Sept. 5
ILLINOIS:
Republican lawmaker to introduce death penalty bill
A Republican state lawmaker is calling for the resurrection of the death
penalty in Illinois after two mass shootings in the U.S. and recent gun
violence in Chicago.
Barrington Hills Rep. David McSweeney said he will either sponsor or co-sponsor
some version of a measure overturning the moratorium former Gov. Pat Quinn
placed on capital punishment 8 years ago.
At the time, Quinn said Illinois should not have a system in place that might
result in the erroneous execution of citizens. McSweeney said “eliminating the
death penalty was a terrible mistake.”
“It has been a complete failure,” he said.
Mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, on Aug. 3-4 killed 31
people. In Chicago last weekend, 4 people were killed and 43 injured in
gun-related violence, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Texas officials are pursuing the death penalty against the coward racist who
targeted Mexican Americans in El Paso. We should have that tool in the state of
Illinois,” McSweeney said. “The time to act is now, because the death penalty
is a deterrent that we need to protect our citizens. No one can argue the state
of Illinois is a model for how to fight crime.”
In part, Quinn’s argument for signing legislation making Illinois the 16th
state to abolish capital punishment was the lack of advancement in DNA testing,
McSweeney said. But DNA technology has progressed “light years” beyond its
stage in 2011, he added, to be the “key to ensuring there are no wrongful
convictions.”
“I want to make sure there are safeguards,” he said.
According to a Pew Research Center study published last year, 54 % of Americans
support capital punishment for those convicted of murder. That number is up
from 49 % 2 years prior. 39 % of people oppose the death penalty.
McSweeney is not the only Illinois politician to express support for capital
punishment. In an unexpected move last year, former Republican Gov. Bruce
Rauner proposed reviving the death penalty by using his amendatory veto power
on a firearms measure that needed his signature to become law.
The legislation would have extended the 72-hour waiting period for gun
purchases to include assault weapons. Rauner wrote in his veto message that the
proposal did not go far enough to prevent gun violence incidents and other
public safety concerns.
His addition would have created a new category of crime — a “death penalty
murder” — that encompassed anyone 18 or older who killed 2 or more people
“without lawful justification” or if the victim is a police officer.
“The ultimate public safety objectives of this bill would be better served with
comprehensive solutions,” he wrote, which included a ban on bump stocks, the
addition of mental health and law enforcement personnel in schools, and
“reintroducing the death penalty for the most egregious cases.”
The General Assembly did not vote on Rauner’s proposal, effectively running out
the clock on the bill.
Before Rauner’s push last year, Illinois’ staunchest supporter of the death
penalty in state politics arguably was former Republican Rep. John Cavaletto,
from Salem.
Cavaletto’s last iteration of a measure to reinstate the death penalty would
have applied to persons older than 18 who were convicted of first-degree murder
for killing a police officer, firefighter, employee of a correctional agency,
or a child; or for killing more than 1 person.
Cavaletto’s legislation never moved out of committee, and McSweeney said he
knows he faces an uphill battle with the Democratically-controlled General
Assembly.
“This one will have a lot of opposition. I don’t think it’s going to happen in
the short run, but it’s an issue I will continue to focus on - through public
education and through pointing out and proving the advances in DNA technology,”
he said. “I believe it’s the right thing to do.”
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat, filed legislation to strike the use of
capital punishment by the federal government. The move came after President
Donald Trump’s administration announced last month it would resume the use of
the death penalty for the 1st time in 16 years.
“Try as we might, we cannot escape the fact that the death penalty in America
is disproportionately imposed on minorities and poor people,” Durbin said in a
news release.
But McSweeney said a capital punishment measure is worth having a discussion
about in a committee hearing.
“There needs to be a coordinated effort between state officials and the federal
government to once and for all end this problem of violence in the city and in
our state,” he said. “We need to get tough on crime again in this state and
defend our citizens.”
(source: sj-r.com)
CALIFORNIA:
Death Penalty Phase Of Hollywood Ripper Trial Postponed -- Jurors will be asked
to recommend death or life in prison for the convicted double-murderer dubbed
the "Hollywood Ripper."
