ISRAEL TRUTH TIMES: death penalty

To Friends and Constituents of Agudath Israel:

As you may know, a Jewish man is slated for execution - Rachmana litzlan! - in Florida next Tuesday. Martin Grossman was convicted of killing Margaret Parks, a Florida Wildlife Officer, in 1984, when he was 19 years old. He did so while under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and in an act of panic, not premeditation. He has conducted himself as a model prisoner since his incarceration some 25 years ago and has shown profound remorse and regret for his actions.

Agudath Israel has joined other Orthodox Jewish groups in asking Florida Governor Charlie Crist to grant clemency to Mr. Grossman, and we have also requested a meeting in person with Governor Crist to discuss the matter.

But it is important that the Governor hear from the grassroots as well - certainly from people who live or spend significant time in Florida, but even from non-Floridians. His e-mail address is Charlie.Crist@eog.myflorida.com , his phone number is (850) 488-7146 and he can be faxed at 850-487-0801. Letters and calls should be polite pleas to the Governor to take into account Mr. Grossman's youth and impairment at the time of the crime and his good behavior and remorse in the years since. And the request should be that Mr. Grossman be permitted to serve his debt to society by serving the rest of his life in prison.

May we have happier occasions to demonstrate our achdus and ahavas Yisroel. And may our action here merit us such times.

Agudath Israel of America | 212-797-9000 | 42 Broadway 14th floor | New York | NY | 10004

From David Wilder's blog.

[And note that the Aleph Foundation - if it is the same organization - is Rabbi Steinsaltz's foundation, which received money from very suspect sources. Still, a Jewish life is worth saving, don't you think? DS]

Save Martin Grossman from execution in 2 weeks

Save Martin Grossman

Target: 10,000 signatures

Sponsored by:

Aleph Institiute and Chabad
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/save-martin-grossman

To save one life is like saving the whole world:

We need your help today to save the life of Martin Grossman who is set to be executed on February 16th. We are only advocating that he not get the death penalty at this time. We are asking that the Governor take the time to hold a proper clemency hearing to determine if the Death Penalty is really appropriate in this case. This may not be easy for you to go out of your way to try and save the life of someone who took someone else's life but we must do what is just and right and what the Torah teaches us is correct. Prominent Rabbis have ruled that every Jew has the responsibility to save this man's life. Please sign the petition at the end of this story.

There is no question that Martin Grossman committed a grievous and violent act, robbing Margaret Parks of her life and her future but also robbing her family of their beloved daughter and sister and the future they hoped for her. Having counseled Martin and providing spiritual guidance to him over the course of the last 25 years, we know without any doubt that he takes full responsibility for his evil deed and that he lives (as he should) with tremendous daily guilt and remorse. He often speaks of the anguish and devastation he wreaked on Ms. Park's family and of his impotence, being completely unable to do anything to relieve their sorrow or make amends.
His childhood history, in fact, is marked by the fact that as a young child, Martin had this very feeling of impotence imposed upon his undeveloped psyche, much too young, because he was unable to relieve the suffering of his father (a veteran who was never known to his son during healthy productive years and whom Martin only knew as an ailing and needy invalid).

The unusual circumstances in Martin Grossman's case include:

1.    The unfortunate arbitrary character of the death sentence in Martin
Grossman's case. In fact, we think it is clear that if Martin were tried in a criminal court today, he would not have received the death sentence. We think you may agree that it was imposed as a result of many distinctly unusual factors that were never well understood, at various levels of the trial and appeal process. For instance, the reason that his crime was identified as "premeditated murder" was a technicality, and nobody who actually knows what took place the day he committed the crime would really use the word "premeditation" for that situation. (He was a drug-addicted youth without much guidance in the world who was surprised and taken aback by the sudden approach of an officer, and he "lost it" and tried to prevent her from turning him in. He was not knowingly committing a crime at the time he was apprehended although technically he was committing the crime of probation violation.) We would ask permission to show the following:
a.    The "aggravating circumstance" was not what we would consider to be aggravating circumstance today, and in fact, did not amount to what most people consider "heinous, atrocious or cruel."
b.    The "mitigating circumstances" were not explored because of the situation including Martin's communication deficits.
c.    The crime was not what any of us today would probably consider "cold, calculated or premeditated."
d.    Martin Grossman's history points to the high probability that he would be considered in "extreme mental and emotional disturbance" at the time of the crime, although that could not come out at the time of the trial.
e.    Martin Grossman acted "out of frenzy, panic or rage" although that was also not brought out at the trial.
f.    Martin's sentence was extremely disproportionate to other criminals who receive the death sentence, and was not worse than many, many other criminals who receive considerably less punishment.

