USA: New Mexico abolishes the death penalty

Amnesty International’s press release: “USA: New Mexico abolishes the death penalty” (19 March 2009)

“From an international human rights perspective, there is no reason the United States should be behind the rest of the world on this issue.” (Governor Bill Richardson, New Mexico, 18 March 2009)

On the evening of 18 March 2009, the Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, signed into law a bill abolishing the death penalty in his state. New Mexico becomes the 15th abolitionist state in the USA. (1)

Amnesty International applauds New Mexico’s decision to end its use of the death penalty, and urges government officials and legislators in other jurisdictions in the USA to reflect upon and follow New Mexico’s example. The death penalty is a cruel, destructive, unnecessary and outdated punishment that should be eradicated from the statute books and permanently confined to the history books.

In a statement, Governor Richardson explained that throughout his adult life he had been a supporter of the death penalty, but that in recent years he had come to the conclusion that its irrevocable nature rendered it an untenable punishment in an imperfect justice system:

“I do not have confidence in the criminal justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes to who lives and who dies for their crime. If the State is going to undertake this awesome responsibility, the system to impose this ultimate penalty must be perfect and can never be wrong. But the reality is the system is not perfect – far from it. The system is inherently defective. DNA testing has proved that. Innocent people have been put on death row all across the country. Even with advances in DNA and other forensic evidence technologies, we can’t be 100-per cent sure that only the truly guilty are convicted of capital crimes. Evidence, including DNA evidence, can be manipulated. Prosecutors can still abuse their powers. We cannot ensure competent defense counsel for all defendants”

New Mexico’s abolitionist bill, replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, had passed the state Senate on 13 March 2009 by a vote of 24-18. The lower House of Representatives had earlier passed the legislation by 40 votes to 28. The Governor then had until the end of 18 March to sign or veto the bill.

After the bill was passed by the legislature, Governor Richardson invited New Mexicans to contact his office with their views on the legislation. In a news release issued on 17 March, he revealed that he had received opinions from a total of 9,413 constituents, with 7,169 (76 per cent) for repeal of the death penalty and 2,244 (24 per cent) against. The news release did not provide information about appeals coming from outside New Mexico or the USA. It did reveal that the Governor had met with “more than 100 New Mexicans” in his office on 16 March, many of whom had concerns, either for or against, abolition of the death penalty. Those he met included the parents of a police officer killed in 2006. The man charged with the murder could have faced the death penalty.

In his statement explaining his decision to sign the abolitionist bill into law, Governor Richardson said that “I have believed the death penalty can serve as a deterrent to some who might consider murdering a law enforcement officer, a corrections officer, a witness to a crime or kidnapping and murdering a child. However, people continue to commit terrible crimes even in the face of the death penalty…”

There are two men on New Mexico’s death row, and the state has carried out one execution since judicial killing resumed in the USA in 1977. Terry Clark was put to death by lethal injection on 6 November 2001, in the state’s first and only execution since 1960. He had given up his appeals. (2)

New Mexico becomes the second state in the USA in the past two years to legislate to abolish the death penalty, following New Jersey in 2007 (which was the first US jurisdiction to pass such a bill into law since 1965). These moves can be seen as part of a general softening in support for the death penalty in the USA in recent years. An erosion of the public’s belief in the deterrence value of the death penalty, an increased awareness of the frequency of wrongful convictions in capital cases, and a greater confidence that public safety can be guaranteed by life prison terms rather than death sentences have all contributed to the waning of enthusiasm for capital punishment. (3)

In 2008, US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who has served on the Court since 1975, wrote in ruling on a capital case that his experience had led him to the conclusion that “the imposition of the death penalty represents the pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes. A penalty with such negligible returns to the State is patently excessive and cruel and unusual punishment”. On the risk of wrongful conviction in capital cases, Justice Stevens pointed out that the risk of executing the innocent “can be entirely eliminated” by abolishing the death penalty. (4) More than 120 people have been released from death rows on grounds of innocence since 1975. They include four men sentenced to death in New Mexico in 1974 and exonerated two years later. Many others among the 120 had spent more than a decade on death row. In his statement, Governor Richardson said:

“In a society which values individual life and liberty above all else, where justice and not vengeance is the singular guiding principle of our system of criminal law, the potential for wrongful conviction and, God forbid, execution of an innocent person stands as anathema to our very sensibilities as human beings.”