The penalty phase of trial -- in which jurors will be asked to recommend a
death sentence or life in prison for the convicted double-murderer dubbed the
"Hollywood Ripper" -- was delayed Wednesday for nearly a month.
The Los Angeles Superior Court panel that found Michael Gargiulo guilty of the
grisly slayings of two women in Hollywood and El Monte, along with an attack on
a woman in Santa Monica, had tentatively been due back in court next Monday for
the start of the trial's penalty phase.
Citing scheduling issues, Los Angeles Superior Court Larry Paul Fidler on
Wednesday pushed back the start of the penalty phase until Oct. 7.
Gargiulo, 43, was convicted Aug. 15 of first-degree murder for the Feb. 22,
2001, killing of 22-year-old Ashley Ellerin in her Hollywood home and the Dec.
1, 2005, slaying of 32-year-old Maria Bruno in her El Monte apartment. Ellerin
was killed hours before she was set to go out with actor Ashton Kutcher.
Jurors also found Gargiulo guilty of trying to kill 26-year-old Michelle
Murphy, who survived being stabbed eight times in her Santa Monica apartment in
April 2008, along with attempting to escape from jail, and found true the
special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder while lying in
wait.
The panel subsequently found that Gargiulo was sane at the time of the crimes.
The violent nature of the attacks earned the killer the moniker "Hollywood
Ripper." Deputy District Attorney Dan Akemon also referred to Gargiulo as the
"Boy Next Door" killer, noting that he lived near all of his victims and
telling jurors that Gargiulo targeted the women in "frenzied knife attacks"
that are "inextricably linked."
Gargiulo is awaiting trial separately in Illinois on a murder charge stemming
from the Aug. 14, 1993, slaying of 18-year-old Tricia Pacaccio, who was the
sister of one of his friends.
After Pacaccio was killed outside her home, Gargiulo moved to Hollywood, where
Ellerin's friends noticed that he showed up uninvited to a party and that he
seemed to be "fixated" on her, Akemon said.
Kutcher -- best known for his work on the TV sitcoms "That '70s Show" and "Two
and a Half Men" -- testified during the guilt phase of the trial that he had
spoken to Ellerin on the phone the afternoon she died and showed up at her home
2 hours later to pick her up. When she didn't answer her door, the actor said
he looked through a window and saw what he believed was red wine spilled on the
carpet. He said he left because he thought Ellerin had already gone out for the
night.
The young woman's roommate discovered her dead the next morning. She had been
stabbed 47 times in the hallway outside her bathroom in an attack in which she
was nearly decapitated.
Gargiulo subsequently moved to El Monte and lived in the same apartment complex
where Bruno was "mutilated" as she slept, Akemon said. The prosecutor said
Gargiulo stabbed the 32-year-old woman 17 times, cut off her breasts, tried to
remove her breast implants and placed one of her breasts on her mouth.
A blue surgical bootie found outside the apartment contained drops of her blood
along with Gargiulo's DNA around the elastic band, and another blue surgical
bootie appearing to be the same model was recovered from the attic of the El
Monte apartment he had rented, according to Akemon.
Gargiulo was able to escape detection until he accidentally cut himself with a
knife during the 2008 attack on Murphy -- near where he lived at the time in
Santa Monica -- and left a "blood trail" during that attack, Akemon said.
Gargiulo was arrested in June 2008 by Santa Monica police in connection with
the attack on Murphy and was subsequently charged with the killings of Ellerin
and Bruno. Authorities in Illinois charged him in 2011 with Pacaccio's slaying.
(source: patch.com)
OREGON:
Oregon death penalty bill may have impact on Douglas County murder trial
The trial of a Myrtle Creek man accused of aggravated murder is not scheduled
until September 2020, but the outcome of a possible special session of the
Oregon Legislature may impact whether Troy Russell Phelps is tried for
aggravated murder or a straight murder charge.
