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Introduction
Stalin,
Goering and Governor Arnold aaSchwarzenegger
- astonishing facts
Psychopaths of the US Supreme Court and aaLord
Justice Goddard's trousers
Obama
Pro-Americanism
and anti-Americanism
Traditions:
bullfighting and the death penalty
Death and a salesman
Executioners: striking facts
from German aahistory
Admiration and appreciation
Campaigning techniques
'The risk of executing the damaged'
Reasoned revulsion
Morons, scum and the enlightened
The victims of murder
Some cases
On another page: a play about the death aapenalty.
This abolitionist page is rather different from most other abolitionist pages on the Web.
My approach to death penalty campaigning is more abrasive than the approaches used by many campaigners. I favour sarcasm, the use of demeaning names, as well as reasoned arguments: reasoned revulsion. I don't give here any elaborate arguments against the death penalty - the risk of executing the innocent, the arguments and evidence showing that the death penalty isn't a unique deterrent, and the rest. These are readily available on many other Web sites. I do, though, discuss the risk of executing the damaged, an argument which deserves to be better known.
This is also a personal response to the death penalty - gratitude for people, organizations, governments opposed to the death penalty, and disgust, disappointment, puzzlement as regards people and countries supporting the death penalty (with, sometimes, admiration and appreciation for their better side.)
Stalin, Goering and governor Arnold Schwarzenegger - astonishing facts
It's astonishing to discover impulses to humanity in two of the worst monsters of the Twentieth Century, Stalin and Goering, and no impulses to humanity - in one sense - in someone who is an affront to civilized values but who probably doesn't rate as a monster at all, or not a monster in anything like the same sense as Stalin or Goering: Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California.
Stalin, surely the second greatest monster of the Twentieth Century, after Hitler, abolished the death penalty in the Soviet Union on 26 May 1947. (Richard J Evans, 'Rituals of Retribution,' Page 806. Also mentioned in Solzhenitsyn, 'The Gulag Archipelago 1,' Page 439.) The death penalty was replaced with a maximum term of imprisonment of 25 years. The law didn't apply in occupied Germany, but even here, "the Soviet Military Administration in Germany declared its extreme reluctance to pass or carry out death sentences from this moment on." (Evans, Page 806.) The death penalty was reintroduced in 1951 for treason and espionage. It wasn't restored for murder until 1954, after Stalin's death.
This is a striking demonstration, I think, of the power of tradition and history, not of Stalin's humanity. Long after the death penalty was abolished in the United Kingdom, there were frequent calls to reintroduce it, particularly in England. The long period of legal neck-stretchings entered into popular consciousness. Now, though, the calls to 'bring back the rope' are far fewer and weaker, aided, perhaps, by high-profile cases in which the wrong person was sentenced, even executed. In the United States, a country with a much weaker sense of tradition and a much shorter history, this particular tradition is still strong, though. Only the method of execution has changed - instead of the call to 'fry the bastards,' the call to 'inject the bastards.' But Russia has a very long history of abolishing the death penalty and opposing it. See the information in the 'Admiration' section of this page, about the Empress Elizabeth, who in the middle of the 18th century never once made use of the death penalty. The Empress Catherine made no use of the death penalty for non-political offences. Solzhenitsyn: '...the yielding up of one's God-given life because others, sitting in judgment, have so voted simply did not take place in our country even for crimes of state for an entire half century - from Pugachev to the Decembrists.' [that is, from 1775-1825] In Tsarist times, the death penalty was used very sparingly. When the Provisional Government came to power after the Russian Revolution, it abolished the death penalty completely, reinstated and abolished again in 1920. Stalin had this tradition and history to draw upon.
Goering, when he became Minister-President under Hitler, took on the prerogative of mercy in Prussia. It's an extraordinary fact that when the condemned had been sentenced to death for any length of time, he hesitated about allowing the execution to take place:
'Goering, a man not generally known for his sensitivity to human suffering, indeed went on to grant reprieves to a number of these prisoners, precisely on this ground; a telling contrast to the equanimity with which other judicial authorities, in other places and at other times, have regarded the confinement of condemned prisoners on death row not for months, but for years, while awaiting a final decision on whether they should live or die.' (Richard J Evans, 'Rituals of Retribution,' Page 642.)
To await death for any length of time seemed to Goering intolerable. On 5 May 1933, Goering pointed out
'that in all the cases which are now before me, it is extraordinarily difficult to allow justice to take its course after the condemned, as a result of the uncertainty under which they have already been labouring, some of them for an extraordinarily long time [this was perhaps a year or two, not two decades or more, as it so often is and has been in the United States], have in any case had to undergo spiritual martyrdom.'
Compare this with...
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, who denied clemency to Clarence Ray Allen, who had been on death row for - 23 years! Justice Stephen Breyer had earlier filed a dissent, pointing out that the man had not only been on death row for 23 years but 'is 76 years old, blind, suffers from diabetes and is confined to a wheelchair.' So, Clarence Ray Allen went to his death. As did Stanley "Tookie" Williams, also refused clemency by the Governor. This execution led to outrage in the Governor's native Austria - he has dual American and Austrian nationality - outrage which is very much to the Austrians' credit.
Another case comes from the state of Georgia, USA (Georgia the former Soviet
republic is much more enlightened in this respect.) In September 2008, Jack
Alderman faced execution after an even longer stay on death row. At the time
of writing, he had received a stay of execution a day before the execution
date. Some facts about the case. His codefendant, John Brown, confessed to
the murder but then changed his story to implicate Alderman, in accordance
with a deal made with prosecutors. This allegation was the only evidence against
Alderman. Forensic evidence was completely lacking. Both Alderman and Brown
were sentenced to death but Brown later pleaded guilty in return for a prison
sentence but was freed after serving only 12 years. Jack Alderman, on the
other hand, was given an execution date after being on death row for - 34
years. What is it about the 'Justice' system in Georgia, what deranged
and disgusting state can it be in, that it could consider an action that would
have troubled even the Nazi Goering? Stalin's punishment for murder after
abolition of the death penalty was imprisonment for a maximum term of 25 years.
In Georgia, USA, on the other hand, the punishment can be much, much harsher:
imprisonment for 34 years followed by execution.
Back to Schwarzenegger. Environmentalists, green campaigners - and I do favour
the green cause myself, but with critical
tendencies - will support Arnold Schwarzenegger's efforts
to curb emissions, to minimize the contribution California makes to climate
change. He has already shown leadership of a high order. But even if environmental
protection is one of the most important of all issues, there are issues of
humanity and human decency which are even more important. If, in twenty years,
all Californians are riding in electric vehicles, vehicles powered by biofuel,
if Californians are recycling, reusing, reducing the products they use on
an unprecedented scale, but the killing centre at San Quentin is still in
operation, then the state will be grotesquely at fault. In the image at the
top of the page, San Francisco is 'twinned' with the state's killing centre.
Arthur Koestler, the Hungarian who played a leading part in the campaign to abolish the death penalty in this country (he was under sentence of death himself during the Spanish Civil War) wrote in his book 'Hanged by the Neck:' 'There is a poisoned spray coming from the Old Bailey [where many of the death sentences were passed] which corrupts and depraves; it can be stopped only by abolishing its cause, the death penalty itself. Two centuries ago, visitors to this country were puzzled to find the road to London dotted with grisly gibbets. They are still puzzled by the same contradiction between the Englishman's belief in the necessity of hanging and his proverbial virtues of toleration to man, kindness to animals, fussing over plants and birds. They fail to understand the power of tradition, his reluctance to abandon any of his cherished prejudices.
