America is now severely out of step with the rest of the industrialized world on the issue of capital punishment. The United States is one of only four industrialized democracies that allows capital punishment, the others being Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. But South Korea has a moratorium on them. In 2011, the United States was the only country carrying out executions in the G8 countries or in the Western Hemisphere. Worldwide, forty countries allow capital punishment, though in most, it is a rare punishment. Only China, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia execute more people than the United States. The worldwide trend is towards the punishment dying out.
But there are countries that buck the trend. In December 2014, Pakistan ended its moratorium on executions, following a terrorist attack on a school in Peshawar. Islamic fundamentalists massacred 149 people, including 133 children, and the government hit back immediately by reintroducing the death penalty for terrorist offenses. Within a week, six men had been hanged, including five convicted of attempting to assassinate the military ruler of the country, Pervez Musharraf, in 2003. Roughly five hundred more were scheduled to hang in the coming months, which would put Pakistan in second place behind China on the number of executions carried out.
Within the United States, attitudes vary from state to state.
Since the moratorium was lifted in 1976, Kansas, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York have not performed any executions, and four states (Pennsylvania, Oregon, Connecticut, and New Mexico) only allow executions if the inmate volunteers for that punishment. Only seven have in close to thirty years. Two states (South Dakota and Idaho) ended de facto moratoriums in the past few years, but executions in these states are rare.
Nevada has executed twelve prisoners in the modern era, of whom eleven waived their right to appeal. Both Kentucky and Montana have executed two prisoners each against their will and one each voluntarily. Colorado and Wyoming have only executed one prisoner each in the past thirty years.
Several states have imposed temporary moratoriums, including Maryland, Florida, North Carolina, California, Kentucky, Washington, Oregon, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Tennessee, and Nebraska. These moratoriums have lasted from months to years. Some have been imposed because of concerns over the death penalty; others because of concerns over a shortage of the drugs required for lethal injection.
On March 15, 2013, Maryland voted to repeal the death penalty, becoming the sixth state in six years to abolish capital punishment.
But there are states where they have embraced the needle with a vengeance. Texas leads the way, executing 517 people (more than a third of the total) since the moratorium was lifted. Strangely, Texas was not a big death penalty state before the moratorium. Virginia and Oklahoma are next, at 110 each, as of October 2014. So three states account for well over half the total. Florida and Missouri fall short of a hundred but are in the high double digits. Of the thirty-eight states that have allowed executions post-Furman, only four have not used the punishment in the past forty years. The Federal Government has executed three people in that time, showing that they are still willing. This will become relevant when the Boston Marathon bombers go to trial—they are facing capital charges in a Federal Court situated in a state that does not allow executions.
Currently thirty-two states have execution on the statutes, and eighteen have removed it permanently as an option. Since the penalty was reinstated in 1976, 1,389 convicted murderers have been executed, of whom fifteen were female. The racial profile of those executed has changed from the days when racial factors crept in to the sentencing process. Now that the penalty comes in for intense scrutiny, more than half those executed are white, while roughly a third are black. The rest are a mix of other ethnic groups. This does not accurately reflect the racial makeup of America, but it comes closer than it did in the pre-moratorium days.
Lethal injection has virtually become the standard method of execution—with 87.3 percent of the total having been by lethal injection, and that has risen as the years have passed. Of the last 758 executions, all but ten were by lethal injection. The electric chair has been the second most popular method, though it accounts for less than 12 percent of the total. The rest have been hanging, gas chamber, and firing squad.
The anti-death penalty movement waxes and wanes in terms of popularity, but is growing. Many influential organizations are behind the movement, including Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Changes have happened; juveniles and the mentally ill can no longer be executed. Each case comes under intense scrutiny.
Public opinion is very divided on the topic, with 65 percent of Americans supporting the penalty, and 31 percent who are opposed to it. In fact, half of those in favor of the penalty don’t believe it is being applied often enough. Worldwide support for the death penalty (which is not allowed in most countries) runs at about half the population, lower than support in the United States, but not substantially so.
