Execution for fun and profit
By Brandon Astor Jones
"A policy which encourages the purchase of two hundred and twenty-five pounds of chicken and twenty pounds of roast beef to celebrate the execution of a human being is certainly revealing". — Michael Mears
If you oppose capital punishment and actively fight against it, your weaponry is incomplete if you do not have a copy of the June 1998 issue of the Open Door Community's Hospitality newspaper. (The Open Door Community is an organisation that feeds the hungry and shelters the homeless.) To obtain a copy, which the quote above is taken from, send US$2 for postage and handling to Reverend Murphy Davis, 910 Ponce de Leon, North East, Atlanta, Georgia 30306-4212, USA.
In that publication, the article entitled "Celebrating the Death Penalty and the Cost of Criminal Justice" by Michael Mears offers some real insight into the macabre carnival-like atmosphere at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison when the state of Georgia kills a man.
State representative Sharon Cooper, a Republican from Cobb County, would take issue with my classification of a prisoner condemned to death as a man. According to Hospitality, she feels that we "need more prisons for ... [those] who have no conscience and are basically animals".
I have noted in this space before that executions and prisons are growth industries in Georgia. While those of us confined at this prison have known all along how much pleasure state officials find in executions, it was not until Mears' article came out that the general public had a chance of finding out these truths from someone other than prisoners.
Because Hospitality is a small regional newspaper, I am asking all of my regular readers to get a copy and send it to your local dailies, along with a request that your daily publish the Mears article, so that its truths can enjoy greater exposure. It really uncovers what the death penalty is, in the USA in general, and in Georgia specifically.
From another source I have learned that execution squad members get a little bonus for every execution that they participate in. As a result, an eagerness to kill and celebrate abounds at this prison.
Getting back to the "lavish banquet for the guards, wardens, law enforcement personnel, victim's family and staff members of the Attorney General's Office", Hospitality tells us that they devour hors d'oeuvres and tarts, all at the state's expense.
These little fetes cost hundreds of dollars, but we must not forget that they are sanctioned by those very same politicians who claim to resent government spending — the same politicians and state officials who are crying for more executions (executions with two and three million dollar price tags) when a prisoner can be kept in maximum security for 40 years at a tenth of the cost.
They are getting rich while rank and file prison guards can barely afford to pay their bills. This atmosphere of death for fun, pleasure and profit in Georgia is personified in the words of one prison guard, who was overheard saying, "I'm glad they executed that son-of-a-bitch, 'cause I needed that hundred dollars."
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He welcomes letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G3-77, Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA. Brandon and his friends are trying to raise funds to pay for a lawyer for his appeal. If you can help, please make cheques payable to the Brandon Astor Jones Defence Account and post to 41 Neutral St, North Sydney NSW 2060, or any Commonwealth Bank, account No. 2127 1003 7638.]