Death is wrong when it's on TV
(still doing these on the fly...spellchecks will return someday, promise)
After running across a few articles on the execution of Stanley 'Tookie' Williams and doing a little thinking about the abolitionists/anti-death-penalty activists I've knoen over the years (not to mention my own back and forth opinions on the issue) I did another one of my searches for information and opinions.
The following articles cover the entire spectrum.
A Guilty Man
by Vince Beiser
Mother Jones
Sept/Oct, 2005
Vince Beiser covers the story of Bill Wiseman - the state legislator who wrote the legislation adopting lethl injection as a method of execution in Oklahoma. Wiseman is anti-death-penalty, but he'd hoped to make executions more humane. Now he feels guilty because it appears that lethal injection has made the death penalty easier to select as a punishment because it's so quiet, calm, and easy to complete as a process. No bodies swining from a rope, no burning flesh in the chair, no load noises from a fireing squad - just a criminal appearing to go to sleep. Sort of like putting a pet down, really.
Now Wiseman is a religious lader and actively working against the death penalty, while atoning for his part in making it so much easier to enact.
This also goes over how terribly painful and difficult lethal injection can be, given no doctors take part in the procedure and the injectible-drug-affected viens of many who are executed can cause the sedation and pain killing aspects of the process to fail to enter into the system properly (or at all), thereby leaving the criminal paralized (as that portion is always completed) and in excrutiating pain as the poison passes through.
The possibility for less than five minutes of fire in the veins pain is given as a strong reason for ending the death penalty.
Curiously, media are indifferent to victims
by Kerry Dougherty
The Virginia-Pilot
12/15/2005
Dougherty speaks for the victems of the murders on death row and asks why their names are not as well known, and their cause (memory) is nowhere near as well publicized, or considered to be of concern, as the criminals on death row.
How can anti-death-penalty activists forget or ignore the people who were executed by the people being executed?
Her unstated point is well taken - her's was the only article I ran accross that focused on the victems (and their names and families) specifically. Many didn't even name, much less pay tribute, to the people who died at the hands of those being executed.
While Dougherty directs her opinions at anti-death-penalty activists, she doesn't directly address the directly related issue - the complete lack of coverage in the press. The little blond girl who was a child model and murdered in her family home was splashed all over every tabloid a grocery store might carry, for months (years?) and I've purposely blocked her name so I can't tell you what it is...the point is, she's the only victem anyone really knows anything about, and that's because she was cute, she was photogrnic, and she was blond.
Hundreds Attend Rites for Stanley 'Tookie' Williams
Compiled by the Diversity Inc staff
© 2005 DiversityInc.com®
December 21, 2005
This one made me cringe. Hundreds of people showed up for the funeral of Stanley 'Tookie' Williams, including a popular rapper who read a poem insisting that this rather famous gang leader didn't do it - at which point the people in the parking lot, watching the funeral on the television stationed there, cheered.
One of many opinions I've stumbled accross insisting that because Tookie had atoned for his sins (and a wrote a few children's books) he should have been forgiven and released, not executed.
It's also one of a few articles that imply that Tookie was framed because he was black and the system doesn't like black men. There is no explanation for how he can be so clean and innocent when everyone freely admits (and even proudly declares) that he founded an extremely violent gang...do the original members of gangs start out as Eagle Scounts who just naively let bad apples join in their little club and then lose control over the actions and behavior of the people spoiling their good name?
Like it or not, agree with it or not, the fact that he was black and he was killed makes him a symbol of oppression and injustice in this country.
It is also never discussed that sometimes attoning for your past, and taking responsibility for your actions, also involves facing the consequences of those actions. Sometimes 'I'm sorry' doesn't get you off - no matter who you are.
Costs of the Death Penalty
Death Penalty Information Center
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/
This is a listing of the costs associated with giving a convicted criminal the death penalty. If you look them over, you'll see they are quite large.
I believe that they're that large, but only because people sit on death row for decades. There is no comparison to the cost of placing someone in prison for life - particularly someone who's crimes and/or behaviors require them to be placed in a secured area away from the general population.
The crime, not his race, put Baker on death row
by Gregory Kane
Baltimore News
12/03/2005
This is the first (and only) article that I ran accross which pointedly (and directly) stated that Stanley 'Tookie' Williams came to the fate he did because of his own actions.
Kane also points out the fact that the same crime Tookie was convicted for will get you death row in one area of town, and barely a flinch (or a trial) in another. There are regions where it's safer to be a criminal than others.
Of course, if you have a large reputation, have racked up enough crimes, or hold enough criminal power, then you have this way of becoming of interested to the people in charge of sending killers to jail. Kane doesn't mention this point, but his commentary on location is clear.
OK. So, having gone over all of the above (and a few not listed above), what are my own conclusions on the topic?
I associate with left-wing politics, I think that much is clear. However, like it or not, my opinions on this topic are not very 'lefty.'
