For David Kaczynski the issue of the death penalty is very personal.

Kaczynski, executive director of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty and brother of "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski, spoke March 8 in Goldwin Smith Hall's Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium about the issues plaguing capital punishment in the United States. He also recounted his own struggles with the justice system after turning his brother over to the FBI in 1996.

The lecture was co-sponsored by the Department of Government and the Cornell Death Penalty Project.

Kaczynski argued that the death penalty system fails to meet three key criteria: accuracy, fairness and cost effectiveness.

But he began the lecture with his own story.

Kaczynski said he remembers his wife first suggesting that his brother could be the Unabomber after she noticed similarities between Theodore and the profile of the suspect developed by law enforcement.

Initially, Kaczynski said, he dismissed the parallels as mere coincidence -- noting that his brother had never displayed a potential for violence. For Theodore to be the Unabomber seemed next to impossible.

After the 78-page "Unabomber Manifesto" was published on the Internet, Kaczynski and his wife sifted through letters from Theodore looking for similarities -- and finding them. Faced with a difficult choice, Kaczynski notified the FBI. He was promised confidentiality and advance notice of an arrest, but his name was leaked to the media and he learned of his brother's arrest when it was broadcast on national television.

Theodore Kaczynski is now serving a life sentence.

David Kaczynski said that though he was always morally opposed to the death penalty, the story of Theodore -- and its contrasts with the story of another convict, Manny Babbitt -- transformed him into a death penalty abolitionist.

After his brother's arrest, Kaczynski received a call from Bill Babbitt, who had turned in his brother Manny, an African-American Vietnam veteran, 18 years before, for the killing of an elderly woman.

Manny Babbitt's court-appointed lawyer, who refused to have African-Americans on the jury and routinely came to court drunk, had never tried a capital case. War evidence, including Manny's nearly life-ending shrapnel injury to the skull, was never heard in court. Babbitt was sentenced to death.

After his appeals had been exhausted, Bill Babbitt felt he had condemned his brother to death. David Kaczynski said he tried to help -- but ultimately Manny Babbitt was executed by lethal injection in 1999.

The disparity between Theodore Kaczynski and Manny Babbitt's sentences -- and the parallel contrasts between their race and socio-economic status -- indicate that the process is not fair, said David Kaczynski. As evidence of the system's fallibility, he cited the 124 death row inmates who have been exonerated by DNA evidence. And he pointed out that New York spent $200 million in nine years on a death penalty system in which nobody was executed.

He also noted that executions take a toll on families of the executed and asserted that the last three New York executioners have committed suicide. "Who does this help?" he asked.

Re-evaluating the system is crucial, he said, adding that if no strong arguments exist in its favor, the system should be abolished -- as it has been in nearly all other democratic nations.

Reflecting on his own experiences, David Kaczynski said he hopes to raise awareness about an issue many people don't give much thought to. "Maybe the only thing I could do was tell our story, tell Bill Babbitt's story and create a human dimension," he said, "so people can see that this is a cruel and unjust punishment that's being administered."

Jack Hoge '07 is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.