With support quite high in the United States, executions will continue to happen. But the frequency has fallen sharply from the peak days of the late nineties. In 1999, ninety-eight people were executed across the country—two a week. Now it is down to roughly forty a year.
Barring a massive change in public opinion, what will end the death penalty is the cost—both human and financial. Prosecuting a death penalty case costs roughly four times what it costs to prosecute a non-capital murder case. California has spent $4 billion on the death penalty since 1978, a massive drain on a cash-strapped state. In Maryland the average death penalty case costs $3 million. Florida spends more than $50 million a year above what it would cost to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment for first-degree murder. Working the figures, it costs Florida $24 million for each execution, money that could be saved by holding a prisoner for life without parole. In Texas a death penalty case typically costs $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single high security cell for forty years.
Although the financial costs can be worked out, the human cost is not calculable. The cost comes in a number of ways. First, there is the horror of the execution chamber itself. Botched executions repulse even supporters of the death penalty (unless they see the sign of the cross in the blood from burst blood vessels!). The other cost is even harder to bear and harder to justify. It is the certainty that innocent men and women have been, and continue to be, executed. If one in twenty on death row is innocent, and if America really has executed seventy innocent people since 1976, that is a cost that will eventually come to be seen as too high for a civilized society to bear.
Great public tragedies such as school shootings, serial killings, and acts of terrorism, can temporarily increase support for the death penalty, as happened in Pakistan. But the problem of innocence won’t go away.
A gambling man would be wise to bet on executions dwindling over the next fifty years and the death penalty being completely removed from the United States some time during the current century.
The odds are less sure on whether we will see Old Sparky switched on for one final encore during that period. Only time will tell if Robert Gleason was the last to sit in the famous hot seat.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Abbott, Geoffrey
Amazing True Stories of Female Executions
Aynesworth, Hugh and Stephen Michaud
Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer
Brandon, Craig
The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History
Cahill Jr., Richard T.
Hauptmann’s Ladder: A Step-by-Step Analysis of the Lindbergh Kidnapping
Elliot, Robert and Albert Beatty
Agent of Death: The Memoirs of an Executioner
Essig, Mark
Edison and the Electric Chair—a Story of Light and Death
Mandery, Evan J.
&n
bsp; Capital Punishment in America: A Balanced Perspective
Moran, Thomas
The Executioner’s Currently – Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair
Rule, Ann
The Stranger Beside Me
Turkus, Burton B. and Sid Feder
Murder Inc: The Story of the Syndicate
