My Thesis on the Death Penlty

“Trial By Fire” is an article written in The New Yorker by David Grann September 7th 2009. Grann makes an incredibly convincing argument concerning the death penalty based on the experience of Todd Willingham’s arson case. Willingham’s case is a perfect example of how flawed our legal system is, and yet it doesn’t show that the death penalty is erroneous in anyway; however, it does show putting an innocent man to death is horribly wrong. If we eliminate the death penalty from our justice system it will not stop innocent people from going to prison for life. The death penalty isn’t what needs to be taken out of the system; it is the system itself that needs reform.
When a person is sentenced to life in prison their life as a human is taken away, and they become animals behind bars. The same life that is taken away when sent to prison forever is also taken away when given the death penalty. Todd Willingham once said, “This is a hard place, and it makes a person hard inside. I told myself that was one thing I did not want and that was for this place to make me bitter, but it is hard. They have [executed] at least one person every month I have been here. It is senseless and brutal….You see, we are not living in here, we are only existing.”(Grann, 2009, 12) Weather it’s the death penalty or a life sentence in prison they are still taking a life away. A prisoner becomes just that: a prisoner, merely existing.
There are numerous reasons an innocent person can be wrongfully convicted. These have been documented by The School of Law at University of Missouri-Columbia in a legal research study written by Rodney Uphoff (2006) and were posted on deathpenaltyinfo.org. The website has five of the most problematic reasons that cause wrongful convictions used in our courts, they are eyewitness error, government miss conduct, junk science, snitch testimony, and false confessions. To name a few of the other reasons are hearsay and questionable circumstantial evidence. Willingham’s case contained four of the five, and they were blatantly obvious.
Investigators painted a picture of Willingham as being a criminal before the trial even started; this contributed to the eyewitnesses’ perception of Willingham and of the horrid night of the fire formed a mixture of confusion and faulty memory. The investigators told of how Willingham dropped out of high school, threatened his wife in public, and was arrested from driving under the influence. Grann wrote: “Father Monaghan initially portrayed Willingham as devastated by the fire. He then wrote in a statement that, upon further reflection, “things were not as they seemed. I had the feeling that [Willingham] was in complete control.”(2009, 4) The neighbor, Diane Barbee, was one of the first to the scene of the fire. “In her initial statement to authorities, she had given the description of Willingham as being “hysterical,” but on January 4th, after the investigators began suspecting Willingham of murder Barbee reported that, before the authorities arrived at the fire, Willingham never tried to get back into the house-yet she had been absent from the scene for quite some time while calling the Fire Department. Itiel Dror, a cognitive psychologist who has done extensive research on eyewitnesses and expert testimony in criminal investigations, says, “the mind is not a passive machine. Once you believe in something – once you expect something –it changes the way you perceive information and the way your memory recalls it.” (2009, 8)
The next mistake made in Willingham’s case was government misconduct - by both the police and the prosecution. In a CNN video called Free the Innocent Nightline talks to Grann, the investigators, and lawyers involved in Willingham’s case. The video showed that a crucial piece of evidence was left out and the right people were not informed of it. When the test came back positive for liquid accelerant found on the porch, lawyers said this to be the most damning evidence, but police left out of their report that there had been a charcoal barbeque grill and lighter fluid kept there and the accelerant likely came from that source. The porch was the only place that tested positive for the accelerant, not the halls, or the rooms in which authorities testified Willingham had sprayed it on to start the fire. Nightline’s report on the case also said that our country’s top arisen investigators have looked over the evidence and stated, “The methods used by the investigators in the case were nothing more than a collection of personal beliefs that have nothing to do with science–based fire investigation.”(2009, CNN) This would be the “junk science” presented in Willingham’s case sealing the deal for his wrongful conviction.
