Hi there,

This month, Democracy Now! marks 29 years of fearless independent journalism. Presidents have come, gone and come back again, but Democracy Now! remains, playing the same critical role in our democracy: shining a spotlight on corporate and government abuses of power and raising up the voices of scholars, advocates, scientists, activists, artists and ordinary people working for a more peaceful and just world. If our journalism is important to you, please donate today in honor of our 29th anniversary. Every dollar makes a difference. Thank you so much.

Democracy Now!

Amy Goodman

Non-commercial news needs your support.

We rely on contributions from you, our viewers and listeners to do our work. If you visit us daily or weekly or even just once a month, now is a great time to make your monthly contribution.

Please do your part today.

Donate

Condemned Federal Prisoner Asks Americans to Rethink Death Penalty

HeadlineSep 18, 2020

Two more federal executions are scheduled for next week at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. One of the prisoners, Christopher Vialva, is being put to death for a crime he committed when he was 19 years old. This is Vialva in his own words in a rare video from death row.

Christopher Vialva: “People are not being informed about the racial disparity on federal death row. Black people are only 13% of this country’s population, yet we are almost half the population of federal death row. … Now I’m making my plea to the American public to rethink the federal death penalty. The Democratic Party claims they want to abolish the death penalty, yet no politicians have said anything about federal death row. Public figures, lawyers and abolitionists are nowhere to be found in the national media on the subject of capital punishment, yet men are being paraded to the federal death house right now.”

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top