John Allen Muhammad's scheduled Nov.10 Virginia execution enlivens the debate over capital punishment, sampling the cadence of every high-profile death penalty case marching to the beat of the count-down "drum."
Karla Faye Tucker , sentenced to death in the so-called "pickax murders," played unwitting but pleasant host to a media-frenzied event, attended by reporters, and festooned in satellite trucks beaming up images of demonstrators for and against the death penalty.
In such cases, the "wisdom of crowds," bristling with symbolic "sticktights" and "hitchhikers" for their trouble, departs the field of screams. In other words, we are no better and no more enriched by hoopla, hype, and talking heads. The buzzing in our ears comes from too much sound, and not from the jury.
Such grassroot convocations--whether flashlight-illumined or candle-lit, in fertile acres of controversy and grim reaper statistic-keepers--propagate a sub-culture of their own.
You've seen their huddled masses. Outside prisons on the day of execution, in virtual or real-time attendence: popes and "nopes," cardboard sign-wielders and murmuring prayer groups, most whose hearts and thinking drive what they do.
Back home, the death penalty should--and maybe has--become dinner table conversation, peppered with newscasts and children's questions: "Mommy, Daddy, what is a death penalty?" Grown-ups linger over coffee and dessert, wondering can the issue itself ever die?
To that end, scholarship and organized discussion have much to add. Googling "death penalty" produces 4,500,000 results, while "capital punishment" yields slightly fewer, or 4,420,000 returns. Likely, the latter phrase reflects word usage and semantics.
Often, the heart moves to little beyond the sound of its own beat. From brainstem to wishful thinking, be it the desire for life or for the life of the one who has taken another's, the issue is just that simple: it isn't.
Looking at 2007 murder rate comparisons of the top 12 executing states (below), as compared to murder rates of non-death-penalty states, lively discussions ensue:
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(used by permission, Amnesty International)
According to the above graphs:
1. Louisianna, "landlord" of legendary penitentiary Angola's death chamber-- portrayed in the award-winning documentary, "The Farm: Angola USA" -- had the highest 2007 per capita murder rate of surveyed death penalty states.
2. Iowa--a non-death penalty state--had 2007's lowest murder rate at approximately 1.2 per 100,000 people.
3. Non-death penalty states Maine and Hawaii also experienced relatively-lower murder rates in 2007.
4. Arizona's 2007 murder rate per capita somewhat surpassed that of Texas. To which death penalty advocates might say that the highest number of executions--26 in Texas as compared to 1 in Arizona in 2007--acted as deterrents, when comparing the murder rates of the two states. What's more, according to the top graph, Texas death rates are actually below the average or mean of 6.89--just under 7 per 100,000 people of the "Top 12 Executing States."
5. Overall, both graphs may prompt a question: excluding drugs, impaired mental capacity and other medically-related bearings on murder, do criminals who kill in death penalty states have death wishes of their own? Or does race--not specified in these graphs--figure in? These are clearly complex issues.
Moreover, at the time of their capital offenses, does knowing the state will likely convict and execute them influence, even drive some crimes? Could such aspects echo "suicide by cop" in a long-term sense? Such questions are for experts to answer; lay-persons interested in criminal behavior also might want more information.
While a first impression of the graphs makes one case for abolishing the death penalty, such representations may generalize, when each crime is unique. It is impossible to rely solely on numbers, because people are neither numbers nor bars on a graph.
Still, if "trending" is not just a Twitter creation, in a NY Times article by Dan Frosch, when asked if there is a general trend toward fewer executions, or to abolishing capital punishment altogether, the Death Penalty Information Center's Executive Director, Richard Dieter, states, " I wouldn't say that the death penalty is being rejected by the public, but there's definitely a reconsideration underway."
For some survivors of the murdered, capital punishment is one guarantor of justice. For others, however, forgiveness and redemption offer measures of life's continuum, after the funerals and tears.
For more information, visit The Death Penalty Information Center at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org
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