Capital Punishment: Life and Death Row
Is it ever right to kill someone? Are lethal injections really humane? Is capital punishment going to be around forever?
In some parts of the world the US is infamous for its continued use of the death penalty.
Using the BBC’s Life and Death Row – The Mass Execution as a backdrop, Dr Vivien Miller discusses the history of capital punishment in America. In doing so, she reveals how the death penalty divides the US along several different fault lines: race, gender, religion and region.
The first episode in a four-part series, Life and Death Row – The Mass Execution is a riveting and heartbreaking account of recent events that unfolded in Arkansas as drugs used in legal injections were soon to become unavailable. The state planned to execute eight men in ten days, leading to a heated debate about the complicated legal, moral, and social factors that are involved in these kinds of decisions.
With lives on the line, and issues of racism arising, this is what some would call a ‘21st-century injustice’...
“It’s much more likely that a black defendant with a white victim will end up with an execution.” - Dr Vivien Miller
Time Stamps:
00:54 - The topic we are looking at today: capital punishment.
01:25 - Meeting our guest Dr Vivien Miller.
03:21 - The documentary that we are looking at today.
04:08 - Why Vivien chose this film.
05:08 - What the film is about.
07:22 - Our first clip, featuring Jeff Rosenzweig, the lawyer for three of the convicted inmates
10:40 - Why the death penalty is still prevalent in the US.
13:40 - Our second clip, where different people say why they support death penalty
15:58 - The reason some people stay on death row for such a long period of time.
18:37 - The issues with some of the inmates' original trials.
20:55 - The racial discrimination that’s prevalent in death penalty sentencing.
22:22 - Why the death penalty is so prevalent in the South.
26:52 - The supply problems with some of the lethal injection drugs over the last 10 years.
29:53 - When lethal injections don’t work.
30:45 - The argument that lethal injections are a cruel and unusual punishment.
31:27 - Our final clip, showing the advocacy group for abolition of capital punishment.
35:02 - What the future of capital punishment will look like in the US.
37:55 - Why capital punishment increased so much at the beginning of the 20th century.
40:25 - Why the use of the death penalty decreased after 1940.
Resources:
Life and Death Row, The Mass Execution
SoHo Radio
Alamo Pictures
Connect with Dr Vivien Miller:
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Transcript for Factual America Episode 9 - Capital Punishment: Life and Death Row
You’re listening to Factual America, this podcast is produced by Alamo Pictures, a production company specializing in documentaries, television and shorts about the USA for international audiences. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Instagram or Twitter, @AlamoPictures, to be the first to hear about new productions, festivals we’re attending and how to connect with our team. Our homepage is alamopictures.co.uk and now enjoy Factual America with our host Matthew Sherwood.
Matthew:
Welcome to Factual America, a podcast that explores the themes that make America unique through the lens of documentary filmmaking. I’m your host Matthew Sherwood, and each episode it’s my pleasure to interview documentary filmmakers and experts on the American experience. Today our topic is capital punishment, as a native Texan born and raised I can say I know it’s certainly a, when I’m in overseas and living in the UK, it is something that unfortunately people think of when they think of my home state, they- we’re all bunch of electric chair loving gun toading nuts over there, but I think, before I say any much of that, let me welcome our guest who is Professor Vivienne Miller, she’s associate professor at the University of Nottingham, she’s an expert on the US capital punishment, her research interest includes the history of violence, crime and criminal justice, especially in the south east in the United States, post-civil era to the present, which really narrows it down, and teaches courses on the crime and punishment in the US, policing prohibition in America, which we might talk about sometime, has written a book on violence, crime and executive in Florida, has developing an expertise in chain gangs, so maybe if we discuss, we are documentary films so we’ll be maybe talk about that, and can I say and then quickly welcome to the show, I loved your- I’m inspired by your bio, because it is probably one of the most honest bio, I’m gonna have to change mine, I mean, ten booking driving test for department of transport, au pair and hotel worker in Stuttgart, there’s a Stuttgart reference in the film we’re going to discuss today, historical tour guide and walking tour guide, secretary of physics, department of Florida State University, clerk for shipping company, I mean, I’m gonna be- in this era of LinkedIn it doesn’t really play well, but I’m gonna have to put my experience as a working for the Texas Highway Department bearing road kills on there, which is probably a horrible segway if it’s even a transition, but let’s move to the topic today which is capital punishment, we ask as you know, first of all welcome to the show.
