Oct. 1
USA:
Mental Illness and the Death Penalty
"Today, at 6pm, the State of Florida is scheduled to kill my brother, Thomas
Provenzano, despite clear evidence that he is mentally ill.... By no means do I
suggest my brother go free. By all means justice should be done. But I have to
wonder: Where is the justice in killing a sick human being?" -- Sister of death
row inmate, June 2000
Thomas Provenzano was executed by lethal injection by the state of Florida on
June 21, 2000. He had a history of mental illness and paranoid schizophrenia
predating his crime, yet his family could not afford hospitalization for his
illness. Moreover, he believed he was Jesus Christ, and believed he was being
killed because he was Jesus Christ. Provenzano's sister wrote a letter to
then-Governor Jeb Bush saying "as you know, Thomas is severely mentally ill. He
believes he is Jesus Christ and that he is going to be executed because people
hate Jesus". Similarly, Provenzano's lawyers requested additional time before
his execution date so he could be examined by psychiatrists. A trial judge even
came to the conclusion that Provenzano believed he faced execution because he
was Jesus. Despite the evidence that Provenzano was mentally ill, he was
executed by the State of Florida and with the approval of Governor Jeb Bush.
Cases such as Provenzano's are all too common: Mental Health America (MHA)
estimates that 5-10% of all death row inmates suffer from a severe mental
illness. MHA has taken a policy stance against the death penalty, explaining
that "mental health conditions can influence an individual's mental state at
the time he or she commits a crime, can affect how "voluntary" and reliable an
individual's statements might be, can compromise a person's competence to stand
trial and to waive his or her rights, and may have an effect upon a person's
knowledge of the criminal justice system." The National Alliance on Mental
Illness (NAMI) also has stood against capital punishment. NAMI calls the death
penalty "inappropriate and unwarranted" for those with severe mental disorders
and a "distraction from the problems within the mental health system that
contributed or even directly lead to tragic violence". For these reasons, MHA
has called upon states to suspend using the death penalty, and NAMI has called
for a ban on the death penalty for those with severe mental illnesses.
How Mental Illness Affects Capital Punishment
1.Police Interrogation: Mentally ill defendants are more likely to give false
confessions and are more vulnerable to police pressure. Mentally ill defendants
are also likely to have difficulty understanding their Miranda rights, often
waiving their right to an attorney.
2.Competency to Stand Trial: The US Constitution states that a defendant must
be competent to stand trial, meaning the defendant must have a "rational as
well as factual understanding of the proceedings" (ACLU). However, defendants
with schizophrenia and / or severe delusions generally do not understand the
proceedings, and should therefore not be declared competent enough to stand
trial. Still, many schizophrenic defendants, like Thomas Provenzano, go to
trial, rather than a state mental hospital to improve the defendant's mental
state. Similarly, mentally ill defendants often fire their lawyers or choose to
represent themselves because they (wrongfully) believe they are capable to
defend themselves. For example, Pernell Ford, who was executed in Alabama in
2000, represented himself at trial. Ford spent much of his childhood in mental
health institutions, attempted suicide several times, and had little formal
education. He fired his lawyers, dropped his appeals, and wore a bedsheet to
the penalty phase of his execution, saying he wanted the victims' bodies
brought to court so God could resurrect him. Previously, Ford's lawyer had won
him a stay of execution by questioning Ford's sanity, yet a federal appeals
court ruled that Ford was competent enough to fire his attorney and drop the
appeals.
3.Insanity: The ACLU reports that juries "frequently reject insanity defenses
in capital cases despite strong evidence that the defendants are suffering from
serious mental illnesses at the time of the crime". This results in guilty
verdicts, which later turn into death penalty sentences.
4.Ability to form a criminal intent: States must prove that defendants
specifically intended to kill the victim in most capital murder cases. Yet
mentally ill individuals usually lack the ability to form the specific intent
to kill, but are still found guilty in criminal cases.
