My experience of the death penalty and capital punishment objectively began in October of 1985.  I say objectively because subsequently I was not fully and completely aware of what could be considered most of the ramification and consequence of having been sentenced to death until two or three years after I was removed to the Texas death row housing section of the Ellis One Prison Unit in Huntsville, Texas.

    I was tried and convicted for one charge of capital murder, which was 'aggravated' and made a capital offence by the murder of a second individual.  In Texas, any homicide adjudged to be murder can be made a capital offence punishable by death by the addition of a felony charge if that alleged felony was committed as a component or closely related aspect of the murder.  In my case the aggravating accompanying felony was the second homicide.  The victims in my case were my fiancée and a mutual male friend.  Details and account of the incident are outside the scope of this article, however, as they are for the most part a matter of public record.  I do not wish to seem deceitful of deceptive, but it should be understood that as I write this I am yet on death row and, contrary to politician's rhetoric and media hyperbole, the appeal for anything other than death at the hands of the government never ceases.  To that end I hope for understanding that there are details which must be kept from my persecutors.

    At the time of my conviction and sentencing I was numb, if only from the experience and trauma of the trial.  Must I mention that the loss of my beloved and friend? What with the presentation of evidence and statements of government witnesses, all hell-bent on seeing that I receive the death penalty? I can't think of any person in this generation who has not been slandered or libeled if not simply berated and belittled.  The hurt, as bad as it may be, is nothing in comparison to the effect of being made to sit and listen to such a monstrous conspiracy designed and with great effort carried through all for the purposes of killing you.  It's incredible to look at all the resources devoted to that intent and grasp that they're tying rope to hang you while you watch them.

    As I said above, I was not truly aware of the real consequences of having been sentenced to die at an appointed time, with knowledge that it would happen, long after arriving on what is known as death row.  I read a newspaper account of the punishment phase of my trial.  During a break in the proceedings, a newspaperman approached me and asked what I thought of the situation thus far.  I don't recall my response.  It wasn't included in the article.  What was included is a statement I made to the effect that it was tedious and that I couldn't wait for the day's presentation to conclude because I wanted to get back to the jail and watch the Daytona 500 on television.  Are these the words of a man understanding that his fate, literally, depends on  his attention and to some degree participation? If the shock and trauma of such an experience weren't enough, I also suffered the rifle shot and bullet passing through the front of my skull, traversing the frontal portion of my brain.

        Only later, having been here for some years, did I begin to realize the enormity of the death sentence.  Only later to this day, have I learned and am learning the realities of existence on death row.  The discovery that once the trial has completed and the pronouncement of the death sentence read into the record, your fate does not rest upon the hallowed theories of Justice but on the same shake as rolling dice or throwing lots.  Sure there's a loud clamor and shriek that each and every person condemned to death is given priority and the attention the gravity of the sentence deserves.  There is variably an added declaration that every person sentenced to death in this State is given the same opportunity (chance) for ensuring the sentence is both fair and properly rendered.  After all, how could a person not have received a fair trial and appeal when it costs so much money and takes so long to execute? Of course, statements like that are both superficial and completely beside the point when one considers the actual assignment for costs and delays rest not with the implied fundamental fairness of the system, but with the whimsy of politics and elementary manipulation of statistical numbers.

       Existing here is an education in life measured by death like no other.  Mortality and immortality have a special and keen meaning here.  Religion: Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and Islam.  Do people compromise themselves and their salvation by experimenting with different and various beliefs? When you hear the clock ticking your mind emphasizes the importance of time.

      What's wrong with capital punishment and the death penalty? I suppose if you don't know the victims; the condemned has been so vilified and reduced from that of a human person to nothing more than a malignant animal; after learning that the victim was no less an angel, did no wrong ever and, most importantly, was no more involved than you, as an 'innocent bystander' would have been had you been there, then nothing is wrong with it.

