Oliver Tuanis writes, “When Oklahoma reinstated the death penalty after a twenty-five-year moratorium, murders increased.” [“Dead Serious,” March] Doesn’t that statement at least deserve a footnote that the Oklahoma City bombing occurred after the reinstatement? How can we take anyone seriously who omits such a relevant fact? The writer also cites the fact that “108 people have been sentenced to death for crimes they were later proven not to have committed” for the assertion that the system does not work. In my opinion, that statistic proves that the system does work. Show me the evidence of the people actually put to death for crimes they didn’t commit. Furthermore, it is worth noting that those 108 would have languished in prison for life if not for the fact that the specter of death garnered them extra attention. The alleged racist application is perhaps best disproved by the fact that the author cites no statistics showing minorities receive a disproportionate share of death warrants. Instead, the author claims that the death penalty is disproportionately meted out to those who perpetrate their crimes on whites. How this statistic is calculated is unclear. There are approximately 350 percent more white people than black people in this country, so if the likelihood of being a victim is spread evenly over the races, one would expect that statistical disparity to exist. Even if the methodology was more sophisticated than it appears, it is folly to try and claim all crimes are identical. A substantial number of black murder victims are the result of gang conflict. While the circumstances might warrant a capital charge, the passions are not likely to rival those when a completely innocent woman is kidnapped and murdered. I respect the opinions (though rarely the facts) of those who oppose the death penalty. Personally, I favor it and I’ll tell you why. I don’t care if it doesn’t deter crime, if it’s more expensive, or anything else. People who commit such crimes are a stain on our society. Viewing the situation from the perspective of a non-perpetrator and a non-victim, I want the death penalty because it gives me a sense that there is justice. My rationale is admittedly visceral, but at least I haven’t tried to prop it up with fuzzy math.
Robert Gust
Minneapolis
Oliver Tuanis responds: The study of the Oklahoma murder rate covered the period 1989-1991. The Oklahoma City bombing occurred in 1995. If there were any deterrent effect to the death penalty, it should be easily observable in Texas, where there are the most executions by far. The murder rate there has stayed relatively constant for the last several years. As for the stats on racism, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund study completed in 2003 found that, in cases where an execution has occurred since the restoration of the death penalty, more than eighty percent of the murder victims are white, even though nationally only fifty percent of all murder victims are white. (The likelihood of being a victim is decidedly not in proportion to one’s race, as Mr. Gust guesses for the purpose of his argument.) So, if the victims are equally likely to be white or not, yet the killers of whites are four times as likely to be executed—well, you figure it out. Maybe, as Mr. Gust implies, the white victims are more “innocent” than the non-white, although to me, it would be hard to find a more innocent victim than Tyesha Edwards, an eleven-year-old African-American girl who was sitting in her living room doing her homework when she was shot dead. I guess she was guilty of living in a worse neighborhood than most white people. Finally, Mr. Gust makes the most bizarre assertion I’ve heard in a long time: that the 108 exonerated people released from death row “proves the system does work,” because of the “extra attention” they got. “Show me the evidence of the people actually put to death for crimes they didn’t commit,” he says. To do that, I’d have to do some more digging—literally, I’m afraid.
Editor’s note: The Death Penalty Information Center has identified five men executed since 1992 whose convictions have since been called seriously into question. The DPIC points out that it’s impossible to know how many more wrongly accused prisoners may have been put to death, since “Courts do not generally entertain claims of innocence when the defendant is dead.”