The Death Penalty
Rethinking the Death Penalty
Lindsey Bever, “It took 10 minutes to convict 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. […]” The Washington Post.
“Murder Rate of Death Penalty States Compared to Non-Death Penalty States.” Death Penalty Information Center.
John J. Donohue, “The Death Penalty: No Evidence for Deterrence.” The Economist's Voice.
Jeffrey Fagan, “Death and Deterrence Redux: Science, Law and Causal Reasoning on Capital Punishment.” Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law.
Michael L. Radelet, Traci L. Lacock, “Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates: The Views of Leading Criminologists.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 99.
Ethan Cohen-Cole, Steven Durlauf, et. all, “Reevaluating the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: Model and Data Uncertainty.” U.S. Department of Justice.
Jon B. Gould & Lisa Greenman. “Update on the Cost and Quality of Defense Representation in Federal Death Penalty Cases.” Judicial Conference of the United States.
Philip J. Cook. “Potential Savings from Abolition of the Death Penalty in North Carolina.” American Law and Economics Review.
The death penalty is as old as our records of written law, going back thousands of years in the roots of global legal traditions. But does it hold up in the 21st century?
Despite the popular belief that the death penalty prevents murders, there is no practical evidence that the death penalty actually reduces the rate of homicide. Although it may seem rational that the fear of death would prevent murder, murderers don’t act rationally. And that’s why many studies show that the death penalty just doesn’t work. In fact, states with a death penalty actually have more murders relative to their population than non death penalty states. Still, other people argue that it’s just a cost thing. Why should taxpayers be on the hook for taking care of a murderer for the rest of their life? Well, you might be surprised to discover that study after study has actually shown that all of the years of prosecution and appeals for death penalty cases make the death penalty more expensive than life imprisonment.
But even if these studies are flawed, even if the increase in murders is just correlation, not causation, even if economists have the costs wrong, one thing is certain: the United States has executed innocent people as young as 14 years old. We often think about the death penalty in terms of the people we know were guilty - Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Aileen Wurnos - but what about the innocents like George Stinney and Joe Arridy? They were innocent, found guilty, and executed. Would you really trust a jury of your peers if your life was on the line?
The Execution of Joe Arridy
Associated Press. “Happiest Man in Death Cell Dies in Chair.” St. Petersburg Times. January 7 1939.
Keith Koffman. “Colorado Governor Pardons Man Executed for Murder in 1939.” Reuters.
Rob Warden. “Arridy.” Friends of Joe Arridy.
Michael de Yoanna. “Crime: Begging Joe’s Pardon.” 5280.
Throughout his childhood, Joe Arridy was in and out of Colorado’s mental healthcare facilities, but no one knew quite how to help him. It was as if he just… didn’t understand the world around him. To be fair, it was the early 20th-century, so the quality of that care was limited at best. Still, Joe’s parents, a pair of Ottoman immigrants, accepted him as he was. The same couldn’t be said for the rest of the community, though. Even at Joe’s school, a facility for those with mental impairments, he was often bullied and beaten. So he ran away to the railyard, hopping from train to train, traveling but not really going anywhere far. But this couldn’t have happened at a worse time. During one of his journeys through town, two young schoolgirls were attacked in their home; one of them was assaulted and killed. And when Joe was arrested for vagrancy in a Wyoming rail yard, police believed he was on the run after committing the attack, so they sent him back to Colorado for questioning. We’ll never know what happened in that jail - we just know that at some point detectives got Joe to sign a confession with an “X.” Joe had misspelled his own last name in the margin. And that was all it took for Joe to be sentenced to death.
It didn’t matter that another man had been found with the murder weapon, confessed, and was executed. It didn’t matter that, even though Joe was in his early twenties, three separate doctors determined Joe had the mind of a six-year-old. As Joe spent a year and a half on death row, reporters remarked that the child-like Joe was “the happiest man on death row,” playing with toy trains in his prison cell and smiling as he was placed in the gas chamber on January 6, 1939.
In 2011, Joe Arridy was finally granted a full pardon by Governor Ritter of Colorado, but as Ritter said at the time, “Pardoning Arridy cannot undo [his execution.] It is in the interests of justice and simple decency, however, to restore his good name.” Forensic science has come a long way since Joe was executed. But our desire for revenge in the face of atrocity can blind us to the facts - and like Colorado’s governor said, execution is a punishment you can’t take back. It’s time to abolish the death penalty in the United States.
The Execution of George Stinney Jr.
Faber, Eli. “The Child in the Electric Chair.” University of South Carolina Press.
Chappell, Bill. “S.C. Judge Says 1944 Execution Of 14-Year-Old Boy Was Wrong.” NPR.
Bever, Lindsey. “It Took 10 Minutes to Convict 14-year-old George Stinney Jr…” The Washington Post.
