June 15
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
His Father Was Murdered. He Helped End the Death Penalty Anyway----“I wanted to
be more than somebody who is the son of a murder victim.”
In May, the death penalty died in New England. A bipartisan legislative
majority in New Hampshire, the final state in the region to enforce capital
punishment, voted to override Gov. Chris Sununu's (R) veto of a bill abolishing
the death penalty. At the time of his veto, Sununu urged those legislators to
consider the "victims of violent crime across this state."
While it is often assumed that victims of violent crime tend to support capital
punishment, one of New Hampshire's most outspoken death penalty critics lost
his own father to an act of violence.
"I wanted to be more than somebody who is the son of a murder victim," says
Renny Cushing, a Democrat who represents the Rockingham district and serves as
the chair of the state's House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. In
1988, Cushing's father was shot and killed before his mother's eyes. Similar
tragedy struck his family again in 2011 when his brother-in-law was shot and
killed in Tennessee.
His father's death taught him that nothing "prepares one to be the survivor of
a homicide victim." When a family friend approached Cushing in a grocery store
to express the hope that the state would "fry the bastard," Cushing says he
didn't initially know how to respond.
His Irish Catholic upbringing called for him to stand by a consistent life
ethic, he explains, which promotes the sanctity of life "from womb to tomb."
This influenced his opposition to the death penalty before he lost his father.
Yet that family friend had assumed that his father's murder would cause Cushing
to change his position.
"As I thought about that over a couple of weeks, I realized that if I had done
that, if I changed my position on the death penalty because my father was
murdered, that would, in some ways, kind of be a compounding of the loss," he
says. Not only would he have lost his father, but he would have lost the values
he held dear.
Confronting such assumptions was the beginning of Cushing's anti-death penalty
advocacy. In 1998, he presented his 1st death penalty repeal bill to the state
legislature.
21 years later, the repeal effort long championed by Cushing and others has
finally paid off.
Bipartisan support was a major factor. "Ending New Hampshire's death penalty
would not have been possible without significant Republican support," says
Hannah Cox, national manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death
Penalty. "Increasing numbers of GOP state lawmakers believe capital punishment
does not align with their conservative values of limited government, fiscal
responsibility, and valuing life."
The Republican side also had its own figure who was able to speak from the
victim's point of view. Sen. Ruth Ward's (R–Stoddard) father was taken from her
family by violence when she was only 7 years old. While announcing her support
for repealing the death penalty, she said, "My mother forgave whoever it was,
and I will vote in favor of this bill."
Another factor contributing to the repeal law's success, says Cushing, is the
general political attitude of the state's people. "New Hampshire has a really
incredibly strong libertarian streak," Cushing points out. "In a state where we
don't trust the government to collect taxes or plow snow, certainly a lot of
people don't want to give the government the power to have a public employee
kill incapacitated prisoners."
Cushing has faith that the remaining 29 states that still use capital
punishment will eventually change their laws too.
"I know as a state legislator and as someone who's traveled around, who works
on a national level on criminal justice policy with other legislators, that the
trend is rapidly [going] away from the death penalty," Cushing says. "And I
think that you'll see that increase in the coming few years."
(source: reason.com)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Bipartisan effort under way in state House to repeal death penalty----New
Hampshire joins the growing list of states to ban the death penalty. Who's
next?
2 state lawmakers who don't usually see eye to eye are putting their
differences aside for a common goal — repealing the death penalty.
State Rep. Christopher Rabb, D-Philadelphia County, and Frank Ryan, R-Lebanon
County, are cobbling together a bipartisan coalition and drafting legislation
in an attempt to eliminate capital punishment in Pennsylvania.
"One innocent life taken at the hands of the state is too many," the bill memo
states.
Rabb said it was important for this repeal to be with "bipartisan support."
"It cannot be overstated how rare it is that I'm shoulder to shoulder with a
conservative Republican," he said. "Getting two people who are so far apart on
the spectrum is like seeing a unicorn riding a leprechaun."
Criminal justice reform is a "big issue" for Republicans, but it's his primary
focus to go about it "the right way," Ryan said, citing his faith as a primary
motivation for the effort.
"We didn't want to create a problem somewhere else," he said. "We want to make
sure there's no unintended consequences or a knee(-jerk) reaction later on."
Capital punishment has long been a contentious issue in Pennsylvania. Gov. Tom
Wolf, a Democrat, halted all executions in 2015. The issue often causes rifts
within party caucuses. Some prosecutors criticized Wolf's moratorium, while
others backed it.
This past year, Wolf's GOP challenger, Scott Wagner, lampooned Wolf's
moratorium.
