March 1 marks 150 years of no death penalty law in the state of Michigan. Washington and the other 37 states which provide for capital punishment should learn from Michigan's experience.

A movement to abolish the death penalty had been growing throughout the United States in the 1830s and 1840s. It culminated March 1, 1847, when Michigan became the world's first English-speaking jurisdiction to abolish the death penalty. This was in part a response to the 1828 execution of an innocent Detroit resident. It was recognized even then that capital punishment forever deprives the prisoner of the benefit of new evidence—and in the US, dozens of probably innocent prisoners have been executed since, including several just in the past few years.

Twelve states do not have death-penalty statutes. Few countries in the Western Hemisphere conduct capital punishment. Its abolition is a prerequisite for membership in the European Union. The US and Japan are the world's only industrialized countries to conduct executions (and Japan performs but a tiny fraction of those conducted by the US). One hundred countries worldwide—more than half of all countries—have abolished this practice, and in recent years an average of two more have joined them every year.

Is this worldwide trend towards abolition due to sentimentality towards killers? Hardly. Almost all of the death-penalty states in the US, including Washington, provide for alternative sentences of life with no possibility of parole ever. In many of these, the only possible sentences for the gravest crimes are death or life without parole. So protection of society is hardly a reason for executing criminals, especially given that predictions of who will murder again usually are wrong.

According to polls, most Americans favor capital punishment (although this support sharply drops if people are aware of the life-without-parole alternative) and of these, most think that the death penalty deters future murders. This ancient belief is opposed by the evidence. Given similar characteristics in all other respects, states which hold executions do not have lower murder rates than states which do not. The reasons aren't difficult to see. Murders tend to be committed by those for whom rational weighing of consequences is unlikely: in the heat of passion, in a state of panic, under the influence of alcohol or drugs or by the mentally ill or unstable. Or they may be committed by professionals who expect not to be caught or by the politically motivated willing to be martyrs.

On the other hand, some research shows that the death penalty can have the opposite effect—it can even encourage some murders.

The death penalty sends the message, after all, that killing sometimes is justifiable when the provocation is sufficient. Some brutal people will learn the wrong lesson from this. Then there will be the sociopaths like Ted Bundy who kill evidently because they find the danger of capital punishment to be thrilling, and the suicidal maniacs who kill hoping that the state will put them to death.

In another way, capital punishment can be responsible for more crime. The cost of sending a criminal to death is vastly more than the cost of incarceration for life. The common-sense notion that the opposite is true again fails us on this point. There are expensive requirements and procedures in the initial trial in capital cases. In most states, including Washington, at least one appeal from this trial is mandatory. Most defendants in these trials are too poor to afford to adequately defend themselves, and some have diminished mental capacity; these are among the reasons for the many further appeals. One of the numerous studies of this issue found that in New York State, the initial trial and appeal alone would cost $1.8 million, double the cost of life imprisonment. This represents a significant frittering of scarce resources.

To many people for whom death is the only fitting punishment for taking life, all this is irrelevant. But vengeance and retribution are not so easy to implement in practice. Only a tiny fraction of all homicides—and not necessarily the most horrific—result in death sentences. The system is, and must be, arbitrary at every stage. Vengeance, even were it desirable, is an empty promise made by pandering politicians and publicity-seeking prosecutors.

Washington State abolished capital punishment from 1913 to 1919. We who seek a return of abolition are as disgusted and concerned by violent crime as anyone else. Therefore, we hope that our state will stop throwing away our money on the false promise of capital punishment. Michigan has had no executions for over 150 years, Rhode Island and Wisconsin for almost that long. They are none the worse off for it, and may well be better. Washington residents should join them.

Letters to the Editor - Published March 8, 1997
©Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Protection of Society the Precise Reason for Capital Punishment

This is in regard to "Protection of society is hardly a reason for executing criminals" (William Kreuter's March 1 Soapbox). Kreuter must have credentials in newspeak 201. Protection of society is exactly the reason for the death penalty or any other penalty. How well the purpose is accomplished is another matter.

People who want to argue that capital punishment does not prevent crime should first obtain agreement with their view from the families of victims of repeat criminals. One suspects the number of such people rather exceeds the number of innocent [sic] ever legally executed.

