The Beacon Journal’s July 19th guest columnist, college professor Rick Feinberg, gives his ivory tower arguments against the death penalty.
In offering a contrary position on this issue, born from my experience, I advocate for reforming rather than abolishing capital punishment.
As a correctional employee at Ohio’s prison housing death row, I experienced firsthand the tragic effects of our failed system.
My coworker, Beverly Taylor, a teacher and just recently married, was brutally murdered 36 years ago by an inmate serving a life sentence for killing another woman.
Working that day as a member of the emergency team, I responded to the scene. Her beautiful smile and that bloody scene is forever etched in my memory.
When later transferring out of that prison, I went to her grave site and cried, telling her that she would never be forgotten.
Thus, from lived experience, Feinberg’s argument that the death penalty does not deter crime is not totally correct. If Bev’s murderer had been justly sentenced to death and executed, the death penalty would have worked. Period.
What other staff members or inmates behind bars may be murdered by a repeat killer as he lives out the next 20-40 years of his life sentence? Feinberg and the anti-death penalty folks don’t have to worry. They are not locked up with them.
I do agree that many murders are crimes of passion and not pre-meditated, so the death penalty is generally not a deterrent. Instead, I accept that the death penalty is punishment and justice for the families and society.
Feinberg says that “we all, despite our best intentions, make mistakes. Most can be corrected.” This is outrageous in the context of discussing convicted murderers. Explain that to the countless family victims who grieve for the rest of their lives. Murder is not just a “mistake”; it can never be “corrected.”
To a fault, Feinberg does not even mention family victims. Where is the compassion, the “morality,” as anti-death penalty folks ignore the impact on the family? The families live with their permanent loss and then are dragged through reliving the horror as the murderer is granted upwards of 20 years of appeals.
Feinberg’s argument about the “risk of executing innocent suspects” because “15% of Ohio’s death row inmates…have been exonerated” is a false flag. Sure, there are unintentionally wrong convictions. No system is perfect. However, most convictions are sound based on DNA, witnesses, recovered evidence, confessions and more.
So, I say this: Only execute a person when there is no doubt of guilt, while giving life without parole for those few cases in which there is any doubt.
Feinberg goes on to argue against the death penalty for its practical and financial costs. I agree in part, but for different reasons.
The capital punishment status quo amounts to bloated government spending on warehousing and paying enormous legal fees for convicted murderers. Society is footing the bill for drawn-out litigation, making high-priced lawyers rich. The legal costs are exacerbated by our failed system.
A remedy would be a fair, efficient, “speedy” trial process, limiting appeals and carrying out the sentence within a reasonable four or five years, not the current 20 or so years in some cases.
The real financial costs not mentioned by Feinberg are these: The average cost of housing prisoners in Ohio is about $40,000 a year, while building one prison cell can conservatively cost between $250,000 to $300,000. As it stands, some inmates could live on death row for 30-40 years at the taxpayers’ expense.
This is not practical, nor is it just. Would not a more moral approach be to implement the death penalty and redirect society’s limited resources to the nation’s homeless, poor, schools, and addiction and veteran services?
Granted, capital punishment is an uncomfortable discussion, but it’s one we should be having. For the sake of society and all the victims, a just and rational approach to executing convicted murders can and should be found.
Michael Anderson is a retired licensed drug counselor with a career in adult corrections, having worked in maximum security and lower-security prisons and jails and with those on parole. As a case manager at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, he co-facilitated groups on death row and taught in the prison college program. He has a master’s degree in public administration and resides in Barberton.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Death row critics don’t know reality faced by prison staff | Opinion
Reporting by Michael Anderson, Guest opinion / Akron Beacon Journal
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By Michael Anderson, Guest opinion | USA TODAY Network
