ABSTRACT: The application of the death penalty in the United States of America.

(Radical News n. 165 of 21 July 1987)

There is not just Paula Cooper.

Other 35 minors are waiting to be executed in the death rows of the U.S. prisons.

At fourteen or sixteen, a person can't vote, can't have sexual intercourse, and juridically speaking has no capacity to act. But in the United States, that same person can be sentenced to death and executed.

The death penalty is in force in 37 of the 50 states of the U.S., and 26 states provide for the death penalty for minors.

In the past weeks, Amnesty International divulged a series of figures and horrifying testimonies as it prepared to launch a campaign against the death penalty in the U.S.

First of all, the methods of the execution are appalling: the electric chair, injection of poison, suffocation by means of lethal gas are the most frequently used. But they also include firing squads and hanging.

The cruelty of the executions is proven by a number of recent cases. In 1983, during an electric chair execution in Alabama, it took three 1900 Volt discharges in the space of 14 minutes to kill the prisoner. By the second discharge, smoke and flames were coming out of the prisoner's left temple and left leg.

In 1984 in Georgia, witnesses saw the prisoner struggle for as long as eight minutes in an attempt to breathe after the first discharge, which had failed to kill him. A year before that, in Mississippi, during a gas execution, the prisoner was shaken by convulsions for eight minutes, and repeatedly beat his head against the pole placed behind him. Some of the witnesses stated that he was still alive when the officials asked them to leave the execution room.

In 1984, during a lethal gas injection execution in Texas, "it took the prisoner at least ten minutes to die, shaking and crying with pain" (Newsweek). A year later, in Texas, the "executioners" spent forty minutes in the attempt to find a suitable vein for the injection in the prisoner's limbs. Not that we approve of an immediate and painless death (but such death is never immediate or painless, because it is preceded by years and years spent in the death row waiting for the execution), but the cruelty which these examples prove should be a matter of reflexion even for the supporters of capital punishment.

The "Do Not Kill" Committee has been created for the abolition of the death penalty, and not just applied to minors. Fifty lay and religious associations have already joined it.

Presided by Don Germano Greganti - the daring priest who directs "Carcere e comunità", an advocate of dialogue with the terrorists - the committee has recently invited William Touchette, the lawyer who represents Paula Cooper, to visit Italy.

The young American of Gary, Indiana, has become the symbol of the European and especially of the Italian initiatives undertaken by small and large groups, parties, labour unions, schools and individual citizens. It is impossible to mention all these initiatives, but we wish to recall some of the most important ones. For example, the town Council of Rome has expressed "its support to the international public opinion in asking to pardon Paula Cooper", or the numerous initiatives of the European Parliament.

The Subcommittee for human rights, which met in Rome last March, repeated the positions of the European Parliament against the death penalty and especially against the death penalty applied to minors. The President of the subcommittee, De Gucht, also met a number of representatives of the "Do Not Kill" committee, whom he expressed the full support of the subcommittee to the initiatives undertaken by the committee.

Emma Bonino, Radical member of the European Parliament, is the first signer of the resolution passed last May by the European Parliament. The resolution, signed by representatives of almost all the parliamentary groups, states that "the European Parliament launches an appeal to the authorities of the different States of the Union in which the death penalty is still in force, urging them to suspend any capital punishment; moreover it asks the Council, the Commission and the member States to take all the necessary steps to urge the State of Indiana, as a sign of good will, to transform the capital punishment for Paula Cooper into a detention punishment".

Eighteen former members of Italian terrorist associations such as the Red Brigades, Prima Linea and right-wing formations such as the N.A.R., have sent an appeal to the U.S. and to the Governor of Indiana.

"We who in the past have claimed the right to decide of another person's life, we who have been operators of death, we who now consider ourselves exiles from terror and equality, refugees from the objectives and the means which made us into barbarians, look with hope at the free world, a world which is at least free of the need to change or suppress human nature. Love democracy, pardon Paula Cooper. For her, for you and for us all".

Over 500.000 signatures collected in Italy have been sent to the Governor of the State of Indiana.

And to thank the Italians also on behalf of Paula Cooper, her lawyer has come on visit to Italy and has held a series of meetings, conferences and television programs in Rome and in Florence.

We shall save Paula Cooper, respecting a commitment which, as Radicals, we had assumed in the past summer. With her, we will continue the huge and absolutely necessary campaign against the death penalty.

Giorgio Del Vecchio, a philosopher of law, wrote that "the history of penalties, in many of its pages, is no less disgraceful for mankind than the history of crimes".

Democracy should be measured on the basis of the respect of life which is practised in a community. The death penalty is the negation of this respect, while it is uncontroversial that it does not work as a deterrent against crime.

Let's start by saving Paula Cooper.