When I tell people this, I get a mixed reaction. My more liberal minded friends are ok with me writing letters, and are even a little curious. Some however, think it is entirely abhorrent. I do not know their specific reasons for thinking this, because pushing the issue leads to unnecessary tension. I am writing to these men (which I will refer to them as, not as prisoners, convicts, murderers, rapists, or any other title) for a number of reasons. Namely, because I am studying psychology and criminology in the hope of working with people in the prison system, and perhaps also with victims of crime. By communicating with people that have been convicted of crimes and are serving time in a prison is very insightful for these purposes. Additionally, I intentionally selected people on death row to write to, because I am resolutely against the death penalty. Of course, by writing to these men, I cannot change the laws nor save them from the gas chambers, but I can allow them something beyond the concrete confinement that serves as their home. As my pen pals have written, their family are long gone and as is the case for one of the men, he has not received a visitation from anyone in five years. These men are no longer considered people. They are the "condemned" and are even listed as such under prison documentation.
I can certainly understand why people may believe that those on death row deserve to be forgotten, neglected, and unworthy of having someone to converse with on pieces of paper. These men have allegedly done heinous things, and I say allegedly because we all know that the legal system is flawed. I myself have served on the jury in a murder trial and I know how easily members of juries can be swayed by their peers or personal bias. The woman we convicted received a 23 year sentence with a minimum of 18 years to be served. If Australia had the death penalty, I would have had to excuse myself from jury duty, as I could not in good conscience send another human being to their death.
For the religious minded, the bible supposedly says something about "an eye for an eye". I haven't read the good book, so I cannot offer my interpretation of such a statement. Someone I admire greatly once said "An eye for an eye would make the whole world blind" which is how I see the issue. Who are we as people to decide who should live or die? Yes, I realise the hypocrisy in this statement, as convicted murderers have made that decision. However, to kill a person is generally agreed amongst cultures to be morally and legally wrong. A culture that metes out the death penalty for crimes such as murder is publicly announcing that killing is wrong, yet proceeds to carry out the same act in the name of justice. What kind of justice is that?
Crimes should be punished. Absolutely. If you murder or rape someone, I will happily lock you up and throw away the key. I have no qualms about that. But I will not be party to a system that cannot see the injustice in sentencing people to death. Especially when there is countless evidence that shows innocent people have been executed. There also appears to be no discretion with murder cases in the United States of America. If you kill someone, you automatically are eligible for the death sentence. Below is an excerpt from an online article that was published about the person I write to in PA. I have removed his name for obvious reasons.
~ ****** Should Not Be On Death-Row ~
APRIL 11 EXECUTION
WILL NOT HAPPEN
“None,” was Attorney Merrill Spahn’s response to my question by phone this morning as to the odds of ****** being executed on April 11, 2006. “He has a multitude of appeals,” he said. Spahn said the only way he could theoretically be executed on April 11 is if ****** were to forgo all possible appeals and he said he found that “very unlikely.”
Deputy Public Defender Spahn and Assistant Public Defender James Gratton were ******'s attorneys in his murder trial in 2001. They no longer represent him. Spahn said his defense is now most likely being handled by the Capital Unit of Federal Appeals based in Philadelphia.
There are many, many serious problems with this being a death penalty case.
To begin with, I am going to take you to two recent, “similar” incidents in which the men involved were not even charged with attempted homicide. And, they were very “lucky” that their victims survived.
One was only two weeks ago. On February 1, 2006 the Intell had this story, “Man accused of 2nd attack on ex-girlfriend.” Akeem Washington, for the second time in less than a month, seriously assaulted his ex-girlfriend and this time was trying to kill her. The article says, “Police say Washington sliced Perez’s throat with a knife, leaving a 3-inch cut.”
Was Washington charged with attempted homicide? No. He was charged with, “aggravated assault, burglary, simple assault, terroristic threats, tampering with or fabricating evidence and intimidation of a victim.”
If this woman had died he would have been charged with murder. Would he get the death penalty?
The second story: “Woman critically hurt in beating” from the New Era on September 5, 2005. The article is in archives but the opening sentence is still there for you to read, “A 36-year-old Green Street man viciously beat his girlfriend with a small baseball bat early today and then threw the woman onto the street, rendering her unconscious, city police said.” The article goes on to say she was in critical condition at Lancaster General Hospital.
Steven Morgan, the perpetrator, did this in front of witnesses. The article says, “Several witnesses saw Morgan chase the woman down the 500 block of Green Street at about 2:20 a.m. today, Bernot [Police Officer Phil Bernot] said. When Morgan caught up with the woman, he struck her about four or five times on the head with a 16-inch wooden mini-bat, police said. As the woman lay on her back, Morgan grabbed her by the front of her shirt and slammed her back and head down onto the street, the officer was told.”
Was Morgan charged with attempted homicide? No. According to the article, he was charged with, “aggravated assault (domestic violence) and resisting arrest.”
If this woman had died he would have been charged with murder. Would he get the death penalty?
Today’s Intell article on ******, “Lancaster city man is slated for execution,” says he “repeatedly refused to cooperate with his attorneys, Assistant Public Defender James Gratton and Deputy Defender Merrill Spahn. Against their advice, ****** took the stand in his own defense.”