Karen McVeigh. “George Stinney was executed at 14. Can his family now clear his name?” The Observer.
Rachel Lynne Morse. “The execution of George Stinney, Jr.: A case of legal lynching in South Carolina, 1944.” College of Charleston.
David Bruck. “Executing Teen Killers Again.” The Washington Post.
Annette Louise Bickford. “The Merciful Executioner: Spectacles of Sexual Danger and
National Reunification in the George Stinney Case, 1944.” Southern Anthropologist.
George Stinney is the youngest person ever executed in the United States.
In the early 1940s, George Stinney Jr. was growing up in the segregated milltown of Alcolu, South Carolina. Just like many towns in the Jim Crow South, race was a defining factor in people’s lives, and Black and White families literally lived on opposite sides of the tracks.
But one spring morning, George and his sister were grazing the family cow by those train tracks when two young White girls, Betty June Binnicker and Mary Emma Thames, walked up. (Show pictures of Betty June Binnicker and Mary Emma Thames) They were looking for maypop flowers for church, and the Stinney siblings told them what everyone knew - that you could find them growing along the railroad tracks. The girls thanked the siblings and rode off on their bicycles, and the Stinneys went on with their lives.
But the next day, those same girls were found beaten to death, their bodies found in a waterlogged ditch. Just hours later, police arrested the 14-year-old George after learning he had spoken with the girls the day before. (Show police questioning a scared-looking George) This swift action raises a troubling question - was George truly a suspect, or was he simply an easy target in a town on edge?
Things only got worse for George. He was questioned by police without an attorney or his parents present. (Show image of an interrogation room) Imagine a scared 14-year-old, isolated and facing adult officers. It's no wonder that under this immense pressure and on the losing side of a Jim Crow power dynamic that he allegedly made several contradictory confessions. To make matters even worse, George's father was fired by the local mill after the arrest, which meant the family lost their company housing. In the face of death threats and homelessness, they were forced to flee the town, leaving George to face this horrifying situation alone. (Show image of an abandoned house)
Despite the fact that George's confessions were inconsistent and there wasn't strong forensic evidence to support the accusations against him, an all-white jury found George guilty after a mere 10 minutes of deliberation. (Show image of an empty courtroom) This trial was a sham, but even more shocking than the verdict was the sentence: execution. (Show image of the electric chair) While George sat on death row, letters poured into the governor's office, begging for leniency. Just a few months prior, a white teenager accused of a similar crime had gotten twenty years in prison. (Show statistics on racial bias in sentencing) Where was the justice in a child’s execution? But the governor didn’t step in, and George’s lawyer didn’t file an appeal.
At fourteen years old and with a Bible tucked under his arm, George was walked into the execution chamber. Prison staff struggled as they attempted to strap the 95-pound, 5-foot one George into the electric chair made for adults. They lowered a mask over the young boy's face to cover what was about to happen, but as the executioner sent thousands of volts into George's body, the too-large mask fell off, revealing the tears pouring down his face. He was shocked two more times before being declared dead - the youngest person in the modern United States to have ever been executed.
70 years later, a judge finally vacated George's conviction due to multiple violations of his constitutional rights. But this ruling was just symbolic. It doesn't give George a fair trial or the years of life that were taken from him.
There are still innocent people facing execution today. Is the death penalty truly just, or is it time for a change?
The Executions of Thomas and Meeks Griffin
SC Supreme Court. “State v. Griffin, 1914.”
Seanna Adcox. “Radio Host Tom Joyner Clears His Family’s Name.” The Seattle Times.
“Four N**roes in Chester Sent to Electric Chair.” The Charlotte News.
Alex Spillius. “South Carolina Pardons Black Brothers Convicted of 1913 Killing.” The Telegraph.
One April night in 1913, a 75-year-old Confederate veteran, John Q. Lewis, was shot & killed in his SC home. Investigators quickly focused their investigation on an African-American couple, Anna & Bart Davis, who were found with packed suitcases & bloody clothes. In another break in the case, investigators found the victim’s pistol in the possession of “Monk” Stevenson, who said that Bart’s brother had given him the gun. But Monk’s story changed when police offered to take the death penalty off the table. In his sworn testimony, Monk accused Meeks & Thomas Griffin, John Crosby, & Nelson Brice of the murder. The Griffin brothers, the wealthiest black men in the county, sold their 138-acre farm to pay for their legal fees, but it wasn’t enough. Within 3 months, all 4 of the accused men had been sent to the electric chair, but all 4 were likely innocent. Monk later told fellow inmates and law enforcement that the men had nothing to do with the crime - he just wanted to save himself and thought the Griffins had enough money for a good lawyer. The Griffins received a pardon in 2009, but Crosby and Brice’s legacies remain permanently tainted by the false accusations that took their life. It’s time to end the death penalty in the US.
