Letter to 11th Circuit Court of Appeals - 25 October 2007

25 October 2007

Honorable Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat
Honorable Judge Rosemary Barkett
Honorable Judge Charles R. Wilson

United States Court of Appeals – 11th Circuit

Your Honors,

I am writing to you from South Africa, in order to personally thank you for your decision in Siebert vs Allen, issued on 24 October 2007.

I especially want to thank you for seeing the motive behind the US Supreme Court’s decision in Baze vs Rees in granting certiorari, convincing you to stay the execution of Siebert. I think I join the wide world out there in thanking you for waiting for an outcome as to the constitutionality of execution by lethal injection.

It is wonderful to see that there are still those out there that will not be swayed by party politics and personal agendas but that can still acknowledge, in the words of Judge Tjoflat, “that the balance of the equities dictates that a State’s interest in timely enforcement of a death sentence must yield to further consideration of the merits that the three-drug protocol, as applied, would violate constitutional rights.”

The task ahead for you will not be easy but I take heart that the right decisions will ultimately be made in your country, as we were faced to make in the revision of our own death penalty in South Africa during 1995. The outcome in our country, to abolish the death penalty as being cruel and not superceding the right to life, did not favor everybody but, in essence, we deemed it to have been the right thing to do.

Thank you for doing the right thing in the present case. I pray that you be strengthened in your resolve in other similar cases in the time ahead.

Yours Sincerely,

Dr. Thinus Coetzee
www.justicefortommy.blogspot.com
justicefortommy@gmail.com