Rolling: The right execution
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2006/12/21/a14a_versteeg_col_1221.html
By Jac Wilder VerSteeg
Deputy Editor of the Editorial Page
Thursday, December 21, 2006
This has been a bad couple of weeks for those of us who still favor the death penalty. Granted, we didn't have as bad a time as Angel Dieves Diaz.
State officials botched Diaz's execution eight days ago. They were executing him for the 1979 murder of a Miami bar manager. Instead of injecting lethal drugs into veins in Diaz's arms, "technicians" - or whatever you want to call them - missed and shot the stuff into the surrounding tissue. They did that twice.
Then Diaz proceeded to not die, and not die, and not die, until 34 minutes later. For much of that time, he was conscious and moving around.
The response from some people who favor the death penalty will be: "So what? He didn't care if his victim suffered. Why should I care if a killer suffers?"
Anyone who feels that way and speaks up about it actually will build support for abolishing the death penalty. Civilization recoiled from barbaric executions centuries ago. Cruel execution is against the law. If knowing that the state carried out a cruel execution doesn't bother you (or if you actually kind of like it), you have more in common with the killer than you'd like to admit.
The state's seeming inability to kill killers efficiently is just the latest problem. Florida and other states have sent a lot of inmates to Death Row who later were released because they were exonerated, most often lately by DNA evidence.
The glib answer is that those cases prove that the system works. Unfortunately, it only proves that the system works sometimes. And when the state is going to kill somebody, being right sometimes - or even almost all the time - isn't a good enough standard.
In addition to questions about whether the right person is being executed are questions about whether enough of the right people are being executed. Studies show that killers whose victims are white get the death penalty more often than those whose victims are black.
With all those problems, how is it possible still to favor the death penalty? Another of Florida's recent executions explains that.
On Oct. 25, Florida executed Danny Rolling for the 1990 murders of five college students in Gainesville. The murders were particularly vicious. Rolling pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death in 1994. News accounts say that Rolling, 52, died 10 minutes after being injected and was unconscious well before that.
I think that's a higher order of justice than keeping Rolling alive in a cell for another 20 or 30 years. Giving up your life is a higher penalty than giving up your freedom. Some say it's better to sentence killers to life without parole because rotting in jail will make them suffer more. Again, suffering isn't supposed to be the goal.
I also think that Rolling's case provides an example of how a killer's death can provide some relief to the victims' families. How much relief? It's hard to quantify.
Ada Larson, mother of Rolling victim Sonja Larson, said in a statement after his execution that: "I can still visualize the picture of my lovely daughter Sonja awakening in her bed and then being stabbed over and over again by this ninja-clad killer as she was trying to fend off the blows."
She continued, "Our pain will never go away, but this evil man has gone away now. This is not closure, as you in the media like to ask. But it closes a chapter in our never-ending sadness."
That's nothing close to complete relief, but she's describing a measure of relief. Making Danny Rolling, or any other murderer, give up his life to provide that relief seems just and fair to me.
That is why, in principle, I'm still in favor of the death penalty.
But it is not just and fair for the state to provide that measure of relief to Ms. Larson and others grieving for murdered friends and family members if doing so means perpetuating a system of capital punishment that kills innocent people or tortures to death the guilty.
I have no doubt that the state got it right when it killed Danny Rolling.
But I have a great deal of doubt about whether the state always gets it right - which leaves me a supporter of capital punishment in principle, but not as it's practiced.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2006/12/21/a14a_versteeg_col_1221.html
By Jac Wilder VerSteeg
Deputy Editor of the Editorial Page
Thursday, December 21, 2006
This has been a bad couple of weeks for those of us who still favor the death penalty. Granted, we didn't have as bad a time as Angel Dieves Diaz.
State officials botched Diaz's execution eight days ago. They were executing him for the 1979 murder of a Miami bar manager. Instead of injecting lethal drugs into veins in Diaz's arms, "technicians" - or whatever you want to call them - missed and shot the stuff into the surrounding tissue. They did that twice.
Then Diaz proceeded to not die, and not die, and not die, until 34 minutes later. For much of that time, he was conscious and moving around.
The response from some people who favor the death penalty will be: "So what? He didn't care if his victim suffered. Why should I care if a killer suffers?"
Anyone who feels that way and speaks up about it actually will build support for abolishing the death penalty. Civilization recoiled from barbaric executions centuries ago. Cruel execution is against the law. If knowing that the state carried out a cruel execution doesn't bother you (or if you actually kind of like it), you have more in common with the killer than you'd like to admit.
The state's seeming inability to kill killers efficiently is just the latest problem. Florida and other states have sent a lot of inmates to Death Row who later were released because they were exonerated, most often lately by DNA evidence.
The glib answer is that those cases prove that the system works. Unfortunately, it only proves that the system works sometimes. And when the state is going to kill somebody, being right sometimes - or even almost all the time - isn't a good enough standard.
In addition to questions about whether the right person is being executed are questions about whether enough of the right people are being executed. Studies show that killers whose victims are white get the death penalty more often than those whose victims are black.
With all those problems, how is it possible still to favor the death penalty? Another of Florida's recent executions explains that.
On Oct. 25, Florida executed Danny Rolling for the 1990 murders of five college students in Gainesville. The murders were particularly vicious. Rolling pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death in 1994. News accounts say that Rolling, 52, died 10 minutes after being injected and was unconscious well before that.
I think that's a higher order of justice than keeping Rolling alive in a cell for another 20 or 30 years. Giving up your life is a higher penalty than giving up your freedom. Some say it's better to sentence killers to life without parole because rotting in jail will make them suffer more. Again, suffering isn't supposed to be the goal.
I also think that Rolling's case provides an example of how a killer's death can provide some relief to the victims' families. How much relief? It's hard to quantify.
Ada Larson, mother of Rolling victim Sonja Larson, said in a statement after his execution that: "I can still visualize the picture of my lovely daughter Sonja awakening in her bed and then being stabbed over and over again by this ninja-clad killer as she was trying to fend off the blows."
She continued, "Our pain will never go away, but this evil man has gone away now. This is not closure, as you in the media like to ask. But it closes a chapter in our never-ending sadness."
That's nothing close to complete relief, but she's describing a measure of relief. Making Danny Rolling, or any other murderer, give up his life to provide that relief seems just and fair to me.
That is why, in principle, I'm still in favor of the death penalty.
But it is not just and fair for the state to provide that measure of relief to Ms. Larson and others grieving for murdered friends and family members if doing so means perpetuating a system of capital punishment that kills innocent people or tortures to death the guilty.
I have no doubt that the state got it right when it killed Danny Rolling.
But I have a great deal of doubt about whether the state always gets it right - which leaves me a supporter of capital punishment in principle, but not as it's practiced.
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