Dead Man Walking

The state of Florida executed James Dennis Ford on Thursday, February 13 by lethal injection for a brutal double homicide and rape he committed in the mid-1990s. The details of the murders are ghastly and reveal Ford as a truly sadistic monster. 

After his execution, family members of the victims expressed relief and said justice had been served. The mother of one of the victims said of Ford, “I hope he burns in hell,” a sentiment that’s hard to disagree with.

Governor DeSantis has since signed a death warrant for Edward James, who was sentenced to death for an even more brutal double murder of a grandmother and her eight-year-old granddaughter in 1993. As this paper went to print, James was scheduled to be executed on March 20. I’m sure the victims’ relatives will express similar sentiments of relief and justice served upon his execution, assuming it moves forward.

Finally, a third Florida man, Michael Tanzi, is scheduled for execution on April 8 for the kidnapping and murder of a woman in 2000.

A Pew Research study conducted in 2021 showed that 60 percent of Americans favored the death penalty, while 39 percent oppose it. For most of my life, I was in the 60 percent, in favor of the death penalty. Then, in 2015, I read a book that put me on a path to that 39 percent in opposition to it. 

That book was Dead Man Walking by the Catholic nun Sister Helen Prejean, published in 1994. Born and raised Catholic, I and many of my Catholic friends and family were in support of the death penalty, so I wanted to learn about the perspective of a Catholic nun who had become an activist opposing it.

The book was made into an award-winning movie featuring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Sister Prejean. It’s a good movie. It depicts Prejean’s work as the spiritual advisor of Patrick Sonnier (played by Penn) during his time on death row after being convicted of murdering two teenagers. 

The book, however, is about much more than Prejean’s gut-wrenching relationship and final days with Sonnier before his execution at Louisiana State Penitentiary in April 1984. It uses her experience with Sonnier, his family, and his victims and their families to weave in observations, arguments, and data supporting her opposition to the death penalty, some of which I’ll outline here, but with updated data and sourcing.

Let’s start with the fact that capital punishment does not deter murder, a fact supported by hard data. Study after study for the last 50 years has shown that states with the death penalty generally have higher murder rates than those that do not. 

The Death Penalty Information Center, a national nonprofit that has been tracking murder and execution rates by state for 25 years, showed that in 2020, the average murder rate per 100,000 residents in death penalty states was 7.3 percent versus 4.7 percent in states without the death penalty, a trend that’s been fairly consistent since they’ve been tracking it. 

So, if we think execution is deterring citizens from killing each other, we’re wrong.

Let’s move on to a topic my fellow fiscal conservatives can relate to. It simply costs more to execute someone than to imprison them for life. A lot more.

As Prejean puts it in her book, the key reason is that “capital trials require more expert witnesses and more investigators, a longer jury selection process, the expenses of sequestering a jury, not one but two trials because of the required separate sentencing trial and appeals in state and federal courts.” She also notes the higher costs of incarceration because death row prisoners are sequestered from others, and they’re not permitted to work to offset the costs of their imprisonment. 

At the time the book was published, she noted that in Florida, on average, it costs $516,000 to imprison someone for life and $3.8 million to execute them, a seven-fold difference. 

More recently, a 2018 analysis by the Tennessee comptroller’s office found that the average cost of death penalty trials alone was almost 50 percent more than trials with life sentences with and without parole. These extra costs are largely borne by taxpayers.

It’s easy to imagine just how costly the process is when you look at the three executions in Florida this year. They were all for murders that occurred at least 25 years ago, meaning 25 years or more of multiple trials, appeals, and their related costs.

Some people point to religion and the well-known “eye for an eye” verse (Exodus 21:23-27) in the Old Testament. Well if you’re Christian, there are two things to think about when contemplating that argument. First, Jesus directly refuted it in his Sermon on the Mount and issued his equally famous directive to “turn the other cheek.”  

In addition, it’s a bit of a stretch to use Old Testament Mosaic law as an argument for the death penalty in modern times. Mosaic law called for the death penalty, usually by stoning, for blasphemy, idolatry, breaking the Sabbath, adultery, homosexuality, negligence, and other offenses that certainly wouldn’t warrant capital punishment today. 

When I talk with friends about the death penalty, I’m almost always asked if I’d feel the same way if someone in my immediate family was murdered. Honestly, it’s hard to answer that question with complete certainty in such a terrible hypothetical situation, but I’d like to think my stance wouldn’t change. 

I’d hope my reaction would be similar to Sharon Risher’s, whose mother and two cousins were gunned down on June 17, 2016, by white supremacist Dylann Roof while attending a prayer group at Charleston’s Emmanuel AME Church.

In an article Risher wrote on Vox about a year later, she said that, unlike her sister, who forgave Roof, she said she couldn’t forgive him but also didn’t want him executed.

“Despite the anger I am still coping with from my mother’s death, I don’t believe in the death penalty. Even for the man who killed her,” she wrote. “That’s my conviction because of my faith. I don’t believe as human beings that we should take away someone’s life just because we have the power to do so.”

He was convicted and sentenced to death and is awaiting execution on death row at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. 

Sister Prejean ends Dead Man Walking with two simple but powerful sentences: “Forgiveness is never going to be easy. Each day it must be prayed for and struggled for and won.”