Flip Side: Death Penalty Debate (Sept. 2012)

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FOR:

As people, one of the most important things we can do is ask questions about the world we live in and weigh the arguments regarding people’s belief systems — even if you believe the same way they do. Asking these questions and playing devil’s advocate is a great way to become more cemented in your beliefs. And knowing that you can adequately defend your beliefs will bring you a great sense of satisfaction when you are challenged. As it happens, doing this kind of thing is one of my favorite activities and I would like to counter last week’s column regarding capital punishment. I would also like to say that I am largely anti-capital punishment primarily for reasons based upon my faith and this article is purely for recreational purposes. I also acknowledge many realities concerning the topic.

The first thing last week’s column pointed out was the amount of money that Mississippi taxpayers spend on housing death row inmates as opposed to normal inmates. The amount was $102.27 per day for death row and $41.61 per day for other inmates. At first this is indeed a shocking statistic if Mississippi is representative of the U.S. — it seems we spend over two times as much money keeping people in death row than we do other inmates. The column suggests that we use life imprisonment as an alternative. But we fail to realize one thing: people on death row are there for a shorter time than people with a life sentence.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the average time between sentencing and execution for death row inmates is 15 years (rounding up from 178 months) as of 2010. They also report that there is a sharp peak in the age distribution of murderers between the ages of 18 and 30. From this we can infer that the average cost of putting someone on death row for Mississippi taxpayers will be will be $560,000 per inmate if we round up. The Central Intelligence Agency reported in 2010 that the average human life expectancy in the United States is 78.2 years (both male and female, but it’s important to note that prison inmates are disproportionately male).  In order to calculate the cost of an inmate we take 78.2 and subtract their age, then multiply that number by days in a year and take the product multiplied by cost per day. If we accept the alternative of life imprisonment and calculate the then Mississippi taxpayers will be paying at the least on average $732,000 per 30-year-old convicted inmate (rounding down) over the course of their life in prison and at the most on average $914,000 per 18-year-old convicted inmate (rounding down again) over the course of their life in prison.

The column last week mentioned that people wonder why it’s so expensive to live in the U.S and mentioned the death penalty as a cause. Perhaps capital punishment is a part of that problem but we can now say for certain that, at least in Mississippi, housing permanently imprisoned inmates is a far bigger one.

The column also asked how we can be certain that the person being executed isn’t innocent, as humans are prone to deceit and mistakes. It also mentions the case in North Carolina of how Jonathon Hoffman was wrongly convicted on a charge of first degree murder and robbery that he committed with his cousin. It mentions how Hoffman’s cousin wrongfully testified against him in open court and how Hoffman was wrongfully convicted of those charges. But Hoffman and his cousin weren’t actually innocent of committing the crime — a jewelry store was still robbed and a man, Danny Cook, still murdered. But Hoffman was released on a mistrial because his cousin accepted money and immunity from an attorney to testify against Hoffman without the judge’s and jury’s knowledge. Hoffman’s cousin eventually recanted his testimony and received his just desserts for his deception.

Hoffman was released from death row and prison because of a mistrial for a crime that he, at least in part, actually committed. He now walks free.

There is a huge difference that the law recognizes between those “legally” innocent and those actually innocent. Yes, there is a difference between “I had no connection to the murder” cases and “I did it but I got off because of legal error” cases. Many death penalty opponents tend to combine these two conflicting groups to increase their “innocents” number.

The column last week mentions Amnesty International in citing the number of people released from death row in the U.S since 1973 (130 inmates). Amnesty International, an anti-death penalty group, draws this statistic from The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), another anti-death penalty group, who conducted the study, thereby negating objective confidence in the results. Richard Dieter, head of the DPIC, has confirmed, again, what their “innocent” means:

“. . . according to death penalty opponents, who say they make no distinction between legal and factual innocence because there is no difference between the two under the law and because there is no objective way to make such a determination. They’re innocent in the eyes of the law,’ Dieter said. ’That’s the only objective standard we have.’

The number of people convicted who were actually innocent and had no connection to the crime when compared to the other group is virtually non-existent.

The very fact that more and more people are being released from death row is proof that the number of wrongfully convicted (not innocent) people on death row is becoming smaller and smaller and the proportion of properly convicted inmates is growing larger. If the trend continues, then soon the number of wrongfully convicted people will also be virtually non-existent.

The column also weighs things in a religious perspective, asking if we are God and what rights do we have to decide who lives and dies. We obviously aren’t God and to believe as such would be the height of arrogance. But we do have a responsibility to society and its people to deliver justice to those  who make that decision under incriminating circumstances. Humans are made in the image of God and capital punishment instills within people a respect for that image. Human life is sacred; to destroy human life is to attack the image of God. Such a terrible offense can only be rectified by offering the life of the murderer back to God.

Many death penalty opponents play up the angle that human life is sacred but without such a standard that calls for capital punishment, human life would be cheapened and humane causes such as civil rights, gender rights and children’s rights would suffer.

Many death penalty opponents also tend to play up the recipients of capital punishment as victims of the justice system’s failures and victims of the targets of vengeance from the families of the people they killed.

I agree that the justice system has flaws that need to be fixed, and there are many people and more than a handful of activist groups who are trying to make that happen. And I make no concession to the belief that vengeance is a human institution that should be freely exercised but I am not so naïve to believe that justice cannot serve as an adequate substitute for people. Justice began with revenge and still revenge is the only justice some people will ever receive.