Vivienne:
Thank you very much, thanks for having me.
Matthew:
It’s a pleasure, we always ask our guest to choose a documentary, certainly our academics use documentaries these days as part of teaching their courses, and I wanna thank you for introducing me Life and Death Row, that’s a series that’s on BBC3 I believe, but this one, life and death row mass execution, we’re gonna narrow it down on Episode 1, but there is a four part-er, it’s on, now this is late November 2019, it’s still available on iPlayer in the UK if you have a TV license, I need to throw that in, I don’t know how much longer it will be there, but it’s definitely worth a look, it’s nominated for Bafta for best factual series, director is Miles Riao and enough of me talking, so, Vivienne, why did you chose this film or why did you use this when you’re teaching your students?
Vivienne:
I think it shows many of the complicated and complex issues around lethal rejection and capital punishment in the contemporary United States, and it gives a set of the emotions on both sides of that argument, pro and for and against the death penalty and it gives a sense of sort of emotional toll on the condemned and the victim’s families waiting over years to executions and the decision to execute, takes on those different actors and the system.
Matthew:
I mean, I was very impressed cause you never know what you gonna get with some of these types of films and from the very beginning, how just balanced it is and objective into showing you the emotions of all sides of the argument. So maybe for those who are probably a lot of our listeners here, and viewers have not seen it, so what’s this film about?
Vivienne:
The governor of Arkansas signed death warrants of eight men to be executed with an attending period in April 2017 largely because the state supplies of one of the three drugs that is used in lethal injection was about to run out, so it was time pressure, to how the executions go ahead, so the film series takes you through the stories of the condemned men their crimes their appeals for clemency, it takes you to a different campaigning groups, foreign and against the death penalty and it also takes you through the kind of emotional journey of the victims, families and gives you a sense of the kind of complicated, legal, moral, social and other factors that are involved in this kind of decisions. But this was a mass execution to take place in one state in one particular which made it quite unique set of events and it drew national as well as international to the state of Arkansas.
Matthew:
And for some of our listeners, we need maybe a little perspective, Arkansas is a state where Bill Clinton was a governor from ’79 to ’92 with a two year interruption towards the beginning, yet, he himself has some famous cases of him, going ahead and pulling the trigger if you want an executions so I completely agree, I don’t know if I could, anyone could say it better than you’ve put it, but we do have here a clip of the lawyer for three of the inmates cause there are eight, they know the order they’re gonna be executed in, and it’s compelling, I mean, this is not the point of our conversation but it is compelling cinema, cause I haven’t watched an episode yet, but I found myself think you almost think of it as drama, you can google these cases and you kind of know what already is happening but it’s still, still compelling, so let’s go to that clip of Jeff Rosenwieg lawyer for the three inmates.
Speaker 1:
Arkansas planning to execute eight people in ten day period, the rationale for this is that one of the three drugs they are intending to use is going to expire on April the 30th and so there is a rush to execute them before that time. The drug companies are loath to have their products for executions and so the governor does not know if and when they will able to get more drugs.
Speaker 2:
How long have you got until the first execution?
Speaker 1:
The first execution is April 17th the first of my three clients is set for April 20th.
Speaker 3:
Stacey Johnson was convicted on April 1st 1993 of Carol Heath of DeQuinn prosecutor Brian Cheshire says it’s time for justice.
Brian Cheshire:
It was very horrific murder, it was done in the presence of the victim’s two minor children, they were hiding in the closet, I don’t see how anybody can have a heart what they’ve done as this man did.
Speaker 3:
Carol Heath was found dead with her throat cut in her DeQuinn duplex, authorities said that six year old daughter identified Johnson in a photo lineup. He was convicted by a jury trial twice and both trials he was sentenced to death.
Brian Cheshire:
There is no doubt this man was a very dangerous man and would be a danger for the same events occurring allow for him to be walking our streets.
Speaker 1:
Stacey Johnson is the only one of the eight serious guilt innocence issue, the issue in this case was this, there was a child in the home who was allegedly an eye witness, the question is, was she?
