The guilty on death row

The news last week of a second electric chair execution in Tennessee in as many months focused mostly on the method.

Electrocution has a checkered past that includes some badly bungled incidents, though the expectation is that modern science can produce a superior and more effective device today than the “Old Sparky”type chairs of the early 20th century. Apparently that was the case; both executions were reportedly quick and without complications. There was no evidence of innocence in either case, and thus no worry of wrongful execution.

But the more newsworthy item should have been how much time had elapsed between their crimes and punishments, and how our nation should remedy the political freak show that capital punishment has become.

The last two murderers electrocuted in Tennessee had sat on death row for 34 and 36 years. Since the median age in the U.S. is about 38 years, that means a little less than half the country’s population wasn’t even born when they committed their crimes.

The first thing to remember about the death penalty “debate” is that there is a tiny minority who oppose it unconditionally, no matter what. Every other consideration— justice, deterrence, public safety— takes a back seat behind their dogmatism.

Most Americans take a more reasonable approach to the issue. They understand the two important criminal justice measures (deterrence and permanent incapacitation) an effective capital punishment system can achieve, but they also recoil at the thought of a wrongful execution. Indeed, there is unanimity in opposition to the execution of an innocent person from all corners; the only arguments over the death penalty really apply to those rightly convicted.

Death row is full of killers for which there is no doubt of their guilt. Since its inception in 1992, the Innocence Project has reviewed tens of thousands of case applications from criminals. There are often as many as 6,000 to 8,000 cases under review at any given time. But in those 26 years, it has achieved only 20 exonerations involving inmates that ever sat on death row.

During the same period, some 7,000 killers have been sentenced to death, and almost all of them are guilty. There is no impending exoneration because they actually committed the crime for which they were sentenced.

The most liberal-minded studies, using mathematical models even their own researchers admit don’t fully apply, suggest maybe 4 percent of condemned prisoners are innocent. If it’s safe to say 96 out of every 100 killers awaiting execution are guilty as charged, what the death penalty debacle has essentially become is a prime example of the perfect being the enemy of the good.

Which brings us back to dogma and, worse, disregard for public safety, neither of which advance good policy.

All condemned killers are not the same. “Death row inmate” is a broad-brush phrase that seeks to characterize a group with too many dissimilarities to be viewed, analyzed or processed holistically. Some of those sitting on death row were judged guilty by a reasonable doubt, but with mostly circumstantial evidence. By all means, let the Innocence Project continue its good work on those cases to validate or exonerate their convictions with DNA.

On the other end of the spectrum, however, many no-doubt-oftheir-guilt murderers on death row are so violent that they’ve killed or attempted to kill even while behind bars. Their recidivism and proclivity to violence is so predictive as to be almost surefire.

Failing to execute those kinds of killers, much less ever paroling them or letting them escape, is tantamount to the state condemning some future innocent victim to harm and/or death.

Sadly for our society, there are more and more of those types among us. Sophistication and civilization in America has seemed to produce more barbarity, not less, among violent criminals.

Death row is reserved for the most heinous crimes, normally murders that also involve rape, torture or robbery.

In 1960, the U.S. population was over 180 million and the number of criminals on death row was 212, computing to one death-row killer for about every 852,222 people. In 2018, our population is 328 million but there are 2,699 death row inmates—one for about every 122,814 people.

Back in 1960, 56 of the death row prisoners were executed. In order to match that percentage today, there would have to be just over 700 executions. Instead there have been only 24 in 2018.

The average length on time on death row before execution three decades ago was about six years. It has now risen to 16 years; as the Tennessee cases show, it’s often much longer. The lengthening time span allows opportunities for violent inmates to attack other prisoners or guards.

Whether capital punishment serves as a more effective deterrent than life in prison is debatable. But for every serial killer, murderous sexual predator, mass shooter and other incorrigibly homicidal criminal, execution forever closes their spree and spares future victims.

Focusing on that value—the death penalty as selectively applied to protect other innocents—ought to weigh heavier in the ongoing debate.