David Lee Powell Petition
Williams's website featured a petition by Amnesty International to stop the execution of David Lee Powell in Texas. Powell was convicted in 1978 for the shooting death of 26-year-old Austin police officer Ralph Ablanedo during a traffic stop. He was tried twice since the death penalty came in to effect and was sentenced to death both times, in 1991 and 1999. Powell was executed by lethal injection on June 15, 2010. Williams's website stated it was cruel and unusual punishment for Powell to serve a life sentence and be executed afterwards. She wrote a song in honor of Ablanedo and stated that the proceeds would be donated to Ablanedo's family.
Read more about this topic: Lucinda Williams
Famous quotes containing the words david, lee, powell and/or petition:
“The ferryman had told us that all the best Indians were gone except Polis, who was one of the aristocracy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!”
—Katharine Lee Bates (1859–1929)
“Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from preconising [proclaiming] its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.”
—J. Enoch Powell (b. 1912)
“Maybe we were the blind mechanics of disaster, but you don’t pin the guilt on the scientists that easily. You might as well pin it on M motherhood.... Every man who ever worked on this thing told you what would happen. The scientists signed petition after petition, but nobody listened. There was a choice. It was build the bombs and use them, or risk that the United States and the Soviet Union and the rest of us would find some way to go on living.”
—John Paxton (1911–1985)