Matthew:
So I think that gives you an idea what this is all about, I think for me, as someone who has lived in the UK now for 17, 18 years, it seems to me and we’re gonna get to this more later in the podcast, it seems to me the whole debate maybe shifted a little bit, and what I found interesting and what I was not aware of, I mean, I’m old enough and I was a little bit geeky news junkie as a little kid so I remember things kids that age should not remember and I remember when there was a moratorium on the death penalty and then they got reinstated and you know then you had this up, this sort of rapid increase of the death penalty from 2000 era and now it’s coming up again, but this whole dynamic of, especially when it comes to lethal injection is an interesting one and it seems to me that it kind of shifting the debate a little bit. But before we go into that, let’s go into, let’s first go back into maybe sort of first principles, why does the death penalty here in the US, I mean, there is 56 countries, the mostly Asia and Africa who still have the death penalty well still use it even Russia as they act as an abolition, same they use it over ten years, is the US only western country to implement it regularly, although we’ve got countries like Japan and Singapore where, in fact Japan has support for it, and it’s topic that’s come around when the Pope is visiting Japan right now, and it’s come up. But let’s hear insights, why do you think it’s here in the US and not elsewhere?
Vivienne:
There’s still significant public and political support of the death penalty in the United States, the death penalty is becoming politicized particularly in the last thirty to forty years, and it’s very difficult to be elected to any kind of significant office, state office, unless you have a record on being tough on crime and that includes of being quite strong on the death penalty. Now there are massive regional variations, and those debates play much more successfully in the southern region, and in parts of the Midwest than they do in the rest of the United States. But I think even though an opinion poll show there is for the death penalty is declining and the people are much more interested in alternatives, such as like without parole of restitution for example, there is still a lot of grandswell support for that death sentence is being imposed and institutions being carried out and I think any kind of hesitation can be quickly offset if there is a mass shooting or a particular heinous murder case that makes its way through the system, so I think it’s simply a larger degree of public political support, in kind of key states such Texas, Florida, Virginia, Oklahoma, those big active execution states.
Matthew:
We’re gonna talk about it later, we’re gonna talk about the regional differences, but you know, I’ve got color coded map here and it looks like the map of the old confederacy, you know, mostly, with a few exceptions, you know. That’s where it’s still actively used, elsewhere, it’s either de facto moratoriums or proper moratoriums, it’s been abolished. But, I think to talk about support I think what the film does really well, it splits them up but there towards the beginning I think there is a clip there where we see people expressing their reasons for why they support the death penalty including one of the victim’s daughters, who plays a key- she’s one of the main characters actually in this film and how she feels about this. So, let’s watch that clip now.
Speaker 1:
He just shot her at the back of the head for no reason. It was just horrible. He is the one that saw my mom last, and that to me is so upsetting, that that’s the last person that she saw, that’s why I want him to be put to death and just to get this over with.
Speaker 2:
What about the man who just lost his wife, what am- telling daughters who’ve lost their mother? I was a coward. That I didn’t care about the family I didn’t stop to think about the harm that I was doing, I know what I did was a very terrible and cowardly act.
Speaker 3: What would Davis death achieve?
Speaker 1:
Probably nothing, you know it’s not going to prevent other people from killing, that’s not how I look at it. It’s truly to give the family the people that love her peace, that’s what it is for me.
Speaker 3:
And you think you will get that?
Speaker 1:
Oh, yeah, oh-
Matthew:
So that’s a very interesting clip I think it can, there is always a danger of carrying a stereotypical views of people especially Americans and use of a death penalty but I think that’s a- because we’ll se hopefully a time later there is also a second segment where they talk to people who lack of better way of putting it, seem like a bunch of rednecks who talk all the reasons why they think it’s wrong. So I think it’s an interesting it’s not so black and white drive of a topic. You’ve already, I mean before we talk about why it is so prevalent in the south especially, I mean, what’s cause it’s tied to this film, we’ve got guys who’ve been on death row for 25 27 years, I mean, the death penalty is around again since 1976, we won’t bore you with, you know, we can do a whole list of legal cases but since what is it Ferman versus Georgia, ’72, the death will institute a moratorium, you know all these moratoriums are sort of a, more of a legalistic reasons less than humanitarian, a bit, there was a bit of the 8th Amendment involved in that. But, how are these guys allowed to- why are they sitting on death row for so long? I mean you’ve got states who obviously don’t own quorums about it, doing the death penalty. Why do they stay on death row for so long?