New Yorker publishes Curlin poem in July Issue (Sept. 2012)

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On Jul. 30, 2012 Dr. Jay Curlin, professor of English, had a poem that was featured in The New Yorker. Dr. Curlin never submitted the poem but after a remarkable set of circumstances The New Yorker’s poetry editor Paul Muldoon, contacted Curlin and asked him whether he might publish it in the magazine. The poem, entitled “Evidence of Things Not Seen,” was written in the Fall of 2010 to feature two words that appeared in the Daily Word Game utilized by professors to enhance students’ vocabulary. The words were “Higgs-Boson,” the legendary god particle and “hirsute,” a word meaning hairy. The poem’s title is a reference to the Bible verse Hebrews 11:1.

“After a couple of years of playing the daily word games [Jay] would incorporate [them] in his reading quizzes in poems he wrote that he called lexical rhymes,” said Johnny Wink, professor of English. “He started sending me these and I thought they were so first rate that I asked him whether he would mind me sending them out on a mailing list because I thought there would be people, in addition to students, who would like to see them. And indeed there were. That then set up this amazing thing that happened with The New Yorker.”

Wink was driving in his car this past July while listening to NPR when he heard a story about how people at CERN had thought they spotted the Higgs-Boson while working at the supercollider. After hearing this, Wink then emailed Curlin and told him about what he heard and Curlin sent Wink a copy of the poem. Wink then sent out the poem to the people on the mailing list.

“I thought they’d might like to see it again now that the Higgs-boson is in the news,” Wink said. “Now you have to remember that Jay is a really good poet but he has not really made any attempts in the direction of becoming a known poet. Years ago I talked him into submitting a poem to a magazine called the Plains Poetry Journal. Jay doesn’t submit poems to places and any poet who is out to make a name for himself lusts to get in The New Yorker. The competition is fierce with all the people writing poetry for the English language and realizing that this is the Cadillac of magazine publications.”

Among the members of this mailing list was Douglass Hofstadter, Pulitzer Prize winner and College of Arts and Sciences distinguished professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature at Indiana University. Hofstadter enjoyed the poem and sent it to some friends of his asking if any of them had any idea of where it might get published. A few of these worked at CERN where the Higgs-Boson was spotted, and one suggested that they look to an online source of publishing. After a number of days they didn’t hear anything about the poem until Curlin was emailed by Muldoon asking him for permission to publish “The Evidence of Things Not Seen.”

“What we found out was this,” Wink said. “Douglass Hofstadter knew some general editor at The New Yorker and sent the poem to him. As it turned out the general editor apparently liked the poem a lot and sent it to Muldoon, the poetry editor. Muldoon liked it a lot and that’s how Muldoon came to write Jay. [He] never submitted a poem to The New Yorker and he must be in a very rare category of people who get asked by The New Yorker [to have there poems published]. This is something that might happen to famous people and well known writers, but Jay’s only published one poem. He is an utterly unknown poet beyond his circle of admirers – the people on the list. And yet because of a strange set of circumstances, The New Yorker asked Jay Curlin if they could publish a poem of his. I just think that is a great thing.”

Because of the recent news regarding the Higgs-Boson The New Yorker rushed to get Curlin’s poem printed within the month.

When he first received the email from Muldoon, Curlin said that the shock was like “a lightning bolt.” He said he was balancing his checkbook in the middle of a Saturday morning when he got the email.

“The title of the message was simply ‘Your Poem,’” Curlin said. “I looked and the text said it was from this Paul Muldoon. It said, ‘Mr. Curlin, I was very taken with your poem and was wondering how you’d feel to have it published in the New Yorker if it hasn’t appeared elsewhere.’ I immediately responded, ‘Good Heavens! I’m mystified Mr. Muldoon that you would want to publish this poem. Indeed this will be its first appearance.’ I was absolutely thunderstruck but also immensely honored and deeply flattered.”

Curlin has been writing poetry since his childhood. He also incorporates much of his poetry in some of his course work and classes. He has written close to 500 poems solely through his efforts to incorporate the daily words in his lexical rhymes. He writes about 42 poems per semester.

Upon speaking of how he felt when he learned who was reading his poem, Curlin said he felt like crawling under a rock. He laughingly recalled the moment in “The Odyssey” when Odysseus fools Polyphemus by calling himself “Nobody.” When he learned that the people at CERN would be seeing his poem and Hofstadter’s positive remarks regarding it, Curlin said he was embarrassed and wanted to say that “Nobody wrote these poems,” similar to Odysseus.

“The week after my poem was published, one of the poems that appeared was by Margaret Atwood. When I looked at these bylines of the type of people who were being published, all of a sudden  I felt very very small. I wanted to crawl under a rock and hide.”

Curlin’s poem has received strong responses from his readers and both positive and negative criticism. He says that when he wrote the poem, it was at a point when the  Higgs-Boson was purely hypothetical. Curlin said that he thought at the time how amazing it is that scientists say we should have faith in the things we can’t see but still know that they have to exist, but do have a problem with the Christian form of faith.

“That’s exactly what faith is,” Curlin said. “It’s the evidence of things not seen. A lot of people say that now we know that everything about the Christian theology must be wrong [because of this discovery]. But by no means does it does the discovery this July do anything to our faith. To me, it’s a beautiful reminder that our faith is built on what we cannot see. And every once in a while this supercollider will give us a reminder that there are all sorts of things out there that we cannot see, but nonetheless have faith that they exist.”

Curlin’s poem is posted in Lile Hall in front of the English department.