American Politics Journal -- A Closer Look at the Death Penalty



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Guest Editorial
A Closer Look at the Death Penalty
by Christian Mitchell

Monday, July 24, 2000 (AmpolNS) -- The campaign-year focus on Texas Governor George W. Bush and the record number of executions in Texas since he took office has touched off a new firestorm of national debate over the death penalty. Around the country, people are beginning to wonder if the death penalty is implemented fairly, and if not, what can be done to fix the problem, and should we call a national moratorium until we can fix it?

But in posing these questions, we are ignoring the larger issue. The question we should be asking ourselves is not, "Should we call a moratorium until we can fix the death penalty process?" The question we should be asking is, "Do we want to be the kind of country that kills its people?"

The death penalty process is flawed. Can we all agree on that? Good. Let’s agree on it and then forget it for a moment. That’s not the point I mean to address.

Let’s forget for a moment that Gary Graham was convicted, sentenced and executed in Texas on the testimony of one witness who saw the killer through the windshield of her car, at night, for 3-4 seconds, from 40-50 feet away, even though five other witnesses who stated that Graham was not the killer were not even called to testify.

Let’s forget for a moment that the court systems in this country are so abysmally flawed that Illinois had to call a moratorium on the death penalty because they found 13 innocent people on their death row.

Let’s forget for a moment that the death penalty has been outlawed as barbaric and inhumane in Western Europe, England and Canada, as well as countries with less solid democratic credentials like the Dominican Republic, Croatia and Angola, and that in our continued use of the death penalty we reside in the dubious company of such nations as Iraq, Iran and Pakistan.

These arguments have been made again and again and again, and people continue to sound the call, "Let ‘em fry!"

Let’s focus instead on why the Texas murder defense -- "He needed killin’" – seems to have become our national criminal justice policy.

Let’s look at the arguments in favor of the death penalty.

The death penalty is a deterrent, you say? The numbers indicate otherwise.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington D.C., in 1977, the year the American death machine started rolling again, one execution took place in the United States, and the murder rate was 8.8. In 1995, there were 56 executions in the U.S. What was the murder rate that year? 8. Moreover, in the intervening years, the murder rate climbed as high as 10.2, and stood at 9.5 in 1993, a year in which we performed 38 executions. In fact, the murder rate only dropped below 8 twice, holding steady at 7.9 through 1984 and 1985, when we performed 21 and 18 executions, respectively.

Furthermore, only 3 percent of all homicide trial convictions result in a death sentence. Does this mean we only want to deter 3 out of 100 homicides? Or do we feel that only 3 out of 100 homicides warrant the death penalty? What about the other 97? Weren’t those people killed, too? What were the circumstances of those 3 poor souls’ murders in particular that warranted the death penalty? Were they really, really killed?

Please understand that the last thing I want to do is make light of or diminish these peoples’ lives or deaths, but do you see what putting the argument in the context of deterrence does to its credibility?

Not to mention the fact that a deterrent is only effective if people expect to be caught. Let’s say homicides fall into two basic categories: 1) premeditated, cold-blooded murder – the murderer planned and executed the crime with malice aforethought; and 2) homicide in the heat of passion – somebody lost their temper and killed the person they were angry at. In the case of premeditated murder, anybody who is planning on committing a crime is planning on doing it in such a way that they don’t get caught. Deterrents are useless against them because they feel they’re going to get away with it. In the case of homicide committed in the heat of passion, the killer has entered such a heightened state of rage that they have killed somebody. It is highly unlikely that, in this state of rage, they will have enough self-control to stop and consider that they might face the death penalty.

Some people say they favor the death penalty because the punishment should fit the crime. But this is faulty logic. If we wanted to do that, the sentence for rape would be for the rapist to be raped themselves. If some guy steals a TV, does the victim get to go into his house and steal his DVD player? No.

If we’re going to use the Bible as an excuse, "An eye for an eye," then that means we’ll be cutting off the offending hands of thieves from now on, right? What? We don’t do that? That would be cruel? (Governor Bush, call your office.) For those who would quote the verse, "Whosoever sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed," I would remind them of the verse that says, "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord." Now I don’t even believe in God, but for those who do, he’s saying vengeance is his responsibility, not ours. I would also remind them that Jesus said, "Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone." Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve committed a few sins in my time. Not any of the big ones, but a few of the second-class variety, the kind that get you suspended but not expelled, so I don’t feel comfortable casting stones at anybody.

Statistics show that the majority of the American people favor the death penalty. But not so fast. A recent Gallup poll shows that support for the death penalty has dropped from 80% to 66%. And a closer look at the numbers reveals something else, too.

In his essay, "The Case Against The Death Penalty," Hugo Adam Bedau offers the following debunking of the much-touted statistics: "It is commonly reported that the American public overwhelmingly approves of the death penalty. More careful analysis of public attitudes, however, reveals that most Americans prefer an alternative; they would oppose the death penalty if convicted murderers were sentenced to life without parole and were required to make some form of financial restitution. A 1993 nationwide survey revealed that although 77% of the public approves of the death penalty, support drops to 56% if the alternative is punishment with no parole eligibility until 25 years in prison. Support drops even further, to 49%, if the alternative is no parole under any conditions. And if the alternative is no parole plus restitution, it drops still further, to 41%. Only a minority of the American public would favor the death penalty if offered such alternatives."

