http://www.capitol-college.edu/troxler/essay6.htm [1] Thoughts from Under a Black Hat Be sure to read the other essays in the "[2]Thoughts from Under a Black Hat" series. She Would Have Been Fifty-Seven Next Month Nancy Clutter died on November 15, 1959 in the small hours of a windy, cold, Kansas night. She was sixteen when Perry Smith, a thirty-one year old parolee with bandied legs broken and shortened by a motorcycle accident, put a shot gun about two inches from the back of her head and pulled the trigger. The blast of that shotgun shell sent Nancy Clutter to her grave and Perry Smith to the gallows. These two intentional killings define a tragically repetitious American tale of murder, revenge, denial and ambivalence. Nancy Clutter was a vibrant, high school senior preparing for college when she was murdered. Perry Smith was a penniless, parole-violator who wanted to rob the Clutter family and flee to Mexico for a life of obscurity and imagined luxury. The complete story about that night of forty years ago includes Smith's criminal partner, Richard Hickock, and the killing of Nancy Clutter's mother, father and younger brother. The Clutter family was murdered for a transistor radio, a pair of binoculars and about $50 in cash. What could be more senseless? The book, In Cold Blood, tells the story of the murder of the Clutter family and the execution of their killers. Written by celebrated author Truman Capote, In Cold Blood has been widely accepted as the definitive account of the Clutter murders. Few acknowledge that Capote was a fiction writer, not a journalist. His goal was to author a masterwork of fiction not to write an objective, analytical account of a terrible crime. The book portrays Perry Smith as a sympathetic character who had endured life-long, appalling abuse and was compelled by his own schizophrenic psychosis to murder the Clutter family. Capote succeeded in turning a sociopath into a victim. We succeeded in The Gallows at Lansing State Prision mistaking Capote's literature for fact. The book became a best seller and spawned two successful movies. These are incontrovertible testimony on the good-natured compassion and gullibility of the American public. Perry Smith and Richard Hickock were hanged on April 14, 1965. A violent end to the violence they began - an eye for an eye and all that. Capital punishment is the American way. Find them. Convict them. Kill them. Society is protected and the grieving families of the victims are revenged. The approach is simple, but is it justice? Consider these facts about the death penalty in the USA. [INLINE] During 1995, fifty-six Americans were executed: all were male, thirty-three were Caucasian, twenty-two were African-American, one was Asian-American. Forty-nine executions were done by lethal injection. Seven were done by electrocution. No one was hanged, gassed, or shot. Execution is getting less dramatic and more clinical. [INLINE] Pennsylvania currently holds about 200 inmates on Death Row. Nearly half of these condemned men are from Philadelphia. Yet, Philadelphia accounts for only fourteen percent of the total population of Pennsylvania. [INLINE] Texas led the nation in executions during 1997 and 1998. During these busy years, more than one-third of Texas' death row inmates were residents of Houston. The population of the City of Houston is not one-third of the total population of Texas. Pennsylvania and Texas confirm that if the question is about the death penalty, just like real estate, the answer is location, location, location. [INLINE] DNA tests conducted recently on more than 20,000 convicted criminals established the innocence of twenty percent of these men. A judicial system with a twenty-percent error rate cannot be trusted and ought not to be blithely granted the power to kill. Crime Magazine recently published federal statistics showing that since 1930, more than 4,400 people have been executed in the USA. Between 1882 and 1951, no fewer than 4,730 people were lynched by extra-legal, citizen mobs. Forget the distinction between a sentence and a lynching. Murder is murder. It doesn't matter whether the act is done by an authorized medical technician with a needle, or an enraged mob with a rope. Killing is killing. Just because a judge raps a gavel and cites law doesn't change that fact. The taking of a human life is murder. It costs, on average, about $2.2 million to carry out a death sentence. Between conviction and execution the average inmate spends slightly less than a decade on Death Row. During those ten years, states spend about $200,000 in room and board for each inmate and nearly $2 million in legal expenses related to each inmate's case. What if we did away with the death penalty and sentenced murderers to life in prison without the possibility of parole? If the average life span is seventy-some years and inmates are on average in their twenties at the start of their life-without-parole sentences, the state would have to house convicted murders for about fifty years. That would cost about $1 million for each murderer. What a bargain! Feeding them costs taxpayers half as much as killing them. Many argue that the death penalty