Legally killing a person as a criminal sentence has been with Judeo-Christian civilization since the time of Moses and with the human species since long before that. The demand of an eye for an eye has been not only tolerated throughout the ages but promoted and showcased by many governments as a means of ultimate punishment for murder and other high crimes. Many jurisdictions sought to discourage such offenses by carrying out death sentences in public. Moving executions behind prison walls was viewed by many western nations as a step up in civilization. Most of those same nations have taken the next step up the social evolutionary ladder and abolished capital punishment altogether. Sadly, the United States is not one of them. Sadder yet, many of the twenty-seven states and the federal government which have retained a capital punishment statute still liberally impose it. For all the moral dilemma and financial costs incurred in the process of imposing a death sentence, all sensibilities regarding such things are tossed aside in favor of it. The fact this practice places America in league with some unsavory regimes elsewhere matters little in the quest for exacting maximum justice. A willingness to tolerate such criticism is irrelevant as the death penalty looks to be here to stay, especially along the most conservative segment of Old Route 66.
The great State of Oklahoma has introduced to the World a few useful things such as the shopping cart, the parking meter and the YIELD sign. In addition to inventing those three innovative items that get used on a daily basis by many ordinary people both nation and worldwide, this wonderful United State was the first to legally insert a veneer of humanity into an inhumane practice. Forward thinking death penalty proponents in the state legislature passed the World’s first ever lethal injection law in May 1977 and the first ever nitrogen hypoxia execution law in 2015. The latter was prompted after multiple botched lethal injection executions. It is certainly nice to have choices in modality when carrying out a sentence viewed by many outside the borders of the USA as so unethical that foreign drug companies refuse to sell the pharmaceutical essentials to prison systems because they object to the purpose of their use. Undaunted by any outside observer’s opinion, the Conservative majority in state government clings to this odious practice as if it were some sort of legal Holy Grail such that no number of laws concerning it strike any proponent of it as excessive. Oklahoma is the only state to allow for more than two methods of execution in its statutes. Here along this section of the Mother Road a condemned prisoner can be suffocated with nitrogen, electrocuted in the electric chair or shot by firing squad in that order should the preferred method of lethal injection be for whatever reason unavailable.
Equally as unsettling as the extremes taken to safeguard the practice of legally killing a person is the application of the penalty itself. Too often in the adherence to the staple tenet of Mosaic Law of demanding an eye for an eye, errors are made in the rush to judgement. This has happened in multiple death penalty states. Whereas most rank-and-file citizens likely have no problem with executing a monster like a John Wayne Gacy or a Ted Bundy, many become uncomfortable passing a terminal sentence on a defendant when the evidence of guilt is not nearly as clean cut. In spite of this, the old principle of Blackstone’s Ratio of “better ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer” means nothing to mercenary law enforcement or agenda-driven prosecutors. Two decades ago, in the state of Illinois, Republican Governor George Ryan issued a moratorium on capital punishment when clear evidence of multiple problems in the state’s criminal justice system became glaringly apparent when numerous wrongful convictions were discovered. This resulted in the exoneration of nearly half the occupants on the state’s Death Row. The State of Illinois subsequently abolished its Death Penalty statute in 2011.
According to statute, the death penalty in Oklahoma can be awarded only for the crime of First-Degree Murder in the following circumstances:
- The defendant was previously convicted of a felony involving the use or threat of violence to the person;
- The defendant knowingly created a great risk of death to more than one person;
- The person committed the murder for remuneration or the promise of remuneration or employed another to commit the murder for remuneration or the promise of remuneration;
- The murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel;
- The murder was committed for the purpose of avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest or prosecution;
- The murder was committed by a person while serving a sentence of imprisonment on conviction of a felony;
- The existence of a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society; or
- The victim of the murder was a peace officer, or correctional employee of an institution under the control of the Department of Corrections, and such person was killed while in performance of official duty.
Even with its narrow boundaries of delineation and specified criteria, the death penalty can be likened to an arbitrary lightning bolt. A casual view of Oklahoma criminal justice will show that the zeal with which a death sentence is pursued is often directly proportional to the socioeconomic status and race of the victim. As with the above noted problems discovered in Illinois, contributing factors to receiving a death sentence are frequently attributed to few available legal resources and poor representation. This, and the demand for an eye for an eye too often results in a disregard for whose eye is taken. The most recent example of this flaw in application was underscored last month in the commutation of the death sentence of Julius Jones just hours before it was to be carried out. As in most states with capital punishment, clemency and/or commutation tends to be a rare act of mercy.
