Unmasking The Face of Deathby Michael Ross
These words, spoken by Lord Chancellor Gardiner during the 1965 death penalty abolition debates in the British Parliament, illustrate the feeling felt by most individuals opposed to capital punishment. It's not sympathy towards the murderer that we feel; indeed, most of us feel a great deal of anger and revulsion towards all murderers and their actions. Our objection is that it is a complete renunciation of all that is embodied in our concept of humanity. Or, simply put, executions degrade us all. In today's society, the execution process is far removed from most individual citizens. We may or may not be aware of the criminal acts that put an individual on death row-and even then usually only through sensationalized press accounts-but very few of us know of the human being whom society has condemned to death. And even fewer of us have ever witnessed, or will ever witness, an actual execution. This deliberate dehumanization of the whole process makes it much easier for us to distance ourselves from capital punishment and to accept it "as something government does," which allows us not to be individually responsible for the consequences of such actions. But we are responsible, for our state and federal governments are killing people in our names. And we should be made aware of the human side of these executions. To do so I would like to share with you an extract from an affidavit by David Bruce, an attorney who stayed with a condemned man, Terry Roach, during the last hours before his execution and actually witnessed the execution. I assisted with Terry Roach's defense during the last month before his execution, and I spent the last four hours with Terry Roach in his cell when he was electrocuted on January 10, 1986. Although I have known Terry slightly for several years, meeting him in the course of visits to see other inmates on South Carolina's death row, my first long conversation with Terry occurred less than a month before his death. An execution date had already been set, and he seemed frightened and very nervous. I was struck at that time by how obviously mentally retarded Terry was . . . I had known from following his case through the courts that he had been diagnosed as mildly mentally retarded, but I was still surprised at his slack-jawed and slow way of speaking, and at the evident lack of understanding of much of what we were telling him about the efforts that were underway to persuade Governor Riley to grant clemency. The next time that I would see Terry was on the night of his execution. The lawyers who had worked on his case for the past eight years were at the Supreme Court in Washington, so I had decided to look in on Terry that night after his family had had to leave for the last time, to see if I could help him with anything or just keep him company. When I arrived, he had decided to ask me to stay with him through the night and accompany him when he was taken to the chair. So along with Marie Deans, a paralegal and counselor who works with condemned prisoners in Virginia, I stayed. Although Terry was twenty-five years old by the time of his death, he seemed very childlike. In general, his demeanor and his reactions to the people around him appeared to me to comport with the finding, made at his last psychological evaluation, that his IQ was 70-a score that placed his intellectual functioning at about the level of a twelve-year-old child. When his family minister showed him some prayers from the Bible that they would read together, Terry asked him which ones he thought would be especially likely to help him into heaven; his questions about this seemed based on the childish assumption that one prayer was likely to "work" better than another, and that he just needed some advice about which ones would work best. Later in the night, he asked me to read him a long letter about reincarnation that a man from California had sent to him just that day; he listened to the letter with wonder, like a small child at bedtime, trusting and uncritical. Both Marie and I were struck by how calmed Terry seemed by the sound of a voice reading to him in the resonant cell, and we spent much of the remaining time reading to him while he listened, gazing at the reader with rapt attention. He had a final statement which his girlfriend had helped him write. When I arrived that night, the statement was on three small scraps of paper, in his girlfriend's handwriting. I copied it out for him, and got him to read it out loud a few times. No matter how many times he tried, the word "enemies" came out "emenies." He kept practicing it, but pronouncing the written word just seemed beyond his capabilities. Still, he seemed to like the rehearsal: like everything we did that night, it filled the time and acknowledged that he was doing something very difficult. Terry was a very passive young man, and that showed all through the night. Although he was obviously frightened, he was as cooperative as possible with the guards, and he tried to pretend that all of the ritual preparation-the shaving of his head and right leg, the prolonged rubbing in of electrical conducting gel-was all a normal sort of thing to have happen. He wanted the approval of those around him, and he seemed well aware that this night he could gain everyone's approval by being brave and keeping his fear at bay. Still, when the warden appeared in the cell door at 5:00 a.m. and read the death warrant, while Terry stood, each wrist immobilized in a manacle known as the "claw," his left leg began to shake in large, involuntary movements. After that everything happened quickly. I walked to the chair with him, and talked to him as much as I could. He wanted me to read his statement, but I told him that he ought to try and I'd read it if he couldn't. His voice was only a little shaky, and he managed quite well, except for "emenies." After he had repeated the name of a friend of mine who had recently died, and whom he had offered to look up for me when he got to heaven, I left him and walked to the witness area, where I gave him a "thumbs-up" sign. He signaled back with his fingers, as much as the straps permitted. We signaled to each other once more just before the mask was pulled down over