What do the states of Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin and District of Columbia have in common?
The all have abolished the death penalty.
What do the states of Oregon, Colorado and Pennsylvania have in common? In each, governors have imposed moratoriums on executions by using executive powers.
Last week, California joined the second group when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to impose a moratorium on capital punishment.
The order gives a reprieve — at least temporarily — to all 737 condemned inmates on the nation’s largest death row. Of that number, 24 condemned inmates have exhausted their appeals, including Michael Morales, 59. He was convicted in 1983 in San Joaquin County of the rape and murder of 17-year-old Terri Winchell. He came within 2 hours of execution 13 years ago.
Clearly, there are those whose crimes are so horrific, so savage they defy comprehension. In such cases the perpetrator’s continued existence offends. But do we want a justice system for retribution or as a means, flawed as it sometimes is, to bend behavior? In a society with a goal of moral behavior, there is only one answer.
To be sure Californians, as many Americans, remain divided over the death penalty issue. Twice since 2012 state voters have rejected attempts to end capital punishment.
As a practical matter, killers who are killed don’t kill again. As a practical matter, killers who are imprisoned for life only rarely kill again and then only inside the prison environment. Of course, as a practical matter there is virtually no evidence to support the notion that capital punishment deters crime.
To be sure, the political, social and emotional debate over the death penalty rarely comes down to practicality. If it did, the punishment would have been banned years ago. Since 1978, the state has executed 13 men. Those executions cost taxpayers a total of at least $4 billion. Spending that kind of money for that kind of result hardly is practical.
There also is the issue of justice delayed, not just for the accused but also for the victim’s survivors. Of the state’s 24 condemned inmates who have exhausted their appeals, the shortest time any has been on death row — the shortest — is 27 years. One man, Harvey Heishman, a rapist convicted of the 1979 murder of an Oakland woman who was about to testify that he had sexually assaulted her, has been there almost 38 years.
The fact of the matter is, a California death row inmate is more likely to die of natural causes or from suicide than by lethal injection.
And what about the survivors? Justice for them? Do executions really bring the closure we so often use as a rationale? Does the death of the killer ease the pain of the victim’s survivors? Does eye-for-an-eye justice simply blind the rest of us?
Newsom’s order hits the pause button. It gives us a chance to consider again if we want to remain with 22 other states and more than 100 nations, including Russia, that have abolished the death penalty or continue down the dysfunctional path we’ve followed for decades.
“I do not believe that a civilized society can claim to be a leader in the world as long as its government continues to sanction the premeditated and discriminatory execution of its people,” Newsom said in issuing his executive order. “In short, the death penalty is inconsistent with our bedrock values and strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a Californian.”
Newsom’s order notes that those most often sent to death row are people of color, are poor, are those with intellectual disabilities and those who suffered series childhood traumas. The penalty costs too much to carry out. And that there is always the no-going-back possibility of executing an innocent person (164 times since 1973 — including five times in California — condemned prisoners have been found to have been wrongfully convicted).
We cannot simply dismiss such facts.
Newsom’s order is not a get-out-of-jail card. Locking a killer up for life without the possibility of parole can — and in select cases — should mean just that. Mass murderers Charles Manson and Juan Corona, both of whom died in the past five months after decades of incarceration, did not have a single moment of freedom after being arrested.
The fight over the death penalty does not end with Newsom’s order. County prosecutors still can pursue capital punishment. Juries still can convict those charged and recommend execution. Judges still can order death.
But Newsom’s order hits the pause button. It gives us a chance to consider again if we want to remain with 22 other states and more than 100 nations, including Russia, that have abolished the death penalty or continue down the dysfunctional path we’ve followed for decades.
Source: Stockton Record, Opinion, March 17, 2019
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