The demand for fatal justice stands as a seemingly bullet proof fixture in this bastion of ultra-conservatism in spite of all its negative publicity and duly earned social stigma. To date, no amount of bad press or outside criticism has so much as come close to forcing a serious discussion concerning its abolition. The argument for its deterrent effect has been neither proven nor disproven. In spite of the fact that death sentence cases represent a small minority of murder cases, the time from sentencing to execution is often well over a decade or more due to the length of the appeals process. Therein lies probably the strongest argument for its abolition: the monetary cost of it.
An Analysis of the Economic Costs of Capital Punishment EXCERPT:
<<…”184 first-degree murder cases from Oklahoma and Tulsa counties in the years 2004-2010 and analyzed costs incurred at the pre-trial, trial, sentencing, and post-sentencing (appeals and incarceration) stages. Oklahoma capital appeal proceedings cost between five-and-six times more than non-capital appeals of first-degree murder convictions. The researchers said their results were “consistent with all previous research on death-penalty costs, which have found that in comparing similar cases, seeking and imposing the death penalty is more expensive than not seeking it.” >>
It is universally beneficial for us as a people to gaze into the mirror of society in the decade of the 2020s and take inventory of our easiest fixable flaws. In doing so enough people will hopefully see that abolishing capital punishment ranks very near the top of the list. It is an outdated fixture in the criminal justice system and a gaping moral blemish on us all which by every credible metric fails in terms of cost versus benefit. Imposing something irreversible like a death sentence makes for an extremely high bar for the proponents and apologists of it to clear in arguing their case for keeping it. If they can figure a way to grant clemency to someone like Cameron Todd Willingham from where he is now, then they win the argument. So long as it remains the law as written in the Oklahoma Statutes, it is a wrongful death waiting to happen and a repulsive oozing infected lesion on our collective soul.
It should be a matter of scientific evidence. My husband and I are for the death penalty, without appeal, if there is DNA and more than a “reasonable doubt” of guilt. When we KNOW they’re guilty, “Bye!” On the other hand, if there’s a shadow of doubt, appeals must continue.
Have felt – for decades – that our Yankee “system” of apportioning and administering capital punishment was irretrievably flawed and ruinously profligate in squandering tax dollars.
Its reform – or repeal – is as much of a pipe dream as Constitutional amendments mandating a balanced budget or Congressional term limits – AND for the same reasons. Too many hack politicians use the tough-on-crime, capital punishment stepping stone to higher office (our current Veep is just one example, as was Slick Willie Clinton before her).
Yet another example of fiscal malfeasance and American “exceptionalism”.
No nation in history has been more adept at blathering out both sides of its mouth AND wasting public funds.
It is indeed ironic that the poster child – Timothy McVeigh – whose story, as much – or more – than any other, cries out for the retention and application of capital punishment, is also THE irrefutable argument against its ridiculously expensive implementation.
Had the OKC terrorist not refused ALL appeals on his behalf and vigorously fought against his execution, he would – very likely – still be alive and enjoying his three hots and a cot today.
McVeigh, however, short-circuited every attempt to appeal and delay his punishment, thereby saving the taxpayers untold million$ in appeals and incarceration costs.
If every sociopath would be so cooperative in embracing their deserved extirpation, capital punishment would be a going concern instead of a slowly dying anachronism.
If you – or I – were related to one of the Murrah victims AND McVeigh were still fighting for his life on death row, it’s doubtful that we could so objectively discuss the pros and cons of capital punishment.
As was stated in the post, most people have no problem executing a monster like a John Wayne Gacy or a Ted Bundy…add to that list Timothy McVeigh. Believe me, I have a personal connection to the Murrah Building. I in-processed both times I went on active duty through the Navy Recruiting Command office on the Third Floor and I have rubbed elbows on a daily basis with people who lost family members in it or who were injured by McVeigh’s bomb. I will say to you as I would say to them…you will never hear me speak up in favor of letting such an individual out of maximum security. The insanity in all this is even as we bankrupt ourselves financially in pursuit of a flawed process, people like Willingham and several others are being wrongly executed to preserve the practice of eliminating the monsters. Simply stated, it is not a sustainable system neither financially nor morally.