Protests Set to Protest Sonnier-Bey's Execution on Tuesday

TEXAS DEATH PENALTY ABOLITION MOVEMENT

PO Box 595, Houston TX 77001 ~ 713-503-2633 ~ Abolition.Movement@hotmail.com

Meetings on 1st Tuesday of the month at S.H.A.P.E. Center, 3815 Live Oak at Alabama at 7:00 PM

June 3, 2008

Press Advisory Contact: Gloria Rubac 713-503-2633



Texas to Resume Executions Despite Evidence That the System is Fatally Flawed;
Protests Against the Execution of Derrick Sonnier-Bey Planned in Houston and Huntsville



Activists will gather around the state of Texas today to protest the first execution in over eight months in the state. Derrick Sonnier-Bey is scheduled to become the 406th victim of the country’s busiest death chamber at 6:00 PM on Tuesday in Huntsville.



The Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement will hold two protests on Tuesday.



In Houston protesters will gather at 5:00 PM at the Mecom Fountain with signs and banners to protest the execution. Mecom Fountain is located at the entrance to Herman Park where Main Street and Montrose Blvd. Meet in a traffic circle.



Also at 5:00 PM, a rally will be held outside of the death house in Huntsville with speakers and poetry as well as statements from death row prisoners. The Walls Unit is at 815 12th Street at Avenue I in Huntsville, east of Interstate 45’s exit # 116.
Featured speakers in Huntsville include Puerto Rican rapper Capital X, who recently completed a “Walk 4 Life” from New Jersey to Texas to protest capital punishment, and Hannaleah Lyon, also from New Jersey, who is a leader in the Howard Guidry Justice Committee fighting to save an innocent Guidry from execution. New Jersey recently took capital punishment off their books.

“For eight months Texas had not executed anyone and what has happened? Nothing unusual. Crime did not rise. The sky did not fall. And business has gone on as usual,” said Njeri Shakur, an organizer with the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement based in Houston.

“Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that the lethal injection protocol is constitutional, we say there is no right way to do the wrong thing. The whole system is broken and executions must stop now. With reports being released regularly about the racism involved in capital cases, including a report about Harris County to be released in the fall in the Houston Law Review, and with the Houston Crime Lab still operating under questionable circumstances, the system is not working.”

“Since 1973, 129 people in 26 states have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence. A few days ago, DNA has proven that death row prisoner Michael Blair is not guilty of the 1993 murder and rape of Ashley Estell, a case which prompted new, tough sex offender laws called “Ashley’s Laws,” Shakur concluded.

Protest will also take place in over a dozen cities around the state, including one in Austin at the state capital.