With the first US execution of 2012 scheduled this week, here is a thought provoking guest blog on the issue. Many thanks to the fabulous Mike Farrell & Law Blog One.
Death penalty USA – News from Texas; the Rodrigo Hernandez case
Written by Mike Farrell in collaboration with Juliette Frangos.
This week on Thursday 26th January after 6 p.m. the state of Texas is scheduled to execute Rodrigo Hernandez by lethal injection, the first execution in Texas this year that looks likely to go ahead pending last minute appeal.
Case Background
Hernandez was convicted in 2004 of the 1994 kidnap, rape and murder of Susan Verstegen, an act following which he attempted to conceal the victims body in a 50 gallon drum.
Unfortunately during the original investigation a lack of evidence meant that the case went cold, remaining in limbo for 8 years. However when Hernandez was later imprisoned in Michigan for an unconnected offence, and on release in 2002 legally compelled to give a DNA sample for the national DNA database, his sample was matched with unidentified DNA samples recovered from the Verstegen case also on the database. Hernandez was then arrested and charged with murder.
On questioning he gave a detailed confession to the murder claiming to have been under the influence of drugs and alcohol at the time. He was subsequently found guilty on trial in Bexar County, Texas, and sentenced to death in April 2004, allegedly showing no remorse. He has been on death row since.
In light of the confession, DNA and the absence of any evidence that the trial was flawed, there is nothing suggesting the conviction was unsafe, and it is therefore not in question, Hernandez deserves to be punished. Only the capital sentence is in question here.
Since conviction, Hernandez has made numerous appeals against sentence, including applying for a writ of habeus corpus to the Texas State Criminal Appeals Court and the Supreme Court, all of which have been rejected. Appeals continued this month up until the 23rd January, again without success (A full procedural history is here).
Therefore pending any further appeals or last minute stays between now and Thursday night, sentence is on course to be carried out..
Capital punishment – Texas
Texas is far and away the most prolific proponent of capital punishment in the USA (see also here), averaging more than one execution per month, more than twice the rate of any other state. Texas has also conducted 477 executions since 1976, more than 4 times that of the next most prolific states, Virginia and Oklahoma.
These are extraordinary figures, especially considered against other states such as California which has a much larger death row population, and yet has undertaken only 13 executions since 1976.
The high number of executions in Texas may of course largely be explained by the republican / conservative background of that state, a political outlook which traditionally leans to capital punishment. There may be other reasons some of which can be considered here which relate to the history and constitutional makeup of the state with regard to elected appellate judicial office. Whatever the reason, the figures appear excessive, and regardless of public or political support capital punishment is rightly becoming more unacceptable as indicated by the recent positive moratorium on capital punishment issued by the Governor of The state of Oregon. In addition, Texas is not the only republican state in the USA, so something or someone else may be responsible.
The Governor
In the ten years that he has held office, Rick Perry as Governor of Texas has authorised and overseen the largest number of executions in the history of the USA for a single Governor, more than 230 executions in the last decade, almost half the number of executions that have occurred over the last 35 years in Texas, indicating a marked and certainly questionable acceleration of capital punishment over a decade. He is known for radical views on capital punishment, gun ownership, same sex relationships and religion and has in the past vetoed a ban on the death penalty for mentally retarded inmates.
He recently launched a presidential campaign, but withdrew in January 2012 following widespread criticism of a homophobic video that he released to ‘support’ his campaign.
With regards to capital punishment, Mr Perry claims not to lose much sleep over it, has stated that he has no problem authorising capital sentences to be carried out, and has never worried that Texas may ever have executed any innocent persons. This in itself is quite disturbing given the reported case of Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004 for the alleged murder of his three daughters in what was claimed at the time to have been an act of arson on his own home. Following Willingham’s execution however it was discovered and reported that in fact there was no evidence of arson at all, bringing the entire trial, conviction and sentence sharply into question.
An investigation was carried out, but just prior to it reporting, the chair of the committee undertaking it was replaced by Perry, an act which effectively cancelled the inquest, and swept the entire affair under the carpet.
The question however remains; was an innocent man executed, and if so, wouldn’t this case have raised an irrefutable argument against continuing capital punishment in Texas? The possibility that it may well have been is argument enough to support an end to capital punishment in Texas and elsewhere. Instead however it appears that the Governor would rather bury the case in favour of his own personal political stance.
The Texan method
Texas like many other capital states of the USA currently advocates lethal injection as its preferred method of supposed humane executions of death row inmates. Please see link above for the full procedure, which in brief involves the following:
- Hernandez will be transported from his death row facility to the execution unit at Huntsville.
- He will undergo a strip and cavity search, before being confined in a holding cell.
- He may be allowed family visits during the morning.
- He will be offered a last meal but will have no choice in what is offered.
- After 6 p.m. he will be led to the execution chamber, prepared and secured to a gurney.
- Intravenous catheters shall be inserted into a suitable vein in his arm or elsewhere in his body.
- Witnesses will be brought in including victim witnesses, his own family if attending, and select media representatives.
- The execution will be authorised to proceed.
- Hernandez will be allowed a brief final statement.
- The drug team will be instructed then to administer the sentence, with drugs being administered in sequence.
- The condemned would be expected to be confirmed as medically dead in about 7 minutes from the beginning of the injections.
