We, On Death Row

Journal article

By: Paul D'Amato

Date: February 2000

Source: D'Amato, Paul. "Benetton Produces "We, On Death Row." The New Abolitionist. (February 2000): 14.

About the Author: Paul D'Amato is a journalist who frequently writes about sociopolitical issues. He writes a biweekly column for the online journal The Socialist Worker ONLINE. He has also written for the political newsletter counterpunch.

INTRODUCTION

Capital punishment is a controversial subject with passionate debate on both sides. In many areas of the world, there is considerable opposition to the death penalty, with many groups pressing hard to put a global end to the practice. At the opposite end of the spectrum are countries where executions are still carried out in public places according to religious law.

The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty is a large abolition group, comprised of nearly fifty non-governmental organizations (NGOs), numerous bar associations (professional associations for attorneys), local and national government agencies, and unions. It was started in 2002, in Rome, Italy, subsequent to a 2001 World Congress held in order to express opposition to the death penalty and to form a united system to work for abolition of capital punishment. The World Coalition is supported and endorsed by the European Union as well as by the Council of Europe. It is the belief of the World Coalition that capital punishment is not a deterrent for future criminal activity (except for the person put to death). It purports that the act of human execution constitutes an act of revenge rather than one of punishment or of justice. It is considered by this group to be cruel, immoral, and inhumane, and an act tantamount to torture. A seminal point of the World Coalition's belief system is that "a society that imposes the death penalty symbolically encourages violence. Every single society that respects the dignity of its people has to strive to abolish capital punishment."

The United States is among the countries that still utilize the death penalty. It may be imposed at either the state or federal level, for a variety of different criminal acts. For the most part, it is first-degree murder, also called premeditated or aggravated murder that merits a sentence of death—particularly death of a law enforcement professional or a political figure. Although thirty-eight of the fifty United States retain laws that permit capital punishment, few of them actually perform executions. Five states currently perform the preponderance of executions: Texas, Florida, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Virginia, with Texas having the greatest number in an average year. Although federal courts in America can invoke a sentence of death, it is relatively unusual for that to occur. According to statistics published by Amnesty International, there are just over thirty inmates housed on federal or military death rows. Of those prisoners, only one has been executed during the past four decades. There are, on average, nearly four thousand inmates living on death row in thirty-seven different states. Amnesty International states that some ninety percent of those individuals were either impoverished or otherwise unable to afford independent legal counsel at the time of their criminal trails and worked with court appointed attorneys. Nearly all death row inmates are male, and a disproportionate number of them are non-white (primarily African-American and Hispanic, few Asians or Native Americans, in comparison).

PRIMARY SOURCE

A lot of good material has been published in the last several years exposing the injustices of the death penalty.

But a double take is in order when Benetton, one of Italy's leading clothes-makers, turns its advertising machine against capital punishment. In January, Benetton produced a one hundred page glossy magazine insert containing pictures and interviews with twenty-five death row inmates from around the U.S.

Entitled "We, On Death Row," the insert includes an interview with Illinois death row inmate Leroy Orange, one of the Death Row Ten convicted on the basis of a confession he gave after being tortured in Chicago's Area 2 police station under the direction of Commander Jon Burge. Leroy confessed to a murder after police placed a plastic bag over his head and applied electric shocks to his testicles.

Burge was thrown off the force in 1993 for directing the torture of scores of people in custody. But that hasn't yet helped Leroy and others convicted on false confessions.

Benetton is known for provocative, socially conscious advertising. Its chief creative director, Oliviero Toscani, said that he intends the supplement to encourage discussion about the human costs of executing criminals. "We will look back to this kind of justice one day, and we will consider ourselves very primitive," he said.

The Benetton ad reflects in part just how unpopular the death penalty is in Italy and Europe. And given the recent California poll showing a shift from three to one in favor of capital punishment to a fifty-fifty split, perhaps Benetton's campaign can be seen as a sign that at least one advertiser believes the tide of public opinion has shifted enough to speak out against the death penalty and still sell clothes.

SIGNIFICANCE

There was a moratorium on the use of capital punishment in the United States between 1972 and 1975. Capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. Since 1976, about one thousand people have been executed in America. In the United States, by far the most common means of execution is the lethal injection, followed by electrocution, lethal gas, hanging, and the firing squad. In lethal injection, the prisoner is strapped to a gurney (stretcher) and given a series of drugs that produce deep sedation prior to stopping the heart beat and respiration. Until relatively recently, the lethal injection was considered the most humane form of execution. However, recent legal challenges suggest that the initial sedatives may not be as effective as had been previously thought, causing the prisoner to die painfully and stressfully.

