Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 3, 2006 19:15:33 GMT -5
Many factors are at work as South leads U.S. in number of executions
Concerned that executions were as arbitrary as lightning strikes, the U.S. Supreme Court halted capital punishment across the country in 1972.
Laws were rewritten to the high court's satisfaction, and in a landmark decision 30 years ago today, states were allowed to resume executions. Since then, 1,029 killers have been shot, hanged, gassed, electrocuted or fatally injected.
And since then, geography has had much to do with a murderer's fate.
Though 38 states now have a death penalty, one region carries it out far more often than any other. Southern states have executed 81 percent of the national total since 1976. Nearly 1/2 have been in just two Southern states: Texas with 368 and Virginia with 95.
Other parts of the country send people to death row, but rarely to their death.
Reasons for the death penalty's Southern accent and its implications are as contentious as nearly everything else about society's ultimate sanction.
In the past 5 or 6 years, the number of death sentences handed down and the number of executions have been decreasing, even in the South, due in large part to states adopting "true" life prison terms without possibility of parole.
So much so that Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, asserts: "the death penalty is becoming irrelevant."
"Almost none of the most notorious killers in recent history received the death penalty," he said. "Of those who do receive it, few are executed." he said.
The number of executions have dropped in Texas and Virginia, and death sentences are down in both states. Nationally, there has been a 60 % drop in death sentences since 1999.
In the past year and a half, Virginia has had one execution. In the past 2 years, it had 3 death sentences. However, execution dates have been set for 2 killers this month in Virginia. And Texas has executed 13 so far this year.
Dieter said geographic and other disparities make the words of one U.S. Supreme Court justice in 1972 ring true today: "It is impossible to distinguish the few cases that receive the death penalty from the many that are eligible. Such a punishment is arbitrary and therefore cruel and unusual."
Defenders say geographic disparity simply shows that the death penalty is used where the public and judiciary most strongly support it.
Why the South leads the nation in executions is a complicated question with no definitive answer, say historians.
Some point to a passage in the Supreme Court's 1976 ruling, Gregg v. Georgia, as a clue: "In part, capital punishment is an expression of society's moral outrage at particularly offensive conduct. This function may be unappealing to many, but it is essential in an ordered society that asks its citizens to rely on legal processes rather than self-help to vindicate their wrongs."
Christopher Waldrep, an American history professor at San Francisco State University who has written extensively about Southern history, says the "self-help" the court writes about is lynching.
The justices also wrote that retribution and deterrence are the two legitimate functions performed by the death penalty. But the high court acknowledged that research on deterrence is inconclusive, he said.
"It really all comes down to retribution, and that is the same imperative that animated lynchers," Waldrep said. "It's an important point that the same region of the country that led the nation in lynchings now leads in executions. . . . I think there is a connection."
Lisa Lindquist Dorr, a University of Alabama history professor and author of "White Women, Rape, and the Power of Race in Virginia, 1900-1960," also suggested that the use of the death penalty in the South might be an outgrowth of a historical focus on honor and retribution.
Jack Roper, a history professor an Emory & Henry College in Southwest Virginia, points to the inordinately large numbers of blacks who are executed and believes there may also a racial component. "We're perpetrating a kind of racial violence through this system that we have," he alleges.
Mark L. Earley, president of Northern Virginia-based Prison Fellowship Ministries, does not believe race is a factor or that greater use of the death penalty in the South is a legacy of lynching. The Republican was Virginia's attorney general from 1998 to 2001, a period during which the state executed 30 men.
He said he does not know why Southern states conduct the most executions. But he said he speculates that it reflects the sentiments of the population and their elected officials who are in tune with public opinion.
Joshua Marquis, an Oregon prosecutor and outspoken defender of the death penalty, agrees.
"The people in Maine don't want the death penalty, so they don't have it," Marquis said. "The people in Oregon want the death penalty, but they're not all that enthusiastic about it, so we put relatively few people on death row."
But that isn't the case in Virginia where the people, the elected leaders and the judges favor its use, he said.
"It is an expression of democracy and true federalism in the sense that these are the kinds of penalties that the citizens really want," Marquis said.
Earley also said he believes the more important question might be where are the people on death rows, rather than where the executions are taking place.
California has more than 650 on its death row but has conducted only 13 executions. Pennsylvania, with more than 230 on death row, has executed just 3. Virginia, which has just 21 on death row, once had more than 60 -- most of them since executed.
Dudley Sharp, a national death-penalty proponent with Houston-based Justice Matters, said polls have consistently shown that the death penalty is popular with the public throughout the country, not just the South.
He blames appeals-court judges who delay executions or fail to uphold death sentences for the limited use of the death penalty in some areas of the country such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California.
The only Pennsylvania executions have been "volunteers" who gave up their appeals. "The appellate courts in that state will never allow an execution," Sharp contends.
Sharp says prosecutors and defense attorneys are no better or worse in Texas and Virginia than they are in New Jersey or Pennsylvania.
Dieter, of the Death Penalty Information Center, disagrees. He believes one of the reasons the death penalty is more frequently successful in the South is because of the relatively poor quality of lawyers given defendants, particularly in Texas.
Marquis, who disagrees with many of Dieter's conclusions, does agree the number of death sentences being imposed in the U.S. is declining and that giving jurors and judges the option of true life sentences plays a large part.
But he said that the high costs of such prosecutions and the toll that lengthy trials and appeals take on survivors of the victims also are factors.
"It's not the Richard Dieters that have succeeded," Marquis said. "It's probably the lawyers that have . . . managed to make capital appeals an extraordinarily long, grueling process."
Marquis said there should not be a token appeals process, but a
consequence of a decade or more of legal battles is "prosecutorial and victim fatigue."