'Tradition has a hypnotic effect which commands blind belief, an instinctive recoil from any new departure as a 'dangerous experiment', and an unwillingness to listen to reasoned argument.'
I share Arthur Koestler's view that the death penalty is almost a form of moral pollution, in effect, that not all pollution consists of chemicals and radiation. The beauty of San Francisco is tarnished.
Psychopaths of the US Supreme Court and Lord Justice Goddard's trousers
Justice Renhquist, Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas of the United States Supreme Court voted for the death penalty for juveniles and for mentally ill defendants. What goes on in the minds of such people? Some information about Lord Chief Justice Goddard, here in England, who sent many prisoners to meet the hangman, not in the middle ages but in the twentieth century. His Clerk records that when a man was due to be sentenced to death, he would bring in a spare pair of trousers. Why? Because Justice Goddard used to have an organism when he was passing sentence of death and ejaculated into the trousers he was wearing.
I don't suppose that Justice Rehnquist, Scalia or Thomas ever ejaculated whilst refusing clemency to the juvenile offenders or other capital offenders whose cases came before them - but they are surely abnormal. I extend the definition of 'psychopath' to include such people as these: another example of a second meaning.
In the section on campaigning techniques, I discuss the {separation} between reasons and tactics. The 'reasons' are the arguments against the death penalty, which should be meticulous and wide-ranging, covering everything from the financial implications of the death penalty and the statistical evidence for its ineffectiveness to philosophical reasoning. Appeals to a Governor or other politicians, to members of a Board of Pardons and Paroles, and all the other approaches which have a place in death penalty work, can be based on some of these arguments but I think that the 'tactics' should be wider than that, in recognition of the hard facts. Such as the fact that a politician may be less susceptible to reasoned argument, or reminders of the difference between civilization and barbarism, than to electoral advantage. Death penalty work should be high-minded but can also use make use of sarcastic names, demeaning nicknames and smears, but smears which are far from groundless, far from unjustified: words as weapons, which I discuss in the section second meanings. Most death penalty organizations and most death penalty campaigners won't choose to use these these particular tactics, but I see no reason at all why I shouldn't.
President Obama called for the death penalty for child rape before he was elected. The arguments I use in the section 'the risk of executing the damaged' I use again here. A close study of many, many death penalty cases has convinced me that one generalization is far from risky. It's more likely that people who have raped a child were raped as a child themselves or subjected to gross abuse as a child than that they grew up in anything like a 'normal' family. It's far more likely that the diseased individuals who collect internet images of children being raped were raped as a child themselves - or hired out to strangers for sex, or subjected to incest or subjected to another form of gross abuse - than that they grew up in anything like a normal family. Of course, people who were raped as a child may grow up to be law-abiding, hard-working, completely respectable citizens - but the obstacles they face are vastly greater than those who were never raped, or beaten, or burned as children. To sentence even one person who was raped as a child to death - to make them wait for execution for perhaps twenty years, to give them a stay perhaps an hour before the execution, to eventually bring them into the execution chamber - this is the act of a barbaric country. See also on this page 'the risk of executing the damaged.'
Although I have no television, I saw a great deal of Obama and McCain during their electoral campaigns and what I saw was often very impressive, although sometimes more impressive for the manner and the fluency than for the content. Obama was markedly superior in both respects, I think, and although I recognize the remarkable qualities that McCain does have, such as his courage, if I'd lived in America I would certainly have voted for Obama. There are many, many people in America likely to benefit from his victory, for example the people who suffer from the inadequacies of American health care. There's good reason for the hope that his election has given to so many people.
But my respect for Obama's outstanding qualities are accompanied with deep reservations and deep repugnance. Obama's support for the death penalty is far from being a minor issue. There may have been little or no comment in the British media about his support for the death penalty but there certainly was in other parts of Europe. The page
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3446397,00.html
is headed 'Germans Disappointed in Obama's Stance on Death Penalty.' Full credit to these Germans! This pleases me no end. Some excerpts from the article:
'German politicians across the political spectrum have responded with surprise and harsh criticism calling for the death penalty for child rapists.'
'The head of the conservative, Bavaria-based Christian Social Union Erwin Huber, said that although "child rape is one of the most heinous crimes, the ban on the death penalty must be absolute."'
'The foreign policy spokesperson for the Union bloc of conservatives in the German parliament, Eckart von Klaeden, cautioned against upholding a false Obama image in Europe. "With all the Obamania in Europe, many make the mistake of believing they can measure Obama on European standards."'
'The Berlin-based newspaper Tagesspiegel appealed to Germans and Europeans in general to wake up from their Obamania trance and recognize the truth behind the democratic candidate's comments...many in Europe are beginning to realize that the negative aspects they eagerly attributed to Bush are in fact deeply embedded in the land itself: the death penalty, gun ownership, moral conservatism and a dogmatic belief in its own rightousness.'
'The Saarbrücker Zeitung questioned how much still unites Europe with America. "Among the western democracies, the US is the only country that still applies the death penalty and allows for widespread ownership of guns. This is the America of George Bush. Now we know that this America will hardly change under a President Barack Obama."
Pro-Americanism and anti-americanism
I was at a meeting where the speaker, with great experience of American death penalty work, declared that despite all the sad and tragic facts, she wasn't anti-American, since she knew just how many Americans there were opposing the death penalty. As for myself, I'm virulently anti-American in some ways, in my disgust, for example, for the American machinery of death, the treatment of farm animals and the use of the leg-hold trap for trapping of fur-bearing animals, and passionately pro-American in other ways, many other ways - including American energy in opposing the machinery of death, the treatment of farm animals and the trapping of fur-bearing animals. In almost all the areas that interest me, and they include scholarship, literature, classical music, science, engineering and computing, American achievement is staggering, beyond praise. (Although Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Bach and many other composers weren't American, of course, there are the achievements of American instrumentalists, singers and orchestras. American scholarship and comment on classical music are like American scholarship and comment in other areas - of a wonderful standard, in large part.)
The bonds formed between this country and America in time of war, like the bonds formed with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Poland and other countries, are so important to me. On another page, I focus on just one example of the courage of Americans, the crew of a bomber which crashed not far from here during the Second World War.
I'm far from sharing the views of Noam Chomsky and others, according to which American foreign policy is nothing but a story of aggression and injustice. America has a fondness for intervention, and its interventions are very often a force for good. Clive James, in his page on the Austrian writer Karl Kraus, one of many very good pages on his Web site and in his print publications: 'Samantha Power, in her excellent book Genocide: A Problem from Hell, reached a conclusion she didn’t want to reach, as the best analytical books so often do. After showing that no genocidal government in the twentieth century had ever been stopped except by armed intervention, she reluctantly concluded that the armed intervention usually had to be supplied by the United States.' http://www.clivejames.com/karl-kraus This, though, is misleading. The worst genocide of all, the Nazi genocide, wasn't stopped by America alone. By one of those hideous paradoxes of history, the most important of the forces that eventually defeated the Nazis was another totalitarian regime, Soviet Russia. A complete survey would include, though, amongst other things, the incalculable importance of Great Britain in standing firm against Germany, the moral and sometimes practical importance of the resistance movements and America's industrial strength, as well as the courage of its troops and the leadership of its commanders.
