Conor Rogers, Ian Goldin & Stephanie Phillips
Writing From: Washington DC & Portland, OR
A Republican, an Independent and a Democrat make the case against state executions.
A miscarriage of justice, an insult to our laws or, murder? Quite frankly, none of these definitions can accurately describe the case of the late Cameron Todd Willingham. Executed by Texas in 2004 after being convicted of killing his three children in an arson attack on his own home, the evidence used to convict Willingham has been rejected, and the science used to support it has been debunked by new research. By all accounts, an innocent man has been executed in the United States.
In the past, we have had doubts; we have had co-conspirators change their stories, and accusations and testimony thrown out. But now, as never before, we have a case where the evidence that was used to kill a man has been thrown out. As profiled by the New Yorker and now CNN, we now know that Cameron Willingham likely did not kill his children, as the state of Texas charged, convicted and executed him of – but Texas has already killed him.
For death penalty opponents, this is our worst nightmare realized: one of our states, rather than executing the murderer, has become the murderer. Not only does Mr. Willingham’s case highlight our worst fear, but it calls into question the logic, validity and constitutionality of the death penalty.
The Axis of Execution
Out of the 195 nations in the world only 25 carried out state executions in 2008. 139 have stopped using the death penalty in practice, with 94 declaring a permanent abolition on the basis that execution violates a basic universal right to life.
With 37 executions in 2008 in nine states, the United States diverges distinctly from its prominent allies and virtually the entire developed world. We are also in embarrassing company: the five global leaders in state executions are China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United States. Communism, sex based oppression, theocracy…and the United States? Is this a club we want to be in when it comes to questions of human rights?
The United States is of course, not anything like these nations. Our foundational principles clearly support the ensured protection of human rights. While the death penalty may have been widely practiced at this nation’s birth, it has since become a relic that needs to be abolished.
A Constitutional Look at the Death Penalty
The US Constitution has continuously been used to facilitate forward movement in life and equality, overturning practices of the past that no longer meet with societal moral definitions. Thirteen States have already joined the rest of the western world and stopped using the death penalty. In principal, complete abolition can easily be argued on constitutional grounds.
In 1972 “Cruel and Unusual Punishment” was defined by the Supreme Court in part as punishment; that is degrading to human dignity and unnecessary. It can easily be argued that there is nothing more degrading to human dignity than being forced to live with a death sentence, often for years. Execution is certainly not necessary: a criminal can be equally removed from society in prison. Regarding its necessity as a crime deterrent, there is no conclusive evidence to demonstrate that it does anything to prevent murders, and a recent study found that 87% of US criminologists believe that it has no significant deterrent effect.
The Constitution posits that all citizens have equal protection of the law and the right to counsel. Multiple studies have demonstrated a direct correlation between death penalty sentences, poverty and poor counsel. Many capital cases require state appointed defense, as the accused are too poor to afford their own counsel. Statistically, an unnerving number of the lawyers of those sentenced to death are later disciplined for poor legal conduct. This demonstrates income based inequality and potential error in the justice system, in an arena where there should be no room for error.
A Racially-Biased System
Whether or not you believe in the constitutionality or morality of the death penalty, there is no getting around one glaring fact: it’s a racist system.
If one were to take a walk down death row, it might not be obvious to the observer how the death penalty in the United States is racist. However, if one were to take a look at the actual death penalty cases, it becomes clear. According to The Death Penalty Information Center—a non-partisan, non-ideological group that collects data on the death penalty—it’s the race of the victim that matters. Almost 80 percent of murder victims in cases resulting in execution were white, while only about 50 percent of murder victims generally are white. Essentially, defendants are more likely to be executed if their victim is white. This shows that the American criminal justice system values white life more than black, Hispanic, or other life.
According to a report by Prof. David Baldus to the ABA, “in 96 percent of the states where there have been reviews of race and the death penalty, there was a pattern of either race-of-victim or race-of-defendant discrimination, or both.” Since we have failed so miserably at attempting to fix this flaw in our criminal justice system, there is only one option remaining, lest we become accustomed to state-sanctioned racism: we have to stop executing people.
Breaking the Bank
We do not believe that it is possible to put a price on life, but for those who are more convinced by the economics of the death penalty; executing is too expensive to sustain.