Prosecutors can’t comment on the case, but the difference could mean the state
chooses to pursue the death penalty for aggravated murder, or life in prison
for a murder charge if the defendant is convicted. It could be the first case
in Douglas County affected by the law, which is scheduled to go into effect on
Sept. 29.
Phelps, 34, is accused of killing 26-year-old Brandon Michael, also of Myrtle
Creek, on May 31, 2017, at Lawson Bar along the South Umpqua River south of Tri
City. Phelps is also accused of kidnapping Michael’s girlfriend and her
10-month-old baby and taking them to a residence in Myrtle Creek after Michael
was killed.
Phelps was in Douglas County Circuit Court on Tuesday as his attorney,
Elizabeth Baker, continued her efforts to subpoena some information from the
Oregon Department of Human Services to prepare her defense in the case.
The case is one of several around the state where prosecutors are waiting to
see if a bill to restrict the death penalty gets changed later this month in a
special session of the Oregon legislature.
During legislative hearings, lawmakers said the bill would not apply to
previous cases in which offenders had already been sentenced.
However, recently the Oregon Department of Justice said that the law could
potentially be applied to the 30 inmates on Oregon’s death row who can still
appeal. That means if a death row inmate’s case was sent back for resentencing,
Senate Bill 1013 could bar prosecutors from again seeking a death penalty if
the case does not fit the new death penalty guidelines set out in the bill.
Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, one of the main proponents of the bill, has
said that’s not what he intended and wants to change that part of it. The
legislature is expected to hold a special three-day session in 2 weeks with one
day of the session set aside to deal with making a change on the retroactive
part of the bill.
The new law would make it more difficult for prosecutors to seek the death
penalty, limiting the types of crimes that would be punishable by death. Only
the killing of a child under age 14, killing 2 or more people in a terrorist
act and killing a police officer, and convicted murderers who kill another
prisoner while incarcerated would be included.
But the change could act retroactively, affecting those already convicted of
aggravated murder, according to the Oregon solicitor general.
Douglas County District Attorney Rick Wesenberg said district attorneys around
the state have been left in limbo.
“We’re evaluating each case on a case-by-case basis, and we’ll evaluate whether
the new law changes if there is a special session,” Wesenberg said. “I feel
strongly and passionately that this decision should be made by the voters of
Oregon because the voters spoke in 1984 and should be allowed to speak again.”
(source: The News-Review)
USA:
Momentum to abolish the death penalty picks up among conservatives
A gathering of anti-death penalty activists this month in New Orleans aims to
kick-start a movement to abolish the death penalty at the state level. But
those attending are not capital punishment’s typical foes.
"I’m a lifetime Republican, a cradle conservative," E. King Alexander told
Facing South. "From a small government perspective, I think the government
needs to stay in its lane vis-à-vis the liberties of the people."
A public defender in Louisiana’s Calcasieu Parish and a member of his state
Republican Party’s Central Committee, Alexander is a part of Conservatives
Concerned About the Death Penalty. The national group was launched at the 2013
Conservative Political Action Conference as a project of Equal Justice USA, a
Brooklyn, New York-based nonprofit that works to break cycles of trauma through
justice system reforms.
Conservatives Concerned is holding its first annual national meeting from Sept.
6-8, giving like-minded anti-death penalty advocates from across the U.S. a
chance to meet, network, and begin organizing campaigns in their respective
states. People affiliated with the group hold various views on why the death
penalty should be abolished. For some, like Alexander, the taking of a life
represents government overreach. For others, it’s a cost issue, as carrying out
a capital sentence is often more expensive than life imprisonment. And for
those like Donald Triplett, the treasurer of North Carolina’s Swain County
Republican Party, it’s an extension of their fundamental values.
"I was raised to be pro-life," Triplett told Facing South. "Around my teenage
years, I started questioning — how far does that go?"