is a deterrent to others who might kill. Would you change your behavior in response to a secret you are told exists but which you are not allowed to know? Probably not. Without publicizing and broadcasting executions, there should be no expectation that capital punishment is a deterrent to future crime. Some argue that the death penalty is an absolute deterrent for one person - the condemned. That is true and therein lies a basis for much of the support for capital punishment. Too often criminals who had been put away for life or lengthy terms have been released on parole. Too often these liberated predators commit savage crimes. The death penalty prevents the justice system from demonstrating its wisdom, compassion and untrustworthy judgement about rehabilitation. The death penalty is society's insurance against the professional misfeasance of the judicial system. Here is the fact of it all. We are frightened. We are afraid of murderers and potential murderers. We want them out of our society - locked up or dead and we don't care which. Yet, we are equally afraid of the criminal justice system. We are afraid that it will release convicted murderers into our midst either by accident or intent. We also fear that the criminal justice system will execute innocent people who, thanks to blundering professionals, rapacious prosecutors or biased juries, were wrongly convicted. When protector and predator frighten you equally, ambivalence is the only rational [INLINE] asylum. A more attentive interpretation of this deadly machinery recognizes that the criminal justice system is, at best, an arcane, often-inept decision system. Justice has precious little to do with its outcomes. All the more reason for a sagacious dose of healthy fear. Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacey, Jeffery Dahlmer, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith. They came, they killed and they have been executed or murdered in jail. They are gone and I say good riddance. But their kind will come again and kill again. Each generation produces its own slayers. In fact, the FBI estimates that there are currently at least fifty unidentified, serial killers at large and at work in the USA. Nancy Clutter died in the millisecond it took for a load of buckshot to vaporize much of her brain and blow off her face. Perry Smith's heart beat for seventeen minutes after the rope that ended his fall from the gallows broke his neck. I find no justice in either murderous act. I oppose the death penalty. Yet, I am comforted to know that men like Perry Smith have been and continued to be executed. You see, my rational mind fails me the moment I recall that in the west of Kansas, on the banks of the Arkansas River in the town of Holcomb, young Nancy Clutter lies in her grave beside her mother, father and younger brother. Had it not been for the criminal justice system's decision to parole Perry Smith, she would have been fifty-seven next month. gwt.gif (1400 bytes) G. William Troxler, Ph.D. President _________________________________________________________________ References Convicted by Juries, Exonerated by Science: Case Studies in the Use of DNA Evidence to Establish Innocence After Trial; Edward Connors Thomas Lundregan, Neal Miller, Tom McEwen; June 1996; U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice In Cold Blood; Truman Capote; 1965; Random House; New York, New York Links [3]http://www.crimemagazine.com Image Credits Gallows at Lansing State Prison used by permission of the Kansas State Historical Society ([4]http://www.kshs.org/places/coolgall.htm) _________________________________________________________________ Responses welcome: [5]http://webboard.capitol-college.edu/~blackhat Be sure to read the other essays in the "[6]Thoughts from Under a Black Hat" series. © 1999, G. William Troxler All rights reserved. The views expressed in this essay are not statements of the official position or policy of Capitol College on any matter. Dr. Troxler's essay does not necessarily reflect views of the faculty or Board of Trustees of Capitol College. This essay was not reviewed by the faculty or board prior to publication. Dr. Troxler offers his opinions to the Capitol College community as a means of stimulating discussion and prompting the notion that Capitol's students should participate in an education experience that attempts to balance the development of excellent, marketable technical skills with the expansion of peripheral intellect. 1pixblue.gif (41 bytes) [7]home | [8]help | [9]contact capitol spacer.gif (67 bytes) _________________________________________________________________ Capitol College - 11301 Springfield Road - Laurel, Maryland 20708 - 301-369-2800 / 800-950-1992 References 1. http://webboard.capitol-college.edu/~blackhat 2. http://www.capitol-college.edu/troxler/default.htm 3. http://www.crimemagazine.com/ 4. http://www.kshs.org/places/coolgall.htm 5. http://webboard.capitol-college.edu/~blackhat 6. http://www.capitol-college.edu/troxler/default.htm 7. http://www.capitol-college.edu/default.htm 8. http://www.capitol-college.edu/resources/help.htm 9. http://www.capitol-college.edu/inquire/default.htm