5 - 11 July 2001
Issue No.541
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 5 - 11 July 2001 Issue No.541 |
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Sleeping tiger
As federal executions resume in the United States, so too does the debate on capital punishment. Nyier Abdou follows the controversy left in the wake of high-profile executions
The world stopped twice for Timothy McVeigh. The first time was on 19 April, 1995, when a deadly blast at the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City killed 168 people -- the worst act of terrorism on American soil. McVeigh, who confessed to the bombing, was an unlikely terrorist; an all-American boy who earned a Bronze Star for his service during the Gulf War. His tale played like a tightly woven drama for six years, culminating in the 11 June "season finale," when the world again took pause, this time for McVeigh's own death.
Read all about it: America's high-profile executions make news around the world -- particularly in Europe, where a key requirement for membership in the European Union is abolishing the death penalty. (Left) A vendor in Mexico City hawks a newspaper headlining the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. A week later, Mexican-American Juan Raul Garza, who was granted a six-month stay of execution by former President Bill Clinton, was executed in Terre Haute, Indiana.
(photo: AFP)
McVeigh's execution, in the new Terre Haute, Indiana, federal facility, formed the zenith of the aggressive argument surrounding the first federal execution in 38 years. Fascination with McVeigh was close to hysterical, with radio stations, television networks and newspapers on a virtual 24- hour death-watch. However, the media circus that descended on the prison grounds -- a reported 1,400 reporters were at the event -- spoke to something larger than America's famous passion for voyeurism. Tagged onto McVeigh's date with death was the larger question of the US's use of the death penalty. And given this chance, a storm of debate erupted.
The question of whether the death penalty is ever a just punishment is an age-old one -- a Biblical one, even. Thou shalt not kill? Or an eye for an eye? In comparison with Europe, Americans have proved profoundly uninterested in the issue of the death penalty. Routine state executions that register as no more than a blip in the American consciousness are covered extensively in European papers. But in McVeigh, both pro- and anti-death penalty groups found a poster-boy for their cause. Unrepentant, cold and calculating, McVeigh was undeniably guilty. Claims that the death penalty is meted out disproportionately to minorities were conveniently irrelevant: McVeigh was one of only three white men out of the 21 federal prisoners awaiting execution.
It is not the severity of the crime -- nor the nagging question of executing innocents -- which forms the basis of the anti-death penalty drive, however. Groups like the London-based Amnesty International (AI) and the New York- based Human Rights Watch (HRW) note that a death sentence is a violation of one of the most basic human rights: life.
President Bush called McVeigh's execution "the severest sentence for the gravest of crimes" and a "reckoning" for survivors and relatives of victims. However, his rhetoric that "good overcame evil" was not well received in Europe. In a tidy twist of fate, Bush embarked on his first European tour the day after McVeigh's execution. Though he was prepared to field angry protest against his administration's wavering on the Kyoto agreement and the highly controversial national missile defence system, he was probably stunned by the vehemence with which European leaders and activists reacted to McVeigh's death. At key stops on his tour Bush repeatedly met newspaper headlines denouncing the US as duplicitous and barbaric.
Following on the heels of a dishonourable exclusion from the council of the United Nation's Human Rights Commission, it is difficult to see how the US can afford to continue stonewalling increasing international pressure. But Laura Moyle, acting deputy director for the southern regional office of Amnesty International, USA, notes that although the US's image abroad continues to be battered, it hasn't been damaged "to the point of economic or political disadvantage."
Unfortunately for Bush, his first stop in Europe was Spain, where Spaniards were already whipped up in a frenzy over the arrival, two days before, of the Spanish national Joaquin Martinez. Sentenced to death in Florida, Martinez was acquitted in a retrial thanks to the efforts of groups back home.
America's use of the death penalty severely undercuts its self-imposed position as the world's moral authority. The only countries which execute more people than the US are China and Saudi Arabia, followed closely by Iran -- company the US cannot be very proud of in terms of human rights records. As Allyson Collins, senior researcher at HRW, told Al-Ahram Weekly: "There may come a time when the death penalty is seen by national and state officials as more trouble than it's worth -- not the most principled position, but if it leads to a recognition that this practice cannot be defended, so be it."
The debate over the US's use of the death penalty is the most meaningful the country has seen since the 1970s, when the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional. The ruling was overturned in 1976, and since then 717 people have died in state executions. Congress only voted to reinstate the federal death penalty in 1988, but in 1994 -- the year support for the death penalty in America was at its all-time high of 80 per cent -- the laws were significantly widened to include more crimes as capital offences.
Among the 1994 additions were crimes involving drug trafficking -- an amendment that ultimately ended the life of Texas drug kingpin Juan Raul Garza on 19 June, in the same spot where McVeigh had taken his last breath eight days before. Garza was given a six-month stay of execution pending a Justice Department inquiry into alarming figures that the majority of defendants in federal capital cases were people of colour. Garza, who is Hispanic, benefited from a moment of uncertainty, during which the Clinton administration was ready to investigate long-time claims of racial bias. But the results of that study, released by Attorney General John Ashcroft last month, insist that there is no evidence that minorities are compromised by the federal system -- a claim that AI's Laura Moye dismisses as "appalling".
"We would still be against the death penalty if it were not racist, but it is clear to us that racism is an undisputable reality," Moye told the Weekly. Garza's last appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court and the execution proceeded as planned.
In the month before McVeigh's execution, polls found support for the death penalty to be between 63 and 65 per cent. These are the lowest figures since the 1980s and they are consistent with polls taken over the last year. HRW's Collins notes that she sees a "real movement towards abolition, or at least a moratorium, on the death penalty." But Dudley Sharp, resource director of the Houston-based pro-death penalty organisation Justice for All, told the Weekly that the drop in support for execution was due in large part to the "fraud of death penalty opponents," whom he described as "horribly inaccurate on the subject."
Sharp noted that people were prone to take the claims of human rights organisations as unquestionable fact. Moye says AI is used to its information being called into question when it is inconvenient or embarrassing, but notes that the organisation is well-respected and trusted because its investigations are rooted in "international standards of morality."
Concerns over the death penalty often focus on issues of application. Many people feel uneasy in the face of numerous cases where DNA evidence has exonerated convicted felons. "With the amount of errors and the number of concerns of unfairness in implementation, I believe the system will ultimately fail under its own weight," suggests Moye. HRW's Collins adds that impoverished defendants cannot afford adequate representation, and notes that prosecutorial and police misconduct -- "just sloppy work" -- are often a problem. European leaders have also repeatedly scoffed at the claim that the death penalty is an effective deterrent against crime.
The argument for deterrence was put forward by Justice for All's Dudley Sharp, who told the Weekly that there is "overwhelming proof, in all the world's jurisdictions, that living murderers do harm and murder, again and again." Pressed to show that a firm sentence of life in prison without parole was not enough, Sharp insisted "the burden of proof is on those opposing execution. If there is deterrence and we don't execute, then we sacrifice innocent lives ... If there is deterrence and we execute, we save additional innocent lives and we prevent the murderer from harming again." The issue of execution as a fundamental wrong was never a part of the reasoning.
It is not all about seeking the moral high ground, however. In New York on the night before McVeigh's execution, my taxi driver interrupted my thoughts with the unqualified statement: "It's not right, what they're doing." When I realised he was talking about McVeigh, I nodded. "They should have let him live," he added. "So he could suffer more."
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