The Legality of Mental Illness and the Death Penalty
The legality of executing a mentally ill person should be clear. In 1986, in
Ford v. Wainright, the United States Supreme Court upheld that insane
individuals cannot be executed. Justice Marshall's opinion discussed the
"evolving standards of the Eighth Amendment" to prohibit states from inflicting
the death penalty on someone who is insane, not aware of his execution and the
reasons for it. Next, in 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, the US Supreme Court
ruled that executing mentally retarded individuals also violates the Eighth
Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The court found that the
Eighth Amendment should be interpreted with "evolving standards of decency that
mark the progress of a maturing society". In Panetti v. Quarterman, the Supreme
Court reaffirmed that an individual cannot be executed if he is incompetent at
the time of his execution, arguing that a defendant must have a "rational
understanding of the reason for the execution".
Past Executions
Yet despite these cases, states have executed mentally ill prisoners, using
legal loopholes surround the definitions of an "insane" person or using
unscientific standards to define an intellectual disability. Below are
definitions from NAMI of 2 of the major mental illnesses defendants on death
row have, and 4 cases in which people suffering from these illnesses were
executed.
Schizophrenia: Schizophrenia is a serious brain disorder that affects
approximately 2.2 million adults in the USA. It interferes with a person's
ability to think clearly, to distinguish reality from fantasy, to manage
emotions, to make decisions and to relate to others. The 1st signs of
schizophrenia typically emerge in the teenage years or early 20s. Most people
with schizophrenia suffer chronically or episodically throughout their lives,
and are often stigmatized by a lack of public understanding about the disease.
A person with schizophrenia does not have a "split personality", and almost all
people with schizophrenia are not dangerous or violent towards others when they
are receiving treatment. The World Health Organization has identified
schizophrenia as 1 of the 10 most debilitating diseases affecting humans.
Symptoms of schizophrenia include hallucinations - hearing voices when no one
has spoken or seeing things that are not there - and delusions such as
believing that people are reading their mind, controlling their thoughts or
plotting against them.
Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can
occur after someone experiences a traumatic event that caused intense fear,
helplessness, or horror. The traumatic events can include war, childhood abuse,
rape, natural disasters, accidents and captivity. Symptoms include
re-experiencing (e.g. nightmares, flashbacks, hallucinations); avoidance (e.g.
lack of recall of the traumatic event, limited range of emotion, feelings of
detachment from others, feelings of hopelessness about the future); and
increased arousal (e.g. inability to sleep, irritability, outbursts of anger,
inability to concentrate, watchfulness, jumpiness).
1.John Errol Ferguson was convicted of murders occurring in 1977 and sentenced
to death in 1983. Yet as far back as 1965, before his crime, Ferguson suffered
from "visual hallucinations" and was sent to state mental institutions
throughout the 1970s. In these institutions, a doctor diagnosed him as "grossly
psychotic", and Ferguson was found to be a paranoid schizophrenic, delusional,
and aggressive. In 1975, a doctor wrote that Ferguson was "dangerous and cannot
be released under any circumstances". Still, he was released a year later, and
soon after committed the crimes that left eight people dead. Ferguson believed
that he was the "Prince of God" and could "control the sun". His attorney
maintained that he was "insane and incompetent for execution". Yet the Florida
Supreme Court found that he was competent enough to die, despite using a test
for mental illness that the US Supreme Court has rejected. After decades of
legal hurdles and appeals, John Errol Ferguson was executed by lethal injection
on August 5, 2013 in Florida.
2.Charles Singleton was convicted of stabbing Mary Lou York to death in
Arkansas. After his imprisonment, a prison psychiatrist diagnosed Singleton as
suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and a panel ordered him to take
antipsychotic drugs. His lawyers filed a lawsuit saying the state could not
force him to take medication in order to make him mentally competent enough to
execute him. Despite the Ford v. Wainright case which prohibited the use of the
death penalty against an incompetent individual, Charles Singleton was executed
on January 6, 2004.
3.Jay D. Scott was convicted for the 1983 murder of Vinnie Prince. Since the
age of 13, he spent all but 28 months in prison. He was a diagnosed
schizophrenic, had a low IQ, and suffered from an abusive childhood. According
to Amnesty International, five jurors from his trial signed declarations under
oath saying they may have decided differently if mitigating evidence of mental
disorders and his abusive childhood had been presented by Scott's attorneys,
and 2 jurors said they definitely would have voted differently had the
mitigating evidence been presented. Despite this, Jay D. Scott was executed by
lethal injection on June 14, 2001 in Ohio.
