What I Learned From Executing Two Men – The New York Times - Semon Frank Thompson - Sept. 15, 2016
Leg tie-downs on the gurney in the execution room at the Oregon State Penitentiary, in Salem, Oregon
SALEM, Ore. — As superintendent of the Oregon State Penitentiary, I planned and carried out that state’s only two executions in the last 54 years. I used to support the death penalty. I don’t anymore.
I was born and raised in the segregated South. I was 13 when Emmett Till was lynched for “flirting” with a white woman. I can remember upstanding black Christians expressing hope that his murderers would be caught and hanged. It seemed quite reasonable to me then that death was the only proportionate response for people who would so egregiously violate the norms of a society.
Years later, as a young law enforcement officer, I lost a close friend, John Tillman Hussey, and a cousin, Louis Perry Bryant — both law enforcement officers themselves — to execution-style murders at the hands of felons who were attempting to avoid arrest. I remember feeling that justice had been served when one of their killers was executed.
In 1994, during my interview for the superintendent job, I was asked if I would be willing to conduct an execution. I said yes. Oregon had not executed anyone in decades, but the death penalty was part of the criminal justice system, and I had to be prepared for all of the duties that a superintendent could be called upon to perform.
Shortly afterward, I was charged with executing two inmates on the penitentiary’s death row, Douglas Franklin Wright and Harry Charles Moore. Moore had been convicted of killing his half sister and her former husband, and he said he’d take legal action against anyone who tried to stop his execution. Wright was sentenced to death for killing three homeless men. He later admitted to killing a 10-year-old boy. He, too, had given up his appeals.
Regardless of their crimes, the fact that I was now to be personally involved in their executions forced me into a deeper reckoning with my feelings about capital punishment. After much contemplation, I became convinced that, on a moral level, life was either hallowed or it wasn’t. And I wanted it to be.
I could not see that execution did anything to enhance public safety. While death penalty supporters suggest that capital punishment has the power of deterrence, a 2012 report by the National Research Council found that research “is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases or has no effect on homicide rates.”
I now believed that capital punishment was a dismal failure as a policy, but I was still expected to do my job. So I met with my staff and explained my position. I made it known that anyone who felt similarly opposed could back out of our assignment. According to state policy, assisting in the executions was voluntary for everyone but the superintendent. And yet each of those asked to serve chose to stay to ensure that the job was done professionally.
I’m a Vietnam-era veteran, and a law enforcement professional who has been trained to deal with life-or-death situations, as were many of my colleagues. We focused on carrying out our responsibilities and leaving everyone involved with as much dignity as possible.
I began to feel the weight of this undertaking while practicing for the executions. Teams rehearsed for more than a month. There was a full “run through” of the execution every week.
The weight intensified during the executions, which took place eight months apart, and it didn’t subside until well after they were completed. I cannot put into words the anxiety I felt about the possibility of a botched procedure. I wasn’t certain how my staff would fare. These were the first executions in Oregon in over three decades. These were the first executions in Oregon to be administered by use of lethal injections. I was the first black superintendent of the Oregon State Penitentiary. All of these firsts had the potential to come together in a very negative way if my team made a single mistake.
Planning an execution is a surreal business. During a prisoner’s final days, staff members keep the condemned person under 24-hour surveillance to, among other things, ensure that he doesn’t harm or kill himself, thus depriving the people of Oregon of the right to do the same. I can understand the administrative logic for this reality, but it doesn’t make this experience any less strange.
During the execution itself, correctional officers are responsible for everything, from strapping the prisoner’s ankles and wrists to a gurney to administering the lethal chemicals. One of the condemned men asked to have his wrist straps adjusted because they were hurting him. After the adjustment was made, he looked me in the eye and said: “Yes. Thanks, boss.”
After each execution, I had staff members who decided they did not want to be asked to serve in that capacity again. Others quietly sought employment elsewhere. A few told me they were having trouble sleeping, and I worried they would develop post-traumatic stress disorder if they had to go through it another time.
Together, we had spent many hours planning and carrying out the deaths of two people. The state-ordered killing of a person is premeditated and calculated, and inevitably some of those involved incur collateral damage. I have seen it. It’s hard to avoid giving up some of your empathy and humanity to aid in the killing of another human being. The effects can lead to all the places you’d expect: drug use, alcohol abuse, depression and suicide.
But the job gets done — despite the qualms and the cost. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. Capital punishment keeps grinding on, out of sight of society.
The average citizen will never find himself looking a death row prisoner in the eye, administering a lethal injection and stating the time of death in front of observers and reporters. But we all share the burden of a policy that has not been shown to make the public any safer, and that endures despite the availability of reasonable alternatives.
I am encouraged that Oregon now has a moratorium on executions, and there have not been any in the state since the ones I oversaw. Nationwide, in the past few decades, executions have also been declining, from a high of 98 in 1999 to 15 so far this year. But people continue to be sentenced to death.
Since I retired from corrections in 2010, my mission has been to persuade people that capital punishment is a failed policy. America should no longer accept the myth that capital punishment plays any constructive role in our criminal justice system. It will be hard to bring an end to the death penalty, but we will be a healthier society as a result.
Semon Frank Thompson was the superintendent of the Oregon State Penitentiary from 1994 to 1998. An interview with him appears in the forthcoming “Death: An Oral History,” edited by Casey Jarman.
Sanjay Gupta Sept. 18, 2016
This editorial is among the best I have read,
but does not move my belief in the
moral necessity of capital punishment. There are certain crimes for which there
is no sentence short of death.
Not far from my home, the brutal rape and murder of the Petit family took place
in Cheshire in 2007 - a crime that was judged to be so heinous as to merit the
death sentence. The governor at the time, Jodi Rell, faced the abolition of the
death penalty within the state legislature and ultimately vetoed the measure,
citing the horrific circumstances of that crime. Dannel Malloy, the governor who
succeeded her, repealed the death penalty - and the murderers now have their
sentences commuted to life in prison.
How arbitrary.
The survivors are left not with closure,
but rather the misery of a system that
cares more about the violent offenders that took the lives of their loved ones.
The executioners hand is their last chance at justice. There are no appeals from
death.
Thompson’s humanity reveals that people killing others is hard - no matter the
reason. That doesn't make it wrong. What is wrong is the perverse sanitization
of the act - there is nothing "clean" about the deliberate taking of life, be it
via a needle or via firing squad. It is this need to "cleanse" the act of
capital punishment that makes it harder on the actor - the death sentence, I
would argue, is still just.
G NY Sept. 18, 2016
It's justice, take a life, lose a life. No more than you should let a rat live in your house with your family and pay for it. Funds are needed for valuable endeavors. Victims need sympathy, not murderer's.
Dadof2 New JerseySept. 17, 2016
In 1988, CNN's Bernard Shaw helped destroy Michael Dukakis's run for the
Presidency when asking about the death penalty, asked how Dukakis would feel if
his wife, Kitty, was raped and murdered. Dukakis could have saved the day had he
answered: "Bernie, of course, like any man I'd want to strangle the guy with my
bare hands, slowly, so he'd suffer as he died. But that's why our justice system
puts the decisions of guilt and innocence, and what the penalty should be in the
hands of disinterested parties. So that it is justice that is served and not
just vengeance. Study after study shows that the best deterrence to murder is
the assurance of being caught and punished, and that the death penalty never
enters killers' minds because they assume they won't get caught."
NIcky V
Boston, MA Sept. 17, 2016
This issue generates strong views, but executions are rare enough to affect few
people directly. The issue became personal for me after the murder of a
childhood friend in our early 20s. That crime led to a death sentence and the
execution of the man who attacked my friend, a bright, compassionate young woman
who planned to study law and thought of becoming a public defender.
Americans tend to be vindictive, and I soon realized that the only politically
correct response to that situation was a revenge fantasy: inflicting great
suffering on the man responsible for taking my friend's life and for causing
such terrible damage on her family and friends. Initially, that intense anger
consumed me and I often imagined violent retribution against the killer. But I
soon realized that I gained nothing from going down that path. It was up to the
state to deal with the killer, and I had to find other ways to honor my friend
and a short lifetime of friendship. The execution provided a legal and moral
resolution, however imperfect, to my friend's murder, but it could not, as the
cliché goes, provide "closure," which is unattainable anyway.
If the subject comes up, I say that the best way to respond to this loss has not
been to dwell on the killer's fate, but to sustain the legacy that my friend
left to her family, her friends, and to the communities that nurtured her and
that she in turn enriched.
Thanks to Mr. Thompson for making this issue less of an abstraction.