his face. A few seconds later the current hit. Terry's body snapped back and held frozen for the whole time that the current ran through his body. After a few seconds, steam began to rise from his body, and the skin on his thighs just above the electrode began to distend and blister. His fists were clenched and very white. His body slumped when the power was turned off, and jerked erect again when it resumed. When he was declared dead, several guards wrestled his body out of the chair and onto a stretcher, while taking care to conceal his face (no longer covered by the mask) from the view of the witnesses and me by covering it with a sheet. I left the death house at about this time in the company of the warden. As we stepped out of the building, I heard the whoops of a crowd of about 150 or 200 demonstrators who had apparently come to celebrate the execution, and who were yelling and cheering outside the prison gates. Executions degrade us all. They are held in the middle of the night, in the dark, away from us all, to hide what they really are. The men who are condemned to death are dehumanized by the state and by the press, to make it easier to carry out their executions. The public is kept as far away as possible from the whole process to keep them from seeing that human beings, real flesh and blood, real people, are being put to death. That is the only way that any state or government can continue with executions without the public demanding their eradication. Our politicians often leap at the chance that the death penalty gives them to sound tough on crime. But what they are really doing is playing on the strong feelings of anxiety, frustration and anger that most people feel towards the seemingly uncontrollable plague of crime that our country is currently experiencing. However, such rhetoric in reality detracts from the real work at hand of developing genuine programs of crime prevention and control. As such, the death penalty becomes the perfect political red herring-a program that sounds tough on crime and helps to create a false sense of security, but one that in all reality saps our already limited resources. There are acceptable alternatives to capital punishment that are more in line with the values of our supposedly enlightened and humanistic society. The state is supposed to be the pillar of our ideals, and its institutions should emulate the best values of our society. And are not the greatest of these values our compassion, our concern for human rights, and our capacity for mercy? By continuing to conduct executions, aren't we undermining the very foundations of our greatness? As Zimbabwe Poet Chenjerai Hove wrote: "The death sentence is abominable, as abominable as the crime itself. Our state must be based on love, not hatred and victimization. Our penal code must be based on rehabilitation rather than annihilation." For no legal order can sustain itself unless it reflects an underlying moral order of society. There are suitable alternatives. Individuals who are a danger to society must be removed from society. Society has the right to protect itself, there is no question about that. If rehabilita-tion is not possible or is not a consideration, then that removal must be made permanent. But it need not be excessive. Those who favor the abolition of the death penalty do not advocate releasing convicted murderers into society. The choice is not between the death penalty and unconditional release, but between the death penalty and a meaningful life sentence. Life without the possibility of parole, or natural life sentences, meet the necessary requirements of society. Feelings of retribution, vengeance, blood atonement, and the like are difficult feelings to suppress. Perhaps some individuals "deserve" to die. But in light of suitable alternatives, such as natural life sentences, is society in general paying too high a price when it executes its own citizens? Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once wrote: "I cannot agree that the American people have been so hardened, so embittered that they want to take the life of one who performs even the basest criminal act knowing that the execution is nothing more than bloodlust." It is time for us to acknow-ledge the death penalty for what it really is rather than for what we wish it to be. By rejecting the simple solutions that compromise our values and undermine the fundamental principles of our society, we maintain the greatness of our country. For it is certainly true that by giving in to our basest emotions we lower ourselves to the level of the very persons that we wish to execute, and in the process weaken the moral fibers that bind and protect our society. And while it is admittedly difficult at times, when we recognize the humanity of even the vilest criminals, when we acknowledge them as fellow human beings rather than as objects to be discarded, we pay ourselves the highest of tributes and celebrate our own humanity. What can you do to help? There are several organizations working diligently to abolish capital punishment in America. They need your help and support. Please contact one of the following groups: Amnesty International USA (Campaign to Abolish the Death Penalty) 322 Eighth Ave.; New York, NY 10001 Telephone 212-807-8400 American Civil Liberties Union (Capital Punishment Project) 122 Maryland Ave, NE Washington, DC 20002 Telephone 202-675-2319 National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty 918 "F" Street, NW, 6th Floor Washington, DC 20004 Telephone 202-347-2510 Catholics Against Capital Punishment P.O. Box #3125; Arlington, VA 22203 Telephone 703-522-5014 Murder Victims Families For Reconciliation 2093 Willow Creek Road; Portage, IN 46368 Telephone 219-763-2170 Michael Ross is a condemned man on Connecticut's death row. He has been on death row since June 1987. He is currently under a stay of execution pending the resolution of the appeal process. Michael Ross #127404, Death Row - Somers Prison, P.O. Box 100, Somers, CT 06071
There are 14 states without the death penalty. Innocence and The Death Penalty
Public Opinion and The Death Penalty
Death Penalty Information Center Financial Facts About The Death Penalty
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