4.Manny Babbitt, a U.S. marine veteran of the Vietnam War, was convicted of
murdering Leah Schendel in 1980. Babbit's lawyers argued he suffered from
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from his time in Vietnam. He had
previously spent 2 years in mental institutions and was found to be a paranoid
schizophrenic. Mental health experts and Babbit's lawyers argued that Babbitt
attacked Ms. Schendel in a flashback, as evidenced by the fact that Babbitt
wrapped a leather strap around Ms. Schendel's ankle - the same way the soldiers
did to the dead in the Vietnam War. They argued he not be executed as a result.
Babbitt never denied murdering Ms. Schendel, but rather argued that he did not
remember doing it. Manny Babbit was executed by lethal injection on May 4, 1999
in California.
October 2014 executions
These are just a few of the many cases in which states moved forward to execute
individuals despite evidence that they were mentally ill, incompetent, or
unfit. Currently, there are 2 mentally ill inmates who have or had execution
dates set for October 2014.
Billy Irick has been on death row since 1986. In May of 1965, when Irick was 6,
a clinical psychologist concluded that he was suffering from "a severe neurotic
anxiety reaction with a possibility of mild organic brain damage". The
following year, he was hospitalized and treated with anti-psychotic mediations;
he remained hospitalized for 10 months. Years after Irick's case closed, key
witnesses were interviewed by Irick's new attorneys saying he suffered from
abuse and psychotic symptoms. The doctor that testified at the trial saying
there was no evidence of mental illness has since said, "I am concerned that in
light of this new evidence, my previous evaluation and the resulting opinion
were incomplete and therefore not accurate ... It is my professional opinion to
a reasonable degree of medical certainty that without further testing and
evaluation, no confidence should be placed in Mr. Irick's 1985 evaluations of
competency to stand trial and mental condition at the time of the alleged
defense".
Billy Irick's execution has been stayed - but not because of Irick's mental
state. In Tennessee, Irick and 10 other death row inmates have filed a lawsuit
challenging the secrecy of the states lethal injection laws, and the legality
of the use of the electric chair as a backup if lethal injection drugs cannot
be obtained. The court has not set a new execution date.
Larry Hatten has been on death row since 1996. Originally, he was scheduled to
die on October 16, 2013, but the execution was stayed due to concern over
Hatten's sanity and to allow time to determine his mental competency. His new
execution date is set for October 15, 2014 after Hatten told his lawyer to drop
all appeals and speed up the execution date (something that often occurs with
mentally ill patients). Hatten's lawyer had said that he has suffered from
mental illness for over a decade and has been forcibly medicated in jail
several times. The issue is whether Larry Hatten is competent enough to be
executed. His execution date is still set for October 15.
The death penalty, though always unacceptable, is especially intolerable in
cases where the defendant is mentally ill. These defendants often were mentally
ill at the time of their crime, or later become so mentally incompetent that
they cannot understand why the reasons for their execution. Now is the time to
abolish the death penalty, especially before states continue to execute
mentally ill inmates.
The NCADP has created the 90 Million Strong campaign to unite the voices of
those who believe the death penalty is wrong. We need to demonstrate that the
broad public support to end this practice is already here in America, and 90
million people speaking up can make a difference.
The 90 million people who oppose the death penalty are organized, energized,
and ready to end capital punishment. Join us today.
(source: NCADP.org)
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The Enforcers of the Death Penalty----How does capital punishment affect the
prison guards and wardens tasked with carrying it out?
It was the late 70s, and Kathleen Dennehy was working at Massachusetts
Correctional Institution at Concord, the oldest running men's prison in the
state. Opened in 1878, it has a vault filled with corrections records dating
back to the turn of the century, both from the now-demolished state prison that
preceded it and from MCI-Concord's prison cemetery. The weathered papers
include death certificates, sentencing documents, and other records, including
those of Sacco and Vanzetti, the famous 20s anarchists ostensibly sentenced to
death for 1st-degree murder, but whose larger crime was being Italian.
But 1 particular document - from the early 1900s, she estimates - caught her
eye. "The wording was so unusual," says Dennehy, who now works for the National
Council on Crime & Delinquency. "It was for a prisoner who had died in custody
at the old state prison, and next to 'cause of death', it read 'judicial
homicide.'"
