Cross-posted at DailyKos.
While we remember Pope John Paul II, who convinced a U.S. governor to spare the life of a murderer, Amnesty International notes in its April 5, 2005 report that more people were executed in 2004 — 3,797 people in 25 countries — and at least 7,395 were sentenced to death in 64 countries.
Which countries are at the top of the list? (more below, with poll)
From the BBC:
China carried out more executions than all other countries combined – at least 3,400 – the human rights group says.
The global rise in executions was “alarming”, said Amnesty’s UK director Kate Allen, who called the figures from China “genuinely frightening”. …
The US came fourth in Amnesty’s table of executions, with 59 in 2004.
Iran came second, with at least 159, followed by Vietnam with at least 64.
The 3,797 executions in 2004 were the second-largest annual total in the last 25 years, the organisation said.
And it noted that its numbers represented the minimum number of executions it could confirm.
“Many countries continue to execute people in secret,” Ms Allen said. ..
My friend J.J. Maloney, a great crime reporter, poet and novelist who died in 1999, wrote a fascinating summation of the history of U.S. executions and judicial decisions:
In addition to judicially imposed executions, from 1882 through 1951 there were 4,730 recorded lynchings by vigilantes in the U.S, with many of them being highly public affairs.
Even when miscreants were afforded a trial and executed in accordance with law, such events were often local in nature. For example, while states such as New York electrocuted condemned persons at Sing Sing’s electric chair as early as the late 19th century, in states such as Missouri hangings were conducted at local county jails as late as 1937.
“The capital punishment issue, J.J. Maloney observed,, does not exist in a vacuum — it is part of our national policy toward crime.”
This has taken place while crime rates have been dropping (in a period of unusual national prosperity). Like Missouri, a number of states now spend more money on prisons than on higher education.
Eventually the United States will adopt a national policy on the treatment of murderers. When that happens, we will harken back to the 1930s wisdom of Karl Menninger* – that we not waste good guinea pigs.
______
*J.J. interviewed and spoke with Menninger on a numer of occasions.
Gosh, yet another top shelf Diary Susan. Yet another one!
I’ve always hated that the US is up there with such moral giants as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, to say nothing about China.
I remain vehemently opposed to the death penalty, under any circumstances, for a variety of reasons. What I tell possible DP supporters is that some of those on Death Row might be mistakenly there due to possible mitigation of circumstances or shoddy or almost non-existent levels of adequate counsel or even outright innocence, but once you’re dead it’s irreversible. You have been permanently denied further justice.
On a deeper, moral level, I know it’s wrong to kill people. It does absolutely nothing in terms of dissuading other people from committing crimes.
When I used to work in law enforcement, some of my more ahem rustic coworkers would advocate stronger punishment for crimes, including speedier executions. I would always tell them about Saudi Arabia, which has just about the swiftest judiciary process and harshest punishment system on Earth.
Think about it. If you know you will get your hand chopped off (or worse), and no amount of lawyers or legal footowork can delay this sentence even for like a week, why do people continue to import large quantities of illegal narcotics into the country? And if Saudi Arabia’s extremely harsh and no-nonsense punishments fail to stop it, how can anything America comes up with stop it?
I guess in the history of the United States there are a few cases of people premeditating to murder along coldly objective lines. But all the murders I’ve worked in my life were based on a combination of intoxication (drugs and/or alcohol) and emotional duress. The murderers I’ve spoken to were not thinking long-term when they shot/knifed/bludgeoned their victim to death, they were only thinking about the immediate circumstances.
Once someone has committed a murder of course, it’s too late to take it back. But does killing the murderer really do anything for the community? It sure doesn’t dissuade anyone else from doing it. About the only “good” that it does, and I’m stretching to make this reach, is that the DA and police often get better confessions in plea bargains by offering to take the DP off the table.
That’s my two cents. Susan, again, top shelf Diary. I don’t know how you do it!
Pax
Have you written about your career in law enforcement? I, for one, would love to read it. And thank you.
Another must-read story from J.J. Maloney about the death penalty: An Evening with Tony. I was so moved by the story that I wrote J.J. an e-mail, and that began our friendship and professional association until his sudden death.
I tend not to write too much about my LE past. I wrote a brief article on it for Thanksgiving 2004 and got a lot of negativity on it.
