Serving 1000 since 1977
Robert Rouse
December 02, 2005
Woo-hoo! We did it! We dreamed the impossible dream. We beat the unbeatable foe. We finally reached the unreachable star. Kenneth Lee Boyd (isn't it great how becoming a murderer immediately makes people start using your middle name) became the 1000th person to be executed in the United States since the ultimate punishment was restored in 1977. What an honor. I bet if Ken was able to read the headlines he would be very proud of his accomplishment. Yes sir, we are now a fully civilized nation. Legalized murder is such a deterrence that we no longer have any of that unlawful kind of murder.
Just a second - someone is handing me a note . . .
Uh-oh! Is my face red? I guess I made a boo-boo. In the last full year tally, there were 16,137 murders committed in the United States in 2004. So . . . does that mean the death penalty isn't really that much of a deterrence? Depends on who you ask. Proponents of the death penalty will tell you that it is. They'll point to the statistics that show the total number of murders in the United States in 2004 were actually down from 2003. What they won't tell you is that the difference between the two years is only 391. No matter how you slice it, there were still more than 16,000 murders each year. The death penalty is not doing the job people claimed it would.
Let's take a look at the facts. Most murders come from emotional outbursts when no one is thinking of consequences. Other perpetrators don't believe they'll be caught, so the death penalty isn't even a consideration (U.S. statistics show us that a full 25% of homicides are never solved). So what purpose does execution serve? I think the answer is pretty obvious - revenge. It is purely and simply an eye for an eye.
I believe the best argument against the death penalty by far is the execution of the innocent. There are people who have been convicted of murder through false witnesses, tainted evidence, forced confessions, and poor defense attorneys. Then there are those who are convicted through association. Take, for instance, here in Indiana, the case of Phillip Stroud. Three years ago, Stroud was convicted on three counts of murder, two counts of robbery, one count of attempted robbery, two counts of burglary and one count of attempted burglary. He was given the death sentence. However, he never killed anyone, he wasn't in the area of the murders, and he had only known the real killers for one day before the crimes were committed.
Stroud, while far from being an innocent, still was not a killer. He acted as a look-out for what he was told would be a break-in. He stayed in the car on the side of the road while his three new friends walked ¼-mile to the site of the break-in.
DNA evidence excluded Stroud from the scene, yet the judge refused to allow the DNA evidence because he thought the DNA might "mislead the jury".
This was a clear case of railroading when you look at all of the facts. A jailhouse informant admitted that the state came to him out and told him he could make a deal that could modify or reduce his sentence in an unrelated case. Under oath, DeAngelo Chick testified that state officials said, "“You were locked up with Phillip Stroud, weren'’t you? If you could remember him ever bragging or confiding in you we can help you with your troubles."”
This was just part of shenanigans of the prosecution. One of the jurors in the case admitted to being like an "auntie" to two of the state's key witnesses against Stroud. In addition, the deputy prosecutor, Scott Duerring, was fired because he disagreed with St. Joseph's County Prosecutor, Chris Toth, before the trial proceedings began. Mr. Duerring says the conflict arose because he "“couldn'’t justify going forward seeking a state-sanctioned killing when he believed that a just result could occur by avoiding the death penalty." Oh yeah, and Toth was up for re-election at the time of Stroud'’s trial.
Even the judge stated during sentencing that "“this court would be inclined to judicially override the jury recommendation for death."” Yet Stroud remains on death row.
I would rather see 1,000 killers spend the rest of their lives in prison than see a single innocent person killed in a process that is both barbaric and uncivilized. Besides, for a nation that is becoming as financially strapped as the United States is, it would even be more cost efficient to keep prisoners incarcerated that to execute them. Here are a few examples I got from "The Economics of Capital Punishment":
Just a second - someone is handing me a note . . .
Uh-oh! Is my face red? I guess I made a boo-boo. In the last full year tally, there were 16,137 murders committed in the United States in 2004. So . . . does that mean the death penalty isn't really that much of a deterrence? Depends on who you ask. Proponents of the death penalty will tell you that it is. They'll point to the statistics that show the total number of murders in the United States in 2004 were actually down from 2003. What they won't tell you is that the difference between the two years is only 391. No matter how you slice it, there were still more than 16,000 murders each year. The death penalty is not doing the job people claimed it would.
