the death penalty

timothy mcveigh died this morning at 7:14 central daylight time. his execution, the first federal execution in thirtyodd years, has brought the debate on the death penalty to the forefront of the nation's conscious again.

i am firmly against the death penalty:

1. a philosophical reason. i do not believe that responding to murder with more murder is a civilized reaction. if it was wrong of mcveigh to kill, then it is wrong for us to kill him in return. note that my opinion is not based at all on any feelings of sympathy for mcveigh; he killed 168 people, and did not regret it. my opinion is rather one of principle.

below are the practical, logistical arguments

2. it is better to set a guilty man free than to convict an innocent man. people are wrongly convicted of crimes, including capital crimes, all the time. in cases where the sentence is death, the punishment is irreversable. it is *inexcusable* to execute someone for a crime they did not commit, and until we can be sure that *all* the prisoners we execute are guilty (i don't think we can *ever* be sure of that), we should not execute *anyone*. below are a few cases where the death was sentenced. in some, the prisoner was saved before they died. in others, evidence of the prisoner's innocence came too late. these cases come from a pamphlet put out by the aclu: "the case against the death penalty," by hugo adam bedau.

• In 1985, in Maryland, Kirk Bloodsworth was sentenced to death for rape and murder, despite the testimony of alibi witnesses. In 1986 his conviction was reversed on grounds of withheld evidence pointing to another suspect; he was retried, re-convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. In 1993, newly available DNA evidence proved he was not the rapist-killer, and he was released after the prosecution dismissed the case. A year later he was awarded $300,000 for wrongful punishment.
• In Mississippi, in 1990, Sabrina Butler was sentenced to death for killing her baby boy. She claimed the child died after attempts at resuscitation failed. On technical grounds her conviction was reversed in 1992. At retrial, she was acquitted when a neighbor corroborated Butler's explanation of the child's cause of death and the physician who performed the autopsy admitted his work had not been thorough.
• In 1985, in Illinois, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez were convicted of abduction, rape, and murder of a young girl and were sentenced to death. Shortly after, another man serving a life term in prison for similar crimes confessed that he alone was guilty; but his confession was inadmissible because he refused to repeat it in court unless the state waived the death penalty. Awarded a new trial in 1988, Cruz was again convicted and sentenced to death; Hernandez was also re-convicted, and sentenced to 80 years in prison. In 1992 the assistant attorney general assigned to prosecute the case on appeal resigned after becoming convinced of the defendants' innocence. The convictions were again overturned on appeal after DNA tests exonerated Cruz and implicated the prisoner who had earlier confessed. In 1995 the court ordered a directed verdict of acquittal, and sharply criticized the police for their unprofessional handling of the case. Hernandez was released on bail and the prosecution dropped all charges.
• In Alabama, Walter McMillian was convicted of murdering a white woman in 1988. Despite the jury's recommendation of a life sentence, the judge sentenced him to death. The sole evidence leading the police to arrest McMillian was testimony of an ex-convict seeking favor with the prosecution. A dozen alibi witnesses (all African Americans, like McMillian) testified on McMillian's behalf, to no avail. On appeal, after tireless efforts by his attorney Bryan Stevenson, McMillian's conviction was reversed by the Alabama Court of Appeals. Stevenson uncovered prosecutorial suppression of exculpatory evidence and perjury by prosecution witnesses, and the new district attorney joined the defense in seeking dismissal of the charges.
• Another 1980s Texas case tells an even more sordid story. In 1980 a black high school janitor, Clarence Brandley, and his white co-worker found the body of a missing 16-year-old white schoolgirl. Interrogated by the police, they were told, "One of you two is going to hang for this." Looking at Brandley, the officer said, "Since you're the nigger, you're elected." In a classic case of rush to judgment, Brandley was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. The circumstantial evidence against him was thin, other leads were ignored by the police, and the courtroom atmosphere reeked of racism. In 1986, Centurion Ministries - a volunteer group devoted to freeing wrongly convicted prisoners - came to Brandley's aid. Evidence had meanwhile emerged that another man had committed the murder for which Brandley was awaiting execution. Brandley was not released until 1990.
• In 1992, Roger Keith Coleman was executed in Virginia despite widely publicized doubts surrounding his guilt and evidence that pointed to another person as the murderer - evidence that was never submitted at his trial. Not until late in the appeal process did anyone take seriously the possibility that the state was about to kill an innocent man, and then efforts to delay or nullify his execution failed. Coleman's case was marked with many of the circumstances found in other cases where the defendant was eventually cleared. Were Coleman still incarcerated, his friends and attorneys would have a strong incentive to resolve these questions. But because Coleman is dead, further inquiry into the crime for which he was convicted is extremely unlikely.
• In 1990, Jesse Tafero was executed in Florida. He had been convicted in 1976 along with his wife, Sonia Jacobs, for murdering a state trooper. In 1981 Jacobs' death sentence was reduced on appeal to life imprisonment, and 11 years later her conviction was vacated by a federal court. The evidence on which Tafero and Jacobs had been convicted and sentenced was identical; it consisted mainly of the perjured testimony of an ex-convict who turned state's witness in order to avoid a death sentence. Had Tafero been alive in 1992, he no doubt would have been released along with Jacobs. Tafero's death is probably the clearest case in recent years of the execution of an innocent person.

if there were no death penalty, but rather life-without-parole, death row inmates who were later found to be not guilty would be able to be released. also, in addition to the inherent wrong of putting an innocent person to death, there is the problem that if someone is punished for a crime they didn't commit, then the person who *did* commit that crime is still loose, and a threat.

3. application of the death penalty (and the rest of the criminal justice system) is racially and economically biased. defendents who are wealthy can afford the best lawyers. those lawyers are better able to get their clients' sentences reduced from death to life-in-prison, or get them acquitted entirely. defendents who are poor must rely on less-talented lawyers, or more overworked lawyers, or underpaid/overworked public defenders. these lawyers are less often able to get life-in-prison subsituted for death, or an acquittal. so, poor people are more likely to be sentenced to the death penalty than wealthy people. furthermore, poor defendents are more likely to be black, and wealthy defendents are more likely to be white.

4. in determing juries for death penalty cases, jurors who are opposed to the death penalty are dismissed, because they will refuse to convict a defendent at all if there is the chance that defendant will get the death penalty. so, all jurors on death penalty cases are pro-death-penalty. this is already a situation where the defendent is not being tried by a jury of his peers/a representative sample of the population. studies have shown that juries where the anti-death-penalty jurors have been dismissed, the average willingness to convict is higher than on juries as a whole. if death-penalty juries are more likely to convict than non-death-penalty juries, then death-penalty defendants are not getting a fair trial.

in sum, i reiterate that i am against the death penalty on principle, for both philosophical and logistical reasons. this does not mean that i think that a killer such as timothy mcveigh deserves to live, or that he deserves any sympathy at all. he killed 168 people and affected the lives of many others. he admitted his crime and felt no remorse for the deaths he caused. i do not feel sorry for him. if he was fearful or anxious as his death approached, that is fine with me. his individual death does not upset me. however, there are many executions that are not so clear cut. there have been too many (one is too many) executions of prisoners who are wrongly convicted. a nation that claims to be civilized, sophisticated, and compassionate, should not also take the lives of its citizens under the guise of justice.