State officials sit in
marble halls and decide a human being must die, this is justified by
adhering to some man made code, they call it justice. In ancient
times they took a human life to appease their chosen God, and we call
it human sacrifice, what's the difference? The sad and abhorrent
aspect of this cruel, brutal and barbaric act is that it is advocated
and carried out by human beings, people with names and addresses,
families and friends, and they walk among us without any display of
blood on their hands and a justification that they are only doing
their duty. To advocate the killing of a human being in a cold
blooded frame of so called rationalism is nothing more or less than
savage barbarism.
The following is an appeal from Amnesty
International.
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| Amnesty International UK | |||||
| Warren Hill is scheduled to be executed on Monday 15th July. Please act now. |
The
US State of Georgia is set to put Warren to death by lethal injection
on Monday at 7pm (midnight UK time), despite the fact seven doctors have
unanimously agreed that he is intellectually disabled - so executing him would be unconstitutional.
What’s
more, the family of the man he was convicted of murdering and several
jurors at his trial have said they don’t want him to be executed. We
desperately need your support to ensure the US Supreme Court intervenes
to stop this injustice.
If Warren’s execution
goes ahead, the Georgia authorities would be ignoring the wishes of
the victim, Joseph Handspike’s, family. They would be ignoring
several jurors at his 1991 trial who said they would have sentenced
Warren to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole had it
been an option, which it was not. They would be going against the
medical opinion of seven doctors who examined Warren and unanimously
agreed that he has intellectual disabilities.
And they would be going against the US Constitution.
In 2002, the US Supreme Court ruled that executing people with
intellectual disabilities was a cruel and unusual punishment and
therefore banned under the 8th amendment.
It’s down to the individual state to prove who
is intellectually disabled, and Georgia requires proof ‘beyond
reasonable doubt’, higher than any other US state. Warren was not
found to meet this standard, but since then three doctors who gave
evidence have changed their minds, and are now among the seven who
believe he is intellectually disabled. Warren has already come within
hours of death at the hands of the state. Eighteen people have been
executed in the US so far this year. Please take action today to
ensure that he is not the nineteenth.
The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman
and degrading punishment. One day we’ll get the whole world to
abolish it, but until then we need your support to fight it, one
injustice at a time.
Thank you for your continued support. Please forward this email on -
we need as many people as possible to speak out today.
Kim
Manning-Cooper,
Death Penalty Campaigner
Death Penalty Campaigner
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