Kaczynski speaks on death penalty

Unabomber's brother argues against capital punishment.

Hilary Disch
features editor

Millikin University hosts a number of speakers on a weekly basis, but rarely are these events actually over-attended. However, on Wednesday, Oct. 20, hundreds of Millikin students and members of the Decatur community filed out of the previously designated facility, Pilling Chapel, to Lower Richards Treat University Center (LRTUC), in order to adequately and comfortably seat everyone.

“I think this is the largest group I’ve ever spoken in front of before,” said guest speaker David Kaczynski, a national leader in anti-death penalty activism and brother of Unabomber Theodore (Ted) Kaczynski.

“We estimated that 300 people came,” said sophomore Jen Nafziger, international studies major and Amnesty International (AI) member.

Kaczynski was brought to Millikin by the university’s branch of AI, in conjunction with Decatur groups including Macon County Citizens Opposing the Death Penalty (MCCODP), the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, Central Christian Church, First Presbyterian Church and Our Lady of Lourdes Church.

“Amnesty is a grass roots, worldwide human rights organization working to protect the universal declaration of human rights as defined by the United Nations,” said sophomore Colleen Cunningham, philosophy/theater major and group coordinator of the Millikin branch of AI. “AI is strongly committed to the abolition of the death penalty in all cases. David Kaczynski has an interesting spin on the issue, as his brother is mentally ill. This factor is another chip in the vast system that is capital punishment.”

It is no wonder that this event was so well attended, given the controversial subject matter and Kaczynski’s extraordinary story.

Over a 17- year period, from 1978-1996, the anti-technology Unabomber killed three people and injured at least 22 in a series of bombs sent through the mail. The spree of violence was ended in 1996 when David Kaczynski and his wife, Linda Kaczynski, turned in his brother to the FBI.

“It was a classical ethical dilemma,” Kaczynski said. “I thought, if you don’t want to go through your life as a hypocrite...if you want to stop the violence, you have to do this.”

FBI agents promised David and Linda that they would not let it leak to the media that the Unabomber’s brother had been the person to turn him in, and also said that the prosecution would not pursue capital punishment.

Both of these promises were broken.

“I felt betrayed by the FBI when there was no one to hold the media back,” Kaczynski said. “But I felt truly betrayed a month later when prosecution hired a psychiatrist that was well-known for her expertise as an expert witness... The government wasn’t looking for the truth. They hired a psychiatrist to seek the maximum punishment, which is capital punishment.”

Kaczynski realized that if he did not speak about his brother's schizophrenia to the media, Ted would be executed.

“My brother is alive because he had good lawyers,” Kaczynski said.

Though the issue of mental illness is the flaw in capital punishment that is most personal to Kaczynski, he also explores the various other problems that factor into the system.

“Innocent people are sometimes sentenced to death,” he said, citing the 1993 Supreme Court case of Lionel Hererra as an example.

“Here in Illinois, some of the prisoners who were on death row were innocent,” said Sister JoAn Schullian, Franciscan nun and pastoral associate for Our Lady of Lourdes Church, in reference to the moratorium imposed on the death penalty by former Governor Jim Ryan in 2000.

Kaczynski also justifies his views on the death penalty by discussing the racial and classist biases of the justice system. The example Kaczynski often refers to is his involvement in the Babbit case of 1999. California resident Bill Babbit began to suspect in the early 1980s that his brother, Manny, was guilty of beating and murdering an elderly woman in Sacramento. However, Manny Babbit suffered from mental illness.

“Bill told the police, ‘Manny is not a monster. He is a very disturbed person...it originated from when he went to Vietnam when he was 17.’”

Manny suffered from serious physical wounds, including a piece of shrapnel in the head. He was not rewarded for his service, became homeless, eventually attempting suicide.

Similarly to the Kaczynski case, the police said that the death penalty would not be sought. However, the Babbits were black, and also could not afford good lawyers.

“Babbit had a court-appointed attorney who’d never had a criminal case before,” Kaczynski said, also mentioning that the attorney was known to come to trial while intoxicated.