It's a telling turn of phrase. Sometime during the 20th century - historical
sources disagree as to the exact year - the term "capital punishment" entered
American legal parlance, and with it a sanitized rebranding of state-sanctioned
killings. Dennehy had never heard the term "judicial homicide" used before
encountering it in the vault, nor - during her 30-year career in corrections
that followed - did she hear it used again. Taken separately, the words
"capital" and "punishment" are both qualifiers for the condemned, but "judicial
homicide" points to someone else entirely. It's the guard standing at the door
to the death chamber, the strap-down team member holding the prisoner's ankles,
and the physician inserting the needle. It's the people who walk into the death
chamber and walk back out, and sure, their task is judicial. But just because
we call it "punishment" now, does it affect their psyches any less than when we
called it "homicide"?
"At job interviews we don't ask things like, 'So how do you feel about wheeling
away a body?' But maybe we should."
Unlike other professions that involve death, such as the police force or the
military, few corrections officers enter the field with the expectation that
they'll eventually have to kill somebody. On the contrary, many view themselves
as protectors.
"We are caretakers for a population of people who instantly go out of sight,
out of mind for the general public," says Jennie Lancaster, a retired prison
warden with the North Carolina Department of Corrections. In 1984, she oversaw
the execution of Velma Barfield, the 1st woman in 35 years to be executed in
the United States and the 1st to die of lethal injection.
"At job interviews we don't ask things like, 'So how do you feel about wheeling
away a body?'" Lancaster says. "But maybe we should. It's not a role many of us
picture ourselves playing."
And why would they? When it comes to the death penalty, much media attention
has been paid to families of the victims and the condemned. Not so with
corrections officers. It takes stories of executions gone wrong, such as
Clayton Lockett's heart attack after a failed lethal injection in Oklahoma last
April, or Joseph R. Wood III's injection of 15 times greater than the standard
dosage, to shift the lens. Then, we wonder: What must it have been like to be
in that room? To watch a person's body convulse, rather than calmly shut down?
What is it like to wait two hours and 600 gasps of air for a man to die?
Following the media circus around Velma Barfield's execution, Lancaster was
asked to appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show for a panel on capital punishment in
1988. This was the same year that Congress reinstated the federal death
penalty, with then-president Reagan as a vocal supporter (though it should be
noted that the Supreme Court put capital punishment back into effect several
years earlier in 1976, after a 4-year moratorium). On the episode, Lancaster
coined the phrase "silent actors" to describe the corrections officers who have
to physically mete out executions, and whose names are protected from the
press.
"There is a code of silence around execution teams, and it's used to protect
people who are involved in them," says Lancaster, who was one of the first
wardens to bring public awareness to corrections job stress. Still, she
acknowledges that the flip side of protection is isolation, and that execution
teams have few people to talk about their experiences with. "It's not
necessarily something you go and bring up in church," she sighs with a North
Carolinian drawl.
So how do you cope with that kind of job stress? In the American legal system,
we burden a small handful of people with what is arguably the hardest part of
corrections: There are only 38 execution chambers in the country, 5 of which -
in New Hampshire, Kansas, Nebraska, California, and New York - are never used.
When almost nobody can relate to your job, is it easier to quell your feelings
about executions than express them?
A 2005 study published in Law and Human Behavior titled "The Role of Moral
Disengagement in the Execution Process" sought to answer that question.
Conducted by then-Stanford psychology student Michael Osofsky, social cognitive
theory pioneer Albert Bandura, and Stanford prison experimenter/psychologist
Philip Zimbardo, the 5-year study aimed to pinpoint the psychological
strategies officers use to repeatedly perform, and cope with, executions.
"The core thesis is that individuals must morally disengage in order to perform
actions and behaviors that run opposite and are counter to individual values
and personal moral standards," Osofsky says. "Capital punishment is a
real-world example of this type of moral dilemma where everyday people are
forced to perform a legal and state-sanctioned action of ending the life of
another human being, which poses an inherent moral conflict to human values."
