To purists and legalists, who view the law as a kind of
sacred undertaking, and its judges as latter-day priests, the last weeks of the
last term of the U.S. Supreme Court must have been mighty disconcerting.
For it is a rare thing for a court to reverse itself, to
announce to the nation and the world that they committed judicial error in the
past. It is so extraordinary that when it occurs, one is compelled to address
it.
That rare ocurrence can be seen in the Supreme Court’s 6-3
decision in the Atkins v. Virginia case, where the Court held that the Eighth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbade the execution of the mentally
retarded. The Atkins decision reversed the 1989 Penry v. Lynaugh decision, which
held that there was no "national consensus" against the execution of the
mentally, and that it therefore did not offend the Eighth Amendment to do so.
What happened in the intervening 13 years between Penry and
Atkins? What happened, in a word, is politics.
In Penry, the Court looked to legislative judgments as "the
clearest and most reliable objective evidence" of public, and indeed, political
opinion. As there were few (if any) states that forbade the execution of the
mentally ill/retarded at the time Penry was decided, it wasn’t unconstitutional.
(Forget the obvious flaw in this reasoning, that it made the nation’s highest
court subservient to state legislators for the determination of what violated
the U.S. Constitution!)
In the interim period, over a dozen states outlawed the
practice, and this, in addition to the bristling hostility of the international
community to the execution of the mentally infirm, sufficed to move the Court to
reverse itself.
This is indeed significant, for it instructs us in the power
of the political in an area that was hotly contested - the death penalty.
The question isn’t what a difference a decade makes, but what
a difference organizing makes. Anti-death penalty groups from coast to coast
have organized, protested and lobbied in state houses for state and regional
bans on the execution of the mentally retarded, and that strategy has apparently
paid off.
The great Swedish-American socialist labor leadert, Joe Hill
(born Hillstrom), faced with the awful shadow of the hangman in Utah, told his
friends, in no uncertain terms, "Don’t mourn for me. Organize!"
That lesson, issued in the 19-teens, remains valuable today.
Organize!
If you are a labor leader, a church person, a butcher, baker
or candlestick maker, it is not enough for people to simply accept what the
courts of the land have said. Organize!
If you are an anti-death penalty activist, learn this lesson
well: Organize!
Reversals are indeed rare, but recent history teaches us that
they are not impossible, if people remember to: Organize!
The Court did not one day come to an epiphany that the
execution of the mentally ill was a "bad thing." They saw the winds of change
blowing. The winds from Europe. The winds from across America. The winds of
people organizing.
Blow on.
Organize!
Copyright 2002 Mumia Abu-Jamal.