2.    The fact that Martin's mental capacity is so seriously challenged (Martin has an IQ of 77 and was uneducated, and also suffered from a seizure disorder and possible organic brain dysfunction since earliest childhood) that he probably misunderstood the nature of his crime itself and surely was not very capable of cooperating in his own defense to the degree needed, considering the gravity of his situation. At the same time, his support system of family and friends was seriously deficient for many of the same reasons, and nobody "kicked in" properly to help his defense at that critical moment. Had he been able to garner support or to provide his lawyer with vigorous assistance in defending himself it is almost certain that he would not have been sentenced to death.

3.    The fact that Martin's tragic childhood and adolescence provided a backdrop for the trial and the appeal that was never adequately presented to jury, judge or appeals courts. In the sentencing phase, 30 out of 33 of the witnesses he wanted to call in his defense were not called, and the terrible result was that he received the ultimate penalty. When he brought this issue up in post-conviction litigation, the court held that the missing 30 witnesses did not matter because they knew Martin when he was much younger than 19 (when he committed the crime) but the three who did testify knew him closer to the contemporaneous time period. In fact, that is the very reason these 30 witnesses would have so much to add to the knowledge that a fact-finder would need to conscientiously decide whether or not a man should die for his crime: what childhood circumstances went into the making of the man who stood before them? In the case of Martin Grossman, the jury decided that they knew his motivations when he killed his victim. Had they heard from the 30 witnesses who were precluded from testifying, they would have had a much different body of knowledge about his motivations. They believed his motivation was purely evil and wicked. Information from these 30 individuals would have made it much more likely that they would have believed that he was motivated by panic, confusion, and a degree of utter helplessness to manage his own emotions brought on by a deficient childhood and deprivation of the ability to mature into a responsible and confident adult.

4.    Martin's unequivocal contrition and changed nature – Rabbi Katz with The Aleph Institute has been Martin's spiritual advisor for the past 15 years and can speak to the man that Martin has become and, as his aunt has written also, he is now a "solid, humble human being" far from the disturbed youth who shot Ms. Parks over 25 years ago. In this case, the rehabilitation given to him by the State of Florida has been effective, and Martin Grossman, far from being a hopeless criminal who must be put to death for fear of worse behavior, has become an example of correctional services effectively correcting both behavior and character.

5.    Martin's age (19) and physical state and state of mind at the time of the offense – Martin was an addict – he had been taking prescription barbiturates for seizures since early childhood and developed as an adolescent an addiction to other drugs. He was regularly high, suffered from a permanent state of paranoia and a lack, sometimes complete absence of judgment. On the night of his crime, Martin was on all kinds of drugs including PCP, Cocaine, Crystal Meth and other pills.

6.    Life in prison without parole is an effective sentence to serve justice. Martin's crime was not actually cold-blooded. His conduct since that night has been exemplary and he is a model prisoner. He did not set out to commit a crime that night over 25 years ago – it was very truly a juvenile lark that went terribly and tragically awry. Note that the medical report of Dr. Fisher, a forensic psychiatrist who studied Martin and a wealth of background information, concludes at page 12 in its final paragraph "Given the facts and diagnosis described above it would be inconsistent and highly illogical to characterize Martin's actions during the murder as rationally directed towards the goals of avoiding arrest or avoiding law enforcement. No such goal-oriented behavior or cognition was possible given the severely altered mental state in which Martin was functioning at this time. Because he was in a psychotic state he was likewise unable to form the premeditation for the underlying felonies present in this case (robbery, burglary and escape)." For the real person who really committed the real crime, death is not necessary; correction has been working and can be expected to be 100% effective.