But Rabb listed 5 reasons why the death penalty in Pennsylvania should be
repealed.
One is the expense: The 3 most recent executions in Pennsylvania — 2 in 1995
and 1 in 199 — cost taxpayers $816 million. It's estimated death penalty cases
cost $2 million more than non-death penalty cases, according to the repeal.
It's also "cruel" to the victims' family, Ryan said.
"There's so many appeals that it reopens wounds every time," he said. "I can't
imagine what that would be like."
It's also not a deterrent, the bill sponsors say. Homicide rates in states with
the death penalty are about 18% higher than those without.
And the death penalty disproportionately hammers the poor, Ryan contends.
"If you don't have the money to defend yourself, you're on your own," he said.
There are nearly 140 people on death row in Pennsylvania, says the state
Department of Corrections.
Twice as many convicts in Pennsylvania have been exonerated than have been
executed in recent years. The bill's sponsors contend that fact alone means the
chances of executing an innocent individual are unacceptably high.
Mike Straub, spokesman for the House GOP caucus, said it's too early to gauge
how much support the legislation would receive among that chamber's majority
party. There's yet to be talk of a companion bill in the Senate.
"If you watch what goes on day to day in Harrisburg, most work together far
more than they disagree," Straub said. "The folks here are a little bit more
connected regardless of party."
The short term goal for the repeal is to have a hearing by the end of the
calendar year, Ryan said.
Until then, they're searching for cosponsors, currently 16, before introducing
the repeal, Rabb said.
Ryan said he was "surprised" there wasn't much blow back when the bill memo was
filed, but he acknowledges there are colleagues who disagree with him.
Kathleen Lucas, the executive director of the Pennsylvania for Alternatives to
the Death Penalty (PADP), said she supports Rabb's and Ryan's death penalty
repeal.
"It's a matter of fairness," Lucas said. "We want a just system where everyone
is treated fairly, and we don't have that right now."
Half of the states have the death penalty on the books, though California Gov.
Gavin Newsom has also issued a moratorium on it. Pennsylvania is the only state
in the Northeast with the death penalty.
(source: York Dispatch)
FLORIDA:
Death penalty cases in Florida cost taxpayers millions
“I think under the current status of the law, Florida sentencing structure is
valid and your motion is denied,” said Lee County Judge Bruce Kyle.
The defense delivered more than 15 motions in front of the Judge Kyle Friday
afternoon, in the Theresa Sievers murder case. One of the motions denied was to
exempt the death penalty for defendants Mark Sievers and Jimmy Rodgers.
A Capital murder trial comes with a big price tag for taxpayers — “cost wise,
if your cost conscious it’s infinitely much more expensive to pursue the death
penalty,” said Attorney Michael Raheb.
According to a survey on SupremeCourt.gov enforcing the death penalty costs $51
million more than it would cost to punish all first-degree murders with life in
prison without parole. This averages out to $24 million dollars per death
penalty case.
And Attorney Michael Raheb explains since it’s a state case those millions are
coming out of your pocket, “the cost of dispositions, litigations, the jury’s,
the state of florida that’s prosecuting it.”
Fox 4 did some digging on the Florida Bar website and found out as of January
2018, Florida has about 390 peple on death row, which equals about $9.36
billion in tax payer money across the state.
“14-15 years I believe is the average from the date of arrest to ultimately all
the appeals, you got a person’s life, no matter what you think of the people
whether you believe they committed this crime of not, they deserve to be
defended properly,” said Raheb.
Jury selection will start on October 1st, the defense expecting 500 potential
jurors. The Sievers trial is expected to last 4 to 6 weeks.
(source: WFTX news)
ALABAMA:
Lee County DA to seek death penalty in shooting death of Auburn PD’s William
Buechner
Lee County District Attorney Brandon Hughes will seek the death penalty in the
Sunday night shooting of 3 Auburn Police Department officers.
In a press conference Monday morning, local officials identified the officer
who died as William Buechner, a decorated Auburn PD veteran.
They also confirmed the other two officers, who are expected to recover from
their injuries, as Auburn Police officers Webb Sistrunk, serving since 2011,
and Evan Elliott, serving less than a year on the force.
The Opelika-Auburn News reported that Hughes confirmed the suspect, who was
captured after a manhunt that lasted over eight hours, will face a capital
murder charge. The district attorney will seek the death penalty if the suspect
is convicted on that charge.
In the press conference, Auburn Mayor Ron Anders and Police Chief Paul Register
thanked the police officers for their courageous service and asked for prayers
for the families, loved ones and community involved.
