Reversing its long-stand­ing sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the Spokane Spokesman-Review recent­ly pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al call­ing for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States. The paper not­ed that the deci­sion to change its stance on the death penal­ty came after care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of grow­ing evi­dence that the news­pa­per’s ​“expec­ta­tions of fair­ness and jus­tice” are not being met and that the death penal­ty’s ​“draw­backs now out­weigh its mer­its.” The edi­to­r­i­al in full:

It took Jermaine Herron sev­en min­utes to die, but it took Texas sev­en years to kill him. ​“I’ll tell you what the cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment is,” said Jerry Nutt, whose wife and son Herron shot to death, ​“it’s the vic­tims hav­ing to wait for jus­tice.”

Nutt does­n’t real­ize it, but Herron’s jour­ney from sen­tenc­ing in 1999 to death by lethal injec­tion 11 days ago in Huntsville, Texas, was swift. Nationally, the aver­age wait on death row is more than 10 years.

Consider Dwayne Woods, who was sen­tenced in Spokane County to die for beat­ing Telisha Shaver and Jade Moore to death with a base­ball bat. That was in 1997, and Woods is still on death row, even though he ini­tial­ly asked for the death penal­ty.

Among the indus­tri­al­ized nations of the world, only the United States and Japan allow cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Of the 26 mem­bers of NATO, only the United States and Latvia allow cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment – and Latvia is per­ceived to be mov­ing toward abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty. Because of the delays, the incon­sis­ten­cy, the drain on the pub­lic purse and the night­mar­ish pos­si­bil­i­ty of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son, it is time for the United States to end the prac­tice.

Duncan case

In Idaho, Joseph Edward Duncan III is sched­uled to go to tri­al in October, accused of slay­ing Brenda Groene, her son Slade and her boyfriend, Mark McKenzie, a year ago at Wolf Lodge. Federal charges also are pend­ing in the kid­nap­ping of Shasta and Dylan Groene and Dylan’s death in Montana.

If Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas con­victs Duncan and wins the death penal­ty, which he says he’ll seek, he’ll still have years of effort cut out for him­self and prob­a­bly his suc­ces­sors. Kootenai County will spend mil­lions of dol­lars and a decade or longer of legal work before Duncan or any oth­er defen­dant con­vict­ed today is put to death. Of the 20 peo­ple now on death row in Idaho, sev­en have been there longer than 20 years.

Steve Groene, the father of Slade, Shasta and Dylan, has encour­aged Douglas to drop cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in a plea bar­gain for life in prison with­out parole. Other rel­a­tives of the vic­tims dis­agree, says Douglas, thus call­ing atten­tion to one of many rea­sons to ques­tion whether cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is admin­is­tered with the even­hand­ed­ness that the American jus­tice sys­tem pro­fess­es.

Once a mur­der has been com­mit­ted, is exe­cu­tion jus­ti­fied by the cir­cum­stances of the crime – or by the dis­po­si­tion of the vic­tim’s sur­vivors? Are those who die alone and aban­doned less enti­tled to have the law’s sternest penal­ty applied on their behalf than those whose par­ents, spous­es and chil­dren can make a per­sua­sive plea for ret­ri­bu­tion?

Justice delayed

While Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens have ques­tioned the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of lengthy delays between sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion, their col­league Justice Clarence Thomas won­ders what else to expect when you ​“arm cap­i­tal defen­dants with an arse­nal of ​‘con­sti­tu­tion­al’ claims with which they may delay their exe­cu­tions. …”

Thomas’ rea­son­ing is appeal­ing but decep­tive. Those con­sti­tu­tion­al claims are pro­tec­tion against grim, irre­versible mis­takes. If Charles Fain, for exam­ple, had been put to death dur­ing his near­ly 18 years on Idaho’s death row, it would have been too late for the DNA tests that even­tu­al­ly proved the blood sam­ple used to con­vict him was­n’t his. In 2001, the same year Fain was freed in Idaho, Illinois Gov. George Ryan, his faith in the sys­tem shak­en by a string of exon­er­a­tions, imposed a mora­to­ri­um on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in his state.

