By
Jay B. Gaskill
Bless those sincere
death penalty opponents who are grounded in traditional morality. They have the gift of intellectual honesty.
As Sister Prejean – of “Dead Man Walking” fame – said in
The death penalty is cruel – to those who don’t deserve it, but it is not unusually so when compared with other punishments in the same class, i.e., other forms of execution. The United States Supreme court will never outlaw execution in all its forms.
In the latest lethal injection controversy (in the Morales case), death penalty opponents are playing chess: Move One was to press for lethal injection as “more humane.” Move Two was to press to mandate the presence of a medial professional on scene. Move Three was to get the physicians to back out. Checkmate? Hardly. The goal is not to save a killer’s life, but only to minimize his pain. San Quentin could get by with a vet.
Those humanitarian souls who oppose the death penalty lack a sufficient grasp of the workings of the brutal mind. Here’s the hard truth: Whenever a region is infected with a critical mass of brutally minded, homicide-prone males (the sub-group is 95% male), the genteel rules of drawing room justice (“Use a gun and go to your room” or “Kill somebody and go to another room”) are ineffective.
I no longer oppose the death penalty because of the answer to one question: What if the legal execution of 50 actually guilty murderers worked to prevent the illegal slaughter of 800 actually innocent men, women and children?
If the death penalty deters murders at all, the moral calculus changes dramatically.
There is a suggestion that the 9th Circuit’s
intervention in the Morales execution might create a de facto
Last year, the Brookings Institute (hardly a bastion of right wing thinking) and the American enterprise Institution jointly published a study (“Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? The Relevance of Life-Life Tradeoffs”, March 2005). Here’s the relevant pull quote: “Recent evidence suggests that capital punishment may have a significant deterrent effect, preventing as many as eighteen or more murders for each execution.”
The people at large, the ones who work, protect their children, pay taxes and vote, have already got it figured out. Society already has been infected with a critical mass of brutally minded, homicide prone males. Many of these brutal minds are functionally undeterrable by the threat of more prison time. Some are deterred by the prospect of death row, and some is better than none. An increase of as few as 6 murders per 100,000 would represent roughly another 1,000 murder victims. Can we really afford another death penalty moratorium?
The execution of Stan “Tookie” Williams, founder of the archetypally violent street gang, the CRIPS, the cold blooded killer of four innocent robbery victims, the author of children’s books (of very limited circulation) marks the most egregious example of delay abuse in the administration of the death penalty in the popular literature; Mr. Williams lived two and a half decades on death row because society could not summon the will to execute justice.
As one commentator pointed out that was 24 years of life denied to Mr.
Williams’ victims.
As I posted on The Policy Think Site,
It seems that, after 24 years on death row,
CRIPS Gang founder, S. "Tookie" Williams,
convicted of four murders, finally kept his date with the executioner.
The real scandal is that, having bought
twenty four years of life for this man, Mr. Williams' handlers and supporters
couldn't get him to say he was sorry he killed those innocent people in
cold blood.
Death penalty opponents: Save your grief
for someone else.
Can we reform the system?
Read my long article on the topic.
This is that article.
There is a solution for
As I demonstrate in the following piece, deterrence is a very real effect of the death penalty (when administered regularly and promptly) that saves thousands of lives.
The next time someone is carjacked and shoved in a trunk, or held up and (having seen the face of the robber) is cowering under a counter, consider this:
He or she might well be spared because the death penalty is far, far more important to avoid than a decade behind bars with one's fellow gang members.
The notion that the death penalty does not deter murders is a falsehood perpetuated by two groups: well meaning dupes and manipulative ideologues.
A huge legal process speed-up is well within our capabilities, and the required resources would be a drop in the bucket compared to other state and federal expenditures.
So, why has reform been stalled? Too few people get it. The current delays are not legally necessary. They represent a tacit conspiracy between out-and-out death penalty opponents (I should know -- I once was among them) and a second group (I call them the process junkies) for whom perfect legal process should be pursued as if it were a moral imperative equivalent to saving the lives of Innocent murder victims. We can do much better....
There are general three schools of thought on this topic, but most policy is made by only one of them.
School One:
Retribution Idealists, i.e., those who feel that any deliberate, unlawful taking of a human life warrants the death penalty as a moral imperative. Made up predominantly of the crime victim lobby and frustrated “gung ho” police officers, opinion in this school runs from advocacy of drastic procedural shortcuts to “kill ‘em all.”
School Two:
Redemption Idealists, i.e., those who feel that all persons are redeemable therefore none may ever be executed no matter how heinous the offense. Consisting of almost all of the public defense community and clergy, opinion runs between advocacy of endless procedural obstacles to a strict “execute no one” policy.