The officers were responding to a domestic disturbance call at a mobile home
park in the 3000 block of Auburn’s Wire Road when the shooting occurred.
Few details have been released about the suspect, however, the Opelika-Auburn
News reported he served in the military, per officials. The suspect was
reportedly wearing camouflage, body armor and a helmet during the shooting.
WSFA reported that the suspect has also been charged with 3 counts of attempted
murder and 1 count of 2nd-degree domestic violence. He is being held without
bond.
Buechner began serving his community and the people of Alabama through the
Auburn Police Department in April 2006. He is reportedly the first officer in
Auburn PD’s history to be killed in the line of duty.
(source: yellowhammernews.com)
**************************
Lawyers fear prosecutors are fishing for info as they house death row inmate
with their client
The attorneys for a Dothan man charged in the brutal 1999 murder of 2 high
school senior girls says investigators tried to use a death row inmate to
strengthen their case against the accused killer.
Coley McCraney, 45, was arrested in March in the deaths of Tracie Hawlett and
J.B. Beasley. He is charged with 1 count of rape and 5 counts of capital
murder.
For the past 20 years, McCraney led a crime-free life, maintaining a family and
keeping a low profile but all the while harboring a deadly secret, authorities
said. The murders of the girls haunted the Wiregrass region for decades and had
been given national exposure on television networks throughout the years. The
friends, both 17, were on their way home from Beasley’s birthday party when
they got lost in Ozark on July 31, 1999.
On Friday, McCraney’s attorneys filed a motion Dale County Circuit Court asking
that their client be separated from death row Inmate Emanuel Gissendanner, who
was moved to the Dale County Jail June 13 for an upcoming court date.
According to the motion, Gissendanner was taken from Holman Prison in Atmore
directly to the Ozark Police Department and questioned by Lt. Michael Bryan
about any knowledge he had involving McCraney. Bryan, the attorneys said, is
not with an agency currently working on Gissendanner’s case.
“Gissendanner was instructed by Michael Bryan, ‘we need something, anything we
can get on this guy,’’’ the motion states. Gissendanner was then taken to the
Dale County Jail and placed in a cell with McCraney in an attempt to obtain
knowledge or a confession, the attorneys assert.
“Inmate Gissendanner has been sentenced to death and has the ultimate reason to
assist law enforcement and, in the interest of justice, the 2 inmates should be
separated,’’ they wrote.
Ozark Police Chief Marlos Walker said they have questioned a number of people
in connection with the case against McCraney. McCraney and Gissendanner were
acquaintances years ago, which is why police talked with him, the chief said.
Gissendanner, 43, has been on Alabama’s death row for 15 years for the murder
of Margaret Snellgrove in 2001 during a robbery and kidnapping. In January, the
Alabama Supreme Court announced that Gissendanner will receive a new trial.
After Gissendanner’s conviction, his lawyers filed a direct appeal and in 2007,
the Dale County judge who sentenced Gissendanner to death granted him a new
trial based on claims of ineffective counsel.
“In his 70-page order, Judge [Kenneth] Quattlebaum found that Gissendanner's
defense counsel were deficient in both the guilt phase and the penalty phase of
the trial. The judge found that defense counsel failed to investigate and to
prepare for trial. The judge also found that the State had violated [case law]
in failing to disclose handwriting samples to the defense,” the state’s highest
court noted.
A hearing in the Gissendanner case is set for next week.
McCraney became a suspect in the Hawlett and Beasley murders after a DNA match
was found through a family DNA website in a geneology search. McCraney had no
previous criminal record.
According to Hawlett’s mother, Carole Roberts, the girls had been lost that
night and could not understand the directions they were given before stopping
at a convenience store in Ozark. They had been on their way home from the party
in Headland.
The girls were found the next day inside the trunk of Beasley’s black Mazda
929, on the side of Herring Avenue about one block away from the Dale County
hospital. Both girls had each been shot once to the head, but there were no
other signs of foul play. The girls’ jewelry, purses and money were not missing
and state forensics experts at the time said neither girl had been raped.
Within a week, police announced a nationwide, 24-hour hotline to receive tips
and a reward fund quickly grew to $15,000 in donations from area residents.
Then-Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman announced another $10,000 in state funds.
In the years immediately after the killing, investigators conducted more than
500 interviews, overworked forensics experts and tested the DNA of more than 70
potential suspects, according to reports.
(source: al.com)
CALIFORNIA:
Death sentence upheld for Camarillo mom who killed 3 of her kids
The California Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously upheld the death sentence
of a Camarillo mother who killed 3 of her children in 1999.