(source: Richmond Times-Dispatch)
Concerned that executions were as arbitrary as lightning strikes, the U.S. Supreme Court halted capital punishment across the country in 1972.
Laws were rewritten to the high court's satisfaction, and in a landmark decision 30 years ago today, states were allowed to resume executions. Since then, 1,029 killers have been shot, hanged, gassed, electrocuted or fatally injected.
And since then, geography has had much to do with a murderer's fate.
Though 38 states now have a death penalty, one region carries it out far more often than any other. Southern states have executed 81 percent of the national total since 1976. Nearly 1/2 have been in just two Southern states: Texas with 368 and Virginia with 95.
Other parts of the country send people to death row, but rarely to their death.
Reasons for the death penalty's Southern accent and its implications are as contentious as nearly everything else about society's ultimate sanction.
In the past 5 or 6 years, the number of death sentences handed down and the number of executions have been decreasing, even in the South, due in large part to states adopting "true" life prison terms without possibility of parole.
So much so that Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, asserts: "the death penalty is becoming irrelevant."
"Almost none of the most notorious killers in recent history received the death penalty," he said. "Of those who do receive it, few are executed." he said.
The number of executions have dropped in Texas and Virginia, and death sentences are down in both states. Nationally, there has been a 60 % drop in death sentences since 1999.
In the past year and a half, Virginia has had one execution. In the past 2 years, it had 3 death sentences. However, execution dates have been set for 2 killers this month in Virginia. And Texas has executed 13 so far this year.
Dieter said geographic and other disparities make the words of one U.S. Supreme Court justice in 1972 ring true today: "It is impossible to distinguish the few cases that receive the death penalty from the many that are eligible. Such a punishment is arbitrary and therefore cruel and unusual."
Defenders say geographic disparity simply shows that the death penalty is used where the public and judiciary most strongly support it.
Why the South leads the nation in executions is a complicated question with no definitive answer, say historians.
Some point to a passage in the Supreme Court's 1976 ruling, Gregg v. Georgia, as a clue: "In part, capital punishment is an expression of society's moral outrage at particularly offensive conduct. This function may be unappealing to many, but it is essential in an ordered society that asks its citizens to rely on legal processes rather than self-help to vindicate their wrongs."
Christopher Waldrep, an American history professor at San Francisco State University who has written extensively about Southern history, says the "self-help" the court writes about is lynching.
The justices also wrote that retribution and deterrence are the two legitimate functions performed by the death penalty. But the high court acknowledged that research on deterrence is inconclusive, he said.
"It really all comes down to retribution, and that is the same imperative that animated lynchers," Waldrep said. "It's an important point that the same region of the country that led the nation in lynchings now leads in executions. . . . I think there is a connection."
Lisa Lindquist Dorr, a University of Alabama history professor and author of "White Women, Rape, and the Power of Race in Virginia, 1900-1960," also suggested that the use of the death penalty in the South might be an outgrowth of a historical focus on honor and retribution.
Jack Roper, a history professor an Emory & Henry College in Southwest Virginia, points to the inordinately large numbers of blacks who are executed and believes there may also a racial component. "We're perpetrating a kind of racial violence through this system that we have," he alleges.
Mark L. Earley, president of Northern Virginia-based Prison Fellowship Ministries, does not believe race is a factor or that greater use of the death penalty in the South is a legacy of lynching. The Republican was Virginia's attorney general from 1998 to 2001, a period during which the state executed 30 men.
He said he does not know why Southern states conduct the most executions. But he said he speculates that it reflects the sentiments of the population and their elected officials who are in tune with public opinion.
Joshua Marquis, an Oregon prosecutor and outspoken defender of the death penalty, agrees.
"The people in Maine don't want the death penalty, so they don't have it," Marquis said. "The people in Oregon want the death penalty, but they're not all that enthusiastic about it, so we put relatively few people on death row."
But that isn't the case in Virginia where the people, the elected leaders and the judges favor its use, he said.
"It is an expression of democracy and true federalism in the sense that these are the kinds of penalties that the citizens really want," Marquis said.
Earley also said he believes the more important question might be where are the people on death rows, rather than where the executions are taking place.
California has more than 650 on its death row but has conducted only 13 executions. Pennsylvania, with more than 230 on death row, has executed just 3. Virginia, which has just 21 on death row, once had more than 60 -- most of them since executed.
Dudley Sharp, a national death-penalty proponent with Houston-based Justice Matters, said polls have consistently shown that the death penalty is popular with the public throughout the country, not just the South.
He blames appeals-court judges who delay executions or fail to uphold death sentences for the limited use of the death penalty in some areas of the country such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California.
The only Pennsylvania executions have been "volunteers" who gave up their appeals. "The appellate courts in that state will never allow an execution," Sharp contends.
Sharp says prosecutors and defense attorneys are no better or worse in Texas and Virginia than they are in New Jersey or Pennsylvania.
Dieter, of the Death Penalty Information Center, disagrees. He believes one of the reasons the death penalty is more frequently successful in the South is because of the relatively poor quality of lawyers given defendants, particularly in Texas.
Marquis, who disagrees with many of Dieter's conclusions, does agree the number of death sentences being imposed in the U.S. is declining and that giving jurors and judges the option of true life sentences plays a large part.
But he said that the high costs of such prosecutions and the toll that lengthy trials and appeals take on survivors of the victims also are factors.
"It's not the Richard Dieters that have succeeded," Marquis said. "It's probably the lawyers that have . . . managed to make capital appeals an extraordinarily long, grueling process."
Marquis said there should not be a token appeals process, but a
consequence of a decade or more of legal battles is "prosecutorial and victim fatigue."
(source: Richmond Times-Dispatch)