Civilization and Its Discontents

by Katherine Scardino

We talk so much at Women in Crime Ink about violent events in our world . . . and how wrong (regardless of which side of the table you are sitting on) our courts are about almost everything . . . and how our country is going to the dogs, etc. etc. . . . that I thought it might be nice to venture in another direction for a change. I don’t know . . . call it my "sensitive side."

Recently I was driving back to Houston from visiting my sister in deep East Texas. That’s the part of Texas where the country roads are "real" country roads—where the trees meet in the middle above your head, where buzzards are eating road kill in the middle of the road and you have to veer your car around them because they do not fly away even when a car drives by.

But I digress. As I was tooling down the road, I just happened to look beyond the first row of trees near the road. I noticed that behind what a driver would ordinarily see was . . . woods. I mean WOODS—like thick trees all growing tight as pick-up sticks without any cute paths or roadways in the middle.

So I started thinking (which is always dangerous), but have you ever just stopped and thought how far our country has come in a mere 150-plus years? There was no machine for cutting trees, paving roads, building houses; gads, there wasn’t even a television to watch CNN on, or "Days of our Lives."

One hundred and fifty years is not even a speck in the timeline of our planet. It is not much of a speck in the timeline of almost every other country, except the United States of America. We are so new and yet we have come so much further in our culture, education, inventions, music, and our laws, especially our laws. With all the advancements in other areas, have we really "advanced" in our legal system?

In our country's infancy all those years ago, we were a rough nation, especially in the area of crime and punishment. We were still having shootings in the middle of the road (you know, in front of the saloon, à la John Wayne), hangings off the old oak tree—and for crimes as awful as horse stealing. Maybe we were just simpler then. Our lives were not so complicated.

I wonder if we have evolved for the better or for the worse? Long before the mid-1800s, we punished people even more severely. I have a book that I frequently refer to: The History of Capital Punishment. It was written by John Laurence in 1960, and has a foreword by Clarence Darrow from Mr. Darrow’s book: Crime, Its Cause and Treatment. In 1922, Darrow wrote: "Frequent executions dull the sensibilities toward the taking of life. This makes it easier for men to kill and increases murders, which in turn increase murders, and so on, around the vicious circle."

So even then, this great lawyer understood that killing people because they kill people does not really get us anywhere. And in closing, Mr. Darrow said the following:

In the end, this question is simply one of the humane feelings against the brutal feelings. One who likes to see suffering, out of what he thinks is a righteous indignation, or any other, will hold fast to capital punishment. One who has sympathy, imagination, kindness and understanding, will hate it and detest it as he hates and detests death.

In my musings driving down the country road, looking at the woodsy backdrop and thinking of what life would have been like "back then," I wondered if we were really better now.

Sure we have all our "toys" and the great mysterious Internet—which in my mind is like the monolith in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. We all worship it as being the greatest thing—ever, but we don’t really know what IT is, right?

But it is part of our new world. Have we done the right thing by "evolving" to a form of capital punishment called lethal injection—instead of the hangings, firing squad, drawing and quartering?

Clarence Darrow seemed to think that by doing something on a regular basis, then it was not a big deal any more—just a regular thing. Is that what we are doing by executing people because they execute someone else?

Have we dulled our sensibilities to the point that it is no longer front page news that we have killed another person? I notice that executions are generally no longer on the front page—but have been relegated to the inside page of a lesser section of our local newspaper.

What is next? Who wants to see an execution on television? Wendy Lesser explored the societal implications in her book Pictures at an Execution. When the State executes, it does so on behalf of "The People." What's the next step in a world where "virtual reality" too often becomes reality? I think of the recently released movie Untraceable, where real-time online killings become a mania that users participate in by sheer number of hits, making us all "hit"men.

Do "The People" really wish to become a futuristic version of the lynch mob of our primitive years? How can that be considered progress? Anti-death penalty folks say "Nature loves life" and life should be protected and preserved.

Clarence Darrow, again, had a great thought: "The thing that keeps one from killing is the emotion they have against it; and the greater the sanctity that the State pays to life, the greater the feeling of sanctity the individual has for life."

Yet our State does not show us much "sanctity" for life. We do not show much sanctity for life. So where are we going with all this?

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Two for Two - Supreme Court Gets It Right Again: No Death Penalty for Child Rapists

by Katherine Scardino

Once again, I am writing about a controversial Supreme Court decision. Last week, the United States Supreme Court decided the case of Kennedy v. Louisiana, and opined (in a 5 to 4 count) that Louisiana’s law allowing for the death penalty for child rapists was unconstitutional. Radio and television talk show hosts, citizens, and even John McCain, again, made statements openly and clearly that they thought the Supreme Court had made a wrong decision.

The Kennedy case basically stands for the proposition that the death penalty in the United States shall be reserved for individuals who intended to kill their victim and did cause the death. The death penalty is not appropriate for people who cause extreme and long-lasting harm but do not cause a death. The opinion talks about prior cases where the Supreme Court stated that we, the United States, may not execute mentally retarded people, or people under the age of 17.

We have made distinctions before about who would actually be eligible for the death penalty. Our highest Court said "capital punishment must be limited to those offenders who commit a narrow category of the most serious crimes and whose extreme culpability makes them the most deserving of execution."

While there are naysayers and critics of the Court, I can firmly state that I am proud of each and every justice who voted for this decision. I know it is not popular. I can hardly imagine the pain a parent must feel when his or her child has been abused. But this is the right decision.

With July 4th approaching, I think it is appropriate for each of us to take a moment and think about our country and how far we have come in the last 200-plus years. We have come from hanging, to firing squad, to electric chair, and now to lethal injection.