Support for capital punishment, once seen as a necessary credential for
politicians running on a tough-on-crime platform, has eroded in recent years as
evidence has mounted that the death penalty is ineffective at driving down
crime rates, unevenly and often arbitrarily applied, and that many innocent
people have been sent to death row. According to Gallup, which has asked about
the death penalty in its polls since the 1930s, 45 % of Americans believe the
death penalty is imposed unfairly, the highest level since Gallup began asking
that question in 2000. In all, 41 % of Americans now oppose the death penalty
for a person convicted of murder — the highest level since 1972, when the U.S.
Supreme Court in Furman v. Georgia briefly struck down capital punishment.
But there’s a deep partisan divide over the death penalty, one that makes its
abolition an uphill battle in red states. In 2018, the Pew Research Center
found that while just 35 % of Democrats and 52 % of independents support the
death penalty for people convicted of murder, 77 % of Republicans favor the
policy. While that number might seem high, it represents a 10-point dip from
1996, when 87 % of Republicans favored capital punishment. Support for the
death penalty among self-identified independents, who make up 38 % of the
voting population, is down more than 27 % points over the same time period.
The movement to abolish the death penalty continues to gain steam. New
Hampshire became the latest state to abolish capital punishment earlier this
year, with significant Republican support. 6 other states — Connecticut,
Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, and Washington — have gotten rid of
the death penalty since 2009, 2 through court rulings declaring state capital
punishment laws unconstitutional. Today, 21 states have rejected the death
penalty by law, and four more have done so through governor-imposed
moratoriums.
But every state in the South except West Virginia still has the death penalty.
The region includes two of the three states with the highest death row
populations: 349 people in Florida, and 218 in Texas. In Florida, 29 death row
prisoners have had their charges dismissed since the 1970s, the most in the
country.
Among the factors driving opposition to the death penalty are the dramatic
racial disparities in its administration. According to a Facing South analysis
of data compiled by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the U.S. Census Bureau’s
American Community Survey, 46 % of the South’s death row population is black,
although black people make up less than 20 % of the region’s total population.
Several studies, including one by the federal Government Accountability Office,
have shown that murder cases with white victims are more likely to result in
capital murder charges and the imposition of the death penalty than those with
victims of another race. And all too often, capital trials occur without a true
jury of one’s peers: Recent high-profile cases in Mississippi and North
Carolina have accused prosecutors of excluding black people from death penalty
juries based on their race.
"The death penalty continues to exist in the parts of America it exists in
because of racism and revenge," said Kenneth Reams, the founder of Who Decides,
a nonprofit that educates people about the history of the death penalty. He is
also a current resident of Arkansas’ death row; though the state’s Supreme
Court reversed his death sentence last year, he remains there pending further
proceedings. "It’s not just racism, but poverty. The death penalty affects
people in our society who are uneducated and poor."
Preaching outside the choir
It’s no accident that Conservatives Concerned’s first national meeting was set
for Louisiana. A coalition of groups from across that state’s political
spectrum recently came together to pass Amendment 2 overturning a Jim Crow-era
law that allowed people to be convicted of felonies by non-unanimous juries.
Alexander was part of that coalition, as was tea party Republican Rob Maness, a
former U.S. Senate candidate in Louisiana and a retired Air Force colonel who
sits on his parish’s GOP executive committee.
"We had to build a team of not just conservatives, but also independent and
moderate-type folks, and then the very liberal side of the Democrats, and
independents too, so across the spectrum of ideology," Maness told Facing
South. "We were able to build that team, because [reversing the amendment] was
the right thing to do."
The measure had support from the state Republican and Democratic parties, from
a slew of criminal justice reform organizations, and from the Louisiana branch
of the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group that has
pushed for criminal justice reform in other states as well. Advocates hope they
can keep this coalition together to push for the abolition of the death
penalty, either by way of another constitutional amendment or with a state
statute.
The upcoming meeting in New Orleans aims to connect Louisiana anti-death
penalty conservatives with each other and with others like them around the
country. It will also serve as a training ground to get other state-based
movements up and running with sessions teaching advocates how to talk to
legislators and how to carry out grassroots organizing targeted at
conservatives.
