September, 14 2010, 04:31pm EDT
Amnesty International Urges Governor to Commute Teresa Lewis Execution
Amnesty International
USA (AIUSA) today urged Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell to commute the
death sentence of Teresa Lewis. If Lewis, a mentally challenged woman
who was convicted of plotting the murders of her husband and stepson, is
executed on September 23, she would be the first woman killed in Virginia's
death chambers since 1912.
WASHINGTON
Amnesty International
USA (AIUSA) today urged Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell to commute the
death sentence of Teresa Lewis. If Lewis, a mentally challenged woman
who was convicted of plotting the murders of her husband and stepson, is
executed on September 23, she would be the first woman killed in Virginia's
death chambers since 1912.
"Proceeding with this execution would come
dangerously close to violating the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits capital
punishment for those with 'mental retardation' -- a precedent established
thanks to
Atkins v. Virginia," wrote AIUSA Executive Director Larry
Cox in a letter sent to the governor. It is one of hundreds that
Amnesty International members worldwide have flooded the governor's office
within recent weeks.
Lewis was sentenced to death while the two
actual murderers, Matthew Shallenberger and Rodney Fuller, received life
sentences. Psychological assessments of Lewis and an admission by
Shallenberger that he was the actual mastermind behind the murders cast
doubt on the prosecution's assertion that Lewis orchestrated the crimes.
Though prosecutors claimed that Lewis "lured" Shallenberger and
Fuller into helping her murder Julian and Charles Lewis, Fuller himself
stated that "Ms. Lewis would do just about anything Shallenberger asked
her to do," and that "Shallenberger was definitely the one in charge
of things, not Ms. Lewis."
A professor of psychology at Duke University
concluded that "when multiple sources of evidence are taken into account,
it is very clear that Teresa possessed neither the verbal intelligence
nor the independent initiative to frame and mastermind a plan to murder
the victims." Although Lewis tested with an IQ of 72, the Duke professor
stated that "the level of intellectual functioning of one with a 72 IQ
would not be discernibly distinctive from one with a 69 IQ. Certainly,
it would not be professionally reasonable to base a life or death decision
on three IQ points." Psychologists look for signs of intellectual
disability when an IQ score is below 70.
"This case highlights the arbitrary nature
of capital punishment in our nation," said Laura Moye, director of AIUSA's
Death Penalty Abolition Campaign. "When the triggermen get life
and a woman who seems incapable of plotting the crime gets death, something
is clearly askew. Given the capriciousness of the death penalty overall,
combined with issues such as witness misidentification and shabby lawyering,
it is clear that the system can never be truly just. The only real
remedy is striking this heinous punishment from the books nationwide."
The United States has carried out 1,224 executions
- 1213 men (99 percent) and 11 women - since resuming judicial killing
in 1977. Virginia accounts for 107 of these executions. The last woman
put to death in Virginia was Virginia Christian, who was killed in the
state's electric chair on August 11, 1912, for a murder committed when
she was 17 years old. The last woman put to
death in the United States was Frances Newton
in Texas in September 2005. There have been 36 executions in the United
States this year, two of them in Virginia.
Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning
grassroots activist organization with more than 2.8 million supporters,
activists and volunteers who campaign for universal human rights from more
than 150 countries. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates
and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice,
freedom, truth and dignity are denied.
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
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Amid Spying Fight, House Passes Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act
"As FANFSA and the 702 reauthorization move to the Senate, lawmakers in that chamber need to take a stand for the rights of people in the United States," said one advocate.
Apr 17, 2024
While applauding the U.S. House of Representatives' bipartisan passage of a bill to ensure that "law enforcement and intelligence agencies can't do an end-run around the Constitution by buying information from data brokers" on Wednesday, privacy advocates highlighted that Congress is trying to extend and expand a long-abused government spying program.
The House voted 219-199 for Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act (FANFSA), which won support from 96 Democrats and 123 Republicans, including the lead sponsor, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). Named for the constitutional amendment that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, H.R. 4639 would close what campaigners call the data broker loophole.