      There are currently five methods of Judicial murder used in the United States: Three states use hanging; five states use the lethal gas chamber; three states use the firing squad, and thirty-four states use lethal chemical injection.  The U.S. Military also uses lethal injection.  Electrocution is the sole method of Judicial murder in four states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Nebraska), each of the states which hang, shoot, gas or electrocute also authorize lethal chemical injection when the condemned is otherwise not qualified for the primary method.  Since 1976 (as of October 1999) one hundred and forty-four have been executed by electrocution; eleven by lethal gas; two by firing squad and approximately four hundred and fourteen have been murdered by intravenous lethal chemical injection.  On February 21, 1930 Eva Dugan was hanged in Florence, Arizona, her head was flung to the floor several feet from her body.  Chaplain Walter Hofman pointed to the bloody spectacle and said, "You, who believe in capital punishment, take a look -women first!" Eva Dugan's botched hanging led Arizona to change its method of execution from hanging to the gas chamber, which was considered more humane at the time.  Each method of Judicial homicide comes with its own unique horrors.

      Even lethal chemical injection, the current state-of-the-art method of execution, isn't without its problems.  The condemned prisoner is strapped to a stationary stretcher where a combination of drugs (chemicals) are administered intravenously:  Sodium thiopental sedates; pancuronium bromide relaxes muscles, collapses the diaphragm and paralyzes the breathing muscles; potassium chloride which stops the heart beat impulse.  Most experts believe that lethal injection, if done properly, is less painful than other methods.  However, it can be very painful if the chemicals are administered in the wrong order.  It's happened many times.  "Surely" they wouldn't intentionally administer the chemicals in such a way to cause the killer pain in his last breaths, but the very sadistic nature of a revenge motivated process makes one wonder at the objectivity of the executioner.  What of the cop killer or the person convicted of abusing children, or the convict who has made his last days as much possible a nightmare for his warders?

      Because licensed physicians are barred by medical ethics from participating in executions, the procedure is often done by inexperienced and incompetent prison personnel designated to the task by the chief administrator.  Condemned prisoners who have a lengthy history of intravenous drug use pose a particularly difficult problem for lethal injection because of the difficulty in finding a suitable vein through which to administer the deadly poison.  This has resulted in some prisoners being poked and prodded for nearly an hour, ultimately being forced to assist their executioners in finding a vein suitable for the lethal injection.

      In the ten-plus years that I've been on death row, I have had much time to reflect upon the death penalty.  Long ago I came under the moral conviction that capital punishment is wrong.  Not that I had much cause or reason to consider capital punishment, per se, as this is my first entanglement with the wrong side of the law.  But my religious upbringing taught me that killing is wrong, no matter what.  I wish to share with you my present thinking on why I am against capital punishment.  Other than the universal understanding and personal reasons we all have against killing; here are thirteen to consider and contemplate the axiom.  "There but for the grace of God, go I".

1)  It is a violation of God's Sixth Commandment; "Thou shall not kill" (Exodus 20:13).
Because we are all created in God's image, all life is sacred.  I agree with the U.S. Representative Henry B. Gonzales (Texas) when he says, "Murder is wrong, whether it is committed by an individual or the state."

2)  The example and teachings of Jesus Christ speak against the death penalty.  When scribes and Pharisees
brought Jesus a woman taken in the act of adultery, Jesus did not condemn her, even though adultery (as well as so many sins) was an act punishable by death under Mosiac Law.  Instead, Jesus told the scribes and Pharisees, "He that is without sin, let him first cast a stone at her."  (John 8:7).  After her accusers left "being convicted by their own conscience."  (John 8:9) Jesus told her, "Go and sin no more."  (John 8:11)

3)  It is a fact that our criminal Justice system is not perfect, however criminal it may be, and innocent
people have been executed.  Once this terrible mistake has been made, it cannot be corrected.  In a study covering a period between 1900-1985, it was found that over 350 people were wrongly convicted and sentenced to death; 23 of those people were in fact executed.  (From 1985 to the present many more people originally sentenced to death have been determined innocent, some are free now.)  Since 1970, 84 people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence.  For a list of the 84, see Innocence: Freed from Death Row, also Innocence and the Death Penalty: The Increasing Risk of Executing the Innocent see also Recent Causes of Innocence and Possible Innocence, continuously updated on the Death Penalty Information Center website http://essential.org/dpic/.  There is without doubt more innocent people still on death row awaiting the same biased trial systems which convicted other innocents.  On 25 January 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (in Herrera v. Collins) that CONDEMNED PRISONERS WHO HAVE EXHAUSTED THEIR APPEALS BUT LATER DISCOVER NEW EVIDENCE THAT COULD PROVE THEIR INNOCENCE DO NOT HAVE A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO BE HEARD BY A FEDERAL COURT.  It is now legal in the U.S. to execute prisoners who are innocent.  Mr Herrera was a friend of mine as was Jesse Jacobs who, on 04 January 1995 was murdered by the State of Texas despite not having anything to do with any murder.  A co-defendant confessed and absolved him. The Texas and U.S. Federal courts would not recognize the confession because rules of appeal would not permit it.  Prosecutors admitted Jesse Jacobs did NOT commit the murder for which he was convicted and executed.  See The Death Penalty: Texas and the USA http://www.inetport.concil-ai500/ .

