THEY INSERTED a needle in Raymond Landry's arm. Lethal injection. Suddenly, the needle escaped Landry's arm, spewing toxic chemicals in the direction of the observers. Landry lived through the most unimaginable thing during the last 40 minutes of his life - a botched execution.
Landry was a convicted first-degree murderer, not necessarily a great guy. But his execution is a stain on us all. Executions, botched or perfect, are wrong. There are far too many possibilities for error in applying the death penalty. That's why Illinois Gov. George H. Ryan (R) has publicly declared a moratorium on all future lethal injections.
Ryan was alarmed that for every execution, one death row inmate had his sentence reduced or overturned. This was because the state had relied on insufficient evidence or had received new evidence or confessions by the truly guilty. That means that a large shadow of doubt underscores many executions.
According to a 1987 study conducted by Adam Bedau, a vocal anti-Capital Punishment scholar, 23 innocent people were executed in the last century alone. Another study conducted by the Stanford Law Review in 1987 places the figure at 25.
Imperfect justice and the death penalty don't mix. No person's judgment is infallible. Judges and juries are prone to make mistakes and they often do. Twenty-three innocent people killed by the state is evidence that the system has failed, that it is failing, and forever is doomed to failure.
A 1997 NAACP Legal Defense Fund study found that minorities and the impoverished are disproportionately found on death row in relation to their white and wealthy counterparts. Yet, a majority of all violent crime is committed by whites.
Clearly, due process of law is at stake. If everyone isn't treated equally before the eyes of the law, then capital punishment's crime is more than one against humanity. It erodes our system of justice. Blind justice is the only justice.
But why get rid of a system just because its parts might need lubrication? When a system takes away lives -- as with capital punishment -- there must be standards for upholding the system. Those standards must be compelling. The current ones are not.
The harms associated with capital punishment are clear. The benefits of capital punishment are nonexistent.
Most advocates reason that if others see death as a punishment, they will be less likely to commit crimes. But even if deterrence did work, the punishment would have to occur promptly, consistently and openly.
Promptly because no criminal worries what will happen 10 years down the road. Consistently because, hey, if everyone else's lawyers can get them off then what do I have to fear. And openly, that's the easiest of all: Changing a person's behavior is dependent on exposure to the very source of deterrence.
None of this is the case in our legal system today. With appeals and stays, an execution comes long after the crime and at a high cost to taxpayers. Consistency also is at issue. Not everyone who commits the same crime serves the same punishment.
Even more ludicrous is the fact that deterrence rests on altering behavior. But the death penalty isn't even conducted openly and criminals can't be exposed to the consequence of death.
Yet, if capital punishment were applied quickly, regularly and publicly, due process would fall by the wayside. Those on death row who now are exonerated, would have been killed in a rush to send a message long ago. That's impermissible.
Underlying deterrence theory, though, is an assumption that people will alter their behavior for fear of dying. Many criminals are irrational and commit crimes of passion. In a fit of passion, nobody is weighing the consequences of his or her actions. But even to the cold, calculating type, life in prison with chance of parole taken away by the state might be an equally strong deterrent. For many, being deprived of liberty inspires just as much trepidation as losing your life.
Gov. Ryan, however, has not taken the final and crucial step of repudiating the death penalty in Illinois. He is hesitant due to procedural and structural errors. But there is another side to the coin. The death penalty is state police power taken to a far extreme. The decision to terminate life never should be the government's.
The cynics will shout about repeat offenses among criminals released on parole. But to curb this, life in prison must actually mean life. With that, we can eliminate all of the superfluous court costs from death row appeals that outweigh costs of life sentences, saving taxpayer money.
Take note, Texas Gov. George W. Bush (R). Three executions a month is three too many. Virginia isn't far behind. Gov. Ryan is leading by example. Let's start following.
(Jeffrey Eisenberg's column
appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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