The judge also insisted on having “the most educated jury possible;” defining “educated” as an all-white jury. Manny Babbit was sentenced to death, despite David and Linda’s efforts to publicize the racial and social prejudice that had factored into the outcome and the fact that Manny was mentally ill.

“We were privileged...the prosecutor of my brother’s case said on national television, ‘thank you to David Kaczynski, a national hero.’ Bill never received any thank you from the state of California, and his brother was executed,” Kaczynski said.

A motive that many Americans cite as reason for capital punishment is that it serves to prevent violence.

“One thing that politicians usually say is that it’s a deterrent to crime- I know Bush has said this...but in general it’s not,” Kaczynski said in an interview with the Decaturian.

Since 1986, public opinion on this supposed reason to support capital punishment has inverted.

According to a report by Death Penalty Information Center on www.deathpenaltyinfo.org, 61% believed the death penalty to be effective in reducing crime rate. In 2004, 62% believe that it does not. However, according to the Gallup Organization, in May of 2004, 69% of 366 adults would still support the death penalty even if it could be proved that the death penalty did not lower the murder rate.

Groups that oppose the-death penalty, such as AI and New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty (NYADP), support life imprisonment without parole rather than execution.

“Part of the education is to say ‘we believe in rules and regulations; you have to be responsible for your actions,” said Sue Simcox, the program chair for MCCODP. “But capital punishment is not something we remotely agree with.”

In recent years, opinions in the United States seem to be reflecting a closing gap, and hence a more divisive public, between those who are pro and anti-death penalty.

“In essence, people want to be safe,” Kaczynski said in the interview.

“Right now, the average is two to one, for the death penalty,” he said. “But when asked if you favor life parole as an alternative to the death penalty, it is about half and half.”

A Gallup poll taken in June of 2004 found that the margin of people in favor of the death penalty over life imprisonment is 50% to 46%.

“I think it is cruel because it is unnecessary. Why do we suppose violence is a solution to violence? War is sometimes necessary to protect innocent life. It is possible to protect society against violent people without shedding blood,” Kaczynski said.

Kaczynski has been speaking on the death penalty and his personal story to various organizations and campuses since 1999, and in July 2001 was selected as the Executive Director of NYADP.

Kaczynski expressed that he feels a particular affinity to the people of Illinois. He stated that, with the moratorium on the death penalty, Illinois citizens might not realize that they have been an inspiration for groups opposing the death penalty across the country.

“We’re the only westernized, industrialized country that executes. In Western Europe, you can’t even be a member of the European Union if you have the death penalty,” Kaczynski said, also mentioning that Canada banned the death penalty decades ago.

Regarding the amount of government-sanctioned executions, Kaczynski said that the United States is “number two, next to China, one of the biggest human rights offenders in the world.”

Members of AI feel that this issue should be important to Americans, particularly young people, right now.

“I feel our nation is in a time period when it’s important for citizens to be aware what our government is doing, that capital punishment is racist and classist. That it’s arbitrary. It’s a flawed institution that isn’t doing anything but violating human rights,” Cunningham said.

Sister JoAn Schullian, who works on the social justice committee of Our Lady of Lourdes Church and is one of the founders of MCCODP, believes that Kaczynski’s message is “an opportunity to let young people form their conscience.”

“No one who is well-informed can be happy with the system as it currently exists,” Kaczynski said.

While Kaczynski continues to campaign against the death penalty nationally and in his home state of New York, MCCODP and other Decatur groups are working towards ultimately passing a law that will permanently suspend the death penalty in Illinois.

“We’ve been challenging state legislatures, senators and representatives, letting them know that we are against the death penalty, because most people in our area are for the death penalty,” Sister JoAn Schullian said.

They have met with representatives in Springfield.

“We have one representative who is really listening. We are working to get IL to actually pass House Bill 213, outlawing the death penalty,” she said.

Kaczynski and Decatur organizations urge students to protest a current death penalty case, that of Dominic Green, a young African American man who has been on death row in Texas for the past decade.

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