Death penalty June 22, 2000, a day when technology such as computers, digital cameras, worldwide contact, mobile phones, and space shuttles, rapid fast internet, is a part of daily life. Still, this is a day to grieve. This is the day that the 36-year-old American, Gary L. Graham was executed. According to Amnesty International, who thoroughly researches the death penalty because they oppose it, Gary Graham was exposed to several types of violence in his youth. Growing up with a mentally ill mother and an alcoholic father drug and alcohol abuse were a part of his life. Under the influence of both and in order to survive, Graham started to steal food, money, anything. Although his life is what America could grieve, because nobody needs to grow up like this; America should grieve for his death. When he was 17 years old Gary had apparently fired the fatal shot that killed Bobby Lambert. Although real evidence was never found, Gary was found guilty. In his trial, his lawyers were either too busy, not interested, inexperienced, or convinced that he was guilty, because they failed to interview those who could have plead him innocent, because they did not identify him as the murderer. Because of inadequate legal representation, on June 22 two years ago, Gary Graham was executed in Texas. “One of his lawyers has admitted:” I have serious questions whether we presented a fair trial and adequate defence. History The first juvenile execution in the United States of America was in 1642, when the states, or colonies, were not even united. In the Plymouth colony of Massachusetts, Thomas Graunger was executed. Since then at least 361 people have been executed in the United States of America for a crime that they committed when they were under the age of 18. People refer to the time between 1973 and now as the “last era”. In that era through August 2000, 17 men have been executed for crimes committed as juveniles. Of those 17 men one, Sean Sellers, was 16 at the time he committed his crime, while all the others were 17. Although they were all teenagers when they made the mistake that sentenced them to death, the actual execution was and still is 6 to 20 years later. From the numbers of executed juveniles as well as adults the state of Texas “leads” with the amount of people executed. The real peak occurred when George Bush became governor of Texas in January 1995. Since then over 120 prisoners were executed, several of whose cases left serious questions about the guilt of the executed person. Besides Texas, 37 other states include the death penalty in their system of justice. From those 38, 23 states, including Texas, also murder those who committed a crime while being a juvenile. Effects When the death penalty is used to punish, many questions rise among people. In the United States of America, the majority agrees that it was a necessity to enforce this law. Although it does seem that killing a person that is dangerous for society is the right thing to do to protect the society, the effects that the death penalty can have are astonishing. Jerry Mooney, waiting on death row, once reacted: “To condemn me to death solves nothing. To be condemned is to say my life has no positive value, I’m beyond correction or rehabilitation. That’s not true”. This one statement he made explains the government’s reason for practicing the death penalty. These kind of people are not able to live in this society. They are dangerous, and
nothing can make them better, so therefore they should die. But the history, and mental history of the accused juvenile Alexander Williams, who was facing the death penalty in Georgia, sheds another light on this reasoning. His story is very similar to that of Gary Graham. Only in this case his lawyer failed to convince the jury that Williams should not be executed because of his mental illness. He was abused throughout his whole childhood. “When he was toddler, she (his mother) struck him with cooking utensils, sticks, branches, and the spiked edge of her glass shoes”. Should his right ...
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nothing can make them better, so therefore they should die. But the history, and mental history of the accused juvenile Alexander Williams, who was facing the death penalty in Georgia, sheds another light on this reasoning. His story is very similar to that of Gary Graham. Only in this case his lawyer failed to convince the jury that Williams should not be executed because of his mental illness. He was abused throughout his whole childhood. “When he was toddler, she (his mother) struck him with cooking utensils, sticks, branches, and the spiked edge of her glass shoes”. Should his right to life be taken away because of something his mother had done to him when he was little? His story shows how much influence the government can have on the people. Because of the government being the one to justify something so simply as murder, the government is actually saying that a group of people can decide by the facts presented whether somebody should be killed or not. If Alexander Williams becomes convicted, he will be a part of the two-third black men who have to face death penalty for their crime instead of any other solution. This is significant because “although African Americans constitute almost half of all juvenile homicide victims, two thirds of the victims in juvenile death penalty cases are white. Since May 1, 2000, A child sentenced to death will get a lethal injection instead of being electrified. Although that may seem less painful, the story of a man whose execution was broadcasted on TV showed the opposite. The reason why nobody knows, maybe the executer was very nervous, but whatever the reason may have been, it took 18 whole minutes for the man to die. In the mean time he could feel the pain of the injection going in his blood, thinking every good thing he had done in is life didn’t count anymore, all that counted was that he was needed nor wanted in the society anymore. And his family had no other option, than to watch and cry. Causes Knowing all