The Execution Jesse Tafero
Mike Clary. “Judge M.D. Futch, 'Maximum Dan'.” Sun Sentinel.
“Tafero v. State.” (1984).
“Sonia Jacobs.” Bluhm Legal Clinic Center on Wrongful Convictions.
“Electric Chair Malfunctions in Florida, Leading States to Change Execution Methods.” History.com.
In 1976, two policemen stopped to check out a parked car at a Florida rest stop. Asleep in the car were Walter Rhodes, Jesse Tafero, Jesse’s common-law wife, “Sunny,” and their children. But within just minutes, things had violently changed. Both officers were shot dead and Jesse, his family, and Rhodes fled in a stolen police car. The fleeing suspects then carjacked and kidnapped a bystander before being caught at a roadblock.
Despite physical evidence and a confession linking Rhodes to the murder, he was allowed to testify against Jesse and Sunny as part of a plea deal. As a result, both Jesse and Sunny were convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death by Judge Daniel Futch, known for his harsh sentences and the miniature electric chair he kept on his desk.
After exhausting all of his legal appeals, Jesse Tafero was strapped into the Florida State Prison’s electric chair before officials sent 2,000 volts surging through his body. But it didn’t work. Over the next six minutes, officials shocked Jesse two more times before he was finally declared dead. It was an execution so brutal that it contributed to the introduction of lethal injection for state execution, and it likely happened to an innocent man. Only two years later, Sunny’s conviction was overturned and she was released for time served. It’s time to abolish the death penalty in the United States.
The Execution of Lena Baker
Kathy Lohr. “Ga. Woman Pardoned 60 Years After Her Execution.” National Public Radio.
Lela Bond Phillips. “Execution in a Small Town.” The Black Commentator.
Lela Phillips. “Lena Baker Case.” New Georgia Encyclopedia.
Lena Baker, a poor, Black mother of three, became the only woman executed in Georgia’s electric chair after she was found guilty of the 1944 death of a white mill owner. But what had brought her there?
Lena had been hired as a nurse for the mill owner, Ernest Knight, a few years before. Over time, Knight began keeping her locked up in the mill as his “slave woman” and threatened her with death if she tried to escape. One April evening, things escalated. Knight attacked Lena in the mill with an iron rod, but she grabbed the pistol Knight kept on his shoulder and shot him before he could kill her. At the end of her 1-day trial, she was found guilty of capital murder by an all-white, all-male jury and sentenced to death. Her last words before her electrocution? “I am ready to meet my God.” Lena was buried in an unmarked grave behind the small church where she had sung in the choir, and she remained forgotten for decades. But in 2005, the state of Georgia finally reopened Lena’s case and gave her the pardon that would have saved her life. It’s too late for Lena, but we can still save lives. It’s time to abolish the death penalty in the United States.
The Execution of Carlos DeLuna
For more information about DeLuna’s case, visit thewrongcarlos.net or check out the additional sources below.
“The Carlos DeLuna Case: Definitive Proof that Texas Executed an Innocent Man?” The Week.
“Columbia Law School Investigation Uncovers New Evidence Suggesting Texas Executed Innocent Man” Columbia Law School.
Justin Chan. “‘The Phantom’: The Unjust Execution of Carlos DeLuna.” The Innocence Project.
Late one winter night in 1983, a Texas gas station clerk, Wanda Lopez, called 911 about a customer with a knife. Just minutes after, she had been brutally stabbed and later died in the hospital. There was one witness to the bloody scene who identified the assailant as a Hispanic male in a grey sweatshirt. Within minutes, the police had arrested Carlos DeLuna. Police tested DeLuna’s clothes for blood and looked for fingerprints, but they couldn’t find physical evidence from DeLuna at the scene. But even without any physical evidence linking him to the crime, De Luna was found guilty and sentenced to death. Until his execution in 1989, DeLuna insisted that he was innocent and had seen the murderer at the scene - even identifying him by name: Carlos Hernandez. Hernandez had a record of similar violent knife attacks, met the description of the killer, and was overheard bragging about committing the crime, but police never followed up with Hernandez because they said, despite his record, that Hernandez didn’t exist. When James Liebman, a professor at Columbia law school hired a private investigator to find Hernandez in 2003, it took only a day. Over the next decade, Liebman continued an incredibly thorough review of every aspect of DeLuna’s case and even uncovered photos of the crime scene that detectives had never even bothered to develop. Professor Liebman’s conclusion: Texas had executed an innocent man. But unfortunately, as Liebman says, “DeLuna’s story is not unique.” We’ll likely never know how many innocent people have been put to death in the United States, but we can keep it from happening in the future. It’s time to abolish the death penalty in the United States.