America is the most important participant in the 'War on Terror.' I dislike the religiosity which is far more common in America than here, but even though I dislike American Christian fundamentalists and other religious freaks, I don't make the mistake of equating them with Moslem fundamentalists, with fanatics, with suicide bombers and apologists for suicide bombers. Since this page is about the death penalty and not about my respect for American achievement and values or the warmth of my feeling for America, I have to omit so much here.
Almost all of this page is concerned with the death penalty in America. I don't suggest that the use of the death penalty in America is uniquely barbaric and indefensible. Quite the opposite. Executions in China far outnumber those in any other country. Executions in China take place for a wide variety of offences other than murder and violent crime. China's success in feeding its people is perhaps its greatest achievement. Its use of the death penalty shows it at its worst, I think. China has to be placed in the lowest category, together with such countries as Iran and Saudi Arabia. The United States I would place not in this category, the lowest of the low, but in the second lowest. Retentionist countries such as India which do execute, but very rarely, are in a much higher category.
Traditions: bullfighting and the death penalty
Some of this section is adapted from my page on Bullfighting.
Any country with vitality tries to preserve its strengths and reduce its weaknesses. To be unchanging, to be oblivious to the better intellectual and cultural currents of the age, is a sign of weakness and stagnation.
Great Britain, and in particular England, has a very high regard for tradition but it has at least recognized that tradition can be a sign of weakness as well as strength. It's remarkable that Britain, with all its serious faults, has transformed itself from a bull-baiting and bear-baiting and fox-hunting country, one with no real tradition of animal welfare, to one with such a care for dogs, cats, injured wildlife, animal welfare in general. It has achieved a very great deal in the abolition of factory farming, although not nearly enough. For many, many centuries, hanging by the neck was a central tradition. At the time of the 'Bloody Code,' in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, punishments in England and Wales - Scotland and Ireland not to anything like the same extent - were more savage than almost anywhere in Europe. After the abolition of the death penalty, there were frequent calls to 'bring back the rope,' but not any longer. Britain's role as an abolitionist country is secure.
Countries, as well as people, are not condemned to repeat the past. Practices that seem deeply embedded in a society, too much a part of its tradition to be reformed or abolished, can be ended. It might have been expected that Spain's fondness for the death penalty would have been reversed with more difficulty. Not so. Execution by garotte and shooting was ended in Spain in a dramatic way. Not one member of the Spanish parliament voted against abolition. Spain's backwardness in animal welfare is still in evidence but there are very committed activists in the country and encouraging signs, above all in Catalonia.
If opinion polls are any evidence, Americans are more attached to executions than Spaniards are to bullfights, but there are reasons for thinking that executions will be ended in America before bullfights in Spain, withering away in advance of legislation. Not all bad practices are ended by legislation. They may dwindle, regarded as obsolete, an embarrassment. Despite the number of states that retain the death penalty in law, the death penalty has become an irrelevance in the majority. States such as Texas and Virginia - the lowest of the low, as regards the death penalty - will continue to execute for some time, but surely with less and less conviction, less and less faith in what they are doing, more and more prepared to elect politicians who have no faith in the death penalty at all, with the emergence at long last of a concern for reputation in the eyes of the world.
But the complexity of America defies over-simple analysis. In its use of the death penalty, America is both backward and forward-looking, shameful and amazingly enlightened. Some states abolished the death penalty a long time ago: Michigan (1846), Wisconsin (1853). Minnesota abolished the death penalty in 1911. Some states, haven't executed for a very long time: Maine (last execution 1887) North Dakota (last execution 1930), Rhode Island (last execution 1930). Compare the United Kingdom, backward in comparison with these states (last execution 1964).
As long as the death penalty is permitted anywhere in the United States, though, there's a kind of moral contamination even of the enlightened areas, as I see it. My own informal name for the United States is 'The Land of the Lethal Injection.' Anyone visiting Michigan or Wisconsin or the other states just named is still in the Land of the Lethal Injection. To me, what is permitted in a country as a whole is the crucial fact, not the varying jurisdictions. In fact, Federal Law allows the death penalty and applies to all the states. In the same way, anyone visiting one of the Spanish towns which don't allow bullfighting is still in 'The Land of the Bullfight.'
It would be completely fair to say that so far, poetry hasn't played a major part in campaigning against the death penalty. Wordsworth, one of the poets who means the most to me, wrote sonnets in favour of the death penalty. These are despicable, in their sentiments and in their quality as poetry.
The poem above, a sarcastic one, was published by the University of Sheffield's literary magazine, 'Route 57.' The poem is given here, and on the page Poems (which also has a poem on the electric chair) simply as a small contribution to attacking the reputation of the USA.
Executioners: some striking facts from German history
These are directly relevant to the use of the death penalty now. From the remarkable 'Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany 1600 - 1987' by Richard J. Evans (praised in the section of the page Admiration and appreciation.)
'Executioners were considered so infamous that it was difficult for any of them to get married except to another executioner's daughter...The extent to which an executioner could be isolated from honourable society was suggested by a case that came up in 1796 in the Bavarian town of Kaufbeuren, when the guilds punished three journeymen weavers because they had danced with an executioner's daughter... In many towns, the executioner was barred from entering the local inn, or, if he did, had a special mug to drink from, which no one else was allowed to touch. Sometimes a special small room would be reserved for him in a particular inn, to remove him from the rest of the company. In Augsburg, the executioners even had their own special brewer, who had no other customers...Complaints were recorded in Burgau in 1771 and Tangstedt in 1772 about the executioner sitting in the same pew as the other citizens in church; normally a special seat was reserved for him...In many parts of Germany...the boundaries between the executoner and honourable society began to harden from the late seventeenth century.' (Page 57, 58.)
[By 1900, in Berlin] 'The word 'dishonourable' was no longer employed; but the language used by the state prosecutor in describing them nevertheless expressed feelings that the executioner was not really a normal member of everyday human society.' (Page 386.)
Executioners were 'seldom able too stand the strain of killing offenders in a society where the very principle of capital punishment was perpetually contested...they succumbed in the majority of cases to drink and got into trouble varying from indebtedness to homicide. Only in the Third Reich did the political atmosphere, with its never ending public cult of hatred and violence, give them a sense of security.' (Page 879. My emphasis.)
What of those shadowy figures whose anonymity is well protected, those standing by the button of the lethal-injection apparatus, waiting for the prisoner to be brought in or dragged in?
In 'The Face of Battle,' John Keegan refers to the marked difference between killing in battle and killing by judicial execution. In a judicial execution, there is no call for toughness, courage, daring, all the qualities which Americans have shown in such abundance in the past and still do. This is the killing of someone who is completely helpless, without even the element of risk involved in shooting someone in the back.
And of course, the executioners are all volunteers. It's far, far healthier to show them contempt - but not their children - than to give them any respect at all 'for doing their duty,' for carrying out a 'difficult but necessary task.' It's not their duty and it's not at all necessary. If execution was dishourable in past centuries in Germany, it should be even more dishourable in twenty first century America.
In 'The Execution Protocol' by Stephen Trombley, a book about executions in Missouri, we learn that while one member of the execution team at the time, Don Roper, goes home after the condemned prisoner is dead, 'the rest of the team holds a party.' Whether the execution teams have a party - a disgusting thing to do after killing someone - or go away to contemplate quietly their own virtue, their selflessness in fulfilling their 'difficult duty,' give them the contempt they deserve.
