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Source: USA Today (Magazine), March 1995 v123 n2598 p92(2).
Title: Those who seek execution: capital punishment as a form of
suicide.
Author: Katherine Van Wormer
Abstract: Some criminals are filled with self hatred and commit capital
crimes as a form of suicide because they want to die. States where the death
penalty is legal may put innocent citizens at risk by attracting suicidal
killers.
Subjects: Capital punishment - Psychological aspects
Suicide - Psychological aspects
Criminal behavior - Psychological aspects
Magazine Collection: 78B0557
Electronic Collection: A16805726
RN: A16805726
Full Text COPYRIGHT Society for the Advancement of Education 1995
CRIME continues to lead in polls that gauge prioritizing of the most serious
issues facing the U.S. An outcry for harsher punishment, including the death
penalty, is reflected in legislation at the state and Federal levels.
Politicians' platforms calling for the death penalty echo the public rage
against the violent criminal.
What is the impact of the death penalty on the homicide rate? Can
victimization be prevented by letting the public know that killers will face
death themselves? To address these questions, it is imperative to understand
what goes on in the minds of some killers, especially those who attack not
out
of passion, but in cold blood, often claiming multiple victims.
Public execution has been an established means of punishment since the
founding of America. From 1967 to 1977, however, use of the death penalty
ceased, partly due to Supreme Court decisions that the penalty, as then
applied, was unconstitutional. In 1976, as states revised their guidelines
for
execution, the practice was resumed. In 1977, Gary Gilmore was the first
person in a decade to be executed. He had killed strangers ruthlessly--a
crime
which, on the surface, made no sense.
Upon examining the life of Gilmore, a key theme that emerges is the
self-hatred and utter self-contempt of a man apparently bent on his own
destruction. Criminologist G. Richard Strafer and author Norman Mailer each
have singled out Gilmore as the prototype of one who plotted his own dramatic
end. After being paroled from Marion Federal Penitentiary, he (consciously or
unconsciously) was attracted to Utah, where execution was by firing squad,
rather than his home in Oregon, then a non-death penalty jurisdiction. After
fighting his attorney for the right to be killed and receiving extensive
public attention, Gilmore managed to be immortalized in death as he could not
be in life.
The implications of Gilmore's actions are staggering. Innocent persons were
gunned down at a gas station, it seems, so a criminal could have himself
executed. Utah's death penalty therefore may have attracted, rather than
repelled, crime, at least in this case. Are there others? Sociologist
Thorsten
Sellin, author of Capital Punishment, reports on an unnamed prisoner at
Leavenworth who committed murder in order to exchange his life sentence for a
death sentence. Numerous psychiatric reports attest to the phenomenon.
Psychiatrist George Solomon in 1975 wrote about two cases involving capital
punishment used as suicide. In the first, a Vietnam veteran, hardened to
killing, chose to end it all by engaging in murder for hire. He knew that, in
his state, the death penalty was mandatory for murder-for-hire killings. He
told his sister, "I'm too much of a coward to commit suicide." The inability
to take one's own life is a theme seen throughout such suicidal killings.
In Solomon's second case, a 20-year-old baby-sitter suffocated two children.
In her words: "I killed my girls; I killed two pieces of me. They were like
my
sisters and I miss them so much.... I had to kill them. ... Yeah, they would
kill me in the electric chair probably. I remember somebody telling me they
were trying to get rid of capital punishment, and like I asked the sergeant
if
like they still had capital punishment and he said yes, so I was pretty happy
about it."
Both parties described by Solomon thought about being executed prior to
committing their acts. In each case, the state gave them prison terms instead
of killing them.
In 1959, at the California governor's request, psychiatrist Bernard Diamond
examined a man immediately before his execution. The convict confessed to
Diamond that he had committed three rape-murders and had attempted a fourth.
His mission was suicide. When asked what he would have done had California
not
had a death penalty, he replied, "I would have had to go to another state
where they did have capital punishment and do it there." Diamond concluded
from this case and his confirmation from other forensic psychiatrists that
the
threat of the death penalty can act as an instigation to crime, rather than a
deterrent.
Capital punishment, with its dramatic rituals and ceremonies (even today,
when
executions no longer are public), is the perfect fantasized death, a
glorified
crucifixion, for certain sick minds, according to Diamond. The perpetrator of
the crime is not afraid of death. What he or she fears is life.
These observations are confirmed in the work of psychiatrist Louis J. West,
who described the case of a Texas farmer, "tired of living," who shot and
killed a total stranger in a cafe. West also mentioned the case of an already
convicted Oklahoma murderer, Howard Otis Lowery, who killed a second time in
order to make sure he would get the electric chair.
On the basis of these cases, West speculated that the prospect of execution
is
extremely attractive to some individuals who crave a violent means of
committing suicide. West even cited the case of a person who confessed to a
murder done by another so he could get himself put to death in this manner.
West further speculated that death penalty states have higher homicide rates
than non-death penalty states because of the attractiveness of the prospect
of
execution to certain sick minds.
The mass slaughter of eight nurses by Richard Speck in Illinois was included
by West as a possible example of a psychopath's attraction to death penalty
crimes in a death penalty state. This was supported by the fact that Speck
previously had moved from Michigan, which did not have capital punishment.
West's "guess" has not been confirmed by other evidence.
In 1980, in Warren County, Ky., I interviewed Sherril Harston, who faced the
death penalty. Harston had killed his lover and her three-year-old child.
Ironically, both the defendant and the prosecutor were pleading for the
maximum penalty. Harston tried again and again to fire his attorney, who was
trying to save the defendant's life.