Wexley, John
The Judgement of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Periodicals and Newspapers
Birmingham News
Bombay Gazette
Boston Globe
Buffalo Courier
Cincinnati Enquirer
Commercial Advertiser
The Cork Examiner
Daily Item
Daily Mirror
Daily News
Free Society
Gainesville Sunday
Houston Chronicle
The Lancet
Miami Herald
New York Herald
New York Times
North Carolina Star News
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pittsburgh Press
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States
Southwest Missourian
St Petersburg Times
The Tennessean
Times Manila
Weekly Messenger
The World
Websites
www.murderpedia.com
www.deathpenaltyinfo.org
www.innocenceproject.org
INDEX
Abbandando, Frank 156–158
ACLU 132, 139, 217
Aikens v. California 116
amendment, eighth 5, 116, 124, 201, 206, 232
amendment, fifth 138
amendment, fourteenth 79, 116, 118, 232
Anastasia, Albert 154–156, 159–161
Aquino y Payumo, Eduardo 197–199
Arkansas 72, 110, 244, 246
Atkins v. Virginia 205–207
Atkins, Daryl 206
atomic bomb 98, 135, 137, 139, 141
Auburn State Prison 56, 60–62, 67, 72–73, 193
Autry, James 218
Beach, Dr. Wooster 16
Beck, Martha Jule 107
beheading 19, 20–23, 98, 217
Belote, Ida 90–92
Biros, Kenneth 220
Blackmun, Justice Harry 118, 233
Bleyer, Dr. Julius Mount 34, 216
blowing from a cannon 19, 20, 23–24
Branch v. Texas 116
Brennan, Justice William 117
Britain 7, 9, 16, 39, 88, 216–217
British Medical Association 217
Brooks, Charles Jr. 35, 218
Broom, Romell 223
Brown, Harold 50–56, 61
Brown, Ray 90
Buchalter, Louis 154–157, 159
Buell, Robert 109
Bundy, Ted 108, 141–149, 158
Burger, Chief Justice Warren E. 118
Burger, Christopher 207
burning 6, 8, 19, 20, 25–27
Bush, Jeb 108, 221
Byrd, James Jr. 110–111
California 115–116, 124, 205, 246, 248
Canal y Sevilla, Rogelio 197
Capone, Al 154, 156, 170
Chapman, Jay 34, 217, 221
Chapman Protocol 217
China 35–36, 146, 164, 209, 245
Christian, Virginia 90–94
Cockran, William Bourke 60–61
Coker v. Georgia 202
Coker, Ehrlich Anthony 202–203
Colorado 113–115, 144–147, 150, 179, 246
Connecticut 108, 246
Coppola, Frank J. 238
Costello, Frank 154, 160
Crowley, Francis “Two Gun” 106–107
current, alternating 18–19, 39, 41, 44–45, 47–50, 52, 54, 98
current, direct 19, 41, 44–45, 48
Czolgosz, Leon 188–195
Dale, Sir Thomas 8
Dannemora 56, 72–73
Davis, Allen Lee 108, 241
Davis, Edwin 61, 64–65, 68, 70, 84, 180, 195, 237
Day O’Connor, Justice Sandra 233
Death Penalty Information Center 242
death penalty, cost of 248
Deering, John 244
Deutsch, Dr. Stanley 217
Devereaux, John 94
Diaz, Angel 221
Dockery, Hascue 96
Douglas, Justice William 117
Dunkins, Horace Jr. 239
Duty, John David 223
Edison, Thomas 18–19, 39, 41, 44–49, 51–55, 61, 66, 69–71, 98–99, 102–103
Electic chair
development 16, 17, 19, 44, 52–56
first 61, 72,
nickname x, xii, 2, 52, 55, 67–68, 73–75, 77–78, 81, 95, 135, 136, 154, 156, 172, 195, 215, 217, 237, 248,
pain of 51, 61, 63–65, 70–71, 79, 140, 199, 238–241
procedure xi, 64–65, 70, 84, 88, 180
states using viii, 35, 37, 71–72, 73, 93, 242,
Electrical Death Commission, the 15–43, 18, 23, 245
Elliott, Robert G. 94, 95
Enmund v Florida 204
Enmund, Earl 204–205
European Union 222
