Category Archives: Political Discourse

The Death Penalty: A Personal Exposure

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On June 29th, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling in favor of Oklahoma continuing its use of lethal injection in carrying out the death penalty. Discussion of capital punishment is cyclic; it’s a perennial topic all contenders for political office have to face – and answer to – in their bid for voters. Presidential elections are still sixteen months off, but controversy over the death penalty has a head start.

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote an impassioned dissent suggesting that since the last fundamental discussion on the constitutionality of the death penalty was nearly forty years ago; it is time to renew the debate. Breyer listed four points regarding the administration of the death penalty:

1 – Serious Unreliability

Clearly, this is the most frightful consideration in the application of the death penalty. There is no pardon from death. The fact 140 convicted people, later found to be innocent and released from death row, were innocent is more than enough consideration to be wary of prescribing the sentence. It begs the question as to how many people have actually forfeited their life because of a flawed criminal justice system. However, there is a simple fix to this problem. Alter the rules of conviction in capital cases to those proven beyond ALL doubt and not beyond all REASONABLE doubt. When someone’s life depends on the strengths and weaknesses of a prosecutor, a defense attorney, and the questionable intelligence of jury, the standards must exist at much higher level. That said, the likelihood of changing a legal system in place since medieval times seems a bit thin.

2 – Arbitrariness in application

Justice Breyer said: “the factors that most clearly ought to affect application of the death penalty – namely, comparative egregiousness of the crime – often do not. Other studies show that circumstances that ought not to affect application of the death penalty, such as race, gender, or geography, often do.” Can anyone really question the validity of such a statement? The numbers of examples one can site for the inequality of justice are legion.

3 – Unconscionably long delays

If the notion of unreliability is the most serious, this situation is the most ridiculous. According to the Death Penalty Center, as of 2012, the average wait time between conviction and carrying out the sentence is more than 15 years. It adds a complication to the discussion of cruel and unusual punishment, not to mention the increased societal cost. It seems ironic even to consider such a factor as cruel and unusual punishment in relation to someone whose crime was murder, or even the method of its administration as discussed in Glossip v. Gross. Whatever pains the convicted feels while in the throes of death seems irrelevant when compared to the life-long pain the victim’s family will have to endure the rest of their lives. It’s difficult to summon an ounce of sympathy in this regard.

4 – Most states have abandoned its use.

This is a mistake. Perhaps the more socially responsible approach is to apply the sentence in the cases beyond all doubt and move on.

Amnesty International touts the most often heard statement about capital punishment: it does not serve as a deterrent. They quote FBI data, which indicates 14 states without the penalty have homicide rates less than the national average. The statement sounds a bit self-serving. The most significant reason the punishment no longer works here is due to its removal from the public forum. In the years before 9/11 and radical jihadists, I never felt safer than walking the streets of Saudi Arabia – day or night. I have a long list of things I do not like about that country, but their murder rate stands at a mere .8 per 100,000. By comparison, America’s is at 4.7. Why? In Saudi Arabia, capital punishment is a public affair and in full display; it’s gruesome in its spectacle. To watch a few thousand Muslims emerge from a mosque on a Friday at noon and circle around the kill-zone, pushing and shoving to get up front in order to watch the executioner slice the back of a man’s neck open with a sword, is horrifically mesmerizing, which is the point. Human rights activists’ fault Saudi Arabia for its growing number of public executions and for good reason – capital punishment serves a broader spectrum of crime there. Nevertheless, there is no arguing the fact it is a significant deterrent to committing capital crimes. We are coming up on the 79th anniversary of the last public execution in this country. Perhaps when the Supreme Court reconvenes on the first Monday in October, they might consider an amendment to common law and push the notion of public display of execution back into vogue. It’s incongruent Americans can withstand the barbarism of white supremacy or gang wars, yet turn suddenly squeamish over a public display of execution designed to curb the very crimes which diminish the quality of our lives.

1982: My introduction to the effectiveness of the death penalty

When Does a Right become a Right?

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Slavery officially ended, at least on the books in America, in 1863. The 19th Amendment finally ended decades of struggling, allowing women the right to vote. Now, in 2015, gays received a federal blessing with the removal of restrictions on same-sex marriage. All were celebrated as victories for the activists trying to push these agendas toward mainstream acceptance. The question is why did they have to fight for them in the first place?

Rights come in two varieties: natural and legal. Jefferson’s preamble to the Declaration of Independence creates the platform by which the United States would assert their liberation from the tyranny of Great Britain by saying that we are all born with natural rights – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Legal rights are those created under social contract theory – the fundamental balance between what rights people surrender in return for the benefits of a larger and orderly society.

Therein lies the problem.

