Georgetown’s Campaign to End the Death Penalty had originally planned for current death row inmate Kenny Collins to phone Georgetown in order for students to ask questions about his life and experiences on death row, as part of Death Penalty Awareness Week. Collins, however, was placed under lockdown and was therefore unable to use his phone privileges.

Instead of an interactive question-and-answer format, the CEDP offered several speeches, first by CEDP Chair Ginny Simmons (COL ’03) and then Shujaa Grahm, an exonerated death-row prisoner who has since changed his name. Organizers draped the ICC auditorium with posters describing the methods of execution, the minimum age for execution by state and the countries that use capital punishment.

Simmons first presented several statistics as reasons to oppose the death penalty. According to a Washington Peace Center study, “Nationally, 90 percent of those on death row could not afford to hire their own defense attorney and thus were forced to rely upon inexperienced, underpaid court-appointed attorneys,” Simmons said. In addition, a Columbia University survey revealed that over one-third of death sentences are reversed because of inadequate counsel.

Simmons said capital punishment does not work to deter other criminals from committing similar crimes. “The New York Times found that during the past 20 years, homicide rates in states with the death penalty have been 48 percent to 101 percent higher than in states without it,” Simmons said.

As a special part of the presentation, Grahm recounted the events of his life starting from his oppressively segregated childhood in Louisiana to the rebellion against such oppression he participated in on the streets of Los Angeles. “I am thankful for having the tenacity to survive the oppression of the South,” Grahm said.

Grahm said that when he arrived in South Central Los Angeles, people were beginning to rebel and stand up against the same white oppression that his mother had warned him to accept as a child.

“I admit that I tried to hate at one point because of my experience, but the reality of those experiences made me understand that I had to stand up for humanity and those who cannot stand up for themselves,” Grahm said.

Grahm said that while he was in prison, he was able to discover a part of himself that he had lost during his many years of being oppressed. Grahm claimed that during the time he was in solitary confinement, he was best able to reflect over his life and discover ways to happiness and peace.

During his time in prison, Grahm said that he noticed the many guards who murdered inmates and the way in which the inmates, in retaliation, would kill guards. Grahm began to speak out against the cruel treatment he had seen in prison, hoping that his efforts would unite the prisoners toward a common goal of freedom.

Finally, after Grahm’s fourth trial, he was released when the jury found him not guilty. Now Grahm has dedicated himself to fighting the death penalty, urging that the state does not have the right to kill, and that the murder of human beings is not just.

Simmons announced that a ruling was recently passed deeming the execution of the mentally ill unconstitutional. This is the first step of several for groups like CEDP in the complete abolition of the death penalty. Its next goal is to bring an end to the execution of juvenile offenders, as many states will kill minors as young as 16.