Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing :: Honoring life by abolishing the death penalty

Tennessee’s death penalty system is fatally flawed. Our state has the 10th largest death row in the country with 103 people—none of whom could afford their own attorneys at the time of their trial—while Tennessee’s public defenders have the highest caseloads in the country. Millions of dollars are expended from the state’s budget on death penalty cases—money, which could be better spent on victims’ compensation funds and law enforcement. Paul House remains on Tennessee’s death row after serving 20 years, even though the U.S. Supreme Court stated in June 2006 that no juror, given the new evidence in the case, would have ever convicted him. In fact, 123 people have been exonerated nationwide since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.

Tennessee is currently poised to become the first southern state to pass anti-death penalty legislation in the 2007-08 legislative session in the form of a moratorium and study bill. This legislation would put a halt to executions while the state conducts a full study of the death penalty system, bringing public attention to the system’s flaws such as:

• Racial bias
• Lack of deterrence
• Class discrimination
• Prosecutorial misconduct
• Incompetent lawyers
• Innocence

Furthermore, the death penalty only creates more victims, continues the vicious cycle of violence, and is based on the false assumption that vengeance can heal. We, at the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing, do not want the state to take a human life in our name or in the name of justice; therefore, we are committed to the goal of abolishing the death penalty in Tennessee through grassroots organizing among individuals, faith communities, and other institutions and organizations.

Currently, TCASK has 4,000 members and six chapters across the state in Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Jackson, Rutherford County, and a chapter at Middle Tennessee State University. TCASK public activities include rallies and vigils, educational forums, speakers’ bureaus, lobbying work, letter writing campaigns, and fundraising events. In 2006, TCASK hosted its first Justice Day on the Hill, bringing together over 60 Tennesseans from across the state to lobby their legislators about the death penalty.

Because we cannot do this work alone, TCASK’s partners with a variety of organizations such as the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP), Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation, the Journey of Hope, the NAACP, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the Tennessee Justice Project, the ACLU, and the Catholic Public Policy Commission.

And, we need you. TCASK asks for your support to achieve our goal of ending the death penalty. Together, we can abolish the death penalty in Tennessee. Email us at tcask@tcask.org or call us at 615-256-3906 to join us in the struggle.