Let's take a look at the facts. Most murders come from emotional outbursts when no one is thinking of consequences. Other perpetrators don't believe they'll be caught, so the death penalty isn't even a consideration (U.S. statistics show us that a full 25% of homicides are never solved). So what purpose does execution serve? I think the answer is pretty obvious - revenge. It is purely and simply an eye for an eye.
I believe the best argument against the death penalty by far is the execution of the innocent. There are people who have been convicted of murder through false witnesses, tainted evidence, forced confessions, and poor defense attorneys. Then there are those who are convicted through association. Take, for instance, here in Indiana, the case of Phillip Stroud. Three years ago, Stroud was convicted on three counts of murder, two counts of robbery, one count of attempted robbery, two counts of burglary and one count of attempted burglary. He was given the death sentence. However, he never killed anyone, he wasn't in the area of the murders, and he had only known the real killers for one day before the crimes were committed.
Stroud, while far from being an innocent, still was not a killer. He acted as a look-out for what he was told would be a break-in. He stayed in the car on the side of the road while his three new friends walked ¼-mile to the site of the break-in.
DNA evidence excluded Stroud from the scene, yet the judge refused to allow the DNA evidence because he thought the DNA might "mislead the jury".
This was a clear case of railroading when you look at all of the facts. A jailhouse informant admitted that the state came to him out and told him he could make a deal that could modify or reduce his sentence in an unrelated case. Under oath, DeAngelo Chick testified that state officials said, "“You were locked up with Phillip Stroud, weren'’t you? If you could remember him ever bragging or confiding in you we can help you with your troubles."”
This was just part of shenanigans of the prosecution. One of the jurors in the case admitted to being like an "auntie" to two of the state's key witnesses against Stroud. In addition, the deputy prosecutor, Scott Duerring, was fired because he disagreed with St. Joseph's County Prosecutor, Chris Toth, before the trial proceedings began. Mr. Duerring says the conflict arose because he "“couldn'’t justify going forward seeking a state-sanctioned killing when he believed that a just result could occur by avoiding the death penalty." Oh yeah, and Toth was up for re-election at the time of Stroud'’s trial.
Even the judge stated during sentencing that "“this court would be inclined to judicially override the jury recommendation for death."” Yet Stroud remains on death row.
I would rather see 1,000 killers spend the rest of their lives in prison than see a single innocent person killed in a process that is both barbaric and uncivilized. Besides, for a nation that is becoming as financially strapped as the United States is, it would even be more cost efficient to keep prisoners incarcerated that to execute them. Here are a few examples I got from "The Economics of Capital Punishment":
- A Duke University study found... "The death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of a non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of imprisonment for life." - (The costs of processing murder cases in North Carolina / Philip J. Cook, Donna B. Slawson ; with the assistance of Lori A. Gries. [Durham, NC] : Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University, 1993.)
- "The death penalty costs California $90 million annually beyond the ordinary costs of the justice system - $78 million of that total is incurred at the trial level." - (Sacramento Bee, March 18, 1988)
- A 1991 study of the Texas criminal justice system estimated the cost of appealing capital murder at $2,316,655. In contrast, the cost of housing a prisoner in a Texas maximum security prison single cell for 40 years is estimated at $750,000." - Punishment and the Death Penalty, edited by Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum 1995 p.109 )
- "Florida spent an estimated $57 million on the death penalty from 1973 to 1988 to achieve 18 executions - that is an average of $3.2 million per execution." - (Miami Herald, July 10, 1988)
- "Florida calculated that each execution there costs some $3.18 million. If incarceration is estimated to cost $17000/year, a comparable statistic for life in prison of 40 years would be $680,000." - (The Geography of Execution... The Capital Punishment Quagmire in America, Keith Harries and Derral Cheatwood 1997 p.6)
- Figures from the General Accounting Office are close to these results. Total annual costs for all U.S. Prisons, State and Federal, was $17.7 billion in 1994 along with a total prison population of 1.1 million inmates. That amounts to $16100 per inmate/year. - (GOA report and testimony FY-97 GGD-97-15 )