Why It Says "Homicide" On Executed Prisoners' Death Certificates
[Updated Thursday, 12:01 a.m.] When watching the news about the botched Oklahoma execution Wednesday, I remembered that little "homicide" fact in the blog post headline I'd learned years ago when I paid a visit to the City of Huntsville, Texas.
Huntsville, north of Houston, is home to the country's biggest capital punishment killing mill and only prison system museum on a city square right downtown that shows off the retired "Old Sparky" electric chair.
I saw it when I went there to work on a 1995 series for The Journal Sentinel about capital punishment.
Huntsville is also where I witnessed, inside and behind "The Walls" where Texas now gives its condemned prisoners a lethal injection, the first of the many executions approved by the portrait painter and former Texas Gov. George W. Bush.
Aided by his trusty sidekick and then-Texas Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez - - before Bush promoted him to US Attorney General and the country's top torture lawyer.
I've written from time to time about my Texas death sentence reporting experience.
Here's one example.
And the series took me also death rows also in Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi, to prison offices and court houses and lawyers offices, and to interviews with death row inmates freed after proving their innocence.
Aided by his trusty sidekick and then-Texas Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez - - before Bush promoted him to US Attorney General and the country's top torture lawyer.
I've written from time to time about my Texas death sentence reporting experience.
Here's one example.
And the series took me also death rows also in Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi, to prison offices and court houses and lawyers offices, and to interviews with death row inmates freed after proving their innocence.
And also to a meeting in New Orleans with Sister Helen Prejean shortly after her book "Dead Man Walking" was published.
My series ran for eight days. I'm sorry the newspaper didn't reprint it, though when I was doing a Google search for this posting I found a Marquette Law Review article whose author cited my interview with Sister Helen. See the text towards the end, and footnotes 120-123.
Anyway, I digress.
Texas prison officials told me during interviews that after they dispatch death row inmates - - and other inmates are tasked with burying those executed in prison cemetery graves marked only with inmates' number if the bodies are unclaimed - - the officials file a death certificate with local authorities listing the cause of the executed inmates' deaths as "homicide."
Those death certificates have been removed from public review.
So, transparency for viewing "Old Sparky?" Definitely. The glass case is professionally lit - but for the little details and contradictions about 'Homicides For Homicides?'
No.
You want more proof of capital punishment as homicide?
Read how Oklahoma officials botched a prisoner's execution and then watched him die of a heart attack strapped to the gurney.
I remember interviewing former Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann about why he was so opposed to capital punishment, didn't want to be a capital punishment prosecutor and didn't want any of his staff to be involved, either.
Never forgot his answer:
"You're in on a killing," he said.
My series ran for eight days. I'm sorry the newspaper didn't reprint it, though when I was doing a Google search for this posting I found a Marquette Law Review article whose author cited my interview with Sister Helen. See the text towards the end, and footnotes 120-123.
Anyway, I digress.
Texas prison officials told me during interviews that after they dispatch death row inmates - - and other inmates are tasked with burying those executed in prison cemetery graves marked only with inmates' number if the bodies are unclaimed - - the officials file a death certificate with local authorities listing the cause of the executed inmates' deaths as "homicide."
Those death certificates have been removed from public review.
So, transparency for viewing "Old Sparky?" Definitely. The glass case is professionally lit - but for the little details and contradictions about 'Homicides For Homicides?'
No.
You want more proof of capital punishment as homicide?
Read how Oklahoma officials botched a prisoner's execution and then watched him die of a heart attack strapped to the gurney.
I remember interviewing former Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann about why he was so opposed to capital punishment, didn't want to be a capital punishment prosecutor and didn't want any of his staff to be involved, either.
Never forgot his answer:
"You're in on a killing," he said.
8 comments:
I inadvertently watched a death video online once, and I had trouble sleeping for months. Can't imagine seeing the real thing. Journalists (and I mean REAL journalists) inhabit a spot on my list of 3 careers, from the original 6, which get automatic respect from me. Couldn't have been easy to dissuade pro-capital sentiment with Oklahoma City dominating the headlines: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=2UocAAAAIBAJ&sjid=8CwEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3033%2C6003
Thank you, Jim. It was a very draining experience. The witnesses all spent hours in a secured room. The execution was sterile and ugly. I'd interviewed the inmate, studied his case. All in all, no need for a second episode, which TX carried off the same night. Its "back to back" experiment.