The appeal decision affirmed the sentence of Socorro “Cora” Susan Caro, now 62,
in the shooting deaths of her children Joey, 11, Michael, 8, and Christopher,
5. Her 1-year-old son was unharmed in the Nov. 22, 1999, incident at their
Camarillo home.
Ventura County Senior Deputy District Attorney Cheryl Temple said Thursday she
was relieved to hear the Supreme Court upheld the original decision.
“I don’t doubt the rightness of the verdict or sentence, and I’m glad to see
the Supreme Court thought the case was fairly tried,” said Temple, who
prosecuted the case back in 2001 with James Ellison.
How it happened
The shooting occurred after Caro and her husband, Xavier, got into a dispute at
dinner. It ended with him leaving the house for his office in Northridge.
The two had been drinking and facing problems in their marriage, and Caro said
during the original trial that she believed her husband was leaving her for
good.
Upon his return home several hours later, he found the 3 children dead and his
wife injured with gunshot wounds.
“It was a horrific, awful crime,” Temple said.
Caro underwent multiple brain surgeries for the self-inflicted injuries.
During her trial, she pleaded not guilty due to insanity and argued she was
clinically depressed. A blood test found she had Xanax, Prozac and alcohol in
her system on the night of the shootings.
However, blood-spatter evidence, among other factors, led a jury to convict
Caro of the murders.
What the high court said
The Supreme Court appeal of the case targeted multiple issues, from the
selection of jurors to using Caro’s clothes from the night of the shooting as
evidence in the trial.
The appeal also argued she was not read her Miranda rights before two
statements used in the trial about how she received bruises the night of the
murders. The Supreme Court ultimately found the statements inconsequential in
their effect on the original trial.
“In considering the picture that emerges from this evidence, we are persuaded
beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury would not have reached a different
result in this case had the court excluded the challenged statements,” states
the decision authored by Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar.
Temple said despite the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold her sentence, Caro
has a few remaining options to appeal before an execution date is set. That may
be a moot issue for the time being, since Gov. Gavin Newsom has imposed a
moratorium on executions.
In the meantime, she will remain imprisoned at the Central California Women’s
Facility in Chowchilla with the rest of the state’s female California death row
inmates.
(source: Ventura County Star)
*****************
Reader reluctantly accepts governor’s death penalty moratorium
I had a dear friend and employee (also a wife and mother of a 2- year-old son),
who was raped and brutally murdered in 1988 by a man who was captured the same
night, then tried and convicted on solid evidence against him and sentenced to
death in 1990.
When Governor Newsom ended the capital punishment penalties of all California
death row inmates my first reaction was extreme anger that the killer of my
friend was being spared the penalty a jury rightly meted out to him so long
ago.
I’ve come to reconsider my reaction, however, since I now accept that there was
never going to be another execution in California. The governor is simply
recognizing this stark reality and making the cost-saving move to eliminate the
huge taxpayer burden of continuing to keep the death penalty charade in our
state going on.
I have agonized for nearly 30 years over the killer of my friend being
sentenced to die and then sitting in his cell without even one execution being
scheduled. His lawyer never even tried to appeal the conviction. With his fate
of life without parole seemingly set there is a sort of exhausted resignation I
now feel, knowing it’s the closest thing to justice I’m ever going to get.
Doug Weiskopf
Burbank
(source: Letter to the Editor, Los Angeles Times)
**********************
L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy Killed in Alhambra Shooting Mourned at Vigil
Hundreds of mourners gathered Thursday to honor the life of a Los Angeles
County Sheriff's Department deputy who was fatally shot in an apparently random
attack at a restaurant in Alhambra earlier this week.
Joe Solano, 50, died Wednesday after remaining hospitalized in grave condition
since Monday night's shooting at a Jack in the Box location in the 2500 block
West Valley Boulevard. He was a 13-year veteran of the Sheriff's Department.
Rhett Mckenzie Nelson, 30, of Utah is accused of shooting another man to death
in Los Angeles about an hour before shooting Solano in the back of the head as
the off-duty deputy stood in line at the fast-food restaurant, Los Angeles
County Sheriff's Department officials said. Investigators also suspect Nelson
in a string of Southern California robberies.
Solano was not in uniform when he was shot, and investigators said the attack
may have been random.
Nelson faces charges including murder, attempted murder and robbery, according
to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. He could potentially face
the death penalty if convicted as charged. Prosecutors of not yet decided
whether they will seek capital punishment in the case.
(source: KTLA news)
USA:
When We Kill----Everything you think you know about the death penalty is wrong.
