Desmond Tutu and the Death Penalty

By Jaya Spier

New York, March 11: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 and Thomas Cahill came together to speak about abolishing the death penalty in America in reference to the execution of Dominique Green in 2004.

On Wednesday Archbishop Tutu and Thomas Cahill spoke along with others at the Riverside Church on the Upper West side of Manhattan. Thomas Cahill’s book "A Saint on Death Row” released on March 10th tells the story of a young black man named Dominique Green who was sentenced to Death Row for charges of murder.

Green spent twelve years on death row before he was finally executed by lethal injection on October 26, 2004 in Huntsville, Texas. He was arrested at the age of eighteen and charged for shooting a man during a robbery. Green insisted that he had not done the shooting but the all white jury sentenced him anyway. He spent twelve years on death row during which he discovered the book No Future Without Forgiveness by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. After reading this, Dominique Green decided that he would no longer be angry with life, he would forgive all those who had hurt him and try to help as many people as he could. He learned a lot from his peers and pushed Tutu’s book on as many people as possible.

Thomas Cahill first met Green in December of 2003 at the request of Judge Sheila Murphy who was dealing with Dominique’s appeal case. Cahill, who happened to know the Archbishop, requested that Tutu visit Green in Texas. He did and they both felt that Dominique Green did not deserve to die. He fought long and hard but in the end the state of Texas refused his pleas, they even ignored the pleas from the family of Dominique’s victim.

Green’s story is very unique in that he found a great deal of peace at the end, though he never felt he obtained justice. So the event on Wednesday was in honor of his life and a plea that capital punishment end in America.

During Desmond Tutu’s remarks he discussed how much he admired America. How the United States had helped push South Africans into action during Apartheid. What happened in Harlem during the 1960’s led to the Soweto Uprising of 1968 in Johannesburg, South Africa. African-American courage inspired South African courage. He said at one point “your civil rights movement inspired us [to] no end. We also had a dream.”

This is why, he said “it was a kind of disillusionment, a pain that is difficult to dscribe” to realize “that this land had this huge blot on its copy book” to find out “that you believed in the death penalty…why do you do this when you are such wonderful people?” He went on to say that the death penalty was brutalizing America and that whether we like it we are all part of the system. The death penalty turns us into violent people and we must change this to change ourselves so that no more story’s like Dominique Greens end in sorrow.