by Laura Moye of Georgia Moratorium Campaign (www.GeorgiaMoratorium.org)
Late last year, a coalition of groups including Amnesty International, Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda launched the Georgia Moratorium Campaign. The campaign is Georgia’s first concerted legislative push for a moratorium, and resulted in the introduction of a resolution in the state legislature on April 2 that called for a study of Georgia’s death penalty.
The need for a moratorium has multiplied since the state resumed executions full force after a three-year hiatus. Once the state Supreme Court rejected the electric chair last year, the state moved to lethal injection and almost immediately resumed killing, conducting 6 executions in just five months.
Campaign success stories
To bolster our call for a moratorium, we organized several events over the course of the legislative session. In January, Sister Helen Prejean spoke to three audiences in the state, including Mercer University in Macon, which drew a crowd of 1,000 people. Several other educational events have taken place throughout the state, including a death penalty conference organized by students.
On February 12, we organized a Death Penalty Awareness Day at the state capitol, where we released new polling data showing that a majority of Georgia’s voters would support a moratorium when informed about some of the problems with the system’s application. Amnesty International commissioned the poll and the Schapiro Research Group in Atlanta conducted it. The results are available at our website.
Over 1,500 people have signed postcards to their legislators as a result of a daily tabling at the state capitol. The postcards are in addition to the over 12,000 signatures gathered on the Moratorium Campaign’s petition. We’ve also continued to gather organizational resolutions and endorsements from organizational leaders for a total of 25 groups and 32 individuals now signed on to the campaign. Among our new resolutions is the Macon City Council, which voted overwhelmingly to adopt a resolution calling for a moratorium on March 19. Atlanta did the same last year.
Beyond the moratorium campaign, activists have had to respond to a number of execution dates this year. The two most recent cases received a lot of international attention and public pressure. Both cases have given us an opportunity to highlight flaws with our death penalty and the need for a moratorium.
Although the first year of our campaign resulted in the introduction of a study resolution without a moratorium, we feel that we’ve made some progress this year, and know that we’re engaged in a long-term process that will ultimately prove successful.