“I hereby sentence you to death.”
The words of Judge Clifford B. Shepard filled the courtroom in Jacksonville,
Fla., on Oct. 27, 1976. Shepard was sentencing Clifford Williams Jr., whom a
jury had just found guilty of entering a woman’s house with a spare key
entrusted to him and then shooting her dead from the foot of her bed.
It was a bizarre verdict, for forensics showed that the shots had been fired
from outside the house — through the window, breaking the glass and piercing
curtains and a screen. Moreover, at the time of the shooting Williams had been
attending a birthday party, an alibi confirmed by many in attendance.
That didn’t matter, for Williams was an indigent black man with a public
defender who didn’t call a single witness. The jury didn’t realize that he had
an alibi or that the bullets had come from outside the house.
Judge Shepard, who was sometimes mocked in the legal community for harsh
rulings and a weak intellect, ordered that “you be put to death in the electric
chair by having electrical current passed through your body in such amount and
frequency until you are rendered dead.”
The sentence came just 3 months after the Supreme Court had restored the death
penalty in the United States, in the case of Gregg v. Georgia, saying that new
safeguards meant that capital punishment would be applied only to the worst of
the worst. “No longer can a jury wantonly and freakishly impose the death
sentence,” Justice Potter Stewart declared in the majority opinion.
Fast forward 4 decades. Williams, now 76, was freed in March along with his
co-defendant and nephew, Hubert Nathan Myers; as they emerged from prison, 2
frail and elderly men, Myers knelt and kissed the ground. They had each spent
42 years in prison for a murder they did not commit — spanning the entire
period of the modern death penalty and its supposed safeguards.
Williams survived because the Florida Supreme Court had overturned his death
sentence by a single vote, in a 4-to-3 decision, back in 1980, effectively
giving him life in prison instead. Then in 2016 Jacksonville elected a
reformist prosecutor who reviewed this old case and concluded, “There is no
credible evidence of guilt, and likewise there is substantial credible evidence
to find these men are innocent.” A judge, noting that she had been only 3 years
old at the time of the convictions, finally released the men from a justice
system that had treated them wantonly and freakishly.
President Trump is now calling for expanding the death penalty so it would
apply to drug dealers and those who kill police officers, with an expedited
trial and quick execution. A majority of Americans (56 percent, according to
Gallup) favor capital punishment, believing that it will deter offenders or
save money and presuming that it will apply only to the vilest criminals and
that mistakes are not a serious risk.
All these assumptions are wrong.
My interest in the death penalty arises partly from a mistake of my own. At the
beginning of 2000, I spoke to Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project, who told
me about a white man on death row in Texas, Cameron Todd Willingham, whom he
believed to be innocent. I discussed with editors the possibility of doing a
deep dive into the case but let myself be lured away by the sirens of that
year’s Iowa caucuses instead. I never wrote about Willingham, and he was
executed in 2004.
Subsequent evidence strongly suggests that not only was Willingham innocent but
that no crime was even committed. He had been convicted of splashing gasoline
around his house and then setting it on fire to murder his three little
children. But experts later showed that there was no gasoline and that the fire
was simply an accident that probably started with faulty wiring.
Imagine what it would be like to lose the people you loved most, then be
convicted of murdering them and finally be strapped to a gurney and executed by
lethal injection. A powerful new movie, “Trial by Fire,” with Laura Dern, tells
the story of the Willingham case, and I hope it will prick the national
conscience.
Partly because I failed to investigate Willingham’s story, I have thrown myself
into the case of Kevin Cooper, a black man on death row in California whose
case reeks of prosecutorial misconduct. Cooper was convicted of the 1983 home
invasion and murder of four white people in Chino Hills, Calif. After an
extensive investigation, I argued last year that the San Bernardino County
Sheriff’s Department may have framed Cooper.
Republican and Democratic politicians alike — including the state’s former
attorney general Kamala Harris, now running for president — refused for years
to allow advanced DNA testing in Cooper’s case, even though his lawyers would
have paid for it. (Harris has apologized and says she now favors testing.) This
summer crucial evidence from Cooper’s case is finally being subjected to that
testing, 36 years after the murders. We may know the results by September.
DNA testing accounts for many of the 165 exonerations and prison releases
because of dubious evidence since 1973, by the count of the Death Penalty
Information Center.
Usually, though, there isn’t DNA available that can be tested to determine
guilt or innocence. As in the Clifford Williams case, it’s more murky. The
crucial evidence in his conviction came from an eyewitness who may have been a
pathological liar.
But let’s be clear: The great majority of people executed are guilty. They have
frequently killed with the utmost savagery.
