Death Penalty Protesters Discover High Cost of Free Speech

Six activists -- five of them members of the SC Progressive Network -- were
sentenced on Tuesday, May 9, to a $400 fine or 30 days in jail for blocking
the entrance to the state prison on Dec. 18, 1998, to protest the death
penalty. Nine protesters were arrested at the demonstration, three
defendants were out of state and forfeited their right to a trial.

"We were trying to protest the death penalty without causing injury to
anyone or damage to property," said Bruce Pearson, director of South
Carolina Coalition Against the Death Penalty. "We will continue until the
death penalty is abolished."

The defendants plan to file an appeal.

The demonstration was organized to mark the 500th execution since the death
penalty was reinstituted in the United States. As has become customary,
death penalty opponents held a vigil outside the prison the evening of the
execution. Just before 6 p.m., when Andrew Smith was to be put to death,
under a banner reading "The Blood Is On All Our Hands" nine protesters
dipped their hands in red paint, walked in silent procession along Broad
River Road, and washed their hands in a bowl of water before sitting in the
entrance to the prison. After refusing police orders to move, the
protesters were arrested.

"Given the state of the courts, the state of the law, the mind-numbed state
of the general populace, we're called upon to put our bodies on the line,"
said Efia Nwangaza, a human rights activist and a Greenville lawyer. "We
must use all the resources at our disposal to awaken our fellow citizens to
the carnage that we're subject to physically, spiritually and
intellectually in this society at this point in time."

Nwangaza, a Greenville lawyer and one of those arrested, said the sentence
was stiff because the police officers and the magistrate were angry the
defendants pushed for a jury trial instead of accepting a plea agreement.
Before the trial, the defendants refused a deal to plead "no contest" and
have their $125 bonds returned. The police officers had expressed a desire
to see the Confederate Flag debate in the State House, and were eager for
the case to be settled to free them up from court time.

"We got screwed," said defendant Matt Painter after the trial. Painter, a
student at the University of South Carolina, does not know where he is
going to come up with the money to pay the fine.

Angeline Echeverria, also a student at USC, was surprised at the sentence.
"The judge was obviously biased in favor of the officers," she said.

"This has been a sad education," said defendant Becci Robbins. "The trial
was an up-close and personal look at the very system we were demonstrating
against. While we expected to be found guilty, we did not expect such
hostility in court. You would have thought we were the ones who had killed
someone. It was a glimpse of how capricious the court system is, and how
hard it is to change the status quo."

(source: South Carolina Progressive Network)