School Three:
Persuadable Realists. These are the actual policy makers. The realists consist of most legislators, jurists and attorneys (including most Bay Area prosecutors) and a plurality of police officials. In this group, policy is driven by practical considerations with the overall objective of achieving the maximum feasible protection of the population from deadly violence via deterrence and the permanent removal of deadly predators. Classic cost effective analysis is often used, causing prosecutors to concentrate on the “worst of the worse.”
Within the realist group, reform advocates are currently advancing the following agenda:
(1) Much more care and attention to screening for actual guilt;
(2) Improved prosecution professional and ethical standards;
(3) Improved defense performance standards;
(4) Much quicker finals resolution of all cases, especially at the appellate level; and
(5) More resources to accomplish the foregoing.
Reform is stalled because of the convergence of three forces:
a. Death penalty opponents tend to use every flaw in the current system as a reason to completely abandon executions.
b. The retribution group refuses to commit the necessary resources for defense services.
c. This results in a covert or unintended alliance at the legislative level to underfund defense resources. Death penalty opponents can then use the resulting delays and system failures as arguments to abandon capital punishment altogether, while the retribution group can take satisfaction in denying “those bleeding heart defenders” needed money.
I’m a persuadable realist. The available evidence persuaded me that the death penalty can deter a significant percentage of deliberate homicides, especially the sub group in which there is some opportunity to reflect before killing. Retribution may be a weak moral justification for the penalty, but saving innocent lives is not.
And I am a reform advocate. Only a robust, well funded defense can shrink the unconscionable lead times between charge and final resolution, (reducing the cruel years spent on death row), expose prosecution errors and police misconduct, weed out the weak cases, and protect the truly innocent.
The
deterrence effect of the death penalty for deliberate killings has been widely
studied with allegedly “inconclusive” results. A number of experts and
organizations still claim that the death penalty doesn’t work. But no respected
study actually rules out death penalty deterrence, and some experts have found
strong indications of a deterrence effect.
There was an interesting joint AEI/Brookings Study that found a deterrent effect. It is no
longer on the web, but
I’ve captured the pdf version and kept it on the Policy Think Site at this link http://jaygaskill.com/AEIBrookingsDeathPenalty.pdf
The
most persuasive recent studies have been conducted by experts with formal
training in economics. The field of economics is often called the “dismal
science” because of its tendency to generate honest assessments, in spite of
political hopes and expectations. Many death penalty opponents resist the basic
assumption of economic science that, over time, incentives and disincentives
will change behavior. Regrettably, an anti-death penalty bias has introduced an
element of intellectual dishonesty into the deterrence debate. Evidence that
the death penalty “disincentive” produces genuine results is ignored,
marginalized, or denied because executions are thought to be immoral under all
circumstances. “Don’t confuse me with the facts” is the motto of the true believers.
When
the overall data are looked at square on, the conclusion is inescapable: The
death penalty deters some murders. Having been responsible for saving clients lives,
I am not at all enthusiastic about executions, but the murders of innocent
people are far more immoral than the judicially ordered execution of culpable
murderers. Killings affect the community at large, and the problem calls all of
us to get outside our biases and roles.
I
find the evidence in favor of the death penalty’s deterrent effect on homicidal
behavior to be highly persuasive, leaving aside the more difficult issue of
measurement of the power of the effect on a given, demographically mixed population.
The so called side-by-side studies that purport not to reveal any deterrent
effect (for example comparing death penalty enforcing state A with non-death
penalty state B over the same time frame) fail to normalize for demographic
differences. There are always higher
“crime prone” sub-populations in any geographic area. At any given moment,
virtually all states differ in political and social attitudes, police funding
and activities, and in the detailed operation of their respective criminal justice
processes.
The
temporary imposition of a well publicized death penalty moratorium in a given
jurisdiction provides a better quasi-controlled experiment, particularly when
demographic factors remain relatively stable over the sample period. And, in these samples, the larger the
population that is included, the less that pockets of demographic variations
will skew the outcome. That said, there can be demographic and cultural changes with time.
With
those qualifications, analysis of the available data has persuaded me that the
death penalty for murder may have saved a significant number of lives over the
last decade in those jurisdictions where it was used. If my analysis is
correct, it follows that any death penalty moratorium, however well intentioned,
will come at a high social cost.
Several recent studies and trends have caught my attention:
“Journal of Applied Economics.”