Wolfgang Price Vienna Sept. 17, 2016
Should one not start with: what is the AIM of a particular criminal justice
system? Societies differ on that questions. (Some beg that question.) Is its
purpose solely law enforcement? Increasingly the implicit answer is 'yes'. The
number of persons engaged in every aspect of law enforcement has increased
dramatically. Law enforcement has become an industry. It is sought after for
'jobs'. By industry it is sought after for 'private enterprise'. By Judges it is
sought after a politically privileged position.
The system as it has devolved for the body politic is one that is ridden with
with public and private security 'patrolman'. No public or private space where
persons is not under vigilance. Cameras every where. Patrol; in front of stores.
Paramilitary officers in masks. Patrols in Humvee.
Civil society, and its elected 'job holders', have found no better means for
securing compliance with its ordinances than evermore enlisted person in the
ranks of licensed weapon carriers. Civil society and its minion of elected
leaders fully fail to perform their duty to fashion a society in which decent
values are praiseworthy, in which every effort is made to enhance the human role
in social life, to assume responsibility for the well-being of each
constituents.
The criminal justice system described in the article reflects in a larger
context the egregious failure of elected civil government to perform its
function and cover-up its failure with a law enforcement battalions.
Jayde Mason Bakersfield, CA Sept. 17, 2016
I have no issue with the death penalty as long as it's reserved for the worst
murderers (e.g., rape murders, torture murders, execution-style killings of
multiple people, etc.) where there's no doubt at all as to the defendant's
guilt. Unfortunately that's not always the case. If there's any doubt at all,
life without parole is always the better choice. It also makes no sense to wait
20 years to execute someone. To have any chance of a deterrent effect, death
sentences must routinely be carried out within no more than 5 years.
One advantage of having the death penalty that is often ignored is that it
allows the DA to make a deal for life without the possibility of parole to
compel testimony that will help convict co-defendants or in exchange for
information on additional murders/bodies, providing much needed closure to
grieving families. This is how the Green River Killer avoided the death penalty.
If Washington state hadn't had the death penalty at that time, the only way to
get this serial killer to cooperate would have been to offer him a sentence
involving parole after X years, and even that wouldn't be as much of an
incentive as avoiding the death penalty. Because while anti-death penalty
advocates often argue that decades behind bars is worse punishment than a death
sentence, the overwhelming majority of murderers disagree, as evidenced by the
fact that they're desperate to make a deal that will take the death penalty off
the table.
jephtha France Sept. 16, 2016
I am opposed to the death penalty on several grounds, but I think one of the most powerful arguments against it is that serving for the rest of one's life in prison with no hope of ever getting out is a far worse punishment than being erased and having one's earthly presence ended. Just ask Leslie Van Houtem, one of the Manson girls. She has been in prison for 46 years. She is now a mature 66 year old woman with college degrees. She is a completely different person from the foolish drug-taking young woman of the 1960's. Her requests for parole have been turned down something like 14 times. She is in absolute agony in prison. The chances are she will never receive parole. She is destined to die in prison. She will probably live another 20 years, and being in prison will be increasingly agonizing. To me that is the real punishment, not releasing someone from this life. Then it is over. I say put these terrible people in prison and throw away the key. Let them suffer in a concrete building with bars, terrible people for companions and complete loss of freedom, until they die.
Harley Leiber Portland, Oregon Sept. 16, 2016
I worked with offenders for many years. The one thing that stands out today, for those who had committed the most heinous acts would be or could be worse than spending the rest of their days in a cell, separated from all other human contact. Year after year after year. Human beings are social animals. Some more than others. But having contact with a limited or broad range of people insures our sanity. Using "true life" prison sentences is, in fact, a death sentence...just another kind.
Mark Long Beach, Ca Sept. 16, 2016
Other than the horrible possibility of executing innocent people, and the ethical questions of the state to putting people to death, there is the practical aspect of the cost of the death penalty. Since 1978, California has spent about 4 billion dollars to execute 13 people, or about 308 million dollars on average foolishly spent for each single person executed. Death penalty cases are very lucrative for the criminal justice system so legal professionals are often in favor of the death penalty. It seems that abolishment of the death penalty would help improve America's image, and possibly some of the money saved that would have been spent on death penalty trials that drag on for years could instead be used to help crime victims and their families.