Scotty Morrow, a black man from Georgia, indisputably committed a brutal murder
in 1994. He fought with his ex-girlfriend, Barbara Ann Young, and, as her
5-year-old son watched, shot her in the head and killed her.
Morrow also shot dead another woman in the house, Tonya Woods, and shot a third
woman, LaToya Horne, in the face. Horne was able to stagger down the road
before collapsing. She suffered permanent injuries.
Not surprisingly, Morrow was sentenced to die — but let me throw in a bit of
complexity.
Morrow grew up in a violent home where he was raped and beaten as a child, and
he never received mental health support to deal with his trauma; that justifies
nothing but may help explain something. He desperately wanted to reconcile with
Young, and when told that she had been exploiting him for money while she
waited for her “real man” to return from prison, he “just snapped,” as he put
it. After the murders, he prepared to commit suicide but was arrested; he then
prayed daily for 25 years for the families of the women he had killed.
“Rarely in my career as a prosecutor and a judge did I witness this level of
remorse and acceptance of responsibility,” reflected Judge Wendy Shoob, one of
the judges who dealt with Morrow’s appeals over two decades. The only
disciplinary report against him in a quarter-century in prison was for
intervening in a fight to protect an inmate who was being stabbed with a shank.
Several correctional officers wrote letters appealing that his life be spared.
“Scotty Morrow is literally the only inmate I would do this for,” said a
correctional officer with 16 years in law enforcement, Nathan Adkerson. Sgt.
Tajuana Burns described him as “just a really nice man.” Lindsey Veal Jr., a
mental health counselor, said Morrow “actually makes the prison safer,” and
added: “There are very few inmates I can call fully rehabilitated. But, without
question, Scotty is one of them.”
William L. Buchanan, a psychologist who worked with Morrow, recalled that one
correctional officer “looked me straight in the eyes and stated to me, ‘This is
the best man in the world.’”
Yet in the end the State of Georgia did with meticulous planning what Morrow
had done impulsively in a spasm of fury. It executed him last month by lethal
injection. In his last moments in the execution chamber, Morrow apologized
again to the families of the women he had killed, adding to the 20 witnesses:
“I’m truly sorry for all that happened. I hope that you all recover and have
healing.”
Was the man strapped down on a gurney truly the same person as the enraged
brute who had shot dead Young and Woods 25 years earlier?
The death penalty has been applied to at least 222 crimes in the Anglo-American
legal system, including marrying a Jew and stealing a rabbit. For a time in
America, stealing grapes was punishable by death. So was witchcraft, as we know
from the Salem trials.
For centuries executions were public affairs. The last public execution in the
United States was in August 1936 in Owensboro, Ky. Perhaps 20,000 people
gathered to see a black man, Rainey Bethea, 22, hanged for the rape and murder
of a white woman. The carnival atmosphere and “hanging parties” led Kentucky to
ban public executions, although public lynchings continued.
The argument for public punishment was that it deters crime, and even today a
common argument in favor of executions is that through deterrence they save the
lives of innocent people. Is that true?
One 2003 study purported to find that each execution deterred five murders,
while opponents of the death penalty sometimes argue the opposite, that
executions brutalize society and lead to additional murders. Statisticians and
criminologists have studied this issue carefully for decades, and the general
conclusion is that executions have no greater deterrent effect than long prison
sentences.
Murder rates are actually lower in states without the death penalty than in
those with it. Some jurisdictions have periodically banned the death penalty
and then brought it back, and this back-and-forth seems to have zero impact on
homicide rates. Scholars have also examined whether there is a decline in
homicides after well-publicized death verdicts or executions; there is not.
One rigorous 2012 study published by the American Economic Review found no
clear deterrent effect and noted that depending on the statistical model used,
one could conclude that each execution saves 21 lives or causes an additional
63 murders. Note also that a 2008 poll of leading criminologists found that
only 5 % believed that capital punishment was an effective deterrent; 88 %
believed the opposite.
Meanwhile, the experts polled in that survey agreed that death penalty debates
distract legislatures from policies that actually would reduce crime — like
lead removal, early childhood programs, career academies, job training, gang
violence initiatives like Cure Violence, and programs for at-risk young people
like Becoming a Man.
Let’s also examine another argument of death penalty proponents: that it’s not
worth spending hundreds of thousands of dollars supporting brutal killers for
the rest of their lives: Execute them and use the savings for better purposes!