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases, unconditionally. To end the death penalty is to abandon a destructive, diversionary and divisive public policy that is not consistent with widely held values. It not only runs the risk of irrevocable error, it is also costly, in social and psychological terms as well as to the public purse (a fact which is drawing increasing public concern in the USA in the current economic climate). It has not been proved to have a special deterrent effect. It tends to be applied in a discriminatory way, on grounds of race and class (Governor Richardson said that “it bothers me greatly that minorities are overrepresented in the prison population and on death row”). It denies the possibility of reconciliation and rehabilitation. It promotes simplistic responses to complex human problems, rather than pursuing explanations that could inform positive strategies. It prolongs the suffering of the murder victim’s family, and extends that suffering to the loved ones of the condemned prisoner. It diverts human and financial resources that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it. It is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it. It is an affront to human dignity.

There have been 1,156 executions in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977, including 20 executions in the USA so far in 2009. A majority of US executions occur in a small number of states. Texas alone accounts for 435 of the USA’s executions since 1977, four times as many as any other state. Texas, Virginia, and Oklahoma together account for more than half of the country’s executions since resumption.

Meanwhile, the global trend towards abolition of the death penalty is clear. Today, 138 countries are abolitionist in law or practice. Governor Richardson recognized the USA’s increasingly isolated position on this human rights issue:

“From an international human rights perspective, there is no reason the United States should be behind the rest of the world on this issue. Many of the countries that continue to support and use the death penalty are also the most repressive nations in the world. That’s not something to be proud of.”

Amnesty International calls on the US federal government and authorities in the 35 states in the USA which still have the death penalty to work against this punishment with a view to abolition. Pending abolition, the relevant authorities should prevent any further executions, in line with the UN General Assembly’s call for such a worldwide moratorium on executions.

INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT, 1 EASTON STREET, LONDON WC1X 0DW, UNITED KINGDOM

(1) The other 14 are: Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. The District of Columbia is also abolitionist. The remaining 35 states have the death penalty, as does the federal government and the US military.

(2) See Amnesty International Urgent Action, 4 October 2001, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/147/2001, and update, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/162/2001.

(3) See, for example, USA: The experiment that failed – A reflection on 30 years of executions (AI report, 16 January 2007).

(4) Baze v. Rees, US Supreme Court, 16 April 2008, Justice Stevens, concurring in judgment.

Related links:

• World Coalition Against the Death Penalty
• Death Penalty Information Center
• National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

Xa está “na rúa” o Notepad++ 5.3

Xa está disponible unha nova versión estable, a 5.3, do Notepad++, que eu defino como un lixeiro pero completísimo editor de texto e HTML.

Quero dicir: eu úsoo para iso, pero os programadores saberán apreciar que recoñeza a sintaxe de ducias de linguaxes máis, como C, C++, XML, CSS, PHP, Java, Perl, JavaScript, SQL, Python, TeX, etcétera.

E o millor de todo, é totalmente aberto e gratuíto (licencia GPL). Un único inconveniente: so funciona en Windows, aínda que tamén pode funcionar en Linux coa axuda de Wine.

HRW report on Women’s Health Care in USA Immigration Detention

Human Rights Watch publicou esta semana un informe sobre os centros de detención de inmigrantes nos Estados Unidos, destacando as graves carencias na asistencia médica ás mulleres alí detidas. O informe leva por título “Detained and Dismissed: Women’s Struggles to Obtain Health Care in United States Immigration Detention”. Copio un extracto da súa introducción:

[...] Most immigration detainees in the United States are held as a result of administrative, rather than criminal, infractions, but the medical treatment they receive can be worse than that of convicted criminals in the US prison system. The inspector general’s office at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued two reports in the past three years criticizing medical treatment at immigration detention facilities. Deaths in custody attributed to egregious failures of medical care have received prominent media attention and a University of Arizona study in January 2009 described failures of medical care for women detained at facilities in that state.

