Executing Those Who Deserve To Die
Alex Kozinski is a conservative Reagan appointee with a penchant for controversial language. His statement was part of a dissent. Judge Kozinski wanted to put a legal hold on an execution. His fellow jurists on the 9th Circuit Court went the other way, refusing to review the death penalty decision of a lower court.
Click here for audio version of this article.
Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and beautiful — like something any one of us might experience in our final moments.
– Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge, U.S. 9th Circuit Court, July 21, 2014
The sentence in the case has quickly become famous. It became the third botched execution in recent weeks. It was expected to last for ten minutes. But Joseph Wood struggled to breathe for an hour after lethal drugs were administered by the state of Arizona. The entire procedure took about two hours. Descriptions of the gasps and snorts are graphic. It must have been ghastly.
Joseph Wood is not an ideal poster child for abolition of capital punishment. Before committing murder, he was the classic abuser, habitually beating the girlfriend who provided financial support during his long periods of unemployment.
When she finally had enough and left him, going to live with her parents, he went into a stone cold rage. He showed up at the little auto shop where she worked for her father. He waited for the father to finish a telephone call, then smiled and shot him to death.
He walked through the shop until he found his estranged girl friend. As she pleaded for her life, he was heard explaining it all to her. “I told you I was going to do it, I have to kill you.”
Then he pulled the trigger of the gun he had pressed against her chest.
Before the execution of Joseph Wood began, he turned and smiled at the family of the two victims. His final statement was that he had found Jesus. There was no apology for the family, but the murderer hoped they would all be forgiven.
The reaction of the family is understandable. In my heart, I do believe it would be close to my reaction if I ever found myself in their place. The brother-in-law of the young woman:
This man conducted a horrifying murder and you guys are going, “let’s worry about the drugs.” Why didn’t they give him a bullet? Why didn’t we give him Drano?
Other executions, botched or otherwise, have similar stories of brutal crimes. How can some sort of retribution be far from our thoughts?
The bloodless answer Mike Dukakis gave in 1988 may have cost him an election.
“Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”
“No, I don’t, Bernard, and I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don’t see any evidence that it’s a deterrent and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime.”
I think of a fictional account of a fictional President pondering whether to save a murderer slated for execution. He asks the survivor of a murder victim for his opinion. Your mother was killed in the line of duty, wasn’t she? The young aide answers yes. Would you want her killer executed? The young man says no, he would not want the killer to be executed. The fictional Commander-in-Chief nods. Then the aide continues: I’d rather kill him myself.
My own journey on the issue has been a slow one. I was swayed by a crooked governor. 13 convicted murderers on death row were exonerated by evidence discovered after their very fair trials. During that time, another 12 inmates were actually executed. Governor George Ryan (R-IL) suspended all death penalties pending a careful study. He eventually commuted all death sentences in Illinois.
The idea of executing innocent people is, and ought to be horrifying. As the possibility went to plausibility, it was enough to convince me. I could not think of a way to execute the unmistakably guilty without eventually executing innocent people.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing for the Atlantic Monthly, presents the case of the youngest person executed in the United States, George Junius Stinney. In retrospect, it is clear he was railroaded. The fact that the kid was black carried the day in 1944. Two little white girls, whose bodies were later found, had spoken with the youngster and his sister shortly before they disappeared. That was enough.
Today we can say those days are behind us. In a sense we would be right, but only in the sense that all past is the past. We face new demonstrations of bigotry, some subtle, every day. As Coates puts it:
The “Hey Guys, Let’s Not Be Racist” switch is really “Hey Guys, Let’s Pretend We Aren’t American” switch or a “Hey Guys, Let’s Pretend We Aren’t Human Beings” switch. The death penalty—like all state actions—exists within a context constructed by humans, not gods. Humans tend to have biases, and the systems we construct often reflect those biases.
The anger that reacts against injustice is often what impels us along the arc of the moral universe. It is part of what bends that arc toward justice. If not channeled, it becomes the violence itself.
