Spring Break
To conquer the barbarism within us
Capital punishment is a remnant of past ignorance and injustice. Banning it is the next step towards a society of redemption.
Robert Zaller
Issue date: 4/20/07 Section: Ed-Op
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I saw a remarkable sight the other day: eighteen death row exonerees, clutching a banner and battling the wind in front on Independence Mall, celebrating their reprieve from hell. One after another, they recounted the days and nights there:
"Seventeen years, eight months, and one day," said Juan Melendez.
"Ten years, three months, and eight days," said Ray Krone.
Death row is not like other places in prison. You are alone. You eat alone, never seeing the hand that slips your food, always cold, through a grate. You exercise in a cage, after being strip-searched, twice, by guards who kick your legs apart. And that's for good behavior.
Most of those who enter death row are mentally ill. Try adding seventeen years of isolation to that. Or twenty. Or thirty. Try imagining how to pass seventeen years, virtually entombed, knowing that you are innocent.
Try being Juan Melendez.
Not all the innocent make it out. Sam Millsap, who'd been the chief prosecutor of Bexar County, Texas, came north to say that he'd put an almost certainly innocent man, Ruben Cantu, to death in 1993. Millsap said that Cantu had received a professional trial, a near-perfect trial. But he was innocent, and now he's dead.
I watched Mr. Millsap carefully, because he is a man still partly in denial. Ruben Cantu did not get a near-perfect trial. The sole evidence against him was the testimony of an illegal immigrant laborer who was repeatedly badgered and threatened by police until he made the identification they wanted, and who has since recanted. That's how and why Ruben Cantu died.
The dirty secret of police and prosecutorial work in death penalty cases is that those involved resist evidence of innocence tooth and nail. Even when condemned prisoners are fully exonerated by the courts, prosecutors typically insist that there is still "doubt," that the case is still "open." There is too much at stake, personally and professionally, for them to do otherwise. In certain states, prosecutors and district attorneys make their bones on death penalty cases-Philadelphia's Lynn Abraham is a notorious example, as is Pennsylvania's current governor, Ed Rendell-and there is no greater embarrassment for them than a death row exoneration. It is not merely the publicity given to capital cases, but also their great expense: it costs twice as much to execute a prisoner after a stay of say, eight or ten years on death row, than to house him in the general prison population for life. Nor does any prosecutor who has assured a murder victim's survivors that execution will give them "closure" for their grief relish the prospect of telling them that they have not only vented their feelings on an innocent man, but that the real killer is still at large.
"Seventeen years, eight months, and one day," said Juan Melendez.
"Ten years, three months, and eight days," said Ray Krone.
Death row is not like other places in prison. You are alone. You eat alone, never seeing the hand that slips your food, always cold, through a grate. You exercise in a cage, after being strip-searched, twice, by guards who kick your legs apart. And that's for good behavior.
Most of those who enter death row are mentally ill. Try adding seventeen years of isolation to that. Or twenty. Or thirty. Try imagining how to pass seventeen years, virtually entombed, knowing that you are innocent.
Try being Juan Melendez.
Not all the innocent make it out. Sam Millsap, who'd been the chief prosecutor of Bexar County, Texas, came north to say that he'd put an almost certainly innocent man, Ruben Cantu, to death in 1993. Millsap said that Cantu had received a professional trial, a near-perfect trial. But he was innocent, and now he's dead.
I watched Mr. Millsap carefully, because he is a man still partly in denial. Ruben Cantu did not get a near-perfect trial. The sole evidence against him was the testimony of an illegal immigrant laborer who was repeatedly badgered and threatened by police until he made the identification they wanted, and who has since recanted. That's how and why Ruben Cantu died.
The dirty secret of police and prosecutorial work in death penalty cases is that those involved resist evidence of innocence tooth and nail. Even when condemned prisoners are fully exonerated by the courts, prosecutors typically insist that there is still "doubt," that the case is still "open." There is too much at stake, personally and professionally, for them to do otherwise. In certain states, prosecutors and district attorneys make their bones on death penalty cases-Philadelphia's Lynn Abraham is a notorious example, as is Pennsylvania's current governor, Ed Rendell-and there is no greater embarrassment for them than a death row exoneration. It is not merely the publicity given to capital cases, but also their great expense: it costs twice as much to execute a prisoner after a stay of say, eight or ten years on death row, than to house him in the general prison population for life. Nor does any prosecutor who has assured a murder victim's survivors that execution will give them "closure" for their grief relish the prospect of telling them that they have not only vented their feelings on an innocent man, but that the real killer is still at large.
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