I worked two kinds of crimes, one being “Major Crimes”, generally (adult) rape, murders, aggravated assaults and armed robberies. The other kind of crimes I worked were Crimes against Children, mostly molestations with a few stat rapes, non-sexual felonious physical abuse and incests thrown in to boot.
I don’t think people want to read about the horrors that I had to deal with. Seeing a baby with its genitals raw and pulpy because the baby momma burned him with a (clothes) iron. Or a three year old both anally and vaginally raped by a 65 year old man. Or a young college student who was abducted and serially raped, the details of which took over two hours to relate. Or a 9 year old boy who saw his whole family murdered by a knife-wielding cracked up maniac. Who wants to hear about this? Nobody I know in real life, that’s for sure.
I don’t know what the accurate statistics are for child molestation, but my gut call is that roughly half the children in America have been molested at some time in their childhood. And yet who wants to even know that? Or talk about it? Or do anything about it?
Pax
I have no statics to back up what you believe either, soj, yet my theory(not scientific)-gut feeling(and listening to a lot of peoples experiences with this) goes along with yours about the massive amount of abuse toward children in this country. I think its the 1000 pound elephant in the living room no one wants to discuss as if it couldn’t be happening except in rare cases which simply isn’t true. Thus people are sticking their heads in the sand on this.
Wonder why this country might seem rather screwed up? Well if every 3rd person walking around has been abused to varying degrees they are pretty much walking timebombs.
I, too, hate that the U.S. is in the top five in such company. At the risk of oversimplification, I keep thinking of a bumper sticker I’ve seen from time to time that pretty much sums up the death penalty: “Why do we kill people to show that killing people is wrong?”
I was actually surprised because they are usually in the top three. This is an improvement for the US.
The last chart I saw sometime ago also had the US at 3, and no don’t have a link so maybe this is some teeny tiny improvement?
I daren’t comment too forcibly on this issue. I would just ask you to consider your own reaction, even though you oppose it, from within a society that puts people to death and the reaction to your country’s practice from those in countries where it has been eliminated.
Strongly opposed you may be, to us a shudder passes as we think what your society does.
was seeing a poll.
In the UK it is simply not an issue. There are undoubtedly many who would support the DP if it were to become one, but the point that it isn’t.
It’s a political dodo. Thank God.
Political dodo. My new favorite phrase. Thanks!
Homicide is homicide. The logic of a State forbidding homicide and then prescribing it as a penalty is revenge. There are other arguments I could advance including executing the wrong person, ineffectiveness, and cost and time, but the underlying base logic of the whole thing is the true point. I’ve argued this for twenty years now, with both myself and others, and in the end it always come down to this simple logical base.
Excellent story, and it brings up all sorts of questions.
I oppose the death penalty, not only because I don’t believe the state should be killing its citizens, or because of the possibility of mistakes. I believe that it’s also very bad for the ones still living.
There was a poll taken in our most deadly state, Texas, where people were asked if they supported the death penalty. Well over 50% said yes. They were also asked if they thought that probably innocent people had been put to death. Again, well over 50% said yes. Talk about soul destroying.
BTW, I read somewhere (might have been here) that China is employing death vans. Seems they park outside the courtrooms and if someone is convincted and sentenced to death, they are taken right outside to the van, and given a lethal injection right there…
I think this is a good diary to go along in a way with the Terry Schaivo case and the whole ‘culture of life’ debate.
I don’t really know when I started really thinking about the death penalty as wrong but it came out of my belief at how racist and prejudicial the whole system was/is.The more I read over the years of how many people are innocent and in jail or on death row convinced me even more how horrendous the whole system is. The moral aspect aspect came later I’m sorry to say.
Even without the moral aspect of the death penalty it has been proven that it simply doesn’t work, period. That can’t be stated strongly enough. It obviously deters no one.
I still hear people(where I live) saying that the death penalty is the only way to get rid of all the scum and also that prisons nowdays are almost like country clubs and prisoners have it made-no kidding(wonder where that propaganda comes from)
The legal and prison system here is so incredibly screwed up that it will take some sort of earthshaking event to even begin to redo/rethink the whole system. And I have no idea how to even begin to help with that. Although good social programs and better lives for children would be a good start.