I was recently asked by a colleague, Dr. Lisa Guenther (Philosophy, Vanderbilt University), to add my signature to an open letter to Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, petitioning him to suspend the scheduled execution of 10 inmates beginning in January. I agreed to lend my name to the petition alongside several others in a coalition named “Tennessee Students and Educators for Social Justice.” For a long time now, I have believed that capital punishment represents a great injustice, both in principle and in practice.
Tennessee has put six human beings to death since 1960, though none since 2009. The reasons behind the state’s recent push to hasten executions are as many and as varied as they are mysterious. Only five years ago, an American Bar Association report on Tennessee’s death penalty laws, procedures and practices determined that “the state of Tennessee fails to comply or is only in partial compliance” with its basic recommendations. None of those noncompliance issues have been corrected since the report, and just in the last year three different men on Tennessee’s death row (Ndume Olatushani, Timothy McKinney and Michael Rimmer) had their convictions overturned.
Dr. Geunther, both a theorist of and an activist for prisoners’ justice and fair treatment, has worked tirelessly to shine light into this unfortunately dark corner of our polis. I urge you to read and seriously consider signing the Open Letter to Governor Bill Haslam. (If you are not a Tennessee student or educator, but would still like to show your support, there is a separate petition you can sign here.) There is strength in numbers, and every extra signature demonstrates that our numbers are too great to dismiss without attention.
As a philosopher, I can understand, even if not sympathize with, the fact that many still believe the death penalty to be just another form of punishment, differing from other legal penalties in degree but not in kind. I believe the difference is a difference in kind, and that any Court or any State that exercises its authority in this way is the weaker for it. Even if I could find some way to relieve my moral objections to capital punishment, I would still find it impossible to sanction its current application and practice. There is an ever-widening gulf that separates those with access to adequate legal counsel from those without it, those who the court system considers without prejudice and those who it exercises prejudice against, offenders who we treat as if they can be reformed and offenders who we treat as if they are best discarded. Until that gulf is eliminated, justice and fairness remain but a charade.
For your consideration, I am copying the Open Letter to Governor Bill Haslam below. I do hope you can find your way to signing it.
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Tennessee Students and Educators for Social Justice
Open Letter to Governor Bill Haslam
As students and educators, we seek to understand the world and to
share our understanding with others through a practice of critical
thinking and responsible action. Therefore, we cannot remain silent as
Tennessee plans to execute people in the name of justice.
We call upon Governor Bill Haslam to suspend all scheduled
executions immediately, and to commission a full and transparent review
of capital punishment in Tennessee.
A 2007 American Bar Association report
on Tennessee’s death penalty laws, procedures, and practices found that
“the State of Tennessee fails to comply or is only in partial
compliance” with its basic recommendations. These include the following
areas for reform:
- Inadequate Procedures to Address Innocence Claims
- Geographical Disparities in Tennessee’s Capital Sentencing
- Excessive Caseloads of Defense Counsel
- Racial Disparities in Tennessee’s Capital Sentencing
These issues have not been resolved in the current system. For example:
- Since 2012, three men on Tennessee’s death row have had their convictions overturned: Ndume Olatushani (Nashville Scene), Timothy McKinney (Democracy Now), Michael Rimmer (USA Today).
The state has officially exonerated three people: Michael McCormick
(2007, after 20 years on death row), Paul House (2009, after 23 years on
death row), and Gussie Vann (2011, after 17 years on death row) (DPIC). - There are persistent geographical disparities in capital
sentencing. For example, more than a third of all death sentences in
Tennessee arise in just one county: Shelby County (Memphis – only 14% of
the population of Tennessee) (The Nation). - In Shelby County, public defenders have caseloads that are 3 to 4 times higher than the national average (ACLU).
- African Americans make up approximately 43% of Tennessee’s death row population but only 17% of the state’s total population (TADP).
