Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in Texas under Gov. Rick Perry for murdering his own children, despite ample evidence of his innocence.
UPDATE: Proving that Angry Black Minds think alike, ABL and I post-jinxed each other! But read both, because we take different points of the story into slightly different directions.
Very, very briefly, as I have both paying work and pro bono stuff up the wazoo today (why do these things not happen on opposite days, for instance? The fates can’t do at least that for me?):
There is much talk on my side of the internet about the fact that the audience at last night’s Republican debate cheered Rick Perry’s statements about the death penalty (clip embedded below) — much horror, much disgust, and on one level, I’m absolutely with you all on the horror and the disgust. After all, among the things that Governor/Presidential Wannabe Perry said was that he he has “never struggled with” the idea that he might have overseen the execution of an innocent man (go to the Brian Williams question, at about the 10 second mark) — and given that it appears that he did just that, the horror just grows exponentially.
But here’s the thing: Those cheering people, and God save us, Gov. Perry himself, are not strangers to us. They are not from another planet, or even another country. They are us. They are Americans. And in 2009, 65% of Americans said that they support the death penalty.
Now, I’m of the opinion that a pretty large slice of that 65% wouldn’t be cheering the idea, and would want those in power to be very, very certain about who they’ve decided to execute and why — to, in fact, struggle over it. That’s American, too, to support something without necessarily loving it. That’s how I feel about abortion, for instance, and it’s part of what is potentially great about this country: At our best (which, I will grant you, is sometimes difficult to find) we do not demand simple answers. Democracy makes room for gray areas, and we are a democracy.
But having said that, no matter how many would or would not cheer, no matter how many would or would not be thrilled that a Governor doesn’t struggle or lose sleep over putting people to death — those who cheered last night are a part of my American tribe. Or, to paraphase an American who I really rather loathe: You go to the future with the Americans you have, not the Americans you might want, or wish to have.
If we want to see less mindless cheering and more mindfulness, indeed, if we want to end the death penalty — we need to be part of making that happen. And that means engaging people in conversation, writing letters to the editor, supporting political campaigns and grassroots efforts. It means playing a part — and that part is much, much bigger than simply curling our lip and walking away.
****************
The famous “GOP crowd cheers death penalty” clip (I particularly can’t stand the self-satisfied smile on Perry’s face when the cheering starts):
Crossposted at Emily L. Hauser In My Head.
Sorry, Emily, but I don’t want to be a part of any tribe that does what those people did last night. They aren’t a part of my tribe at all. They are the enemy tribe and must be defeated and deterred from ever being mistaken as a part of my tribe.
And the funny thing is that I’m not a die-hard anti-death penalty person. There are cases where I believe it is immoral to NOT impose the death penalty. These are few and far between, granted, but they exist. I shed no tears when Tim McVeigh was executed, for instance. I didn’t cheer, but I wasn’t sad or anything about it.
I believe that the vast majority of people on death row do not deserve to be there. I don’t support death for every kind of murder and mayhem a person may commit. But I want it to be there for those special cases. In my perfect world, I’m guessing we’d have an execution about once every decade because that’s about how often I’d want someone convicted and sentenced to death. Because that’s how few truly heinous enough crimes are committed that I can justify in my mind using the death penalty.
But then, I don’t play video games because I find them violent. I don’t watch action or war films because I hate violence as entertainment. I’m not blood thirsty enough to have people who cheer for over 200 executions, one of them a proven innocent, in my tribe.
As I noted in the other post’s comments, America likes, as a society, to kill people:
What really amazes me about the nonchalance with which some people support the death penalty even knowing that sometimes we get it wrong and an innocent person is executed, is that when we do get it wrong, *the guilty person gets away.* Of course, this doesn’t apply in CTW’s case because the only crime was the rush to judgement and the crappy forensics that contributed to the verdict. I guess it does apply because that was a crime, and they got away with it.
I honestly believe that one reason Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois — a Democrat — was able to sign the death penalty ban here this spring was because the groundwork had been laid by former Governor George Ryan, a conservative Republican (who is now in jail for corruption related to selling drivers’ licenses to unqualified truckers when he was secretary of state for Illinois — one of those truckers took out a van and killed several children of a minister and his wife).
Ryan’s moratorium — whether it came from a place of honest re-evaluation because of the work of the Innocence Project at Northwestern University or was, as some decried, an attempt to distract from his own burgeoning legal woes — made it easier to point out some of the gross miscarriages of justice that had been happening in Illinois. And let’s face it — a Dem pushing through anti-death penalty bills is a wimp, “soft on crime,” etc. A GOPer doing the same thing is someone standing in noble opposition to his base. (Even though I think there are plenty of Dems who support the death penalty. I am NOT one of them.)
John Waters (yes, THAT John Waters) had a great response one time to someone who challenged him for his prison-reform/anti-death penalty activities. He said he’s often asked “Well, how would you feel if someone murdered YOUR loved one?” And his answer was, while he was sure he would feel angry and awful, it’s just as easy to ask “How would you feel if YOUR loved one were on death row?” It’s easy to call convicted killers “monsters” — especially when the evidence ISN’T tainted and made-up. But they don’t come from another planet. They come from us. Killing them won’t make anyone else come back. And in terms of vengeance, I think keeping Tim McVeigh alive and NOT giving him the martyrdom he obviously craved would have been a better option — let him turn into an old pathetic forgotten man in a cell.