To develop his moral disengagement metric, Osofsky studied 8 behaviors: moral
justification, the use of euphemistic language, advantageous comparison (for
example, "the execution prevented him from killing many more people"),
displacement of responsibility, diffusion of responsibility, distortion of
consequences (i.e. minimizing the execution process: "lethal injection is
humane as the inmate has no pain"), attribution of blame, and dehumanization of
the prisoner. During his interviews with execution teams and uninvolved
correctional officers, he used the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS-1)
Life Events Checklist and the Beck Depression Inventory, 2 tools psychologists
use to measure trauma and depression.
One unsurprising aspect of the research was that nearly all corrections
officers, whether involved or uninvolved with the execution process, rated high
on the CAPS-1 Life Event Checklist, meaning that they had experienced and
witnessed some pretty extreme events. But interestingly, there were almost no
incidences of depression and scant evidence of PTSD among the wardens or
executioners, even for those who had participated in 20 or more executions.
Why?
Perhaps because moral disengagement does a good job of protecting the psyche.
In fact, Osofsky made another striking discovery: an inverse relationship
between levels of moral disengagement and how close to death each team member
was. In other words: Carry out your execution day task in the next room
(sitting with the victim's family, for example), and your moral disengagement
stays low; touch the condemned while they die, and your moral disengagement
soars. This is, of course, keeping in mind that it's incredibly difficult to
quantify these types of psychological effects: Everyone processes death in
their own unique way, which is why Osofsky's study makes ample use of
storytelling and interviews. A quote from his research, this one from a
death-chamber door guard at Louisiana's Angola State Prison, aptly illustrates
the moral disengagement/proximity-to-death pattern: "After it is over, you get
to thinking about him," the guard said. "You try to block it out, but you can't
- his death is there."
"I always ask myself, would I have agreed to participate in executions if I
knew then what I do now?"
It's a dimension of capital punishment that is rarely discussed. We frequently
debate whether it's moral to make human beings die for their actions. But
should we also be asking how moral it is to appoint other human beings to be
their killers?
It's not a question with any neat answers. But no matter what retired
corrections officials think about the morality or justness of capital
punishment, many seem to have one thing in common: When asked to join
executions, they were hesitant to take the job.
"I always ask myself, would I have agreed to participate in executions if I
knew then what I do now?" says Steve J. Martin, who began his corrections
career on death row at age 23 at Ellis Unit, part of Texas State Penitentiary
at Huntsville. After leaving to earn his law degree, he eventually returned as
executive assistant to the director and general counsel of the Texas Department
of Corrections. During that time, he was asked to sit inside the death chamber
while each execution happened, keeping the phone line open in case the Attorney
General called at the last minute with a reprieve.
"I wasn't conflicted at that point about it, and I agreed without giving it a
lot of thought," Martin says. "After each execution, I signed the death warrant
too, until the thought occurred to me that I didn't really know much about
these men. So I started pulling the file each afternoon before someone was
assigned to die and reviewing it, just to get to know them better."
Things changed after the 1985 execution of Doyle Skillern, a co-defendant in a
homicide case that gave Martin pause. As a lawyer, he knew that murder
co-defendants often avoid the death penalty - but Martin had gotten to know
Skillern, too, as part of an experiment in the 80s in which Ellis' death row
inmates were mixed into the unit's general prison population, where they
interacted with prison staff as well as fellow inmates. Though the experiment
was eventually cut short, it afforded Martin and Skillern some 1-on-1
conversations - including one in Skillern's cell on the day of his execution,
when he looked Martin and his boss, the Director of the Texas Department of
Corrections, in the eye and thanked them before being taken away.
"The whole thing made me step out of my role professionally, and touched me on
an emotional level," Martin says. "I began to realize that this is how these
things happen, executions. We do these things that personally you would
normally never be involved in, because they're sanctioned by the government.
And then we start walking through them in a mechanical fashion. We become
detached. We lose our humanity."
Should we also be asking how moral it is to appoint other human beings to be
killers?
A few years later, there would be another corrections officer at Huntsville who
was equally hesitant to join executions. Like Martin, Jim Willett spent his
youth working in corrections, starting at the Huntsville penitentiary as a
college student in 1971. As is the case with reliable wardens, Willett was
tapped often for promotions, until he was made an offer that he initially
turned down: the position of head warden, where he'd be overseeing executions.
"I had some personal feelings about it," Willett says. "But I made the mistake
of telling my supervisor that if they couldn't find anyone else, I would do
it."