Nevertheless, if a state legislature chooses to eliminate capital punishment, I, for one, will not object. What we as a public should be violently objecting to is the prostitution of our legal system as a tactic by advocates who simply will not accept the fact that capital punishment is the law. Too often, those tunnel-vision advocates are successful in being appointed to the bench. From that vantage point, they engage in flaky pseudo-legal maneuvering to frustrate what is in fact their sworn duty.

Now about Kreuter's claim of excessive costs (of capital punishment):

There are about 3,000 people on death row nationwide. Typical time lapse from sentencing to final resolution is 12 years. In the majority of cases, guilt has been firmly established. What is usually being endlessly dragged through the courts amounts to claims that if he or she had had a better lawyer, he or she would have gotten away with it.

Am I alone in detecting a whiff of lawyerly make-work?

Law Gives Victim's Family Small Amount of Satisfaction

Arguments opposing the death penalty usually omit important considerations. William Kreuter's March 1 Soapbox is a recent example.

People who lose a loved one to a murderer are entitled to revenge. The murderer, by virtue of a violent act, loses the right to live. Nearly anyone who has lost a loved one has an overpowering, justifiable motive for eliminating the culprit. If present at the scene of the crime, hardly anyone would blame a bystander for killing the criminal. There is no reason for modifying that reasoning because of a judicial proceeding.

Keeping a murderer in prison for life is not cheap. Costs run at least $30,000 per year. There usually is a chance of parole followed by more crime. Society has zero gain, except to satisfy the misguided ethics of those whose lives have not been affected.

Appeals should be limited to one year, and there should be ample opportunity for the courts to consider new evidence. But the number of murderers found innocent on appeal is miniscule and probably will be reduced with the admission of DNA samples. From society's point of view, the gamble is reasonable.

To put the death penalty in perspective, each taxpayer should imagine that all of his or her taxes during 30 or 40 productive years were devoted to keeping a murderer alive in prison. Every morning the taxpayer could awaken to the dismal prospect of spending several hours working to support some scumbag who has committed an unforgivable crime and is of absolutely no use to society.

Whether revenge for murder reduces the crime rate is beside the point. At least society is sure that one of the transgressors will not repeat the crime. With 5½ billion people crowding the planet, who needs living, breathing Ted Bundys?

William Kreuter's Response to the March 8 Letters

NOTE: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer declined to publish this response.
I think H.B. Porter and Thomas Coad are missing much of the point in their letters responding to my March 1 "Soapbox" piece on the death penalty.

The death penalty doesn't work, and no "reform"—no matter how much trampling of justice these reforms create—can change what's built in. Most murderers are not sentenced to death. The crimes of the ones who have been are indistinguishable from those who haven't. The objective of protecting society from the few irredeemably violent is best met exactly in the manner that nearly all of the worst murderers are treated at present, by the severest terms of incarceration under the strictest security. Washington has sentenced dozens of convicts to life without parole, and no one has ever been freed from this sentence, here or in any other state. Nevertheless, life without parole costs a small fraction of sending a convict to death row, and trashing appeal rights won't change that. It is therefore capital punishment, not life imprisonment, which wastes the public's money.

Appeals are not frivolous. In the past twenty years, about 40% of death row inmates nationwide have had their sentences reduced for reasons such as their court-appointed attorney was drunk or asleep during the trial, or that no defense was presented at all by a recent law graduate handling his first case ever. Since 1977, over sixty prisoners on US death rows have been freed on appeal because they were innocent. More are waiting. Many wouldn't have a chance under "reforms" promoted by capital punishment advocates. Probably more than a dozen innocent men have been executed since 1977. Those advocating this "reasonable gamble" would quickly change their minds if it were an innocent friend or relative facing execution.

Porter wonders if the appeals aren't just make-work for lawyers. Wealthy defendants are never sentenced to death. Most death-row inmates are indigent and their appeals are handled for little or no fee. The lawyers who benefit from death sentences are the ambitious prosecutors who build their careers on it.

Coad writes that the family of a murder victim is entitled to revenge. Among the victims' survivors who disagree are Martin Luther King's widow and the many other members of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation who say, "Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder."