In the U.S., Death Penalty Is a Continuation of Racial Segregation

On Oct. 10, 2011, World Day Against the Death Penalty, the United States, the world’s largest democracy, holds a strange record. By itself, it has one quarter of the world’s prison population, and it ranks fifth in the number of executions; behind China, Iran, North Korea and Yemen.

Since its reintroduction in 1976, capital punishment has been applied in 34 out of 50 states and has taken the lives of 1,254 people, the majority of whom are black males. Nearly 3,330 people today wait for their sentence on death row.

Behind these numbers and facts, one question nags abolitionist activists and researchers: how did the death penalty become a part of a modern democracy? To attempt to answer that question, Arnaud Gaillard, a sociologist, traveled to eight U.S. states where capital punishment is in force. He produced a book of stories and analysis, “999,” and a film, “Honk” (to be released on Nov. 9).

Why did you title your book “999”?

Those are the first three digits of the registration numbers of those on death row in most states, including Texas. I used them to symbolize the inhumanity of capital punishment: their sentence is like a tattoo on their identity throughout their incarceration, which often lasts many years.

The United States is one of the few large democracies (along with India and Japan) to use the death penalty. How do you explain this phenomenon?

Among the possible explanations, there is of course the fact that American society was built on a pervasive violence, illustrated by the carrying of firearms or high crime rates. The United States remains a country of pioneers who work according to the motto of “sink or swim.” People adhere to this extreme idea, and the idea of indulgence is not widely shared. The law, like the Constitution, is considered by many to be divinely inspired, and the law of retaliation, contained in the Old Testament, is in the eyes of many a justification for capital punishment.

We should add that the United States is a young, almost adolescent society, which is built by trial-and-error. Lynching was allowed until 1968, and the death penalty remains today in many states. There is certainly a scaling back in executions, but the country has yet to take a truly critical view of capital punishment.

The country’s federal structure is often cited as a means of explaining the persistence of the death penalty in some states. What is the position of the federal government, and does it have a role to play in this issue?

The federal government has a role to play, and it already played a role between 1972 and 1976, when the Supreme Court put a moratorium on executions before finally determining that capital punishment did not violate the Constitution. If there had been a constitutional issue, the states would have had to fall in line.

The problem, if we can articulate it, is that American democracy is extensive: the judges, the district attorney and the governors are all elected. They often make excessively severe statements to respond to the population’s fears of crime, which is a scourge in the United States. To position themselves against the death penalty would be suicidal, even in the Democratic Party. What Mitterrand did in 1981 is unthinkable there.

The death penalty retains a very strong totem dimension. In Utah, there is a custom that consists of coining money with each execution. There is a desire to perpetuate the event, to make a collective sacrifice that is profoundly inscribed in the cultural landscape.

How is it that California, which Is very liberal on many issues, is one of the states that has the most inmates on Death Row?

California has taken a step in the right direction with a moratorium on executions since 2006, but there is a clear lack of political courage. This compromise has led to a grotesque situation: today, 700 detainees wait on California’s death row. If the moratorium were lifted, California would have to execute all of these 700 detainees, which is unthinkable.

How is the balance of power structured between abolitionists and retentionists (those in favor of retaining the death penalty), along political, ethnic or religious lines?

A 2006 Gallup poll showed that support for the death penalty is on average 65 percent (down from 80 percent in 1994). The retentionists represent a little more than half of Democrats, two-thirds of Independents and 80 percent of Republicans.

Baptists are among the fiercest defenders of capital punishment. Jay Gross, the pastor of a Southern Baptist Church in Conroe, Tex., was very committed to it in his preaching when I attended his church: “If we do not execute for of fear of killing an innocent person, then we must open the prison gates as well, because we can be sure that there are innocent people inside,” he explained to his congregation before concluding, “When we bombed France to liberate Europe from the Nazis, of course innocent people died. Yet, we had to do it and we were proud of having done it. It’s the same thing for the death penalty!”