Laura Ipsum Midwest Sept. 16, 2016
Haunting. There is something so macabre about running practices for a month before an execution to make sure you get it right, as if you're gearing up for the big game. I've also always found the idea of a special last meal especially cruel and twisted. You're about to end someone's life, but hey, let's do it in style. It's the exaggerated show of polite and civilized behavior right before they put the needle in you that is especially chilling.
Aaron Ladera Ranch, CA Sept. 16, 2016
I have watched plenty of "ID" on cable to know there will always be those who are beyond any hope of rehabilitation or redemption. The lowest form of humans who not only took lives- but wasted their own. I have no sympathy for these people. And for those who commit the most heinous, unconscionable crimes, we must have the death penalty at our disposal. We will end the life of those who have proven they can not live among civilized society. Our system of justice will ensure that this final act be performed with swift dignity and mercy- so as not to compare or come near the vile hate and disdain wrought on by the perpetrators themselves. In other words- we're gonna kill you- but we'll be nice about it.. We aren't China where the government shoots criminals in the back of the head then bills their family .30 cents for the bullet.
emby Canada Sept. 16, 2016
There is another reason the death penalty is not a deterrent. A psychopathic serial killer driven by an urge to kill is not deterred by the death penalty. They don't care. Or they figure they won't get caught, or get convicted because they're so much smarter than everyone else.. They don't think "Oh, I shouldn't do this, I could get the death penalty!" "Gee, I shouldn't kill my pregnant wife, I could face the death penalty!" They think they'll beat the rap or they just don't care if they die. The death penalty has become revenge so the families of the victims can feel better or feel avenged. The justice system shouldn't be used to make people feel avenged or to convince the public they are safer; it's emotional and false, IMHO. The justice system is supposed to be blind, logical and equal, and the death penalty's fairness is often corrupted by emotion, not to mention issues of race and class. The innocent or wrongly executed are usually not middle class executives, let's face it.
Laurie Drucker New York, Sept. 16, 2016
I don't want to pay for the sandwiches. When someone chooses to commit a heinous, violent crime, I don't want to pay to feed, clothe, house, monitor and medically care for this person for 10, 20 or 30 years. We have better ways to spend those resources, there is so much need. That's why I am in favor of use of the death penalty. If you say that the appeals process costs even more, then I'd say let's put more reasonable limits on the appeals process. Evil is evil, wrong is wrong, there is no mitigating factor that excuses ruining innocent lives intentionally or through depraved indifference.
JSB NYC Sept. 16, 2016
A few thoughts: Some have said that capital punishment amounts to ‘revenge,’ and
that revenge is beneath civilized society. But why should this be so?
We live
every day trusting that fellow members of our human community will treat us
decently; if someone breaks this trust by taking a life, who is to say that
revenge is not called for? What do we, collectively, owe the killer?
Finally, preserving the death penalty – for the most egregious and irredeemable
cases – seems a more flexible resolution than eliminating it across the board.
Nate Atlanta, GA Sept. 16, 2016
I used to be vehemently against the death penalty until the 2007 home invasion, rape and murder of an innocent family in Cheshire, CT. This was an absolutely senseless crime committed against strangers who were randomly targeted. The two perpetrators, career criminals, were caught in the act, so there was no debate over their innocence. The idea of an innocent person being put to death sickens me, as do cases where there are mitigating factors that aren't considered. However, I believe certain, rare cases rise to level of heinousness that deserves the death penalty. These men were the embodiment of evil and forfeited their right to be on this earth by committing a such an unequivocally gruesome crime. It disgusts me that Connecticut has banned the death penalty and commuted their sentences to life.
ChesBay Maryland Sept. 16, 2016
It's NOT a good enough reason. Our government should never be in the business of revenge. It serves NO useful purpose, is incredibly expensive, and is certainly not a deterrent. Life without parole should provide enough closure for the families of any victim. If it doesn't, then they are the ones who might need some psychological attention.
Robert T Colorado Sept. 16, 2016
Such hypocrisy, to insist on executions but run and hide when it's time to carry
them out. Men and women like this bear the burden of our collective cowardice.
Let them by performed in public, and make everyone watch. No sanitized methods
like injection that let us pretend this is simply another bureaucratic
procedure. And the person who pushes the button must be one of us, chose by lot.
Don't like it? Then maybe we should not be doing this.
Sam, Virginia Sept. 16, 2016
I oppose the death penalty.