7.    The Affidavit of Charles Brewer dated 21 July 1990. Charles Brewer, a fellow inmate in 1985, testified for the prosecution. Subsequently he provided a very disturbing affidavit that states that his testimony was not completely true and that he expected, and received, consideration for enhancing what he really knew and what he actually heard from Martin Grossman. What is most disturbing is that he appears to have been a critical witness, bringing into question the strength of the case without Brewer, who admits his testimony was tainted and improperly procured.
Moreover, the case relied on such witnesses as Brewer, the accomplice Taylor (who was sentenced to a mere three years), and others who all had something to gain by lying or at least embellishing the truth. This may have, at the very least, made the difference between life and the death sentence. We do not know what attempts, if any, were made to plead Mr. Grossman "down" on diminished criminal responsibility. We are looking into this question now.

In a death penalty system in which approximately 2% of known murderers are sentenced to death, fairness mandates that those few who are sentenced to death should be comparable to others who are similarly sentenced, and worse than those who are not. Problems with the trial of Martin Grossman have been admitted by the appeals courts (while being called "harmless" one by one, but their cumulative effect was far from harmless) and in one case, a new law was passed to say that judges were required to do things differently from the judge in Martin's trial. In today's system, the sentence of death depends on many factors other than the moral depravity of the defendant or the actual severity of the offense. Especially in the case of Martin Grossman, it seems that it came about because of many misunderstandings that could be carefully and dispassionately explained if Martin Grossman is given a 60-day stay for the preparation of a clemency petition.

Please sign the petition today to save the life of Martin Grossman:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/save-martin-grossman

UPDATE:

Please see THIS I received from Carl. Having second thoughts after all? I can understand. I really do not have an answer, as I am no computer expert. Your comments will be appreciated. DS

"Thought this was very informative , I was glad to get it , hope you are too.

Good Advice from Snopes

The man that sent this information is a computer tech. He spends a lot of time clearing the junk off computers for people and listens to complaints about speed. All forwards are not bad, just some. Be sure to read the very last paragraph!!!!

Please read :

By now, I suspect everyone is familiar with www.snopes.com and/or www.truthorfiction.com for determining whether information received via email is just that: true/false or fact/fiction. Both are excellent sites.

Advice from Snopes.com Very important!
1) Any time you see an E-Mail that says forward this on to ' 10 ' (or however many) of your friends, sign this petition, or you'll get bad luck, good luck, you'll see something funny on your screen after you send it, or whatever, it almost always has an E-Mail tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and E-Mails of those folks you forward to.

The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of 'active ' E-Mail addresses to use in SPAM E-Mails, or sell to other spammers. Even when you get emails that demand you send the email on if you' re not ashamed of God/Jesus .....that ' s E-mail tracking and they' re playing on our conscience. These people don' t care how they get your email addresses - just as long as they get them. Also, emails that talk about a missing child or a child with an incurable disease "how would you feel if that was your child"....E-mail Tracking!!! Ignore them and don't participate!
2) Almost all E-Mails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all any of this type of E-Mail is, is a way to get names and 'cookie ' tracking information for telemarketers and spammers - - to validate active E-Mail accounts for their own profitable purposes.
You can do your Friends and Family members a GREAT favor by sending this information to them; you will be providing a service to your Friends, and will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam E-Mails in the future!

Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those types of listings regardless how inviting they might sound!...or make you feel guilty if you

don' t!...it ' s all about getting email addresses - nothing more!

You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT! Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later and very possibly a virus attached! Plus, we are helping the spammers get rich! Let's not make it easy for them!
Also: E-Mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any other organization - i.e. social security, etc.

To be acceptable, petitions must have a signed signature and full address of the person signing the petition, so this is a waste of time and you're just helping the Email trackers. "

Comments:

SHmuel writes:

YES!

Apparently many people got pretty ticked off with the abuse of their email addresses and got things moving to try to cut that out.

I was warned two years ago by my bro, the computer sciences doctor.

No polls, no chain letters, no resends, no name lists, etc.

AND always remove e mail addresses from distribution lists.

As time goes by the sneaks get more and more agile to steal names and addresses.

Good HEADS UP!