Do we deserve to kill? Capital punishment, mass incarceration and the threat of fear and anger to the justice system in the USA

Der farbige Anwalt Bryan Stevenson vertritt in den USA mit seiner EQUAL RIGHTS INITIATIVE zum Tode Verurteilte und Menschen, die zu lebenslangen Haftstrafen verurteilt wurden. Viele der Verurteilten sind arm und/oder schwarz. Viele haben kein angemessenes Gerichtsverfahren bekommen, das ihnen die Chance gab, fair be- und angemessen verurteilt zu werden. Die USA und ihr Justizsystem -so Stevenson in seinem gefeierten Buch JUST MERCY - , sind von Angst und Wut korrumpiert. Mit ihrem Ssytem massiver Strafen treffen sie vor allem die verletzlichsten Mitglieder ihrer Gesellschaft - Arme, Menschen mit Behinderungen, Kinder, Schwarze.

"Mass Incarceration", "Mass Imprisonment" - Masseninhaftierung ist laut Stevenson nicht nur die Antwort auf Herausforderungen, die anders angegangen werden müssten: Armut, Drogenabhängigkeit, Vernachlässigung, psychische Erkrankung, u.v.m. Es ist unter anderem auch eine Industrie, an der viele verdienen. Gefängnisse sind große Arbeitgeber. Eine Zuliefererindustrie verdient an der Essensversorgung und Bekleidung der Häftlinge und Wachen. Die Häftlinge sind billige Arbeitskräfte, rund um die Gefängnisse entstehen kleine Städte, in denen nicht nur die Angestellten wohnen, sondern auch die Angehörigen bei ihren Besuchen Hotelzimmer nehmen und konsumieren.

Mit ihrer Lobby-Arbeit und Spenden an Politiker und gewählte Richter und Sherriffs sorgen die Interessenvertreter dieser Inhaftierungs-Industrie, dass das Prinzip harter Bestrafung - und die Fiktion ihrer Notwendigkeit wie Wirksamkeit - aufrechterhalten wird.

Die USA haben heute weltweit die meisten Menschen in Haft. Waren es in den frühen 1970er Jahren noch 300.000 Inhaftierte füllen heute atemberaubende 2,3 Millionen Menschen die Gefängnisse. Gut 6 Millionen Menschen sind derzeit auf Bewährung. Statistisch gesehen wird 1 von 15 in den USA geborenen Menschen ins Gefängnis gehen. Bei farbigen Männern liegt die statistische Wahrscheinlichkeit dramatisch höher: Jeder dritte in diesem Jahrhundert geborene Farbige wird inhaftiert werden. Mehr als 50% der Inhaftierten haben eine diagnostizierte psychische Erkrankung, bekommen allerdings keine angemessene Behandlung - die Gefängnisse reagieren auf das nicht dem Protokoll entsprechende Verhalten mit außergewhnlichen Strafmaßanahmen, wie Einzelhaft.

Auch sind die USA, so Stevenson, das einzige Land der Welt, das Kinder nach Erwachsenenstrafrecht verurteilt und sie auch für andere Straftaten als Mord zu lebenslangen Haftstrafen ohne Bewährung verurteilt. 2.500 Menschen, die im Alter von 13 bis 16 Jahren unterschiedlichste Taten begangen haben, sind in den USA dazu verurteilt, wie Stevenson dies drastisch und deutlich nennt, im Gefängnis zu sterben für etwas, das sie als Kinder getan haben. Mittlerweile hat Bryan Stevenson vor dem obersten Gericht erfolgreich erstritten, dass diese Praxis als nicht verfassungsgemäß, unmenschlich und unangemessen verurteilt und untersagt wurde. Damit werden aber nicht automatisch die im Alter zwischen 13 und 18 Verurteilten freigelassen. Ohne Anwälte, die in ihren Fällen entsprechende Anträge stellen und ihre Sache vertreten, ändert sich an ihrer Situationen nichts. Und solange sie arm sind und keine Lobby haben, ihre Familien nicht die finanziellen und sozialen Mittel haben, ihnen zu helfen, werden sie weiter in Gefängnissen bleiben, die dazu geeignet sind, sie weiter zu verletzen und lebenslang zu zeichnen.

"Walter made me understand why we have to reform a system of criminal justice that continues to treat people better if they are rich and guilty than if they are poor and innocent. A legal system that denies the poor the legal help they need, that makes wealth and status more important than culpability, must be changed. Walter's case taught me that fear and anger are a threat to justice. THey can infect a community a state or a nation and make us blind, irrational and dangerous. I reflected on how mass imprisonment had littered the national landscapewith carceral monuments of reckless and excessive punishment and ravaged communities with our hopeless willingness to condemn and discard the most vulnerable among us. (...) the death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment in this country is: Do we deserve to kill?"

