The Death Penalty

By Matthew Dicks Staff Writer

arry and Donna Jacobs. Mr. And Mrs. John Keaton. Jose Ross and Catia Melena. Mr. And Mrs. Earl Washington. Leonel and Maxine Herrera. Dellie Adams. Michelle Grahm. David and Linda Bland. Bobby and Dorothy Hogan.

These are just a few of the countless number of parents who have lost a child to the death penalty. But this list is special. Not only did each one of these people lose a child, but in each case, their son or daughter was later found innocent of the very crime for which they were executed.

Shocking? It shouldn't be. In the last twenty years a total of forty-eight people have been released from death row after having been proven innocent, in some cases as close to three days before their execution. These are not releases due to technicalities or pardons, but actual evidence that proved them to be innocent. But this is only the beginning.

Research conducted independently by Stanford, the University of Florida, and Northwestern University has indicated that twenty-three innocent people have been executed in the twentieth century alone. Twenty-three innocent human beings have been gassed, electrocuted, poisoned, hanged, or shot by the state because of errors made by juries of their peers. Simple, deadly mistakes. Or were they?

Stanford researchers also found that in more than 65 percent of these cases, errors made by the jury were directly linked to inappropriate or illegal behavior committed by police officers, district attorneys, or judges. These actions ranged from jury and witness tampering to the torture of suspects in order to coerce an admission of guilt. In many of the twenty-three cases cited, district attorneys , police officers, and witnesses later admitted to lying on the stand and breaking laws in order to ensure a guilty verdict. In two such incidents, district attorneys admitted to knowing of the suspect's innocence during the trial.

The death penalty is wrong. The death penalty is immoral. But most importantly, the death penalty is dangerous. Innocent people lose their lives. Good people die.

There are those who contend however, that twenty-three accidents in ninety-six years is an acceptable, tolerable, and understandable level. There are some who compare these mistakes to similar honorable sacrifices made by our fellow man in order to preserve order and save lives. There are even a few who make the analogy that the innocent victims of these executions are like the people who have died testing experimental drugs and vaccines; reasoning the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Of course, the people who make these contentions are not dead. They have not had 50,000 volts of electricity run through their innocent bodies. They have not been brutally slain in some Texas gas chamber in the dead of the night. They have not been murdered by the state because a witness was paid to lie. They have not been mercilessly beaten by a racist cop into a false confession. They have not taken the eternal dirt nap. They are not worm food.

My argument against the death penalty is not a difficult one to make. Innocent human beings have died at the hands of our government. These people were not aberrations. They were literally no different than ourselves. They were our neighbors, in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, and sons, and daughters. They were friends and loved ones, and someday they might be your own. The presence of the death penalty in America today is a threat to the lives of each law abiding citizen. One mistake is too many.

If you don't believe that one mistake is to many, consider this for a moment: in the last forty-five years a total of eleven children have been killed by school buses that ran them over while they were crossing the street. This means one American child is killed every 4.08 years in these accidents. In response, most states have passed legislation requiring that a school bus monitor be present to assist children who are crossing the street. The cost of these monitor's salaries nationwide runs in the millions of dollars. All this for eleven children. Every year an average of 2.4 innocent people are placed on death row in this country. Does Americans' compassion for victims end at the victim's eighteenth birthday?

Public sentiment regarding the death penalty is often irrational and should never be used as an argument for its support. Opinions and beliefs are formed out of hate, fear, and a need for vengeance. Americans support the death penalty because they believe it serves as a deterrent. They insist on the death penalty because they are angry. They are tired of being afraid. They cannot afford to see their tax dollars spent on housing more and more criminals. They have lost their faith in the criminal justice system.

Think about that for a moment. Americans' faith in the criminal justice system is at a fifty year low (USA Today, March 21, 1995), yet people are willing to allow the courts to decide who lives and who dies in our gas chambers every day. Where is the logic?

Religion is another illogical tool used to support the death penalty. According to a recent Gallup poll, eighty percent of Christian Americans are in favor of the death penalty. In more than half of the eighty percent found to be in favor, their reason for supporting the death penalty was their Christian belief of the Biblical "an eye for an eye" principle.

This is an argument of utility, based solely upon the often misguided authority Christians conveniently place in the Bible. Careful study of the text would in fact indicate just the opposite, that the "eye for an eye" principle is fundamentally false. While it is true that in Exodus 21:24, the Lord says to Moses, "But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise," the story does not simply or conveniently end there. In the New Testament (thirty-eight books later), Jesus Christ clearly states, "You have heard that it was said, "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other as well. If someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, give him your cloak as well" (Matthew:5:38-40). We ask our children to "turn the other cheek" in the playground during recess. We teach them to forgive and forget. Yet "an eye for an eye" remains the battle cry for death penalty supporters. Where is the logic?

Thomas Grasso, a man convicted of murder in two states (Minnesota and New York) was serving a life sentence in a Minneapolis prison when Republican George Pataki, in favor of the death penalty, became governor of New York. For more than a decade, Grasso had pleaded to be extradited to New York (where the death penalty was law) so that the misery of his life could end, but because there was a Democrat (Mario Cuomo) who opposed the death penalty serving as governor, his request was repeatedly denied.

In 1994, with Pataki in power, Grasso was finally extradited to New York and executed. Death penalty proponents proclaimed it a victory for their cause. Yet in order to punish a killer, New York in effect granted Grasso the one request that made him happy. Where is the logic?

Mistakes are made. In the seventeenth century, the people of Salem, Massachusetts burned women at the stake because they were believed to be witches. Americans look back upon those times today and shake their heads in disbelief, but what is so different from our system today? Instead of falsely convicting women of witchcraft, we falsely convict predominantly African American men of murder. We judge them by a system we know is flawed, declare them guilty, and kill them. And sometimes, we kill innocent people by mistake. Isn't that what happened in Salem three hundred years ago? Isn't that precisely what is happening today?