"On the Death Sentence"

I just read "On the Death Sentence"- a review by John Paul Stevens of David Garland's book, A Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition. Justice Steven's provides a good overview of the book and a compelling analysis of the death penalty in America. I have always been uncomfortable with the death penalty- as I think most people are- because of the sheer finality of it and the possibility of human error; but I became firmly opposed to it after reading Gibbs Smith's book, Joe Hill, for a criminal justice class that I took in college. Joe Hill was a migrant worker originally from Sweden who came to Utah to work as a miner and was executed by firing squad in 1915 for the murder of a local butcher and his son. His conviction was based on inconclusive circumstantial evidence and questionable eyewitness testimony. For example, the prosecution emphasized the fact that Joe Hill received a gunshot wound on the same night as the murder. There were a total of five people treated for bullet wounds in the Salt Lake area that night, and the prosecution did not demonstrate why Hill's wound was more suspicious than any of the others.

Most people who study the case today believe that the state of Utah failed to prove that Joe Hill was guilty, and that he was convicted because he was a migrant worker and a member of the International Workers of the World (a very unpopular organization in Utah at the time). He was likely the victim of the public's hunger for vengeance and the state's need for a scapegoat, consistent with Garland's thesis that "the primary public benefits of the death penalty are 'political exchange and cultural consumption."

Justice Stevens says about those who are condemned on death row: "Many of them have repented and made positive contributions to society. The finality of an execution always ends that possibility." When I was working at the Salt Lake Metro Jail, I worked one-on-one with several people who had committed capital crimes, and there were times that I was shocked by how badly they wanted to redeem themselves. It may never be possible to right a wrong as great as murder, but why not let someone try? I recently read an article in the Salt Lake Tribune about a man named Robert Jones who was convicted of murder in 1983 and has been in the Utah State Prison since then. He has devoted his time to doing service projects in the name of Kim Chapman, the man he shot and killed. This year, he crocheted 540 stocking hats for needy children in the Salt Lake area, often staying up late into the night to make sure the hats could all be delivered by Christmas. If he had been sentenced to death, Kim Chapman would still be dead- nothing can change that. 540 children, though, would not have hats to keep them warm this winter.

Justice Stevens concludes his review by quoting Justice Byron White: "the death penalty represents the 'pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes."

Read Justice Stevens' review here.
Read the article about Robert Jones here.