The Forum of Young Writers and Thinkers: On Capital Punishment

In 1608, the first person in the “newfound” land of America was executed by European settlers. He was a Spaniard who was accused of espionage in the original British colony of Jamestown. Since this unremarkable event, hangings, electrocutions, gas chambers, firing squads, and finally lethal injections have been killing criminals left and right, to “clean up the streets” and to “make America a better place.” The Death Penalty Information Center’s database relays that going back to 1608, over 15,000 Americans have been executed in some way, shape, or fashion. Of these fifteen thousand, some have been put to death for crimes as trivial as sodomy, forgery, theft, and, even as recently as 1964, one man was put to death for robbery, sentenced to die by the Alabama electric chair named “Yellow Mama.” No one knows for certain how many of these criminals deserved to die or how many were innocent; but, observing that The United States today is the only Western nation to still slaughter their criminals, one thing seems fairly obvious: America likes killing people.

First for a little background to the present situation in the United States: the issue of capital punishment has come before the Supreme Court several times in the past decades, and its institution has been upheld each time. On the forefront of this judicial battle is originalist Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia has gone public in several situations, posing his mildly callous aphorisms, like “death is no big deal,” and “you kill, you die; that’s fair.” But even putting these statements behind, for someone on the vanguard of such a hotly debated Rovian wedge issue, Justice Scalia has made some very outrageous claims. For instance, he asserts that the secular United States government “derives its moral authority from God ... to execute wrath, including even wrath by the sword, which is unmistakably a reference to the death penalty.” Not only does this irk the populace that believes spiritual motives should not influence our non-religious government, his statement also exemplifies his arrogance and portrays Scalia as some sort of religious vigilante, taking God’s will into his own hands and carrying it out through the legal system.

One other thing that Justice Scalia has continually asserted is that no innocent man has ever been executed. This issue has been a hotbed of legal disagreement and discussion, and now the state of Texas finds itself on the precipice of that debate.

On February 17, 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham of Corsicana, Texas was given a lethal dose of potassium chloride by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Weeks before, Governor Rick Perry had received a lengthy report that concluded that the convicted Willingham was only wrongfully so. Mr. Willingham was arrested and jailed for felony arson and murder, after police accused him of setting fire to his own house and killing his three children. The state forensic investigator ruled that due to the burn patterns discovered in the house, arson was definitively involved.

However, the science of arson investigation is seriously flawed. Since the trial, two separate and independent arson experts have come out and challenged the findings of the state. One of the two, Craig L. Beyler, stated that the state’s “investigators had a poor understanding of fire science.”

A special investigative committee, The Forensic Science Commission, was assigned to look closely at the details of this case and to examine the newfound evidence. However, weeks ago, Governor Rick Perry halted the committee before they could issue their results. He then replaced the chairman and various members of the board with his personal allies, and is now motioning to remove the “public” status of this committee’s findings.

Nobody expects the results to be disclosed until after the governor’s upcoming Republican primary.

A political stir is now in the works, and rightfully so. If Todd Willingham was indeed innocent, he would be the first executed man whose innocence was proven. This would exemplify how unjust the death penalty truly is, putting a halt to the appeals process and stymieing the legal framework of our nation.

America is the only nation who still has mentally disturbed people on death row. Our nation ranks in the top five countries worldwide with the most executions per year, accompanied by China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. Politicians and citizens alike need to take a serious look into the stark nature of capital punishment and reevaluate their understanding of right and wrong. This institution is a blemish on America’s reputation, for what justice is there in killing?