California is bankrupt. The State government is giving its employees unpaid time off, and was considering legalizing marijuana for the tax revenue—all just to stay afloat. And yet, they didn’t consider abolishing the death penalty, even though the California death penalty system costs taxpayers $114 million per year beyond the costs of keeping convicts locked up for life. Taxpayers have paid more than $250 million for each of the state’s executions. (L.A. Times, March 6, 2005)
California is not alone in its situation—in every state with the death penalty, taxpayers bear the burden of the vast expenses that come with it. Thanks to the due process clause of the Constitution, death row inmates are granted more appeals than someone with life in prison. Those appeals rack up court and trial costs, which we pay for. (And no, Texas, we can’t get rid of the due process clause).
The death penalty is unconstitutional, racially-biased, economically unsustainable, and puts us in the worst sort of company abroad. Now, on top of it all, the American death penalty has likely claimed the life of an innocent man. We have gone too far; it’s time to execute the death penalty.
I find many problems with this article.
First, I don’t think that any advocate of the death penalty would argue that we should use it willy nilly. In the Willingham case, there was a clear lack of solid evidence throughout the trial, and he should never have been convicted of the crime in the first place. The case clearly shows that we may need reform of the justice system and reform of application of the death penalty, but to me it doesn’t come close to proving that the death penalty should be abolished.
To say that we are in poor company when it comes to human rights is completely unfair. While I don’t know the statistics, I’d be willing to bet that we donate more than most, if not all other countries to poor, undeveloped nations, and we (though maybe not as much as we should) often intervene when injustice around the world leads to violations of human rights. We certainly aren’t the greatest about recognizing a genocide or helping people in other countries immediately, but to compare our view of human rights to the views of China, Pakistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia? Give me a break, that’s absurd.
Your constitutionality argument is really pushing it. It’s an affront to human dignity to have somebody sitting on death row but it isn’t an affront to human dignity to have someone sitting in prison for the rest of their lives? Is the death penalty particularly cruel? No, actually. We have done everything possible to make sure that the worst members of our society are perfectly comfortable when they’re put to death. And nothing more degrading to human dignity than being forced to sit on death row? Hm, how about being raped and killed? Is it unnecessary? Well, not if you want these murderers to kill their fellow inmates in prison.
With regard to deterrence, you can read this article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/11/AR2007061100406.html
I’m sure you’ll have articles to show me saying the opposite, but you can’t simply say in this article that there is no conclusive evidence one way or the other when there is. That’s disingenuous.
An entire article could be written about alleged racism in the justice system. But I would argue that it isn’t necessarily a racist system at all, but that one of the problems is that when blacks are murdered, they are far more likely than whites to have been murdered in gang violence or in a city with an either crooked or inadequate police force, making their murderers more difficult to find. Unless you can show me evidence of a comparison where, taking the same number of murderers of whites and murderers of blacks, the murderers of whites are more likely to be sent to death row, your conclusion on this topic is weak and probably inaccurate.
In my view, and the views of many others which you three can’t really dispute because there are facts to support our side as well (which I wrote about in an article on this site a couple of months ago), the death penalty does deter crime and possibly saves money in the long run (by deterring crime), though to say that the government worries about spending money is also silly. Does it need reform to make sure innocent people aren’t executed? Yes. Abolishment? Absolutely not.
Ironic that you’d make the argument on the day after the state dispatched a guy to the next world who everybody agreed deserved it–further “process” would be wasted on him, and that’s the D.C. shooter. We will see the likes of him again, I hope not soon, but I think we saw him his ilke last Thursday at Fort Hood. If we as a nation can’t retain the capability to send the Muhhameds and the Hassan’s to their just deserts, a little more of our nationhood will die.
What about treason? No noose for traitors? Again, a little bit of our nationhood will die.
And how about Willie Horton as an example?
Though he became an issue in a presidential campaign and critics of Bush accused him of racism (absurd, as the ad didn’t mention Horton’s name, show his photograph, and featured 30 prisoners: 3 black, 2 Hispanic, and 25 white), let’s look at what Wille Horton actually did.
He demanded money from a cash register at a gas station in Massachusetts. The cashier handed over the money, and Horton proceeded to stab the teenager 19 times and dump his body in a dumpster, where he was left to bleed to death.
Horton was given a life sentence and not the death penalty. Then, on a furlough (thanks, Michael Dukakis), he was able to leave prison and stab a man while raping his girlfriend.
Obviously the death penalty would have been a deterrent in this case (though maybe not how you’re thinking of it as deterring others from committing crimes, but certainly deterring Willie Horton), and it would have definitely been appropriate, just as it was in the D.C. sniper case and in countless other murder cases.
About a year ago, I would have argued against this article, but conversations I have had with friends, family, co-workers, professors, and others have made me rethink my position.
“It’s an affront to human dignity to have somebody sitting on death row but it isn’t an affront to human dignity to have someone sitting in prison for the rest of their lives?”
Yes, it is. It is an affront to human dignity to decide that we’re going to set a date before which a person who has the cards stacked against them can prove their innocence. Cameron Willingham and Jesse Tafero are two examples of people found to have been innocent of the crimes of which they were accused after their execution. The state, in each case, committed murder against an innocent person. In a country whose justice system is supposed to follow the motto “better a hundred guilty men go free than an innocent one spend a day in jail,” it is ludicrous that we would decide to kill someone when we know full well that the very next day, exculpatory evidence may come to light.
Willie Horton is a terrible example of a reason that we should execute. He’s a great example of why convicted murderers should not be granted furloughs of their sentence. I think that was a rather obviously stupid idea and not very many will disagree with me there.
Finally, for me, it comes down to the effect on overall society of killing someone. To kill a man, even a guilty man, burdens the soul of the killer. When the state kills a man under the auspices of a case titled “The People v. Defendant,” the People are told that a man is killed on our behalf. The state has no right to make me a killer.
Alec:
The point about human rights was not to say that the United States lived in that club all of the time – of course that’s absurd. The article says: “The United States is of course, not anything like these nations.”
The point was that since the United States clearly is nothing like those other countries, and clearly wishes to be nothing like them, it is interesting to look at the fact that the United States is the ONLY western country and the ONLY country with strong human rights principles that uses the death penalty. ON the death penalty alone, we are in poor company and that should tell us something.
Arguing about what is more degrading: a death sentence or life in prison is probably pointless. For me, I’d rather live a life in prison, but you can’t really remove that from the personal.
IN terms of deterrence, you’re completely right, there are tons of studies both ways – and I remember making that exact point on the article you posted a few months ago. The point here is not that it has no deterrent effect, in fact this article says: “there is no conclusive evidence to demonstrate that it does anything to prevent murders.”
It is not which study is right and which isn’t, there are many types of studies in this arena which prove different things. However, the fact that there is so much uncertainty means that the evidence can’t be used to prove either way – it can’t be used to prove that it is a deterrent or that it isn’t. Since there is no conclusive proof, it certainly should not be used as evidence to kill people. Considering the stakes, the possibility of it being unnecessary should be enough to make us think twice.
As I said, there needs to be reform in the system. When there is any shadow of a doubt that a person is innocent, he should not be put death. Only when the evidence is insurmountable and indisputable should someone be killed.
The Willie Horton argument is meant to show that prison doesn’t turn these convicted murderers into peaceful men. Horton was just as violent years after committing his initial crime as he was when he was released on furlough. Had he not been released, there’s a pretty good chance he would have acted violently in prison against other inmates. My point was that people like Horton are dangerous whether they are in jail or not, and we cannot risk having them around.
With regard to your last point, the state has no right to do a lot of the things it does. This is one that makes sense – protecting the rest of society from dangerous criminals.
Stephanie,
The problem with your deterrence argument is that you assume that the reason we have the death penalty is to deter crime. While I think that it does deter crime, I consider this just an added bonus. My main reason for supporting the death penalty is that removes dangerous criminals from our society.
O&D: You may find it ironic that the article was posted today, but the execution of Muhammad was actually part of the reason behind posting it today…. it was a high profile execution and it could spark interesting debate about the death penalty considering that many people do believe he “deserved.”
I don’t choose to make judgments like that, they are the same kind of judgments that he made in order to commit such terrible atrocities. And I don’t agree with you for a second about our nationhood. In fact, to me the death penalty speaks against everything I love about the United States, and everything that inspires my patriotism.