Underlying the individual stories of abuse and mistreatment is a system badly in need of repair, recent reforms notwithstanding. This report, based on interviews with women detainees, immigration officials, and visits to nine different facilities in three states, addresses one important component of the needed change: the medical care available to women detainees. As detailed below, we found that ICE [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] policies unduly deprive women of basic health services. And even services that are provided are often unconscionably delayed or otherwise seriously substandard.

Abuses documented in this report range from delays in medical treatment and testing in cases where symptoms indicate that women’s lives and well-being could be at risk, to the shackling of pregnant women during transport, to systematic failures in provision of routine care. [...]

While the immigration detention system’s flawed medical care affects both men and women, this report focuses on the situation of women detainees, roughly 10 percent of the overall immigration detainee population at any given time. These women include refugees fleeing persecution, survivors of sexual assault, pregnant women, nursing mothers separated from their children, patients detained amidst treatment for cancer, and many more women who have needs for basic medical care.

Many women in the United States continue to struggle with finding ways to access basic medical care. But for the thousands of women in immigration detention, there is only one way to get a Pap smear to detect cervical cancer, undergo a mammogram, receive pregnancy care, access care and counseling after sexual violence, or simply obtain a sufficient supply of sanitary pads: through ICE. In custody without other options, women receive care through ICE or are forced to go without.

In interviews with detained and recently detained immigrant women, Human Rights Watch documented dozens of instances where women’s health concerns went unaddressed by facility medical staff, or were addressed only after considerable delays.

• We met women who were denied gynecological care or obtained it only after many requests, including a woman who entered detention shortly after receiving news of an abnormal Pap smear. She told detention authorities that her doctor instructed her to get Pap smears every six months, but after 16 months in detention and many requests, she had still not gotten a Pap smear.
• We met women who were refused hormonal contraceptives during detention, including one who had inflamed ovaries and endured excruciating, heavy periods when the detention facility refused to provide her the birth control pills prescribed to manage her condition.
• We met women who, according to standards of medical practice in the United States, should have received mammograms, including one woman who had breast cancer surgery before detention and was instructed to get mammograms every six months. Due for her six-month check-up when she was detained, she waited four months for her first mammogram during detention, and did not receive another in her remaining 12 months there.
• We met women who complained of inadequate care during pregnancy, including one diagnosed with an ovarian cyst threatening her five-month pregnancy shortly before she was detained. Her doctor said the cyst should be monitored every two to three weeks, but during her stay in detention of more than four weeks, she was never able to see a doctor. The medical staff’s response to her last sick call request read, “be patient.”
• We met mothers who were nursing their babies prior to detention and were then denied breast pumps in the facilities, resulting in fever, pain, mastitis, and the inability to continue breastfeeding upon release.
• We met women who had to beg, plead, and in some cases work within the facility just to get enough sanitary pads not to bleed through their clothes, and one woman who sat on a toilet for hours when the facility would not give her the pads she needed.

[...] Official ICE policy, which focuses on emergency care and keeping the individuals in its custody in deportable condition, effectively discourages the routine provision of some basic women’s health services. ICE’s Division of Immigration Health Services (DIHS) has chief responsibility for the medical care provided to detained immigrants, whether it provides those services directly or through a contractor at a local facility. The DIHS Medical Dental Detainee Covered Services Package, which governs access to off-site specialists, says that requests for non-emergency care will be considered if going without treatment in custody would “cause deterioration of the detainee’s health or uncontrolled suffering affecting his/her deportation status.” Although, on occasion, officials have offered generous interpretations of this policy in its defense, the message about the scope of care provided remains clear. “We are in the deportation business… Obviously, our goal is to remove individuals ordered removed from our country,” ICE spokesperson Kelly Nantel told a reporter in June 2008. “We address their health care issues to make sure they are medically able to travel and medically able to return to their country.” [...]

Xa está “na rúa” o Internet Explorer 8

Xa saíu a nova versión estable, que leva o número 8, do navegador que vén co sistema operativo Microsoft Windows, o Internet Explorer. Representa unha millora de seguridade e debemos instalar esta nova versión. Se preferides esperar, creo que a van ofrecer dentro de poucos días a través do servizo Windows Update.

