Objection! (40 page)

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play in our courts, insisting that the punishment fit the crime. Unlike some societies, we do not chop off a hand that steals, we don’t gouge out the eye that covets, stone the spouse that commits adultery. We do not cane the perpetrator or employ torture or deny prisoners food, shelter, or medical care. We try to do good and remain blind as to gender, race, creed, or color in meting out justice. This is also true for the imposition of the death penalty. We are neither barbaric nor draconian. The simple truth is, if you do the crime, you pay for it. If you commit the ultimate evil, murder, there is a chance you will face the ultimate punishment—

the death penalty.

The Danes and the Norwegians abolished the death penalty before the First World War but restored it for a period of time after 1945 in order to mete out justice to the Nazis. Uncivilized? Absolutely not. It was the appropriate response to unspeakable evil. The Bahamas, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, China, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, South Korea, Malaysia, Morocco, the Philippines, St.

Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Singapore, Taiwan (Republic of China), and Thailand are some of the other countries around the world that agree with Americans that the death penalty is appropriate in the face of heinous crime. So where does that leave the broad assertion that capital punishment cannot exist in a civilized society? What do opponents of the death penalty think a civilized society is? “Civilization”

has created the measured response of the death penalty specifically to avoid the less civilized alternative called vigilante justice—or mob rule, to put it more bluntly.

Is a civilized culture one that claims low crime rates? Is that civility? O’Sullivan wrote in
National Review
that in the fifties, America had the highest-ever level of social tranquility and its lowest crime rate ever. At that time, we also had the death-penalty alternative. As use of the death penalty was gradually minimized by outright formal statute and by judges’ reluctance to impose it, crime and violence increased markedly. America reinstated the death penalty in the 1970s, and within two decades violent crime finally began to decrease again. I believe a 2 7 2

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truly civilized society hears the cries of crime victims instead of the protests of heartless killers.
That
is civilized. And for those of you who disagree: This is not about gentility. Go spread your butter with your teaspoon, drink your water from your teacup, and pray like hell that you or someone dear to you is not the victim of a repeat offender.

I T ’ S T H E W I L L O F

T H E P E O P L E . . .

L E T ’ S S U B V E R T I T !

Why do anti-death-penalty advocates
insist that the majority of Americans are wrong and they are right? Why are these entitled few allowed to subvert the will of the many—in direct contradiction to the U.S. Supreme Court? America supports the imposition of the death penalty in egregious cases. The death penalty is authorized by thirty-eight states, the federal government, and the U.S. military. Those jurisdictions without the death penalty include twelve states (Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin) and the District of Columbia.

Support for the death penalty is high despite the concern of most Americans over the possibility that innocent people have been put to death in the past five years (although most consider this a rare occurrence). According to a nationwide poll conducted by the Gallup Organization in May 2004, the latest numbers show a continued high level of public support for the death penalty for those convicted of murder.

Americans say that the death penalty is not imposed enough rather than imposed too often.

The poll found 71 percent of Americans in favor of and 26 percent opposed to the “death penalty for a person convicted of murder.” While Gallup has been asking the death-penalty question since the 1930s, support has been above 70 percent over the last two years, after having O B J E C T I O N !

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been in the mid- to high 60 percent range in 2000–2001. The current number is the highest support level Gallup has obtained on this measure since May 1995, when 77 percent supported the death penalty. The highest support level was 80 percent in 1994, and the lowest was 38

percent in 1965.

In the last couple of years, there has been a growing belief that the death penalty is applied fairly in this country, despite news reports that some individuals were incorrectly given death sentences. Fifty-five percent of Americans now say that the death penalty is applied fairly, while 39 percent disagree. In 2000, 51 percent said it was applied fairly and 41 percent said it was not. That year, Illinois instituted a death-penalty moratorium, and the death penalty in Texas under then-governor George W. Bush was a major issue in the 2000 presidential campaign. The numbers were unaffected.

L I V I N G L A R G E B E H I N D B A R S

Do convicted murderers repent?
Are they remorseful? Do they exhibit a concern for their innocent victims? Let’s examine the evidence.

Stardust Johnson was shocked when she logged on and inadvertently spotted a photograph of her husband’s killer on the Internet, pleading for female pen pals to end his boredom on death row. Johnson’s husband, Roy, a music professor at the University of Arizona, was kidnapped, robbed, and beaten to death after a concert in Tucson in February 1995. Beau Greene was convicted of the murder and sentenced to death. Johnson learned the hard way that while her husband was dead and buried, his killer was free to advertise for female com-panionship. The pen-pal site stated that it was “pleased” to present Greene and shows off a picture of the condemned killer cuddling a cat.

Ferreting out Internet mail generated from the Web and separating it from regular mail would necessitate more investigators, but with all the money federal, state, and local authorities lift from our wallets, I 2 7 4

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think they can afford it. The dating game shouldn’t be allowed on death row. I was shocked to learn that multiple Web sites, created by everyone from human-rights groups and ministers to moneymakers, actively try to find “pen pals” for inmates. I won’t give them the free publicity by listing their names here, but trust me when I tell you there’s more than a handful of them out there. The sites solicit letters from those outside prison walls to fill the “lonely” hours of inmates on death row. Some are looking for women. Others solicit donations to their defense funds and ask people to send them stamps. Some insist they only want to hear from the outside world. Many inmates even have set up Web sites devoted to publicizing their cases and maintaining their innocence.

