On Hope

Much has been made of the execution of Stanley Williams, both in the MSM and the blogs. Captain Ed, a blogger I read every day is opposed to the death penalty, for reasons that I think naive.

Grims Hall, another blogger on my favorites list, posts other arguments, but fails to take into account the simple human capacity for hope.

First, my credentials. I began my law enforcement career with the Louisiana Department of Corrections. Shortly thereafter, I went to work in the Division of Probation and Parole, a community based division of the department, where I worked as a Parole Officer. Parole Officers in Louisiana are fully accredited law enforcement officers, with the powers of arrest. I eventually retired from the LA DOC, and went to work as a jailer, with the Natchitoches Parish Sheriffs Office, where I rose to the rank of Lieutenant. I currently work for another agency, to be closer to my aging parents. I have worked in an around prisoners for virtually my whole career.

Captain Ed's naivete can be seen here:

When we have the person locked up, he should stay locked up -- and I mean locked up for good, and none of the Club Fed treatment, either. Three hots and a cot, and anything else depends on how well the prisoner behaves. That to me settles the entire case in a relatively expeditious manner without having twenty years of legal motions keeping the case alive.

Captain Ed wishes to quash hope.

An inmate in a prison has nothing but hope, and the astute prison administrator does nothing to diminish that hope because the behavior of the prisoners depends on it. Hope can come in many forms: That if a prisoner acts a certain way, he will make trustee; that if a prisoner completetes enough programs that he might be paroled; that if a person on death row gets the right lawyer, his sentence might be commuted; that if he is serving a life sentence, his lawyer might find procedural grounds to get it diminished; that if he serves long enough he will not be considered a threat. The list goes on and on. Tookie Williams had hope right to the last that his sentence would be commuted, and that he would spend the rest of his life in prison. His hope was based on a number of things, but it was his nevertheless.

Hope keeps a prisoner stable, and by extension the whole prison on an even keel. Prisoners without hope can commit unspeakable atrocities inside a prison.

The problem comes when the system lies to the public. Lets take, for example, the case of Wilbert Rideau. Rideau was convicted in Calcasieu Parish, LA, in 1961 for the murder of Julia Ferguson during a botched bank robbery. He was sentenced to die, and later in the 60's the US Supreme Court threw out the death penalty.

The victim's relatives were told that Wilbert Rideau would serve the rest of his life in prison. That he would never be released. That he would die in prison garb.

Rideau went on to become the publisher of The Angolite magazine and became instrumental in changing prisoner treatment across the United States. He was hailed by various wardens as the most rehabilitated prisoner in the country. He continued his appeals and was freed in January 2005 after his fourth trial. He was convicted, 44 years after the fact, for Manslaughter and was released because his time in prison had exceeded the maximum sentence for that crime. Rideau is still a convicted killer, but he is free.

His release came as a slap in the face to the system that put him in jail. Four trials over a 44 year period are almost impossible to sustain. Witnesses die, evidence degrades, memories fade. Eventually, everyone will be given a reduced sentence. Wilbert Rideau is proof of that fact. He is a free man today.

In Williams case, it took 24 years between the trial and the execution. If the case had dragged on another twenty years, the outcome might have been totally different.

If a system locks up a prisoner and tells him that whatever he does is futile, then hope is destroyed. The destruction of the prison will come soon afterward.

I support the death penalty on philosophical and practical grounds. It is a penalty that prevents multiple crimes each year, by simply reminding inmates that killing another inmate, or a guard, that the death penalty can be applied. The death penalty also gives closure to victims, in that they know that the case is finally over. Nothing closes a case like the death of the perpetrator.

The fault lies in that the time period between the verdict and the execution is so long. I place that blame firmly on the Court system. The death penalty should be applied fairly, and fairly sooner than it is currently applied. Lengthy, time consuming appeals are common in our justice system. The time frames should be expedited in capital cases.

I reject the line of thought that says it costs more to execute a prisoner than to keep him alive. A length of rope, a box of ammunition, the cost of an electric chair, or in Tookie's case, a vial of sodium pentathol is less expensive than keeping him alive a year. The cost argument is disingenious at best. The cost comes from keeping the prisoner alive while interminable appeals are filed. Reduce the time that appeals stretch out, and the cost of executing prisoners will go down.

Oh! Almost forgot. Merry Christmas y'all.