Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry, a Democrat, has put his imprimatur on a law
that permits executing child molesters.
Senate Bill 1800, signed without comment by Henry, allows the death penalty or a life-without-parole sentence for a second or subsequent conviction for rape, sodomy or lewd molestation involving a child younger than 14.
Sen. Jay Paul Gumm, D-Durant, tried several times to pass a measure to allow second-time child molesters to be subject to the death penalty. It died three times in the House.
Gumm finally got the language attached to SB 1800 by Sen. Jonathan Nichols, R-Norman, and Rep. Fred Morgan, R-Oklahoma City. It establishes a child-abuse response team within the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.
Gumm said the measure will make the state safer for children and send a message to child predators that they are not welcome in Oklahoma.
"We need to send the message as a state that if you repeatedly prey on our children, we will find you, prosecute you, convict you and execute you," Gumm said.
You can always complain about polls because the answers depend on the way questions are framed. Nevertheless, recent polls on the death penalty have shown the majority of Americans believe executions should be carried out. This is true whether you are a Republican, Democrat or Independent. It is also true whether you are liberal or conservative. For example, in an aggregate of 2001-2004 polls, Gallup found that
74% of conservatives and 54% of liberals support the death penalty.
However, for the past 20 years, when Gallup has given respondents a choice of life in prison (without chance of parole), the number who choose the death penalty drops dramatically. In 1994, when 80% favored executions, the highest in Gallup's polling history, support dropped to 50% when respondents were given a choice of life without parole.
As a long-time lurker, I will make a safe guess that Kossacks are out of step with national views. Perhaps 15%-20% support the death penalty if offered the alternative of life without parole. Even among those supporters, a large proportion would probably say that capital punishment should be applied under the narrowest of circumstances. Some, I know, believe it should be restricted for use solely against war criminals.
I can imagine what some of you are thinking. Why even raise this issue? The death penalty is, you say, the last thing we need to be talking about in an election year when Democrats might have a chance of gaining the majority in the House of Representatives or Senate. Should we not be discussing how to make it easier for Democrats to win those extra seats rather than bringing up subjects that could make it harder for some of them to get elected? This issue is like abortion, gay marriage, prayer in schools, and all those other social concerns that have derailed the Democratic party from its true purpose - helping average Americans.
I understand what you are thinking. Everyone in my house opposes the death penalty. But we have argued many times over whether it makes sense to try to convince Democrats to be more forceful against it. My husband says this will never fly.
I am sorry. I just cannot help myself. Ever since I saw students hanged on the campus of Fatah University where I taught English in Tripoli, Libya, in 1982, abolishing the death penalty has been of major importance to me. I find it appalling that my country is one of the few in the world where the state has a license to kill. IEven worse, in my mind, is that people who I align myself with politically are unwilling to stand against this barbaric practice. It makes me even more ill to know that some Democrats - including Governor Henry - are trying to expand the practice to include other crimes.
Nobody knows whether this particular Oklahoma law will survive a Supreme Court test. In a case nearly 30 years ago, Coker v. Georgia, a much more liberal Supreme Court than we have today ruled 7-2 that executing someone for raping an adult was disproportionate punishment and unconstitutional. But would today's court decide the same way in the case of a child? Might it maybe even reverse Coker?
The argument is that molestation is a heinous crime. It is. Molested children often carry the psychological damage for their entire lives. Many go on to become molesters themselves. So is rape heinous. I have been raped, and at the time I wanted to kill my attacker, who was never caught. If statistics hold true for him, he probably went on to rape others. Maybe he is still doing so. Although I have been in therapy and have a loving relationship with my husband, I still have scars from the attack. I am sure his other victims do too? Why not execute him?
So, if child molesters are worthy of executions, why not rapists? And, if them, why not kidnappers? My children were kidnapped and I did not see them for 15 years. I was deeply traumatized and still carry the scars from that crime, too, even though I have been reunited with my children. Should kidnappers be punished by death?
What about drug dealing? The outcome for millions who buy drugs, and for their families, is horrible. Is not then selling the means of their destruction a heinous crime? The Thais, Indonesians, Singaporeans, Taiwanese and Malaysians think so. What about corruption? China executes hundreds of people each year for that crime, including price gouging. Once you get started thinking about heinous crimes, the list is endless. Until the early 1800s, the British had more than 200 crimes for which execution was prescribed. Once we start, where do we stop?
In the 29 years that executions have been re-allowed in the United States, 1,026 men and women have been executed. Many have been mentally deficient and disproportionate numbers have been poor or black. Between 1976 and the Supreme Court's decision last year to overturn a previous ruling allowing execution of people who had killed when they were minors, 22 convicts who were juveniles at the time of their crime had been executed.
Nobody I know wants innocents to die. That has led to a downward trend both in support for executions and in executions themselves in the past few years because some already on death row have been exonerated.
Just how many innocent people have been executed is not known; courts generally don't consider such cases after execution, and overworked and underpaid defense attorneys turn their attention to the living.
But we can estimate. The error execution rate has to be at least 1 in 1,000--the "1,000" being Kenneth Boyd and the "1" being Ruben Cantu, whom the Houston Chronicle seems to prove died for a crime he did not commit. The Death Penalty Information Center lists another eight people as "executed but possibly innocent." That pushes it to about 1 in 100. Estimates for the number of people on death row who have been exonerated range from 25-30 from a prosecutor's estimates to 73 from a University of Michigan study. The maximum possible error rate, depending on very loose assumptions, then surges up to 1 in 30 to 1 in 12. These rates are undoubtedly too high, but they help to establish an upper bound.
So the poll question should be couched as: Would you be in favor of the death penalty if one innocent person were executed for every 10 guilty ones? How about 1 in 100? 1 in 1,000? Factor in the alternative to the death penalty--life with no chance of parole--and I'd bet that public support for capital punishment would dwindle. Science has shown that our death penalty system is deeply flawed. Now the U.S. public needs to see those flaws.
I wish Democrats would take up that charge. Like so many other issues upon which we are allegedly vulnerable to Republican spinning, it all depends on the frame. Opposing the death penalty does not mean being unattentive to the victims. It does not mean being "soft on crime." It does not mean giving more rights to criminals than to the people they harm. We Democrats, we Kossacks, should stop avoiding this issue.