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| Michael Crowley |
My position is quite different, and I appreciate that Mr. Douglas and I will likely never agree on this subject. I also realize that the debate about capital punishment has been long and emotional — one that seems to be rooted in one’s belief system, probably from an early age, and one not likely to change, even over time.
I must confess that when I was a teenager, I was not opposed to capital punishment, a subject that normally does not come up when one is that young. An individual named Caryl Chessman had been sentenced to death in California and instead of merely accepting his fate, he launched countless appeals that garnered a lot of publicity. Chessman was a career criminal, committing armed robberies throughout the West. He became known as the Red Light Bandit because he had a realistic-looking red light that allowed victims to think he was a police officer as he approached them, usually in parked cars in deserted areas, where he would assault and rob them. He also sexually assaulted some of the female victims.
Chessman did not kill any of his victims. He was sentenced to death because he dragged more than one victim out of the car she was in and sexually assaulted her. This was considered to be violent kidnapping, and because of laws passed after the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped and murdered, such crimes were punishable by death, even though no one had died.
As a teenager more interested in baseball and basketball than in world events, I still could not help but become aware of the case because of the publicity it gathered. Chessman denied his guilt, wrote books, filed appeals and found celebrities who supported his cause. I grew to believe that whatever he had done had broken several laws — that he had been found guilty by a jury and that he should just accept his fate. On the day of his execution in a gas chamber in San Quentin Prison, our school’s PA system announced his death to the cheers and applause of most students.
But while I may have been among those students, I also began questioning some of the supposed facts and wondered whether it was normal or appropriate to take the life of someone who had not committed murder.
That began a bit of a journey for me that led, eventually, to my belief that taking a life was wrong, either by criminals or by the state. That view has not changed in more than 60 years, in spite of the fact that I worked in the criminal justice system for more than 40 years and was a parole board member for 21 years — a time when I had the opportunity to conduct hearings that involved hundreds of individuals serving life sentences.
I do not believe that capital punishment serves as a deterrent. If it did, there would be no murders occurring elsewhere, and clearly, that is not happening in those jurisdictions, such as the United States, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Egypt. Only 55 countries still have capital punishment on their books, but many of these have not executed anyone in years. Canada does not have capital punishment while the United States (though not every state) does. If the death penalty was truly a deterrent, one would expect to find that the murder rate in the United States would be lower — but it is not. In fact, the murder rate in the United States is approximately five times that of Canada.
The argument has been made, over many years, that if someone takes a life, then they should forfeit their own.
Taking a life (on behalf of the state) is the most extreme measure possible that a government can take, and throughout history, it was often used for reasons related to the retention of property. In the 1700s, more than 200 crimes were punishable by death in England. At various times and locations, a person could be executed for killing chickens or eating grapes (the Divine, Moral and Martial Laws of the Virginia Colony). Horse thieves (for instance) could be hung. In current Theocracies, one can be executed for reasons of blasphemy or violation of some other tenet. This is an echo of the Duke’s Laws in the New York Colony, in which one could lose their life for denying the “true god.”
Even if a government confines capital punishment to those cases in which someone is murdered, there is little evidence, based on research, that capital punishment serves as a deterrent. The sad reality is that, oftentimes, the individuals who commit such violent acts do not think that they will be caught or, if arrested, convicted. A significant percentage give little thought to the consequences of their actions or the harm they are causing.
If the state is to take someone’s life, in my view, there can be no mistakes made in the prosecution of the case, as a “mistake” cannot be erased after an innocent person has been killed.
There are, unfortunately, many cases in Canadian history where individuals were arrested and convicted of murder, but in fact, were innocent. Perhaps the most notorious case involved Steven Truscott, who was 14 years of age when he was arrested and then convicted for killing a 12-year-old girl in 1959. He was sentenced to death by hanging. He was also innocent. Luckily his sentence was commuted to life in prison and paroled in 1969. His case was eventually re-opened, and he was found to be innocent.
There are other cases, notably those of David Milgaard, Romeo Philion, Donald Marshall, Guy Paul Morin and Robert Baltovich to name a few. In each instance, the Crown argued, based on police, scientific and even eyewitness information, that each individual named above was guilty. They were not.
In the United States, more than 180 individuals have been released from “death rows” when new information came forward that exonerated them. These individuals were not released on technicalities but were innocent.
If capital punishment is not a deterrent, then what purpose does it serve? Vengeance? Perhaps. But vengeance is not a legitimate purpose for a civilized state or government action.
Mr. Douglas then argues that if we are unable or unwilling to bring back capital punishment, then we should have a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
But in my opinion, this is a death sentence but done more slowly and painfully than an execution. This type of sentence has become quite popular in the United States. There are more than 55,000 individuals serving such a sentence in the United States. This represents a 66 per cent increase since 2003.
If such a sentence were meant to serve as a deterrent, then one would not expect to see such a dramatic increase in its use — as potential killers would seriously and soberly consider the consequences of spending the rest of their lives confined to a prison cell, and not act out violently. Clearly, they do not. There is a significant cost to housing so many individuals for so many years — and always without the hope of a release.
From my experience in conducting parole reviews with individuals serving life sentences, I have seen people who I believed should never return to society, as they pose too high a risk for re-offending violently. And although they are eligible for parole, it is more likely that they give up trying and waive their right to be considered. In some cases, I have seen individuals who committed what could be considered as heinous crimes — ones with gratuitous violence or involved more than one victim — and denying any form of release was the only logical choice to make. But in some cases, there are individuals who continue to have hope, continue to participate in counselling or programming and cascade to minimum security institutions from which they are able to participate in escorted or unescorted passes.
For those individuals, I think it is not inappropriate, in terms of public safety, to give them some hope of being released, with significant supervision strategies in place, so that they can return to society as meaningful contributors to that society.
Michael Crowley has a BA from Syracuse University. He spent more than 40 years in various positions within the criminal justice system in Canada. Before retiring, Crowley had been a member of the Parole Board of Canada for 21 years. Contact him via CrowleyMichael167@gmail.com.
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