Executions mar spring landscape
“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” — Harper Lee, “To Kill a Mockingbird”
That quote hangs in my mind these days. The calendar has turned to April and spring is coloring the landscape. Easter — the day Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ — is a couple of weeks away. But, right after we celebrate the cornerstone of redemption, death will come.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed orders on Feb. 27 for an unprecedented eight executions to be carried out over a 10-day period this month. Since the state’s last execution was in 2005, why the sudden rush? Execution drugs, like Bayer aspirin, come with expiration dates and apparently, the state’s supply of midazolam will expire at month’s end. Midazolam is a sedative. Potassium chloride is the kill drug. Vercuroniium bromide, a skeletal muscle relaxant, also is used.
Unless there is some type of intervention, the scheduled dates for the four sets of double executions will come: April 17, Bruce Ward and Don Davis; April 20, Stacey Johnson and Ledell Lee; April 24, Jack Jones and Marcel Williams; and April 27, Kenneth Williams and Jason McGehee.
As the clock ticks on the condemned, let’s return to the topic of one’s conscience. Former Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller’s conscience was clear back in 1970. He granted clemency to the 15 men sitting on death row.
“My position on capital punishment has been clear since long before I became governor,” Rockefeller wrote in a statement. “I am unalterably opposed to it and will remain so as long as I live. What earthly mortal has the omnipotence to say who among us shall live and who shall die? I do not. Moreover, in that the law grants me authority to set aside the death penalty, I cannot and will not turn my back on lifelong Christian teachings and beliefs, merely to let history run out its course on a fallible and failing theory of punitive justice.”
Indeed. There was a time when I was an advocate of the death penalty and you can probably dig in the archives and find columns I’ve written indicating such. My position changed as I watched how justice is dispensed and saw the number of wrongful convictions and sentencing errors — in general, not just in death penalty cases.
A California man was exonerated last week of attempted murder after serving 20 years in prison. Thanks to Loyola University Law School’s Project for the Innocent, he is a free man. The Death Penalty Information Center reports that since executions were reinstated in 1976, more than 1,400 executions have occurred in the U.S., but 156 innocent people also were released from death row. That’s one exoneration for every 10 executions. On average, these innocent people spent 11.3 years on death row before being exonerated, according to DPIC.
Here in Arkansas, there are 34 men awaiting their death sentences, but that number was once higher. Some have been resentenced to life and then, there’s Damien Echols. He’s a free man, along with the other West Memphis Three.
Conscience and exonerations aside, the death penalty is not administered in a fair and
equitable manner. Two people can commit similar capital offenses, but they may not receive the same sentence for their crimes. One might get a life without parole sentence and the other, the death penalty. Financial resources play into the quality of legal representation. Poor people tend to receive overworked
and sometimes incompetent, court-appointed attorneys.
“The American Bar Association, a conservative group of nearly 400,000 lawyers, has called for a halt on executions, due in part to the failure to provide adequate counsel and resources to capital defendants,” DPIC says. “Almost all the people on death row were too poor to afford their own attorneys at trial. These low-income defendants
were appointed lawyers, some of whom were overworked, underpaid, drunk, asleep or lacked the necessary experience to handle death penalty cases.”
Should death sentences fall only to those with the misfortune of being poor? Roger Coulter of Ashley County has been sitting on death row in Arkansas since his sentencing 28 years ago. He is not among the eight scheduled to die this month, however.
Shouldn’t he be up first? And should death sentences be carried out decades after the crimes were committed? These aren’t the same people. If we are waiting 20-plus years to execute the condemned, why can’t we wait on their natural deaths behind bars?
Though exact figures aren’t available in Arkansas, studies in other states show that the death penalty can be up to six times more expensive than sentences
of life without parole. And the threat of death is no deterrent to crime. Research indicates homicide rates in death penalty states is higher than in non-death penalty states.
Whether it is a matter of conscience and fairness or financial practicality, the death penalty is no longer right for America, assuming it ever was. Globally, in 2015, Amnesty International reports that the top six countries for executions were: China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Iraq. Contemplate human rights issues and ask yourself, is that the company we — as Americans — want to keep?