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February 2006

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Montreal Climate talks (2005)
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Don Monkerud


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The Battle Over Execution

By Don Monkerud
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February 2006
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D ecember 2005 marked a milestone—1,000 executions since the Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to restart after a brief recess in the 1970s. While news stories narrowly focus on individuals to be executed, such as Nobel Peace Prize nominee “Tookie” Williams and Ruben Cantu in Texas, the country appears unable to fully debate the merits of the death penalty. Consider that the U.S. position on the death penalty parallels those in China, Iran, and Vietnam, all of which executed more people than the U.S. did in 2004. These 4 countries accounted for 97 percent of executions in 2004—China leads with 3,400. Other countries that execute criminals include Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Egypt, Singapore, and Yemen—some of the most repressive regimes in the world. 

Some 120 countries have abolished the death penalty legally or in practice. Five countries—Bhutan, Greece, Samoa, Senegal, and Turkey—abolished the death penalty last year. As Kate Allen, Amnesty International’s UK director, says, “The death penalty is cruel and unnecessary, does not deter crime, and runs the risk of killing the wrongly convicted. It is time to consign the death penalty to the dustbin of history.” 

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 2,135,901 prisoners are currently being held in federal, state, or local prisons in the U.S.—twice as many as in Russia and about 25 percent more than in China. This number represents 486 prison inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents, an increase from 411 in 1995. Although crime rates are decreasing, courts continue to put more people—at an ever-increasing cost—in jail. 

Attitudes are slowly changing. At its peak, 80 percent of people in the U.S. supported the death penalty. Today this has eroded to 64 percent, still a majority. The number put to death declined this year to the lowest level since 1996 and 12 states have abolished the death penalty, although it continues to be popular in the South. 

From 1993 to 2003 almost 88 percent of executions took place in southern states. Since 1976, Texas executed more than one-third of those put to death. Harris County, Texas is the death penalty capital of the country, a place where Rice University sociologist Stephen L. Klineberg found that more defendants are sentenced to die than anywhere else in the nation. 

Support for the death penalty continues to come from the GOP and the White House. On December 2 President Bush reiterated his strong support for the death penalty. Bush, while governor of Texas, oversaw 152 executions, more than any governor in recent history. With the help of his legal counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, Bush reviewed 57 death penalties and commuted only one. He okay- ed the execution of a 33-year-old mentally retarded prisoner with the communication skills of a 7-year- old and the first woman executed in Texas in more than 100 years. Publicly, Bush said he sought “guidance through prayer”—that must have been before becoming a “compassionate conservative.” 

According to a new book, Death By Design: Capital Punishment as a Social Psychological System by Craig Haney, professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, there is a systematic set of procedures designed to “distance and disengage” decision makers from the responsibility of the death penalty. By allowing prosecuting attorneys to exclude anyone who wouldn’t vote for death, the courts promote capital punishment. During the required sentencing phase, most juries don’t understand or respond to aggravating or mitigating circumstances and often little or no information is presented about the psychological or social circumstances that led to the crime. Innumerable cases exist where mentally retarded, mistreated, or brutalized defendants are sentenced to death without the jury learning about their pasts. 

Haney analyzes the formation of public attitudes toward criminals and the death penalty. Of course, political campaigns play a large role in any media coverage. Crime and the fear of crime are a major focus of the news. Haney points to the covers of Newsweek , Time, and U.S. News, with titles like, “How Kids are Robbed of their Child- hood,” “Lock’em up and Throw Away the Key: Outrage over Crime has America Talking Tough,” and “The Truth About Violent Crime: What You Really Have to Fear.” 

Cop shows are a major focus of TV programming. John Sloop, in The Cultural Prison , reports that there’s “a growing tendency to show prisoners as irrational, predatory, dangerous, and beyond reform.” Media sources have replaced scientific studies in forming public attitudes and, in the process, helped create popular myths about the death penalty. 

Haney explains that many people believe capital punishment is necessary for public safety, without understanding how the system actually operates. “People believe the death penalty deters murder, yet there is no reliable evidence that it does,” said Haney. “Many believe people sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole eventually will get out, although that does not happen.” 

Indeed, deterrence, the most often stated argument for the death penalty, is highly questionable. According to an FBI Preliminary Uniform Crime Report, the murder rate in the South increased by 2.1 percent in 2002 while the South has accounted for 82 percent of all executions since 1976. In Texas a team of researchers examined executions between 1984 and 1997. Researchers concluded that the number of executions was unrelated to murder rates in general and that the number of executions was also unrelated to felony rates. 

Another argument, based on purely economic issues, is the “I don’t want to pay for their oatmeal” position towards those on death row. There is no evidence to back up this argument either. A “New Jersey Policy Perspectives” report, commissioned by New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, found that convicting a killer and putting him or her to death costs about four times more than imprisoning him for life without parole. An Illinois State University study estimated that the death penalty process has cost New Jersey taxpayers $253 million since 1983. Studies by the Death Penalty Information Center found that the cost of capital trials far exceeds the cost of other types of trials. 

Of course there’s an argument that those sentenced to death should only get one appeal, but this perspective overlooks the 172 exonerations of innocent people—including 14 people who were at one time sentenced to death—that the Innocence Project has won. 

Today, a number of powerful political forces are looking to speed up the trial and execution of prisoners. Congress is considering bills that would decrease appeals to federal courts in death penalty cases. How these efforts will fare is undetermined. 

Currently, 1,000 religious leaders—including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United Methodist Church—are calling for an end to the death penalty. As U.S. citizens consider the facts involved in the death sentence, they may change their minds and end a practice supported by only a small number of repressive nations.

Don Monkerud is an Aptos, California-based writer who follows cultural, social, and political issues. 
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