Just Mercy: Trina Garnett

Die USA sind das einzige Land der Welt, in dem auch Kinder, auch 13jährige, nach dem Erwachsenenstrafrecht verurteilt und in Gefängnissen für Erwachsene untergebracht werden.

In seinem Buch JUST MERCY schildert der afro-amerikanische Rechtsanwalt Bryan Stevenson viele Beispiele von Menschen, die für eine Tat, die sie im Alter zwischen 13 und 15 begingen, mit lebenslanger Haft ohne die Möglichkeit auf Bewährung verurteilt wurden. Stevenson beschreibt die Strafe so drastisch, wie sie ist: Diese Kinder wurden verurteilt, im Gefängnis zu sterben. Sehr viele dieser Kinder und Jugendlichen sind im Gefängnis zusätzlichen Gefahren ausgesetzt, werden misshandelt oder sexuell missbraucht.



Der Umgang mit straffälligen Jugendlichen ist nur eine der problematischen Seiten des US-Justizsystems, dessen Ungerechtigkeit, Rassismus, Fehlerhaftigkeit (Einer von neun zum Tode Verurteilten wird wegen des Nachweises seiner Unschuld wieder freigelassen - Stevenson weist in einem Vortrag darauf hin, dass es erstaunlich sei, dass wir diese Fehlerrate im Justizsystem in Bezug auf die Todesstrafe hinnehmen. Übertragen auf den Flugverkehr: Niemand würde ein Flugzeug besteigen, wenn jedes 9. abstürzen würde. Wenn es um das Leben von Verurteilten geht, ist die Gesellschaft indes bereit, diese Fehlerquote zu tolerieren.) und Unmenschlichkeit Stevenson durch die anschauliche Darstellung vieler Beispiele greifbar macht. Beispiele, wie das von Trina Garnett:

"Trina Garnett was the youngest of twelve children living in the poorest section of Chester, Pennsylvania, a financially distressed municipality outside of Philadelphia. The extraordinarily high rates of poverty, crime, and unemployment in Chester intersected with the worst-ranked public school system among Pennsylvania’s 501 districts. Close to 46 percent of the city’s children were living below the federal poverty level. Trina’s father, Walter Garnett, was a former boxer whose failed career had turned him into a violent, abusive alcoholic well known to local police for throwing a punch with little provocation.

Trina’s mother, Edith Garnett, was sickly after bearing so many children, some of whom were conceived during rapes by her husband. The older and sicker Edith became, the more she found herself a target of Walter’s rage. He would regularly punch, kick, and verbally abuse her in front of the children. Walter would often go to extremes, stripping Edith naked and beating her until she writhed on the floor in pain while her children looked on fearfully. When she lost consciousness during the beatings, Walter would shove a stick down her throat to revive her for more abuse. Nothing was safe in the Garnett home. Trina once watched her father strangle her pet dog into silence because it wouldn’t stop barking. He beat the animal to death with a hammer and threw its limp body out a window.

Trina had twin sisters, Lynn and Lynda, who were a year older than her. They taught her to play “invisible” when she was a small child to shield her from their father when he was drunk and prowling their apartment with his belt, stripping the children naked, and beating them randomly. Trina was taught to hide under the bed or in a closet and remain as quiet as possible.

Trina showed signs of intellectual disabilities and other troubles at a young age. When she was a toddler, she became seriously ill after ingesting lighter fluid when she was left unattended. At the age of five, she accidently set herself on fire, resulting in severe burns over her chest, stomach, and back. She spent weeks in a hospital enduring painful skin grafts that left her terribly scarred. 
Edith died when Trina was just nine. Trina’s older sisters tried to take care of her, but when Walter began sexually abusing them, they fled. After the older siblings left home, Walter’s abuse focused on Trina, Lynn, and Lynda. The girls ran away from home and began roaming the streets of Chester. Trina and her sisters would eat out of garbage cans; sometimes they would not eat for days. They slept in parks and public bathrooms. The girls stayed with their older sister Edy until Edy’s husband began sexually abusing them. Their older siblings and aunts would sometimes provide temporary shelter, but the living situation would get disrupted by violence or death, and so Trina would find herself wandering the streets again.