While in jail, Harston composed a song that expressed his sentiments: "Now my
life is doomed to be / Face to face with the magistrate-- / For my final
destiny, / For all eternity,/ The Electrical Hanging Tree." When given a life
sentence instead, he successfully fired his attorney and filed an appeal for
a
new trial. In prison, he threatened to kill again if he did not get his way.
Although Harston never did get his wish and refrained from further
murder-today, he is working toward a college degree-his case is reminiscent
of
the earlier case of James French, who was more successful in achieving his
ends. In 1958, French was convicted of murdering a motorist. He testified at
his trial that he hoped to be executed, but his pleas for the death penalty
were to no avail. Sentenced to life in prison, he strangled his cellmate and,
when tried on the new murder charge, reiterated his desire to be
electrocuted.
The state executed him in 1966. French admitted that he always had "chickened
out" at the last minute on several suicide attempts.
Sometimes, the urge to be killed may be so strong that the convict may turn
on
the jury. In 1980, rape-murderer Steven Judy threatened his jury with: "You
had better put me to death, because next time it might be one of you or your
daughter."
In 1992, the Louisville Courier-Journal quoted an interview with a
17-year-old
Indiana prisoner. The youth told police and others that, when he was 15, he
wanted to die, but was afraid to commit suicide, so he killed his friend,
thinking the state would execute him. The state declined to do so.
Days before Lloyd Wayne Hampton was to die by lethal injection in Illinois,
he
spoke bluntly about the fact that he had murdered in 1990 in order to get the
death penalty. In a telephone interview with a Courier-Journal reporter,
Hampton stated: "I either had to put myself in a position of being killed by
somebody else or committing suicide. [A]t that point I had strong beliefs
about not killing myself.... So I put myself in a position to have the state
kill me."
Charlie Brown and Charles Kelley committed murders in Minnesota in 1962, then
came to Iowa to commit another, particularly horrible killing. They asked to
be tried in Iowa because it had a death penalty, while Minnesota did not.
Brown said, "I want to die for what I did. I don't want to spend the rest of
my life in jail." The state of Iowa accommodated his request and executed
both
men. Former Iowa Gov. Robert Ray often has cited their case as an example of
murder attracted by capital punishment. Iowa abolished the death sentence in
the mid 1960s.
Aberrations or a troubling pattern?
Extensive media coverage is given to criminals facing execution. While some
of
the residents of death row proclaim their innocence and others claim
repentance, still others seem to welcome their demise. These latter cases
raise important policy questions. Are they aberrations or part of a
consistent
and troubling pattern? Are innocent persons-the victims-put at risk in death
penalty states?
In 1993, Westley Allan Dodd was hanged in the prison at Walla Walla, Wash. He
stalked and murdered two young boys, strangled a third, and then was arrested
while trying to abduct a six-year-old boy from a movie theater. He readily
confessed to the killings, showed pictures of the victims to the police, and
insisted on execution by hanging. Several witnesses claimed that he had a
religious conversion in his final hour.
Also in 1993, a headline in The Chicago Tribune declared: "AIDS Patient
Charged in Attack with Syringe." Trannie Blue had attacked a nurse at the
University of Chicago Hospital with a syringe filled with his HIV-infected
blood. According to the Cook County state attorney, Blue told investigators
he
had done so because he wanted to receive the death penalty and end his
suffering.
In The Execution Protocol, Stephen Trombley reports on a story from the
Missouri State Penitentiary. Two prisoners became lovers; one ended up on
death row after killing two inmates. In order to join him, the other one
strangled his cellmate. They now are together on death row.
Thomas Grasso, serving a life sentence in New York, requested to be
transferred to Oklahoma on a previous murder charge. He would rather be
executed than grow old in prison, he said. Then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo
refused to extradite Grasso, but his successor, George Pataki, had Grasso
returned to Oklahoma soon after Pataki took office in January, 1995.
A small minority of sick and suicidal individuals find the prospect of highly
publicized punishment intriguing. Such people are sufficiently irrational to
wreak havoc upon themselves and others, yet rational enough to plot out this
destructive course to its bitter and gruesome end.
Those most prone to carry out execution-inspired homicides are young white
males with a history of unsuccessful suicide attempts. Restrictions on the
scope of capital punishment are not a barrier to them. If the death penalty
is
limited to the death of police officers or Federal marshals, then a police
officer or a Federal marshal will become the target. The same holds true with
prison murders, crimes of an especialty heinous nature, murder for hire, etc.
that call for the death penalty. For each group targeted in that state, there
is an increased risk for the commission of those designated crimes. The
notoriety generated through the mass media to those scheduled for execution
provides additional attraction to the Richard Specks who say they are "born
to
raise hell" and to the Sherril Harstons who beg for death by "the electrical
hanging tree."
When cases such as those described above are examined individually, each
seems
to be one of a kind, a bizarre product of a sick mind. When all are
considered
together, though, a pattern emerges. There is a method in such seemingly
senseless murders. "I couldn't do it myself," the killers say. "I needed the
state to do it for me."
In this pattern of calculated, externally inflicted suicide, there is a
danger
in even just having the death penalty on the statute book in a state. For
every person who verbalized this wish of execution, there probably are many
others who failed to reveal their innermost motives. Death by lethal
injection
would seem to offer an especially easy way out to one desirous of this form
of
state-sponsored euthanasia.
Dr. Van Wormer is associated professor of social work, University of Northern
Iowa, Cedar Falls.
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