The attendees know their views are out of step with most Republicans; Maness
said that if he decides to run for office again he’s certain GOP voters will
"hold me accountable" for not being sufficiently "law-and-order." But they hope
to reach people around the South who might be predisposed to discount the
arguments of liberals.
"If you’re a Democrat you’re preaching to the choir," said Alexander. "Where we
need to make progress is with Republicans."
That’s been the focus in Tennessee, said Amy Lawrence, who leads the state’s
chapter of Conservatives Concerned. People who have been in conservative
circles their entire life may not have thought about the death penalty from a
pro-life lens, or may not be aware of the expense of sentencing someone to
death, she said.
"We still have some work to do," Lawrence said. "We have lawmakers who say, 'I
get it, I understand that there are flaws with the death penalty, that it’s an
exorbitant cost, that it’s an arbitrary system.'" There’s still a stigma
associated with being anti-death penalty in Republican circles, however, and
some lawmakers fear that vocalizing their opposition to capital punishment
could mean losing their seat, said Lawrence and other advocates.
But that’s beginning to shift. In 10 states this year, three of them in the
South, Republican legislators sponsored bills to repeal the death penalty. In
Georgia, a bipartisan group of 3 Republican and 3 Democratic legislators
introduced a bill in April that would abolish capital punishment and change the
sentences of the state’s 55 death row inmates to life without parole. Though it
was introduced too late to advance this session, its timing was aimed to spark
debate next year. In Louisiana, Republican state Sen. Dan Claitor put forward a
constitutional amendment to get rid of the death penalty, but it was rejected
by the legislative body. And in Kentucky, Republican House Majority Whip Chad
McCoy introduced a bill to repeal the state’s death penalty. Though it gained
several co-sponsors, including other Republican state legislators, it died in
committee.
"If we can get lucky enough to get one of the states in the South to seriously
look at capital punishment, to simply put a moratorium on it, that would be a
start," said Reams. "If we could get one state in the South to abolish it, I
think it would open the door."
(source: facingsouth.org)
**********************
Witnessing a Federal Execution
When William Barr, the attorney general, announced plans to put five federal
prisoners to death by the end of January, he set in motion what could be the
U.S. government’s first executions since 2003. In fact, the federal government
has carried out the death penalty only 3 times in the past 56years, most
prominently against the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, whose truck bomb
was responsible for the deaths of a 168 people, in 1995. The other 2 condemned
men have largely been forgotten: Juan Raul Garza, a marijuana smuggler who
murdered a Texas-trucking-company manager and ordered 2 other deaths, and Louis
Jones, Jr., a Gulf War veteran who kidnapped a teen-age soldier from a military
base, then raped and murdered her.
Barr said that “we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward
the sentence imposed by our justice system.” He made no mention of any other
purpose to the executions. Not deterrence, in the face of studies that show no
positive correlation between the death penalty and murder rates. Not removing
felons from society, a task that lengthy sentences do effectively. Not cost,
considering research that demonstrates it’s more expensive to sentence an
inmate to death than to sentence him to life. Rather, Barr explained that the
capital-punishment laws were duly constituted by Congress, and the Justice
Department “upholds the rule of law.” A press release from his office ended
with a declaration: “Additional executions will be scheduled at a later date.”
The Trump Administration’s return to the death penalty hardly seems likely to
change the direction of the debate around the country, where only half of the
states currently enforce it, or the world, where a hundred and twenty countries
voted last year, in the United Nations General Assembly, to recommend a
moratorium on the practice. More than anything, it is a political signal. As I
heard the news, I couldn’t help but think of Garza, who was executed eight days
after McVeigh, in the same room, at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute,
Indiana. As a reporter for the Washington Post, I joined a small group of
journalists who witnessed his execution. What, I wondered then, did his death
accomplish?
Sunrise came early on June 19, 2001, one of the longest days of the year, and
the media witnesses, whose names had been drawn from among the willing,
assembled for the walk through the prison yard to a squat, red brick building
that contained the execution chamber. The building had a series of windowless
doors, allowing different groups of witnesses, including those present for the
victims and for the condemned man, to enter without encountering one another.
