Information on the Southern Center: www.schr.org/
Despite a recent spate of executions, Sara Totonchi predicts a day in the very near future with no death penalty, in Georgia and nationwide. Totonchi is executive director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, an Atlanta-based nonprofit founded 40 years ago to represent people, mostly poor minorities, facing a death sentence. Today, the center’s staff of lawyers, paralegals and investigators also fights what it perceives as human rights violations in prisons and jails and advocates on behalf of criminal justice reform. Totonchi talked about the center’s work and why she says “the death penalty is on life support and its end is imminent.”
Q: Why was Southern Center founded?
A: The Southern Center was founded in 1976 by a group of activists, ministers and lawyers in response to the reinstatement of the death penalty and the horrendous conditions in prisons and jails in the South.
Q: Anything changed since then?
A: At the time we were founded, the death penalty was rampant. Last year, there were 28 executions in only six states nationwide, the fewest since 1991. Even though executions unfortunately are being carried out in Georgia, there were zero new death sentences imposed here in 2015.
Q: What’s behind the shift?
A: A palpable shift in the public's perception of the death penalty. There have been 156 exonerations from death row since 1973 — innocent people who could have been executed. There is a growing discomfort with the government having the ultimate power to extinguish human life.
Q: What is Southern Center’s basic philosophy?
A: That a person's life is worth more than the worst decision they've ever made. We are working to fulfill the promise of equal justice under the law.
Q: Do you think the average Georgian cares?
A: It is important to remember how wide reaching the criminal justice system is here. Nationally, 1 in 31 adults is under some form of correctional supervision. In Georgia, the statistic is 1 in 12. The realities of how our legal system works become very clear when you or a loved one interacts with it.
Q: What other issues is the Southern Center involved in?
A: There has been a national awakening about the criminalization of poverty and acts of police violence against people of color. The Southern Center has been sounding the alarm on these abuses for decades. We are involved in criminal justice reform in Georgia. Typically, I wouldn't be on the same political side as Gov. Nathan Deal but his will benefit our state and citizens for years.
Q: Why are you against the death penalty?
A: My parents instilled in me an obligation to help those less fortunate. Growing up half-Iraqi during the Persian Gulf War era, I saw a parallel between Saddam Hussein's random killing of innocent civilians and the way the death penalty is carried out in the U.S. At the Southern Center, we see cases where clients have been represented by lawyers who knew nothing about the law, fell asleep during trials, referred to their clients by racial slurs. Some clients have struggled with mental health challenges or had childhoods that could be compared to horror stories. We see time and time again that the death penalty is not given out for the worst crimes but to people who have the worst lawyers. It's time to end this practice and embrace equal justice for all.
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