It’s not surprising to learn that there have been several cases of inmates scamming people on the outside to support them. Individuals have gotten sucked into pen-pal relationships with inmates and have actually ended up mortgaging their homes and maxing out their credit cards as a result. There have been cases where women have sent inmates sexually explicit audio tapes and photographs and wound up depositing thousands of dollars of their own, hard-earned money into inmate bank accounts and defense funds. Here are just a few examples of killers looking for a little TLC through the personals: Triple killer Michael E. Correll is a death-row Casanova and a self-described lover of “animals and nature” who actively tries to convince women he meets on the Internet to finance his legal defense. Robert Moorman, who killed his mother and chopped up her body, has said he wished women would write him to discuss poetry and
Star Trek.
Kenneth Laird, who strangled a woman with rope he tightened around her neck with a screwdriver, says he’s trapped in a “lonely and scary place” and wants women of any age to write him.

In his personal ad posted on the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty’s (CCADP) Web site, Correll claimed he was wrongly convicted of murder. He said he was seeking “sincere and caring hearts” who wish “to bring the light of day” into his life. Correll has placed several ads on the Internet to garner support for his case. He O B J E C T I O N !

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even provided a Fabio-like picture of himself, showing off his muscular body and long hair.

Correll is not alone. There are many others like him. Clinton Spencer was sentenced to death after being found guilty of kidnapping a woman, sexually assaulting and stabbing her to death, then finally setting her body on fire. The victim was kidnapped from a Tempe, Arizona, convenience store in 1989. At the time of the murder, Spencer was on probation for felony child abuse. Arizona Department of Corrections records show Spencer to be a violent inmate, with fifty-two dis-ciplinary actions filed against him between 1991 and 1998. He has been found guilty of seventeen major and nineteen minor violations of prison rules. Major violation charges against Spencer include verbal threatening, disobeying orders, narcotics possession, possession of a manufactured weapon, threatening physical assault, physical assault, threatening with harm, lying to an officer, and a pending charge of riot-ing. Spencer described online the “loneliness” of death row and said he hoped to find a friend who can understand and listen to him. He urged readers to write him at a “secret place” where “nobody could evade

[
sic
].”

Death-row inmate Danny Jones turned to the Internet to “meet new friends and share their thoughts, ideas and dreams.” In his online personal, he wrote that he enjoys reading novels and poetry and makes his own floral designs and greeting cards. Jones was convicted of killing three people, including a seventy-four-year-old grandmother and a seven-year-old child. Jones used a baseball bat to kill his friend Robert Weaver. He then went inside Weaver’s house, attacking and killing the victim’s elderly grandmother. Finally Jones chased down Weaver’s seven-year-old daughter and hauled her from under a bed, where she’d been hiding during his murder spree. He strangled her. Jones then stole a gun collection from the home. ADC records show that during his time on death row, Jones has been found guilty of two minor and one major violation. His last infraction occurred in 1996, a major violation for drug possession and manufacturing.

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Edward Bennett has been on death row since a jury sentenced him to die in 1988 for the shooting death of a Las Vegas convenience-store clerk. Bennett’s ad soliciting pen pals states, “My life has gone afoul enough that my heart melts when I see someone else’s troubles. . . . The only compensation I’ve ever found is to love people and so I’d like to love you. What do you like? Where does it hurt the most? I would like to be there for you.” That may be true for Bennett’s online “friends,”

but not for his victim or his grieving family left behind.

A F I N A L W O R D

I have finally accepted
that I will never know why a human chooses to rob another of his life, but I do have the common sense to know that some people will never be rehabilitated. Some people are simply so evil, so uncaring, that they will forever pose a threat to innocent individuals like the victims I listed above. I have learned that there is no such thing as locking killers up and throwing away the key. Just think about Charles Manson and his “disciples.” They were sentenced to death following the Manson-family murders in 1969, and then, in a political twist, the death penalty was banned in California in 1972. Manson’s sentence was commuted to life. Eventually he ran out of appeals, but each time he has come up for parole, it has wisely been denied.

Even though the death penalty was reinstated in that jurisdiction in 1978, Manson and his followers continue to live on California tax dollars and conduct business on Web sites that encourage a cultlike following. Who knows what an ever-changing parole board may decide in the future? One thing about the Grim Reaper—he doesn’t grant parole.

The fact that these murderers are not only living large behind bars but tormenting victims online is wrong. These crimes call out for the death penalty.

I rest my case.

O B J E C T I O N !

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T H E R E V O L V I N G D O O R

A K A O U R P A R O L E S Y S T E M

There is a theory
that keeping criminals off the streets is the best way to reduce crime. It makes perfect sense, except for one tiny detail: Most criminals, even the hard-boiled ones, are sent away for a relatively short period of time. Fleeting time behind bars doesn’t rehabilitate inmates; too many reemerge into society even more dangerous. Theoretically, parole is the ability to get out of jail under state supervision much earlier than the sentence from the judge dictates. For instance, a trial judge can sentence a child molester to thirty years behind bars and have that conviction and corresponding sentence affirmed on appeal.

But—and it’s a powerful but—the parole board in that jurisdiction will release the defendant whenever it sees fit, or when the bed space is needed, be it after ten years, five, or three. Too often, these decisions result in more kidnappings, rapes, and murders.

The case of Dru Sjodin’s disappearance and murder is a particularly disturbing example of how a violent criminal falls through the cracks. The criminal complaint against her alleged assailant, Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., said that the crime was “especially heinous, cruel and depraved,” and involved “torture and serious physical abuse.” Detectives confirm that they found traces of Sjodin’s DNA in blood collected from Rodriguez’s car. They also found a knife in the trunk that matched a sheath found near Sjodin’s car at the Grand Forks mall where she disappeared in November 2003.