End Capital Punishment…Stop Killing Citizens…It’s Cruel, Racist, and Expensive

California is about to vote to repeal the death penalty. It will no longer be a legal means for the state to kill its citizens. That is, if on November 8th, the majority of California voters choose to vote that way. They should. It’s an archaic, barbaric practice more in line with the Spanish Inquisition than with any sense of modern justice.

California is one of 32 states that offers capital punishment to its citizens. Some states, like Texas and Oklahoma, kill so many people they might as well get rid of their death rows and just have one of those airport people-mover sidewalks ushering prisoners to their on-time death. Over in Utah, they slow it down and keep things old-fashioned; a prisoner still has the option of a firing squad, which seems like a historically dark way to murder your citizens–gunned down by a firing line like a courtesan loyal to the Czar. Up in the state of Washington they’ll also execute your ass the old-fashioned way. Only, rather than relying on a bullet to end your life, they let you kick and dangle from a rope.

States like Florida, Texas, Washington, Utah, all seem to take such a strange pride in their death penalty executions. But, to be fair, executing citizens is an esteemed part of a violent American tradition. Sometimes you gotta kill some people to get some respect for the Law. Or, so the lawmakers think.

Speaking of traditions, did you know the vast majority of death penalty executions take place in the Old Confederacy? Yep. 80% of executions occur in the Deep South. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn there’s often a racial component that determines which Southerners receive the death penalty. I’ll let you guess which ones. This obvious effect of systemic racism makes the death penalty look even uglier, if that’s even possible. But, make no mistake, the death penalty is definitely part of a tradition beloved in the former Confederate states. They seem to feel that, sometimes, you need blood to maintain those traditions.

Here in California we don’t have those same Southern traditions. We have our own–a back-and-forth fight over the death penalty. We’ve executed people under the death penalty since 1851. It was technically added to the official state Penal Code in 1872. And then, a century later, in 1972, the California Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was unconstitutional.

In People v. Anderson the court determined that capital punishment was “cruel and unusual.” The state stopped killing Californians. For a few months. The death penalty was reinstated later that same year when Californians voted in favor of Prop 17, making capital punishment once again legal in California. However, the California Supreme Court again ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional. And in response, a year later, this time the California legislature voted to re-enact the death penalty statute, overriding the court’s decision. Finally, two years later, wishing to cement the death penalty into state law, in 1978, California voters passed Prop 7, expressing their collective desire to kill their fellow citizens.

After Prop 7 passed, California didn’t actually exercise its legal right to execute prisoners until 1992, when a death row inmate was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin. Twelve more executions followed. The last prisoner was killed in 2006. From 1992 to 2006, California executed 13 people. After appeals and lawyer fees, it cost taxpayers, roughly $4 Billion dollars to kill those 13 prisoners. (More on that later.) There have been no executions over the last ten years.

Since it’s California, our executions, which mostly occurred under our Republican governors, became an impromptu stage for a grotesque form of theater. As soon as the date of execution was set and made public, the protesters would plan, and on that deadly day they’d show up en masse. They’d plead for leniency, as a cadre of priests, nuns, rabbis and other religious types looked dutifully conflicted about it all. Perhaps the protestors would be joined by a grieving mother–from one of the victims’ families, or perhaps the guilty prisoner’s own mother–you never knew what you’re gonna get at a prison protest in California. But, one thing was certain, every time the tv news vans would show up at San Quentin because they knew they’d get something good as they clumsily wrestled with the inescapable question: Which citizens need to die?

It’s such a very strange expression. Needs to die. Like the same way one needs water and food, or how a plant needs light, a death row prisoner needs to die. The phrase gets tossed around so lightly, like it’s an apple or a baseball. But who ever…needs to die? Well, apparently, the poor unfortunate bastards we consign to the electric chair. They need to die.

Their death is a strange modern form of godless martyrdom. Their death is a symbol. It signals to everyone that this type of behavior will not be tolerated. Their death slakes a societal blood lust–our shared desire for a punishment to be as severe as the crime.

You hear many people express this opinion. “He needs to die. After what he did? He needs to pay with his life.” But, this notion of “life as currency” is a bad metaphor. Time may be money, but a lifetime is not currency. Simply put, it can’t be exchanged. It’s not like a victim’s family can take a condemned man’s life and trade it to get back their lost child. When a person is executed, the only one who’s paying anything is the one being killed. He’s paying with all his future moments. All his possibilities. All his chance encounters. All his possible interactions with others. All his chances to change, to grow. He needs to die. That his payment for his crime. His life.