Willett ended up becoming Huntsville's head warden during Texas' three busiest
years for executions, 1998-2001, when he oversaw a staggering 89 of them. "I'd
tell the inmate to lie down on the gurney, and I'd stand by his right shoulder,
with the chaplain at his right foot. And there is some emotion that runs
through all of that, through the whole experience," say Willett. "You'd have to
be crazy for it not to be. I don't know how anybody could totally
disassociate."
Still, one gets the sense Willett would score low on the Beck Depression
Inventory, just like the prison workers in Osofsky's study. When asked if those
89 executions affect him at all today, his response is either a stunning
testament to the durability of the human spirit or a haunting confirmation of
Osofsky's research. Or both.
"To be honest with you," Willett says, "They rarely cross my mind. They rarely
cross my mind at all."
(source: The Atlantic)
*****************
Juries Dole Out Harsher Sentences to Non-Citizens
When Texas resident Edgar Tamayo shot and killed a police officer in 1994, he
was arrested the same day, and 20 years later, the state of Texas executed him
by lethal injection. His guilt wasn't in question, but Tamayo's death was
nonetheless controversial: He was a Mexican citizen, and the Mexican government
- which does not support the death penalty - appealed to the U.S. to let him
live. Mexicans around the world protested his fate. Some Americans - including
Secretary of State John Kerry - feared the execution could even threaten the
U.S.'s relationship with Mexico or endanger Americans living abroad.
There are currently 60 Mexican nationals on death row in the U.S. (10 of them
in Texas), and, as of April, a total of 138 foreign nationals awaiting
execution in the U.S. The execution of foreign nationals inevitably generates
more controversy than most death penalty cases, and now we have another reason
to question the treatment of foreign criminals: A new study has found that U.S.
juries may show less mercy to non-citizens. In a new paper, forthcoming in the
journal American Sociological Review, a team of researchers led by Michael
Light, a sociologist at Purdue University, analyzed 17 years' worth of data
from the U.S. federal district courts, from 1992 to 2008. Most research on
juries' biases has focused on variables like race, ethnicity and gender -
scientists have found that black and Hispanic defendants tend to get harsher
sentences than whites - but citizenship has been largely neglected.
After controlling for factors like age, race, education level, criminal
history, and seriousness of the crime, Light and his colleagues found that
non-U.S. citizens received sentences that were, on average, 2 to 4 months
longer than those doled out to American citizens. And they were more likely to
get prison sentences in the first place: In 2008, for instance, 96 % of
convicted non-citizens were given at least some jail time, compared to 85 % of
citizens. Undocumented immigrants fared even worse than non-citizens residing
in the U.S. legally.
It's not just jurors' preference for their own groups that explains the penalty
for non-citizens: It may reflect a (presumably unconscious) effort to maintain
dominance in light of an influx of immigrants. "The group threat perspective
... suggests dominant group members feel threatened economically, politically,
criminally, or culturally," the authors write, "and will step up efforts to
maintain social control when minority group populations are increasing."
(source: The New Republic)
**************
States Try Secrecy to Protect Lethal Injection Drugmakers
Ohio's attorney general proposed shielding the identity of companies who
provide drugs for execution, following the lead of other states
States carrying out lethal injections have had to find new ways to execute
inmates in recent years. Many have not only experimented with multiple untested
drug combinations but have also turned to previously unused pharmacies. And
they???ve increasingly tried to block the identity of those drugmakers in order
to keep a steady supply of drugs flowing.
A handful of states, including Arizona, Georgia, Missouri and Oklahoma, have
passed secrecy laws to protect the anonymity of pharmacies, which fear backlash
if it becomes public that they???re providing drugs for executions. Ohio - home
to a lethal injection earlier this year that was widely considered botched -
may be next.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said this week that it's unlikely executions
in the state would proceed unless the legislature provided anonymity for
compounding pharmacies and immunity for physicians involved in executions.
"You're not going to see a death penalty take place until the General Assembly
takes action," DeWine said in a debate with a Democratic opponent Tuesday,
according to the Columbus Dispatch. The execution of Ronald Phillips, convicted
in the 1993 rape and murder of a 3-year-old girl, is scheduled for Feb. 11.
