Vicky Elliott, journalist, San Francisco Chronicle
In Texas, the cross marking the grave of an executed prisoner bears his number, not his name.
In a climate
influenced by the religious right, a public stand against the death penalty is regarded
as nothing short of political suicide
In a nation where
the death penalty is in force in 38 out of 51 states, roughly 3,500 prisoners are
waiting on death row, 47 per cent of them white and 42 per cent black.* Executions
are on the rise, with 68 carried out in 1998. In addition to imposing the death penalty
for crimes committed by juveniles, the U.S. is also unusual in making no exceptions
for the mentally retarded.
What explains the endorsement of the death penalty by four out of every five Americans?
In the civil rights period of the1960s, the percentage of those in its favour briefly
dipped as low as 42 per cent. But since the Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976,
after a moratorium of about a decade, support has been little short of monolithic.
It is true that the figures drop (to about 60 per cent) if those surveyed are presented
the alternative of keeping serious offenders in jail without possibility of parole.
The
‘death belt’
However, fear of crime
persists and a punitive climate remains. Lawmakers are continually introducing bills
to expand the list of “aggravating factors” presented to the jury in many states
in the sentencing phase of a capital case.
The so-called “Death Belt” of the Southern states, with their history of lynch law,
accounts for a hefty percentage of death row inmates, and half of the executions
in 1997 were carried out in Texas alone. But California, which pays out more for
its prisons than its universities, now has the largest number of inmates on death
row. New York, whose Governor Mario Cuomo was one of the few American politicians
in recent history willing to risk a public stand for abolition, has brought the death
penalty back. And in Arizona, officials intend to accelerate the pace of executions.
Built on Puritanical foundations, human relations in this gun-toting culture are
still viewed in Manichean terms, validating the frontiersman’s call for the bad guy
to be strung up. In a climate heavily influenced by the religious right, a public
stand against capital punishment is regarded as nothing short of political suicide.
Executive clemency, which was used to commute many death sentences to life imprisonment
during the heyday of the gangsters in the 1930s and 1940s, is rarely exercised. Witness
Governor Bill Clinton, who approved the execution of a mentally retarded convict
in Arkansas just after winning the presidential elections in 1992, and California’s
Democratic Governor Gray Davis, who has passed up the possibility of staying two
executions this year.
Moreover, the criminal justice system is inextricably intertwined with electoral
politics. District attorneys, who make the decision whether to seek the death penalty
in a given case, are elected. State judges, once appointed, face a retention vote
at the next general elections. While federal judges are appointed for life, they
face a grueling congressional confirmation battle. Public perception is that capital
cases, which can cost a state in the region of $1.2 million to prosecute, are subject
to unduly lengthy scrutiny. In fact, legislatures around the country have made it
increasingly difficult to bring appeals.
Meanwhile, despite a 1984 Supreme Court ruling intended to correct racial bias in
jury selection, the operation of the death penalty remains racially skewed. Of the
1,838 District attorneys in death penalty states as of May this year, only 22 were
Hispanic and 22 black. Although roughly equal numbers of blacks and whites are homicide
victims, of the 500 people put to death between 1977 and 1998, 81.8 per cent were
convicted of killing a white person. Setting aside cases involving particularly egregious
crimes such as serial killings, the death penalty falls disproportionately, for crimes
of equal severity, upon poor blacks who cannot afford adequate legal representation.
There are some signs of movement in public opinion. A cluster of miscarriages of
justice on death row and the reversal of several convictions have helped to rally
support both for a new moratorium on executions and for a plan to divert spending
on death penalty cases into a fund for the families of homicide victims. It is also
conceivable that if a Democrat comes to power at the next elections and appoints
two new justices of a less than extreme conservative persuasion, the Supreme Court
might turn the situation around.
Between now and then, prisoners wait on death row. In the words of one juvenile offender
in Oklahoma, “To condemn me to death . . . is to say my life has no positive value,
I’m beyond correction or rehabilitation.” It is strange that a nation that puts such
store in the perfectibility of the individual is willing to discard so many lives.
*Amnesty International figures