This argument, too, is groundless: Capital punishment is far more expensive
than life prison terms. This is because pretrial preparations, jury selection
and appeals are all more expensive in capital cases, and death row confinement
is more costly than incarceration for the general prison population. One 2017
study by several criminologists found that on average, each death sentence
costs taxpayers $700,000 more than life imprisonment.
“It is a simple fact that seeking the death penalty is more expensive,”
concluded that inquiry, by Peter A. Collins of Seattle University and
colleagues. “There is not one credible study, to our knowledge, that presents
evidence to the contrary.”
One reason death penalty cases are expensive is that the defense is given more
time and resources to prepare the case, and appeals are automatic. So you would
think that innocent people are less likely to be put to death than to serve
life sentences.
That may be true. Defense lawyers grimly joke that if you’re falsely convicted
of a crime, it’s best to be sentenced to death — because then at least you will
get pro bono lawyers and media scrutiny that may increase the prospect of
exoneration. Researchers find that an exoneration is 130 times more likely for
a death sentence than for other sentences.
Yet if death penalties get unusual scrutiny, there are countervailing forces.
Researchers find that juries are more likely to recommend the death penalty for
defendants who are perceived as showing a lack of remorse — and innocent people
don’t display remorse. A 2nd factor is that death sentences are often sought
after particularly brutal crimes that create great pressure on the police to
find the culprits.
In 1989, for example, after 5 black teenagers in New York City were arrested in
the rape and beating of a white investment banker who became known as the
Central Park Jogger, Donald Trump bought full-page newspaper ads calling for
the death penalty. The teenagers were later exonerated when DNA evidence and a
confession by another man showed that they were innocent of that crime.
One peer-reviewed study suggested that at least 4.1 percent of those sentenced
to death in the United States are innocent. With more than 2,700 Americans on
death row, that would imply that more than 110 innocent people are awaiting
execution. The Supreme Court in 1976 restored the death penalty partly because
it was confident that safeguards — such as meticulous rules about when death
penalties could be applied — would eliminate the arbitrary application of
capital punishment. In fact, “its defining feature is still its arbitrariness,”
noted Jill Benton, an Atlanta lawyer who defends capital punishment cases.
Racial bias affects every aspect of the criminal justice system, and
researchers have found that black defendants not only do worse than white
defendants, but also that blacks with dark complexions fare worse than those
with light ones. Of prisoners now on death row, 42 percent are black, 42
percent are white, and most of the remainder are Hispanic.
Bias is not just found in judges and prosecutors. In Washington State,
researchers found that juries were four times as likely to recommend a death
sentence for a black defendant as for a similar white defendant. The same study
also underscored how random capital punishment is. In Thurston County in
Washington, prosecutors sought the death penalty in 67 % of aggravated murder
cases; in Okanogan County, 130 miles away, zero percent. Over all in America, 2
% of counties account for a majority of death penalty cases. Researchers have
found that whether Texas prosecutors seek the death penalty depends partly on
how The Houston Chronicle covers the case. They have also found that if a jury
has a majority of women, it is less likely to recommend death.
Justice is supposed to be blind. But it is not supposed to be random.
Aside from deterring murders and saving money, a third common argument for the
death penalty is that it is appropriate retribution for a heinous crime, a way
for a community to rise up and express its revulsion for some brutal act. We
dishonor victims, so the argument goes, if we simply lock away a monster.
This is an argument that cannot be countered with data, for it rests on values.
It has to be said, though, that the history of executions as an expression of a
community’s moral values is not an inspiring one. Such values-based arguments
have been made through history for stoning adulterers and burning witches —
and, in Japan in the 1600s, boiling Christians alive.
Just this spring, the small Southeast Asian sultanate of Brunei defended the
stoning to death of gays, adulterers and heretics as an expression of community
values intended “to educate, respect and protect the legitimate rights of all
individuals.”
Strom Thurmond, the South Carolina senator who was the longest-serving
Republican in congressional history, used to boast that as a judge in the 1930s
and 1940s, he had sentenced 4 men to death; he saw capital punishment as
reflecting community values and had no regrets, for the men got what they
deserved.
A South Carolina lawyer, David Bruck, looked into those four death sentences. 3
involved black men: 1 who was deranged from syphilis, 1 who was accused of rape
by a white woman but had many alibi witnesses and may have been innocent, and 1
who in self-defense shot an armed white man who attacked him. The 4th was a
white man who, in a rage, killed his girlfriend.
At the time, it may have seemed to Thurmond and the white community
self-evident that these 4 executions were righteous. Today the first 3 seem
hideous examples of racist injustice. Our standards and perspectives have
changed — but what is unique about the death penalty is that a person can never
be un-executed.