Vivienne:
You need the governor to sign a death warrant to kind of get the case moving and some governors are simply more cautious than others, they want the cases to go through process and a timely fashion at various stages and condemn person or an offenders criminal justice life, their case might be appealed, there might be consequences that have to be followed up from that appeal, maybe the governor is on the rush to sign a death warrant. There are all sorts of different factors but there is an extraordinary long drown out process. You get a situation which I think is very well illustrated in the series, that the guys that are being executed are different people, to the man, often young man that committed these crimes 25, 27 years ago and in many ways they’ve kind of gone a reformation or rehabilitation within prison which also can have quite strong moral on consequences on the victim’s family as well as their families iand on the decision of the execution et cetera.
Matthew:
I think that’s a very good point, one thing that strikes me, you know, some of these lawyers are making these arguments, and it’s like, you only making this argument now about his mental state, why was that not made twenty years ago [smiling] I mean they all try to find techniques to just delay the execution by another whatever it is, so they get beyond this deadline. Because what we’ll talk about later is the fact what’s pushing this is that state supply of the drug is expiring.
Vivienne:
I think in some of the cases and this is not just in Arkansas thing there were problems with the original trials and convictions, there are notorious cases where defense lawyer is falling asleep or being drunk during trial, or the kind of mental competency of the defendant wasn’t assessed, or various aspect of the kind of eyewitness testimony or forensics have shown, become problematic. And so those challenges come later on in the process. So I think that’s another reason why the process becomes elongated if you like.
Matthew:
And of course we have this advent of DNA and you can find a Wikipedia list of all the people, I think they’re all men, but maybe there’s a woman or two in it, but of all the inmates who were on death row who’ve now been exonerated, largely in many cases because of DNA evidence come to life, and I think even that’s how moratorium in Illinois happen because the governor saw the light if you will, and decided wait a minute there’s too many of these- didn’t want it on his hands.
Vivienne:
And also there’s this problem, in some cases you have defendants who have committed a crime together but one person ended with a life sentence the other person ended with a death sentence. So there are all sorts of issues of equity as well, that have to be addressed during the appeal’s process.
Matthew:
Yeah, I think also what this film does, whether the director knew this is getting this or not, the aide at least what I’ve seen so far are very good representation of the different types of cases you’re looking at, don’t you think, because some is very obvious, they know, we know they are guilty. Some of them later you found one has mental issue so he’s schizophrenic, another one fits in that DNA conversation, but he’s also African American which also is another element of this discussion.
Vivienne:
I mean, there is no question the death penalty is still applied differently in terms of racial dynamics, it’s much more likely that a black defendant with a white victim will end up with a conviction a death sentence and execution.
Matthew:
So I think African American are 12% of the population but they are something about third or more of men on the death row.
Vivienne:
Yes, 40%
Matthew:
40% so yeah I think on that note we’ll take a little break but we’ll be back shortly to further discuss this topic with Doctor Miller.
You’re listening to Factual America, subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Instagram and Twitter @AlamoPictures to keep up to date with new releases and upcoming shows. Check out the show notes to learn more about the program, our guests and the team behind the production, and now back to Factual America.
Matthew:
Welcome back to Factual America. Doctor Miller, we’ve been talking about life and death row this film and sort of generally about capital punishment, the death penalty in the United States. I think it would be a good time to, this takes place in Arkansas, state of the old South, I mean you’ve lived in Florida, why is this still so prevalent in the South and what is it with southern United States that makes them more likely to want to use the death penalty.
Vivienne:
It is a combination of historical and current factors I mean two of the major execution states, Texas and Florida are in the deep south, with Oklahoma, Virginia, Alabama et cetera. They have long history of being active execution states, and although there are moratoria in the sixties and the seventies, in many ways they have not embraced those kind of moratorium or arguments in the same way as the north east and the west for example, I think there is a long aidn of racial discrimination, racism and kind of just a system, which is played out in many, murder, rape and other trials throughout the 19th 20th and into the 21st centuries. The southern region has the highest homicide rate of all the regions, and I think that’s still important in the people’s calculations when it comes to death penalty, and death sentences and so on. The south in 2019 is a different place to the south of 1959 or 1909, it’s been driven by huge growth in the last 50 to 60 years, large numbers of migrants, immigrants, that’s changed the kind of politics of traditional one party democratic state to, and in some ways very conservative republican states, and the republicans too- of kind of law and order, politics, very strongly in the 70s and 80s and I think that combination of kind of long time democratic party support for being tough on crime with a kind of surgeant kind of republicanism has driven a lot of the political and public support for the death penalty in the southern states. I think the combination as I’ve said of high homicide rates kind of different ethnic racial factors all come into play in that region.
