Cost and Contention: A Convincing Case Against Capital Punishment

 Author’s note: I removed the works cited page and as many in-text citations as possible – plagiarize and die!

 

“If we haven’t got a system that works, then we shouldn’t have a system… Justice delayed is justice denied,” said former Illinois governor George Ryan when he commuted 164 death sentences to life in prison. Though he had stood in favor of the death penalty his entire career, a reexamination of the system changed his mind. He’s not the only one – a hearing held by Kansas Republican senator Sam Brownback revealed that many states are backsliding on their position on the death penalty. Some are studying the cost and administration of capital punishment (Texas, North Carolina, and California), some have placed moratoriums on it (Illinois, New Jersey, Kansas), banned it completely (New York), or introduced life without parole (Texas). In the Supreme Court actions Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons, in 2002 and 2005 respectively, executing the mentally disabled and minors was found to be cruel and unusual punishment. Judging by these growing reservations, the sheer cost of administration, and conflicting evidence produced by both sides of the death penalty argument, capital punishment is clearly an inefficient system hardly worth the belated justice it delivers.

            For most of American history, from the Pilgrims and Puritans to the present day, criminals have been arrested, convicted, and punished. Some are sentenced to prison, others to probation, hard labor, monetary restitution, or death. Some of these might even be proportional to the crime. The death penalty and its courthouse square gallows used to be fairly popular in that lineup, probably ranking with the quaint image of the bestriped roadside chain gang. However, that simple Saturday afternoon entertainment wore off like the excitement of a failed gold rush: hanging didn’t always work the first time around, and the longer a man twisted around semi-conscious from the rope instead of dying outright, the more the audience recoiled instead of cheered.

            Eventually, the spectacle was moved inside. Hanging and any other methods involving blood or guts, such as the firing squad, were judged too icky by the late 1800’s, and electricity was expected to fill the gap. Up until this time, executions had been popular and cheap. Hundreds of people could crowd into the town square, and the only equipment supervisor necessary was a carpenter. However, with the advent of electricity, attitudes began to change and the state budget books needed another column. Only a handful of people could watch now, and state legislatures had to appropriate between five and ten thousand dollars apiece for electric chair equipment, which in the early 1900’s was a fantastic sum.

            That amount of money back in the day, along with the “improvements” in the criminal justice system in the form of more bureaucracy, translates into exorbitant lawyer fees, court costs, complicated paperwork and appeals, and the indefinite amount of time it all takes. The state of New York spent about $200 million on capital cases alone in the past ten years. New Jersey has spent $253 million since 1982, but unlike New York, no one’s been executed since the sixties, five years before Furman v. Georgia outlawed capital punishment. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh cost at least $14 million for his defense team alone, and even though his particular case ended in execution, the vast majority of capital cases do not. In New Jersey, there have been 60 capital cases since the early 1980’s but only ten men are on death row. Considering New Jersey’s barren execution record, these men are very likely to have their sentences commuted or their execution dates postponed until they die of natural causes.

            It should be clear by these dollar amounts alone that capital punishment isn’t the best solution to problems faced by criminal justice. For instance, not everyone agrees with Governor Ryan’s decision to commute the sentences of convicted murderers, and present evidence in curiously direct opposition. This is a common feature of the evidence presented by opposite sides in debate, which on principle weakens both cases. Statistically, for every man put the death five murders are avoided, and for every death sentence commuted, five are caused. Conversely, Governor Ryan claims that “half of the nearly 300 capital cases in Illinois had been reversed for a new trial or re-sentencing…” Similarly, states with the death penalty have a murder rate 44 percent higher than states without, according to a Birmingham News editorial. The editorial continued, stating that the South, where the death penalty is most popular, has a murder rate 50 percent above that of the Northeast, where the death penalty is least popular in the nation. Cassell, a professor of law at the University of Utah College of Law and a US District Court judge, goes as far as to quote FCC (of all organizations) statistician Paul Zimmerman’s findings that for each execution carried out, and average of 14 murders are deterred. Which is it? Are murders really deterred by other men being executed, or does the murder rate make up the difference? If the experts cannot agree, then how can either side use these figures as evidence?

            Another disputed issue is the fairness of the trial that defendants facing the death penalty receive. Cassell argues that “federal law requires appointment of extremely well-qualified counsel and provides [defendants] with seemingly unlimited resources,” citing the Timothy McVeigh defense team’s price tag of $14 million plus. However, Governor Ryan’s review of the death penalty in his state concluded that far from being stellar appointees, at least 15 percent of those defendants’ attorneys were later disbarred or imposed with some kind of suspension. Were these 15 percent merely anomalies in the usual standard operation procedure, or was McVeigh simply a special case? Who represents a nationwide trend of legal inadequacies? In New Jersey, the Office of the Public Defender represents more than 90 percent of death penalty candidates; an often inexperienced and underpaid group of attorneys who aren’t getting their names in the papers like the pricey men who jump on high-profile cases like McVeigh or Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph. Rudolph’s defense cost $4 million and didn’t even go to trial, in which he may have been sentenced to death. Instead, he pled his way out to life in prison. Had he gone the McVeigh route to trial (and to the needle), the cost of the defense would have been “tripled,” according to Bill Bowen, one of the at least nine lawyers working on the case. These lawyers also earned up to $160 per hour doing mostly interviews and paperwork.

            Contrary to Cassell’s assertions that “all” death penalty defendants receive “extremely well-qualified” counsel, it is clear this is not the case. Granted, each case comes with a burdensome price tag, but the very few with eager defense teams clearly become more burdensome than the others without.