A man by the name of Johnny Webb testified that he had heard Willingham confess to him in jail. This is the “snitch testimony” - often given in exchange for a reduction in sentence presented by the prosecution. Grann wrote that, “[When] Webb came forward against Willingham, he was facing charges of robbery and forgery. During Willingham’s trial, another inmate planned to testify that he had overheard Webb saying to another prisoner he was hoping to “get time cut,” but the testimony was ruled inadmissible, because it was hearsay.” Later in Grann’s article he says, “the prosecution urged the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant Webb parole. “I asked them to cut him loose early,” Jackson said. The board granted Webb parole, but within months of his release he was caught with cocaine and returned to prison.” Webb later sent a Motion to Recant Testimony to the prosecution, but Willingham’s lawyer never got the information of the recant and soon “Webb recanted his recantation without explanation.”(2009, 10) These jailhouse informants are notorious for wanting to make deals in testifying for an exchange of a reduced sentence and are very untrustworthy.
One thing Willingham refused to do was confess to the murder of his three precious baby girls. Even though false confessions do exist Willingham’s ability to never falter or give in to the pressure that was put on his shoulders is admirable. Grann (6) wrote, “The prosecution approached Willingham’s attorneys with an extraordinary offer: if their client pleaded guilty, the state would give him a life sentence. Willingham’s attorney’s advised him to accept the offer, but he refused.” While Willingham lay on the injection table where his death was carried out, he was given the opportunity to say his last words. (21) “The only statement I would like to make is that I am an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for twelve years for something I did not do. From God’s dust I came and to dust I will return, so the Earth shall become my throne.” Even through his death he maintained his innocence. Now beyond the grave he has been proven not guilty.
Grann also wrote about a man by the name of John Stuart Mill, in 1868 he gave a very convincing argument in defense of capital punishment saying, “We show, on the contrary, most emphatically our regard for [life] by the adoption of a rule that he who violates that right in another forfeits it for himself.” Even though the counter argument was that “if an error of justice be made and an innocent person is put to death the mistake can never be corrected,” (2009, 11) still doesn’t make the death penalty unworthy for those who have been found guilty of heinous crimes. The Legal system in 1868 presented cases in which most lasted about ten minutes, not much time to find out the truth.
Even before 1868 evidence exists of harsher punishments being given out. The death penalty was issued for homosexuality, idolatry, blasphemy, adultery, talking back to their parents, and picking up sticks on the Sabbath. Social history reveals mutilation and torture were a routine form of punishment. For the same things today we are given a fine, but in those days it would result in your tongue being cut out or your hand being cut off, burning at the stake, disembowelment, ears cut off, eyes being blinded, stoning, being pulled apart, and slavery. Our standards have changed. We have come so far from those types of punishment that even though we have genocide in Duffar and war in Iraq it is nothing comparable. Steven Pinker, a Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, talks of today as having the least amount of civil wars and genocides than ever before. He shows that in 1950 we had over sixty five thousand deaths from capital punishment, today (in 2007) there is less than two thousand per year. He goes on to say, “only a handful of prisoners die by lethal injection in Texas after fifteen years of appeals, we don’t realize one hundred years ago they would have been burned at the stake for criticizing the king; a trial that would have lasted only ten minutes. Today we look at capital punishment and think how low our standards have sunk instead of the reality of how high they have risen.”(2007, A myth of violence) It’s not the punishment that should be reprimanded; it’s the system that gives out the punishment.
The legal system isn’t just for deterring criminals from committing offenses, it’s really for supporting justice. When a crime is committed, the victim deserves justice. In the case of Todd Willingham, he became the victim of the legal system. Contrast this with people who have committed truly despicable crimes, people like Jeffrey Dahmer who killed, dismembered, mutilated, and cannibalized fifteen victims, or Joseph Duncan who kidnapped, raped, and killed children , Ted Bundy who sodomised, raped, strangled, slashed, bludgeoned, decapitated, and dismembered young women. These people, who are without a doubt serial killers, must be punished. The death penalty only seams too nice of a sentence for what they have done. The death penalty isn’t for deterring criminal behavior, it’s for achieving justice. People who commit such horrid crimes won’t stop regardless of the punishment; they are sick. A report by the Office of the Fayette Commonwealth’s Attorney said, “Criminologists found that six percent of the criminals in America commit seventy percent of the crimes. It stands to reason that if we can identify this six percent and incarcerate them as long as possible, the crime rate will decrease and our cities will be a safer place to live.”(1999) We need to amend the way our system convicts and sentences people for their crimes. By starting with the system first and the punishment last we will be able to eliminate the disgusting practices of wrongful convictions, and truly fit the punishment to the crime.