Today the Supreme Court is caught in a bitter feud over the death penalty, with
a conservative majority approving executions and fretting about “unjustified
delay” in carrying them out, as Justice Neil M. Gorsuch put it in April. In her
dissent in that case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued, “There are higher values
than ensuring that executions run on time.”
The result of this division is that the court is unlikely to constrain
executions significantly. Yet there is some recognition that the system is
faulty, and capital punishment is becoming more rare. In 1998, there were 295
death sentences in this country; in 2018, just 42. In California, which has the
largest death row, Gov. Gavin Newsom has bravely declared a moratorium on
executions.
The case of Kenneth Reams, a man on death row in Arkansas, encapsulates the
cruelty and absurdity of this system. It “shows clearly all the problems with a
democratic society using the death penalty,” said George H. Kendall, a lawyer
who is helping Reams challenge his sentence.
Reams was a black kid born to an impoverished 15-year-old mom. He had a
turbulent childhood, running away from home at 13 and dabbling in juvenile
crime. Then at 18 he helped a friend who needed money to pay for his graduation
cap and gown: They robbed a white man named Gary Turner at an A.T.M., and the
friend shot and killed Turner.
Reams was defended by a part-time lawyer with several hundred other cases and
no capital punishment experience, and there were indications that the jury was
manipulated to underrepresent African-Americans. In the end, Reams was
sentenced to death.
Last year the Arkansas Supreme Court overturned the death penalty for Reams,
but he remains on death row pending new hearings and a new sentence. Even if
you believe it is appropriate to execute an unarmed robber because his partner
shot someone, even if you’re unconcerned by a criminal’s troubled childhood,
even if racial manipulation of juries doesn’t bother you, there remains the
basic question of what the execution of someone like Reams would accomplish —
and whether, more than a quarter-century later, that 18-year-old offender still
exists to execute.
“People change,” Kendall told me. “Kenny was a reckless, out-of-control kid
who, while barely 18 at the time of the crime, had the mental maturity of a
14-year-old. His maturation had been slowed by years of horrible neglect and
abuse.” Behind bars, Reams has grown into an accomplished artist who encourages
other prisoners to express themselves through poetry.
That’s something you encounter again and again: People evolve. So because of
the glacial pace of “justice,” we sometimes execute a graying, kindly inmate
quite different from the violent felon he once was. They may have the same DNA
and fingerprints, but their hearts are not the same.
There is no evidence that the death penalty deters. It costs hundreds of
thousands of additional dollars per prisoner. It is steeped in caprice,
arbitrariness and racial bias. It is fallible — and when it fails, it
undermines the legitimacy of our judicial system.
Some day, I believe, Americans will look back at today’s executions just as we
now look back at witch burnings and public hangings, and they will ask, What
were they thinking?
In Jacksonville, Clifford Williams Jr. is now trying to get used to freedom
after 42 years as a convicted murderer. Buddy Schulz, his lawyer, told me what
happened when he visited Williams in prison and told him that he would be
released.
“He cried for the first 10 minutes,” Schulz recalled. “For the next 10 minutes,
he laughed. And finally after 20 minutes, he said, ‘Mr. Buddy, I hope you don’t
think me rude, but I’ve got to go to the chapel and thank God.’”
Schulz added: “I’m personally of the opinion that the death penalty serves no
purpose whatsoever, and I think it’s immoral. This is an example. The judge
imposed it and but for a close decision by the Supreme Court, here would have
been an innocent man who would have lost his life.”
I reached out to Henry M. Coxe III, who 4 decades ago prosecuted the case
against Williams and won the death sentence. I figured that he would see the
issue differently, but he didn’t. In fact, he was relieved that of the 5 death
sentences he won as a prosecutor, none were ever carried out.
“In hindsight, I don’t think the death penalty serves a meaningful purpose,” he
told me.
Williams is now living with his daughter in Jacksonville, taking “one day at a
time,” he told me. The fact that he knew he was innocent made it immeasurably
harder, he said, but he added, “I was trusting God would deal with it.”
Calm and mild-mannered, he didn’t want to talk about his decades in prison. “It
wasn’t a nice time,” he explained mildly. I told him that I was surprised he
didn’t sound bitter. Williams laughed. “Well, I feel a little bit bitter,” he
said.
I asked about the death penalty, and there was a long silence. I thought he
hadn’t heard, so I asked again, and then I realized that he was struggling with
his emotions.
“Too many people,” he said, suddenly sounding exhausted, “are getting the death
sentence who don’t deserve it.”
(source: Opinion; Nicholas Kristof----New York Times)
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