Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing
P.O. Box 120552 . Nashville, Tennessee . 37212 . 615-329-0048 [This is no longer the correct TCASK State Office number. The number was changed to 615-463-0070 in February 2005 .]
e-mail: tcask@earthlink.net
Promoting Alternatives to Capital Punishment in Tennessee
For Immediate Release Contact: Randy Tatel
7 April 2003 615-329-0048 [This is no longer the correct TCASK State Office number. The number was changed to 615-463-0070 in February 2005 .]
Public Support for First Lady’s “Spotlight Tour” Grows
TCASK Proposes Restoration of $76 million Reserve Legislature Stripped from Victims Compensation Fund
April 7, 2003 – The Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing (TCASK) today called on the Tennessee Legislature to replenish funding reserves that were stripped last year from the state’s criminal injuries compensation fund. Lawmakers raided the fund to make up for revenue shortfalls in the state’s 2001-2002 budget. TCASK pledged its support to assist First Lady Andrea Conte in ''putting a little spotlight'' on the state's criminal injuries compensation fund.
As part of Crime Victims’ Rights Week, Conte is traveling the state to promote awareness of the fund, which helps pay medical, burial and other expenses for crime victims.
Randy Tatel, executive director of the Coalition, said the idea of restoring the fund’s reserves merits strong support from legislators, regardless of their stand on the issue of the death penalty. “Victims of violent crime deserve the strongest support from the state, both to help facilitate the healing process and to pay for quantifiable expenses, such as costs of burying a loved one to medical injuries,” Tatel said. “It was unconscionable to drain the fund last year. We support crime victims and we support Conte’s efforts to draw attention to this issue.”
When asked how the state could restore the reserve under the current budgetary constraints Tatel said, “The $76 million stripped from the compensation fund’s reserves last year could easily be made up for and services to crime victims even expanded if legislators considered abolishing the death penalty in Tennessee.”
Pointing to numerous studies that demonstrate the special requirements of death penalty trials make them as much as ten times more expensive as non-death penalty trials, Tatel argued that scarce tax-payer dollars are better spent on the victims. “Tennessee should spend scarce tax dollars to keep its promises to victims,” said Tatel.
The United States Supreme Court and state law require a higher level of scrutiny for capital trials, which contributes to the high costs of death penalty trials. In addition, there are state and federally mandated appeals to ensure an innocent person isn’t put to death, and once in prison death row prisoners are isolated from the general population and have additional security. In addition to this required scrutiny, studies find that a majority of death penalty trials have serious errors and need to be redone to prevent a wrongful execution.
“If today we were to design a public policy from scratch that was sensitive to and focused upon the needs of murder victims’ family members the last system we’d create would be our death penalty system,” continued Tatel.
Tatel points to the additional burdens that these capital trials and retrials put on families. “Every appeal reopens the wounds for the victims. Every trial and retrial focuses press attention on the gruesome and horrific acts, further hurting the victims and preventing them from moving forward with their lives”
Last year’s gutting of the Tennessee criminal injuries compensation fund is, for Tatel, one more reason for Tennessee to halt executions. “We are spending money glorifying crimes and criminals, and at every step emotionally badgering the victims’ families. Sentencing a criminal to life in prison without the possibility of parole is far less expensive than sending them to die and gets the process over with so the family can begin to heal. The money not spent on death row can be spent where it is needed – on the victims family.”
“It generally costs three million to five million dollars to conduct an execution, from pretrial discovery to the trial itself to the complex appeals,” Tatel said. “Tennessee has 95 people on death row and has executed one person in the past quarter of a century. You do the math.”
“If we were to redirect these tax dollars toward crime victims, think of the services we could provide,” Tatel said. “We could offer more extensive counseling for victims of violent crime. We could offer college scholarships for children who lose a parent to murder. We could more fully compensate for the true costs of burial, plus medical expenses. Crime victims deserve our support – both emotional and financial.”
“Murder takes the life of the victim and can strip the spirit of the loved ones left behind. Tennessee tax payers would rather see our tax dollars go toward the healing and future of the family than on a process that diverts money from where it’s needed to pay for an endless cycle of anguish” Tatel concluded.
The TCASK call to replenish funding reserves stripped last year from the state’s criminal injuries compensation fund was backed by Steven Hawkins, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP). The NCADP will hold its annual conference in Nashville October 16-19, 2003 at the Downtown Sheraton.
The First Lady and her husband, Gov. Phil Bredesen, will travel this week to Knoxville, Maryville, Cookeville, Cleveland and Chattanooga.
The Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing is an affiliate member of the NCADP.
