Wanted: An Honest Debate about the Death Penalty

By David Harsanyi

Monday, December 14, 2020

 

When Mike Dukakis was asked by CNN’s blunt Bernard Shaw during the 1988 presidential debates whether he would support the death penalty if his wife, Kitty, had been raped and murdered, the Massachusetts governor famously responded, “No, I don’t, Bernard, and I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don’t see any evidence that it’s a deterrent and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime.”

 

Given the kind of coddling Democrats receive from the press these days, Shaw’s question sounds especially jarring. But Dukakis’s automaton-like response to a query about the theoretical slaying of his dear wife did not go over well with the American public at the time. The candidate did not seem to genuinely grapple with the complex moral implications of murder and punishment.

 

Like Dukakis, I oppose the death penalty as a matter of policy (other than for extraordinary cases of domestic terrorism, such as Timothy McVeigh) for several reasons relating to state power and the effectiveness of the practice. That’s my rational side. But viscerally speaking, I have yet to encounter a death sentence in America in my lifetime that I didn’t think was well-earned. That’s despite the dishonesty that usually defines the coverage of these cases.

 

This summer, the federal government began putting people to death for the first time in 17 years. “Trump administration executes Brandon Bernard, plans four more executions before Biden takes office,” said a Washington Post headline last week. While that is technically true, it wasn’t Trump who convicted these men of murder; it was a jury of their peers. It wasn’t Trump who upheld their convictions after numerous appeals; it was the judicial system. It wasn’t Trump who found the death penalty constitutional; here, it was the Supreme Court that reaffirmed the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 requires executions to be carried out “in the manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence is imposed.” It wasn’t Trump who sponsored that law in 1994; it was Joe Biden.

 

Reporters nearly always glide past the horrifying specifics of these murders, spending inordinate amounts of space presenting the case of anti–death penalty advocates, who themselves often dishonestly paint these men as victims. A curious person will almost always have to ferret out all the ghastly details. This isn’t an accident.

 

The New York Times stresses that the “Justice Department Executes Man for Murder Committed When He Was 18.” NBC News notes, “U.S. executes Brandon Bernard, who was 18 at the time of his crime, despite appeals.” (The same people who want 16-year-olds voting want to treat 18-year-olds who commit multiple homicides as if they were children.) If Bernard had been 35 when he was convicted, his advocates would be claiming he was railroaded or mentally unfit or innocent. Every execution is conducted “despite appeals.”

 

Take this detestable Vox piece, wherein the reader learns that Bernard, “a model prisoner, mentoring at-risk youth,” had “committed crimes that resulted in the deaths of a young white married couple in 1999” — which not only makes a double homicide sound like an unfortunate accident but also intimates that the conviction had something to do with the race of the victims and perpetrator.

 

The fact is that 18-year-old Bernard helped kidnap and rob a couple named Todd and Stacie Bagley, youth ministers visiting Killeen, Texas from Iowa. The fellow gang members he was with could have let them go. Instead, they forced the Bagleys into the trunk of their car and drove around for hours. While the victims were locked in the back, they appealed to the humanity of the kidnappers, saying “that they were not wealthy people, but that they were blessed by their faith in Jesus.” After hearing these words, one gang member wanted to back out of the murder.

 

Not Bernard, though, who didn’t merely “commit crimes that resulted in the deaths” of the Bagleys. He had been the one driving the car used to hunt for victims. After the murder was planned, it was Bernard who drove to purchase the fuel to burn them. It was Bernard, along other another person, who poured the lighter fluid on the car “while the Bagleys sang and prayed in the trunk.” It was Bernard who brought the Glock used to shoot Todd in the head and knock Stacie unconscious when the car didn’t burn fast enough. The autopsy revealed that Stacie died from smoke inhalation.

 

“Having gotten to know Brandon,” Kim Kardashian West told her 68 million followers on Twitter last week, “I am heartbroken about this execution.” I myself don’t believe the death penalty solves much — and the cost and moral baggage isn’t worth it — but we should be heartbroken for the Bagleys, whom no one will ever get to know. If you’re leaving out that part of the story, then you’re not having a real conversation about the death penalty.

 

And we rarely do. “Two Black men have been executed within two days. Two more are set to die before Biden’s inauguration,” writes CNN, diligently attempting to create the impression that the federal government is targeting black men. The first person put to death this summer was white supremacist Daniel Lewis Lee. Wesley Ira Purkey, Dustin Lee Honken, Keith Dwayne Nelson, and William Emmett LeCroy — all as deserving as Bernard — were all executed this very summer as well.

 

As I write this, “Dylann Roof,” the racist murderer of nine parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in 2015, is trending on Twitter. Most of the irritation seems to be directed at officials who, I guess, aren’t executing Roof fast enough — which is a weird way to make the case to spare Bernard. Why, some of these people demand to know, did the justice system coddle Roof but kill Bernard? Well, in reality, a jury of nine white and three black Americans found Roof guilty on 33 criminal counts and unanimously came back with the death penalty in the sentencing phase. Once Roof loses his appeals — he committed his crimes 16 years after Bernard — he will be executed, unless Biden, or whoever is president when the day comes, decides otherwise. Will we see celebrities pleading for his life? Will there be messages of heartbreak from Kim Kardashian West? Will newspapers and liberal websites offer slippery phrasing to explain his crimes? Seems unlikely.

 

On rare occasions, there is some genuine doubt about the legitimacy of the conviction. Many death-penalty cases are overturned on appeal. That’s why the process exists. But you either believe the punishment for those guilty of committing especially heinous, cruel, or depraved crimes should be death, or you do not. The death-penalty debate should revolve around the morality and efficacy of state policy regarding that criminality, not some fantasy world in which butchers are selectively cast as victims.