Accidental Blogger

Except for two years in Germany, I have always lived in places where execution is legal for capital crimes. While western Europe, Canada, Mexico and some other nations have done away with the death penalty, most Islamic nations (some of whom still employ beheading and stoning as a means of execution), China, Japan, 37 states in the US (except for a brief period between 1972 – 1976, when it was illegal in all fifty states) and India permit capital punishment.

The three US states where I have lived have all been "death penalty" states. In 1994 when I was in Nebraska, the state had its first execution after a thirty five year hiatus. Soon after that in 1996 and 1997 two more death row prisoners were executed. All three died on the electric chair. The executions caused some soul searching in the press and among the public regarding the morality and usefulness of capital punishment. On execution days, the grounds outside the prison saw the gathering of both opponents and supporters of the death penalty. Those opposed, held up banners, lit candles and said prayers. Among the supporters the mood was more like that of tail-gate parties at a Cornhusker home game. They too held up signs, some of them gleefully encouraging the prisoners to "fry" "die" and "burn in hell." Nebraska hasn’t executed anyone since I left in 1998. I now live in Texas where one or more executions every month is no big deal. (There were 131 executions in Texas during 5 years of Georg W. Bush’s gubernatorial tenure) Religious and secular protesters do show up at the Huntsville prison when an execution is scheduled. But except for family members of the victims, there are usually no crowds of celebrants. Prisoners being put to death by lethal injection is a routine matter here – taken for granted. But according to an article in Newsweek, things may be changing even in Texas, where 70% of the citizens support the death penalty.

Although our society may be no more moral, logical or compassionate than that of our fore bearers, it is possible that our stomach for participatory violence has become weaker. Executions once were public events. Citizens, including women and children gathered in the town square to watch condemned men and women put to death and where often a country fair like atmosphere prevailed. Over the years, the venue of executions shifted from public places to prison yards. Hanging gave way to the firing squad, to be followed by the electric chair which in turn has been mostly supplanted by lethal injection. It is clear that while our desire for vengeance may not have abated, we wish to devise more "humane" ways to extract revenge and mete out punishment. Our tolerance for graphic violence has reduced. We may have no problem supporting a government policy of invading another country which we know will cause mayhem in a distant land but very few of us will put a gun to a stranger’s head and pull the trigger. Eating factory farmed animals slaughtered by others rarely is a cause for losing sleep but most meat eaters will flinch from taking a hatchet to a chicken or a turkey or willingly watch the slaughter of an animal for food. In other words, even if the deaths of men and animals do not stir our souls at a fundamental level, we wish to make those deaths anti-septic, far removed and invisible – with no blood on our own hands.  A person who is intellectually in favor of retributive justice in the form of capital punishment, may flinch at the prospect of sentencing another person to death when he or she sits on a jury panel. The queasiness about playing a direct role in the pain and suffering of another living being may be at the heart of a recent trend in which prosecutors and jurors are increasingly reluctant to seek the death penalty, favoring life sentence without the chance of parole where it is an option. (In the last two years, it has become an option in Texas) The other important development that has gradually tilted the case against executions is the increasingly frequent overturning of convictions on the basis of DNA evidence. Even those who have few qualms about seeing a "real" criminal put to death, balk at the thought of sending an innocent person to his / her death.  So it seems that improved forensic technology and our increasing aversion to explicit violence may eventually make the death penalty a rare occurrence even if it remains an option within our penal code.

Texas has long been the Hang ’em high state. In 2000, it executed convicted prisoners at the rate of almost one a week. Gov. George W. Bush seemed to take pride in turning down appeals for clemency. The "Decider" was known for spending as little as 15 minutes reviewing a death case. In a Talk magazine piece, Tucker Carlson reported that Bush mocked the plea of one double murderer on death row, pursing his lips in mock desperation and whispering, "Please, don’t kill me." (Bush later said Carlson had "misread, mischaracterized me.")

Texas still accounts for more than half of all executions in the United States. But a strange thing is happening in the state that has executed more prisoners than any other since the U.S. Supreme Court revived the death penalty in 1976 after a brief hiatus. Texas prosecutors are less willing to seek, and juries are less willing to grant, capital punishment for aggravated murder. In 2006, only 15 Texas convicts were sentenced to death, down from 34 a decade earlier. Texas mirrors a national trend: death-penalty sentences in the 38 states that allow capital punishment dropped from 317 in 1996 to 128 in 2005, the latest year for which statistics are available.

Why the reluctance to populate death row? Polls show popular support for capital punishment stays relatively high, at about 65 percent. But when it comes to carrying out death sentences, the people involved—judges and juries, prosecutors and prison officials—are starting to recoil, or at least pull back. What is acceptable in theory seems less and less tolerable in practice. Indeed, the Supreme Court has called at least a temporary halt to executions while it examines the fine points of killing convicts by pumping lethal chemicals into their veins. "The death penalty may go out with a whimper, not a great moral revolution," says Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

The Newsweek article here.