February 21, 2008 issue

The Real Death Penalty: Capital Punishment in America

Appalachian Symposium Features Films, Presentations This Week

Story by Kathleen McFadden
Appalachian State University is presenting a variety of events in The Real Death Penalty: Capital Punishment in America symposium that continues through Saturday, March 8. Here’s what’s coming up during the remainder of the symposium.

Thursday, February 21, 7:00 p.m.
Panel Discussion: Never Truly Free: Bringing Voice to the Reality of Wrongful Convictions Room 114, Belk Library and Information Commons
Darryl Hunt, who was wrongly convicted of the brutal rape and murder of a Winston-Salem reporter and spent almost 20 years in prison before his exoneration, will join panelists Theresa Newman from Duke University Law School and Dr. Barbara Zaitzow from Appalachian’s Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice for the discussion Never Truly Free: Bringing Voice to the Reality of Wrongful Convictions.

According to Dr. Matthew Robinson who coordinated the symposium, “My colleague Barbara Zaitzow is very active in research regarding wrongful convictions. We didn’t want to give audiences the impression that this only happens elsewhere. The best known case of wrongful conviction in the state is the Darryl Hunt case.”

Friday, February 22, 6:30 p.m.
Documentary film: Deadline
Room 114, Belk Library and Information Commons
Shortly after he was elected, Illinois Governor George Ryan, a tough-on-crime, pro-death penalty Republican, faced a serious challenge to his long-held beliefs about crime and punishment. A group of undergraduate journalism students at Northwestern University discovered evidence that proved a man on Death Row, Anthony Porter, was wrongly convicted. Their revelation came just a few hours before the man’s scheduled execution. Then another Death Row inmate was found innocent. And another. Reporters from The Chicago Tribune unearthed evidence suggesting that there could be no absolute guarantee that the Illinois criminal justice system had not, or would not, execute an innocent person.
In response, the governor set up special clemency hearings for each person on Death Row. Each inmate’s lawyer was given one-half hour to make a case for his or her client’s life; each prosecutor was allotted an equal time to prove the need for the inmate’s execution.

Deadline’s access to these hearings, to Death Row prisoners, to the exonerated men and to Governor Ryan brings its audiences directly into the emotional and legal storm surrounding Ryan’s investigation and subsequent decision.
On January 10, 2003, just three days before his last day in office, Ryan pardoned four men. But it was his move the next day that changed the course of judicial history in the United States. Unwilling to uphold a system he found to be fraught with error, Ryan granted blanket clemency to the remaining 167 people on Illinois’ Death Row, an unprecedented move for a U.S. governor.
In his review of the film, Michael Wilmington of The Chicago Tribune wrote, “It gives you a chance to ruminate on some crucial questions of human error, justice and life-and-death.”

Monday, February 25, 7:00 p.m.
Presentation by Dr. Margaret Vandiver
Room 114, Belk Library and Information Commons
Dr. Margaret Vandiver, professor and graduate coordinator in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Memphis, will present a talk on The Human Costs of Homicide and Capital Punishment: Families of Victims and Offenders. Vandiver's main area of research interest is state and collective violence, ranging from the use of the death penalty in America to contemporary instances of genocide. She recently published Lethal Punishment: Lynchings and Legal Executions in the South. Among her current research projects are a study of jurors in capital cases (funded by the National Science Foundation), an oral history project focusing on the anti-death penalty movement in America and research on the influence of slavery on modern criminal justice practices.

Tuesday, February 26, 2:00 p.m.
Presentation by Delbert Tibbs
Table Rock Room, Plemmons Student Union
Delbert Tibbs, wrongfully convicted of murder and rape, will tell of his experiences in the presentation My Story: A Death Row Exoneree Speaks. Tibbs was arrested in 1974 and charged with the murder of a white man and the rape of his girlfriend. The crime took place on a Florida highway, and except for the “rape victim,” there were no other witnesses. Tibbs, who was hitchhiking 200 miles away from the scene, was arrested and charged with the crimes.

Despite a significantly flawed trial, Tibbs was sentenced to death. Two years later, the Florida Supreme Court overturned his conviction for lack of evidence. Since his release, Tibbs has lectured all over the United States on the issue of capital punishment and has participated in workshops, forums and panels with community groups all over the nation.

Tibbs is portrayed in the play The Exonerated, being presented at Appalachian from Tuesday through Saturday, March 4 to 8, as part of the symposium.

Wednesday, February 27, 2:15 p.m.
Presentation by Drs. Kimberly Cook and Saundra Westervelt
Room 114, Belk Library and Information Commons
Dr. Kimberly Cook, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and Dr. Saundra Westervelt, associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, will present a talk on Life After Death Row: Recovering from a Wrongful Capital Conviction.

Cook is the author of Divided Passions: Public Opinions on Abortion and Death Penalty, and her current research interests are wrongful convictions in capital cases, shelters for battered women and restorative justice in communities.
Westervelt teaches primarily within the criminology concentration available to students in the sociology major. Her teaching interests lie in the general areas of criminology and the sociology of law. Her early work focused on the extra-legal factors that influence the development and acceptance of new criminal defense strategies in court. However, she has more recently turned her attention to examining the causes and consequences of wrongful convictions. At present, she is engaged in a long-term study of individuals who have been wrongly convicted and released from death row across the United States. She is particularly interested in the consequences such experiences have for the individuals who have suffered this fate, i.e., what "life after exoneration" is like. This research involves personal interviews with those individuals who have been wrongly convicted and exonerated.

Friday, February 29, 6:30 p.m.
Documentary film: After Innocence
Room 114, Belk Library and Information Commons
The 2005 winner of the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize, After Innocence tells the story of seven innocent men—including a police officer, an army sergeant and a young father—wrongfully imprisoned for decades and then released after DNA evidence proved their innocence.

The film examines how the men were thrust back into society with little or no support from the system that put them behind bars. While the public views exonerations as success stories—wrongs that have been righted—After Innocence shows that the human toll of wrongful imprisonment can last far longer than the sentences served. The movie addresses the question of compensation after wrongful imprisonment. Unlike paroled prisoners, who have a network of social services to help them reenter society, the exonerated receive little guidance or support. What does society owe these people for what they lost, not only in wages and career opportunities, but also as compensation for their suffering and humiliation?

The film raises basic questions about human rights and society's moral obligation to the innocent and spotlights the flaws in the criminal justice system that lead to wrongful conviction of the innocent.

The film, written by Jessica Sanders and Marc Simon, was made in collaboration with the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal clinic founded in 1992 at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan. The clinic only handles only cases in which post-conviction DNA testing can yield conclusive proof of innocence. Its work has helped exonerate more than 160 people, and the center’s lawyers estimate that DNA testing could free thousands more.
According to an LA Times review, After Innocence is “even-handed but quietly devastating.”

Tuesday through Saturday, March 4 to 8, 8:00 p.m.
Play: The Exonerated
I.G. Greer Studio
Appalachian’s Department of Theatre and Dance will present The Exonerated at I.G. Greer Studio Theatre Tuesday through Saturday, March 4 to 8, at 8:00 p.m. Admission is $4.

The Exonerated chronicles the experiences of six innocent people who spent from 2 to 22 years on Death Row and were eventually cleared—often thanks to an attorney who took on their case pro bono or dedicated law school students who wanted to right a wrong. The play follows the six innocent victims through their arrests, trials, incarcerations and eventual releases when found innocent beyond doubt.

Culled from interviews, letters, transcripts, case files and the public record, The Exonerated tells the true stories of the six innocent survivors of Death Row in their own words.