Law Enforcement

As he pre­pared for retire­ment, the long-time direc­tor of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said he does not sup­port the death penal­ty and believes the pun­ish­ment is on its way out in Georgia and across the coun­try. In a tele­vi­sion inter­view on his final day of work as GBI direc­tor, Vernon Keenan (pic­tured) told WXIA-TV, Atlanta’s NBC tele­vi­sion affil­i­ate, that he has ​“nev­er believed in the death penal­ty” and “[t]he day will come when we won’t have the death penal­ty in Georgia and in the United States.”

Keenan, a 45-year vet­er­an of law enforce­ment who has run the state crim­i­nal jus­tice agency for the past six­teen years, called the death penal­ty out­dat­ed and inef­fec­tive in advanc­ing pub­lic safe­ty. Keenan said, ​“I don’t believe the death penal­ty deters any­one. The peo­ple that com­mit crime, they don’t believe they’re going to get caught. The death penal­ty is just a way soci­ety gets ret­ri­bu­tion from the crim­i­nal.” He told WXIA that he believes declin­ing pub­lic sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment will ulti­mate­ly lead elect­ed offi­cials to recon­sid­er whether the death penal­ty should remain part of the state’s criminal code.

Keenan’s belief that the death penal­ty is not a deter­rent reflects the wide­ly held beliefs of many senior crim­i­nal jus­tice per­son­nel. A 2008 study found that 88% of the nation’s lead­ing crim­i­nol­o­gists believe the death penal­ty is not an effective deterrent to crime and that three-quar­ters of them believed that debates over the death penal­ty ​“dis­tract leg­is­la­tures from real crime solu­tions.” A 2008 poll of 500 police chiefs in the United States, com­mis­sioned by DPIC, found that police chiefs rank the death penal­ty low­est among crime fight­ing options as ​“most impor­tant for reduc­ing vio­lent crime.” The chiefs believed that increas­ing the num­ber of police offi­cers, reduc­ing drug abuse, and cre­at­ing a bet­ter econ­o­my were all more impor­tant in reduc­ing crime. More than two-thirds (69%) said that “[p]oliticians sup­port the death penal­ty as a sym­bol­ic way to show they are tough on crime.” ​“I believe life in prison with­out parole is pun­ish­ment enough,” Keenan said. ​“Probably worse than death.”

Georgia was one of only eight states to car­ry out exe­cu­tions in 2018. No Georgia jury has rec­om­mend­ed a new death sen­tence since 2014.

(Doug Richards, Retiring GBI direc­tor pre­dicts demise of death penal­ty, WXIA-TV, 11 Alive News, December 31, 2018.) See New Voices and Deterrence

Drawing on their expe­ri­ence in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, elect­ed law enforce­ment offi­cials in Washington and Texas have urged repeal of their states’ death-penal­ty laws. In Washington, King County (Seattle) pros­e­cu­tor Dan Satterberg (pic­tured, left), a Republican, tes­ti­fied January 22 before the Senate Law and Justice Committee in favor of a bipar­ti­san leg­isla­tive pro­pos­al to repeal Washington’s cap­i­tal-pun­ish­ment statute. Telling the Texas Tribune “[w]e’re killing the wrong peo­ple,” for­mer Dallas County sher­iff Lupe Valdez (pic­tured, right), cur­rent­ly a can­di­date for the Democratic Party nom­i­na­tion for gov­er­nor of Texas, announced her oppo­si­tion to Texas’s death penal­ty. Satterberg’s tes­ti­mo­ny came on the heels of an op-ed he wrote in The Seattle Times in sup­port of SB6052, a bill that would prospec­tive­ly abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Satterberg, who has worked in the King County pros­e­cu­tor’s office for 27 years and wit­nessed Washington’s last exe­cu­tion in 2010, wrote: ​“It is my duty to report that the death penal­ty law in our state is bro­ken and can­not be fixed. It no longer serves the inter­ests of pub­lic safe­ty, crim­i­nal jus­tice, or the needs of vic­tims.” Sitting along­side Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson, Satterberg told the com­mit­tee, ​“If you look at it care­ful­ly and take away the pol­i­tics and the emo­tion, by any mea­sure this does­n’t work. Our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem would be stronger with­out the death penal­ty.” The abo­li­tion bill was intro­duced by Republican state Sen. Maureen Walsh, with bipar­ti­san co-spon­sor­ship, at Ferguson’s request. In a news release, Ferguson said: ​“The death penal­ty is expen­sive, unfair, dis­pro­por­tion­ate — and it doesn’t work. More than a third of all U.S. states have abol­ished the death penal­ty. Washington should join them.” The bill passed the com­mit­tee by a 4 – 3 vote on January 25. In a Texas can­di­date’s forum in Austin, Valdez — who served as sher­iff from 2005 to 2017 before resign­ing to run for gov­er­nor — ref­er­enced on-going con­cerns about wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions and wrong­ful exe­cu­tions. ​“Some of those [sen­tenced to death in Texas] have been exon­er­at­ed,” Valdez said. ​“We can­not con­tin­ue being in a sit­u­a­tion where we risk killing a per­son who is not guilty.” Since 1973, 13 peo­ple have been exon­er­at­ed from death row in Texas, and ques­tions have been raised about the guilt of sev­er­al exe­cut­ed pris­on­ers, includ­ing Carlos DeLuna, Cameron Willingham, and Robert Pruett. Valdez joined anoth­er lead­ing Democratic con­tender for gov­er­nor, busi­ness­man Andrew White, in oppos­ing the death penal­ty. Incumbent Governor Greg Abbott, a for­mer Texas attor­ney gen­er­al, is a strong sup­port­er of capital punishment.