Show to executioners the contempt they deserve in a twenty first century democracy, not the respect they were given in Nazi Germany. And show contempt for the others who think they're entitled to respect: the members of Boards and Paroles who vote for execution, the judges who deny clemency and set execution dates, the Governors who sign execution warrants.
These are some of the people and organizations that deserve our gratitude, and some of the countries which come out well in their response to the death penalty. I can't possibly mention here all of them, but I intend to add to their number.
Cesare Beccaria (1738 - 1794), the author of 'On Crimes and Punishments' (Dei lelitti e delle pene) is magnificent, astonishing. His work has had an incalculable effect, wholly for the good. At a time when the criminal justice systems in almost all countries were hideously barbaric, he cut through all the traditional arguments and traditional complacency and attacked the death penalty and other abuses. From section XXVIII, on the death penalty: 'This vain profusion of punishments, which has never made men better, has moved me to inquire whether capital punishment is truly useful and just in a well-organized state...In order to be just, a penalty should have only the degree of intensity needed to deter other men from crime...If anyone should cite against me the example of practically all ages and nations, which have assigned the death penalty to certain crimes, I shall reply that the example is annihilated in the presence of truth, against which there is no prescription, and that human history leaves us with the impression of a vast sea of errors in which a few confused and widely scattered truths are floating.'
If he had confined himself to attacking the death penalty, this would have been an enormous achievement, but his humanitarianism was very broadly based and deserves to be mentioned here. From the introduction to 'On Crimes and Punishments' (Hackett edition, translated by David Young):
'The criminal justice systems of Europe in the eighteenth century were open to criticism on a number of counts. There was often cruelty in the investigation and punishment of crime. Judicial torture was frequently used, and the death penalty was common even for relatively minor crimes. Almost everywhere, the law reflected the common assumption that political loyalty and good behavior were best secured by religious uniformity. Reliance on tradition and ancient custom tended to reinforce the powers of local courts and parochial elites...and to circumscribe the central authority of the state. In most countries, equality before the law was not recognized, even in principle; different rules applied to different levels of the social hierarchy. The law's vagueness, contradictions, and wide scope for interpretation and discretion tended to reinforce the personal dependence of the disadvantaged on those with inherited property and authority.' Beccaria wrote against all these abuses, and his writing had a dramatic impact. It should be read, and remembered, with gratitude.
San Marino, and other countries which are abolitionist for all crimes, or for ordinary crimes
Some of the smallest states have very great cause for pride, For example, San Marino (last known execution: 1468!). The Rough Guide to Italy takes a dismissive attitude to San Marino, claiming it 'trades on its falsely-preserved autonomy.' But this distinct jurisdiction hasn't executed for so many centuries. In humanitarian history, San Marino has importance out of all proportion to its size. Liechtenstein too (last execution: 1785). Monaco (last execution 1847). But also larger states: Iceland (last execution: 1830). Portugal (last known execution: 1849). Venezuela (death penalty abolished 1863). Compare with the United Kingdom (last execution: 1964) or France (last execution: 1977).
Israel abolished the death penalty when it became a state. It made one exception - in my terminology, practised limitation in the case of Adolf Eichmann (executed 1962.) I'm in full agreement with the Israelis' decision to execute him. A state which defends itself against suicide bombers without recourse to the death penalty is entitled to our admiration. This is not to overlook its faults, but the faults of Israel - a democracy with a free press - are far, far less than those of a country such as Saudi Arabia or Iran.
American achievement in opposing the death penalty
Some states abolished the death penalty a long time ago: Michigan (1846), Wisconsin (1853). Minnesota abolished the death penalty in 1911. Some states, haven't executed for a very long time: Maine (last execution 1887)' North Dakota (last execution 1930), Rhode Island (last execution 1930). Compare the United Kingdom, backward in comparison with these states (last execution 1964).
The people and organizations active in opposing the death penalty in the USA are very numerous, so I give no names here, and very, very impressive. I'm familiar with a large number of these but obviously not all. The Death Penalty Information Center gives a comprehensive list of US organizations and their Web sites, as well as of organizations outside the USA, at:
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=547
&scid=37#Int%27l/Nat%27l
As always, exclusive reliance upon the Web would lead to a very restricted survey. The American books which oppose the death penalty, and the articles in journals and magazines, include many which are very important contributions. To mention just a single example, the 'Machinery of Death: The Reality of America's Death Penalty Regime,' by the writer Mark Dow and the death penalty lawyer David R. Dow.
Abolitionist organizations in abolitionist countries
Opposition to the death penalty is strong in many countries which no longer execute, and some of them have notable abolitionist organizations. One example is the Canadian organization, the Canadian Coalition against the Death Penalty, Web site:
Borders make vivid the contrast between human society, of which the legal system is a part, and the natural world. Although the plains or the forests or the desert look the same on both sides of the border, on one side lies the abolitionist country, Canada (or Mexico) and on the other lies the United States, the executing country, drastically different in kind.
Malawi and other countries which are abolitionist in practice
Malawi is one of the countries which is abolitionist in practice: 'Countries that retain the death penalty for ordinary crimes such as murder but can be considered abolitionist in practice in that they have not executed anyone during the past 10 years and are believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out executions.' (Amnesty International, http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-abolitionist3-eng)
Years ago, I wrote a letter about the death penalty to a politician in Malawi, the then Minister of Education, and the reply was so heartening that I quote it here:
Dear Mr Hurt,
Thank you for your letter of 9th February. I am encouraged greatly by your kind remarks about the situation in Malawi.
We were indeed very fortunate that Malawi experienced such a peaceful transition from a vicious one-party dictatorship to a multi-party democracy. It was partly because we were convinced that some of the people who had been sentenced to death were not really guilty of the offences that we commuted all death sentences on the president's inauguration day in May 1994.
The death sentence however has not yet been formally abolished in this country. The matter was discussed extensively during the recent Constitutional Conference and the delegates decided to retain it. This decision ties up the hands of the government, much against its own will. We are only hoping that with civic education the body of public opinion will swing towards the abolition of the death sentence.
You can rest assured however that no executions have taken place since the new government took over.
Yours faithfully,
Sam Mpasu MP
Minister of Education
Like Malawi, a large number of the countries on this list are poor. It includes Burkina Faso, Gambia, Mali, Niger amongst others.
German writers and politicians such as Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier (1787 - 1867), described by Richard J Evans as 'the nineteenth century's most influential critic of the death penalty.' 'Mittermaier had already published articles on the subject over a number of years, during which he had steadily worked his way round to a whole-hearted opposition to the death penalty. In 1840 he brought his researches together in a powerful indictment of capital punishment...Mittermaier demonstrated statistically that the reduction or abolition of capital punishment, wherever it had occurred, had not led to any noticeable increase in capital offences. On the other hand, the threat of the death penalty led to many acquittals by courts whose members had been reluctant to use it. With these arguments, Mittermaier not only moved the argument about capital punishment onto a new intellectual plane, but also placed himself at the head of the growing movement to abolish the death penalty in Germany.'
Erich Koch-Weser (1875 -1944) was 'a committed opponent of the death penalty for murder, and on 13 June 1928 he won the backing of his party for a bill to abolish capital punishment.' Although the death penalty remained in force, in 1928 and 1929, there were no executions anywhere in Germany. Koch-Weser 'had issued a circular to all governments in the federated states advising them not to carry out any executions until the new Criminal Code had been voted into effect by the Reichstag.'
