Sir, - I have just read David Rose's interesting piece on capital punishment in the US (Weekend, February 7th). While I fully applaud the general thrust of the piece, I feel that I must disagree with his overall explanation of the phenomenon.
Citing Weber and Foucault, Mr Rose argues that capital punishment, performed for the public's benefit, buttresses a decaying political and social order. He claims that through the mass media (always an easy target) Americans have "become virtual witnesses of electrocution and lethal injection" and that thereby the state reinforces its power over them.
This is manifestly not the case. Unlike public executions of old, capital punishment today takes place behind closed doors with only a handful of witnesses present. When it is reported in the news, it garners a few seconds between the weather and basketball results ("Time ran out last night for convicted murderer . . ."). Far from being "virtual witnesses" to executions, most Americans have little or no idea what is entailed in carrying out an execution, and virtually none has any concept of how appallingly unequal capital trials have become or how the appeals process is now weighted against the appellant. And the truth is, they don't really want to know. They prefer to live in a cocoon of ignorance, believing that "the system" is working on their behalf and protecting them. Grisly details would only disturb them and perhaps turn public opinion away from the death penalty.
My experience of presenting such details and inequities to mild-mannered supporters of capital punishment (the rabid ones are beyond reason) has been pretty constant over the years: horror and concern at the minutiae of the system's operation, mirrored by an overarching and complacent acceptance of its fairness. It's a sort of "it couldn't happen here" attitude, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary.
What, then, explains the paradox, so clearly laid out by Mr Rose, that the world's leading advocate of human rights is rushing to execute its own citizens? From first-hand observation, I believe there is a complex interaction of circumstances, a nexus of death, if you will. In the first place, law enforcement officials - sheriffs, prosecutors and judges - are all elected in the US. To secure re-election, these people need to be seen to be effective and "tough on crime". Believe me, if the public attitude were against capital punishment, the system would be staffed with very different personnel. Contrary to Mr Rose's analysis, it is therefore the public's support for capital punishment, not an elite "penal-industrial complex", that drives the whole machine.
Law-enforcement officials continually appeal to the will of the people to justify their actions. And they are not wrong. Polls consistently show between 70 and 80 per cent support for capital punishment among average Americans, with a negligible drop if the possibility of executing an occasional innocent victim is entertained. Such a high level of public support for executions stems, I believe, from two main sources: fear, generated by the widespread belief that violent crime is out of control; and American evangelical Christianity. It is remarkable how many average Americans justify capital punishment as "God's law." It is no coincidence that the states of the "Bible Belt" (i.e., those located mostly in the south-east) have by far the greatest number of executions every year. In this universe, unborn babies are innocent victims, murderers are guilty perpetrators; the former deserve life, the latter death (according to "God's law"). This is why doctors who perform abortions can be gunned down by so-called "pro-lifers" (again, usually in the Bible Belt): the abortionists rank among the guilty, and so they deserve to die.
I thank Mr Rose for an enlightening article, but I believe his analysis to be misleading. The capital punishment juggernaut in the US is not driven by an Oliver Stonesque shadowy elite but, far more disturbingly, by the very people I see around me taking their kids to school every morning. - Yours, etc.,
Garrett G. Fagan,
State College, Pennsylvania, USA.