Her mother’s death, the abuse, and the desperate circumstances all exacerbated Trina’s emotional and mental health problems. She would sometimes become so distraught and ill that her sisters would have to find a relative to take her to the hospital. But she was penniless and was never allowed to stay long enough to become stable or recover.

Late at night in August 1976, fourteen-year-old Trina and her friend, sixteen-year-old Francis Newsome, climbed through the window of a row house in Chester. The girls wanted to talk to the boys who lived there. The mother of these boys had forbidden her children from playing with Trina, but Trina wanted to see them. Once she’d climbed into the house, Trina lit matches to find her way to the boys’ room. The house caught fire. It spread quickly, and two boys who were sleeping in the home died from smoke asphyxiation. Their mother accused Trina of starting the fire intentionally, but Trina and her friend insisted that it was an accident.

Trina was traumatized by the boys’ deaths and could barely speak when the police arrested her. She was so nonfunctional and listless that her appointed lawyer thought she was incompetent to stand trial. Defendants who are deemed incompetent can’t be tried in adversarial criminal proceedings — meaning that the State can’t prosecute them unless they become well enough to defend themselves. Criminally accused people facing trial are entitled to treatment and services.

But Trina’s lawyer failed to file the appropriate motions or present evidence to support an incompetency determination for Trina. The lawyer, who was subsequently disbarred and jailed for unrelated criminal misconduct, also never challenged the State’s decision to try Trina as an adult. As a result, Trina was forced to stand trial for second-degree murder in an adult courthouse. At trial, Francis Newsome testified against Trina in exchange for the charges against her being dropped. Trina was convicted of second-degree murder, and the trial moved to the sentencing phase.

Delaware County Circuit Judge Howard Reed found that Trina had no intent to kill. But under Pennsylvania law, the judge could not take the absence of intent into account during sentencing. He could not consider Trina’s age, mental illness, poverty, the abuse she had suffered, or the tragic circumstances surrounding the fire. Pennsylvania sentencing law was inflexible: For those convicted of second-degree murder, mandatory life imprisonment without the possibility of parole was the only sentence.

Judge Reed expressed serious misgivings about the sentence he was forced to impose. “This is the saddest case I’ve ever seen,” he wrote. For a tragic crime committed at fourteen, Trina was condemned to die in prison.

After sentencing, Trina was immediately shipped off to an adult prison for women. Now sixteen, Trina walked through the gates of the State Correctional Institution at Muncy, an adult prison for women, terrified, still suffering from trauma and mental illness, and intensely vulnerable — with the knowledge that she would never leave.

Prison spared Trina the uncertainty of homelessness but presented new dangers and challenges. Not long after she arrived at Muncy, a male correctional officer pulled her into a secluded area and raped her. The crime was discovered when Trina became pregnant. As is often the case, the correctional officer was fired but not criminally prosecuted. Trina remained imprisoned and gave birth to a son. Like hundreds of women who give birth while in prison, Trina was completely unprepared for the stress of childbirth. She delivered her baby while handcuffed to a bed. It wasn’t until 2008 that most states abandoned the practice of shackling or handcuffing incarcerated women during delivery.

Trina’s baby boy was taken away from her and placed in foster care. After this series of events — the fire, the imprisonment, the rape, the traumatic birth, and then the seizure of her son — Trina’s mental health deteriorated further. Over the years, she became less functional and more mentally disabled. Her body began to spasm and quiver uncontrollably, until she required a cane and then a wheelchair.
By the time she had turned thirty, prison doctors diagnosed her with multiple sclerosis, intellectual disability, and mental illness related to trauma. Trina had filed a civil suit against the officer who raped her, and the jury awarded her a judgment of $62,000. The guard appealed, and the Court reversed the verdict because the correctional officer had not been permitted to tell the jury that Trina was in prison for murder. Consequently, Trina never received any financial aid or services from the state to compensate her for being violently raped by one of its “correctional” officers.

In 2014, Trina turned fifty-two. She has been in prison for thirty-eight years. She is one of nearly five hundred people in Pennsylvania who have been condemned to mandatory life imprisonment without parole for crimes they were accused of committing when they were between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. It is the largest population of child offenders condemned to die in prison in any single jurisdiction in the world." (JUST MERCY, S. 148ff.)