Blacks are much less favorable towards capital punishment than whites, but also much less politically engaged. They are aware that this is a justice system made for whites by whites. The death penalty is a continuation of racial and also economic segregation, in a country where the prosecution has an unlimited budget and where the defense attorneys don’t always do their work.

How is the population of those on death row divided by ethnicity?

African-Americans represent 12 percent of the U.S. population, but 42 percent of the population on death row. Whites, which represent 72 percent of the population, constitute 44 percent of those condemned to death.

The imbalance is even more striking when you consider the victim’s origins: a black person who killed a white person is far more likely to be executed than a white person who killed a black person. Nationally, most of the victims are not white. However, 80 percent of death sentences are handed down to murderers of white Americans. This statistic tells us, first, that the death penalty is a device that primarily serves white people, and second, that the price of a life is different depending on skin color or a person’s financial capacity.

Is this division by origin reflected in the compositions of juries?

For a trial where the death penalty is proposed, 200 people are summoned to finally form a jury of 12 people. They must be able to respond favorably to the following question: “Would you be able to vote in favor of capital punishment if that was the verdict suggested?” The participation of abolitionists is therefore excluded from their own country’s judicial mechanism. Dennis Longmire, a criminology professor at the Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Tex., explained that “Catholics and Jews, known for their abolitionist views, are not welcome on juries. Regularly, they prefer white Protestant Baptist or Evangelical citizens, whose morality doesn’t prohibit them from voting in favor of capital punishment.”

So there is a real jury selection, sometimes without motivation being required. If the victim is a child, the judge, sometimes in league with the attorney, will primarily select mothers, who can identify closely with the victim’s relatives. Justice in the United States is a war, and this war is being fought through jury formation.

Are the criteria that can lead to a conviction systematic or fluctuating?

The criteria are completely random. A study conducted in California shows that only six to eight percent of cases eligible for capital punishment are actually sentenced to death. Someone who kills a police officer will be automatically sentenced to death. A child- or wife-killer or a high-profile criminal will also be much more likely to be sentenced to death, even though the law does not mandate it. Finally, from a geographical point of view, for the same crime, a defendant might be sentenced 20 years, life in prison, or the death penalty according to the county where he is judged.

What are the detention conditions like on death row?

They obviously vary greatly from one state to the next. In Nashville, Tenn., they are completely acceptable, and in California, death row is considered to be like camp. Mississippi, by contrast, is a prison where inmates must endure temperatures from 40 degrees Celsius day and night at certain times of the year, without air conditioning. It’s impossible to sleep, it’s a hell that never ends, except by death. In Texas, telephone calls are limited to two per month, visits are very rare, the food is deplorable, and books are screened by a censor and limited to four per cell…

In Texas or in Georgia, detainees are imprisoned 23 out of 24 hours a day in what can’t even be called cells, but in “cages.” When you know that on average inmates wait between 12 and 20 years for their execution and that the Dean of Death Row lived 34 years in these conditions before being executed… besides which, it is forbidden to smoke in prison, the last cigarette of the condemned is prohibited by law on the grounds that it’s bad for your health…

In Oklahoma, one guy tried to commit suicide the day of his execution with barbiturates. They took him to the hospital, pumped his stomach, took him back to prison, strapped him in, and executed him, all in the space of 4 hours!

Do these conditions make people think that the death penalty will one day be abolished in the United States?

There are several signs indicating that the country is on the path to abolition, but it will undoubtedly take a very long time. If we take a little step back, between lynchings and capital punishment, the visibility of executions decreases from year to year. But a penalty that is less visible is a penalty that disappears, to paraphrase Michel Foucault.

The abolitionist idea took hold 20 years ago and it has continued to grow. A Gallup poll shows that if the respondents were given the choice between the death penalty and a life sentence without parole, they would be more likely to choose the latter (48 percent) over the former option (47 percent). Three states, New Mexico, New York and, most recently, Illinois, have abolished the death penalty in recent years.

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The book “999” has inspired a movie, “Honk,” a documentary co-directed by Arnaud Gaillard and Forent Vassault, in theaters Nov. 9.