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Mrs. HARPER. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise to support the Governor's veto. I have never seen, read, or heard of a wealthy person being electrocuted. If you have money, you can buy your freedom, and until the laws are fair, I shall continue to vote against electrocution because it is only a law against the poor. A good example is Dr. Sam Sheppard. He was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife; he went free from the electric chair simply because he had the money to buy his freedom. That is why I shall continue to support the Governor's veto, Thsnk . .. -.. . > vm~ LEGISLATIVE JOURNAL-HOUSE September 13, I would like to have you consider that, and certainly I am in The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentle- favor of overriding the Governor,s veto, man from Philadelphia. Mr. White. Mr. WHITE. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, rise to support the vetoof the Governor with respect tc the death penalty here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I think my colleague. Mrs. Harper, is absolutely correct when she states that justice really in this Commonwealth and, in fact, in this country is not justice. Being a member of the Judi- ciary Committee, we have heard testimony over and over again with regard to the disparity in sentencing as it relates to poor people, as it relates to women, as it relates to black people in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. My colleague from Allegheny County cited an instance of a horrendous crime in which an individual, he claimed, was not subjected to the death penalty and, therefore, proper punishment, I believe in his mind, was not meted out. There is a case in Philadelphia that I am certain all of us are aware of, which relates to the case of Mr. Red Wilkinson, an individual who was convicted in our courts of a likewise heinous crime, and it was found some time later that Mr. Wilkinson was innocent. I would hate to think that any member of this House, regardless of our views on criminal justice, would condone the killing of innocent men and women. and until such time that the justice system in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, until such time that the members of this House of Representatives deal with the root causes of crime, deal with the frustration of people in this Commonwealth who feel that there is no justice. I would certainly hope that we would reronsider our artions with respect to the death penalty, and with that. Mr. Speaker. I would hope that the members would join with me in sustaining the Governor's veto on this measure. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentle- man from Lehigh, Mr. Zeller. Mr. ZELLER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call to the atten- tion of the members of the House the report from the Ameri- cans for Effective Law Enforcement out of Evanston, Illinois, an organization that has been in business for some time in regard to crime victims' problems. I would like to get this into the record, but I want to mention just a portion of it: Our Victim's Rights Center has represented crlmr victims in the laws courts and has consulted with at- torneys across the country who are working to vindi- cate the rights of crime victims. (. . . "Do Victims Have Rights?") B~~~~~~ of this orientation we make our policy de. cisions about important criminal justice issues based, in large measure, on how the resolution of those issues affect the victims of crime. To us, the impact of capital punishment is clear. In 1967 we stopped executing murderers in the united States; in that year we had just over 10,000 homi- ii:? :z ~,"~~~~~o'~l,"~&',"~~sfio~,"',"~$~~ murder ~ victims ~ had doubled. we do not say that our failure to execute any murders at all was the only reason that homicide rates skyrocketed like they did-we do believe that it was a major factor that if we had heen enacting the su. preme penalty a large number of innocent victims would have been saved. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentle man from Philadelphia, Mr. Giammarco. Mr. GIAMMARCO. I rise to support theoverride. Let us take into consideration all of these children who do not have their parents anymore because of the criminals who are living in these prisons, getting their three square meals a day, watching their TV shows, watching the movies there while the other ones are 6 feet under. I feel that we should take a lot in com- pass, namely, what I have just said. Let us look over the picture. How many are in there for three murders? They laugh. When will there he their fourth murder or their fifth? If we continue to let them get away with it, this is what is going to happen. So I feel that we all should take into consideration all of these broken families because of the individuals who are sitting in there living high off the hog and laughing at us because they are living a good life and the other individual is 6 feet under. Thank you. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentle- man from Allegheny, Mr. Trello. Mr. TRELLO. Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the override of the Governor's veto. My two colleagues from Philadelphia-although I respect what they have to say and I will defend to the end their right to say it, and also my other colleague from Philadelphia who supports the veto, I defend his right-talked about children not having their parents around. What about the parents who do not have their children around? As a police commissioner for 6 years in the borough of Coraopolis. I have had occasion to see victims - children who were raped, strangled, stabbed with ice picks, and beaten to death. I pray to God that I die before my children, because I think that is the worst thing that could ever happen to a par- ent. And what about these parents who have had their children raped and victimized? I, too, am a Christian and believe in the 10 Commandments. although I am not a born-again Christian, but I am a good Christian who goes to church. I urge everybody to support the override of the Governor's veto. It is something that Pennsylvania has lacked for many, w r* many years and something that we should have starting today. ~ h ~ ~ k you, w The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentle- man fromphiladelphia. Mr. Richardson. Mr. RICHARDSON. Thank you very much. Mr. Speaker.
