I had asked a friend the other day what a good topic to write on would be and he said, “I always think its best when you do something a little controversial.” I agree but at the time I couldn’t really think of anything. I sat uninspired for a while and was scrolling through the news and came across two different stories that sparked a bit of inspiration. The first was about the shooting in the California hair salon yesterday that killed 8 people and wounded another. The guy, Scott Dekraai, seemingly opened up at random on a little independent hair salon in a quiet community in California. I thought to myself, “What an asshole, why is he even here? Why keep this guy around? Is he going to cure herpes or multiple sclerosis? Couldn’t he have killed himself and saved everyone a lot of time and money? I mean if you are going to go on a killing spree at least have the decency to off yourself beforehand or let the cops kill you. If statistics prove correctly his case could potentially cost California over $25 million before all is said and done (that’s if the death penalty is sought). The next article I read is about a Republican Representative from Florida, Brad Drake, who proposes that Florida abolish the lethal injection and bring back firing squads and the electric chair. He feels that the murderers have had it too easy with getting a nice little injection that kills them. He not only wants them dead but he wants a little suffering to go along with it. As if sitting in a cell for 10 years knowing that you will never be free again and your fate is going to be an injection shot into you intravenously in front of a live audience isn’t enough suffering. Kind of makes me wonder where his intentions are. Is he just as bad as the murderers? Didn’t another one of his representative buddies give him a nudge and say, “Jesus, Brad what is wrong with you?” Death is death, either way they go they aren’t coming back. After reading these two contrasting articles and other recent stories about the West Memphis Three and Troy Davis, I really realized that I’m torn on this death penalty issue.
As far as personal views on the subject, I have the feeling that probably several of these guys on death row deserve to die. John Wayne Gacy deserved to die. Ted Bundy deserved to die. Jeffery Dahmer deserved to die and I found it much more satisfying that he died at the hands of another inmate. But did Troy Davis deserve to die? Were there questions left unanswered about his guilt/innocence? Is it fair that Damien Echols, of the West Memphis Three, had to sit on death row for over 10 years when his innocence was so clear? Isn’t possible for some people to change in prison? But the biggest question of all is this, “Is our justice system infallible enough to always arrest and convict the right man? And am I confident enough that our justice system is competent enough to decide who is executed?” My initial opinion is no, on both accounts. Since 1977, 1,271 men and women have been put to death in the US. We currently have 3,251 inmates awaiting death (numbers as of April 2010) in our American prison systems costing around $250 million annually. Death row inmates cost substantially more than a standard prisoner. And one of the most damning statistics is the number of inmates that have been exonerated since 1973…139 men have been found innocent for crimes that had them sitting on death row. In the scheme of things where we think in terms of global numbers in the millions and billions, 139 doesn’t sound too bad and is actually a pretty good margin of error. Some people are willing to accept that margin, but I wonder if the principle was applied to them would they feel the same.
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| The recently freed West Memphis Three Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelly |
Imagine that you are asleep soundly in your bed, just as you would be any other night of the week. Your day was pretty uneventful; maybe you went fishing or went shopping with your friends. You are going about your routine as you would any day of the week. You wake up the next morning and as you are eating your Eggo waffles and bananas, you are watching the news and a horrible triple murder is all the talk. You feel bad for the victims, “its awful what people do to one another” you think to yourself. You get ready for your day but a knock on your door interrupts you. You go and answer the door and its two cops at your door asking you questions. “Did you know the victims?” “Where were you last night?” “Can anyone vouch for you?” etc. You answer the questions honestly but unbeknownst to you, the cops already have their eye on you because they feel you are a little weird, you aren’t like everyone else, no one can really figure you out, and this murder sounds like something some weirdo would do. So they hone in on you, they put the idea out there that possibly you had something to do with the murders by just bringing up your name when questioning other potential witnesses. People are always open to suggestion and the mere mention of your name sparks something in them. “Yeah, I did see him acting really weird that night. Looked like he might have had some blood on ‘em” says the “witness”. It’s not true but it doesn’t matter. The cops want justice and they have no leads. All it would take is to get a few people out there with the right idea planted in their head to get a case against you. Next thing you know, you are being arrested, shoved into a car, handcuffed behind your back, and off to jail. You are innocent but it doesn’t matter, others don’t think so. The court of public opinion has deemed you guilty and eventually so does the court of law. The judge is a hardass who is trying to look tough on crime because he has that big election to win next year and he sentences you to die. Sound improbable? Sound like some dumb made up movie plot? Yes, but unfortunately this has happened in the real world. Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley went through a very similar chain of events almost 18 years ago. They were accused and convicted of murdering three 8 year old boys, stripping them naked, and mutilating their bodies. The problem was there was no physical evidence to point to them. Damien was the “weird Goth kid” of the small West Memphis community and he was immediately zoned in on from the day the bodies were discovered. The police disregarded evidence to the contrary of their innocence because it didn’t fit in with nailing Echols and the other two boys. Baldwin and Misskelley were sentenced to life and Echols was sent to Death Row. Fortunately, after years of people rallying around the group and new uncovered DNA evidence the former boys, now grown men, were released but under a strange sneaky legal maneuver called the Alford Plea. The state of Arkansas saw that it was inevitable (and they have admitted this) for a new trial to come for the West Memphis Three because of the DNA evidence and other glaring mistakes made in the past prosecutors office. Not wanting the open embarrassment of having to admit they wrongfully imprisoned these men and opening themselves up to a huge lawsuit, they offered this tricky Alford Plea which would set them free. The deal was that they all three plead guilty to the murders based on the assumption that the prosecutors had enough evidence to convict them, they would be able to maintain their actual innocence, and they were free to go. Initially Baldwin didn’t want to take the deal because he wanted to prove in an actual trial his innocence, but the prospect of the trial was still a year or more away and he knew that Echols was wasting away on Death Row, sealed off from the rest of the prisoners in complete isolation. The deal had to be agreed upon by all three of them in order for it to go, and in an act of compassion and childhood friendship Baldwin agreed and they were freed.
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| Mumia Abu-Jamal: Is he on death row for politcal reason or is he innocent? |
Now this might sound like a one in a million case and pretty unlikely, but what would’ve happened if the State of Arkansas shoved that needle into Echol’s arm years ago? Echols came within 1 week of execution before but was granted a stay. Imagine the terror and crushing depression that he probably felt, knowing that he was going to die for a crime he didn’t commit. Imagine how many others could be out there like this. It’s not completely uncommon. In 1993, Kirk Bloodsworth, a convicted child murderer and rapist sentenced to death, was the first man to be exonerated by DNA evidence after spending 8 years in prison. Oddly and ironically enough, years later when the DNA database was instituted it was found that the man guilty of the rape and murder that Bloodsworth had been convicted of was actually one cell down from him for years. In 1981, a black janitor at a predominantly white high school in a fairly racist section of Texas name Clarence Brandley was convicted of the rape and murder of a student based on the testimony of three other white janitors who worked with him. The Texas Ranger that investigated the case actually had the three white janitors concoct a story against Brandley because, as the Ranger so eloquently put it to Brandley, “You’re the nigger, you’re elected.” Of course as it turned out one of the janitors felt guilty years later and came forward with his story and it lead to the arrest of one of the other white janitors and his friend that killed the student. Brandley, unfortunately, spent 7 years behind bars and was denied any monetary reimbursement from the state of Texas. These are just a few of the stories and there are countless more out there. Cases with questionable guilt or motive, cases that are seemingly politically motivated like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal, and cases like the West Memphis Three are out there and the justice system is doing them no justice.
It makes it increasingly difficult to trust our justice system with these issues. The fact that two states, Texas & Arkansas, refused to fully admit that they were wrong and denied monetary compensation to the men whom they destroyed is a “justice abortion”. If you had just had a significant part of your life stripped away and were threatened with death by your state wouldn’t you want some sort of apology and some cash? Just some food for thought.
Now, I know one of the biggest arguments for the death penalty is that it deters murderers from murdering. Well, that’s not the case. There are 34 of our 50 states that still have the death penalty on the table for people who enjoy murder (and the two other capital crimes that don’t involve murder; treason and espionage). Quick tangent: Treason and espionage are tricky because treason can be looked at in two different ways and espionage is really just a fancy way of saying spying. Treason can be the attempt to over throw the government or violating one’s allegiance to their country. So does that mean that we can kill the Tea party people? Can we execute the Occupy Wall Street protestors? Should someone stick a needle into the arm of Sean Penn and Oliver Stone? Because under that definition all of these people have either tried to force a change in the country or have “bad mouthed” America. Anyway back to the topic at hand, the death penalty has never proven to be any sort of effective deterrent in the murder rate. Out of the top 25 states with the highest murder rate per capita 22 states are death penalty states. In my opinion, I don’t think there has ever been a case of when a potential murderer was getting ready to kill and they stopped and thought, “Wait, what state am I in? Oh hell, I’m in Florida. I better drive up to West Virginia to do my killing if I don’t want the death penalty.” As a matter of fact, year after year it is shown that states with no death penalty have lower murder rates. So are these death penalty states just so pissed at its citizens that they want to join in on the killing with them? I don’t know what the rationale is, but if I saw that it was really not making any sort of difference it would weigh on my conscience that I was killing all of these murderers. It’s kind of like when I see parents spanking their kids while yelling “We do not hit!!!”