However I take issue with the notion that the justices of the Supreme Court,
whether of an Earl Warren or Antonin Scalia bent who are not answerable to the
people have the authority to unilaterally substitute their subjective cultural
values for those of the people and their representatives, a conceit which
although by tradition a legitimate function of the Law Lords of the British
House of Lords denies the fundamental principle of this country's democratic
republicanism that the people have reserved to themselves the right to be wrong.
Our errors are correctable. The Court's, not so much if at all.
Orjof New York, NY Sept. 16, 2016
What a powerful, honest, moving piece.
I have been on the fence about the death penalty, but I have to say I had never
fully realized its costs (other than the cost of multiple appeals, which is well
publicized). This piece was very informative and, while arguing against the
penalty, did not argue on the basis of moral superiority. A must-read for all of
us.
Thank you Mr. Thompson.
ACW Sept. 16, 2016
I respect the author's arguments, and his feelings. However, his qualms do not
change my view, which is that the death penalty should continue to be available
for the most heinous crimes. Granted that the system needs drastic reform. But
there's an old saying, 'it's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it', and these
jobs are usually carried on out of sight.
Tell me, Mr Thompson (and all those who concur with him): did you kill the meat
in your sandwich? Did you even watch? Could you do it if you had to? Yet the
steer, or lamb, or hog, or chicken is completely innocent of anything except
perhaps being tasty and unable to fight back. Nor did it have years of appeals
and volunteer legal talent to protect it, and its death - as well, probably, as
its short life in a factory-farm prison - was far more painful and horrible than
any you administered.
And if you had the freedom to write your essay, you may thank a soldier. I'm
generally anti-war, and strongly critical of the wars the US has fought in my
lifetime (I'm 61); but I feel war is like capital punishment - the option should
be available, though resorted to only in extreme circumstances, and our criteria
for resorting to it need reexamination and drastic reform.
Jay Jones Loganville, GA Sept. 16, 2016
Mr. Thompson's experience touched me in that we share an evolution process of
our thoughts on capital punishment. I also think the death penalty does not
provide a deterrent to crime. This has always been a argument for the death
penalty in Georgia.
The death penalty is a tool of vengeance more than anything. I covered two death
penalty trials during my time as a newspaper reporter. In both cases, the
defendants were found guilty and sentenced to death. In both cases, the victims'
family were pleased with the verdicts. The men committed heinous crimes, and I
wondered how I would have reacted if it were my family who lost loved ones. I
arrived each time in trying to make sense of it all that two families will lose
after a death penalty conviction, and there are never any winners in these
cases.
SuperKev Brooklyn Sept. 16, 2016
Many people oppose the death penalty because of the fallibility of the system
(or the humans that make up the system). I am speaking of racial bias, and the
fact that it is likely that the state has put to death people innocent of the
crimes of which they have been accused. Built in to these critiques of a
fallible system is a sense that, maybe, we can perfect our justice system so
that no one is executed without a truly fair trial.
Let’s imagine, for a moment, that we could, in fact make a more perfect justice
system. Mr. Thompson cuts to the heart of why capital punishment, even then,
should be ended in the USA. He acknowledges that that the two men for whom he
oversaw the executions either wanted to die or admitted their guilt – they
clearly committed heinous crimes. And yet, in killing them, we, the people,
crossed a line ourselves. We, the people, committed premeditated murder. Mr.
Thompson and his staff administered the chemicals, but when the state kills in
our name, we are all guilty of murder.
Justice is different than vengeance. Vengeance is an understandable response to
pain and suffering, especially for the families of victims. But that is why
victims and their loved ones are not on juries and do not carry out the
punishments. We do not have a vengeance system; we have a justice system. And
state sponsored murder is not just. It is revenge. Those correctional officials
committed murder in our names and suffer the guilt and shame for all our sins.
Mmm commented Sept. 16, 2016
This is an important first hand account and adds something to the debate about
the practice of capital punishment.
I suppose I'm not convinced that there is something inherently wrong with
killing a person as punishment for murder. I understand that we greatly value
the sanctity of human life and should treat it with extreme care, but the same
can be said of the freedoms we deny by confinement in prison. To me, it's just a
matter of degree--obviously taking a life is much more significant, but can it
not be said that our criminal justice system already acknowledges that fact
(when the number of executions per year is down to low double digits)?