Some time ago Frontline or NYTimes (I am not sure which) had a series about capital punishment. The effect of the death (murder) on the people who witnessed and carried out the punishment was haunting and reason enough to end capital punishment. Madison was privileged to have the opera 'Dead Man Walking' in our theater this weekend - as close as I hope to ever get to an execution. Are the Wisconsin Republicans planning to bring back capital punishment?
Supporters of the death penalty routinely shrug off the potential for innocent people to be executed due to an imperfect and often corrupt justice system. Their logic is that the killing of a few innocents is justified by the presumed deterrent effect on a general population secretly yearning to kill each other. That most of the condemned are racial minorities or poor makes this leap of conscience easier for the conservative mind, as opposed to, for instance, a death row populated by the white upper-middle class or the wealthy
It is at this point that the death penalty becomes nothing more than a race and class-based act of state terrorism, more typical of authoritarian or totalitarian regimes.
US death row study: 4% of defendants sentenced to die are innocent | World news | theguardian.com
@Betsy - - I was fortunate to be able to spend a half day in New Orleans with Sister Helen Prejean right after her book came out. She is a wonderful human being.
Being executed by the state is always a much more compassionate way to die than these folks murdered others. The death certificate should state Suicide since they decided their own fate by their own actions.
I find it telling that the comment composed of little more than misguided and/or abhorrent statements was authored by "Anonymous"...
This person's definitions of "compassionate" and "suicide" boggle the mind.
When your "bar" for judging a behavior is "well, it's nicer than this cold blooded murderer" then you are suffering from some major cognitive dissonance.
The question, to me, seems simple, especially when the concept of "self defense from an immediate and credible lethal threat" is removed:
Is it wrong or not to purposefully kill by choice, and not out of necessity?
If your answer features anything like "killing is wrong, but..." then, really, just stop.
As an atheist, the irony is supremely rich when I'm told that atheists can't be moral without belief in a god, or when I'm warned/scolded about the "evils of moral relativism"...
I ask anyone who differs with me to explain precisely how the "logic" that justifies the death penalty is to be labelled anything but "moral relativism"...? (I have chosen not to utilize the option for anonymity, and responses will come to me via email.) It's for this very reason that the "King James Version" of the bible, which I was raised on, had Exodus 20:13 rendered as "thou shalt not kill" which, in another clear example of the dreaded moral relativism, has been replaced with "you shall not murder" in the "NEW" King James Version, and most other so-called "modern" translations. Tell me again how non-believers cannot be moral, while I stifle a sardonic chuckle at what seems to be gleefully blatant hypocrisy...
In reality, biblical laws aren't moral, or even immoral, they are amoral, and completely relative to the situation. Kim Davis is a prime example of that thinking, and it's logical result. A multiple divorcee, and admitted adulterer, (both of which are biblical "sins") denying others' legal rights because it's against "god's" law... and when asked about the "laws" that she herself has ignored? To paraphrase, "that's different, I was forgiven"
#MoralRelativism
NOTE: Apologies for the short-novel length rant, these are my deeply held beliefs.
I was in prison for 11 years. I have talked to people on death row. They're people. They're human lives. Is it right for one person to take another person's life? The answer to that question must be applied to every human life. A fifteen year old once gave me the clearest explanation of the death penalty I have ever heard. He said that the death penalty is killing a killer to show that killing is wrong. The concept is a bit ridiculous.
There are people who believe that I should have been executed for my own crimes. I was 17 when I went to prison. Now I am 30. I have a son, a fiance, and a beautiful family. I can't change the past, but I can make sure that I don't make bad choices and do my best to develop as a human being. If I had been executed, I would not have had the opportunities to make the progress that I have. My life would have ended. Lives are precious. I hope that universally people will someday recognize their value.
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