Take a survey of all our systems of law: common law, civil law, criminal law, corporate law, real estate law, biblical law, maritime law, tax law, Hammurabi’s code, you might even consider the Ten Commandments. Over the last six thousand years, we’ve been so busy legislating what people can and can’t do that we’ve lost sight of what simple, natural rights look like. At best, we have some semblance of civilization (not really – just read the news every day). At worst, we have global disparity and the polarization of people over every belief, custom, and way of life.

It comes down to agendas. Get enough people together with a similar agenda and the life of a natural right is threatened. It’s the might-makes-right sickness. News flash: the majority IS NOT always right. There should never have been a law restricting same-sex marriage. If two people find a connection with another of the same-sex, how can anyone honestly object? Why should anyone care if two women kiss, or two men hold hands? It’s a natural right. Why don’t women receive equal pay? It’s a natural right. Instead of voting for new laws, we should be looking more toward removing statutes, especially the ones that offer benefits to smaller segments of society to the deficit of everyone else. (IRS, are you listening?) We should be re-examining the ways in which our society is suppressing our natural rights.

My fifteen-year-old son, Ian, phrased it correctly for me. He said: “how embarrassing humans are to have just allowed gay marriage, instead of how it should’ve been a human right from the beginning.”  So today, on this July 4th, I can rest thinking that perhaps there is some hope for the future after all.

A House Divided…

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In June of 1858, Abraham Lincoln won the candidacy for the Republican Party in the Presidential race. He addressed over a thousand people that evening with a now famous speech that, in part, spoke of the rift caused by slavery. He quoted the bible: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

A hundred-fifty years have passed since Appomattox, and we seem to have come full circle. South Carolina is once again the center of controversy (the recent shootings in Charleston were, figuratively, a stone’s throw from Fort Sumter), and the ignominious face of racism has been unmasked, once more. We’re still dealing with the shame and arrogance of the Confederate flag, economic and political issues divide the nation, and terrorism runs rampant throughout the country as it did in the decades leading up to the Civil War. In the 1830s, there were upwards of 115 riots in the then major urban centers, and reports of lynchings were commonplace.

How sad is it to discover that we have learned nothing? For all our advances in medicine, technology, and science, we are still standing on the same foundation of the house that burned to the ground in the most catastrophic domestic war in our history. The Ku Klux Klan, formed in the aftermath of that war, during the so-called Reconstruction, still wreaks havoc. Its influence has spawned more than a dozen other white supremacist organizations, which are just as guilty of radicalizing our young minds as ISIS is.

Historically, I’m amazed that other, stronger nations of the period, like France or England, didn’t capitalize on our weaknesses then and attempt to absorb our nation into their empires. We may not be so fortunate the next time around. China and Russia are both posturing with imperialistic intent, both militarily and economically, and we are insolent enough to assume that we can withstand all-comers.

To borrow a quote from economist, John Maynard Keynes: “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” So how do you eradicate the truly pervasive and deep-rooted notions of racism and prejudice? You can’t undo the teaching of hate, you can’t legislate against it, civil wars don’t eradicate it – in fact, it probably exacerbates it, and you can’t go around shooting people who stand at the root of it all, though the temptation to do so might be appealing. Unfortunately, that would put all of us in the same category as Dylann Roof. Don’t laugh, Charles Cotton, moron extraordinaire and board member of the NRA said that if more people carried guns, nine people might not have died in Bible study class. I kid you not!

Racism is but one of many divides in our country. Politics, always a detestable and unpalatable subject, has practically unraveled to the point of political civil war, and any unifying force seems as remote as the Andromeda galaxy. If a Democrat says the sky is blue, the Republicans will pronounce it will ruin the economy. Economics: Republicans, Super PACs, and the 1% on the right; Democrats, the dwindling middle class, immigrants, and the common American on the left. How are you going to solve that one? I don’t even want to think about the Tea Party. Gays vs anti-gays, blacks and Jews vs white supremacists, Bible-thumping creationists vs the scientists, war-mongers vs the isolationists, union vs non-union, humanitarian aid vs ‘it’s not my problem’ types, or pick any other one you want, the list is inexhaustible.

Is leadership the answer? Right now, there appears to be only two voices out there that seem to make any sense: The Pope and Bernie Sanders. Since the former isn’t eligible for the presidency on any level, this leaves Mr. Sanders – who could possibly take the Republican Party seriously at this point. It’s a long road to next November. I’m not sure if leadership will help since whoever is elected will be hated by virtually fifty percent of the people.

In a recent post on racism, I said the only solution to curbing that problem lies within each of us, individually and the choices we make. I lack the faith that this notion will work in practice for the legion of problems we face. Meanwhile, I hear the timbers around me starting to crack inside my divided house. Anyone out there know a good carpenter? I can imagine someone making the corollary that Jesus was a carpenter. Well, if the guy was as good as so many people believe he was, then this might be a good time for him to make a pit-stop.

Diversity is the cultural norm of the United States, and the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and religion, but there is a price. Diversity is the root of all conflict. It sparks the fuse of superiority and entitlement and explodes in a miasma of hate.