The comments appeared to be an indication of the difficulties Ohio is having
obtaining execution drugs following the lethal injection of Dennis McGuire. In
August, a moratorium on executions was set by U.S. District Judge Gregory
Frost, who postponed all lethal injections in the state after McGuire -
convicted in the 1989 rape and murder of 22-year-old Joy Stewart - was executed
in a 25-minute-long execution, in which the inmate reportedly made repeated
snoring and snorting noises. The state used 2 drugs, midazolam and
hydromorphone, which were obtained from Illinois-based Hospira, a
pharmaceutical company.
Since then, the McGuire family has sued Hospira, forcing Ohio to look elsewhere
for drugs. Like most states, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and
Correction is attempting to acquire drugs from compounding pharmacies, which
are not regulated by the federal government. Many pharmacies, however, are
unwilling to manufacture drugs for prison systems unless their identities are
shielded.
Secrecy laws have become the only way for most states to continue carrying out
the death penalty, but those protections are increasingly being challenged.
The Guardian, along with the Associated Press and Missouri's 3 largest
newspapers, filed a lawsuit against the Missouri Department of Corrections in
May, arguing that under the First Amendment the public has a right to know what
drugs the state is using and where the state is obtaining them. In September,
the Guardian also joined the American Civil Liberties Union and three other
newspapers in a similar lawsuit in Pennsylvania.
In a few states, efforts at creating secrecy laws have failed, including in
Alabama and Louisiana, both of which failed to pass legislation shielding
drugmakers. But most states are pressing forward.
"States certainly aren't backing away from their secrecy positions," says
Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center,
an anti-capital punishment organization. "In many states, the legislation
already in place has been relied on to claim secrecy. It seems that part of
Ohio's, and other states', problems stemmed from their secrecy. So it seems
ironic that the proposed solution is even more secrecy."
(source: TIME magazine)
*********************
Put the death penalty to death
I think that in many circumstances, we would call for the death penalty on
someone, especially if someone does something that is strongly against our
morals or has affected us personally. I feel that when it comes to voting on
this specific issue, we need to learn about the bigger picture and ask
ourselves a couple of questions. What if an innocent person is put to death?
And is it wrong to put someone to death for a wicked crime? Does doing this
make us hypocrites?
As a society, we all want to deter crime. We don't want our belongings stolen,
and we want our homes safe.
So what better way to deter crime than to impose a possible death penalty to
crimes? While common sense would say that people wouldn't commit as much crime
in states where the death penalty is active simply due to the fear of dying,
crime may not be deterred by the death penalty. According to a study, the death
penalty does not deter homicide rates even with the fear instilled death
penalty in place, and goes even as far to say that politicians may support the
death penalty in order to appear as being tough on crime.
When we look at the death penalty throughout the ages, it seems to have gotten
more humane in a sense. We went from burning people at the stake, to hanging,
to the electric chair and then to lethal injection. While other countries and
certain states still have wicked death penalties, lethal injection has been
seen as the new modern way to end someone's life. But I question if this is
true.
Killing someone in a humane way sounds like an oxymoron to me. How can you kill
someone humanely? Is it determined by the least amount of shed blood and pain?
Or is it how calm the death is? We have answered with lethal injection, a
system involving 3 drugs that induce unconscious, muscle paralysis, then stops
the heart.
Unfortunately, many of these lethal injection executions have been botched,
having the victim take a longer than normal time to die, and bringing up the
fear that they may have felt pain due to this.
Ultimately, my opinion on the subject derives from the possibility of innocence
of a death row inmate. According to a recent study, it was found that no less
than 4.1% of people sentenced to the death penalty are innocent. The
unfortunate part is that this is a conservative number, so it could be much
higher. The problem here is that if we put someone innocent to death and later
find out that they were innocent, there is no way we could bring them back. At
least if they had life in prison, there would be even the smallest chance of
new evidence or a case reopened.
To conclude, I don't think the death penalty will ever be humane, as there
isn't a humane way to kill someone. The death penalty also brings up many
issues for families, cost, and the potential of executing an innocent person.
Overall, I think it is more effective to keep someone in jail for life than
giving them the death penalty.
(source: Victor Martelle, Opinions Editor, The Anchor)
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