Matthew:
I think it’s a very interesting point over the years I’ve seen, I mean sometimes not very serious attempts to explain it, whether it’s climate, you know being hotter, whether it’s the fact that South was Scottish and Irish immigration, I’ve seen all kind of explanation for why this could be. I mean I think it would be good to take a little bit of a step back because what strikes me is, yeah you can look at the map of the United States, and yes technically 31 states out of the 50 are death penalty states. But then if you look at two things, states whether it’s actually abolition, I mean it’s not even a red blue Trump, not Trump states, we’ve got states, Michigan, never had a capital punishment case, you’ve got Iowa that’s- you’ve got these states, Visconsin, Minnesotta, that went, they have in Pennsylvania, formal moratorium on it, yeah, you’ve got more liberal state Oregon that’s kind of gone back and forth over the years, there’s an interesting, sort of dynamic there, but we still have the 16 states they’re still practicing it, Arkansas it’s very being south and Texas, but you know that’s just my biases but actually Arkansas never really out of the drugs, so I think that maybe this gets us to a point to look at, where I think this has been a big change, this whole thing about, how capital punishment is implemented, with this lethal injection, and how that has been played out and how it’s taking a turn with what’s happening with big on this. So could you tell us a little about what’s been happening in the last ten fifteen years with this whole debate around lethal injection even.
Vivienne:
So you need three drugs to carry out a lethal injection execution. Certainly in the last ten to fifteen years they’ve been major supply problems with one or two of the drugs as a- pharmaceutical companies are not interested in having their drugs used for this purpose, as you might understand, the supply from Europe and other parts of the world have been curtailed largely through European Union restriction and other restrictions, so the States have increasingly relied on drugs that are difficult to obtain, and there’s not- I don’t know how much experimentation or research there is into kind of death penalty methods in the contemporary United States, but it does look like lethal injection is sort of at the end of its road in many respect but we’ve kind of been here before because the electric chair came in the 1890s as hanging has been discredited as a kind of old fashioned painful unacceptable method of execution although it does continue in the South in the 1910s in the 1920s.
Matthew:
There’s even been one as recently as in August this year, in Tennessee cause- we can go into that in a few minutes but in some places they can choose the method.
Vivienne:
That’s right. and then the electric chair was a dominant method for many states, particularly in the South although other states such as California, Mississippi opted for gas, lethal gas in 1030s onwards, but lethal injection was the main method for the last 20 years. Some states did shift quite late from electric chair to a lethal injection but it’s always been seen as a kind of more modern, more humane method. But there is a lot of evidence as it’s been shown in one of the episodes there are problems with lethal injection executions taking hours and being equally problematic as the electric chair those are other-
Matthew:
I mean, maybe they bring us to the point as, in this particular case but we’ve got the case in 2014 in Arizona with Joseph Wood, I think just now you’ve eluded to it, but the whole point of reason with lethal injection came to being was like, it was supposed to be the humane way, it was, you know you could’ve not get more humane way if there is such a thing, of putting someone to death. Yet, like you’ve said there is not much research on this but we have the case of Joseph Wood and I know there is some mention of others, where it was far from humane.
Vivienne:
Right, there’s been a lot of lethal injection executions, problems with veins not being available and inmates not reacting to the drugs in a way that was expected et cetera. Some states controversially experimented with two drugs has been moved to use of one drug etc. so I think they’ll keep going with it as long as they can, but the line between cruel and unusual punishment and supposedly humane punishment is increasingly becoming blurred, I think.
Matthew:
And this also it gets us back to the US constitution it gets the eight Amendment that says, if I’m correct, that you can’t have cruel and unusual punishment.
Vivienne:
That’s right.
Matthew:
And that’s why all the arguments now, it’s not all the death penalty itself is cruel and unusual but the methods and I think that’s the most legal battles are these days.