French creative writers
- a few of them, that is - have been at variance with a state which continued to execute until as late as 1977.
This information is taken from a report in the newspaper of Georgetown University (Washington D.C.). http://www.thehoya.com/news/092002/news7.cfm
The French senator and former Minister of Justice Robert Badinter spoke to honour Victor Hugo's opposition to the death penalty. Robert Badinter dedicated himself to the abolition of the death penalty after a man he had defended as a lawyer was executed, even though the man had not killed anyone. He was very closely involved in the movement that finally ended the death penalty in France. He continues to fight against the death penalty. Robert Badinter also has a place of honour in this section. He said of Victor Hugo:
'While Hugo is renowned for his literary genius, the French writer also had a lifelong opposition to the death penalty.' He began by noting that Hugo was a man who, unlike many other people, became less conservative with age.
'Hugo's approach to fighting the death penalty was different from both those who preceded him and his contemporaries, in Badinter's view.
'Hugo went beyond the use of intellectual discussion to make his point. He decided that he would put the reader in the condition of a man who was sentenced to death and is waiting for his execution,' Badinter said. An example of this is Hugo's novel The Last Day of the Condemned.
'Literature, however, was not Hugo's only means of expression. Whenever he found out that an execution was to take place or if someone ever requested his help, Hugo immediately took action by giving speeches and writing letters. Badinter said Hugo came to the aid of American abolitionist John Brown when he was sentenced to death.
'What made Hugo's efforts so remarkable, according to Badinter, is the continuity of his struggle. His work was constant and always done with passion. Badinter said that Hugo never had doubts about his position, even when the person sentenced had committed atrocious crimes. "For me, the assassin is no longer an assassin, the arsonist no longer an arsonist, and the thief no longer a thief. He is a quivering human being who is about to die," Badinter said while quoting Hugo's work.
'Later in Hugo's life, he became a senator...His final political move was presenting a proposal for abolishing the death penalty in which he wrote, "happy is he of whom it one day may be said in leaving this world he took with him the death penalty."'
Albert Camus
Two quotations from his 'Reflections on the Guillotine,' (1957):
'An execution is not simply death. It is just as different from the privation
of life as a concentration camp is from prison. It adds to death a rule, a
public premeditation known to the future victim, an organization which is
itself a source of moral sufferings more terrible than death. Capital punishment
is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however
calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty
would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which
he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward,
had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered
in private life.'
'[The] reply is as old as man; it is called the law of retaliation. Whoever has done me harm must suffer harm; whoever has put out my eye must lose an eye; and whoever has killed must die. This is an emotion, and a particularly violent one, not a principle. Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature. If murder is in the nature of man, the law is not intended to imitate or reproduce that nature. It is intended to correct it.'
English scholars and journalists
As regards the death penalty, England's record is in general far, far better than America's. I don't give here the exact dates, but the significant dates are much earlier in England than in America for: the last execution (not yet achieved in America, of course), the last public execution, the last execution for offences other than murder, such as armed robbery or rape, the last execution of a juvenile offender. (The state of Virginia marked the new millennium by executing two juvenile offenders.) A similar comparison shows that England's record is far, far worse than the record of many other countries. Some English people, against the general trend, have done a great deal to oppose the death penalty or to shed light on the death penalty. For example, some English scholars have written books which are very significant:
Rituals of Retribution: capital punishment in Germany 1600 - 1987 by Richard J. Evans. The author writes that "The past, as the famous opening to L.P. Hartley's novel The Go-Between says, is a foreign country; they do things differently there. By visiting this foreign country we can enlarge our conception of what it means to be human, and perhaps gain a better understanding of the limits and possibilities of the human condition. One of the aims of this book, therefore, is to restore a sense of strangeness to the past. We have to make an imaginative leap of understanding by which to comprehend mentalities which present-day Europeans may find at first encounter repulsive and bizarre."
This is an astonishing book, a very important contribution to 'humanitarian history.' Reading this book hasn't been, as it were, a matter of duty, simply to make me better informed about the death penalty. It certainly does that - it's massively informative - but it's also so engrossing and readable that I've found myself reading it and rereading it at very frequent intervals. It contains astounding information. I've quoted some of it on this page. Brief comments on the book from the Publisher's catalogue:
http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780198219682
The Hanging Tree: execution and the English people 1770 - 1868 by V.A.C. Gatrell. I fully agree with the comment on the cover: "This gripping study is essential reading for anyone interested in the processes which have 'civilized' our social life...Panoramic in range, scholarly in method, and compelling in argument, this is one of those rare histories which both shift our sense of the past and speak powerfully to the present." The author writes, "Late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English people were very familiar with the grimy business of hanging. This is so large a social fact separating this era from our own that although it is not the most obvious way of defining modern times, it must be one of them...What they watched was horrific. There was no nice calculation of body weights and lengths of drop in those days; few died cleanly. Kicking their bound legs, many choked over minutes." (Page 6, 7.)
The record of English journalists of the present is generally better than the record of English journalists of the past - although one of these, David Astor, gave unstinting support to the campaign of Arthur Koestler and others to have the death penalty abolished. Some journalists have declared their opposition to the death penalty only very occasionally, or on one single occasion: the surprise, the heartening surprise, is all the stronger for that. Philip Hensher is a novelist as well as a journalist - and a writer who can portray well cataclysmic events and the abysses of the mind (as his wonderful piece 'Brandy' shows.) He has only written about the death penalty once, so far as I know, but on that occasion he wrote that he wouldn't travel to the USA, as a country that inflicted the death penalty. Melanie Phillips has written at some length to oppose the death penalty (when a Conservative politician, David Davis, made known his support for the death penalty) but is far better known as a commentator who is, let's say, not at all left-wing, a reminder that on this issue, the left wing has no monopoly of decency at all.
Arthur Koestler
For further information click here.
Abolitionist politicians
I'm far from sharing in a cynical attitude to all politicians. Opposing the death penalty may accord with the views of the electorate in some countries but far often than not, opposition brings no electoral advantage whatsoever or is deeply unpopular. It's heartening when politicians go against the flow. Here, I give the names of only a very few. I'm aware of many others. One example is the East Midlands Member of the European Parliament, Bill Newton Dunn. On a page of the East Midlands Liberal Democrats, his opposition to the death penalty is given a very prominent position, and at some length. He backs the "World Day against the Death Penalty" - 10 October" ...I hope that people will take this opportunity to concentrate their hearts and minds on this issue."
The contribution of the French politician Robert Badinter I discuss above.
Nelson Mandela was sentenced to death himself, of course. His lifelong opposition to the death penalty is one aspect of his towering moral stature.
Pope John Paul II, the Roman Catholic Church and other churches
I'm an atheist, a militant atheist, but I don't reluctantly agree, if I'm forced to, that theistic opponents can show humanity. I go much further than that: I warmly admire their humanity. The present-day Roman Catholic Church is a very important opponent of the death penalty world-wide, and in the United States, a far more religious country than this, its opposition is particularly significant. Again and again, Catholic bishops, priests and laity have supported the abolitionist cause. During his lifetime, Pope John Paul II was tireless in opposing the death penalty and in calling for clemency for people facing execution. The Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa is a notable opponent of the death penalty. The work of the Catholic Community of Sant' Egidio, based in Italy, has been outstanding. I refer to their work on this page.