4/01, Vol
33, N 5, p569 -- p576,
“Execution Moratorium Is No
“The (
Professor Cloninger: “ . . . (Our recent) study is but another on a growing list of empirical work that finds evidence consistent with the deterrence hypothesis. These studies as a whole provide robust evidence -- evidence obtained from a variety of different models, data sets and methodologies that yield the same conclusion. It is the cumulative effect of these studies that causes any neutral observer to pause.”
“Does Capital Punishment Have a Deterrent Effect: New Evidence from Post-moratorium Panel Data”, Dezhbakhsh econhd@emory.edu), Rubin (prubin@emory.edu) and Shepherd (jmehlho@emory.edu), January 2001. Located at userwww.service.emory.edu/~cozden/dezhbakhsh_01_01_paper.pdf January 2001.
Emory University Economics
Department Chairman Hashem Dezhbakhsh
and Emory Professors Paul Rubin and Joanna Shepherd: “Our results suggest that
capital punishment has a strong deterrent effect. An increase in any of the probabilities --
arrest, sentencing or execution -- tends to reduce the crime rate. In
particular, each execution results, on
average, in eighteen fewer murders -- with a margin of error of plus or minus
10.” Their data base used nationwide data from 3,054
“Pardons, Executions and Homicide”, H. Naci Mocan (mmocan@carbon.cudenver.edu) and R. Kaj Gottings (rgitting@carbon.cudenver.edu), October 2001, located at http://econ.cudenver.edu/mocan/papers/deathpenalty1007.pdf
Overview of
“Long term trends, Homicide Victimization, 1950-99”, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Source: FBI, Uniform Crime Reports, 1950-99, (ii) Crime in the United States -- 2000, Section II -- Crime Index Offenses Reported, “Murder and non negligent homicide”, FBI, Uniform Crime Reports, “Number of persons executed in the United States, 1930-2001”, Key Facts at a Glance, Executions Bureau of Justice Statistics, Source: Capital Punishment 2000, December 2001 at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/exetab.htm
Between June 1967 and January
1976, there was an effective national moratorium on executions (see the
Analysis of
Recent California Experience is
strongly suggestive of a deterrent effect. Between 1930 (the first year for
which we have reliable records) through 1976 there were 292 executions (3,859
in the
In 1976 the US Supreme Court
effectively overturned the death penalty laws for several states (including
The Bird court reversed 61 death
cases. From 1967 through 1991 there were no
No one was executed in
I am well aware of the other studies and statistics that are cited to the effect that there is no conclusive evidence of deterrence. So what are we “realistic persuadables” to make of all this? Deterrence can be measured in a number of ways:
(a) anecdotally, i.e., by collecting statements of criminals who admit to have refrained from killing someone when the opportunity and motive coincided, citing fear of the death penalty;
(b) statistically, by measuring the increase (or decrease) of the homicide rate when the death penalty is suspended;
(c) statistically, by measuring the decrease (or increase) of the homicide rate when the death penalty is enforced.
To summarize our problem: No
perfect controlled experiment has yet been designed on a significant scale to
produce a precise measure of the deterrence effect of the death penalty because
there are too many variables: How much is the penalty actually used? What is the street level perception of the death
penalty’s use? What is the arrest rate? The clearance rate? What is the time lag between charge and
execution? [The median stay on
A social cost calculation is possible, based on the value of a human life in different circumstances. Here is the formula:
L = [D s] – [E p]
· L is the measure of the success of the death penalty in net valuable lives.
· D is the raw number of lives saved by deterrence.
· s is the value assigned each life saved by deterrence. [s=1 or whatever society chooses.]
· E is the raw number of executions in the time frame.
· p is the value assigned to the life of a murder perpetrator.[p = 1 or whatever society chooses.]
To solve for “L,” we multiply the number of lives saved by deterrence times the value “s.” From that number, we subtract the number of executions times the value “p.” L is a measure of the success of the death penalty in valuable lives.
In other words, whenever “L “is a
positive number, net valuable lives are saved. If “p’ (the value of the life of
the killer) is set at zero, then the death penalty always saves net lives
unless “D s” (value of lives saved by deterrence) is zero. This never happens
(unless we perversely place s, the value of a single life saved, at zero),
because we can always find examples of
criminals who were deterred.
Some would have us assign the life of a convicted killer exactly the same value that of a saved life. [I think this is fairly perverse. When “p” and ‘s ‘each = 1, we have a moral equivalence between killer and victim.] But even in that calculation, the death penalty saves valuable lives because a tiny deterrent effect produces a net savings of human life whenever “E” is a small number. Only a minuscule percentage of all homicide convicts are actually executed.
For example, at a rate of 6
homicides per 100,000, a jurisdiction with a population of 30 million people
would suffer 1,800 homicides in a year.
