In a message dated 00-06-27 22:17:21 EDT, you write: << Full content for this article includes illustration and other. 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. -- End -- __________ earthradioTV.com - Alternative News Portal for ecology, politics & consciousness. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] earthradioTV.com MIRROR SITES: USA http://www.earthradioTV.com/ CZECH http://mujweb.cz/www/ecologynews/ UK http://members.tripod.co.uk/ecologynews/ Canada http://www.ecologynews.com <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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