abolish the death penalty
Photo by Lee Hedgepeth / Tread
WE WERE MARRIED for two years. He was full of love, compassion, didn’t hold grudges or anything like that, quick to forgive, just an amazing man. Loved his family, not just us here, but his family there at Holman [Correctional Facility]. He’s not a monster. Kibby was my nickname for him: “Kenny” and my “hubby” mushed together. This doll I am holding became Kibby Bear. It’s made from his pants. One of the guys [on death row] made it and dyed it green because that’s my favorite color. It’s got a lock of Kenny’s hair in it. It helps me feel close to him.
ON MARCH 13, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an order issuing a moratorium on the state’s death penalty—providing a reprieve from execution for 737 people on death row. Newsom cited as reasons that the ultimate penalty provides no public safety benefit and has no value as a deterrent. As someone who has worked as a public defender inside the criminal justice system for 30 years, I applaud the humanity and compassion of his decision.
While the number of countries that employ the death penalty dwindles, the United States and several others still enforce it. Despite strong empirical evidence to the contrary, we are led to believe capital punishment is reserved for the “worst of the worst” and that it is supported by victims and law enforcement alike. Leaving aside that 156 people on death row nationwide have been exonerated since 1973, the death penalty is discriminatory in its application and in the selection of those whom the state seeks to kill. It is largely sought because of the economic status of the defendant, the race of the victim and the defendant, and where the crime took place, not because of the circumstances of the offense.
Katherine Welles / Shutterstock.com
ON JUNE 29, death penalty abolitionists gathered for a four-day fast and vigil on the steps of the Supreme Court. The fast began on the anniversary of the 1972 decision that struck down the death penalty as unconstitutional and ended on the anniversary of the court’s 1976 decision to reinstate it. These activists serve as witnesses to the full arc of the political climate in which the death penalty exists in the United States.
There were signs a year ago that the death penalty in the U.S. was on its last legs. More recently, capital punishment is resurging, a shift fueled by politicians projecting fear on an anxious public. But there is hope.
ON A COOL NIGHT in spring 2006, I knelt with a half-dozen friends on the driveway of North Carolina’s maximum-security prison. When officers came to inform us we were trespassing, we asked if they would join us in prayer against the scheduled execution of Willie Brown. Though one officer thanked us for doing what he could not, we were arrested and carried off to the county jail. Willie Brown died early the next morning.
But this isn’t an article about the death penalty.
At the county jail that evening nearly a decade ago, I was fingerprinted, strip-searched, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, and processed into the general population of an overcrowded cell block. When I walked onto the block, I was greeted almost immediately by a 20-something African-American man who asked me, “What the hell are you doing here?” As I summarized the events of the previous evening that had led to my arrest, he decided I was teachable. “You wanna know how I knew you weren’t supposed to be here?” he asked. “’Cause everybody else in here I knew before they got here. We’re all from the same hood.”
“They only kill people like us,” my teacher at the county jail told me that day. “The train that ends at death row starts here.”
Scott Dekraai's mug shot after his arrest in the Seal Beach salon slayings.
Tony Rackauckas, Orange County District Attorney, held a press conference to announce his intent to seek the death penalty for Scott Dekraai, who killed his ex-wife and seven others at Salon Meritage in Seal Beach on Oct. 12.
“There are some cases that are so depraved, so callous, so malignant that there is only one punishment that might have any chance of fitting the crime," said Rackauckas. “When a person, in a case like this, goes on a rampage and kills innocent people in an indiscriminate bloody massacre, I will of course seek the death penalty.”
He added, “This is the only way our society can get anything approaching justice for the victims, their families, the town of Seal Beach, and the larger community.”
If justice means putting Dekraai on a gurney and executing him, the victims, their families and everyone else hoping for that outcome should face the cold hard fact that they are in for a long wait.