We Executed Five People In One Week. Can We Abolish The Death Penalty Now?

And Democrats should put 'opposing capital punishment' back in their platform, too.

Sep 27, 2024

OPINION: Florida Senate should pass bill prohibiting executions of mentally ill criminals – The Oracle — Robert Crow | Credit: vividcorvid - Fotolia

Last Friday, South Carolina executed Freddie Owens for the 1997 killing of a convenience store clerk during a robbery — the state’s first execution in 13 years, due to the inability to obtain the drug cocktail necessary for lethal injections. A witness admitted to having lied on the stand, stating that he “thought the real shooter or his associates might kill me if I named him to the police,” but they killed him anyway.

On Tuesday, Missouri executed Marcellus Williams, who was almost definitely innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. Texas executed Travis Mullis, a man described as having “profound mental illness,” for the death of his three-year-old son, after he waived his right to appeal the death sentence.

Yesterday in Alabama, Alan Miller became the second person executed by way of nitrogen gas — a procedure described by the United Nations as “an untested method of execution which may subject [the condemned person] to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or even torture” and which would violate “two international human rights treaties that the U.S. is bound by."

Of course, it is eminently clear that the United States no longer gives one single flying fuck what the United Nations has to say about “human rights” issues.

Also yesterday, Oklahoma executed Emmanuel Littlejohn for his participation in a 1992 robbery that ended in the shooting death of a convenience store owner. Though only one bullet was ever found, prosecutors first successfully argued that his partner, Glenn Bethany, was the one who fired the shot, and then, a year later, when Littlejohn was tried, argued that he was actually the one who did it. Only Littlejohn got the death penalty, though he has maintained all along that Bethany was the one who shot the store owner.

That’s five. In one week. For the first time since 2003. As of yesterday, we have now executed 1600 people since the death penalty was reinstated.

This comes at a time when there is actually far less support for the death penalty than there has been in years. It’s still a majority, but only 53 percent of Americans say they are in support of capital punishment — the lowest percentage since 1972, when only 50 percent said they supported it.

It also comes at a time when the Democrats have taken opposition to the death penalty out of their platform — and let it go entirely unmentioned for the first time since 2004. In 2008 and 2012, the Democratic platform criticized the way that capital punishment was administered, and in 2016 and 2020 actually called to abolish it. Indeed, Democrats came out strongly against the death penalty in 2020, with only one primary candidate being in favor of it (Steve Bullock of Montana).

Very much to his credit, Joe Biden was the first president to come out and say that he wanted to abolish the death penalty — which was quite impressive given that he had previously supported it as a senator. Kamala Harris has yet to say anything about it. In the past, she has said she is personally opposed to it and refused to pursue it at all during her tenure as District Attorney in San Francisco, despite immense pressure to do so after the fatal shooting of a police officer, but as Attorney General of California, she defended its continued existence.

Democrats have had a difficult history with the death penalty. While opponents of capital punishment have long tended to be Democratic voters rather than Republican voters, it took years for many Democratic politicians to get over whatever hell was wrought by Michael Dukakis’s entirely motherfucking reasonable, intelligent and morally coherent answer to a debate question about whether he’d want an “irrevocable” death penalty against someone who raped and murdered his wife.

I understand that people are perhaps doing some calculations here and figuring that coming out with a stance against capital punishment or saying anything about it at all is more likely to lose votes than gain them. But we’re not in the immediate post-Dukakis times anymore, and while I realize that Harris is trying to appear “tough on crime,” she’s missing out on a big opportunity to show people exactly who Republicans are and who Donald Trump is.

Like I said, more people oppose capital punishment than have for decades. More people are aware of the way innocent people are being executed or almost executed. More people are aware of all of the grotesque botched executions that have occurred because states can’t get the lethal injection cocktail drugs they need to kill people. And at this time, we’ve got Donald Trump literally calling for more executions. Hell, he’s calling for drug dealers to be executed! You know, because the “War on Drugs” was so successful and beloved by all Americans.

We’ve got creeps like Charlie Kirk and former Daily Wire writer Ben Zeisloft calling for public executions (Kirk wants kids to watch!).

And I will tell you, it’s not because they think it deters crime. We all know it doesn’t deter crime (Michael Dukakis was correct about that). It’s because they want to inure people to the cruelty and the violence of it all — they want people to care less about people, because the less people care about people, the less horrified they are to watch someone twitch and writhe and die, the more willing they are to vote Republican.

The curious thing about capital punishment is that, while a slim majority still support it, large majorities of people on both sides of the aisle actually oppose is as it is actually administered in this country.

Because it’s not something we talk about a lot, I think a lot of people truly do believe it’s reserved for “the worst of the worst” — the Ted Bundys, the John Wayne Gacys, the Albert Fishes. Situations where there is just absolute, extreme evil and no question of guilt. But when you poll Americans on how they feel about how the death penalty is actually applied … clear majorities on both sides of the aisle feel a lot differently.

In 2021, the Justice Research Group conducted a survey on just that, and found that 60 percent of Americans opposed seeking the death penalty against those with severe mental illness, 59 percent opposed seeking it against those “with serious intellectual impairment, for example someone who has an IQ score of 75 points,” 63 percent opposed seeking it against those with a traumatic brain injury, and 61 percent opposed “seeking a death sentence against a person who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after serving their country in the U.S. armed forces.”

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The more people understand the realities of capital punishment, the more disgusted they are by it. Just as Republicans can rack up more votes in a society where such injustice is tolerated and celebrated, we all, just as people, do better in societies where it is not. Just look at the few remaining countries besides us that still have the death penalty! Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, North Korea — not exactly the most free, liberated, tolerant societies in the world, are they? These things matter more than you think.

Again, we’ve killed 1600 since 1976 and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but people are still killing people — at a much higher rate, mind you, than most countries that do not have the death penalty. Our homicide rate is five times higher than Europe’s — so maybe, just maybe, we’re doing it wrong.

Also: the guns. Don’t get us started on the guns.

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