Ema Nevřelová
October
My mother grew up in communist Czechoslovakia. She would often tell me the story of her first official act of free will. During the first months of 1990, Amnesty International was collecting signatures to petition for the abolition of the death penalty in the former Czechoslovakia and, at the age of 18, my mother signed it. For my mother, freedom lies in the ability to act and to stand up for what you believe in. In her view, the value of a person’s life is too high to risk the possibility of executing someone innocent—she would feel partially complicit if she did not protest. Three months later, in May 1990, former Czechoslovak President Václav Havel pressured the government and the death penalty was abolished. U.S. citizens have not unilaterally pushed the abolishment of the death penalty; support for capital punishment has historically fluctuated. A recent Gallup poll demonstrated that only 53% of Americans favor the death penalty.
In Gallup’s research from 2022, there is an even greater disparity between Democrat and Republican party members: 35% of Democrats and 77% of Republicans were in favor of the death penalty. Unsurprisingly, typically “red” states such as Texas, South Carolina, Alabama, Idaho and many more have the death penalty, although it is not exclusive to states supporting Republicans. Meanwhile, California, a “Blue” state, still has not abolished it. But the current Governor of California, Gavin Newsom has put a hold on executions. There is no federal mandate on the capital punishment, meaning that the employment of the death penalty in the U.S. is determined at the state level. The State Attorney General has the final say, and if a prisoner wants to appeal outside of state, their only option is the U.S. Supreme Court of Justice—which does not review many death penalty cases. The death penalty also is also influenced by the forces at the federal level; it became infamous during Donald Trump’s presidency, during which a total of 13 executions were carried out—the highest number since 1896. However, apart from Trump’s presidency the federal death penalty is rarely carried out.
The Gallup research helps to step out of the narrative that the supporters of the death penalty have some inherent characteristics or evil traits. While there is a trend among different political parties, there is no consistent definition of a person favoring the death penalty. However, the indisputable fact of procedural and systematic issues make scrutiny over the death penalty all the more important, especially given the irreversibility in case of wrongful conviction. Recent news about executions of Travis Mullis, Emmanuel Littlejohn, Alan Miller, Freddie Owens and Marcellus “Khalifah” Williams in the span of a week brought such discussions to the forefront of the U.S. social media discourse. Being Czech, I was surprised that 5 executions in one week are in fact not the everyday reality of the U.S., as it last happened in 2003. The execution of Marcellus “Khalifah” Williams was publicly opposed, as some people believed him to be innocent in the murder of Felicia Gayle, for which he was convicted. His case highlights two key issues with the death penalty: the closure myth and systemic racism.
The closure myth is a commonly held belief that by executing the murderer, the family of the victim will get a closure. Surely, some families do, however the process of a murderer receiving a death sentence is lengthy and there is a lack of mental health and financial support. Often, it leaves the families of the victims struggling even after the execution, delaying the process of closure. In this case, Governor of Missouri Michael L. Parson, who appealed on certainty, indirectly used the closure myth by stating:“Withdrawing the order allows the process to proceed within the judicial system, and, once the due process of law has been exhausted, everyone will receive certainty.”
Given the external factors influencing the family (financial and health issues) it is not surprising that a study by Eaton and Christensen from 2014 concluded that co-victims (family members of the victim) “expressed their views on closure in various ways’’ and those“who did mention closure were evenly divided on whether they felt the execution provided closure or not.’’ This deconstructs the narrative that execution is the only way to provide closure for co-victims and while it can put their minds to rest there are more usually aspects preventing them from doing so.
However, the family of Felicia Gayle, the murder victim, approved, together with the court, for Williams to enter an Alford plea, a plea where a defendant can maintain innocence while accepting a plea bargain and allowing Williams to be re-sentenced to life in prison. However, the state attorney general’s office opposed and blocked the decision by appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. Presumably, when it comes to closure and justice for the family, it is not the family who decides, but rather the system does it for them without even taking the family’s position into account.
The second issue arising during Williams’ process of appealing the death penalty was the selection of a jury. In an emergency appeal made to the U.S. Supreme Court before the execution of Williams, his attorney declared: “Of the seven Black venirepersons (out of 131 in total), the trial prosecutor [St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office] used peremptory strikes against six of them. His reasoning for excluding one of those venirepersons, Venireperson 64, was that he “reminded” him of Mr. Williams. He thought the men looked similar and that boy had ‘piercing eyes’ (App. 89a).”