4)  The death penalty is not a deterrent to murder.  If the death penalty was an effective detterent to the crime of murder, then we could expect to see that those states with the death penalty would have murder rates lower than states that do not have the death penalty.  Such is not the case.  Cesare Beccaria, known as the father of modern penal reform, states; "It is not the severity of the punishment which deters crime but rather the certainty of punishment."  Most murders are indeed committed while the perpetrator is under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol; intense external pressures, mental illness or a myriad of other extenuating factors and circumstances.  Most murderers do not think they will be caught, much less punished for their crimes.  Albert Pierrepont, who executed several hundred people as Britain's official executioner for twenty-five years, wrote in his memoirs entitled Executioner Pierrepont:  "It is said to be a deterrent; I cannot agree.  There have been murders since the beginning of time and we shall go on looking for deterrents until the end of time.  If death were a deterrent, I might be expected to know.  All the men and women whom I have faced at the final moment convinced me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder."

5)  The death penalty is not needed in order to protect society.  With our modern state-of-the-art prisons, we are well able to secure prisoners with life sentences.  The current prison over-crowding problem is not due to more criminals.  I would argue that it is a combination of knee jerk, reactionary attitude brought about by media hyperbole and political rhetoric.  With the end of the so-called Cold War, jobs have been hard to come by.  Imprisoning the lower class of society serves two purposes:  They can be temporarily employed building the prisons and can be legislated to occupy them by over-zealous political prosecutors; criminalization and inequitable punishment schemes, i.e. mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines and "Tough On Crime" wagging.

6)  The death penalty is not cost effective.  The most comprehensive study in the country found that the death penalty costs the state of North Carolina $2 million per execution over the costs of a non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of imprisonment of life (Dukes University, May 1993).  On a national basis, these figures translated to an extra cost of half a billion dollars ($500,000,000) since 1975 for having the death penalty. The death penalty cost California $90 million annually beyond the ordinary cost of the justice system - $78 million of that total is incurred at the trial level.  Florida spends an average of $3.2 million per execution.  In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years (Dallas Morning News, March 1992).  This figure does NOT include the cost of the federal appeals process where 50% to 70% of the death sentences are overturned.  By  comparison, the cost of housing an inmate in a single cell maximum-security unit for life is approximately $750,000.  As of 1994, Texas ranked LAST among the 50 states in the amount of money allocated to its citizens for social services.

7)  The death penalty is imposed unevenly.  Twelve states do not have a death penalty: Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesotta, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin.  In the 38 states that do have the death penalty, the poor and uneducated are most likely to be executed.  Over ninety percent of death row prisoners had court-appointed attorneys represent them at trial.  The death penalty is far more likely to be imposed on blacks than whites, and on men than women.

8)  It is illogical to punish someone who commits murder by murdering them.  We do not burn the arsonist nor rape the rapist.  To do so would put us on the same level as those we seek to punish.  Our society is founded on principles that are different than those it condemns.  Why then do we murder the murderer? George Bernard Shaw is reported to have said, "When will we stop trying to convince people to stop killing people?" I add, Why kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?

9)  The United States is one of three nations that has executed persons who were Juveniles at the time of their crimes.  Thirteen men have been executed for crimes committed as juveniles since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.  There are currently 70 death row inmates who were sentenced as juveniles.  They comprise about 2% of the total death row.(Juveniles and the Death Penalty, June 1999: Death Penalty Information Center, Washington D.C.)  Texas has by far the largest death row population of juvenile offenders, holding now 24 (34%) of the juvenile offenders.

