crossposted at www.denniebriggs.com/wp/

The New Year will see California all set for an execution. Nothing new, even though five federal court judges argue that Kevin Cooper was framed by the police. Aside from guilt or innocence, the verdict again raises the issue of the death penalty.

“An important reason Americans retain capital punishment is their fascination with death. Great works of literature, like best-selling paperbacks, attract readers by discussing killings and revenge. . . the popularity of the mystery story is part of the culture that keeps capital punishment alive.” 

Disparaging remarks coming from former Supreme Court Justice, John Paul Stevens, in an essay review of David Garland’s book, Peculiar Institution. America’s Death Penalty in an age of Abolition. “An execution may provide revenge and therapeutic benefits” for the survivors, the Justice points out, “But important as that may be, it cannot alone justify death sentences. We do not, after all, execute drunken drivers who cause fatal accidents.”

So why then, after so many other countries have abolished the death penalty, do Americans hang on to it? Perhaps we can learn from looking at the shifting views of the former Justice himself. Adam Liptak, writing in the NYTimes, reminds us that, “In 1976, just six months after he joined the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens voted to reinstate capital punishment after a four-year moratorium.” And then in 2008, as he announced his retirement, after three decades on the Court, and 1,100 executions, Justice Stevens changed his position:

“. . . the imposition of the death penalty represents the pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes. A penalty with such negligible returns to the State [is] patently excessive and cruel and unusual punishment violative of the Eighth Amendment.” 

Justice Stevens quotes David Garland to draw our attention to how penal intentions have switched to political interests: 

“Support for death penalty laws allows politicians to show that they support law enforcement. . .  California Senator Barbara Boxer bragged that she voted 100 times for the death penalty. And George W. Bush first ran for president in a year when, as governor of Texas, he had presided over the largest number of state executions ever carried out in a single twelve-month period—a total of forty in the year 2000.”

Justice Stevens additionally argued against the use of lethal injections which was overturned by the Court. A NY Times editorial concluded, “Since then, evidence has continued to mount, showing the huge injustice of the death penalty—and the particular barbarism of this form of execution.”

Although the ethical issue of capital punishment remains, by commuting Kevin Cooper’s sentence, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could at least gain a modicum of humanity.

[Here, with the original, there follows a series of comments. Responses by Dennie and Ian are retained below. For all of the comments, go to https://web.archive.org/web/20160306061056/http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/barbarism-american-style-7794]

 [Dennie:]

I don’t personally believe in the death penalty for any offense. But I do believe that some offenders must be incarcerated for life, until we know more about the effects of the environment and what made them into what they became. Nor do I believe that prisons should become warehouses for stockpiling offenders. We speak of the offender as owing a debt to society and paying for it by his—or her—loss of freedom. How could one’s life in prison contribute to the betterment of us all?

Every prison could become a field laboratory where prisoners could pay that societal debt by assisting social scientists to study the many facets of crime. Prisons are microcosms of societies (although some are as large as small cities), characturing life in its rawness—over population, drug addiction, unemployment, bigotry, gangs, racketering, violence; yes, and even a hit-and-miss modicum of kindness—inflicted unintentionally. Every offender was once a child—what went wrong? Criminal justice programs lack opportunities for their students to learn first hand from offenders. Students in law, criminal justice, psychiatry, psychology, education, sociology, counseling, and so on, could do “internships” much as those do in medicine, learning alongside their professors, in “teaching prisons.”