In my view, and my reading of the principles of the Constitution, the United States government should both preserve and further human rights, liberty and freedom for all of its citizens in its larger laws. Simultaneously it should work to protect its citizens from the kinds of larger dangers that will not allow them to pursue their own happiness. If successful, internationally the United States can serve as an example and can extend aid and exercise successful diplomacy.
THe death penalty just doesn’t fit in here – in this beautiful dream of a free country – the death penalty is just a relic of absolute government rule over its people. It is a fear tactic and it demonstrates that the State ultimately has control over life. This is not a principle of the United States, in any way shape or form, and the death penalty is completely out of place here. It also does not protect us – it is symbolic only. Symbolic of what the state can do to you if you commit horrible crimes, and symbolic of who deserves to live and to die. People are equally safe from these criminals with prison sentences.
Alec while I agree with you much of the time in this case I am anti-death penalty. Most of the stats promoting the death penalty show a correlation between number of executions and number of crimes committed, two very broad figures between which no causation can be proved. Also removing dangerous criminals from society can be done by putting them in prison for life without parole. I am a proponent of sticking them in pairs in a 8 by 10 box rather than using my taxpayer money to execute them. Am I glad that The DC sniper is dead? Of course. But the same result (protecting society from a dangerous man) could have been done for a lot cheaper. Also, do we really want government to decide who lives and dies?
Alec,
Fair enough, I see your point. I think this may come down to two beliefs that just aren’t reconcilable.
Some people are probably just crazy, and violent, yes, but I think prison is still the better option considering the larger and more symbolic consequences of being a nation that still executes – that has a mechanism for publicly deciding who can live or die, and then uses state money to kill its own citizens.
Stephanie: While I admire the poetry of your rhetoric, I have to recognize that if your prescription were followed, there are those among us right now, and in the future, it would protect from justice in committing acts against our people, and our nation.
Count O & D as one who thinks we need the death penalty–to balance the scales of justice when Mrs. Smith’s son is killed, and to show those inclined to murder and treason how much the state values life, and our people’s protection.
“China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan” From the piece: those countries who besides us, also execute. Does it strike anyone as odd that arguably each one of those nations is on the ascendancy? Perhaps societal will to execute is a sign of some vigor and strength. I know none of you like those nations, but you have to admit, they are definitely “figures of menace”(key players) on the geopolitical scene.
Could you anti-death penalty folks be taking the easy path to mediocrity? All you personally have to do to avoid the death penalty is not commit a capital crime, right?
But we aren’t even supposed to convict a person of a crime except beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yet we do. Thirty years ago, DNA evidence did not exist in criminal cases and a judge or jury did not know to take its absence into account. Who is to say that thirty years from now, there will not be a new kind of evidence that proves people innocent?
Witnesses make mistakes, science is always developing, and juries get caught up in animated arguments from attorneys. The fact of the matter is, you can never be sure enough about someone’s guilt to kill them.
The Willie Horton case as an example of pro-deat penaltiy is spurious because unless he is a one-man Great Escape he is unlikely to be able to escape from prison walls with any regularity. His escaping is the result of ineffective prison security protocols regarding furloughs.
Absolutely nobody is making the statement that prison automatically turns people into peaceful men, but it makes a lot more sense to me that putting our collective efforts towards making prisons safer for both inmate and general public benefits everyone – unless we’re comfortable with prison at large being rape and murder factories.
It’s sort of like arguing that we should exterminate all zoo tigers after that attack in LA, and not instead build better cages. It’s missing the point.
It’s far easier to construct safer prisons that resurrect the hundreds of people who have been executed WRONGLY by the state, as uncovered by organizations like the Innocence Project and DNA/forensic testing. The bogeyman of the crazed madman escaping from prison overshadows the actual possibility that you may be imprisoned and executed without actually having committed a crime. Depending on your demographic background in this country, the chances of that happening can be quite strong.
Furthermore, you’re not really using “deter” in any meaningful sense. When you deter someone from doing something, that implies some volition on their part. A dead person can’t be moved to do anything, and you yourself admit that people like Willie Horton and the DC sniper are crazy anyway, so what would dying really do to compel them to stop killing people while alive? Prisons can keep high-risk and violent offenders in segregated blocks, so unless you think there’s a huge spate of prison breakouts that nobody is reporting on, they’re reasonably secure.
There’s also the whole seperate ethical issue of murdering murderers and whether we are actually doing something good as versus merely sustaining a societal need for vengeance, but that’s another argument.