Let’s assume 16 are executed in a given year (which is more than the
total number
Only if the value of “p” is grossly exaggerated can that calculation outcome be changed. If effect, the true-believer death penalty opponents are assigning an infinite value to p, the life of the killer. This may or may not be good theology, but it is terrible public policy.
Let’s pick a more realistic number for p. Assume the value of the life of a convicted death eligible killer is reduced to p=.5, (a generous value considering the value most Californians would assign). If only 9 murders were deterred in the last hypothetical, society would still be ahead. And when the reduced penal consequences to the would-be killers are taken into account (after all a murder deterred is one less killer, too), the societal balance sheet is not even close.
Whenever the value of the convicted killer’s life is reduced from p=1, a very, very weak deterrence effect, one measured by a handful of individual cases, always demonstrates a net social benefit.
But the real deterrence effect of
the death penalty is undoubtedly stronger. The studies referenced and
Not all sub-populations are equally
deterred. Criminally prone males do most murders. Educated people with a lot to
lose (i.e., most death penalty opponents) are deterred from killing each other
by a moral code, coupled with the prospect of shame, arrest, and prison. Subtract the pro-life moral code, the shame,
and add gang affiliation and/or long prison experience. Move this
sub-population into an urban area and ask yourself the question: Will the prospect of a return to prison
deter all these
men?
For example, at 113 homicides during
2002, the city of
A critical moment comes when a prison habituated felon, who is preparing to engage in another crime, chooses to bring along a loaded pistol; a second critical moment comes when he makes the decision to pull the trigger or to refrain from that act. We need to ask: What disincentives will get the attention of this sub group of criminals? In the current punishment scheme, what is there beyond a term for years? There is only life incarceration without parole and, finally, the threat of execution.
Even for those undeterred by the
prospect of an additional prison term, some criminals do hesitate when faced
with the prospect of a long stay on death row, separated from the general
prison population, living with the hovering ghost of the “Green Room.” As more
cities like
I’m well aware of the psychological and budgetary costs of administering the death penalty. The cases are hard on everyone in the system, especially for those assigned the responsibility of conducting an effective defense. If it were just a question of working conditions in the legal community from which I’ve graduated, I would want to abolish the penalty. But the social costs are too high.
Obviously, the death penalty process needs reform. Extraordinary attention needs to be given every possible instance of factual innocence. But careful jurisdictional and situational distinctions must be made. Executing the truly innocent is very, very rare in this country, especially in cases brought within the last fifteen years in the more enlightened jurisdictions that provide for an adequately funded public defense system. Strident death penalty opponents have conflated the “error” statistics. Cases reversed for penalty phase legal errors fall far short of exoneration. Cases reversed on guilt phase error because otherwise reliable but illegally seized evidence was introduced, also fall short, even when the retrial of a weakened case results in a hung jury and dismissal.
Some advocates attempt to shoehorn the “guilty-but-misunderstood” into the niche occupied by the factually non-culpable. Of course there is a huge difference between the factually innocent suspect who is misidentified in a lineup and goes to the executioner for a murder some miscreant, still at large, has committed, and the case of the actual killer who gets a lethal injection without having had an adequate courtroom exploration of child hood deprivation, other relevant social history mental incapacity or derangement. These mitigation errors are certainly important, but they do not support the claim that the “innocent” are routinely being executed.
My own state of
The appellate delays for
prisoners on death row are cruel in themselves, running about 13 years in
Death penalty defense
legitimately takes more time than routine criminal defense. This is partly
because no one wants an innocent defendant to slip through and because the appellate
courts do look at everything with great care.
But most of the delay is because the law does not permit automatic
execution. In other words, there is no
crime or set of crimes so heinous that execution can be the automatic penalty
once guilt is proven. “Mitigation” must
always be considered (though ill defined) and the capacity to grant “mercy”
(the criteria for which can’t arbitrarily be limited) must always exist. This
tends to put the defense into a “no stone unturned” hysteria. Was it the bad mother? Did the kid get bonked on the head at
five? Where are those medical records
from
The delay issue has been distorted by the tactics of some true believers. This is the well-meaning group of advocates who, for religious or ideological reasons, see the struggle against the death penalty as a life calling, something on the scale the rest of Americans might reserve for putting an end to the terrorist threat. For this group, especially in a heinous murder case, delay is a calculated goal. Every year of delay is another year the client is alive. The ultimate political objective is to undermine the public’s willingness to put up with the penalty by dragging the process out for decades, running up the cost, hopefully delaying things until the now-maturing serial killer begins to write poetry, lands a spot on Sixty Minutes, and generates a huge candle-bearing fan club. If the governor fails to grant a commutation, maybe the client will die of natural causes. In this case, the client’s death is victory.
