Revenge American Style
The disinclination of Arnold Schwarzenegger (now repudiated as a hero by his native Austria) to grant clemency to Stanley (Tookie) Williams this holiday season is emblematic of what one hopes may become the end of an era in America's "cruel and unusual" penal practices.
Under the standards operative up until about 3 decades ago when politicians rediscovered executing persons as a hot button issue to win elections, rehabilitation of criminals was a widespread if not universal goal of the American criminal justice. Such it still is in most civilized countries. When the aim of a criminal justice system is rehabilitation, clemency or amnesty for _some_ criminals operates in both sentencing decisions and treatment of those incarcerated who can be offered treatment for addictions, job training and/or study opportunities leading to productive lives.
Had Williams been facing death during that earlier era, the doubts about his guilt in committing murders for which he was convicted and/or recognition of the effective role he had assumed in prison in persuading young Americans NOT to enter gang life (such as he had done when at 17 he had become the co-founder of the notorious Crips gang) might well have made a grant of clemency the opportunity for him to continue his constructive efforts even while serving out a life sentence in a California prison.
But what has happened to American justice during recent decades is a regression backwards into frontier cries for revenge (directed at innocent and guilty alike) that now trump clemency as a supplementary instrument of punishment. Retributivism, dating back to the cruel religion of the ancient Babylonians and enshrined in their notorious lex talionis ("an eye for an eye . . .") has become the media's and, thus, the ambitious politician's route to success. I recall all too well when former 'New Deal liberal' Ed Koch startled all with his decision to break away from a pack of competitors in a democratic primary for the NYC mayoralty by announcing that he supported reinstitution of the death penalty. It worked. Koch tried the same strategy in a Democratic primary race for Governor against Mario Cuomo (anti death penalty) and it did _not_ work. However, Cuomo, who had held the death penalty at bay with his vetoes, was in turn displaced by George Pataki who campaigned for and reinstituted the death penalty in NY -- now fortunately put on hold by legislative blockage despite Pataki's efforts last week to appeal to public emotions again by calling for the death penalty for killers of police. He was apparently held in check and obliged to accept the alternative of life without parole.
I had been aware of the historical evolution of this American horror in the face of increasing international rejection of capital punishment -- I had, myself, 'flip flopped' back in the 1970s when a former student had invited me to speak to an Amnesty International conference on the death penalty which she was organizing and which had obliged me for the first time to examine in depth both the history and the implications of execution -- particularly in the U.S. where we seemed then to be replacing lynchings with executions. During the first half of the 20th century some 3,000 minorities and new immigrants (the latter about 1/3 of the total) were lynched. During the second half of the 20th century to the present the percentage sentenced and executed was more than 50% for African Americans and other minorities -- particularly if the victim was a Caucasian!
We have seen our Supreme Court endorse prosecutions and sentencing in capital cases which it recognized to be prejudiced. McCleskey v. Kemp 481 U.S. 279 (1987) admitted that capital punishment was manifestly unequally imposed on poor minorities who had murdered whites -- but said such was fine so long as only the guilty were executed. More recently the Court has only gradually raised the age of those executed from no minimum -- an horrendous picture postcard rendition of a 14-year-old African American boy sitting terrified in an electric chair and about to be fried well done haunts anyone who see it in Langston Hughes' 1962 History of the NAACP. A decade or so ago the Court spared a 15-year old African American girl, raising the minimum age to 16. And most recently increaed it to 18 (Roper v. Simmons, 2005). We still have some juveniles living on death rows, but presumably they will now be removed. Had Roper been in place a few years earlier, the execution of a possibly innocent young African American not granted clemency by George W. Bush while governor of Texas would not have occurred. Bush, as governor of the state of Texas one year presided over the half the executions (37 or 74) in the U.S. Texas is notorious for its crude violations of basic rights of the accused:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/061700-102.htm
With DNA evidence, available in only a few of the crimes of murder, now proving the innocence of increasing numbers on our death rows, both our courts, and public at large, if not our legislators, are showing signs of uneasiness with the continuing barbarity of legalized state murders.
I am at the moment preparing a review for an excellent book that I have just finished reading, Mercy on Trial by Austin Sarat (Princeton University Press, 2005), which uses the 4 pardons and grants of clemency to the 167 remaining on Illinois death rows by Governor George Ryan in his last days in office, January 10, 2003, as a lens for examining the shift from rehabilitative justice to revenge in our American penal practices. Ryan, subsequently, himself, prosecuted and imprisoned for earlier corruption in office, had been distressed by the numbers of errors in capital sentencing and based his clemency on the imperfections of a legal system which could not protect innocents from execution. Sarat's low key study lays out in grim detail the long saga of American 'cowboy' justice.
Americans are all too vulnerable to popular appeals for revenge directed at real or supposed 'enemies'. Fifty years after European countries had stopped the horrific practice of executing suspected witches, we started burning and drowning them in Salem, Massachusetts, a state now without the death penalty! With the end of slavery lynching became our brutal practice for acting out racial hatreds, supplemented by refusal to prosecute or convict Caucasian murderers of African Americans until far too late in the 20th century. Legal executions (or unpunished killings by police and others) have replaced our previous brutal revenge modalities. Murders of African Americans are virtually exempt from the death penalty. But poor African Americans -- charged even falsely with murderers of 'Caucasians' -- are many times over at risk of execution in our death penalty states -- both north and south. And we are still executing persons known to be disabled by extreme retardation and/or mental illnesses.