Unfortunately, mis­takes and vagaries are more com­mon in death cas­es than many law-abid­ing cit­i­zens like to think:

•Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a sup­port­er of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, wor­ries about the com­pe­tence of lawyers who rep­re­sent defen­dants in cap­i­tal cas­es. One study in Washington state showed that 20 per­cent of the lawyers whose clients received the death penal­ty had dis­bar­ments, sus­pen­sions or arrests on their records. O’Connor thinks lawyers who han­dle such cas­es should have spe­cial qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

•Noting that ser­i­al killers like Gary Ridgway and Robert Yates Jr. in Washington have been able to bar­gain for life sen­tences in exchange for infor­ma­tion about their crimes, state Supreme Court Justice Charles Johnson wrote: ​“No ratio­nal expla­na­tion exists to explain why some indi­vid­u­als escape the penal­ty of death and oth­ers do not.”

•In some juris­dic­tions, bud­get-strapped pros­e­cu­tors decline to seek the death penal­ty, not because of mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances in the case but because of the cost. One study at Duke University con­clud­ed that it cost North Carolina $2.16 mil­lion more per exe­cu­tion than mur­der cas­es with a sen­tence of life in prison. Other stud­ies have reached sim­i­lar find­ings. Think of how many police offi­cers that mon­ey could hire.

•Whether a mur­der­er is exe­cut­ed prob­a­bly has less to do with the cir­cum­stances of the crime than it does with the state where it was com­mit­ted. Texas alone accounts for a third of the more than 1,000 exe­cu­tions in the United States since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed in 1976. Add Virginia and Oklahoma and it’s more than half. Twelve states have no death penal­ty, and five oth­ers have one but have nev­er used it.

Despite the death penal­ty’s vaunt­ed deter­rent effect, the mur­der rate in the nine states that have exe­cut­ed an aver­age of one or more defen­dants a year since 1976 ranges from 5.2 per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion to 12.7. It’s less than 5 in 10 of the 17 states that haven’t used the death penal­ty in the past 30 years. Nationally, the mur­der rate is about 8 per 100,000, about the same as in 1976, although it has fluc­tu­at­ed through­out that peri­od.

No tears for killers

Society’s worst offend­ers mer­it no sym­pa­thy. They’ll get none here. If you’re the vic­tim of a crime, espe­cial­ly a mur­der that’s ripped a jagged hole in your life where a loved one used to be, you have a right to be out­raged and emo­tion­al. You’re enti­tled to think of fun­da­men­tal safe­guards like due process and a pre­sump­tion of inno­cence as annoy­ances.

It’s not the vic­tim’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to be calm and dis­pas­sion­ate, but it is the law’s. Courts must deal firm­ly and deci­sive­ly with mur­der­ers, but that isn’t hap­pen­ing under a scheme that deals out death penal­ties with whim­si­cal unpre­dictabil­i­ty and makes vic­tims wait years, even decades, for res­o­lu­tion.

Life with­out parole is a bet­ter solu­tion. So-called BTK killer Dennis Rader and con­vict­ed 9/​11 con­spir­a­tor Zacarias Moussaoui have recent­ly been dis­patched to spend the rest of their lives in iso­la­tion. Political assas­sin Sirhan Sirhan and mad­man Charles Manson remain secure­ly behind bars, soci­o­log­i­cal arti­facts from anoth­er era. And their upkeep is a tax­pay­er’s bar­gain com­pared with the end­less legal expens­es con­sumed by cap­i­tal cas­es.

For those to whom the death penal­ty is an invit­ing way to even the score, life in prison with no parole may still be unsat­is­fy­ing gru­el. But the law is a com­pact that holds all of soci­ety to a set of expec­ta­tions. Crime is a vio­la­tion of the com­pact, a break­down in social order. The court sys­tem is expect­ed to restore order and to do it with effi­cien­cy and pre­dictabil­i­ty. The goal is jus­tice for all, not vengeance for some.

(Spokane Spokesman-Review, May 28, 2006) (empha­sis added). See Editorials and New Voices.

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