That doesn’t mean he should get the death penalty.
There is another very disturbing side to this story as relayed in the same article. It says, “First Assistant District Attorney Heidi Eakin told jurors ****** had been arrested three years before Taylor’s murder for an unrelated violent crime. In 1997, ****** was arrested for attempted murder, kidnapping, rape and weapons violations, Eakin said. He served 2 years in an Ohio prison on a reduced charge of assault and was paroled in 2000.”
There is something terribly wrong in that information. If Eakin told his jurors he was arrested for attempted murder, kidnapping, rape and weapons violations then why did he only serve 2 years? Were the jurors made aware of the final court sentence and what crimes he was actually convicted of? Or were they only told what he was initially “arrested for”? He only served two years. This was highly incendiary and untruthful information that was provided to the jury.
The death penalty in this case was arbitrary and groundless, based on erroneous information from the District Attorney’s Office. This man should not be facing execution. Yes, his crime was horrific. Unfortunately, there are a lot of horrific crimes. The two mentioned above in this article were horrific and yet neither of those men were even charged with attempted homicide. ******’s case is not a death penalty case. He should not be on death-row.
A similar opinion was recently aired by now-retired former Justice John Paul Stevens:
"I thought at the time ... that if the universe of defendants eligible for the death penalty is sufficiently narrow so that you can be confident that the defendant really merits that severe punishment, that the death penalty was appropriate," he says. But, over the years, "the court constantly expanded the cases eligible for the death penalty, so that the underlying premise for my vote has disappeared, in a sense."
Additionally, people are being executed despite having sufficiently low IQ scores to be excused from the death penalty. In the recent case of Teresa Lewis, her execution went ahead in spite of protests from lawyers, celebrities and others who argued that she should have been given clemency because of her low IQ. Under US law, anyone with an IQ of 70 avoids the death penalty. Lewis was judged to have an IQ of 72. It is common knowledge that IQ tests are not an exact science and are a rough guide only. Often, psychologists administer these tests to children who are intellectually disabled and whose parents require financial assistance from the government. The government also has a cut off point for financial aid, and in the instance where a child scores 2-3 points above this cut off point, a psychologist will generally write a letter reinforcing the inadequacy of such a test and the fallibility of the system. 9 times out of 10 the government will be compelled to agree with the psychologist, however because of the difficulty of contesting the system, many psychologists now refuse to conduct IQ tests for the purposes of financial aid. I suspect there is a similar crisis amongst psychologists who must administer the test to determine one's eligibility for the death penalty.
Having sat on a jury for five weeks and seen the effects of serious crime on the family and friends of victims, I do not say any of this lightly. Each day when I took my seat in the jury booth, I had to look at the daughter of the deceased, who was my age and had clearly suffered greatly as a result of her loss. I remember as clear as day, the moment when my jury's foreman announced that we had reached a verdict of guilty of murder. The reaction from the victim's daughter is one I see replayed in my mind every single day. And keeping that image in my mind helps me live with the knowledge that I sent someone to prison for a very long time. And it helps me push through the difficult times with my studies, because if I succeed and manage to work with prisoners and criminals, perhaps I can rehabilitate people so they do not commit crimes again, and then no one will have to feel the way this woman did. Even better, would be to gain sufficient understanding from people already incarcerated so as to be able to prevent crimes.
Knowing the reasons I have for writing to and visiting these people on death row allows me to look the doubters in the eye and gives me the strength to do what I do. I grieve for the families and friends of the victims of my pen pals, and in no way do I excuse their behaviour. But they are human beings and I will continue to treat them as such.
Addendum:
Firstly, I'm a little overwhelmed by the response to this post. Thanks to people from as far away as Iraq for reading it, and thanks for the positive feedback. I expected a far more negative response.
At any rate, after posting a link to the blog on facebook and Google Reader, etc. I added a comment in regards to there being a lack of wealth on death row. I did so as a reply to someone who pointed out that in the case of sociopaths or other types of personality disorder, rehabilitation is unlikely to be an option. My response was thus: Sociopaths and the like will always be sociopaths, but in a lot of cases, the people on death row are without personality disorders of any kind. They come from poverty and are without education. To them, carrying guns and knives is as normal to us as carrying mobile phones and daily planners.
You won't find anyone with money on death row.
While in the blog I expressed my own opinion (the whole point of the article) and mixed it with fact, this additional comment I paraphrased from one of my pen pals. I am not being ignorant, disrespectful or anything of that nature towards people of low socio-economic standing. And I am certainly not saying that ALL poor people become murderers and rapists (which I was accused of doing). I'm saying that for many people on death row, this is simply the case. Just as I rarely leave home without my phone in my bag, for many people, a weapon is rarely left at home.
I completely understand that money often buys freedom or reduced sentences, but we cannot neglect the arrest rates which overwhelmingly tip the scales towards poorer people. My goal here is to help people, not alienate them.
I'm not on death row, and I'm guessing neither are you. So we'll have to accept this observation from someone who is. If you want to continue to argue the point, feel free to pop into San Quentin and state your case there.