Governor Bush and other politicans use these numbers as the basis for their support of the death penalty. The people want it, they say. But Edmund Burke, a member of the British parliament, had this to say about leaders and public opinion: “A representative owes the people not only his industry but his judgment, and he betrays them if he sacrifices it to their opinion.” A leader’s job is not to blindly follow public opinion; rather, a leader’s job is to mold it.

But let’s forget about the numbers for a moment, even though they tend to prove that the death penalty is not an effective tool. Let’s talk about something much deeper than that, something than can’t be quantified or measured.

On the day in 1989 when Ted Bundy was executed in Florida, people stood outside the prison holding up signs. The signs said things like, "Burn in hell, m*therf***er," and "Burn, Ted, Burn."

Is this the kind of people we want to be? Are we looking for justice, or a reprise of burnings at the stake?

I have always been opposed to the death penalty. I was opposed to the death penalty when they were looking for the serial killer that was murdering these women. And yet I admit that when they first caught Ted Bundy, my knee-jerk reaction was, "Fry him."

Of course I thought that. That’s a natural human reaction. We hear of a crime as heinous as his were, and our first instinct is to make the bastard pay. BIG. Preferably in blood. If a member of my family was murdered, I’d want the sonofabitch who did it to die. And if the state didn’t do it, I’d probably do it myself.

But that’s the thing. Somebody who is devastated over the loss of their wife, their child, their father cannot be relied upon to act reasonably, nor should we expect them to. They are wild with grief. They want to punish the person who killed their loved one, and they want them to suffer. Of course they do. I would, wouldn’t you? That’s when it’s time for the rest of us, who are in our right states of mind, to take care of meting out justice, and not to be guided by thoughts of revenge.

We need to be sensitive to the feelings of the victims’ families, to be sure. But family and friends of murdered loved ones invariably say that they want the murderer executed so that they can achieve a sense of closure and move on with their lives. But many people who’ve seen the murderers of their loved ones executed say that, after the execution, they are left with that same anger, that same emptiness, and that the void that they thought will be filled by the "justice" of the execution was still there.

When a robber kills somebody in the course of a robbery it’s called murder. When the state kills the robber as punishment for that crime, it’s called execution. Well, what’s the deal here? Is murder immoral? Or is it merely illegal? Whenever my brother hit me and I hit him back, my explanation to my grandmother was, "He hit me first," and her reply was always the same: "Two wrongs don’t make a right." Well, excuse me, but a robber killing somebody, and then us killing the robber, sounds to me like two huuuuuge wrongs.

Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun became convinced the death penalty was a mistake. After years of joining in opinions upholding the death penalty, he came a full 180 degrees and decided that "the death penalty experiment has failed" and announced that he would no longer support it.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, some of President Kennedy’s advisors were urging him to use nuclear bombs in Cuba, but Bobby Kennedy objected, and told his brother, "That’s not the kind of country we are." Was he wrong? I had always thought he was right. I was always proud to live in a nation of people who chose by virtue of our founding documents to be guided by law and reason, where the separation of church and state guaranteed that we would not engage in witch hunts, where we had carved out for ourselves a gentler, more humane existence than many of the places we left behind when we came here.

A journalist who witnessed the execution in Texas of Betty Lou Beets, the grandmother who was convicted of killing two of her husbands, said in an interview right after the execution that she thought it was going to bother her, but it didn’t. She said, in fact, that it was "pretty easy to watch." How did we get to a place in this country where it’s easy to watch somebody killed?

Whenever I talk with somebody about the death penalty, I keep thinking that this time I’m going to come up with the argument that’s going to convince them, the perfect, inescapable logic that will lead them to the conclusion that the death penalty is wrong. But what I’ve realized is that this is not an issue of logic. It’s an issue of the emotions. We KNOW murder is wrong, we know it instinctively, it is written on our hearts. That’s why as a society we have such powerful laws against it. And when somebody murders, we are so outraged, so disgusted, so carried away with anger and sadness that we want to wipe that person away, and hopefully the stain of their abhorrent crime with them. But in doing that, we become guilty of what we ourselves believe to be wrong.

We are imperfect creatures. We are part Jekyll and part Hyde, the animal in us always struggling for domination over the human. We can be cruel and spiteful, and we have an instinct for revenge. But we also have intellect, reason, compassion, the ability to understand our baser emotions and bring them under control.

And so I ask again. What kind of a country do we want to be? Do we want to uphold the finer lineaments of the human spirit – love, compassion, forgiveness, reason – or do we want to give in to the less noble elements in our nature – anger, hate, and revenge?

People are dying. And we are killing them. Is that justice? Or is it just murder?