Evans, John 238
Evans, Wilbert Lee 240
Feguer, Victor 109
Fell, Dr. George E. 39–40, 65
felony murder 178, 204–205, 213
Fernandez, Raymond 106–107
firing squad 5–6, 31, 35–37, 105, 132–133, 196, 217, 244, 247
Fish, Albert 161–167
Florida 1, 35, 106, 108, 121–128, 145–146, 149, 203–204, 207, 217, 221, 239, 240–241, 244, 246, 248
Francis, Willie 75–81
Frank, Daniel 6
Franklin, Benjamin 10, 43
Fuchs, Klaus 137
Fugate, Caril Ann 183–187
Furman, William Henry 115–119, 122–132, 201–202, 217, 228, 246
Futch, Judge Danial “Maximum Dan” 239
Galleani, Luigi 175
gallows 6–8, 11–12, 17, 29–31, 65, 72–73, 76, 242
garrote 12, 16, 18–20, 27–30, 195–196
gas chamber 32–34, 37, 113–115, 186, 216, 244, 247
General Electric 39, 45, 52
Gerry, Edridge T. 18,
Gilmore, Gary Mark 131–133, 201, 217
Gleason, Robert vii–viii, ix–xii, 248
Godfrey v. Georgia 211–212
Godfrey, Robert 211
Goldson, Charles 94
Goldstein, Martin 157–159
Gomez, Jose y 197
Graunger, Thomas 88
Greenawalt, Randy 205
Greenglass, David 137–138, 141
Gregg v. Georgia 122, 125–126, 129, 131, 201, 218
Gregg, Troy Leon 121–122, 125–126, 129–130
Gregory, Menas 166
Gruesome Gertie 77–78
guillotine 12, 16, 18–23, 29, 65, 94, 98, 195, 245
Hahn, Anna Maria 149–153
Hammurabi, code of 2
hanging 5–8, 11–12, 15–21, 24, 28–31, 34–37, 43, 51, 62, 65, 71, 75, 81, 98, 101–102, 124, 132, 196, 216–217, 222, 237, 244, 247
Hauptmann, Brumo Richard 107, 167–174
Herrera v. Collins 229–235
Herrera, Leonel Torres 231–233
Hinlein, Edward 94
Holmes v. South Carolina 210–211
Holmes, Bobby Lee 210
Holton, Daryl 242–244
Hospira 222
Houdini, Harry 72–73, 131
Hover, Dow 73
Howard, James 97
Hudson, Ralph 68–69, 108
Hulbert, John 180
Humes, Edgar 94
hung, drawn and quartered 3, 21
Idaho 147, 246
Indiana 72, 108, 238
innocence 111, 119, 210, 224–235, 248
Innocence Project 227
Iowa 109
Iran 38,
209, 245
Iraq 245
Jackson v. Georgia 116, 218
Jacobs, Sunny 239–240
Japan 19, 245
Jefferson, Thomas 9
Jon, Gee 33–34
Jurek v. Texas 122, 125
Jurek, Jerry Lane 122, 125, 128–129
Kansas 246
Kemmler, William 57–67, 69, 72, 215
Kendall, George 5–6
Kennedy v. Louisiana 203
Kennedy, Patrick O’Neal 203
Kentucky 71, 95, 208, 244, 246
Kiefer, Richard 108
Kloepfer, Elizabeth 142, 144–145
Lansky, Meyer 154
Lawson, Milford 96
lethal injection viii, 32–37, 73–74, 108–110, 113, 205, 207, 215–224, 233, 235, 238, 242–247
Lincoln, Abraham 10–11
Lindbergh, Charles 167–170
Lindbergh, Charles Jr. 107, 169, 171, 173
Lockett v. Ohio 209–210
Lockett, Sandra 209–210
Lockett, Clayton 223
Louisiana 76–77, 80, 106, 122–125, 128, 203, 207, 246
Love, Governor John Arthur 114
Luciano, Lucky 154
lynching 7, 12, 27, 87, 98
Madeiros, Celestino 179, 181
Mafia 154–156
Maione, Harry 155–158
Marcos, Ferdinand 196, 198
Marshall, Justice Thurgood 117
Maryland 246, 248
Massachusetts 8, 27, 47, 71, 176, 180, 182
Mays, Eddie Lee 73
McDonald, Dr. Carlos 64, 69–71
McElvaine, Charles 67–71
McGlaughlin, John 94
McGuire, Dennis 223
McKinley, William 83, 188–193
McQueen, Clarence 97
Medina, Pedro 240–241
Michigan 11, 45, 85
Mississippi 98, 203, 246,
Missouri 35, 208, 244, 246
Mitra, Charles Paul 97
Model Penal Code 125, 127
Montana 246
Moore, Willie 97
Morelli, Joe 179
Old Sparky Page 27