Vivienne:
I think there are a lot of different aspects to the cruel and unusual punishment argument, there are arguments around the method but also the way in which is applied to specific groups of defendants or condemned men and women.
Matthew:
Yes, indeed. I think before we get away from this part of the topic I think it’s not bad time to have one more clip of the film where there is a scene where I think it’s an advocacy group for abolition and they are talking about Joseph Wood and his, there’s a woman in the audience who talks about that, so let’s watch that clip now.
Feranda:
My name is Feranda Breswill I am the executive director of the Arkansas coalition to abolish the death penalty and again I’d like to thank all of you for coming out today and showing your support for the cause to abolish the death penalty and to stop executions now. We are set to make history around the world for something that is atrocious as executions. And we need to pull on the governor to ask him to have a change of heart.
Speaker 1:
I think that it is extremely likely that these executions if they go forward they will go horribly wrong and are not going to end up in the way the governor is expecting them to go, the rush to use this drug is bad for the dignity they are trying to do in ten days, but it’s also a terrible idea because it is a terrible drug. A lot of the dazzling executions have gone wrong and the problem is, madazlem is not anesthetic drug in a surgical way it is used as a pre anesthetic it’s a sedative and so it cannot induce a general anesthesia which is how they are planning to use it or what, how they are thinking it’s going to work but the second drug that is used paralyzes all the voluntary muscles in your body including your muscles to breath and so what happens is that the person feels like they are suffocating and it’s called air hunger and that’s where you’re seeing these gasping, coughing, horrible deaths like Joseph Wood in Arizona where it took two hours for him to die, a torturous horrible death, so we shouldn’t be in a hurry to use it.
Speaker 2:
Thank you [applause]
Speaker 3:
It’s bringing it slow to live, there is nothing here at all, just inhumane, the way they want him to die [crying]
Matthew:
I think that this film points there is a lot of different ways of looking at this, we have the victims, we have those who are friends and family of the inmates and the perpetrators, there’s a lot of emotions but I think that’s a very good regardless that is sort of horrific scene described there how this man was put to death far from being humane. And with that in mind, do you think that the tide is turning, and I hate to say it but if it isn’t what is the future, what if it’s not going to be a lethal injection, if they’re running out of drugs and big pharmaceuticals sell the drug, what is the future of capital punishment of the US?
Vivienne:
Difficult to say, isn’t it? Cause the assumption is there will be an increasing number of states that will impose moratoria, or will just stop executing. New York had the classic death penalty in the ‘90s when they restate the death penalty, I think 300 people were sentenced to death, but no one has ever executed. And then of course the statute was appealed and maybe the modern day penalty has the people on death row for indefinite periods of time, rather than actively executing, I mean there will still be states, I think such as Texas, and possibly Oklahoma that continue to try and carry out executions but I think there is a lot of public support, for looking at alternatives, but public support can be quite fickle, they can change and we maybe in a situation ten years time when we’re back in the late 1990s with executions rising, and public support for that so I think it is difficult to predict, in the sixties everyone thought the United States was heading toward abolition it was falling in lie, with those western industrialized nations
Matthew:
Sounds like at the same time Britain and- is it even the eighties before France, I mean France had the guillotine until-
Vivienne:
Yeah. But that changed within a generation. And so I think it’s difficult to predict where the United States will be in ten or twenty year time, but certainly more politicians more governors are becoming increasingly vocal about their moral and personal issues with the application of the death penalty and the kind of problems around innocence inequitable sentencing racial factors and are becoming much more or much bolder in the willingness to hold executions or to kind of put those questions out there for public debate.
Matthew:
Because indeed the number of executions has been trending downwards it’s about 2000 quite sharply.
Vivienne:
There was ’98 I think 1999, and 25 last year, so-
Matthew:
Yes, looking at the chart now, that seems about right.
Vivienne:
Which is a significant drop and most of those executions tend to be concentrated in a very small number of states.
Matthew:
What strikes me- I mean, this is maybe- point out a little bit of a tangent here, but we’ve got this- so I’m looking at the same chart, you are historian, I know your specialty in that area, why, you know, this thing, the death penalty pretty leveled but then you get to the late 1800s up until early 1900- middle of the twentieth century, why it’s just, it’s almost go straight up, what was driving that do you have anything to say on that, what would you say about that?