1978. LEGISLATIVE JOURNAL-HOUSE 2837 Today I rise to support the sustaining of the Governor's veto concerning SB 1233. It seems to me that many memhersof this House are not clear on the fact that certainly although SB 1233 is new, the concern that has arisen out of capital punishment is old. On April 12. 1973, this House-and I was at that time a very young legislator-had a HB 700, which is very similar to SB 1233 essentially. In its potential dealings for action, if passed-and I believe that in the dealings of what we are in- volved in in this present day and time, specifically as it relates to the death penalty-blacks will suffer tremendously because of this. I would like to just quote for you for just a moment from the eminent American citizen, Dr. Louis Knowles, who is now in the doctorate of ministry program at the University of Chi- cage, and also professor tienneth prew,tt, also an associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, who in their hook. "Institutional Racism In America," said on page 58: is often that law is the foundation ofour soci. ety. Law sets forth commonly accepted standards of behavior in written form so that social controls may be applied in an orderly and consistent way. For most Americans, the legal system works fairly well. The written standards of conduct and the police and judicial apparatus set up to enforce them are established and administered by persons with interesh and perspectives similar to those of the majority of white Americans. But for those who differ substantially in economic status or culture from the white middleclass norm, the apparatus breaks down. Not only are these people arrested and prosecuted under laws they had no hand in making, but they are also tried by judicial institutions which exclude them both from structural mechanisms and from personnel rolls. The situation is most acute for those who are both poor and culturally different-blacks, Indians, and Mexican-Americans. To these citizens the law symholizes white oppression. Those who represent the legal system are almost exclusively white and reflect the prejudices and ignorance of white society. Yet the prohlem is much deeper than one of participation in judicial functions. The very structures of the system, because they were created by whites, invariably operate to disadvantage the culturally different, regardless of who is in control. The unequal dispensation of justice is a result both of the origin of legal institutions and their present operation by white citizens who do not recognize the worth of non-white cultures. The effects of these two factors are impossible to disentangle. We emphasize the racism of the legal structures themselves because it is more basic than the personal racism of administrators and thus has more profound implications as an obstacle to change. Then on page 77 of the same book, they end their analysis of racism in the administration of justice in America with these words: "The cultural myopia of white society permeates our judicial system, making it inherently incapable of delivering justice to people of color." Mr. Speaker, the hard, cold, end product of the depth of racism has produced the statistics as quoted on page 132 of the International Library of Negro Life and History 1969 Year Book, that out of the 3,859 prisoners executed since 1930, 53.5 percent were black. According to the United States Census of 1970, blacks constitute 12 percent of the population and are convicted of one-sixth of the crimes punishable by death as out- lined in this horrendous hill. Then even assuming that those convictions were arrived at equitahly, fairly, without racial hias, the hias of execution weighs 570 percent greater prohahil- ity for execution of hlacks than for whites. White slavery hy the force of the gun invaded our country where an overwhelming majority of hlack people living in America came from. Blacks were living in Africa where no jails were necessary, hecause we knew how to live with our hrothers and our sisters. To quote an eminent white authority on Afri- can study, Basil Davidson, in his book, "The African Past": In Songhai, travelers were as safe in the loneliest cor- ner of the Empire as he would be in the King's Court surrounded by his army. Black people came here with their skills and knowledge of medicine and surgery with the abilities to transplant limbs and immunize their children against bacterial infections. Their spiri- tual values were high. We were virtually free from The question arises, "What is the problem?" The problem, as YOU heard pointed out earlier by the past two speakers, Mr. White and Mrs. Harper, is that we must pinpoint the fact that the prohlem, as pointed out in the report of the National Ad- visory Commission on Civil Disorders, by the hooks that they wrote in March of 1968, is white racism, individualized and institutionalized. White racism is responsible for those con- ditions which lead to the crimes by hlack people which you are anxious to punish. You heard earlier one individual, Mr. Zeller, indicate that these crimes are growing outrageously in our com- munities. When your unemployment rises, so does crime rise. People will do whatever is necessary, whatever race of people they are, to survive. The report states that white institutions also created this, and it seems that a searchlight of inquiry by this House of Representatives should he directed toward the cause of white racism and the immediate cause of the problem as opposed to looking for an easy way out. Today is the easy way out. White racism, not just its manifestation, keeps blacks in con- stant turmoil, but white racism is basically an attitude fostered in the belief that most, if not all, blacks are nothing, a little less than human and make no contribution to world progress, free- loaders, and should be relegated to a low status. This attitude is what breeds the contempt that almost all individuals who support racism have against blacks and those who are there with the problem, and that is where the problem lies. First of all, the question is, is it genetic or is it enculturated? If it is the former, then there is little that a powerless minority can do, except to struggle vainly on our way to the gas chamber or perhaps link up with the 2.4 billions of nonwhites and make a very hard and heroic stand. The bloody history of whites stands as mute testimony to their 300-year reign of terror against non-Europeans; against South American Indians, with Europeans murdering 10 million of them in savage orgies; against North American Indians as their lands were stolen, with Europeans murdering 12 million and driving the re mainder onto barren pieces of parched land; against the people of the Songhai Empire of Western Africa, starting in 1591, and over three centuries of blood, wiped out 30 million of our mothers and fathers. The Europeans' lust for blood extended
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