Around the world, there are seven main forms of death by execution. Hanging is considered to be humane if properly done. If the free fall distance is appropriate, death is swift and purportedly painless. If not, the person can either asphyxiate (if the fall is too short), or be forcibly beheaded (if the fall is too great). Many countries still use death by electrocution (also called the electric chair), which is strongly opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union. There is some evidence that it may take several episodes of application of electric shock before the inmate is actually killed, lasting anywhere from five to ten or more minutes. Because the individual typically wears a mask and hood, it is virtually impossible to know what is experienced prior to death. The firing squad is still employed in some places, with the bound and blindfolded prisoner being shot through the heart (there is a target pinned to his clothing) by a group of marksmen. The gas chamber, or use of lethal gas, is still used in a few places. In that scenario, some form of cyanide is dropped into an acid-filled container, producing hydrogen cyanide. This is considered to be a very slow and painful form of execution, and it is strongly opposed by many of the world's communities. The lethal injection is used most commonly by those countries that execute the death penalty. The guillotine is rarely utilized and is not used at all in North America. It functions by severing the head. It is reported to be a swift and apparently painless form of execution. Some Muslim and Middle Eastern countries still practice death by stoning. In that case, the individual is buried up to the neck and showered with rocks and stones. The premise is that the rocks are large enough to cause pain and significant bodily injury, but not immediate death.

Among the socially and philosophically controversial aspects of death by execution, in addition to the basic human rights issues, concern the matters of executing innocent people, or those who were denied adequate legal representation or truly fair trials; execution of those who were later found to be innocent by means of DNA exclusion or other incontrovertible evidence; carrying out a sentence of death for those who are mentally ill, mentally retarded, have suffered significant brain insult or injury, or those who are otherwise cognitively or psychologically disabled; and execution of those who committed capital crimes as children or youth. Although abolitionists, as well as a growing segment of the general population, favor ending the death penalty under all circumstances, the foregoing are considered the most egregious human rights concerns meriting a moratorium on the death penalty for all persons falling into those categories. Of concern as well is the number of countries that have utilized the practice of deportation of convicted capital criminals, a situation in which nations that have abolished the death penalty have sometimes sent such persons to countries that permit death by execution, under any circumstances.

According to the most recent statistics published by Amnesty International, well over half of the countries in the world have abolished the death penalty, either in fact of law or in practice (that is, having legislation that permits the imposition of the death penalty while choosing not to enforce it for at least the past decade.) According to their data, nearly ninety countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, more than ten have ceased it for all but very specific crimes (generally associated with wartime behavior), and close to thirty have capital punishment laws on their books but have carried out no executions for at least ten years. To date, nearly one hundred twenty-five countries have virtually eliminated the death penalty, either in fact or in practice.

Of those countries that still permit capital punishment, some ninety-seven percent of all executions occur in just four countries: China (reported figures range from five thousand to more than ten thousand per year), Viet Nam (estimated sixty to eighty annually), Iran (estimated one hundred and fifty to two hundred annually), and the United States of America (estimated fifty to sixty-five annually).

Although the originally stated premise in favor of capital punishment is that of deterrence, published statistics on the occurrence of violent crimes consistently fails to support this in any considerable degree. The United Nations has expressed the opinion that death by execution is no more a deterrent than life imprisonment. Research data published by Amnesty International suggests that the threat of life without parole has a greater deterrent effect than does the death penalty.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Ancker, Carsten. Determinants of the Death Penalty: A Comparative Study of the World. New York, New York: Routledge, 2004.

Bedau, Hugo Adam, and Paul G. Cassell, eds. Debating the Death Penalty: Should America Have Capital Punishment? The Experts on Both Sides Make Their Best Case. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Hood, Roger. The Death Penalty: A World-Wide Perspective. Oxford, United Kingdom: Clarendon Press, 2002.

Johnson, Robert. Death Work: A Study of the Modern Execution Process. Pacific Grove, California: Brooks Cole Publishing Company, 1990.

O'Shea, Kathleen. Women on the Row. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Firebrand Books, 2000.

Prejean, Helen. Dead Man Walking. New York, New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

Web sites

Amnesty International. "The Death Penalty." 〈http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-index-eng〉 (accessed May 07, 2006).

World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. "First World Congress Against the Death Penalty." 〈http://www.worldcoalition.org/bcoal03decla.html〉 (accessed May 07, 2006).