In addition to these ongoing structural flaws in Tennessee’s death
penalty, we now face new issues concerning the method of execution:
- In 2011, Tennessee and several other states had to turn over their
supplies of sodium thiopental, one of the drugs in the three-drug
execution protocol, because of the circumstances under which it was
acquired (New York Times). - A lawsuit was brought against the FDA for allowing the drug to be
imported by state corrections departments without proper inspection and
approval (Death Penalty Info). - This year, Tennessee switched from a three-drug protocol (involving
sodium thiopental) to a new one-drug protocol (pentobarbital). But it
is not clear how the state intends to secure a supply of the new
execution drug. Neither drug is manufactured in the US, and
pharmaceutical companies based in the European Union have banned the use
of their products for state execution (The Tennessean). - This year, Tennessee legislators passed a law that allows compounding pharmacies to mix drugs without a prescription (NPR).
This law would permit the state to order execution drugs directly from a
compounding pharmacy in Tennessee, bypassing EU trade restrictions. - In April 2013, Tennessee legislators amended a law guaranteeing
confidentiality to any “person or entity involved in the procurement or
provision of chemicals, equipment, supplies and other items for use in
carrying out a sentence of death” (TCA Section 10-7-504(h)(1)).
This means that a compounding pharmacy in Tennessee could accept a
contract to produce execution drugs without disclosing its name to the
public.
This series of events raises many ethical, political, and practical
questions: How can we be sure that execution drugs prepared by a
compounding pharmacy would not produce unconstitutional pain and
suffering? Doesn’t the public have a right to know who is making the
drugs used to execute people in our name? And why are we using drugs
otherwise meant to heal people in order to kill them?
There are also enduring ethical, political, religious, and practical reasons to oppose state execution:
- Those of us who identify as people of faith demand the suspension or
the abolition of the death penalty in Tennessee because our faith in
the God of life compels us to seek justice that is truly equitable and
that restores to life that which has been broken. As people who bear
witness to the power of healing, we call upon the Governor to set about
healing the demonstrably wounded and wounding death penalty system in
Tennessee. Because Governor Haslam is also a person of faith who
believes in the God who fosters life and who asks us to do the same, we
ask that he halt and address the problems in this current system that
foster neither justice nor life. - Since 1976, over 140 people have been exonerated and freed from
death row in the US. That’s one innocent person for every ten people
who have been executed. How many more innocent people have we executed,
and how many are still slated for execution? (One For Ten) - 88% of leading criminologists in the US do not believe that the
death penalty is an effective means of deterrence. This view is
supported by empirical evidence; for example, the murder rate in death
penalty states is consistently higher than the murder rate in non-death
penalty states (Death Penalty Information Center). - Many people across the political spectrum believe that the death
penalty fails to provide closure for the family members of murder
victims (Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty, Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, TADP).
Some Tennesseans, such as Hector Black, have found peace through
restorative justice after the loss of a beloved member to murder (NPR). - No one knows how much the death penalty costs in Tennessee because a
full study has never been conducted in this state. But in other
states, death sentences have proven to be far more expensive than other
sentences for first degree murder, and we have no reason to believe that
our state expenditures would be significantly different. For example, a
2008 study in Maryland showed that a death penalty case (including investigation, trial, appeals, and incarceration) cost an average of $3 million; that’s $1.9 million more expensive than non-death penalty cases (TADP and Death Penalty Information Center).
Taxpayers in Tennessee have the right to know how much it costs to
maintain the death penalty. Couldn’t we use money saved from stopping
executions to open cold cases and to address the social conditions that
drive violence and crime?
For these and other reasons, we call upon the Governor to halt
executions until we can be sure that the system is working in the
service of justice rather than against it.
As students and educators who seek to foster critical thinking and
responsible action, some of us believe the death penalty should be
abolished, while others believe it should be suspended until systemic
flaws are fully addressed. But we stand united in our critical
opposition to the death penalty as it is currently practiced in
Tennessee.