“His story, of a young boy victimized by addiction, poverty, violence, the foster care system and later the justice system, profoundly touched me then, and still does today,” Oprah Winfrey said in explaining why she chose Jarvis Jay Masters’ 1997 memoir, That Bird Has My Wings, as her latest selection for Oprah’s Book Club. Masters was first incarcerated at California’s San Quentin Prison in 1981 for armed robbery and was moved to death row in 1990, convicted of conspiracy in the murder of San Quentin prison guard Dean Burchfield. While three people were charged with the crime, Masters was the only one of the three sentenced to death (the other two men were sentenced to life without parole), despite the undisputed fact that he didn’t kill Burchfield — but was convicted of making the weapon, which he denies. Now a Buddhist, he has won several writing awards and written a second book, “Finding Freedom.“
In his op-ed in the Montgomery-Advertiser, “Why Is Toforest Johnson Still on Alabama’s Death Row?” former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Drayton Nabers, Jr., writes, “Supporting the death penalty shouldn’t mean ignoring signs that a person on death row may have been wrongfully convicted. In fact, it should mean the opposite. If we’re going to use the power of the state to execute someone, we should do everything possible to make sure that the person had a fair trial and that the evidence proves his guilt.” Johnson was sentenced to death for killing Birmingham deputy sheriff William G. Hardy, who was working as an off-duty security guard at a hotel, in 1995. But despite substantial new evidence that Johnson is innocent and that the district attorney and the lead prosecutor in his case support a new trial, state officials have defended his conviction, and Johnson is still on death row.
In her article, “New Execution Method Touted as More ‘Humane,’ but Evidence Is Lacking” in Scientific American, Dana G. Smith spoke with anesthesiology, law, and capital punishment experts about Alabama’s plan to execute people with nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative to lethal injection, and found that “there is little medical research on death by nitrogen gas. . . . It is not clear exactly how long the process would take or how much the person would suffer.” She interviewed Joel Zivot, an associate professor of anesthesiology at Emory University, who says there is “no evidence” to the “baseless” claim that nitrogen gas “would cause a death that would be peaceful and cruel.” Smith also discovered that the proposal to kill the incarcerated by nitrogen hypoxia came from a criminal justice professor, not a medical professional or even a person with medical training.
In her editorial in the Indiana Capital Chronicle, Niki Kelly asks, “Should Indiana move on from the death penalty?” and concludes that since the state hasn’t executed anyone since 2009, and the last person sentenced to death was in 2014, abolishing capital punishment “would certainly save money, time, and effort.”
Pointing out that “the vast majority of 2022’s executions have or will take place in the Bible Belt” and that “white evangelicals are the strongest supporters of capital punishment” in the U.S., in his op-ed in Christianity Today, Aaron Griffith says it’s past time for his fellow Christians to oppose capital punishment, starting with those on death row who are also Christian, and recognize “God’s redemptive work… in the lives of all people—even those who have committed violent crimes.”
Essence profiles the Innocence Project’s first Black woman executive director, Christina Swarns, who explains that she believes “the work of Innocence Project is really about challenging and debunking the false and pernicious link between race and criminality — this idea that Black and Brown people carry every single day. Every exoneration of a person of color who is swept up, largely or partly on the basis of race that we are able to secure, cuts into that myth.”