So, yeah, if my family was victimized, I would want to kill those responsible. Personally. Slow, torturous death would not be a flaw, it would be a feature. I wouldn’t want to be deterred by process, or by appeals, or by the microscopic possibility that I might have the wrong guy.
I would likely be the one who wants to pull the switch. I can see myself as the one who hopes the killer suffers at least as much as his victim. Two hours to die? Good.
The same would be true if a victim of murder was from a family down the street. The same might even be true if the family was in the same courtroom while I deliberated guilt or innocence.
That rage inside of me is a large part of why I have to be against the death penalty.
This article is a collaboration between MadMikesAmerica and FairandUNbalanced.com.
I agree that killing others for revenge only pulls humanity back into the mire.
The whole death by injection movement started in Oklahoma. As a young Oklahoma state legislator, Rep. Bill Wiseman introduced legislation that became the model for lethal-injection laws nationwide. He eventually became appalled at what he’d helped create; repented of this; switched to the Democrat party; and got soundly defeated at the next election. At age 61 he became an ordained Episcopal priest and was active in fostering social justice until his early death.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/archives/rev-bill-wiseman-jr-was-hard-to-pin-down/article_38079880-a527-564e-90b2-84be0c6ffad0.html
I remember an interview with him. Despite all of his good intentions he seemed to be a tortured man.
Thoughtful comments. Thank you.
I guess I come closest to Pennyjane Hanson’s reaction. I began to oppose the death penalty as a result of Governor Ryan’s stand and the research he provoked.
But it came to me that the issue was not with those who, unlike me, would be unwilling to put aside their anger at the crimes. The issue is with people very much like me.
By taking it upon ourselves to kill those who kill for revenge or to send a message to others who might kill we have stepped across the same line as the one we are killing. It has been proven over and over again that any system that we devise to ferret out the guilty for that ultimate punishment will be flawed and we, society, will also kill innocents. Even if we were to perfect the process, the mere fact that our arrogance would lead us to kill shows our imperfection. Executions only show how little value we in this country places on life while most other older, wiser civilizations have already learned that it accomplishes nothing. A friend of mine once pointed out that there may well be a correlation between the fact that while America still has the death penalty it also has one the highest rates of violent crime in the world.
Here! Here!
I was once a fierce defender of the death penalty, until I realized that once you press that button, or pull that trigger, the bad guy suffers no more but the families of their victims will suffer for life. I prefer a slow death, one that puts an offender in an 8×10 cell for the rest of his or her natural life. That’s punishment.
No death penalty in Britain. Gave it up years ago and there’s not one difference in the number of murders. Only deters those who are hung.
well, suicide is always an option…if someone really feels within themselves that death is better than life, if it’s really more than just bravado, they can make it happen. one enticing thing about the death penalty is that you get to take the option out of their hands…you get to IMPOSE your will on them.
not that i particular like that about myself, but it can be pretty self-satisfying.
Mike and I spent years together working the streets as cops in Missouri and I can tell you that some people are just shit bags who deserve to die. That being said it just isn’t punishment enough. As Smith mentioned: decades in prison. That’s fucking punishment. Death means lights out, no more pain. Make them suffer for as long as they draw breath in the belly of the beast.
This is a great argument. Thanks for writing it.
this is one of the most stimulating articles i’ve read in a long time.
“the rage inside of me is a large part of why i have to be against the death penalty.”
this makes me feel like that even with my strong commitment to saving the forest, every time i see a tree i get this maniacal urge to chop it down.
although i’m against the death penalty period, each time i examine an individual case that thought creeps into my head, “i could pull the trigger on THIS guy myself.
sometimes we just have to drag ourselves kicking and screaming back to reality.
As cruel and often badly-done as the death penalty is, it still isn’t as bad as decades in a prison. Given the choice between the two, I’d pull the switch on my own execution.