Death penalty, exhibit B

Following my previous post, I would like to subject the internet to a series of quotes from Scott Turow's book, Ultimate Punishment. Turow is a former prosecutor and author of many legal suspense thrillers who was also served on the Illinois Commission that influenced Governor George Ryan's decision to commute the sentences of all Illinois Death Row inmates before he left office. Turow's perspective is interesting because, while he agrees the death penalty should be an option under ideal circumstances as, as the Commission words it, "the strongest condemnation of a small number of the most heinous crimes," he believes we are not at this stage prepared to administer it fairly.

While he acknowledges also possible moral issues, Turow focuses on several examples of exonerated inmates, and cases in which the crimes of some life inmates were demonstrably worse than those of certain Death Row inmates.

And says:

“In confronting murder, we as a society ask how we should face an ultimate evil, which, if unchecked, would reduce almost all human interaction to war. We want to punish in order to prevent murder, but also as part of our effort to restore ourselves from the anxieties it raises about our ability to live with one another…"

"Murder takes us to the Land’s End of the law. Our horror and revulsion undermine our capacity to reason—and prove that justice alone will not make us whole. Only the attachments we have to each other, the antipodal experience of what goes on in the moment a murderer kills, can accomplish that. In the face of the cruelties we visit upon one another, murder being the gravest wrong among them, a sense of meaning and connection must come from outside the law.”

“I admit I am still attracted to a death penalty that would be available for the crimes of unimaginable dimensions like (John Wayne Gacy)’s, or that would fully eliminate the marginal risks that incorrigible monsters like (repeat offender who killed again after he was imprisoned) might ever again satisfy their vampire appetites…There will always be cases that cry out to me for ultimate punishment. That is not the true issue. The pivotal question instead is whether a system of justice can be constructed that reaches only the rare, right cases, without also occasionally condemning the innocent or the undeserving.”

And here is my favorite.

“After twenty-five years of attempting to establish laser-like guidelines, we still end up with a moral hodgepodge where Chris Thomas is condemned to die because he is poor and belligerent, while the likes of the Menendez brothers, who shotgunned their parents for the millions, or the Unabomber, who killed and maimed and threatened the nation for years, get life. In yet another of the perpetual paradoxes in this subject, retaining the death penalty seems to be a road to breeding disrespect for the law, because it exposes so many of its shortcomings. (emphasis added)”

Ending the death penalty, exhibit A

Consider that sometimes it is in vogue to have emotions. Consider this man in Ohio, who was convicted of doing, yes, terrible things. & when the time came to die last month, & when it proved much harder than expected, & when after two hours they still had not managed to get into his veins, he tried very politely to help.

"Several times, Broom rolled onto his left side, pointed at veins, straightened tubes or massaged his own arms to help prison staff keep a vein open. He was clearly frustrated as he leaned back on the gurney, covering his face with his hands and visibly crying." - Cincinnati Enquirer

If you cannot imagine this with needles and veins, consider moments in movies when the loser of a fight pulls his opponent's knife upward into the heart. Or lifts his arms above his heads to make a bigger target for the firing squad. I know this is not quite accurate or analogous, but it might be a useful image. Regardless, Mr. Broom's magnanimous effort to help the state kill him (like some other inmates before him who encountered difficulties in the process of being executed) is neither proof of his innocence, nor on its own reason enough to keep him alive if you have already decided that logic favors his execution. But it's a sliver of something both extremely painful and important, I think, and, I hope, a wake-up call to those who would dismiss Death Row inmates as utterly without humanity.

As I said in a comment way earlier, the problem I had with this bit of news is not that it was difficult to administer the drugs. He's just the most extreme example of a common problem in medicine - veins don't always cooperate. (Thanks to my friend Sam for pointing that out, p.s.)

The problem I have is
1. Cognitive dissonance. The process of killing killers has changed throughout human history, and lethal injection is the humane alternative to every other method that we have used in the past - hanging, the gas chamber, guillotine, firing squad. So when there is such vivid evidence that we still don't have it quite right - who would have thought ending a human life is actually a tricky and difficult business - then I question what values are driving the decision. Do we care about the inmates' wellbeing or do we not? Should we pretend we care if we don't? If we did care, would we still execute them? If we can care and still execute them, then what more can we do to ensure we are acting on how much we care?

2. As a social body, what is the impact on the rest of us to be complicit in killing our fellows? Perhaps we would be complicit by suffering murderers to live, even behind bars. But capital punishment is so much more a machine of death, a series of calculated decisions involving both elected officials and the ordinary citizen, and I wonder, following one measly philosophy class three years ago, if it makes us harder, if it tells us revenge is the Right Way Of Doing Things. In addition, if we say killing is okay at all, if we say all you need are many many rigorously-defined criteria and the backing of the entire justice system, aren't we still, on some level, condoning even those most violent and awful "illegal" killings? I'm not trying to turn this into a slippery slope argument, but I think the question of "Who are we as a society if we collectively commit these actions?" is one that should be invoked in any discussions of law.

Courts

Yesterday, I tagged along with Karen, the justice reporter, and observed the South African High Court. I haven’t quite figured out which tier of American courts it would correspond to, but the proceedings I saw were for events that occurred 2-5 years ago.

Right away, I figured out I won’t be doing any actual court reporting myself here. Lawyers and judges slip effortlessly between English and Afrikaans, and while some clearly have a preference for English, judges will address a lawyer in whichever language the lawyer started in. I only managed to understand about half of any one proceeding. At best. Karen was kind enough to translate the big picture for me, and court reporters from different papers frequently share information and contacts, but it’s a huge stretch to think I’d be able to find someone to translate 75% of a case for me over coffee. Still, it was interesting to see how things work. I’m finding that a lot of things in Cape Town are very similar to things in the States, but with enough differences to catch you off guard just when you start feeling comfortable.

For example, there is no jury system in the South African courts. Judges are vested with the power to render verdicts, the logic being that they take oaths of objectivity, recuse themselves when they cannot be objective, and have a good 30 years of experience in the courts as lawyers and lower magistrates before they’re put such a position of trust. And even then, it’s still difficult to become a judge. In particularly complex cases, a second judge may sit in as assessor, someone to assist and bounce ideas off. Verdicts can still take days, though.

Also, lawyers in the high court wear formal robes, as do court stenographers and other aides. It’s pretty formal. I did like that when entering late, people bow slightly to the judge before finding a seat. There are so many instances like that where I wish I could apologize but it would be even worse if I did.

I may go into more depth on the justice system here if I ever dig up a copy of the South African Constitution, which is pretty amazing in theory but, so far, imperfectly executed.