            The Constitution itself has no position on the matter. The fifth and 14^th amendments demand due process of law, and the eighth amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment from being dealt, but makes no say on whether or not death is in violation. Conceivably, the average length of a capital case could prove that capital punishment violates the due process clause of the fifth amendment, for approximately twelve years pass from the time a suspect is apprehended, until he’s pronounced guilty, he’s exhausted all his chances for appeal, and is injected with sodium cyanide.

            Unfortunately for some convicts, this constitutional procedure is too cut-and-dry. With the advent of DNA evidence and ever-advancing science, suspects can be automatically ruled out if forensics shows no sign of that person ever being in or near a crime scene. But amazingly, this isn’t enough for some prosecutors, such as Missouri Attorney General Frank Jung. “If there is no underlying constitutional violation, there is no right to relief,” he told a judge. “Even if DNA evidence conclusively found an inmate innocent, the court would need a constitutional violation to stop the execution. That’s the standard, your honor.” In other words, if prosecutors follow procedure to the letter, the evidence doesn’t really matter because due process was not violated. This is not an honor of Constitutional rights; this is adherence to mere evidentiary rules, and not justice.

            The amount of money spent on capital cases should at least guarantee that someone is going to get the axe (so to speak). But in New Yorker Michael Grinnell’s case, the state spent $1 million on his double homicide defense until the prosecutor finally threatened him with the death penalty, effectively railroading him into accepting life in prison without parole. But even with these time-consuming, delayed, and expensive plea arrangements in place, they don’t always guarantee that someone is going to stay in a 6×8 concrete block for the rest of his life. While there’s no chance that Eric Rudolph will ever walk a free man again, extenuating circumstances apply to his particularly high-profile case: one breath of freedom for him means a furious media storm for the rest of us; a status quo-endangering chance the system will not risk. But for the nameless killers who are barely likely to grace the screens of Local News at 6, the chances are better of them getting out sooner than anyone thinks. “There’s no guarantee that life without parole is really life,” said Patricia Tedesco, whose police officer brother Gary Tedesco was murdered by a parolee who had been sentenced to death but eventually walked free. “A life sentence is crap. The laws always change, depending on what politician wants his name in the paper.” Was the governor of Illinois one of those attention-seeking politicians? Is it likely that one of the men who received his mercy will walk free again? One of the attorneys for Illinois’ Cook County, Dick Devine, shows some concern. “All of these cases would have been best left for consideration by the courts, which have the experience, the training, and the wisdom to decide innocence or guilt. Instead, they were ripped away from the justice system by a man who is a pharmacist by training and a politician by trade.” Devine seems to be a doting fan of the system, an enforcer of the 12-year quagmire. Ryan may have been a pharmacist in a former life, but he sure dealt a swift justice deemed adequate by other states.

            The complexities of the criminal justice system muddy the waters of determining which cases merit the death penalty and which ones don’t. Homicide related cases that can be punished with the death penalty include:

• drug-related shootings
• civil-rights offenses
• sexual exploitation of children
• carjacking
• kidnapping
• rape

Non-homicide related charges include:

• espionage
• treason
• drug-trafficking

            Depending on how good the defense attorney or prosecutor is, factors that make a defendant eligible for the death penalty can be bargained and precedents can be ignored. For example, a man could be sentenced to death for using a racial slur before killing his victim, but if he doesn’t, he has a good chance of pleading his sentence down to manslaughter. Two drug-related shootings could differ only by a few extra ounces of cocaine on one count, but could mean capital murder for one man and manslaughter for the other. The factors are plentiful and complicated, and therefore open to abuse.

            Plea bargaining and quality of representation plays possibly and even larger role than the factors involved in a case. McVeigh and Rudolph, who both bombed public places and killed scores of people, are undoubtedly among the most cold-blooded and basest of human beings, remorseless and undeserving of mercy. However, while McVeigh went to trial and was executed, Rudolph is now languishing in federal prison in Florence, Colorado.

            On the civilian side of things, the takers of the religious and moral high ground are sharply divided on God’s approval or disapproval of the death penalty, and therefore should not be considered in the general debate. The Bible itself contradicts its position, therefore taking none. Christian supporters of the death penalty cite the Book of Genesis as justification when God told Noah and his family, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” However, in an equally popular passage originally written on a stone tablet given to Moses states “Thou shalt not kill.”

            Even the surviving friends and family members of murder victims don’t agree on what should happen to their killers. The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Senator Brownback, spoke to family members of victims with vastly different views, one with vengeance and one with a more merciful approach. They and a third parent, Eddie Hicks, whose daughter was killed in 2000, concur on one measure: that “the current system does not serve victims’ families. It focuses attention and vast expenditures on the offenders, but there’s no support for our victims.” (Vicki Schieber, mother of murder victim Shannon Schieber, speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee) Hicks himself is now saddled with the responsibility of his remaining children, who needed psychiatric help after watching their sister die, and his deceased daughter’s children.

            Clearly, the only rock-solid concession by all sides is that money is misappropriated in the administration of capital punishment. Only high-profile cases such as those of Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph see the expensive lawyers that deliver a competent defense, and even then, the drawn-out process of the appeals courts ensure an ever-growing price tag even for the most provincial of criminals. This is not to mention that while all this money is being squandered on dregs of criminals, the people truly affected and deserving of justice are left in limbo, without their loved ones and without peace for years on end.