You may recall the story of an Oklahoma man, Clayton Lockett, who the state couldn’t quite kill. Back in 2014, his lethal injection was botched. He was stabbed with an IV needle more than a dozen times. A paramedic and doctor took turns trying and failing to raise a vein, first in his bicep, then his neck, near his clavicle, and finally, into the femoral artery in his groin. When they felt confident they could deliver the deadly mix into his IV, the state ordered for it to be administered–a cocktail of paralytics and lethal poisons. But it was poorly mixed in insufficient quantities, it was poorly-delivered in the poorly-placed IV, and that lethal injection failed to kill him, and instead left the condemned man to suffer in excruciating, mostly silent agony. After an hour of struggling and failing to kill him, the prisoner Lockett eventually died, from a heart attack. It occurred just after the warden had impotently called off the now-aborted execution. Boom. Justice served.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s imagine the death penalty for just one person. We’ll call this doomed man Steve.

Our man Steve is a bad dude. Like, a real bad dude. He murders people because it makes him feel something dark and powerful inside. And so, one day, this murderous asshole gets caught. The cops manage not to mismanage the evidence. It’s a clean and fair trial. He gets convicted by a jury of his peers. The judge sentences him to die. So far, it’s basically the lyrics to a rejected Johnny Cash song.

But we skipped past the sentence of death so quickly. Why exactly does Steve need to die? Because he killed some people? How many people does he have to kill? One? Three? What if it’s just one cop? What if it’s one gang-member? In each case, the guilty man’s death will not bring back the people he killed. His death will only serve as a warning to others that we as a society do not tolerate this kind of behavior. But isn’t that message already clear? Perpetrators of murder generally know what they are doing is wrong.

Let’s say Steve knows murder is wrong. And yet, he still commits the crime. The warnings didn’t work. Apparently, he didn’t fear the death penalty; at least, not enough. He’d be one of those people who most needs to feel the fear of the death penalty to persuade him, and yet, it fails to convince him.

Gun-owners say when guns are outlawed…only outlaws will have guns. (Or maybe it’s people who ride three-wheelers and ATVs. Maybe it’s both. The point is they’re right.) This also works in the case of murder. When murder is outlawed…only outlaws will murder. You quickly see how that sort of bumper sticker logic doesn’t really mean anything when you get down to it. It’s a syllogism. The essential digestible idea is that people will continue to own guns, ride four-wheelers, and murder people. Law or no law. People are gonna do their thing. This happens because you can’t legislate morality.

So, if Steve doesn’t fear the death penalty, if he doesn’t care what the law is, he’s going to do his thing, and his thing is murdering people…what’s the fucking point of the death penalty?

Unless…you think all those everyday citizens you see in the grocery store, the ones who drive your ambulances, the ones who file your taxes, the ones who serve you soy lattes, if you think they would quickly turn into murderers if we didn’t have clear enforceable laws against such behavior, and that we need the death penalty to keep the night manager at Wendy’s from killing a truck driver who calls her an ethnic slur, unless you think the death penalty is keeping you and people like you from murdering others, please understand it’s not working as a deterrent for the people who are doing most of the murdering.

Did you know that most people know their murderer? It’s usually a partner, a friend, family-member, a co-worker, or neighbor. It’s typically done in the heat of passion. In a moment when the death penalty is far from their mind. Pushed out by their murderous rage.

But, let’s talk about folks who commit multiple murders. I’ve known killers. They weren’t serial killers, but they also weren’t what anyone would call good dudes. And not a single one of them ever said the death penalty was a consideration. It wasn’t even a speed bump in their thinking. It just meant they had to be smarter about how they killed someone.

So, if you think your loud-ass neighbor would likely kill his co-workers if we didn’t have the death penalty, then yes, by all means, we should keep it…and Steve needs to die.

Otherwise, one must ask, why exactly does Steve need to die?

If we don’t kill Steve, we could learn from him. Like, we could study cycles of abuse and trauma. If you’re more punitive-minded, we could have Steve do labor for the state and give the majority of his income to a fund for his victim’s families. If we don’t kill Steve, we have all sorts of options. If we kill him we have only one option, bury him.

Maybe we’re not being honest about why we need to kill Steve. Maybe it’s not to keep other would-be criminals in line. Maybe it’s not a deterrent. Maybe the death penalty is an emotional release. For us. Maybe we need to kill Steve because…we need to kill Steve. He’s crossed a line. And to keep harmony in the social group, we occasionally need to punish the Steves of the world. If we’re being as honest and efficient as a grave-digger’s shovel, perhaps it feels good to kill Steve. For us.

We all know one can find a certain fiendish delight when you get the sense that justice is being served to someone most deserving. We like to see a person we feel is guilty get their comeuppance. But, is a prisoner’s death the ultimate comeuppance? How come we never killed Charlie Manson? We’ve kept him alive. The answer is…for us. We want that monster for our entertainment. He’s deemed too crazy to kill. Whatever that means. Like he won’t know we’re killing him, so why bother? But mostly, it’s that we like our monsters. And some we want to keep on display.

Many defenders of the death penalty have confessed to me that they posses a desire to see a condemned criminal suffer for his crimes. Like, truly suffer. Not watch their execution, per se, but just to see that he gets what he deserves. I understand this desire to see people suffer, I was raised Catholic. We spend a lot of time talking about suffering, and executions.

