist who reacts in this way to control violent impulses. Something like the person who decides to become celibate to avoid being a sexual predator.

Why though, wasn't the life of misery and the horrible death of Daniel Siebert satisfying to victim's children? Twenty-two years on death row. One inmate describes the experience like this:

We are kept in constant confinement, locked in-cell all day long - except for the five days a week we are allowed one whole hour outside (in another, slightly bigger, cage). Cell temperatures are kept cold and breezy by powerful forced-air vents, yet permissible clothing is limited. All meals are served in-cell, on a filthy tray shoved through a slot in the door. Showers? For us, it's three times weekly. As for visiting, we are limited to two hours per week, with added physical restrictions: all death row visits take place in a 4' x4' separation booth, behind a barrier. (All this after prisoners' family, friends and attorneys' drive many hours to reach this remotely-located prison.)
This from a Robert Buehl incarcerated in Pennsylvania.

And then death by pancreatic cancer, normally a relatively rapid death (months of agony), but an especially painful death, even under the best of conditions with morphine and hospice care. And from what I know of prison medical care, I suspect Mr. Siebert's care in Alabama was less than ideal. (If I knew the choice was lethal injection or pancreatic cancer for me in an Alabama prison, I may well be too afraid of the cancer pain. Like those people who jump to their deaths out of a burning building).

The victim's children reported they did not have a sense of satisfaction from this end to Daniel Siebert.

Would an execution have actually been better, though? I don't know.

I do believe that we who choose to defend those accused of capital crimes (either in or out of court) must be willing to face the worst of cases and be willing to face the suffering caused the victims.

Jail house blues: If voting won't help much, what can we do?

So why didn't the slaves just vote themselves freedom? Well, OK, they weren't allowed to vote and there were other problems like this original provision of the U.S. Constitution:

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

In other words, if you run away, we track you down and bring you back.

Sound familiar? Now ask why we cannot just elect different county commissioners and sheriff and improve jail conditions?

Inmates, like slaves, cannot vote and if they run away we track them down and bring them back. Even very democratic rule (which we do not have) may leave a despised minority without rights and with harsh treatment. Comments on earlier blog posts have discussed the hatred engendered by being gay, socialist or atheist. Imagine being an inmate.

This is one problem (among many more) that cannot be voted away.

I urge ideas from everywhere; community organization is not my strength. Nonetheless, here are some things that occur to me may be started locally or encouraged statewide that may make a difference:

1. Jailers--they hold the key.

a. Organize jailers and increase their pay and education.
b. Make jailers a profession with a code of ethics and a risk of loss of license for ethical violations.
c. Within the code of ethics require reporting of inmate abuse or other violations of minimum standards.
d. Give jailers civil service protection to require due process so they will not be punished for reporting violations.
e. Make sure many jailers have paramedic training like firefighters.
f. Encourage social work, psychology educations for jailers.

How can this be done? Some trade unions may be interested. AFSCME, maybe. I understand the weaknesses of trade unions as opposed to industrial unions, but the trade unions at least are still alive.

Jailers attended the Pax Christi meeting on jail conditions and some of the candidates were either past or present jailers. Encouraging at least some support group to begin to wield some influence. Jailers and their families, unlike most inmates, can vote.

2. Organize inmate families. The extent of the damage done to families, jail house widows and orphans, is difficult to overstate. Often if people who have a son, husband, brother in jail they are embarrassed for themselves or loved ones and keep it a secret. Protests including children were historically what first began to give ML King a measure of success. Families Against Mandatory Minimums is one organization and I know there is a local organization as well.

3. Seek help from religious groups to promote these issues. Valley Interfaith may be interested. Scripture certainly supports a jail ministry. Church members can also vote.

4. Educate the inmates. Copies of forms for Federal Tort Claims Act complaints should help the federal prisoners. Copies of the Jail Commission Standards. Case law summary on 8th Amendment protections. International human rights treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory. All in Spanish.

5. Opening of the jail to education, ministry and the press (including photographs). All of these are restricted and inadequate. These restrictions are made on the basis of arguing security risks.

Of course, to an extent this is true. Anytime anyone is allowed into a jail facility there is at least a theoretical risk of introducing contraband. Anytime anyone or anything is allowed out of a jail, there is a risk of introducing information that would allow an escape, riot or introduction of contraband. So everything that humanizes the jail and makes it otherwise function such as family visits, jail ministries, bringing in and taking out of supplies, mail, books, art, GED training, AA, lawyer visits, foreign consul visits, probation and parole officer visits, shift changes in jail employees, medical visits, contact with one another, creates a security risk. Especially if that risk involves some political heat or extra expense, and sometimes only because of the political heat and extra expense, using security as a pretext, the first reaction seems to be to exclude the risk rather than increase the security.

However, prisoners cannot be kept sealed air tight plastic wraps. And to the extent extra security requires more personnel and equipment to conduct searches and examinations of the people and things going in and out of the jail, this is simply part of the basic required expense of the jail, just like bars and walls.

6. Involve the Mexican Consul. The folks there want to help and have intervened on behalf of individual clients. They also seem to be able to get in for visits.

7. The county could hire an inmate ombudsman and allow that person full access. Talk to the commissioners about this. Sen. Lucio and the State Reps Oliveira, Lucio and Rios Ybarra (elect) could promote this on a statewide basis.

8. Website support: Post inmate complaints and medical information on a website (redacting inmate names to protect privacy). Post personnel information about jail employees on a website, including salaries and sanctions (again, redacting names). Post jail populations in the different facilities. Post numbers of inmates in different facilities and compare with maximum capacity in that facility. Give locations as to facility of inmates. Family members and lawyers would be able to find the inmate and the jail would be less likely to lose one or overstay the end of the sentence. Post judgments with sentencing in connection with the inmate. (This is also public information already). Post name of medical personnel on duty. Status of other jail systems such as life safety rules, something we only hear about in after a tragedy, should be publicly posted. The jail commission standards require each jail to have extensive plans regarding many areas of standards and these should be posted as well.

9. Ask Sen. Lucio and State Reps. Oliveira, Lucio, (and now) Rios Ybarra to give someone authority to enforce the Minimum Jail Standards--the DA, Attorney General, or maybe a standing special enforcement agency for jails. Our commentators from yesterday discuss the strictness of the TCJS, but after reports of violations are issued, it seems there is little pressure for change. Variances appear to be readily granted. I may be mistaken about this, but it is how things appear to me as an outsider. Also, a statewide agency is unfit to oversee daily and micro local jail problems. There is a particular regulation dealing with our famous toilet paper issue:

RULE §277.5 Toilet Paper: Toilet paper shall be available at all times.

How is a state agency without a local staff, supposed to oversee this, for instance?

10. The minimum jail standards themselves may not meet constitutional muster and if they are treated as an aspirational standard for the jails, rather than a true minimum standard, unless the jail standards are improved, unconstitutional jails will be guaranteed. The chapter of the minimum jail standards that applies to education and rehab programs does not address religious exercise and I cannot find it otherwise. Inmates, including convicts in prison, must still be provided some access to the Free Exercise of Religion. The jail standards themselves may require revision.

And then, when all else fails, or at least to augment everything else, the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 were codified in 42 USC Section 1988 helped end the other kind of slavery. Our "evolving sense of decency" has not evolved yet to the point where we may expect the abolition of jails. But maybe we can agree decency must include mattresses, soap and toilet paper.