Colin – yes, that is the goal and I don’t think that’s something anybody would argue. We should only be convicting people of crimes when we are positive they are guilty. And of COURSE there are cases where we can be sure enough to put someone to death. What you say is absolutely not the fact of the matter. If we never have enough evidence to be assured that someone has committed a crime, I guess you would then also advocate for the abolishment of prisons because it would be an injustice to have someone in prison for a crime we’re pretty sure they’ve committed because new science could be developed decades from now?
Peter,
What are prison guards doing wrong now that could be changed so that prisons are no longer violent? Prisons are places full of dangerous people, no amount of security will be able to completely stop inmate violence. I don’t think your tiger analogy is a good one. These prisoners have in them an innate desire to cause violence and harm to others. The tigers are not rational beings. The tigers don’t have a goal of escaping their cages and committing violence; many inmates in prisons do.
Deterrence may not have been the best term to use in terms of preventing executed criminals from committing further crimes since they are physically incapable, but I also used “deter” when talking about the study described in the Washington Post article about how capital punishment actually does deter crime.
No, because in a prison system, if some new science comes out thirty years down the line which can possibly produce exculpatory evidence, that person has not already been killed at the hands of the state. Things which are not reasonable to expect right now may be accepted facts in ten, twenty, or thirty years. And we owe every person, even people accused of capital crimes, the expectation that we will not make them victims of homicide before that new innovation comes about.
Killing people under any circumstance is, by definition, homicide. Intentionally killing someone is intentional homicide. People who commit homicide are, by definition, homicidal. The state is killing people, which makes the state an intentionally homicidal apparatus.
Oh, and Alec, if you can decide not to spend your taxpayer dollars to fund abortion, which is viewed by slightly more than half of the country as killing someone, I demand to be able to decide that my taxpayer dollars not go to committing an act which 100% of the country views as killing someone.
If evidence surfaces 30 years later, you’ve still robbed someone of 30 years. You have basically taken away their lives. There is no recuperating from spending 30 years of your life in a cell.
Thank you for that transitive property…thing. I wasn’t arguing anything related to that, though.
On taxpayer-funded capital punishment – demand it all you want.
So, your argument is that it is not right for you, a taxpayer, to be forced to pay for an act that you see as murder even though the state says it is legal but I should have to do just that? How does that make sense?
Where did I make any kind of argument like that?
I said that if that’s important to you, then demand it.
“Demand it all you want” has a rather obvious connotation.
No it doesn’t. People didn’t want their tax dollars paying for abortions. They rallied and called their congressmen and got their voices heard.
If you feel strongly about capital punishment, then do the same (though I don’t know where funding would then come from, as opposed to with abortion, where taxpayers would have been funding abortions when it’s obvious who should actually be footing the bill).
O&D: On many of our other posts, you cite religion and tradition as reasons for your beliefs, why do you ignore the Bible’s sayings about the fact that judgement (read death or end of life) in Hebrew and koine greek)is God’s alone to pass.
Conor, You raise an important question, but religious support of the death penalty is better approached from another angle. Literal interpretation of scripture can aid both arguments (see Genesis, Exodus, etc.) Unless you’re looking to engage in a duel of biblical verses, it is better off tabled. I do not mean to say that texts such as the bible do not inform American opinion; rather, it is better to examine if and how the American legal system responds to such arguments. If they do, do they hold weight on their own or is it attached to a desire for proportional justice?
Conor: Good question, it caused me to pause. So I looked up the commandment applicable, and the translation I got was “Thou shalt not murder.” It startled me. Hanging, electrocution, needle, it’s hard to look away from that being the “killing” of someone, but “murder” is more personal, not the kind of thing a state, or in the old days, a king, would do.
And Conor, if a bad guy has a gun to your daughter’s head, and is threatening to kill her, you gonna say “Nope, BIble says not to murder, I have to let him have her,” or do you blow the guy away?
So we’ve established that there’s a graduated scale, and that it may be permissible, perhaps warranted, to take a life under certain situations.A just war is another example. I happen to believe that capital punishment is warranted, also that the current arguments we’ve seen rehearsed here aren’t compelling enough for me to not support its continued appropriate use
It ain’t pretty, but neither are the things bad guys do to people, and the nations they inhabit.