[Fredslist] Capital Questions [Op Ed]

[Scott Stuart]

*Capital Questions*

By Scott Y. Stuart


It was current events day in Mrs. Gehlmeyer's sixth grade class.  That day
we were to discuss the death penalty.  My teacher broke us up into two
groups and we had to argue, as best as any 11 year old could, the pros and
cons of capital punishment.  I became the spokesperson for the group that
argued in favor of capital punishment.

Sixth grade for me was smack in the middle of a national moratorium on the
death penalty following a 1972  Supreme Court finding that it was 'cruel and
unusual punishment'.  By the time I was in high school however, there it was
again, back at the center stage of the American penal system.  Today, while
most free nations have banned it altogether, the United Sates ranks fourth
in its use behind China, Iran and Vietnam. And while I may have been an
ardent supporter of capital punishment while debating it in Mrs. Gehlmeyer's
sixth grade class, these many years later I, like many Americans, struggle
with the issue.

Recent polls suggest we basically think capital punishment has a place in
our society.  Well, at least 64% of us do.  Now while that is a strong
indication of support for the death penalty, it is not the 80% that
supported it just a decade ago.  In fact, the nation is pretty much evenly
divided when the issue comes down to death verses life imprisonment.

Admittedly, there are crimes so heinous that it is easy to justify use of
the ultimate sentence.  Unlike other nations that still use capital
punishment though, we go through painstaking efforts to assure propriety in
the use of this sentence, with death row inmates often pursuing appeals that
span a decade or more. Likewise, use of the death penalty has come under
heightened scrutiny in states like Texas, where more people have been put to
death than any other state in the union, and in Illinois where capital
convictions were found to be so flawed that a governor banned its use
altogether.  To really see the issue though is to see it through the
faces of the executed. With this in mind, I introduce you to John
Spenkelnik, Kenneth Lee Boyd and Stanley 'Tookey' Williams.

As long as I can remember, critics of capital punishment have argued that
the ultimate sentence has been disproportionately handed down to black men.
Perhaps this is why in 1976, following the end of the death penalty
moratorium in America, the first man to be involuntarily executed was a
white man in the State of Florida named John Spenkelnik.  Although no one is
quite sure why of the 134 prisoners on death row in Florida, then Governor
Bob Graham signed John Spenkelnik's death warrant, it has been speculated
that the decision to execute him came from tough on crime politicians
determined to see a white man be the first to be executed in an effort to
obviate the argument capital punishment was primarily a black man's
plight. And so it was that on May 25, 1977 John Spendelnick was put to death
ushering in the next era of capital punishment in America.

Thirty eight states in the Union allow capital punishment today, and in the
late 1990's it seemed as if executions were happening at a fast and furious
pace.  It was on December 2, 2005 however that we reached a new milestone in
the post Spendelnick era of capital punishment when Kenneth Lee Boyd became
the 1,000th person executed in the United States since The Supreme Court
gave the thumbs up to capital punishment in 1976. While the 57 year old
former Vietnam veteran convicted of brutal murders commented he did not want
to be remembered as a number, this is exactly what he was and a significant
one at that since of the 1,000 United states executions, more than half
have occurred in Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma.

Perhaps one of the more controversial faces of the death penalty however
surfaced last week with the execution of Stanley 'Tookey' Williams in
California.  A former gang leader convicted of murdering four people, his
years on death row yielded him a noble peace prize nomination, the writing
of an anti-gang book and renunciation of gang life.  Still, he was a
convicted murderer, and while questions of rehabilitation surrounded this
condemned inmate, he was still denied clemency by Governor Arnold
Schwartznager who believed 'Tookey's' lack of remorse for the murders he
committed outweighed whatever good he seemingly achieved during his many
years in prison.

It was Martin Luther King, Jr. who said "the arc of the moral universe is
long but it bends towards justice."  While I believe capital punishment has
and will continue to be a part of our penal system, it seems that we are at
a pause in the use of the ultimate sentence nationwide. Today, state
governors are exercising clemency powers more than ever before.  The advent
of DNA evidence, something not available or used just a few years ago, has
resulted in the acquittal of 120 death row inmates.  And even the Supreme
Court, established and conservative as it may be, has banned the use of
capital punishment in cases where juveniles and the mentally retarded are
involved.

Sixth grade seems like a long time ago.  But when it comes to the issue of
capital punishment, it seems as if the pendulum is swinging back to 1976,
when we again paused as a nation to look at how the death penalty was being
applied. Is it more fair, more just or more fair handed in its use today?
The jury is still out but the questions loom large and may go unanswered for
years to come.  Perhaps this is why most free nations have banned the use of
capital punishment altogether.  While this may not be the answer, it
certainly is one solution that offers a certainty our current system in
America lacks today.

12/15/05

*THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE THAT OF THE AUTHOR AND DO NOT
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--
SCOTT Y. STUART. ESQ.
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