The European Union and the Council of Europe
The European Union's opposition to the death penalty and the Council of Europe's opposition are not just pursued at the level of policy. They act in particular cases as well, calling for mercy for particular prisoners, as the page below makes clear. I view their work with pride and gratitude.
http://www.eurunion.org/eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1783
Amnesty International
Peter Benenson founded Amnesty International in 1961. His contribution to human rights campaigning is incalculable, of course, but it's cause for intense disappointment that he didn't include the death penalty in his work. What gave him the impetus to start the organization was a newspaper report about two Portuguese students during the Salazar dictatorship. They had been sentenced to seven years' imprisonment for making a toast to freedom, a shocking matter. But in the matter of the death penalty, Portugal was the advanced country - it hadn't executed anybody for a hundred years - and Britain was the backward one. Britain's last executions were in 1964. It was some years before Amnesty International began to work against the death penalty but since then, its contribution has been magnificent. Amongst many other achievements, it has documented the grim and harrowing facts - tragic lives, botched executions, the minutiae of international legislation, the heartening or depressing contemporary history of the death penalty in very small as well as very large states, virtually all aspects of this shameful practice. Amnesty International's death penalty work is still one of the things it does best, but now Amnesty International gives it less prominence and gives more prominence, I think, to some issues where the organization's work isn't nearly as impressive.
Amnesty International only uses a selection of campaigning techniques, arguments and methods of persuasion: inevitable and acceptable, to a large extent. Amnesty has its own ethos, its identity, which places a {restriction} on using some methods. But some of the campaign techniques, arguments and methods of persuasion which it does use are demonstrably ineffectual, or not as effective as could be wished.
I've written extensively about campaigning methods. Amongst other things, I advocate campaigning methods which
(1) make more use of the the public domain. Of course, Amnesty letters or emails, or those of other organizations, will always have a place. But a letter, email or (ridiculous thought) text message to a Governor or to the President of the United States is received in private and often dismissed out of hand in private. In the public realm there's at least the possibility that the person addressed will be 'shown up,' will have their standing lowered, even if they're not receptive. There are recipients who are quite receptive to arguments, and recipients who are anything but receptive. Shaming may work where arguments don't, even if there's no guarantee of that.
(2) are continuing in their effects rather than temporary. A demonstration, a vigil, other events of this kind may cause embarrassment, may exert some sort of pressure - but they're forgotten very quickly. Far better to forge a continuing linkage between a person, an institution, a city or a country with backwardness, barbarism, an image totally different from the image they would prefer to present.
(3) I also favour indirect means as well as direct means of publicizing the issue and imposing pressure. 'Direct campaigning' (not to be confused with 'direct action') is campaigning directed at those who are responsible for the death penalty in some way, such as governments, presidents, prime ministers, attorney generals, members of Pardons and Parole Boards. Such people are opinion-formers, to a greater or lesser extent, but not the only opinion formers. As in war, undermining the morale of opponents, making opponents feel that they no longer have right on their side, that their position is untenable, is important. One obvious place where the battle of ideas can be conducted is the university sphere. Amnesty International could supply posters giving information about the death penalty in the USA, China, Singapore and other death-penalty countries. The posters would be seen by staff and students from these countries. The Necropolis Initiative is mainly intended to be an indirect method of campaigning.
I was a death penalty co-ordinator for my local Amnesty group for about fifteen years. During that time, I was asked time and time again to write to the Texas Board of Pardons - which never recommended clemency to the prisoner about to be executed - to ask the board members for clemency, or to write to Governors of States with pleas for clemency - although it's been said that some of these Governors would have their own grandmother executed if that was needed for them to remain in power. A thought experiment. If Amnesty International had been in existence throughout the Nazi era, would Amnesty have recommended writing letters beginning, "Dear Herr Hitler, I am very concerned about the plight of X, sentenced to death for making a joke about yourself...and ending, 'I call for his unconditional release.' Probably, Amnesty would have. Using this approach with such ruthless people would be completely futile. It's an admirable thing to fight against overwhelming odds but there's also such a thing as not wasting your time and not wasting a stamp.
I'm not a member of Amnesty International any longer and now I'm able to choose from a greater range of campaigning techniques and to try out new methods, or advocate their trying out. Not just an expanded repertoire of campaigning techniques but a repertoire of styles, including styles which are abrasive and confrontational, which directly confront the supporters of the death penalty. Fellow campaigners - or anyone - feel free to object and disagree.
This is taken from the page on bullfighting on this site, adapting the passage slightly.
In campaigning, I think it's essential to distinguish two things: (1) The
most effective techniques to win. This will often demand short, vivid messages
and simple slogans. It will often demand arguments presented very briefly,
and action which is concentrated rather than diffuse, ruthless in spirit rather
than genteel, but action which keeps within the law. In a democracy, it may
be necessary to break the law if that seems the only way to end a serious
abuse, but the most effective actions for opposing the death penalty don't
require the law to be broken, I'm sure. (Where the opponent is a totalitarian
power, as in the occupied countries of Europe during the Second World War,
then the use of violence and force can be justified.)
(2) The reasoning which underlies the action. This should not be simple. It
should be comprehensive (covering all relevant aspects of the subject rather
than a few), fair-minded (taking every care to avoid distortions of reality,
taking note of possible objections), sophisticated in moral argument and,
also, factually correct.
However, it's sometimes difficult to separate the two. The ideas which seem vastly more forceful, developed, persuasive than the opposing ideas are amongst the most important contributions to activism. They're a precondition for activism, or should be. One of the most striking demonstrations comes from the history of penal reform, on which the Italian thinker Beccaria has had an incalculable influence. Beccaria's achievement is amongst other things a massive practical achievement - concrete reforms can be traced back to his work - but these were due purely to his ideas. He had none of the attributes of an activist. The introduction to his work 'On Crimes and Punishments' in the Hackett edition describes the work as 'greater than its self-effacing author, a man of almost crippling shyness.'
Amnesty International doesn't always distinguish sufficiently between (1) and (2). It tends to use the methods of reasoned argument which are part of (2) as a campaigning tactic, for the purposes of (1). It may often be more effective to have {separation} of the two activities. As I've noted earlier, not all recipients of pleas from Amnesty members are susceptible of reasoned argument (or capable of reasoned argument). People who have the power to change things may be very unlikely to change things because they may have too much to lose. A governor in a death penalty state may not be re-elected. People whose livelihood depends upon administering or carrying out the death penalty may lose their livelihood. Or there may be strong psychological reasons why they should not be open to rational argument. They may lose their self-respect. To acknowledge that the death penalty is wrong could well bring with it the burden of guilt, feelings of inadequacy and worse. This is why methods of campaigning based on rational arguments, which will always be necessary (for more on this, see the section below, reasoned revulsion) have to be supplemented by other methods.
'The risk of executing the damaged'
The danger of executing the innocent is one of the most important of all arguments against the death penalty. It led to Governor Ryan of Illinois commuting the death sentences of everyone on death row in the state. Since the resumption of executions in the United States, more innocent prisoners were found to be on death row in the state than had been executed. One of these innocent prisoners had been within hours of execution. The number of death row prisoners released in the USA after their innocence had been established is well over a hundred.