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Wednesday's vote followed the House sending the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act to the Senate. H.R. 7888 would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows for warrantless spying on noncitizens abroad but also sweeps up Americans' data.
The House notably included an amendment forcing a wide range of individuals and businesses to cooperate with government spying operations but rejected an amendment that would have added a warrant requirement to the bill, which the Senate could vote on as soon as Thursday.
Noting those decisions on the FISA reauthorization legislation, Ruddock stressed that "today's vote is a victory but follows a recent loss and ongoing threat as that Section 702 bill moves to the Senate this week too."
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Jeramie Scott, senior counsel and director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Project on Surveillance Oversight, also praised the House's FANFSA passage on Wednesday.
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Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at ACLU, similarly said Wednesday that "the bipartisan passage of this bill is a flashing warning sign to the government that if it wants our data, it must get a warrant."
Hamadanchy added that "we hope this vote puts a fire under the Senate to protect their constituents and rein in the government's warrantless surveillance of Americans, once and for all."
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As the United Nations Security Council prepares to vote Thursday on Palestine's bid to become a full U.N. member, the Biden administration—which claims to support Palestinian statehood—is lobbying UNSC nations in an effort to wrangle enough "no" votes so that the United States can avoid resorting to a veto.
Leaked cables obtained by The Intercept show U.S. pressure on Security Council members including Malta—which currently presides over the body—and Ecuador.
While claiming that President Joe Biden backs "Palestinian aspirations for statehood," one of the cables asserts that "it remains the U.S. view that the most expeditious path toward a political horizon for the Palestinian people is in the context of a normalization agreement between Israel and its neighbors."
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The U.S. argument essentially is that the U.N. should not create an independent Palestinian state by fiat—even though that's precisely how the world body voted in 1947 to establish the modern state of Israel.
The renewed push for Palestine's U.N. membership comes as Israel wages a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority, which hasn't controlled Gaza for nearly two decades, rejected the Biden administration's requests to hold off on seeking full membership.
"We wanted the U.S. to provide a substantive alternative to U.N. recognition. They didn't," one unnamed Palestinian official toldAxios on Wednesday. "We believe full membership in the U.N. for Palestine is way overdue. We have waited more than 12 years since our initial request."
As The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Boguslaw noted:
Since 2011, the U.N. Security Council has rejected the Palestinian Authority's request for full member status. On April 2, the Palestinian Observer Mission to the U.N. requested that the council once again take up consideration of its membership application. According to the first State Department cable, U.N. meetings since the beginning of April suggest that Algeria, China, Guyana, Mozambique, Russia, Slovenia, Sierra Leone, and Malta support granting Palestine full membership to the U.N. It also says that France, Japan, and Korea are undecided, while the United Kingdom will likely abstain from a vote.
Along with the United States, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom are permanent members of the UNSC, so they also have veto power.
Ahead of Thursday's planned vote, Spain has been doing its own lobbying in Europe to build greater support for Palestinian statehood. At a joint Tuesday press conference with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob said the question is "when, not if, but when is the best moment to recognize Palestine."
Belgium—which is seeking economic sanctions against Israel in response to its genocidal war on Gaza—is expected to join Spain's push for Palestinian statehood after the country's European Union presidency expires in June.
Currently, 139 of the U.N.'s 193 member states recognize Palestine as an independent state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who has also claimed to support a so-called "two-state solution"—has alternately boasted about thwarting Palestinian statehood.
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PI calls it an "illicit network undermining democracy around the world."
"Today is a mask-off moment for the Reactionary International and the parties, politicians, judges, journalists, foundations, think tanks, tech platforms, NGOs, activists, financiers, and entrepreneurs that comprise it," PI said.
"After a year of preparation, we finally open the doors to our new research consortium, exposing the global network of reactionary forces that corrode our democracies, destroy our planet, and drive us closer to world war," the group added.
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Yanis Varoufakis, a PI member and secretary-general of the left-wing Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, called the database "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."
PI invites the public to contribute to the database.
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