This method of execution has long been considered humane by some, however it has generated much controversy, including:
- A scandal throughout the European Union where it was found that capital states having exhausted their own supplies of the death drugs used for capital sentences were illicitly importing large quantities from Europe, a practice the EU is now apparently seeking to prevent. Some companies took it upon themselves not to supply their products while they were being used for capital purposes.
- The fact that medical practitioners are barred from administering the drugs under the Hippocratic oath as well as showing a true hypocrisy regarding the ‘justice’ of the procedure, means that administering the sentence falls into the hands of prison employees. There have been alleged stories of incorrect dosages being used, and other instances where the convict has suffered greatly during the procedure. Consider for example the botched34 minute torture ofAngel Nieves Diaz in Florida, 2006.
- The ongoing search for a more humane form of execution in itself proves that deep down inside, we all know that killing another person is wrong. Someone will always have to have blood on their hands regardless of the method or justification, legal or otherwise.
The view of Mike Farrell & LawBlogOne
As you may know from prior posts, I am completely against the death penalty. In my opinion, it is simply not acceptable to lower yourself to committing the same act in the name of justice that another has been prosecuted for. I do not believe that a society that executes its prisoners can claim to hold a higher moral ground in doing so.
I find capital punishment shameful, not only in concept but in application, particularly due to the fact that during the course of an execution, it is not the judge or the jury or the victims themselves that carry out the sentence, but an unnamed group of individuals who during the moment of sentence effectively become state sanctioned murderers.
Capital punishment is not justice; it is pure and simple revenge and retribution. What it is not about is deterrence, rehabilitation and reparation, all elements which don’t come into it, and as has been widely debated and reported over the years, capital punishment is no more a deterrent against murder than life imprisonment would be.
Lastly, the USA to me should be and has been in the past a leading light for freedom and human rights. However on the issue of capital punishment, and others that I will not debate here, they have fallen behind in that respect, and by continuing to uphold an out of date, unjustifiable and wrong system of capital punishment, they are little better than those other states that they themselves criticise for imposing capital sentences and human rights abuses on their citizen’s, including states such as Iran.
I therefore call on the Great Pioneer State of Texas to urgently reconsider and abolish its current policy on capital punishment, and to show the world that Texas and the USA can be a leading light to the modern world on Human Rights issues.
Jue Frangos’ view
I am something of an idealist and detest injustice in all forms. I believe fundamentally in all human rights, particularly the right to life, and I find it abhorrent that any allegedly civilised nation can continue to support the death penalty – sadly, it seems that the United States and specifically in the case in hand, the State of Texas, holds a different view as they march steadfastly towards another inhumane execution, against the rule of law and dressed up as justice. I also believe that we all bear some responsibility for making things change.
In 2010 at the 65th session of the UN General Assembly a Resolution calling for a global moratorium on the death penalty was reaffirmed – theUnited States was one of only 41 Nations to vote against (with 109 votes in favour and 35 abstentions). The UN has, in fact, been calling for a global moratorium since 2007 yet seems powerless to convince an ever decreasing number of Nation States who continue to be in favour of the mindless execution of their own [and other] citizens. A further reaffirmation is expected from the UN in 2012.
The fact that this UN Resolution exists lends itself to my belief that we all bear responsibility for the continuance of the death penalty, not only collective responsibility but also a personal responsibility. I’d never really thought about it as an issue that I could do something about, I’d never felt that sense of personal responsibility until I experienced the execution of Troy Davis through the joys of social media. The experience of going through that execution as it happened, in real time, with hundreds of thousands of other people around the world made it very real and I felt an incredible sense of guilt and loss that I had not been able to do anything to stop it; It also made me realise that its not OK to look the other way and hope that someone else will speak up – it made me see that we all need to speak up and keep doing so until the death penalty is abolished entirely, globally.
As Texas prepares to execute Rodrigo Hernandez this week, it can be sure that I am watching and shouting that not only is it wrong but that it is a clear breach of human rights, it is against the rule of law and against the moral code of societies all around the world. Texas and the rest of the United States is in an ever decreasing minority and it can rest assured that I along with the rest of the genuinely civilised world will continue watching until it agrees to cease its inhumane practices and evolve, morally and socially, to adopt the same standards as we have.
Capital punishment is nothing more than barbaric retribution in its lowest form; State sanctioned murder for which there can be no justification. We are all able to play a part in putting an end to the death penalty in America and around the world. We can all make a difference and I call on Governor Rick Perry to make his difference by stopping the execution of Hernandez and immediately installing a moratorium on the death penalty in Texas.
What you as reader can do
- Write to Governor Rick Perry and express your opinion on capital punishment. The governors office can be be contacted here. May be slight difficulty with accessing this system from countries outside theUS as it is address specific, but worth a try.
- Take to twitter and signal your discontent with the situation
- Likewise do the same with Facebook
- And any other social networking sites you use
- Post links to this post, or re-blog it yourself to spread the word.
- Follow the Hernandez case on ‘Execution Watch’ which will be broadcasting online radio live on the night of the execution reporting from the site on any developments that may occur particularly regarding any last minute appeals.
- Support organisations including Reprieve and Amnesty International who campaign for the abolition of capital punishment, in theUSA and worldwide.
- Write to your MEP to express your opinion and ask them to place the death penalty firmly back on the EU agenda this year.