10) In the United States it is legal to execute the mentally deficient and incompetent.  In 1989 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled permissible judicial homicide of persons with an IQ of 70 or below.  Johnny Ray Anderson (Texas), executed in 1990, was unable to tell the months of the year; Johnny Paul Pendry (Texas) has an IQ between 50 and 63 (based on the results of three separate examinations) and is now on death row; Michael Lee McBride (Texas), who, upon realizing that he had just shot two people, placed above the larynx in his throat the muzzle of a high power assault rifle, jerked the trigger and blasted a hole through the front portion of his brain, shattering the top of his skull.  His lawyer at trial never attempted to determine if he was cognizant and competent to stand trial.  Such brain trauma ordinarily takes 2-3 years to recover normal, full functioning ability.  Since 1976 to date, 34 offenders with diagnosed mental retardation incompetence were executed.  (Death Penalty Information Center, Washington D.C. September 1999).  Great Britain banned executions in 1964 after Timothy Evans, a mentally retarded man hanged for murdering his wife and child, was posthumously found to be innocent.  Nebraska reversed their law of executing the mentally retarded incompetent in 1998 stating that anyone with an IQ below 70 cannot be executed.  The law defines those with mental retardation as having "significant sub-average intellectual functioning as well as deficits in adaptive behavior."  A state senator declared, "This law should not have been necessary because no civilized, mature society would ever entertain the possibility of executing anybody who was mentally retarded."  (Associated Press: 07/1999)

11) Nearly all other Western democracies have abolished the death penalty without ill effects.  Even the nation of South Africa recently abolished the death penalty on the ground that it is cruel and inhumane punishment which does not deter crime, but rather cheapens life.

12) No credible study has ever shown that judicial homicide is a deterrent to murder.  When comparisons are made between states with the death penalty and states without, the majority of states imposing judicial homicide show murder rates higher than states which refrain.  Death Penalty states usually have much higher murder rates than neighboring non-death penalty states.  A survey of experts from the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Law and Society Association showed that the overwhelming majority did NOT believe that the death penalty is a proven deterrence or justification of judicial homicide.  Similarly, over 75% of those polled do NOT believe that increasing the number of executions, or decreasing the time spent on death row before execution would produce a general deterrent effect.  (M.Radelet and R. Akers, Deterrence and the Death Penalty? The View of the Ext,erts.1995).  A research report in Homicide Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, May 1997, indicates that execution may actually increase the number of murders, rather than deter murders.  In a February 07, 1997 report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (Part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), from 1950 to 1993 child homicide rates in the U.S. tripled.  The CDC compared the U.S. with twenty-five other modern industrialized countries and found that, 'the United States has the highest rates of childhood homicides, suicide, and firearm-related death among industrialized countries."  Almost all of those other industrialized countries have stopped using judicial homicide.  The report also showed that the overall firearm-related death rate among children less than 15 years of age was twelve times higher than among children in the other 25 countries combined in total.  The firearm-related homicide rate in the U.S. was nearly sixteen times higher than in all  of the other countries combined rate.  The firearm-related suicide rate was nearly eleven times higher.  There is a direct correlative association between rates of violent death and the social acceptability of violence.

13) The death penalty only feeds the cycle of violence by demonstration that we do not value human life.  The death penalty is vengeance derived and leads us, as a nation and a people, away from forgiveness, healing, and restoration.  Our young people quickly pick up on our double standard of condemning killing while condoning execution.  Is it possible that the overall escalation of violence in our society, especially among our youth, is related to the lack of reverence for human life which our society shows in part by its support of the death penalty?

    Each of the twelve jurors of my fate needed only one of the above- listed reasons to say, 'No, I won't kill."  One vote of no carries the same weight as the unanimous, "Yes, I will kill."

   Your questions and comments are invited and welcome.  Please write to me directly for a considered quick response.  I will respond to every inquiry I receive, letters written in German will take slightly longer because it must be translated for me.  I invite your sincere curiosity; I am here now to help you to understand and give your mind thought. 
                                                                                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                                                                          Back to top