A comment about process versus results. In this arena, as in so many others, we can observe the usual suspects playing their respective roles: (1) The “ringers” the ones for whom process is just a tool to obstruct the goal --forever if possible; (2) the process junkies, for whom process is so important that the goal is sometimes forgotten; (3) the honest brokers who run the process in order to achieve the goal; (4) the goalies, who have figured out the right outcome and would just as soon dispense with the process if possible. A simple recommendation: Leave it to the honest brokers, weeding out the rest; fund the process to accomplish maximum speed and reliability, then get out of the way.
Of course, such answers are easy to prescribe, complex to implement. Legal definitions about what warrants the death penalty and what might avert it could be made much more clear and bright line. All cases need to be expedited by a realistic but tough schedule. The resources for a vigorous, credible defense are essential to the speed and reliability of the process. But adherence to any calendar requires that the defense in many jurisdictions must receive augmented funding. Appellate delays because the court delays preparation of the needed records for review and drags its feet in assigning defense counsel are common but inexcusable. All this can be changed with tough rules and sufficient resources. Here I notice a virtual alliance between the true believers in the legislative process and the “kill ‘em now” block, both of whom are reluctant to provide the resources needed to get to finality within a reasonable time, the former for the obvious reasons and the latter out of hostility to the defense function. The state-level appellate process needs a sharp prod to move death penalty cases ahead of the pack.
Given the various legal constraints, we might reasonably expect a typical state death penalty murder case to go from charge to penalty trial in less than two years, and from there to final state appeal decision in another two. With more resources for investigation, defense services and appellate review, even this time frame could be reduced sharply. Saying this is easy, but doing it requires staffing, will, and a general change in the justice culture. The federal system could be affirmatively helpful in providing technical support, and setting up guidelines. Jurisdictions that follow such hypothetical federal guidelines (I’m thinking time-lines, standards of performance, and resources) could be left alone by the district federal courts, as a matter of explicit policy, except in the most rare and extreme situations.
As a society, we should never be willing to sacrifice the lives of innocent murder victims on the altar of an ideology that assigns an unreasonably high value to the lives of convicted killers. That acknowledged, we can also notice that deterrence of a certain percentage of murders does not seem to require that a very large number of death eligible murders actually be executed. As a practical matter, prosecutors use a cost effective analysis in pursuing the ultimate penalty. Weak cases aren’t worth the time and effort. As a result, the number of executions at no time have amounted to more than a tiny percentage of all murders. Yet many prospective murderers do hesitate, deterred by the very risk of life on death row and the bare possibility of facing execution.
Even if it were not constitutionally required, we should never constrain the power to grant mercy. But the price of mercy is a certain non-uniformity of penalty application. Any individuation of penalty by jurors that is based on non-quantifiable mercy criteria will produce non-uniform results. So what? That is as it should be. There are only two other options: uniform, mandatory death or abolition of the ultimate penalty altogether. I can’t abide either and all the polls for the last half century suggest that a super majority of the voting public can’t either. Arguments about the alleged arbitrary and capricious nature of the death penalty’s application should be directed solely to the active use of invidious criteria by the decision makers. Mercy should never constitute an invidious criterion in a death case.
The protection of the factually
innocent convicted who have somehow slipped through the protracted review
processes is the ultimate responsibility of those who exercise the chief
executive power in the relevant jurisdictions. State governors (and even the
President of the
I would limit such a triage inquiry to two narrow questions:
(a) Did the death row candidate actually commit
the act or acts leading to the death(s) of the murder victim(s)?
(b) Was the candidate legally responsible for
the killing(s)?
Mitigation and mercy would be separate questions, left to others. I would use a simple test: Is either (a) or (b) still subject to rational dispute? The commissions would be budgeted and empowered to conduct witness interviews and tests. The defense would be invited to present its views and to make the death row client available for interview as well. There would be three possible outcomes: (1) The case is dropped back into the death row pool. (2) The case is pulled out of that pool for further review and examination. (3) The case is referred to the executive for commutation to life imprisonment.
We would quickly discover that the great majority of death row cases in the great majority of jurisdictions would not meet the “still subject to rational dispute” test as to actual legal responsibility for unlawfully taking one or more human lives.
Copyright © 2003, 2005, 2011by Jay B. Gaskill
Also see Thugology 101, by Jay B Gaskill at this link -- http://jaygaskill.com/THUGOLOGY101.htm
For permission to copy, print or distribute, contact:
Jay B. Gaskill, Attorney at Law