The reporters stood in a small, unadorned room facing a curtained picture
window, and waited.
The turquoise curtains opened, as in a theatre production. We beheld a setting
resembling an operating room, with tile walls and floors. Lying silently, on an
elevated bed, a laundered white sheet pulled up to his shoulders, was Juan Raul
Garza, age forty-four. With the curtains now open, he looked from window to
window in an effort to see the witnesses’ faces. 4 relatives of his victims
were in one room. A person identified by authorities as his spiritual adviser
was in another. Garza, who received multiple visits from his relatives in his
final days, had asked his children, including a son, age 12, and daughter, age
10, to stay away. They waited across town. “I don’t want to be in the place
where they kill my father,” his son said.
At 7:04 A.M., Garza said, from the bed, “I just want to say that I’m sorry, and
I apologize for all the pain and grief that I have caused. I ask for your
forgiveness.” U.S. Marshal Frank Anderson picked up a red telephone receiver
and asked someone in a Justice Department command center, “May we proceed with
the execution?” The Supreme Court had already turned down his final appeals,
and President George W. Bush had rejected a plea for clemency. Anderson
listened for a moment. He then said, at 7:05 A.M., “Warden, you may proceed
with the execution.”
Garza moved his feet nervously. The drugs that would stop his lungs, and then
his heart, flowed through tubes that stretched from a far wall, each taking
about sixty seconds to cross the room and enter his body. He blinked a few
times. I wrote at the time that his eyes looked distant, and then went dull.
The edges of his lips turned slightly blue. He died with his eyes open. It was
all over in four minutes. The warden, Harley G. Lappin, announced, “Inmate
Garza died at 7:09 A.M., Central Daylight Time. This concludes the execution.”
With that, the curtains in our witness room closed, and we emerged into the
crisp morning air. What I remember is a blast of brilliant, blinding sunshine
in a grassy prison yard filled with inmates busily getting on with their day.
As workers inside the death chamber moved through the protocol to remove
Garza’s body, his defense attorney, Greg Wiercioch, was standing in another
part of the prison grounds, getting ready to tell us, in anger and defiance,
“Someday, this precise savagery will end, but not today. Today, President Bush
had the last word, but he will not have the final say on the death penalty.
History will.”
What stayed with me all these years was the bleakness of the scene in the death
chamber. Not just the fact that a man had been put to death by the U.S.
government in the year 2001. That would be stark enough. But the anonymity of
it. How many people would take note of Garza’s death, much less remember it?
That day, the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, said that President
Bush believed that the death penalty, fairly administered, “serves as a
deterrent to crime.” For whom would Garza’s death be a lesson?, I wondered.
Would a drug smuggler, tempted to commit murder, have second thoughts because
Garza was executed? If we follow Bush’s reasoning, would the smuggler be more
likely to kill if he merely faced the prospect of spending the rest of his life
in prison? Are we a safer country as a result of Garza’s death? Are we a better
one?
About 2 years after Garza’s execution, Jones was put to death. One obstacle to
further federal executions was the refusal of drug companies to provide one of
the drugs used in them. Another was a series of executions that went awry.
Judges questioned the humanity of the 3-drug protocols that make up what is
called lethal injection. Barack Obama, who favored the death penalty in certain
cases, ordered a review of execution methods, following a botched execution in
Oklahoma, where an inmate writhed in pain before slowly dying. Barr’s decision
appears likely to energize a lawsuit, filed in 2005 by 7 federal death-row
inmates, challenging the 3-drug protocol. In a notice to the court, the Justice
Department announced that it intends to use a single drug, pentobarbital.
During the years since the executions of Garza and Jones, public support for
the death penalty has declined significantly, even as state authorities have
executed nearly seven hundred inmates. In the past 3 years, a hundred and ten
people were sentenced to die nationwide, compared with more than eight hundred
in a comparable period 2 decades ago. Doubts have climbed, parallel to an
increasing number of exonerations, which number a hundred and sixty-six since
1973, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. On the Supreme Court,
where a majority favors the death penalty, Justice Stephen Breyer has been
outspoken in opposition, calling the practice “random” and “capricious.” He
wrote in a 2015 dissent, “I see discrepancies for which I can find no rational
explanations.”