Just Mercy - Bryan Stevensons Plädoyer für eine gerechte Justiz und eine menschliche Gesellschaft

Auszug aus dem Buch "Just Mercy" (deutscher Titel: Ohne Gnade) von Bryan Stevenson (Hier Hinweise auf die Buchrezension). Als Anwalt arbeitet er in den USA pro-bono für zum Tode Verurteilte, die sich keinen Anwalt leisten können. Anhand konkreter Fälle illustriert sein Bestseller die vielen bedrückenden Mängel und Ungerechtigkeiten des US-amerikanischen Justizsystems, die er auf die Formel bringt: In den USA behandelt Dich die Justiz gerechter, wenn Du reich und schuldig bist, als wenn Du arm und unschuldig bist.

Stevenson geht es dabei nicht darum, in schrillem Ton "das System" anzuprangern, sondern zu verdeutlichen, dass die Gesellschaft, die sich ein solches Justizsystem gibt, letztlich sich selbst deformiert, verletzt und unmenschlich macht

Stevenson zeigt die Unmenschlichkeit der Gesetze und Regeln, die auf Erbarmungslosigkeit und Rache gründen, mit denen etwa Kinder nach Erwachsenenstrafrecht verurteilt und Menschen mit geistiger Behinderung hingerichtet werden können. Es wird klar, dass es aufgrund der Privatisierung der Gefängnisse ein wirtschaftliches Interesse an Ausdehnung (und daher auf besonders "harte" Gesetze und Strafen) anstatt auf Resozialisierung gibt. Und es wird deutlich, wie sehr der Atem des unaufgearbeiteten und immer noch agilen Rassismus das Rechtssystem durchzieht.

Ein Beispiel ist die Geschichte von Ian Manuel.

"In 1990, Ian Manuel and two older boys attempted to rob a couple who were out for dinner in Tampa, Florida. Ian was 13 years old. When Debbie Baigre resisted, Ian shot her with a handgun given to him by the older boys. The bullet went through Baigre’s cheek, shattering several teeth and severely damaging her jaw. All three boys were charged with armed robbery and attempted homicide.

Ian’s appointed lawyer encouraged him to plead guilty, assuring him that he would be sentenced to 15 years in prison. The judge accepted Ian’s plea and sentenced him to life with no parole. Even though he was 13, the judge condemned Ian for living on the streets, for not having good parental supervision, and for his multiple prior arrests for shoplifting and property crimes. Ian was sent to an adult prison – the Apalachee Correctional Institution, one of the toughest prisons in Florida. The staff could not find any uniforms that would fit a boy Ian’s size so they cut six inches from the bottom of their smallest pants. Juveniles housed in adult prisons are five times more likely to be the victims of sexual assault, so the staff at Apalachee put Ian, who was small for his age, in solitary confinement.

Solitary confinement at Apalachee means living in a concrete box the size of a walk-in closet. You get your meals through a slot, you do not see other inmates, you never touch another human being. If you “act out”, you are forced to sleep on the concrete floor of your cell without a mattress. If you shout or scream, your time in solitary is extended; if you hurt yourself, your time in solitary is extended.
In solitary Ian became a self-described “cutter”; he would take anything sharp on his food tray to cut his arms or wrists to watch himself bleed. His mental health unravelled, and he attempted suicide several times. Each time he hurt himself his time in solitary was extended.

Ian spent 18 years in uninterrupted solitary confinement.

Once a month Ian was allowed to make a phone call. Soon after he arrived in prison, on Christmas Eve 1992, he used his call to reach out to Debbie Baigre, the woman he shot. When she answered the phone, Ian spilled out an emotional apology, expressing deep regret and remorse. Ms Baigre was stunned to hear from the boy who shot her but was moved by his call. She had physically recovered from the shooting (...) and that first surprising phone call led to a regular correspondence.

Ian had been neglected by his family before the crime took place. He'd been left to wander the streets with little parental or family support. In solitary he met few prisoners or correctional staff. As he sank deeper into despair, Debbiee Baigre became one of the few people in Ian's life who ecouraged him to remain strong.

After communicating with Ian for several years, Baigre wrote the court and told the judge who sentenced Ian of her conviction that this sentence was too harsh and that his conditions of confinement were inhumane. She tried to talk to prison officials and gave interviews to the press to draw attention to Ian's plight. "No one knows more than I do how destrucitve and reckless Ians' crime was, " she told a reporter. "When this crime was committed, he was a child, a thirteen-year-old boy with a lot of problems, no supervision and no help available. We are not children."

The courts ignored Debiie Baigres calls for a reduced sentence.
By 2010 Florida alone had sentenced more than 100 children to life imprisonment without parole for non-homicide offences, several of whom were 13 at the time of their crime. All of the youngest children were black or Latino. Florida had the largest population in the world of children condemned to die in prison for non-homicide."