Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

ARKANSAS:  Not OK to 'liquidate' people, death penalty foe tells forum Panelists say public, court views moving against executions

The chairman of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty on Wednesday encouraged Arkansans to help end what he called the "nightmare" of capital punishment.

 "We have to get beyond this ideology that it is OK to liquidate people, because it isn't," said Rick Halperin, who spoke at "Death Penalty 2002: A Forum On Contemporary Issues" at the Main Library in Little Rock. "The process of the abolition of the death penalty has already begun. It's not a matter of if the death penalty will be abolished. It's a matter of when."

 Hosted by the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, the forum drew about 100 lawyers, students, legislators and others who listened to panelists discuss topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to an Arkansas law that allows youths who commit murder to be sentenced to death.

 More than 3,700 inmates are on death row nationwide, including 42 in Arkansas. Since the Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that states could execute people, Texas has led the nation with 281, including 25 this year. Arkansas has executed 24, the last occurring in May 2001.

 Halperin and others pointed to two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions as evidence that attitudes about the death penalty, which exists in 38 states, are changing in both the federal judiciary and the nation. In one, the Supreme Court ruled that juries, not judges, must make the decision to impose the death penalty. In the other ruling, the court ruled that executing mentally retarded murderers is unconstitutional. Both decisions were handed down in June and neither directly affects those sentenced to death in Arkansas, legal experts here have said. Arkansas law has prohibited the execution of mentally ill persons since 1993.

 Though opponents of the death penalty saw both decisions as victories, the court did not stand together in either.

 In Atkins v. Virginia, the case regarding the mentally ill, Justice Antonin Scalia accused other members of the court of basing their decision on the "embarrassingly feeble" evidence of a national consensus. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas dissented along with Scalia.

 "Seldom has an opinion of this Court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members," Scalia wrote.

 While Arkansas already banned the execution of mentally retarded persons, Rita Sklar, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas, believes Arkansas legislators should examine that ban to make sure the statute's applications comply with the language of the Supreme Court decision. The law, Arkansas Code 5-4-618, says any defendant with an IQ of 65 or below is presumed mentally retarded.

 "The problem is in defining mental retardation and in whether the Arkansas statute adequately does that," Sklar said. "It may turn out that our language is best, but that's something we're going to examine, and that's something states across the nation are examining."