Later, the Supreme Court of Missouri found this reasoning to be race-neutral. A parallel can be drawn between the reasoning given by the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office of “piercing eyes”and of some white people complimenting black women’s hair while touching them without consent. On the surface it may seem innocent and “race-neutral,” but upon the addition of astriking imbalance of power, it becomes awfully clear that there are not many things in life that are race, gender or otherwise neutral. The selection process of jury pools is often based on registered voter lists or on driving licence holders, although other factors may apply. There is, however, no obligation to adapt mechanisms to achieve an equal representation of the community that the jury represents.
Looking at the American justice system and racism in general, a 1990 study on Death Penalty Sentencing concluded that a “synthesis of the 28 studies shows a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty […].” Furthermore, this study suggests that if a victim is white, the likelihood of the defendant receiving the death penalty is higher. This is disturbing on several levels including the fact that it implies the lives of Black people have lesser value when it comes to the severity of the penalty. The Innocence database is run by the Death Penalty Information Center, which records cases of people who have been sentenced to death but have been exonerated before the execution. Out of the 200 recorded cases, 108 wrongfully convicted people were Black, 21 were either Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Latinos or Asians. But these people are far away from being just numbers.
This becomes evident in the case of Timothy Howard and Gary James, who spent 26 years in prison for bank robbery and murder as they were convicted in 1976 and freed only in 2003. On average, there is at least one person wrongfully convicted every year. It is true that the list of wrongful convictions ends in 2014, but it would be naïve to expect that it is because judges suddenly became infallible from then on. The Innocent database does not include people who have already been executed but could potentially be innocent. The Death Penalty Information Center provides a list of people who were executed and are now believed to be innocent, although according to the Center: “Courts do not generally entertain claims of innocence when the defendant is dead.” These statistics and the real human beings behind them tell heart-wrenching stories of a system failure that is irreparable.
Even if we look at the cases of people who have been convicted because they were truly guilty, there are still aspects to the death penalty that make it morally questionable. Firstly, in the U.S., it is illegal to sentence a person with intellectual disabilities to death, yet mental illness is not included even though the American Bar Association states the following: “In short, the ABA finds that individuals with severe mental illnesses or disabilities present at the time of the crime should not be subject to capital punishment.”
This is an unsurprising reflection of how U.S. society still views mental health. Mental health issues are weaponized when convenient—in the U.S. context, young school shooters are often portrayed as anomalies to a perfectly functioning system of gun control, without considering or acknowledging the dire situation of mental health struggles among young people. There is also this narrow-minded approach leading some to believe that mental illness is only used as an excuse, where in reality living with mental illness can be challenging to a level that people who have never experienced it can hardly imagine.
The second problem is with the execution itself, as the preferred method of execution in the U.S. is death by lethal injection. There are recorded instances where the needle was administered incorrectly or the person executed was struggling to breath for tens of minutes to an hour before dying. Coming from the Czech Republic, a country which abolished capital punishment almost 35 years ago, the faulty procedures seem as vengeance, close to torture. Should society’s goal be to follow Hammurabi’s law “eye for an eye,” or should we let murderers sit with the horrors of their actions while not risking an execution of innocent people?
Williams’s case should be a reminder that the death penalty is not a punishment standing on its own, rather there are external factors such as racism, lack of focus on mental health and the potential for false conviction. Society that carries out capital punishment must think very carefully about the policy’s potential consequences. Taking an innocent person’s life is a grave enough reason to put someone to death, but shouldn’t there be accountability for those who sentence innocent people to the death penalty? The answer is not simple and even if the U.S. were to abolish capital punishment, it does not put an end to the debate about it. Circling back to the example of the Czech Republic, although capital punishment has been abolished, we have only recently (in 2023) gotten to a point where the percentage of people opposing capital punishment is higher than that of its supporters. Yet, support for the death penalty is at 42 % and had we not had the constellation in which the capital punishment was abolished, Czech people might have had to face the same moral dilemma the Americans are facing today. And while my mother does live in a society without capital punishment and does not have to battle her conscience, the polarization on the topic has not vanished.