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The Final Judgment

© Gina D. Gipson

It is difficult to write about anything other than the utter turmoil currently enveloping this country. Yet I have managed to find an equally tumultuous, farcical issue: the administration of the death penalty.

I know that this has been revisited many times, but we have unquestionably reached a new level of loutish hubris in this country. The ultimate judgment has evidently not been pronounced often enough. Well, color me crazy. I thought our penal officials were as busy as ever. But then, I may have a skewed view of things. I am a Texan after all, and we are most efficient in all things death penalty related. But apparently, not even our impressive numbers may be good enough for Mr. John Ashcroft.

He has instructed his U.S. Attorneys to be more aggressive in seeking the most permanent of all punishments. Why? Don't know. But I have long felt that the DP should be reserved for the most heinous criminals -- and then only if/when a jury determines it is warranted. There is much merit to the argument asserted by at least one former federal prosecutor, made since Ashcroft's directive, that to increase the occurences of seeking the DP is tantamount to "bargaining away death." Why would a crook want to cooperate, say in a federal drug case, if he's going to get the needle anyway?

Ashcroft has, on at least one occasion, nixed an offer to a murder defendant for a life sentence in return for his cooperation. Yet it's an effective prosecutorial tool in nabbing the biggest venal hoodlum, without having to give the cooperator a free ride. Start killing everybody involved in a given course of events, and the big hoodlum may walk. Rarely a good thing. Take away this advantage, and a prosecutor is severely weakened in his ability to secure a plea.

A spokesperson for the Attorney General explained that the Justice Department was seeking to employ a uniform standard across the country. Intriguing. Maybe Texas can be the bench mark for the other capital punishment states. It's an ambitious goal, for sure.

Of course, the new directive was probably meant for capital punishment states that, although have sanctioned the act, don't use it very often. New York comes to mind.

I believe that one of the reasons that the United States Supreme Court reinstated the DP under newly blessed guidelines -- such as Texas' bifurcated system -- is because, at least in part, some Justices felt that it would be a deterrent to those who are anticipating committing deadly evil. Again, I turn to the mother of all injections. There hasn't been any meaningful reduction in brutal crimes in the Lone Star state -- that's why the needle is getting such a workout. And I doubt that there are very many would-be perpetrators who stop and consider the consequences of their actions before committing an offense. But a great number of them feel that they won't get caught. And that's too bad for them, because they typically do; then, it's all over.