The points made about the victems gruesome and violent deaths (often taking a far longer time and involving far more torture than execution), and the fact that people who commit crimes living out the consequences of those crimes, are very much in line with what I think.
However, when it comes down to it, they are not what bother me the most. What really makes my spine itch is the focused placed on the deaths everyone can see.
I have known people who have spent time in prison. I have become good friends with people who spent a significant time in prison. I have become good friends with people who have immediate relatives in prison. Anyone who's been that close to the realities of incarceration know - people die in prison. Lot's of people die in prison and most of them are at the hands of other prisoners.
Then, there's the fact that people are murdered on the street everyday. Often, the people who find themselves in prison (regardless of how long) have been very close to murder, either through the death of someone close, or witnessing a death of someone they don't know when taht person is gunned down in front of them.
Violence is out there. So is retribution.
The strangest aspect to the death penalty (from my perspective) is the fact that death row is one of the safest places a person can be (as far as prison goes). Death row is seperate from the general population and under heavy guard (from what I understand). The chances of a death row inmate being randomly killed by another inmate in prison, are pretty slim, whereas the chance of a general population inmate dying at the hands of another inamte, are higher than the penal system would probably like known.
Add onto that the number of people tortured and killed in domestic abuse cases with murderers rarely, if ever, coming to trial because of their personal connection-relationship to the victem (as long as you marry the woman before hand, slitting her throat isn't quite as big of a deal).
And then there are the prostitutes, transients, children, and other 'invisible' people who are murdered and never noticed or investigated.
Not to mention the people who commit crimes, or murders, or otherwise offend people, and wind up dead as a matter of revenge and vigilante justice. Convicts getting out of prison have to face this on the streets. Convicts in prison have to face it from the cell block. People who've never been caught have to live with it.
Why is it better to be killed in the privacy of your own community, by fellows seeking vigilante revenge, then to be sentenced to death after a complete trial?
There's a whole lot of killing going on, but the state mandated, they-got-a-trial, make-this-as-humane-as-possible, televised on TV, wait-in-near-absolute-security-for-decades, and everyone-knows-it's-going-to-happen deaths are just to much for some people to handle.
Sometimes I think the biggest problem with the death penalty is the wait. Sentence to death and kill within a few days - that makes more sense to me...
But I'm left wing and that's a bit harsh for someone on the left.
Regardless of my opinion of time-on-death-row, I would really prefer to hear a lot less talk about execution from anti-death workers and a lot more about violence, murder, and death in our lives and our streets.
After running across a few articles on the execution of Stanley 'Tookie' Williams and doing a little thinking about the abolitionists/anti-death-penalty activists I've knoen over the years (not to mention my own back and forth opinions on the issue) I did another one of my searches for information and opinions.
The following articles cover the entire spectrum.
A Guilty Man
by Vince Beiser
Mother Jones
Sept/Oct, 2005
Vince Beiser covers the story of Bill Wiseman - the state legislator who wrote the legislation adopting lethl injection as a method of execution in Oklahoma. Wiseman is anti-death-penalty, but he'd hoped to make executions more humane. Now he feels guilty because it appears that lethal injection has made the death penalty easier to select as a punishment because it's so quiet, calm, and easy to complete as a process. No bodies swining from a rope, no burning flesh in the chair, no load noises from a fireing squad - just a criminal appearing to go to sleep. Sort of like putting a pet down, really.
Now Wiseman is a religious lader and actively working against the death penalty, while atoning for his part in making it so much easier to enact.
This also goes over how terribly painful and difficult lethal injection can be, given no doctors take part in the procedure and the injectible-drug-affected viens of many who are executed can cause the sedation and pain killing aspects of the process to fail to enter into the system properly (or at all), thereby leaving the criminal paralized (as that portion is always completed) and in excrutiating pain as the poison passes through.
The possibility for less than five minutes of fire in the veins pain is given as a strong reason for ending the death penalty.
Curiously, media are indifferent to victims
by Kerry Dougherty
The Virginia-Pilot
12/15/2005
Dougherty speaks for the victems of the murders on death row and asks why their names are not as well known, and their cause (memory) is nowhere near as well publicized, or considered to be of concern, as the criminals on death row.
How can anti-death-penalty activists forget or ignore the people who were executed by the people being executed?
Her unstated point is well taken - her's was the only article I ran accross that focused on the victems (and their names and families) specifically. Many didn't even name, much less pay tribute, to the people who died at the hands of those being executed.
While Dougherty directs her opinions at anti-death-penalty activists, she doesn't directly address the directly related issue - the complete lack of coverage in the press. The little blond girl who was a child model and murdered in her family home was splashed all over every tabloid a grocery store might carry, for months (years?) and I've purposely blocked her name so I can't tell you what it is...the point is, she's the only victem anyone really knows anything about, and that's because she was cute, she was photogrnic, and she was blond.