The newspapers consistently tell us about inmates who have been exonerated by DNA and released from lengthy prison sentences and even some from Death Row. In fact, tomorrow, right here at Women in Crime Ink, you'll read the personal account of one such man whose death sentence was reversed.

And courts aren't alone in making fatal mistakes. A couple of years ago, a Connecticut lawyer took the law into his own hands, killing his neighbor based on his child's accusation--later determined to have been false--that she had been molested by the neighbor.

It is my humble opinion that jurors--at least in my previously death-happy jurisdiction, Texas--are beginning to hesitate to render a verdict of death. Texas now has the "life without parole" choice in death penalty cases and that is causing the hesitation.

Statistics have shown that it is cheaper on the taxpayers to lock up the murderers for life than it is to execute them. And, this "life sentence" means exactly that--there is no possibility of parole--ever. Plus there is always the possibility of a "mistake" somewhere down the appellate process, and if so, the individual is still around to be released.

So while we still have the death penalty, it is becoming eroded by our evolving standards. This is a good thing.

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Witness

by Jenna Jackson

I got an email a few days ago that made me start thinking about something I have not thought about in years. Executions.

A group called the Texas After Violence Project e-mailed to ask me to interview with them about my experience with the death penalty. Thankfully, I’ve never lost anyone I love to murder – or to an execution. But as a young reporter, I witnessed more than 20 lethal injections.

When I was in college at Sam Houston State University, I worked full time at the local newspaper, the Huntsville Item. I got some of my best reporting experience to date at that tiny paper. Even though it was a small paper in a small town, we covered big issues – because it’s located in the state’s prison capital – Huntsville, Texas.

I worked the prison beat, and part of my beat included covering executions at the nearby Walls Unit. I was 20 years old – and I spent many evenings at the old brick prison. It was usually just the same handful of us there – me, an AP reporter and a UPI reporter. Most nights, just before 6 p.m., the three of us would follow the prison PR guy across the courtyard and into the death chamber. Outside the gates of the courtyard, it would be silent. Every so often, an execution would garner publicity – and the street just outside that gate would be packed with people … protesting or just watching.

But most of the time, an execution was a non-event. That always struck me as one of the strangest parts of this ritual. I was a reporter covering a story – so I never voiced my opinion on whether I thought the death penalty was right or even effective. But I did always think if someone was going to be killed – whether at the hands of another person or by the state – it should be noted.

And because of that, our paper’s policy was that we published a story on each and every execution. Some weeks, there were several. On a couple of occasions, there were two in one night.

Because of those many nights I spent watching men be put to death, I actually came to believe that executions should be public. We as a society condone them – and we should see the effects of those laws. I’m not even sure it would change people’s minds to see them – but I think the option should be there.

But as it stands now, there are only a handful of people allowed into the death chamber to witness an execution. The inmate can choose a couple of people to come in on his side of the partitioned chamber – and the victim’s family can have a few people on the other side. The reporters usually were ushered into whatever side was the least crowded.

There was one night in particular that I remember where we three reporters were the only people – apart from prison staff – who were witnessing the lethal injection. The man strapped to the gurney had killed an entire family, so there was no one left on the victim’s side to attend. And he apparently had no family who was invited or wanted to come see him die. That was one of the saddest nights – simply because there was no one left to care whether this man lived or died.

When I got the e-mail from the Texas After Violence Project, I thought I really didn’t have much to tell them. I witnessed several executions, but I was never personally involved in any of these cases. But after thinking about it, I guess it affected me more than I knew at the time.

Their web site says the project was formed in 2007 “to listen.” As a reporter, I’ve always thought the more information people have, the better off they are – so, although I’m not sure what I can add to this project, I am going to call and tell them what I know.

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Death by Lethal Injection - What's Cruel to Animals is Not Cruel to the Condemned

by Katherine Scardino

Yesterday, the highest court in our land issued a landmark decision about the death penalty in the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld Kentucky’s method of execution, refusing to rule for condemned petitioner Ralph Baze (pictured below) who claimed that death by lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of the 8th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.

The issue in this case was based on the lethal "cocktail" that is used to execute people convicted of capital murder and sentenced to die. One drug in this three-drug combination, pancuronium bromide, works its way through the body and basically numbs the nervous system in such a way that the person being executed may feel the excruciating pain caused by this lethal combination of chemicals but is unable to express his pain and torture. There have been documented cases of patient awareness or "anesthesia awareness" (click here for video explaining phenomenon). During anesthesia awareness, patients undergoing surgery are awake during the procedure - able to feel the pain - but powerless to tell the surgical team that they are aware of the knife cutting through the body. People who have undergone this horrifying experience have been traumatized by the event and have come forward to let the world know about this terrible drug. One patient's post-traumatic stress led him to commit suicide. The phenomenon of patient awareness is horrific enough to have inspired the film Awake.

Veterinarians banned the use of pancuronium bromide to euthanize animals. Even this profession no longer uses this drug in their field because they realized that it was painful and cruel. So why does our Supreme Court believe that it is appropriate for human beings?

Perhaps this subject opens up dialogue about whether capital punishment is "cruel and unusual" - whether we, as a nation of civilized people, believe that killing is a morally justified response to killing. Our courts have stated that we must evolve in our laws based on our evolving standards of decency. We have gone through several different methods of capital punishment in our history - beheading, the body being drawn and quartered, shot, electrocuted - but over time, we have decided that these methods are cruel and inappropriate for our evolving society.

The result of this ruling is that the inmates who have been waiting for their execution will now be on the "fast track" to death. In my area alone, there are six people waiting to die on Death Row. The Supreme Court has now opened the door to more executions - and back to the same old method disclaimed by the vets for their beloved animals. Are we not better than that?

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