A Loaded Question – The Death Penalty

Growing up in Canada, the death penalty is something I’ve heard about but never really affected me.  None of my family were criminals (that I know of!) and even if they were, the death penalty hasn’t been around in Canada for years.

I always knew it happened in the States, I can still remember standing outside of my Junior High School when I heard some of the other kids talking about how Ted Bundy had been executed that day.   I knew what execution meant, I had a vague idea who Ted Bundy was… but I was a 14 year old girl and serial killers in the US weren’t exactly on my radar.   I listened as they all talked about how glad they were that he fried, as I’m sure many others were.  Then I went home and forgot all about it.

A number of times I’ve been around discussions regarding the Death Penalty, listening to people’s opinions and taking in how widely they vary.  For some reason I actively tried NOT to get involved, and I think it it was because I found it confusing and wasn’t sure what my own opinion was.

There is such a wide range of opinions, at least from what I’ve heard.  From people who paint them all with the same brush, seeing them all as a ‘Ted Bundy’ and want them all to fry to others who are not entirely comfortable with the death penalty but feel there has to be an ultimate price to pay so they accept it.  Some feel that it’s wrong to punish murder with murder and feel very strongly against taking a human life, while others are against it because they worry about the system and how often they get it wrong – hence executing innocent men and women.  There are also people who, while they don’t totally disagree with the death penalty itself, don’t feel that those on death row should sit in those conditions for years, decades even, waiting for their execution.

I’ve heard all of these arguments at some time or another but was always successful in avoiding forming one of my own.

Recently I met someone who is involved in an organization based in the UK called Lifelines.   This is a description from their website:

“It gives me life where sometimes life is hard to find, it lets me dream where dreams seem mostly to be only living nightmares.”

There are at present about 50 women and 3,500 men on Death Row in the US. They spend many years awaiting execution.
Almost invariably the prisoners are from poor backgrounds, suffered abuse in childhood and received bad legal representation.
The conditions in which they are held are harsh and dehumanising.
Many are abandoned by their family and friends and have very little, if any, contact with the outside world.
Consequently, letters can be a very real lifeline to them.

When she told me she was involved in an organization that act as pen-friends to death row inmates, I was a bit taken aback.  I was fascinated but a little freaked out at the same time.   I first thought oh god it’s one of those romantic things like you see in the back of magazines where inmates are looking to write to people, ugh.   Then I thought oh no, she’s all religious, this is a thing about saving their souls and no way she’ll want to be my friend once she realizes I’m about as non-religious as they get.

I was intrigued though and my curiosity got the better of me.   We sat there in the small bagel shop while I bombarded her with questions about it.  She was really good natured about it and seemed interested in sharing her opinions with me and telling me what this organization is actually all about.

From their website, on how Lifelines came to be:

LifeLines began in 1988 when its founder Mr. Jan Arriens – a Quaker – watched a BBC documentary, Fourteen Days in May. Jan was so moved by the words of the condemned prisoners who were interviewed, and by the dignity of the man who was to be executed, Edward Earl Johnson, that he wrote to three of the prisoners. They all replied, saying how much his letter had meant to them and how pleased they were to have their voices heard beyond the prison walls.

The more we spoke about it the more curious I got.  She told me how one supporter of Lifelines is Sister Helen Prejean who’s writing about her experience with inmates on death row was the basis for the movie Dead Man Walking.   The movie sounded familiar but I hadn’t seen it, so I filed it away in my memory so I could download it later.

From what I can gather, Lifelines does this not because they all think the death penalty itself is bad, but rather everything surrounding it.  From the astonishing amount of death sentences that later, due to new evidence or better legal representation, end up being over turned to the length of time they sit on death row waiting for their sentence to be carried out.  They are also concerned about the conditions they are kept in during this time.

Sadly, in some of these cases where the sentences are overturned, the inmate had already been executed.  In the case of Edward Earl Johnson, mentioned above, not only had the woman he was accused of rape said it was NOT him, but after his execution a woman came forward to the people who made the documentary claiming she had been with Edward at the time of the crime but when she went to give her testimony a white police officer told her to ‘go home and mind her own business’.

Since talking to my friend about this, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.   I have this need to really figure out how I feel about the death penalty and the people who are on death row.   I’m not sure why, I just do… but I’m not sure I’ll ever figure it out.  Probably because there are so many unknown variables.   I’ll never know what really happened with people, or truly understand or trust the United States legal system… I’m starting to think there really is no right answer.   That depending on where you live, who you are and how this all may have touched you personally, your opinion is your opinion and it can’t be right or wrong, can it?

On the one hand I think of someone like Ted Bundy.  Would he have ever deserved someone writing to make his day a little brighter?  How would the families of his victims feel knowing that someone out there was taking the time to try to make his life a little nicer before his execution?  Surely, he deserved to spend his time in solitude, miserable for the things he’s done.  Right?

But then… they aren’t all Ted Bundy’s are they?   Some are truly unfortunate for growing up in poverty with little to no parenting, sometimes mentally challenged in one way or another.   Not to mention lack of legal representation, influences of different legal officials with their own agenda and racial issues.   Some are people who for any number of reasons committed a truly heinous act, and some didn’t at all.

Does this make them not human anymore, though?  Should they be judged based on that one act and have it dismiss all their rights as a human being?   I’m not sure…  is the death penalty really about justice, or is it about revenge?  Is it right for us to punish taking a life with taking a life?  In the end, is it right for those who carry out the executions to do so just because it’s deemed ok by the government?

It’s all so confusing, isn’t it?  Well, maybe not to some who already stand firm in their opinions, but to me it is.  Since talking with my friend I have borrowed books from her, I’ve downloaded Dead Man Walking and have watched the documentary that first brought Lifelines into existence.   I cried at the end of both movies, but maybe that was the intention of those who created them.   Had they been made through the eyes of people who believed in the death penalty I may have seen things very differently.

I’m pretty sure if I spoke to most of my family and friends they would give the ‘fry them all’ speech and then think I was weird for even taking the time to think about this issue, let alone actually considering joining the organization itself… but for some reason it’s touched me and I don’t know why.

Am I crazy for wondering if maybe some of these people deserve more in life than they have?

I don’t know…