Danny Glover — Executing Reggie Would Be A Grave Miscarriage Of Justice

The Justice for Reggie Clemons Campaign is pleased to have renowned actor and social activist Danny Glover as one of Reggie’s many supporters. On May 10, 2006, Danny Glover came to Missouri to speak on Reggie’s behalf.

I’m a child of the Civil Rights Movement. I was seven years old when the U.S. Supreme Court made the decision in Brown v. Board of Education to end segregation in public schools. From that point on, I followed the movement, initially through my parents, who were active members of the NAACP. They were postal employees who were very involved in restructuring their union after it was desegregated in 1948. It was a kind of empowerment that my parents embraced; the Civil Rights Movement was tangential to their own struggle. I was always privy to the discussions going on. Those were the things that shaped me. From an early age, I became active in social justice issues.

It is no surprise then, that I have always been opposed to the death penalty, both in principle and in practice. As a matter of policy, I do not support the use of homicide as an official tool of the state, particularly since the death penalty does not serve as a deterrent to crime. In practice, we have seen how unfairly the death penalty has been applied in this country. It is a punishment that has been almost exclusively reserved for the poor and people of color. “Justice” does not come easily to those who are the least empowered, and we have seen the chilling results: over one hundred and twenty people have been exonerated and released from death row in modern times, some of them only hours before they were to be executed. One shudders to think how many innocent people have gone to their deaths.

There are some cases that stand out because they are so egregious. Reggie Clemons is an example of such a case.
Reggie’s case is marked by the familiar litany of abuses found in so many capital cases: police brutality, prosecutorial misconduct, racial bias and ineffective assistance of trial counsel. It is also a textbook case of reasonable doubt, a fundamental element of our criminal justice system that requires especially intense consideration in death penalty cases.

 

And yet these are not the only reasons to believe that executing Reggie would be a grave miscarriage of justice. Executing Reggie would continue the legacy of state sponsored homicide as a solution to acts of violence. It would create additional victims, continuing the cycle of violence. Carrying out this execution would not bring back the victims; nor would it ensure that future crimes are not committed. Instead, Reggie’s mother and father would lose a son. His brothers and sisters would lose a sibling. His daughter would lose her father.

Like my parents before me, I believe that we have a responsibility to act whenever we see grave injustices. We must act and believe that we can change things for the better. Collectively, we can stop this execution from going forward. Please join me in urging Governor Blunt to grant clemency to Reggie Clemons.