Public Workshop Seeks to End Capital Punishment

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March 16, 1968 

FOR: IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

FROM: Coordinating Groups to Abolish the Death Penalty 
c/o The New York Committee to Abolish Capital Punishment 
2 West 64 Street, New York, N.Y. 10023 (212) TR 4-2073 

PUBLIC WORKSHOP SEEKS TO 
END CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 

Michael DiSalle, Clinton T. Duffy, Senators 
Javits and Philip A. Hart, Slated to Attend 

Fifty professional, civic, political, religious, civil rights, 

correctional and social betterment organizations, who favor detain- 

ing and rehabilitating lawbreakers rather than killing them, will 

hold a mass public workshop 3 p.m. Sunday, March 17, 1968, at the 

offices of the New York Committee to Abolish Capital Punishment, 

2 West 64 Street, New York. 

Strategy for completing abolition of state-sanctioned violence 

at both the state and federal levels will be planned, according to 

Jerome Nathanson, chairman, Mrs. J. W. (Ruth) Kitchen, executive 

secretary, and Norman Redlich, counsel, of the New York Committee. 

On the program will be (former) Gov. Michael DiSalle, Cleve- 

land, O., chairman of the National Committee to Abolish the Federal 

Death Penalty; Austin H. MacCormick, director, the Osborne Associa- 

tion; Clinton T. Duffy, former warden of San Quentin prison, Cali- 

fornia; Senator Jacob kK. Javits (R.-N.Y.); Senator Philip A. Hart 

(D.-Mich.); and eight New York Congressmen who are sponsors of four 

bills outlawing legalized murder by the federal government (Frank 

J. Brasco, Emanuel Celler, Leonard Farbstein, Abraham J. Multer, 

Joseph Y. Resnick, Benjamin S. Rosenthal and Herbert Tenzer, Demo- 

crats, and Seymour Halpern, Republican). 



noe 

Also, attorneys Anthony Amsterdam, NAACP Legal Defense and 

Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF); Neil Fabricant, Martin Garbus, and 

Florence Robbin, American Civil Liberties Union; and Sol Rubin, 

the National Council on Crime and Delinquency; plus Assemblyman 

William F. Passanante and State Senator Manfred Ohrenstein; and 

John Lassoe, chairman of the Committee of Christian Social Concerns 

of the Episcopal Church. 

In 1965 the New York State Legislature passed and Governor 

Rockefeller signed a bill outlawing capital punishment in the State 

for most crimes. Since then, however, elections have somewhat 

changed the legislature's membership, and four total and two partial 

restoration bills have been filed in Albany this year. The Sunday 

workshop will lay plans for a concerted front at new hearings before 

the Joint Codes Committee of the legislature as well as Washington 

hearings March 20-21 on bills to abolish the federal death penalty. 

"Hysterical racist reactions to the riots of last summer, 

fear-producing publicity about 'crime-in-the-streets,' and question- 

able crime statistics--which historically rise in wartime--have 

weakened the conscience and courage of some legislators to the point 

of yielding to scare tactics and a demand for pushing New York State 

back into the primitive business of state-sanctioned killing,' accord- 

ing to Mrs. Kitchen. 

"Without any new, or old, evidence that execution has ever 

been a crime deterrent, legislators who voted against capital punish- 

ment in 1965 are now trying to restore it," she pointed out. The 

record shows that in New York State the death penalty discriminates 

against racial and economic minorities, Mrs. Kitchen added. Of 14 

men executed between 1959 and 1963, 11 were Negro. 



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Nathanson said the new A.C.L.U. state-by-state program to 

abolish the death penalty, aimed at legislatures in all the re- 

maining executing jurisdictions, will be explained at the workshop, 

as well as the new United Nations capital punishment survey. 

Mrs. Kitchen noted that constitutional challenges by both 

the A.C.L.U. and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund 

have temporarily halted all executions in the country, resulting in 

a build-up of condemned men. "Tf all our efforts fail," she said, 

"it means we authorize the government to perform a blood bath with 

450 victims.” 

"In view of the President's Crime Commission Report and the 

Riot Commission Study, this is not the time to add racist-inspired, 

state-sanctioned violence to our laws," Nathanson added. 

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