What do I mean by 'the execution of the damaged?' Most of them will be guilty, not innocent, but their execution should arouse as much revulsion as the execution of those who are innocent. This is one example, Johnny Garrett. I tried to place an advertisement in a Texan newspaper to commemorate the anniversary of his death by lethal injection. It included the words 'in memory of Johnny Garrett and his victim,' but the request was refused. His victim was a Nun. The Catholic Church, including Pope John Paul II, made every effort to secure clemency for him. This information, as well as the others in this section, comes from a Web site page of Amnesty International USA, which I warmly commend (the examples I give here are no substitute for reading the whole of this shocking page):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?lang=e&id=ENGAMR510022006
'Chronically psychotic and brain damaged, Johnny Garrett had a long history of mental illness and was severely physically and sexually abused as a child, which the jury never knew. He was described by a psychiatrist as "one of the most psychiatrically impaired inmates" she had ever examined, and by a psychologist as having "one of the most virulent histories of abuse and neglect... encountered in over 28 years of practice". Garrett was frequently beaten by his father and stepfathers. On one occasion, when he would not stop crying, he was put on the burner of a hot stove, and retained the burn scars until his death. He was raped by a stepfather who then hired him to another man for sex. It was also reported that from the age of 14 he was forced to perform bizarre sexual acts and participate in pornographic films. Introduced to alcohol by his family when he was 10, he subsequently indulged in serious substance abuse involving brain-damaging substances such as paint, thinner and amphetamines. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a state court finding that his belief that his dead aunt would protect him from the chemicals used in the lethal injection did not render him incompetent to be executed (for a murder committed when he was aged 17).'
And another case, that of Curtis Harris, again, executed by the state of Texas:
'Curtis Harris had an IQ of 77 and significant brain damage. Suffered serious head injuries as a child. One of nine children brought up by an alcoholic father who beat the children regularly with electric cords, belts, a bullwhip and fists. On one occasion, Curtis Harris was hit over the head by his father with a wooden board and his cranium was permanently indented by the blow. Sentenced to death for a murder committed at the age of 17.'
When babies and young children are left lying in excrement for weeks or months, or left to scavenge amongst rats, or are beaten to a pulp, then they may go on to become law-abiding citizens, but the obstacles are greater than for the ones who have had a loving Mom and Dad at home, who received Christmas presents and birthday presents and were taken on holidays.
Of course, society has to be protected against murderers, no matter what their childhood experiences, whether violent, troubled or idyllic, but protection is secured by imprisonment (a much less expensive option in the United States than death row followed by execution.) A barbaric childhood followed by death row - Americans who see nothing wrong in this are no better than psychopaths.
Since I wrote the comments above there has been the case in this country of Baby P. From the report by Adam Fresco in 'The Times:' 'Baby P's life in a council flat in Haringey, North London, began with gradual and growing neglect at the hands of his mother, who would leave him unattended for hours in his cot.' She 'spent hours trawling the internet for pornography, split from the boy's natural father when he was 3 months old after affairs with two men. When the second lover moved in, Baby P's suffering increased dramatically. The court heard that while his mother gossiped with friends in online chat rooms, her boyfriend took to beating the boy.' He 'forced Baby P to follow commands like a dog. At the click of a finger he would have to sit wtih his head bent between his legs; 20 minutes later a second click would be the signal that he could sit upright again...Detectives found that after the boyfriend moved in there was not one piece of the boy's clothing that was not spattered with blood...After 17 months enduring abuse of an almost unimaginable cruelty, the boy had been reduced to a nervous wreck, his hair shaved to the scalp and his body covered in bruises and scabs. Physical injuries included eight broken ribs, a broken back and the missing top of a finger...Baby P received a fatal blow to his mouth, knocking a tooth out. After 17 months of agony, the tiny child finally succumbed. The next day he was found dead in his cot.'
There was anger amang MPs and charities after Martin Narey the chief executive of the children's charity Barnardo's said that if he had lived to become a teenager, Baby P might have turned into a "feral, parasitic yob." This was an atttempt to focus attention on the need to address the causes of abuse, but it was an unwise comment to make about a named child victim.
The comment is, though, realistic in its grim portrayal of the future for many - not all - victims of child abuse. Some of these victims of gross cruelty go on to kill. In an enlightened country, long incarceration is the worst penalty they can face. In the United States, it may be the execution chamber. There are many, many tough-talking Texans, and others who feel proper revulsion when a child is beaten and abused but no revulsion at all when, after an interval, that same person is sent to death row. Again, Americans who see nothing wrong in this are no better than psychopaths.
In my experience - not the experience of someone taken into care as a child but from knowing people who have - even children who were not treated with particular cruelty but who simply had inadequate parents and who were adopted or fostered are changed. The level of anger which results would shock many people who have no experience of all this. Statistics confirm my own experiences. Inmates who were fostered or adopted as children make up an overwhelmingly significant part of the prison population.
The need for 'reasoned revulsion.' A letter I wrote to the Amnesty Journal:
'In the November/December 97 issue of AMNESTY, in which there was a very welcome article by Pierre Sane opposing capital punishment, there was also a letter by Sylvia Callaghan, practising Christian, member of Amnesty International and supporter of the death penalty (or, in her words, "not opposed to the death penalty.")
Unfortunately, she gave no arguments or information in the letter as published to justify her support. It does seem overwhelmingly common for supporters of the death penalty to avoid the tiresome little matter of providing actual arguments and evidence.
The contrast with opponents of the death penalty could hardly be greater. There is a complete disproportion here. I have been a death penalty co-ordinator for some years. In that time, I have received from Amnesty International a large number of documents and urgent action appeals. These have given reasoned arguments and an enormous amount of detailed information about the sentencing to death of the innocent, the mentally ill, those who experienced hideous cruelty as children, those who were too poor to obtain the lawyers who could have secured a lesser penalty - and about so many other aspects of this degrading inhumanity. (They have also shown great concern for the victims of violent crime and their relatives and have made clear the need to punish crime adequately.) There are also, of course, many books which give reasons for opposing capital punishment.
Where are all the books and articles in favour of the death penalty which demonstrate that it protects society more than alternative punishments, which honestly address such issues as the execution of the innocent, the mentally ill and the abused - and the brutality of the process even if the person concerned belongs to none of these special groups?
In our death penalty work, I am sure that we ought to make clear this disproportion, that we ought to set a challenge to supporters of the death penalty, and to those directly responsible for carrying out executions: justify, if you can, your support and your acts.'
Morons, scum and the enlightened
Of course, supporters of the death penalty include people who have given sustained thought to the issue. But supporters of the death penalty include too a disproportionate number of morons, head-cases, people who've never had an intelligent thought in their lives, emotionally stunted people, near illiterates. If you disagree, by all means do the research, trawl the internet for pro-death penalty views. Then draw what conclusions you like. You could do worse (as well as better) by starting with this page, where supporters of the death penalty for juveniles argue with opponents of the death penalty:
http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-255230.html
It isn't my bias which makes me conclude that here, the opponents use arguments which are vastly more sophisticated and serious than the supporters. It's time that supporters of the death penalty became vastly better informed. If they became vastly better informed, they might well be converted into opponents of the death penalty. On the page whose address is given above, for instance, we find the common misconception that executing someone saves the cost of imprisoning them for the rest of their lives. In the USA, of course, the cost of imprisonment for life is much cheaper than the cost of executing.
