The Colorado Theater Shooter, The Death Penalty, And Real Punishment

Yesterday in a packed Colorado courtroom, family and friends of victims—as well as surviving victims—of the Aurora theater shooting listened and then applauded as prosecutors announced that they would be seeking the death penalty against the alleged perpetrator of that horrific crime, 25-year-old James Holmes. A fully-bearded Holmes sat and reacted with almost contemptuous casualness as the decision was read. Holmes’ rugged appearance in court was a long way from the orange and red dyed Joker-inspired-hair he sported the night he pushed into the nearly-packed movie theater in Aurora last July. Donned in a get-up reminiscent of the fictional Batman villain, he barged into a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises” and began opening fire on the crowd watching the movie with an assortment of weapons, killing 12 and wounding at least 58 people.

Accused Aurora, Colorado theater shooter James Holmes, shortly after his first courtroom appearance last year and more recently.

In past court appearances, Holmes has appeared to be what can only be described as “detached” in his concern for both the proceedings and his apparent actions.
In an action that contradicted Holmes’ cavalier attitude toward his actions, his lawyers last week indicated that Holmes was willing to “plead guilty and spend the rest of his life in prison in order to avoid death row.” His offer was summarily rejected by prosecutors.

In a perfect (in not imaginative) world, executing Holmes would bring both closure to the families of his victims, as their departed loved-ones back from The Great Beyond. But as it stands, putting perpetrators like Holmes to death does nothing but perpetuate a cycle of violence as well as demonstrate how inconsistent we can be by way of our collective behaviors. We have no problem killing to demonstrate that killing is wrong, but we cannot spank/hit our unruly (and oftentimes deserving) children to demonstrate to them that hitting/disruptive behavior is wrong. Are we “civilized” or aren't we? A couple of years ago, I wrote posted a piece calling for a different way of punishing repeat violent offenders. The punishment was based on the premise of the old John Carpenter 1981 sci-fi flick (one of my personal guilty pleasures), “Escape From New York” (See: "A Hollywood Approach to Crime And Punishment"). The thesis of that particular piece was that the death penalty was neither a true deterrent to such offenses, nor has it even invoked a sense of fear or even concern in the minds of those charged with committing such heinous crimes—especially the way it is administered inconsistently and disproportionately. And for those who invoke the “justification” for capital punishment that “taxpayers shouldn't have pay to support such criminals,” these individuals ignore the fact that it actually costs taxpayers more money to execute those charged with capital crimes.
My suggestion was that a true level of punishment for unrepentant, repeat, and incorrigible criminals should illicit fear. In that previous posting, I suggested that criminals be allowed to live in a society of their rules, where only the strongest survive, and where there is no rule of law and enforcement for the laws they hold such concept for. Due process would still apply, but such criminals would truly get to see and live the consequences of their own thinking and actions.
My point is that punishments should hurt, and they should instill fear of consequences as well as that of punishment itself. A true system of punishment would create an environment of such apprehension of consequences that those like James Holmes who knowingly commit crimes of such magnitude against others would rather die—or simply not engage in such behavior—than experience the consequences. Death is seen as a punishment by some, but wishing for death would be a better lesson.

See also:  "Time To Rethink The Death Penalty"

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Time To Rethink The Death Penalty

Earlier this week as I watched various newscasts, I took note of two related stories—both about the subject of the death penalty—which forced me to write a long overdue perspective on the subject.
In the first story, syndicated morning radio host Tom Joyner was at the center of an extraordinary story. Two of Joyner’s distant relatives were posthumously exonerated after having been tried, convicted, and executed by the state of South Carolina in 1915 for killing a Confederate Civil War veteran. Almost immediately, the case was riddled with doubt, issues of race, and Southern culture taken to the extreme. It was only after being interviewed for a PBS special on the lives of African-Americans that Joyner was even made aware that he had two great uncles who occupied that sad chapter of American history. After the details surrounding the case of Meeks and Thomas Griffin came to life, Joyner took it upon himself to dig up the proof of the Griffin brothers’ innocence, which led to their exoneration by the state.


Syndicated radio personality Tom Joyner's recent ancestors are exonerated by South Carolina officials following an investigation into the circumstances surrounding their wrongful execution decades ago.

In the second news story on CNN’s Headline News, it was revealed that Texas Governor Rick Perry (Rep.) has come under scrutiny for his actions regarding the 2004 execution of a man charged with setting a fire in 1991which killed his 3 daughters. Apparently, Perry fixed the outcome of scheduled meeting between the Texas Forensics Science Commission and an independent investigator looking into details of that case, days before it was to hear evidence regarding the findings of that investigation. The investigator’s conclusions, made up of three separate reports, had shed much in the way of serious doubt on whether the deadly fire which Todd Willingham was ultimately executed for was actually caused by arson. One of these reports was presented to Perry days before Willingham’s execution. For his part, Perry promptly ignored the casting of doubt the report brought on the case and denied a stay of execution for Willingham. Perry, in his attempts to “carry out the will of the people of the state of Texas,” chose to disregard the legal safeguards of reasonable doubt and due process, which are inherently intended to limit the possibility that the government would engage in the most extreme violation of the most basic of rights…the right to life. With regard to the case, Perry is guilty of self-serving politics at the very least; at the very most, he’s incompetence incarnate.

CNN Headline News report from 10/14/09. Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) engages in ethically-questionable, possibly politically-motivated actions in order to ensure a questionable execution from earlier this year.

What both of these cases illustrate is that mistakes have and do occur with such an apparatus of finality as the death penalty. Some individuals who support the death penalty, particularly governors of death penalty states and prosecutors who employ its use, would have us believe that the complex legal mechanisms which lead to it being imposed, are infallible…or at the very least has an infinitesimal chance of resulting in a catastrophic mistake like an erroneous execution. And while there have been those who have been successfully proven innocent of accused crimes and exonerated while sitting on the death rows of many states, those individuals were not proven innocent by [the absence of] legal safeguards built into the legal system. In most cases, freed convicts are only spared death by the goodwill of lawyers, private investigators, reporters, or other private citizens who take it upon themselves to look into the facts of such questionable cases.
But the reality is that even entertaining the notion that everyone who has ever been tried, convicted, and executed for a crime in America was guilty is an act in defiance of basic reason, common sense, and not to mention, the law of averages. We’ve all heard the arguments against the death penalty. Yes, it’s applied with racial, gender, and socioeconomic bias. Yes, it’s an outdated as well as barbaric means of dealing with crime. No, it’s not a deterrent to crime. Yes, it’s applied inconsistently. Yes, it’s used often as a political tool. No, it’s not philosophically or ethically moral to execute the mentally-impaired. Yes, it’s hypocritical to consider one “pro-life,” and also pro-death penalty (which many of its supporters often do); I’ll leave it up to you to research the inssues surrounding the death penalty (contact the Death Penalty Information Center, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/).
All life is sacred, and no one, neither individuals nor the state, has the right to give or take life. Providence along brought each of us here, so only Providence alone should be what removes us from this mortal coil. And contrary to popular opinion, no one (consciously or otherwise) “forfeits” their life based on their actions. We all are human, we all make mistakes, and the overwhelmingly majority of us commits a sin, some worse than others. Taking human life to illustrate that taking human life is wrong is not a sign that an enlightened society which values life, but an indication that in some respects, we fail to advance ourselves and our sense of ethics and morality beyond what we embraced when we were far less civilized.

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