Help to end death penalty; pay for inmate fans

Typical death-row cell at
Polunsky Unit, Texas - more here

While others have been analyzing and debating the U.S. Supreme Court's most recent divisive decision, I have been thinking about another landmark case handed down 40 years -- almost to the day -- before the court's ruling to uphold the controversial Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare."

On June 29, 1972, the Supreme Court declared the death penalty "cruel and unusual punishment" based mostly on the "arbitrary and capricious" nature of how it was being applied by the states. That 5-4 ruling in effect ushered in a moratorium on capital punishment for a few years.

I want to use the anniversary of that ruling to make two appeals: one to call for another moratorium on the death penalty, and the other to ask help for state prisoners who once again are suffering through a sweltering Texas summer.

While I'd like to see the death penalty outlawed outright, as some other states have done in the past few years, at the very least we should call for another moratorium so that we can have a rational discussion about the legality and morality of capital punishment.

Now to another continuing problem in the state prison system that becomes more acute in the summer. I was reminded of it again last week as the unofficial temperature in Fort Worth was 109 degrees, knowing that the vast majority of Texas prisoners were in un-air-conditioned facilities where the summertime temperature usually is well above 100.

For the past 12 years Texas Citizens for Rehabilitation of Errants (TX-CURE), whose headquarters is in North Texas, has been providing fans for indigent prisoners (as defined by TDCJ).

Through 2011, the group had bought 6,015 fans for inmates, Project Director Dorothy Deen said.

The way the program is set up, the fans have to be purchased through the prison system at $20 each.

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Source: Bob Ray Sanders, Star-Telegram, June 30, 2012