Deterrent??

C

                   A Deterrent??

                     By Kenneth Bagnell

      Executing a man, no matter what our opinion of execution, should be a straight forward exercise no matter what the method: hanging, electrocution, firing squad, whatever. In fact it’s often never that way. Years ago, a man in the Maritimes who witnessed many, and in general supported the death penalty, said to me: “If only they’d not hang them. Not hanging. It’s awful to watch.” (I won’t go into his graphic descriptions.) But so are other methods of execution, including the American ways of death, as witnesses saw in Oklahoma, on April 29, when Clayton Lockett was to be put to death by injection. It was botched. Badly. He struggled and writhed in pain a full seven minutes, then lifted his head from the gurney to which he was strapped, then moaned a pathetic understatement: “Something is wrong.” Experts, including every criminologist I’ve read, say no matter what the injection, the punishment by injection is always ugly. (About an hour after the botched horror, Lockett died of a heart attack.)

        As we know, something good can actually emerge out of evil. The horror in the Oklahoma prison was an example: it helped fuel the gradually widening American movement, at least, toward the right thing: abolishing capital punishment. It’s now nearing 50 years since a man named Thorsten Sellin with his memorable mane of thick white hair came to lecture in Toronto. He had a great reputation as perhaps the leading American sociologist on matters of crime. (He was, among his many accomplishments, visiting lecturer at Princeton, University of California, and Oxford.) I heard him speak on the death penalty and afterward had a too brief interview with him. Sellin had examined the death penalty from every angle humanly possible and it came up a total failure as a deterrent. So, given the Oklahoma disgrace, I reached back to my study shelf and got one of his essays on the death penalty from a book called, “The Death Penalty in America” I include but one brief paragraph on why, if anybody is interested in facts over rage, he’s right. Looking back on his several pages of tables, graphs and statistics , Thorsten Sellin writes this:

      “In preceding passages, one of the aspects of this issue has been considered, namely, the question of whether or not the death penalty appears to have any effect on homicide death rates… Anyone who carefully examines the above data is bound to arrive at the conclusion that the death penalty, as we use it, exercises no influence on the extent or fluctuating rates of capital crimes…. It has failed as a deterrent…” He’s clearly right. That’s partly why the EU (European Union) in 1997, ruled that its membership include only those countries that had abandoned the death penalty. Further, its charter of human rights contains a commitment to work for “Universal abolition of the death penalty.” Is it too much to hope that it might even influence the United States especially in the wake of the furor following the bungled execution in Oklahoma. “This could be a real turning point,” according to a spokesperson for the American Death Penalty Information Centre, “as people grow disgusted by this.” We can hope.

     The best news has come from the Death Penalty Information Centre whose Executive Director Richard Dieter said a month or so ago: “There’s been a 75 percent drop in death sentences since the 1990s… The number of states still with the death penalty has declined; death row has declined and even public support is at a 40-year low, so we’re certainly at a crossroads with the death penalty, compared to where we were 15 years ago.” He went on to point out that while 32 states still have the death penalty on the books, only nine had an execution. There’s plenty of evidence to view even these nine as futile revenge. A seasoned public person, Janet Reno, US Attorney General from 1993 to 2001 serving President Bill Clinton, put it bluntly a decade ago. She said she’d searched all her adult life for evidence that the death penalty was a deterrent. Her conclusion: I have not seen any research that would substantiate that point.”

        Canada, which abolished the death penalty in 1976 –- I expect forever — nonetheless has a significant number of citizens who still support ìt. A couple of years ago the credible Angus Reid Public Opinion firm, surveyed the country and revealed that just over sixty percent of the population support the death penalty in cases of murder. In Alberta seven out of ten back its return and in Ontario, it’s six out of ten. Moreover, that same year, 2012, a widely read newspaper, The National Post, asked readers to respond to this question: “Should Canada bring back the death penalty.” A narrow majority said yes. Among the reasons cited were such as these: it should be available in extreme cases involving children; society should not be burdened with keeping Paul Bernardo and others like him incarcerated; society should focus its compassion on victim’s rights, not criminal’s rights. (It’s relevant to add that The Post, a sophisticated paper, is also firmly conservative, hence readers are largely, not entirely, of that leaning.) Moreover, though the subject now and then emerges on Parliament Hill, especially among today’s conservatives, it’s inevitably sidetracked.  May we leave it where it belongs, in the darker pages of our history.  I can’t help thinking that if our American friends were able to do likewise, they’d not have to live with that tragic memory of April 29, 2014 in Oklahoma. 

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All my past blogs are archived on my website: your comments are welcome here: www.kennethbagnell.com.