Internet Explorer 8 avanza tamén en aspectos como os estándares web e as extensións. Aínda que os de Microsoft lle copian case todo ó Mozilla Firefox, polo de agora non chegan á súa altura, e iso xa se percibe desde a instalación… Seguiremos informando, porque creo que van aparecer maiores inconvenientes axiña.

Requiem (Verdi): “Dies irae” (Abbado)

Hoxe traio o “Dies irae”, un dos millores momentos da misa de Requiem composta por Giuseppe Verdi. Esta misa estreouse no 1874, e Verdi compúxoa movido pola morte do escritor Alessandro Manzoni, e quizá tamén pola do compositor Gioachino Rossini.

Este vídeo encontreino nunha anotación do blog Audición y apreciación musical (escrito por José Ramón Tapia Merino), “G. Verdi: Dies Irae de la Messa da Requiem”. Intérpretes: Orfeón Donostiarra, Radiokören, Berliner Philharmoniker, baixo a dirección de Claudio Abbado.

O texto aquí cantado son as tres primeiras estrofas do “Dies irae”, himno do século XIII que formou parte da liturxia católica ata o Concilio Vaticano II:

Dies irae, dies illa,
solvet saeclum in favilla,
teste David cum Sibylla.

Quantus tremor est futurus,
quando judex est venturus,
cuncta stricte discussurus!

Tuba mirum spargens sonum
per sepulchra regionum,
coget omnes ante thronum.

Xa está “na rúa” o SeaMonkey 1.1.15

Xa se pode descargar unha nova versión estable (1.1.15) do SeaMonkey, o que antes se chamaba “Mozilla Application Suite”… algo así como se xuntamos Firefox, Thunderbird e algunha cousiña máis nun so programa.

Xa está “na rúa” o Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.21

Xa temos nova versión, nunha chea de linguas, do cliente de correo irmán do navegador Firefox. Para os sistemas operativos Windows, Mac e Linux: Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.21.

Intervención do Centre Delàs na xunta de accionistas do BBVA

Intervención dun membro da Campaña “BBVA sin armas” (SETEM, Observatori del Deute e Centre Delàs de Justícia i Pau) na “Junta General de Accionistas” do Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), que tivo lugar o día 13 de marzo do 2009 en Bilbao.

Buenos días señores y señoras accionistas del Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria.

Mi nombre es Pere Ortega y les hablo como miembro del Centro de Estudios por la Paz “J. M. Delàs” de Justicia y Paz de Barcelona. Y en representación de los accionistas (Compañía de Maria Marianistas de la Curia Provincial de Madrid, de la Congregación Misión Paulas de la Curia Provincial de Barcelona, de José Ricardo Alvárez, de Pilar Guerra, de Antonio Carmona y en el mío propio). Mi intervención es para mostrarles mi profundo desacuerdo con algunas prácticas del Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria.

Permítanme un corto preámbulo. En cualquier actividad humana, lo primero, es la moral, el resto aunque importante, es accesorio. Es decir, el lucro tiene que ceñirse a reglas de comportamiento ético que afectan a nuestra moral. Entonces ¿Cómo se puede entender que una parte de los beneficios que obtiene el BBVA provengan de actividades económicas éticamente reprobables? En concreto a la producción y la exportación de armamentos.

Con motivo de nuestra participación en la Asamblea de la Junta anterior, nos consta que la Dirección del BBVA ha corregido alguna de estas prácticas. Concretamente el BBVA ha dejado de financiar operaciones de la firma Raytheon de Estados Unidos, quinto mayor fabricante de armamento mundial, que entre otras armas de destrucción masiva, fabrica minas antipersona y bombas de racimo, ahora prohibidas en nuestro país desde julio de 2008, lo cual ha motivado que el BBVA excluya a esta firma en sus operaciones.

Lo cual es una buena noticia, pero insuficiente, pues el BBVA, sigue manteniendo su colaboración y líneas de crédito con Boeing (primera), EADS (sexta) y Thales (décima) respectivamente en el ranking mundial de fabricantes de armas.