Growing up, I went to church every Sunday. I stared at statues of Jesus, with his agonized face, twisted in pain, frozen in stone, his dying moment on the crucifix. I’d think about how when the mob turned against him, they wanted to see him die. We have a cross to commemorate that long death moment. You’ll find one hanging behind the altar in nearly any Catholic church you attend. As a boy, I stared at Jesus, up there on his crucifixion cross. And consequently, I’ve thought a lot about why a society feels the need to kill a prisoner. Also, I’ve wondered why people who like to call America a Christian nation would be so into executions. But it’s complicated, no doubt. One thing I’ve never understood is how seeing someone else suffer can make anyone feel better.

There’s a social need for some to see the guilty pay for their sins. With pain and suffering. This may be due to the fact that–in the West–our first law books were written in the stone tablets of our religions. For some folks they seem to feel that we need to kill the condemned man because it makes them feel good and right in a world of chaos. Similar to how religion once provided such a strong sense of order and justice. Maybe, in a very grim way, like the hellish wrath of the God from the Old Testament, for some people capital punishment makes sense because it feels like the scales of justice have been balanced, with suffering. And we can all feel momentarily good about that. I guess. Like I said, I don’t get it.

But I’ll concede I’ve heard it often enough that I trust some people feel better knowing that a criminal is suffering for their crimes. The same way one might pay for their sins, the state demands that the prisoner pay with all their tomorrows. Now, if you’re not someone who can so easily make sense of the suffering of others, the death penalty offers little else.

One thing to keep in mind about California, and our death penalty, we did elect Ronald Reagan as our governor. And Arnold Schwarzenegger, twice. We seem to have an image of ourselves that’s pretty macho. Maybe that’s it. Maybe we still kill prisoners because our Republican governors all seem to share a love for the cowboy way–like an old hanging judge, serving justice out in the territories. But what a terrible justification for taking a man’s life.

Look, Steve, we’re really sorry. We know executing you won’t do much for society or for the victim’s families, but we feel real macho and cowboy killing you…so, you need to die, Steve.

That’s essentially our argument. If a prisoner’s death can’t bring back his victims, and his death won’t stop others from acting like him, really we’re just killing him because of how it feels for us. Steve needs to die because it makes us feel good about ourselves and our place in the world.

Well, I guess to be fair, there is one another reason you hear. One that’s not as emotional. In fact, it’s so coolly rational it’s chilling if you think about it. Certain defenders of the death penalty like to point out that it costs X amount of dollars to keep a man in prison for a year. When they discuss death row inmates, they consider how much each one costs the state to lock up. More to the point: they weigh a man’s life in dollars. Like accountants with a kill switch. It has to be one of the most callous statements you’ll ever hear.

Steve needs to die because he just costs so damn much to feed. Steve eats a lot. And as he gets older, we’re gonna have to buy his medicine, too. Look, Steve needs to die.

Like that shit is so cold you could use it to chill drinks. And it’s wildly inaccurate. You know what is more expensive than housing a prisoner for a year? Lawyers. Death row inmates rack up legal appeals. On average, it costs taxpayers $308 million dollars to kill a death row inmate in California.

In a 2011 study of California’s death penalty, the authors reported that:

“Since reinstating the death penalty in 1978, California taxpayers have spent roughly $4 billion to fund a dysfunctional death penalty system that has carried out no more than 13 executions.”

If you doubt the veracity of those numbers, one of the authors of the study was Arthur L. Alarcon, a U.S. 9th Circuit judge. We’re not talking about an Ivy league academic, he’s someone for whom the death penalty is part of his job.

But frankly, money shouldn’t be the metric to decide whether a prisoner lives or dies. We shouldn’t be so quick to do the math to calculate how much we as a society should spend before the price is right to kill a citizen. Just imagine how much that $4 billion would do if it was given to schools, how many lives it could change. Instead, we wound up with 13 dead.

Think of it this way. If you repeal the death penalty we would never kill the wrong people. That’s kind of a big deal. Generally speaking, in other arenas of life, outside of death row, we’re all fans of that sort of thinking. We prefer when businesses don’t accidentally kill people. Right? Also, we could study and learn from murderers in the hopes we can save others from their crimes and from their fate. But it’s very difficult to learn anything from a dead man. The conversation tends to be a trifle one-sided.

In more serious terms, our state would join the rest of the modern developed nations of the world who long ago abolished the death penalty. Most reasonably modern governments think executions are an archaic notion of justice. They place them somewhere alongside witch hunts and those gruesome skin-peeling acts of faith from the Spanish Inquisition. Look, some traditions need to be set down. The death penalty is one of those traditions that we need to leave to history. It’s barbaric, it’s racist, it’s unfairly applied to poor people, innocent citizens are wrongly killed, and it costs you roughly $308 million dollars to kill a Californian.

It’s simple. No one should be killed by the state. If you agree that we no longer need the death penalty, be sure to vote against capital punishment.