Gotta love this. This week’s New Yorker cover references, of course, New York City’s plan to ban the sale of large cups of soda
Venezuela Uses Mimes to Enforce Traffic Laws: Nothing really more to say about that, is there?
Death Row Suicide Highlights Execution Delays — This is the headline for a Houston Chronicle about how, with executions in many states taking place decades after the crime — if at all — far fewer Death Row prisoners are being executed than are dying of natural causes (or by their own hands). The article also discusses the debate in California over abolishing the death penalty, and an update on the Scott Peterson case.
The question is, is the article’s premise valid? The article discusses the suicide of James Lee Crummel, who in 1979 abducted, sexually abused and killed a 13-year-old boy. If California didn’t have a death penalty, he’d certainly have been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole — and since that’s what California’s death penalty essentially is anyway (they haven’t executed anybody since 2006), how is the existence of the death penalty a factor in his suicide?
And of course, if we’re going to be honest about it…
© 2012 by Bill Bickel unless otherwise noted.
Decades ago, I recall hearing of a condemned man in Oklahoma who delayed his date with the gas chamber for years by attempting to “cheat the executioner” with a suicide attempt the night before. I got the impression his intent actually was to kill himself before the state could, rather than the delays that it caused instead.
I never understood why they wouldn’t just let him succeed and be done with it.
Letting death row inmates commit suicide if they want to could lead to an increase in them “wanting to”, thereby saving the state money and giving people the revenge they want.
Lovely. So we’re to say that it’s a good thing this guy killed himself, and therefore all the collateral damage is just A-OK?
Life without a parole is still very different from the non-executed death penalty, in that with the former one *knows* ones destiny. In that latter case one literally doesn’t know whether one’s dead or alive. It’s torture, plain and simple.
But of course that’s no longer considered “cruel and unusual”. And Scalia famously doesn’t consider innocence an argument against the state killing people, so I’m sure he’d approve of torturing prisoners as well.
Suicide is regarded by many as the killer cheating justice.
So is the death penalty, for that matter.
Reminds me of some commentary I heard on a local call-in talk radio show awhile back. A killer was able to avoid a trial and possibility of a death sentence by agreeing to life in a maximum security prison. Most callers were unhappy about it, and many brought up the fact that the guy had been quite poor and struggled to make ends meet, so his life in prison would actually be an improvement for him, which of course he didn’t deserve. My first thought was “so they’re saying we should only execute poor people who have had a rough life?”