insurgent49
  updated weekly
 home - submissions - donate -  message board - events - links - contact us - archive
December 2, 2005
The Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford

The Death Lottery

     The United States is fast approaching (or may now have passed) the one thousandth judicial execution since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, after previously banning it as cruel and unusual punishment. The first person executed was Gary Gilmore in 1977. The one thousandth person was scheduled to be Robin Lovitt, but the Governor of Virginia recently exercised his power of clemency to stop his execution because potentially exculpatory evidence in the case had been improperly destroyed. Someone else has or will take his place as the one thousandth person.

     On average, we have executed one person every ten days during that 29-year period. Approximate 3,400 additional people are on death row awaiting execution, so the rate of executions is likely to substantially increase in coming years.

     It is a cruel irony that the Republican Party supports the death penalty so fervently. It is a party that claims to be pro-life. The GOP’s claim to be pro-life is belied by its actions in supporting more frequent imposition of the death penalty (and by other actions such as advocacy of unnecessary wars, reduced safety standards and laxer pollution standards). Its support of the death penalty is even more hypocritical because it so frequently attacks the competence of the government to carry out any kind of program.

     The GOP does not believe that government can help the poor, protect worker safety, or even deliver the mail on time. Despite this, it wants to give the government increased power to execute people, with even less judicial oversight than has been provided in the past. Giving the power to kill to those that you consider incompetent is almost the definition of irrationality. To then claim to be pro-life is positively Kafka-esque.

     It is not as if the government’s actual track record on convictions is beyond reproach. More than half of the death row prisoners in Illinois had their convictions overturned before the Governor imposed a moratorium on executions in 2000. My May 13, 2005 article for Insurgent49, Law and Disorder, detailed many other examples of wrongful
convictions of innocent people in the United States. There have undoubtedly been innocent people among the one thousand who have been executed since 1976.

     There are many very solid arguments against the death penalty, besides the fact that it kills innocent people. It is much more expensive than locking the prisoner up for the rest of his or her life. It does not deter other people from committing similar crimes. It is imposed with disproportionate frequency against racial minorities and the indigent. It dehumanizes the persons who must carry out the sentence.

     The crimes of many of the executed are less severe than the crimes of many people who are not executed. Only a tiny fraction of the first degree murders committed in the United States result in a death penalty, so its imposition is little more than a lottery, with minorities, the poor, the ugly and the unlikable having the best odds of “winning.”

     In the end, the only real reason for a death penalty is because the survivors of murder victims may obtain some personal satisfaction from the death of the person responsible for the murder. This is nothing more than the government saying it is OK to kill someone in order to obtain some personal satisfaction from their death.

     The effect of that policy is to reinforce and expand the notion that killing other people is justified. Holly Near expressed it well when she asked the question “Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?”

     In Alaska, we do not have a death penalty, thanks in part to the ongoing efforts of the dedicated folks at Alaskans Against the Death Penalty. You can find a lot more information about this issue at their web site. www.aadp.info It is a telling indictment of the Republican leadership in Alaska that the monetary cost has been a stronger factor in their failure to pass a death penalty than the cost in innocent human lives.

     Despite the fact that their greed is bigger than their compassion, we should be glad that Alaska has not been dragged into the sordid business of killing people who are already incarcerated.






Kevin Morford is a political activist and an attorney in private practice in the Anchorage area.  He can be reached at kmorford@insurgent49.com.
- Columnists -

Editor's Desk
by Aaron Selbig

Red Alert
by Soren Wuerth

Alaskan In Exile
by Neil Zawicki

The
Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford





Copyright 2005 Insurgent Media. All Rights Reserved.
in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership.