Near the end of September, coverage of the death penalty by the media expanded as the scheduled dates of multiple executions approached. Activists in states where these executions were scheduled did the best that they could to rally opposition, but the executions went forward, nonetheless. While supporting and promoting the efforts of abolitionists in other states, we at FADP were also studying the events of the last month carefully, following our instincts that there would be something to learn here.
The campaign to stay the execution of Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams in Missouri stood out the most in September. It received an outstanding amount of attention. Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty (MADP) was joined by other organizations, notably including The Innocence Project, which added a significant amount of visibility to the campaign. From a certain perspective, there was reason to be optimistic that we would see public pressure overcome the state’s will to kill.
Many factors aligned to support this. A case for Mr. Williams’ innocence was made on his behalf. The prosecutor which had originally charged him supported a stay of execution, as did the family of the individual he was charged with murdering. MADP set up a brilliant campaign page and was relentless in their advocacy. The case was reported on by major national media outlets, from NPR to The New York Times and many more. The petitions asking to stop Mr. Williams’ execution collected over one million signatures.
Days before the execution, I participated in a speaking event at Barry University in Miami Shores. While interacting with the audience, a young woman excitedly exclaimed her horror at the situation, expertly explaining key points to her fellow students. I was impressed! She added that she doesn’t “watch news” and learned about this on TikTok. Sure enough, advocates had created effective content on TikTok to inform audiences on the platform and rally support.
The campaign was brilliant. It surpassed anything I had seen since I joined FADP as a death penalty abolitionist. I quickly moved to identify examples I could use to teach and demonstrate what certain strategies and tactics can look like. Still, there were some big questions with big implications waiting to be answered as I held my breath in anticipation.
When you see the word “petitions” you may imagine this, but we do them online now. 😃
Petitions & Power
As I have pieced together my perspectives over the last ten months with FADP, I have collected quite a few questions about power. Who really has it, when it comes to the death penalty? How does it work? What is that power responsive to? These questions can be partially answered in a straightforward way. State governors may often hold a large amount of authority, and laws vary across states that dictate what rights death row inmates have, for example. But answers like this do not satisfy questions about power well enough to support and inform effective strategy. Power can be analyzed on other levels, and power can work in ways that are less obvious.
I had observed that there is a common body of tactics used by death penalty abolitionists across the country, and that petitions play a prominent role in the common strategy. In previous experiences as an organizer and activist, I seldom interacted with petitions, so I was curious to observe and understand the role of petitions in this movement against the death penalty.
I was skeptical that power—by which I mean people who hold power to command our systems of capital punishment and the power that they collectively have access to—would be responsive to petitions. For this to be true, I reasoned that the power behind the death penalty would need to be generally responsive to public opinion in the first place, and then be responsive to public opinion on the death penalty in particular. There is much more to say about how petitions and power interact, but in a nutshell I am suggesting that the system of power administering the death penalty is not very responsive to public opinion in the way that the power behind some other issues may be.
What It Takes to Make a Dent
Exploring the use of petitions led me to suppose that the system of power behind the death penalty might not be very responsive to public opinion, in general. Much control over the issue lies within the byzantine world of our legal system and not squarely in the hands of popularly-recognized elected officials. The issue is largely handled by state government. Many other more popular criminal justice issues can often be impacted via local government. Retentionists benefit from how hidden away the issue can be from the public.
When advocacy for Mr. Williams blew the lid off and reached its great heights, I found myself focusing on my questions about power. If it’s true that the parties in control of the death penalty enjoy some insulation from public opinion, and thousands of people have not been enough to stop executions, what in the world would happen when those parties face over a million?
We saw what came to pass. The state went ahead with the execution, anyway, to the shock and horror of many people. The force of the campaign for Mr. Williams did not succeed in stopping his execution.
It did make a dent, though, that I had not seen in my experiences up to that point. A wave of articles, op-eds, and comments emerged after the execution, condemning the state and stimulating additional mainstream recognition of the death penalty. Governor Mike Parson of Missouri released a final statement on the matter after the execution, reiterating the state’s position. That such a statement was released after the fact, more or less restating what seems to be customarily released before each execution in Missouri (given that the Governor’s Office has released a statement before each execution this year) can be read as an indication that they were feeling the pressure, to say the least.
It was striking that an advocacy effort which succeeded in reaching a scale exponentially larger than that reached by others this year seems to have barely made the state flinch. It was an impressive sight, to see how all of that effort rallying attention from across the globe on a case with supported innocence claims did not defeat the state’s resolve to move forward on the execution. On the other hand, the events played out in a way that seemed to confirm my developing theories about power and the death penalty.
“We’re just caught up in the churn, is all.” Amos Burton as portrayed by Wes Chatham.
What Does That Mean for Us?
I can’t helpbut to think to myself that we are “caught in the churn.” It’s an idea that comes from Amos Burton, a fictional character in the science fiction series, The Expanse. I enjoyed the television series, but did not read the novels. Because I may not be able to do the concept justice, I will rely on the wisdom of this internet stranger on Reddit to give a clear description of the churn:
“The Churn is some event that changes the rule for the way you live without giving you a choice to participate. Old norms are uplifted, old habits are forcibly broken, and your current way of life no longer can sustain itself.”
For Amos, the churn represented his life experience of hard choices, in which his own survival was not guaranteed. Not only that, but it also represented a life where survival depended on ability to adapt. The only way to survive the churn is to change. I related to the concept, which seemed to echo how I would describe much of how I have lived my own life. Perhaps it is an apt description of any dimensions of our lives where we experience relative powerlessness. The churn is something that Amos may have experienced, having had a rough, lower-class upbringing in a dystopian, future Baltimore. It describes the experience at the bottom of a power hierarchy, but certainly not at the top, where people are making choices that impact everyone else.
Why do I think of the churn, now? Because if even the amount of popular power amassed by the Khaliifah campaign was not enough to deter the state from executing him, then that leaves all of us—in retentionist and actively executing states—caught in the churn.
When caught in the churn, adaptability is survival. Creativity is key. Grit, rigor, and persistence is the way out. For death penalty abolitionists, and for any organizers that face a dramatic power imbalance in their issue, that means being prepared to test assumptions at every opportunity. From studying the Khaliifah campaign, we in Florida and other states can learn about the strengths and shortcomings of our common set of tactics. We need to learn what we can, apply our insights, and continue to reiterate what we are doing on an ongoing basis.
Within FADP, some insights have certainly been reinforced by this campaign and other current events: we should aspire to mobilize the public with as much success as our friends in Missouri had, and we should expect that public pressure alone is unlikely to be enough on its own to deter the state from executing. Continuing to assess what the parties with power over the death penalty are sensitive to and developing strategies that test possible avenues is important. We have reconfirmed our commitment to strengthening FADP with evidence-based, data-driven strategy. There continues to be a lot of work for us to do as we upgrade FADP to do the work that needs to be done. Until next month, we’ll keep an eye on the churn for you.