No other Western democracy permits capital punishment, and there have been
bipartisan efforts in an array of states to abolish it. One of the most
noteworthy attempts came this year, in Wyoming, where the Republican-dominated
House of Representatives voted 36 to 21 for repeal, before the bill was
defeated in the Senate. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, shut
down the country’s largest death row this year and granted a reprieve to 737
inmates by declaring a moratorium on executions and dismantling the storied
death chamber at San Quentin State Prison. He called the death penalty a
failure: “It has provided no public safety benefit or value as a deterrent. It
has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. Most of all, the death penalty is
absolute. It’s irreversible and irreparable in the event of a human error."
While support for capital punishment has fallen from 78 %, in 1996, to 54 %,
last year, according to the Pew Research Center, the division in public opinion
remains highly partisan. Seventy-seven per cent of Republicans remain in favor,
compared with thirty-five per cent of Democrats. With the 2020 Presidential
campaign underway, and all of the major Democratic candidates in favor of
abolishing the death penalty, I couldn’t help but notice that all 5 of the men
Barr hopes to put to death committed their crimes in states that voted for
Donald Trump: Missouri, Arizona, Iowa, Arkansas, and Texas.
Each of the 5 men on Barr’s list was sentenced to die for a horrific crime. The
killings, absent a new judicial finding, would be lawful under U.S. code. And
yet, the Trump Administration’s sudden enforcement of the death penalty
reflects the President’s over-all approach to criminal justice, marked by
caprice, contradiction, and a certain brutishness. He has accused his political
opponents of treason, denied the rights of asylum seekers, and called for
capital punishment for opium traffickers. It bears recalling that, in 1989,
soon after the New York City Police Department wrongly implicated a group of
black and Latino teen-agers in the rape of a white jogger, Trump took out a
full-page ad in four daily newspapers, calling for the reinstatement of the
death penalty in New York. Beneath the large type, he wrote, “Criminals must be
told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS.” Many
years after the teens were convicted and imprisoned, the true attacker
confessed, and police matched his DNA to the crime scene. The city paid the men
a 41 million dollars settlement, but Trump continued to deny their innocence.
Then there is the other side of the ledger, where Trump, with relish, exercises
his Presidential power to excuse lawbreaking, often on the recommendation of
friends and courtiers. Just 4 days after Barr’s death-penalty announcement, the
President granted clemency to seven people. One was Ted Suhl, who owned 2
companies that received more than 107 million dollars in Medicaid funding for
faith-based mental-health services and paid bribes to a state regulatory
official. In allowing Suhl to leave prison more than three years ahead of
schedule, Trump credited the lobbying efforts of the former Arkansas governor
Mike Huckabee, the father of his fiercely loyal former press secretary, Sarah
Huckabee Sanders. Earlier, he pardoned the conservative commentator Dinesh
D’Souza, who illegally funnelled contributions to a Republican Senate
candidate. He also pardoned Joe Arpaio, the hard-line anti-immigration sheriff
in Arizona who broke the law by defying a federal judge’s order to stop
detaining people solely because they were suspected of being in the United
States illegally. And yet, Barr insists that a return to executions is
necessary in the name of justice and the “rule of law.” Indeed, putting
convicts to death, he seems to be saying, is the only legal and moral option.
He could have left the federal death penalty unenforced, but he didn’t. He
could have, at least, waited to see whether the judiciary approves a new
lethal-drug protocol that executioners could use in place of older
techniques—the electric chair, the gas chamber, and the noose. He didn’t do
that, either. As I did in Terre Haute all those years ago, I found myself
wondering what public purpose, beyond retribution, the execution of these 5 men
would fulfill, compared with, say, life without parole. In other words, if
these men must die, as Juan Raul Garza did, to what end?
(source: Peter Slevin teaches at Northwestern University’s Medill School of
Journalism----newyorker.com)
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