(Dan Satterberg, King County’s pros­e­cut­ing attor­ney: ​‘We don’t need the death penal­ty’, The Seattle Times, January 19, 2018; AG Ferguson, King County Prosecutor Satterberg tes­ti­fy in Olympia to end death penal­ty, Kent Reporter, January 22, 2018; Max Wasserman, Effort to abol­ish death penal­ty in Washington gains steam after it clears Senate com­mit­tee, The News Tribune, January 25, 2018; Patrick Svitek, Democratic can­di­date for gov­er­nor Lupe Valdez calls for increased min­i­mum wage, is open to a tax increase, Texas Tribune, January 18, 2018; Ross Ramsey, Analysis: What works in one Texas elec­tion might not work in the next one, Texas Tribune, January 19, 2018.) See Recent Legislation.

Former high-rank­ing law enforce­ment offi­cials from Arizona and Kansas have called on their states to end the death penal­ty. In sep­a­rate op-ed sto­ries one week apart, for­mer Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard (pic­tured, left) and for­mer Kansas Secretary of Corrections Roger Werholtz (pic­tured, right) con­clude that the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment schemes in their states have failed and should be aban­doned. In a November 5 op-ed in the Arizona Daily Star head­lined Arizona’s 40-year exper­i­ment with the death penal­ty has failed, Attorney General Goddard said ​“Arizona does not have a good track record for get­ting [the death penal­ty] right,” point­ing to prob­lems of inno­cence, racial dis­par­i­ty, cost, and per­sis­tent struc­tur­al prob­lems with the state’s death penal­ty law. Goddard, a for­mer Mayor of Phoenix, lat­er over­saw the exe­cu­tions of six peo­ple dur­ing his tenure as the state’s Attorney General from 2003 to 2011. He now says the state’s death penal­ty has ​“failed … in fun­da­men­tal ways,” with a statute so broad that it ​“captur[es] near­ly every first-degree mur­der” and defec­tive statu­to­ry pro­vi­sions and judi­cial pro­ce­dures that have caused ​“dozens of [cas­es to] have been set aside.” He says “[s]entencing the inno­cent to die … is rea­son alone to aban­don the death penal­ty.” Although “[g]etting it wrong once is one time too many,” Arizona ​“has swept up the inno­cent in its net” at least nine times. Goddard argues that the ​“unset­tling racial dis­par­i­ties” in the appli­ca­tion of Arizona’s death penal­ty — Hispanic men accused of mur­der­ing whites are sen­tenced to death at more than four times the rate of white defen­dants accused of mur­der­ing Hispanics — and “[t]he spi­ral­ing costs of seek­ing and impos­ing a death sen­tence are fur­ther rea­son to aban­don the pol­i­cy.” Goddard con­cludes that, after four decades of using cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, ​“Arizona has failed to nar­row [its] appli­ca­tion … and has been unable or unwill­ing to pro­vide the guid­ance nec­es­sary to ensure that the death penal­ty is only imposed on the worst offend­ers.” Given these ​“myr­i­ad prob­lems,” he says, ​“Arizona should join the ris­ing tide against impos­ing it.” On October 31, Corrections Secretary Werholtz also authored an op-ed advo­cat­ing end­ing the death penal­ty, though for very dif­fer­ent rea­sons. In an opin­ion piece in the Topeka Capital-Journal enti­tled End the death penal­ty in Kansas, Secretary Werholtz addressed the state’s bud­get short­fall and the chal­lenges it posed to keep­ing cor­rec­tions staff, pris­on­ers, and com­mu­ni­ties safe. Werholtz — who served 28 years with the Kansas Department of Corrections, includ­ing eight as its Secretary — says ​“one sim­ple choice” in address­ing the prob­lem ​“would be to elim­i­nate the exces­sive amounts of mon­ey we are spend­ing on Kansas’ bro­ken death penal­ty by replac­ing it with life with­out parole.” As Kansas faces a deci­sion on whether to build a new exe­cu­tion facil­i­ty to replace an exe­cu­tion cham­ber that the state has nev­er used, Werholtz ​“believe[s] it’s time we acknowl­edge that the return on our invest­ment in the death penal­ty has been abysmal. Numerous stud­ies con­clude that the death penal­ty keeps us no safer than impris­on­ment, and yet it siphons away far more crime pre­ven­tion dol­lars.” Currently, he says, Kansas is unable to ful­ly staff its cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ties or make tech­no­log­i­cal improve­ments to ensure the safe­ty of cor­rec­tions offi­cers and pris­on­ers alike. ​“With funds so scarce, and the needs so great,” Werholtz says, ​“it sim­ply makes no sense for us to con­tin­ue to invest more in our inef­fec­tive death penalty.”

(T. Goddard, ​“Arizona’s 40-year exper­i­ment with the death penal­ty has failed,” Arizona Daily Star, November 5, 2017; R. Werholtz, ​“End the death penal­ty in Kansas,” The Topeka Capital-Journal, October 31, 2017.)