Hundreds Attend Rites for Stanley 'Tookie' Williams
Compiled by the Diversity Inc staff
© 2005 DiversityInc.com®
December 21, 2005
This one made me cringe. Hundreds of people showed up for the funeral of Stanley 'Tookie' Williams, including a popular rapper who read a poem insisting that this rather famous gang leader didn't do it - at which point the people in the parking lot, watching the funeral on the television stationed there, cheered.
One of many opinions I've stumbled accross insisting that because Tookie had atoned for his sins (and a wrote a few children's books) he should have been forgiven and released, not executed.
It's also one of a few articles that imply that Tookie was framed because he was black and the system doesn't like black men. There is no explanation for how he can be so clean and innocent when everyone freely admits (and even proudly declares) that he founded an extremely violent gang...do the original members of gangs start out as Eagle Scounts who just naively let bad apples join in their little club and then lose control over the actions and behavior of the people spoiling their good name?
Like it or not, agree with it or not, the fact that he was black and he was killed makes him a symbol of oppression and injustice in this country.
It is also never discussed that sometimes attoning for your past, and taking responsibility for your actions, also involves facing the consequences of those actions. Sometimes 'I'm sorry' doesn't get you off - no matter who you are.
Costs of the Death Penalty
Death Penalty Information Center
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/
This is a listing of the costs associated with giving a convicted criminal the death penalty. If you look them over, you'll see they are quite large.
I believe that they're that large, but only because people sit on death row for decades. There is no comparison to the cost of placing someone in prison for life - particularly someone who's crimes and/or behaviors require them to be placed in a secured area away from the general population.
The crime, not his race, put Baker on death row
by Gregory Kane
Baltimore News
12/03/2005
This is the first (and only) article that I ran accross which pointedly (and directly) stated that Stanley 'Tookie' Williams came to the fate he did because of his own actions.
Kane also points out the fact that the same crime Tookie was convicted for will get you death row in one area of town, and barely a flinch (or a trial) in another. There are regions where it's safer to be a criminal than others.
Of course, if you have a large reputation, have racked up enough crimes, or hold enough criminal power, then you have this way of becoming of interested to the people in charge of sending killers to jail. Kane doesn't mention this point, but his commentary on location is clear.
OK. So, having gone over all of the above (and a few not listed above), what are my own conclusions on the topic?
I associate with left-wing politics, I think that much is clear. However, like it or not, my opinions on this topic are not very 'lefty.'
The points made about the victems gruesome and violent deaths (often taking a far longer time and involving far more torture than execution), and the fact that people who commit crimes living out the consequences of those crimes, are very much in line with what I think.
However, when it comes down to it, they are not what bother me the most. What really makes my spine itch is the focused placed on the deaths everyone can see.
I have known people who have spent time in prison. I have become good friends with people who spent a significant time in prison. I have become good friends with people who have immediate relatives in prison. Anyone who's been that close to the realities of incarceration know - people die in prison. Lot's of people die in prison and most of them are at the hands of other prisoners.
Then, there's the fact that people are murdered on the street everyday. Often, the people who find themselves in prison (regardless of how long) have been very close to murder, either through the death of someone close, or witnessing a death of someone they don't know when taht person is gunned down in front of them.
Violence is out there. So is retribution.
The strangest aspect to the death penalty (from my perspective) is the fact that death row is one of the safest places a person can be (as far as prison goes). Death row is seperate from the general population and under heavy guard (from what I understand). The chances of a death row inmate being randomly killed by another inmate in prison, are pretty slim, whereas the chance of a general population inmate dying at the hands of another inamte, are higher than the penal system would probably like known.
Add onto that the number of people tortured and killed in domestic abuse cases with murderers rarely, if ever, coming to trial because of their personal connection-relationship to the victem (as long as you marry the woman before hand, slitting her throat isn't quite as big of a deal).
And then there are the prostitutes, transients, children, and other 'invisible' people who are murdered and never noticed or investigated.
Not to mention the people who commit crimes, or murders, or otherwise offend people, and wind up dead as a matter of revenge and vigilante justice. Convicts getting out of prison have to face this on the streets. Convicts in prison have to face it from the cell block. People who've never been caught have to live with it.
Why is it better to be killed in the privacy of your own community, by fellows seeking vigilante revenge, then to be sentenced to death after a complete trial?
There's a whole lot of killing going on, but the state mandated, they-got-a-trial, make-this-as-humane-as-possible, televised on TV, wait-in-near-absolute-security-for-decades, and everyone-knows-it's-going-to-happen deaths are just to much for some people to handle.
Sometimes I think the biggest problem with the death penalty is the wait. Sentence to death and kill within a few days - that makes more sense to me...
But I'm left wing and that's a bit harsh for someone on the left.
Regardless of my opinion of time-on-death-row, I would really prefer to hear a lot less talk about execution from anti-death workers and a lot more about violence, murder, and death in our lives and our streets.
posted by A at 4:02 PM
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