Vivienne:
Between 1850 and 1950 I think no different factor, so in the south you have the end of the American civil war, the abolition of slavery, and the use of criminal justice system is too controlled and-
Matthew:
So lynch would be that-
Vivienne:
No executions so as legal executions as well as lynching and kind of quite striking horrible methods, kind of racial control and intimidation and terror, there is a lot of public support for, capital punishment in the late 19th early 20th century, kind of rise of immigration, change of the economic and political communities, anxiety over murder, other violent crimes et cetera, and the way to control that there’s a lot of support for draconian measures to do that. There is a regional shift in early 20th century, a lot of the northern states become less willing to apply death sentence execution in comparison to the southern regions, there are differences. But in the 1920s 1930s you’ve got the rise of the prohibition and the gang violence, in the 1930s the war of crime against the bandits and the arm robbers and the kidnappers, et cetera, and again a lot of support of tough measures.
Matthew:
But then, you know, cause I’m trying to build an arch of history here, so then sort of 1930 40 it looks like, it is drops sharply almost to nothing, even before, the supreme court rules- I guess what I’m trying to get is, are we in another inflection point maybe we are heading towards of what you say as de facto moratorium on the death penalty, cause that has happened before.
Vivienne:
Sure. I think the major factors from the 1940s, 50s and 60s relate to the kind of, the end of world war two and kind of changing attitude towards violence and the kind of use of violence to correct violence. So there is a lot of revolution at particularly the use of lethal gas, even in some states there are continuing to adopt that, but the other big factor is the rise of the civil rights movement, which to attention of the discriminatory practices not just for African Americans but also lower class white defendants, there is a whole set of arguments in the 50s and 60s around the lack of legal representation for capital and non-capital defendants the ways in which police conduct interrogations around the scrutiny so all that kind of focus on civil rights translate into greater scrutiny of criminal justice systems and the ways in which link these sentences as well as death sentences are being imposed on a particular groups of offenders, there is a huge outcry at the discriminatory sentencing of rape defendants, there are very few southern states that are convict what white men of raping black women, but they are very willing to execute black men convicted of raping white women, so there is kind of discriminating practices are much more scrutiny in the 50s and 60s I think in also in the 60s you’ve got the rise of kind of, new ideas of how the law should work and how defendant should be represented more fairly in court and all those things come into play in that time period.
Matthew:
And so as we’ve talked about then we had a period rise and the use of the death penalty until, I think around 1999, has becoming down sharply since then, maybe we’re at the- as you’ve described it, possibly heading towards another period if not actual abolition, sort of de facto abolition where- even though states were not implemented are maybe not in a position where they can either from a purely logistical standpoint not being able to get their hands on the idea the drugs that they need to implement to carry out these sentences.
Vivienne:
Sure, I think it’s the exonerations that have really turned the tide in recent decades and the fact that there are over 160 people who’ve been liberated from death row because it’s been proven beyond reasonable doubt that the convictions were completely on safe. I think that’s a whole series a lot of public worry about whether the death penalty has been applied properly, I think one shouldn’t underestimate the kind of power of the exoneration movement and the kind of related questions it poses about, you know, the drugs but also about whether the price of innocence in many respects, is it better to save guilty people because you are fearful of executing the innocent or should one sacrifice innocent people in the quest to demonstrate that, we’re tough on crime we need this deterrent, and all those kind of law and order arguments.
Matthew:
And I think that nicely takes us back to the film itself which I think for those of you who haven’t seen it I highly recommend, not to give away the ending but I can tell you one of the cases that it’s still this whole idea of DNA evidence is still playing out today, which is very topical of what we’ve been discussing. Again this is for those of you who are listening I highly recommend Life and Death Row, mass execution episode, we’ve looked Episode 1 but that’s just the first of the four part-er. And I wanted to also thank Doctor Miller for coming on the podcast it’s been a pleasure having you, it’s a weighty topic to be discussed on Saturday morning but we do very much appreciate it, for our listeners and viewers actually cause we are on video as well, if you’re keeping track you might notice it’s a little different, it’s a little shutout to Soho Radio for hosting us here, and again to remind you that wherever you happen to listen to podcast please remember to like us and share us with your friends. And without further due, this is Factual America, signing off.
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