Although I regard some United States Governors, Justices of the Supreme Court and some other pillars of the American establishment as 'scum,' I'm completely willing to describe some criminals - many criminals - as 'scum' too, of course of a very different kind. Their crimes may be so atrocious, so impossible to explain or understand, that protection of society against such people is the overwhelmingly priority. But protection is always secured by imprisonment for life. When the arrangements are made for the final meal of the 'scum,' for the execution of the 'scum' and the funeral of the 'scum' (whilst the 'scum' is still very much alive) then there may still be outrage at the crime, but now the condemned is, in the words of Victor Hugo, 'a quivering human being who is about to die.'
It suits so many American death penalty supporters to pretend that all the occupants of death row are morons or scum. There are remarkable, enlightened people to be found there. This is the blog of one of them: William van Pock, on Florida's death row (even though it is conceded that he never killed anyone):
http://www.deathrowdiary.blogspot.com/
Very often, I print out Web pages so that I can give them my complete attention.
I did so in this case, despite its length, and I found it a wonderful source
of insights.
The
victims of murder
The attitude of abolitionists to the victim of a murder or violent crime and to the relatives of the victim is the same as the attitude of death penalty supporters, including outrage at the crime. Our only difference - but a vast difference - concerns our views about the punishment of a murderer. In America, there are relatives of murder victims who publicly and energetically oppose the death penalty.
There are other victims of murder. The Hungarian writer Arthur Koestler was sentenced to death by the Nationalists during the Spanish civil war. Officials 'informed him that a helpful statement praising Franco's thougtfulness would further ease his situation, but Koestler courageously refused to oblige him.' (From the biography by David Cesarani.) He was eventually released and moved to England. His role in the ending of the death penalty in this country was a central one. This, on the victims of murder, is from his anti-death penalty book 'Hanged by the neck:'
'...there are other victims than the person murdered. There are his wife and family, his dependants and relatives, his close friends - an outspreading circle of people with a poignant claim upon our sympathy...But there are also those who stand in the same relationship with the executed prisoner....Have you ever known the widow or children of a man executed for murder, his fiancee, his parents? This is the experience of many social workers, particularly Probation Officers and those concerned in child welfare. And to know such victims of the death penalty, however casually or slightly, is to acquire a mental burden that is never to be shaken off, never to be lightened by sighing to oneself: 'Such things must be.' '
Troy Davis
September 20, 2008
Bob Herbert, the New York Times:
'Troy Davis, who was convicted of shooting a police officer to death in the parking lot of a Burger King in Savannah, Ga., is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday...
No one anywhere would benefit from killing Mr. Davis on Tuesday, as opposed to waiting a week to see how the Supreme Court rules. So why the rush? The murder happened in 1989, and Mr. Davis has been on death row for 17 years. Six or seven more days will hardly matter.
Most of the time, the court declines to hear such cases.
If that's the decision this time, Georgia can get on with the dirty business of taking a human life. If the court agrees to hear the appeal, it would have an opportunity to get a little closer to the truth of what actually happened on the terrible night of Aug. 19, 1989, when Officer Mark Allen MacPhail was murdered.
He was shot as he went to the aid of a homeless man who was being pistol-whipped in the parking lot.
Nine witnesses testified against Mr. Davis at his trial in 1991, but seven of the nine have since changed their stories. One of the recanting witnesses, Dorothy Ferrell, said she was on parole when she testified and was afraid that she'd be sent back to prison if she didn't agree to finger Mr. Davis.
She said in an affidavit: "I told the detective that Troy Davis was the shooter, even though the truth was that I didn't know who shot the officer."
Another witness, Darrell Collins, a teenager at the time of the murder, said the police had 'scared' him into falsely testifying by threatening to charge him as an accessory to the crime. He said they told him that he might never get out of prison.
"I didn't want to go to jail because I didn't do nothing wrong," he said.
At least three witnesses who testified against Mr. Davis (and a number of others who were not part of the trial) have since said that a man named Sylvester "Redd" Coles admitted that he was the one who had killed the officer.
Mr. Coles, who was at the scene, and who, according to authorities, later ditched a gun of the same caliber as the murder weapon, is one of the two witnesses who have not recanted.
The other is a man who initially told investigators that he could not identify the killer. Nearly two years later, at the trial, he testified that the killer was Mr. Davis.
So we have here a mess that is difficult, perhaps impossible, to sort through in a way that will yield reliable answers. (The jury also convicted Mr. Davis of a nonfatal shooting earlier that same evening on testimony that was even more dubious.)
There was no physical evidence against Mr. Davis, and the murder weapon was never found. As for the witnesses, their testimony was obviously shaky in the extreme * not the sort of evidence you want to rely upon when putting someone to death.
In March, the State Supreme Court in Georgia, in a 4-to-3 decision, denied Mr. Davis's request for a new trial. The chief justice, Leah Ward Sears, writing for the minority, said: "In this case, nearly every witness who identified Davis as the shooter at trial has now disclaimed his or her ability to do so reliably."
Amnesty International conducted an extensive examination of the case, documenting the many recantations, inconsistencies, contradictions and unanswered questions. Its report on the case drew widespread attention, both in the U.S. and overseas.
William Sessions, a former director of the F.B.I., has said that a closer look at the case is warranted. And Pope Benedict XVI has urged authorities in Georgia to re-sentence Mr. Davis to life in prison.
Rushing to execute Mr. Davis on Tuesday makes no sense at all.'
Troy Davis was given a stay of execution. Patrick Dyer visited him just over
48 hours before he was due to be executed. His account is interesting:
http://www.counterpunch.org/dyer09232008.html
Romell Broom
His executioners tried to find a suitable vein in which to insert the tube for the lethal injection chemicals for almost two hours. This search for a vein is common enough in American executions but on this occasion, they gave up. At the time of writing, Romell Broom is still alive in the barbaric state of Ohio, waiting once more - to find out if he's to be subjected for a second time to the search.
Charles Dean Hood
Quoted from http://www.examiner.com
'Texas, highest criminal appeals court ...ordered a lower court to examine why a death row inmate's attorneys waited nearly 20 years before claiming a sexual affair between the trial judge and prosecutor tainted the case.
'Charles Dean Hood's appeal will be considered by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after the trial court hearing on the admitted affair.
'Allegations of the affair, an apparent open secret 20 years ago in Collin County legal circles, gained traction in June in the days before Hood was scheduled to die when a former assistant district attorney filed an affidavit saying it was "common knowledge" from at least 1987 until about 1993. The time frame includes Hood's trial.
'Appeals stretched late into the night June 17 when Hood, a convicted killer, was to receive lethal injection and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice ran out of time to meet a midnight deadline to carry out the punishment. When the execution was reset for early September, the Austin-based appeals court stopped the punishment again, a day before the scheduled Sept. 10 execution, because of what it said were questions about jury instructions.
'Hood has maintained his innocence. He was driving Williamson's $70,000 Cadillac at the time of his arrest. Evidence against him included his fingerprints at the murder scene. Hood has said he had permission to drive the car and his fingerprints were at the house because he had been living there.'
William Van Poyck
William Van Poyck has now been moved to Florida's death row, after being held for many years on the death row in Virginia. It's acknowledged now that he wasn't the 'triggerman,' that he has killed nobody. His blog is deeply intelligent and gives great insight into life on death row - and life outside death row. It's at:
http://www.deathrowdiary.blogspot.com/