Tomen nota de un buen ejemplo. El Gobierno de Noruega cuenta con un Comité que vigila el cumplimiento de un código ético de los Fondos de Inversiones de Públicos del estado. Esté Comité ha decidido excluir de los Fondos Públicos a siete empresas, entre las que se encuentran Boeing (Estados Unidos), EADS y Thales por su implicación como industrias de armamentos en la fabricación de armas nucleares. Ahí tienen un buen ejemplo a seguir.

Respecto a la industria de guerra en España, el BBVA es accionista de manera directa o indirecta en Indra, Ibérica del Espacio, Rymsa, Inmize, Hisdesat y CESCE.

- INDRA de quien posee el 1,56% de acciones, es una de las principales empresas del sector armamentístico español que se dedica a fabricar sistemas electrónicos de guerra para todo tipo de armamentos y desarrolla tecnologías de la información con aplicaciones militares. En concreto, Indra participa en diversos programas militares de la OTAN y europeos, entre otros, el avión de combate Eurofighter, el avión A400M de transporte militar, el helicóptero de combate Tigre, el carro de combate Leopardo, el misil Sparrow de EEUU, las Fragatas F-100, entre un largo listado de productos militares

- Inmize, de la cual posee el BBVA el 40% a través de Indra, es la sección española de MBDA, filial de EADS, el mayor fabricante mundial de misiles tierra-aire, misiles guiados, de defensa aérea y de aire-aire.

- Hisdesat, de la cual posee el BBVA el 7% de sus acciones también a través Indra, que se dedica a ofrecer servicios de comunicaciones e información gubernamental por satélite para el Ministerio de Defensa.

- Ibérica del Espacio (un 5,65% a través de Iberdrola), una industria aeronáutica y del espacio con aplicaciones militares, en concreto participa en los proyectos de satélites militares proyectados a través de Hisdesat para el Ministerio de Defensa español.

- Rymsa, propiedad de la Corporación IBV (100%), la cual está a su vez controlada en un 50% por el propio BBVA, tiene como principales clientes son el Ministerio de Defensa español, el Pentágono, Lockheed Martin. Rymsa produce sistemas de comunicación por radar y sonar para fragatas de guerra, submarinos y satélites militares.

- CESCE, en último lugar, cabe destacar que el BBVA posee actualmente el 14,3% de acciones de la Compañía Española de Seguros de Crédito a la Exportación. Entidad de carácter público que juega un papel clave asegurando a las industrias de armas españolas el cobro de todas las exportaciones de armas al exterior.

Como cosas más recientes, el BBVA apareció en el mes de abril de 2008 como financiador de un contrato de la española EADS-CASA por un importe de 554 millones de euros para la venta de 12 aviones de transporte militar C-295 y la modernización de 8 aviones P-3 con las Fuerzas Aéreas Brasileñas que contaba con la cobertura de riesgo de CESCE. Así como otra financiación (junto a otros bancos) en marzo de 2008 a EADS por un importe de 2.000 millones de euros para la venta de 14 aviones cisterna a las Fuerzas Aéreas del Reino Unido.

Ahora déjenme ir finalizando, añadiendo que esa perversa actividad dedicada a la industria y comercio de armas, teniendo en cuenta el bajo volumen que las exportaciones de armas supone en la balanza comercial española, podemos afirmar con seguridad que los beneficios del BBVA no se verían afectados debido a su escasa cuantía respecto al volumen total de negocios del BBVA, y por tanto absolutamente prescindible.

Aún es más, estamos seguros de que si el BBVA se desmarcara del resto de la banca tradicional y se convirtiera en un banco sin inversiones en armas de ningún tipo, vería aumentados sus beneficios, porque sus actuales y potenciales clientes valorarían positivamente una decisión de este tipo.

Pedimos, por tanto, al Consejo de Administración del BBVA, un compromiso explícito para que el lucro proveniente de negocios que promueven la violencia, las guerras y la pobreza extrema sea evitado y que se elimine toda financiación a industrias, ventas y exportaciones de armas, así como se desprendan de las acciones en empresas militares.

Muchas gracias por escucharme.

Pere Ortega Grasa
Centre d’Estudis per la Pau “J. M. Delàs” (Justícia i Pau)
Rivadeneyra, 6
Barcelona