Now that I have spouted out all of my hippy liberal stuff, I can go to the darkside for a moment…the conservative right, pro-death penalty side. If someone were to rape and murder my wife, of course I would want to see him pumped full of deadly poison until the life was snuffed out of him. Serial killers, child molesters, and the mass shooters like the Virginia Tech guy all deserve to die a long and horrible, painful death. I see the point of all the pro-death people, I really do. These killers and kiddie-diddlers have no function in society and are better off dead. None of them are going to cure cancer, they aren’t going to help stabilize the economy, and they aren’t going to solve world hunger. They are useless stains on the fabric of our society. However, (you knew that was coming didn’t you?) the system is so flawed and inconsistent with its “justice” that I don’t think the death penalty is right nor is it effective. I have already listed a litany of reasons as to why it’s obviously flawed (false convictions, DNA evidence, coerced stories and confessions, and bias) but the inconsistencies are nearly as bad. I have always wondered how it’s determined which murderers’ get the death penalty and which don’t. How do we place value of one life over another? Is a priest’s life more important than a child’s? Is a cop worth more than a pregnant woman? Is a white stock broker’s life more valuable than a homeless Hispanic man? I have wondered this forever but just recently bothered looking it up. Each state has its own weird guidelines as to who qualifies for state sanctioned death and who doesn’t; these guidelines are called aggravating factors. Each state has different sets of these factors and some want several factors to be in place while others only require one to be in effect. I found some interesting ones during my research and would be remiss if I didn’t share them. Tennessee has the option to kill you if you murder anyone over 70, anyone who is handicapped, and if you mutilate the body AFTER you kill them. So as long as your victim is a 69 year old, well bodied person whom you only mutilate while killing them, you are probably safe. Virginia has an oddly specific factor when it comes to age as well; if your victim is under 14 and you are over 21 then they will shove the needle into your arm. I just wonder what the judge says when the victim was 12 years old but the killer was only 20, “Sorry ma’am but your son’s killer was only 20 so we can only give him a life sentence.” Washington state and Arizona have even further oddly specific factors. Washington states that the convicted can face the death penalty if they were a reporter who killed their victim in order to obstruct their own activities. You know there had to be some reporter in Washington at some point that they really wanted dead in order to add that to the list. Arizona’s was probably the oddest of all. In Arizona, if you kill your victim with a stun gun the state may put you to death. How would that even work? I’m sure it would be a long process killing someone with a stun gun.
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| John Wayne Gacy: Ok, so they got one right. |
So I guess what I am saying after all of this is this: Our justice system is too flawed, inconsistent, corrupt, and close-minded to have the death penalty. It simply doesn’t work. I would hate to see even one innocent man put to death in order to kill 10 monsters. Some would like to argue that “Well, in that case we should only put to death the ones that killed without question like Ted Bundy.” However, that argument only further proves my point. Any man or woman who is in prison in the first place should be proven without question that they are guilty. See? It just doesn’t work that way. We can’t risk killing innocent men in the name of killing bad men. It would simply make us just as barbaric as some of the countries we always shame. When we see a news story out of Iran about how some husband threw hydrochloric acid into his wife’s face and gets 30 days in jail and a woman shows a little too much leg in public and she is put to death by stoning, we get outraged. But the same concept can be transferred over here. Maybe the Iranians watch the news and say, “I can’t believe they are going to kill that man who did not kill another.” Probably not but you get the point. So, I will never be fully supportive of the death penalty even though I know that people like Susan Smith, Andrea Yates, Anthony Sewell, Gary Ridgeway, and many others deserve to die because I don’t think our justice system is competent enough to do it right.
Very good!
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