We know too much now to allow such practices to continue -- or to allow ambitious politicians to play on our crudest of human emotions -- revenge -- to win election to offices for which they are thereby manifestly unfit! This is why I could not vote for Freddie Ferrer who ran for Mayor of NYC this past autumn.
http://agendagap.blogspot.com/2005/10/freddy-flip-flops-on-death-penalty.html
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Under the standards operative up until about 3 decades ago when politicians rediscovered executing persons as a hot button issue to win elections, rehabilitation of criminals was a widespread if not universal goal of the American criminal justice. Such it still is in most civilized countries. When the aim of a criminal justice system is rehabilitation, clemency or amnesty for _some_ criminals operates in both sentencing decisions and treatment of those incarcerated who can be offered treatment for addictions, job training and/or study opportunities leading to productive lives.
Had Williams been facing death during that earlier era, the doubts about his guilt in committing murders for which he was convicted and/or recognition of the effective role he had assumed in prison in persuading young Americans NOT to enter gang life (such as he had done when at 17 he had become the co-founder of the notorious Crips gang) might well have made a grant of clemency the opportunity for him to continue his constructive efforts even while serving out a life sentence in a California prison.
But what has happened to American justice during recent decades is a regression backwards into frontier cries for revenge (directed at innocent and guilty alike) that now trump clemency as a supplementary instrument of punishment. Retributivism, dating back to the cruel religion of the ancient Babylonians and enshrined in their notorious lex talionis ("an eye for an eye . . .") has become the media's and, thus, the ambitious politician's route to success. I recall all too well when former 'New Deal liberal' Ed Koch startled all with his decision to break away from a pack of competitors in a democratic primary for the NYC mayoralty by announcing that he supported reinstitution of the death penalty. It worked. Koch tried the same strategy in a Democratic primary race for Governor against Mario Cuomo (anti death penalty) and it did _not_ work. However, Cuomo, who had held the death penalty at bay with his vetoes, was in turn displaced by George Pataki who campaigned for and reinstituted the death penalty in NY -- now fortunately put on hold by legislative blockage despite Pataki's efforts last week to appeal to public emotions again by calling for the death penalty for killers of police. He was apparently held in check and obliged to accept the alternative of life without parole.
I had been aware of the historical evolution of this American horror in the face of increasing international rejection of capital punishment -- I had, myself, 'flip flopped' back in the 1970s when a former student had invited me to speak to an Amnesty International conference on the death penalty which she was organizing and which had obliged me for the first time to examine in depth both the history and the implications of execution -- particularly in the U.S. where we seemed then to be replacing lynchings with executions. During the first half of the 20th century some 3,000 minorities and new immigrants (the latter about 1/3 of the total) were lynched. During the second half of the 20th century to the present the percentage sentenced and executed was more than 50% for African Americans and other minorities -- particularly if the victim was a Caucasian!
We have seen our Supreme Court endorse prosecutions and sentencing in capital cases which it recognized to be prejudiced. McCleskey v. Kemp 481 U.S. 279 (1987) admitted that capital punishment was manifestly unequally imposed on poor minorities who had murdered whites -- but said such was fine so long as only the guilty were executed. More recently the Court has only gradually raised the age of those executed from no minimum -- an horrendous picture postcard rendition of a 14-year-old African American boy sitting terrified in an electric chair and about to be fried well done haunts anyone who see it in Langston Hughes' 1962 History of the NAACP. A decade or so ago the Court spared a 15-year old African American girl, raising the minimum age to 16. And most recently increaed it to 18 (Roper v. Simmons, 2005). We still have some juveniles living on death rows, but presumably they will now be removed. Had Roper been in place a few years earlier, the execution of a possibly innocent young African American not granted clemency by George W. Bush while governor of Texas would not have occurred. Bush, as governor of the state of Texas one year presided over the half the executions (37 or 74) in the U.S. Texas is notorious for its crude violations of basic rights of the accused:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/061700-102.htm
With DNA evidence, available in only a few of the crimes of murder, now proving the innocence of increasing numbers on our death rows, both our courts, and public at large, if not our legislators, are showing signs of uneasiness with the continuing barbarity of legalized state murders.
I am at the moment preparing a review for an excellent book that I have just finished reading, Mercy on Trial by Austin Sarat (Princeton University Press, 2005), which uses the 4 pardons and grants of clemency to the 167 remaining on Illinois death rows by Governor George Ryan in his last days in office, January 10, 2003, as a lens for examining the shift from rehabilitative justice to revenge in our American penal practices. Ryan, subsequently, himself, prosecuted and imprisoned for earlier corruption in office, had been distressed by the numbers of errors in capital sentencing and based his clemency on the imperfections of a legal system which could not protect innocents from execution. Sarat's low key study lays out in grim detail the long saga of American 'cowboy' justice.
Americans are all too vulnerable to popular appeals for revenge directed at real or supposed 'enemies'. Fifty years after European countries had stopped the horrific practice of executing suspected witches, we started burning and drowning them in Salem, Massachusetts, a state now without the death penalty! With the end of slavery lynching became our brutal practice for acting out racial hatreds, supplemented by refusal to prosecute or convict Caucasian murderers of African Americans until far too late in the 20th century. Legal executions (or unpunished killings by police and others) have replaced our previous brutal revenge modalities. Murders of African Americans are virtually exempt from the death penalty. But poor African Americans -- charged even falsely with murderers of 'Caucasians' -- are many times over at risk of execution in our death penalty states -- both north and south. And we are still executing persons known to be disabled by extreme retardation and/or mental illnesses.
We know too much now to allow such practices to continue -- or to allow ambitious politicians to play on our crudest of human emotions -- revenge -- to win election to offices for which they are thereby manifestly unfit! This is why I could not vote for Freddie Ferrer who ran for Mayor of NYC this past autumn.
http://agendagap.blogspot.com/2005/10/freddy-flip-flops-on-death-penalty.html
--
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net/blognews.asp
posted by Ed Kent at 10:57 AM
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