this information, why do people think it is necessary to use the death penalty to correct or improve society? Ernest van Den Haag, a death penalty supporter, said: “ Each case is different. While some are quite immature, others are quite mature.” He thinks that those boys who are mature and have been able to let the feeling of responsibility be a part of their life, should be punished, because they can be on the thinking level as many adults. Others think that it is only fair to want revenge. Those people think it is only fair for the family of the murdered person that the murderer gets murdered as well. According to those that is the way society should be handled; if I hit you, then you may hit me back. Although many don’t think that, they see the death penalty as a fair trial for the family and a good way of preventing the society from these people. But when one asks them what they would do if somebody would hit them, they would almost all say they would talk to a solution first. Then there are those who are more sensitive and emotional and think that locking up a person for lifetime is more cruel than killing instantly. “ Most murders are committed by very young people. Immunizing them against the death penalty means that they will be able to murder again in prison and out; further, the group most inclined to murder- male youths- would not be threatened with the most sever penalty”. Here are a couple of people who have been, or will be executed in the future two months. 09/01/02 TX Michael Moore, 09/01/02 AZ Kevin Miles (unlikely), 11/01/02 NC Charlie Mason Alston, 16/01/02 TX Jamarr Arnold, 24/01/02 FL Amos King, 29/01/02 OK John Romano, 29/01/02 CA Stephen Wayne Anderson, 30/01/02 TX Windell Broussard 31/01/02 TX Randall Hafdahl, 31/01/02 OK David Wayne Woodruff 05/02/02 FL Linroy Bottoson, 07/02/02 FL Robert Trease 21/2/02 TX Thomas Miller-El, 28/2/02 TX Monty Delk 07/03/02 TX Gerald Tigner. TX= Texas, FL= Florida, CA= California, AZ= Arizona, OK= Oklahoma. Solutions The world has provided different solutions, some are to replace the death penalty, others to make it fairer, so cases as Graham wouldn’t leave questions. The most important recent improvement evolved because of the growth of the knowledge of technology. New technology has produced a process called DNA testing, which I assume you have heard at lot about. With this DNA, tests show whether very personal property from the killer found on the victim, such as blood and hair belongs to the accused person. But this is also not always accurate. Sometimes somebody who has met the victim just before he or she was murdered could have left a trace such as a lost hair. To replace the death penalty some cases end up in lifetime imprisonment, or other punishments in which the victim has either a chance to prove its innocence or learn from what he/she has done. Critics like Victor R. Streibe, who is an opponent of the death penalty, would argue that the death penalty for juveniles does not act as a deterrent to them, and should be abolished. He stated: “Harsh punishments for violent crimes are only temporary band-aid solutions, with the only long-term solutions coming from cleaning up the neighbourhood, schools, and societal structures that continue to generate such violent teenagers.” Instead of investing more money in the actual execution, maybe it’s time to invest money in the neighbourhoods where it is necessary, according to Streibe. There are world wide and national organizations such as Amnesty International and ACLU who promote the awareness of the effects of the death penalty. They are against the death penalty and try to convince others to become so as well. Their organizations grow every day because of this awareness and people who support their ideas. To make people recognize what is really going on in the world they try educate as much as possible. Amnesty International, for example, is a part of the society lessons taught in Europe. In those lessons they learn how to be a part of society, and how they and others react to certain events. Teaching children is a very important since they are the future leaders. Other things such organizations do are protest, provide information on events and collect signatures. “The execution of a juvenile offender is contrary to fundamental principles of American justice which punishes according to the degree of culpability and reserves the death penalty for the worst of the worst offenders. By their very nature, teenagers are less matures, and therefore less culpable, than adults who commit similar acts but have no such explanation for their behaviour- adolescence is a transitional period of life when cognitive abilities, emotions, judgment, impulse, control, and identity are still developing. Indeed, immaturity is the reason we do not allow those under 18 to assume the major responsibilities of adulthood such as military combat service, voting, entering into contracts, drinking alcohol, or making medical decisions. A number of organizations urge that the execution for a crime committed while a juvenile is simply unacceptable in a civilized society”. This is a very important reason why the death penalty should be abolished. If not, the government should consider those major responsibilities of adulthood. Is death penalty causing pain or suffering? Today six different methods are used: hanging, stoning, the lethal injection, the electric chair, shooting and the gas chamber. 