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Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive.
Editorial: 6/9/2000 I've only witnessed one execution. I was even asked to be one of the executioners,
but declined. It was at the end of a two-week stint inside Nicaragua, traveling with
U.S.-backed Contra rebels fighting against the Marxist Sandinista government. Up until
the last three days, it had been a muddy, boring assignment--go out on patrol up to
twenty klicks outside the base camp in Jinotega province, shoot an iguana for protein,
harangue some villagers, keep an eye out for Sanmdinista troops, get chewed by
mosquitos while trying to sleep in a string hammock, repeat daily.
But seventy-two hours before I was supposed to hop back in a dugout canoe with a
Mercury outboard and burble my way back to Honduras and clean sheets, all hell broke
loose. A Sandinista unit, oblivious to the Contra's best efforts to keep an eye out, hit
the base camp just after dawn with the force of a tropical squall. It wa sone of my
first lessons in free trade. Chinese, Czech, and Russian-made bullets, grenades, and
mortar rounds plowed up the center of the camp. After about twenty minutes, a Contra
squad outflanked the mortar position and put it out of commission, and the Sandinistas
vanished into the bush.
The Contra commander in homage to the classics, had given himself the nom de guerre
of Comandante Rambo. After the firefight, he determined that a small, wiry Contra named
Morales who had joined the unit a month before had tipped off the Sandinistas. He sat
down on the ground, faced a kneeling, shaking Morales, and talked to him for a few
minutes. The evidence at the one-man tribunal must have been pretty convincing, since
Rambo began organizing a firing squad. He grinned and offered me an AK-47 to help with
the administration of justice. I said no. Rambo laughed. Morales was dead within
a minute.
The thing I remember most is the sound. The bullets entered him with a pttpt sound.
Pretend you've got a small piece of food on your lower lip and you're trying to get rid
of it by popping your tongue. That's the sound. One round that hit his shoulder had
been dum-dummed, and tore out a chunk of flesh and muscle with the sound of a wet
washcloth dropped on a tile floor.
Rambo made it clear he killed Morales not as a deterrent, but as retribution. He
told the troops he didn't think any of them were traitors, so there was no need to
deter them. He said trason was so heinous that it demanded execution as revenge for the
untimate breach of a soldier's honor. No one disagreed.
That's the same theory behind our death penalty. Ask people why a majority of
Americans support executions, and they'll tell you--retribution. Hardly anyone
believes that executing someone will discourage someone else from committing a similar
crime. Exceutions are cosmic payback for someone who has done something so
venal that there's only one punishment that's appropriate.
But the execution chamber is not a restaurant. You don't make mistakes and tote
them up as part of the cost of doing business, like spillage. 87 innocent people have
been freed from death row since the Supreme Court re-authorized the death penalty.
A recent Frontline documentary traced the cases of over 100 probably innocent people
who have been executed.
This is why Illinois' pro-death penalty governor, George Ryan, has suspended all
Illinois executions. It's why the New Hampshire state legislature abolished the Granite
State's death penalty only to have the bill vetoed by the governor. It's why a
coalition of Republican and Democratic senators have re-introduced the Innocence
Protection Act in Congress. That act would require a DNA sample be taken from any
convict facing the death sentence who requests it. It would require all physicial
evidence from a crime be preserved for years if necessary to check it against the
DNA. It would require states to offer more competent counsel to those facing
death sentences.
People still solidly behind capital punishment say the system works, that every
capital sentence is automatically appealed through each state's courts, then
automatically appealed through Federal district and appeals courts, all the way up
to the U.S. Supreme Court. They point out the average wait for execution is over five
years, plenty of time to appeal and discover the truth. they say the doezens freed from
death row proves the system works.
Not quite. If the system works, how did 87 innocent people get death sentences
in the first place? How did over 100 probably innocent people end up dead? And why
were the vast majority of the 87 freed not through the courts or their attorneys, but
by investigations launched by family, volunteers, activists, journalists, even a
Northwestern University class of journalism students?
Does the blood of innocent victims of crime cry out for the blood of the
guilty? Maybe. But it certainly doesn't cry out for government-sponsored executions
of innocent people. Me? I've always favored the death penalty.
Except in Nicaragua. And now.
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