1. When a person is hanged, a rope is put around his neck and then, a door in the floor will open, so that the condemned will fall and die. If he is lucky, the length of the rope and his fall are exactly long enough. If so, he will break his back between the third and the fourth vertebra and death will be fast and painless. But most of the times the circumstances are not that good and the condemned will choke to death. Then it could take till 10 minutes before he dies, 10 very long minutes. Also, the sight of a hanged person is not that nice; the condemned his eyes will pop out and he’ll wet his pants. All together, hanging is quite painful, and the hanged people suffer a long time before they finally die. 2. Stoning is when the condemned is buried in the ground till his waist or his neck, and stones are thrown to his head. The condemned can not move away from the stones, and it takes a long time before he will die. 3. When lethal injection is used, the condemned lies on a stretcher and is injected in both arms, one real one and one for it the first doesn’t work. Two different drugs are used; the first one will paralyse all the muscles in the body, except the heart. After a while the condemned stops breathing. The second drug blocks all the impulses of the neurons to the heart. 6 to 13 minutes after the first injection the condemned dies. 4. An electrician of a prison in New York invented the electric chair in 1890. The condemned is made to sit on a chair and he gets electrodes with sponges with a salt solution on his head. He also wears a cap over his face. The first shock is short and hard, it makes the brains around 60º C. After that a long but weaker shock will disturb the heartbeat. 5. When killed by the firing squad, the condemned stands or sits on a chair and wears a cap and dark blue clothes. 10 meters away the gunmen wait, and they’ll fire when it is commanded. The condemned gets several bullets in his body, so that he dies faster. 6. In a gas chamber, the condemned is made to sit on a chair, while poisonous gas streams into the room. Because of the gas, oxygen can not mix with the blood, and the body chokes, cell after cell. With this method it will take between 2 and 18 minutes before the condemned actually dies. (4) With all the methods the condemned suffers a long time, even if it takes only 10 minutes to die, those 10 minutes will be the longest of that person’s life. Death penalty makes the condemned suffer, and that’s against the Human Rights. Amnesty International says that everybody is equal before the law, and that everybody has to get equal protection of the law. But in a lot of countries not all the people are equal when it is about whom deserves death penalty and who doesn’t. In the United States, prosecutors will ask earlier for death penalty against a black person than they do against somebody who is white. A recent investigation, held in Philadelphia (US) says that the chance that somebody has to be sentenced to death is four times higher for a black person than a white person. And while the amount of murders on black and white in the US is nearly equal, 82% off all the executed people since 1977 has been sentenced to death because of murder on a white person. This is a serious form of racism against all the black people, a social weaker group in the society of the United States of America. My opinion. It is not part of the government’s obligation to kill people in cold blood. Whether a person already killed somebody or not, the death penalty is a broader way of seeing what we learn as children to be wrong. You don’t hit back when somebody hits you, you try to solve it first, and then you seek for help if it doesn’t work. The death penalty is doing the opposite; it’s hitting back. Only this hit is so fatal, that the “victim” has no change of ever trying to do something good to you so you will forgive him for what he had done wrong once. And not one study has shown that the method of killing is more effective in society than giving them a change to do something right. In fact the opposite is true, because research suggests that the death penalty is not an effective way. 80 % of experts from the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Law and Society Association who did a study on the death penalty for juveniles “believe the existing research fails to support a deterrence justification for the death penalty’’. Instead the root of the problem needs to be worked on. As Victor Streibe suggested, the problem should be dealt with in the places where it is caused, families, schools and neighbourhoods. Those are the places that make the difference in a child’s behaviour and future life. Therefore more education should be provided, because education is a key to intelligence. In the upper schools, information about the death penalty with causes and effects, such as the Amnesty International program in Europe, would be a good start. Their subject would be to discuss the issues caused by the death penalty and without it, because they will be the future voters, they are the one who can make a change in this system. When Bush became governor in Texas, “he never used his power to grant a 30- day vote reprieve even not in cases which concerned a possible innocence”. Now Bush became president, think of what would happen to the USA. Keep in mind those numbers from Texas; what if you are suddenly accused of a murder? Bush isn’t going to save you. The government is supposed to set the right example for society. And by killing its children, it’s saying that it is ok to take revenge. The government should set the right example by not killing, because that is what executing is. Everybody deserves a second chance in life. The benefit of the government not doing so is that it shows the people of the United States of America they have a system of justice in which they can believe. According to Amnesty International Death penalty violates human rights. It violates our right of equality, our right to life, our right of protection against cruel punishments and it violates our right that gives us equal protection from the law. First of all, Amnesty International says that all the human beings on this planet are equal. But when a judge or a member of the jury decides whether or not somebody deserves death penalty, he or she has at that time, the power to decide about somebody else’s life. When you have that power, the power to decide whether or not a person is going to die, you put yourself on a higher position than that person. But the UDHR says in its first article that all human beings are equal, the same. If we are equal, how can we decide about such radical changes in somebody’s life at the same time?
