The death penalty is not an effective deterrent to anything, it's overwhelmingly expensive because of multiple appeals, and it does not bring closure to those left behind.The death penalty is about the ONLY thing that can bring closure to "homicide survivors", i.e., those left behind.
GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION FOLLOWS
My brother was murdered by Corey Joe McCutcheon near Daytona Beach, at about 1:45 AM, Oct. 17 1995. My brother was asleep on the couch when he was attacked with a Phillips head screwdriver. He awoke, and struggled, but Corey had the advantage of surprise and my brother died not of any particular wound but, as the ME said, "of a pain so great that his body could no longer sustain life." The ME also stated that there were more than 100 wounds, perhaps 200, but "we simply stopped counting after 100." The ME's report takes 6 single-spaced pages to describe the wounds in aggregate. James was struck in the chest, back, through both eyes and then through the skull and out the right eye. The murder weapon and a flathead screwdriver were then jammed into the side of his neck by Mr. McCutcheon, probably while he held the neck steady with his boot. Blood pooled in Jim's eye sockets and coated his chest and the flooring around him. The amount of force used to penetrate bone with a blunt screwdriver like a Philips head is "very high." Think about the last time you slipped with one of these and jammed it into your hand - damn! That hurts. Try jamming it all the way through your hand to see how much that hurts. Mr. McCutcheon claimed to believe in "only himself" as a God, and wears tattoos scratched in with a knife: a swastika, and WAR (White Aryan Resistance). He was and is a professed skinhead who delighted in killing small animals such as cats, and once told his girlfriend, possibly before beating her up, that he was a Satanist. This was never proven or indeed investigated, and he is probably not an official WAR member.
Corey then repeated a murder attempt next day. This victim survived, and testified at the trial. Corey's family was paraded through the court: a homeless mother; suicide father; brothers, sisters, cousins. They told the tale of a wasted life, drugs, homelessness, fellatio under the pier for a few dollars, jail time - he was on parole for beating up his girlfriend when he killed my brother and attempted to kill again. The court-appointed attorney pretended to cry, begging for his life. Corey Joe was like an iguana that the attorney's little girl kept. He didn't like the iguana, but he made sure to feed it regardless that morning. He had also approached the DA with a deal: life without parole, with no chance of appeal. I laughed. No way, no fuckin way. I had basically pushed my whole family into protesting an earlier trial balloon by the DA; we hit him with 20 letters after I had sent them the ME's report. I saw no downside for sticking to my guns: hopefully, I get to watch him fry, or, worst case, he's locked up forever. There had been no sign of remorse then, before, or after, not even a simple "I'm sorry." In summation, the attorney said that "jail would be GOOD for Corey: it would give him structure, and he would never be homeless again." And he won. He got life without parole, which he can appeal. He is now 30 pounds heavier, and to date has apparently not killed anyone again. Of course he has yet to express remorse because, I believe, it will not occur to him; that murder was in the past and it's really not as if he were totally accountable, since he just felt so bad.
I always felt that my brother would die sooner than me, just because he was seven years older. No one can anticipate a murder. If you haven't lived it, you only know hypotheticals, like Kitty Dukakis's "murder" in that 1988 debate. All was not peaches and cream between me and James. For many years we were estranged; I didn't approve of his drinking, which had taken over his life in his late 20's; it was hard to talk to him on the phone because his thick drawl now had a drunken slur to it. But we had reconciled that February. He told me he had felt he was always the "bad sheep" of the family. I lied and said he wasn't, then hugged him so hard his boots came off the ground. He had months of sobriety after that, and didn't die drunk. I know that because the ME was able to stick a needle in what was left of an eye and collect vitreous fluid for testing. I also know the exact weight and size of all of Jim's organs, which were excised, plopped in a butcher's scale, then sewn into a bag and stuffed inside his body cavity like a turkey.
For years, James had tormented me as only a big brother can a little brother; little things that added up to a big load of frustration and fear. As a small child, I hoped that something really, REALLY bad would happen to him someday, and HE'D know what it was like to be helpless, maybe even get killed (which I thought of as vanishing). And after about 40 years, it happened.
I developed tremendous survivor guilt soon after the funeral and post-traumatic stress disorder within four months. I was typing at my keyboard and my hands just froze in midair. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a videotape was playing in an endless loop. I saw Jim being killed, over and over. I went to see a psychiatrist my wife knew. I told her what was happening while she looked at me intently. "I want you to go to _ Clinic and check into their PTSD program," she said. "Uh ... okay, when?" I asked. "Right now." "You mean today." "No, now." I wondered just how bad I must look, but went.
I went in at 9AM and went home at 3PM for a week. I was high-functioning; some of the people there were patients at the main hospital; all of them had terrible tales to tell: the nurse who couldn't revive her sister from a heart attack ("but I'm a nurse! I should have been able to save her!"), the kid who lost part of his brain in a car wreck, the lady whose son suicided. It was in group therapy with this woman that I made my own breakthrough. Her son had driven his Camaro into a bridge abutment at about 120 mph, but survived. She went to see him in the hospital, and he hanged himself with his belt shortly after she left. I told her that she wasn't even a part of the equation there, that things happen that we can never affect, and - bingo, that was it. I could never have affected my brother's life in any meaningful way that would have kept him out of danger. He loved danger. He raced (legally and illegally), he carried weapons sometimes, he went into the roughest roadhouses; Christ, he was the bouncer who tossed out the brawling bikers during Bike Week!
But the PTSD remains with me to this day. I now know that I will never be able to turn off the pictures totally. Autumn leaves bring on the depression and hopelessness and loneliness. Worse, my son's birthday is only 5 days apart from Jim's death date. I literally got off the plane in 1995 after burying Jim, then took a car direct to my son's fifth birthday party. It's ironic that I missed the draft in 1971 only by the luck of the lottery, and now have the Viet vet's disease. I don't see VC jumping out from behind the couch with AK-47's, and I don't hit the dirt when a car backfires. It's mainly the pictures and finding the guts to go on. Fully 10% of all homicide survivors kill themselves. They can't stand the pain anymore, and the killer wins twice. Not this time he doesn't.
I'm willing to go for therapy and to take drugs probably for the rest of my life, but not my sister, who prefers denial and baking. She was 16 when James was born, and thought of him like her own baby, I'm sure. She went to the guilt/innocence part of the trial, but collapsed when they showed photos and an X-ray (the screwdriver outlines were shockingly stark against the tissue and bone). She won't discuss anything after James' murder, or the day it happened. In her mind, he is young and happy, a little boy on a swing set, not ashes in an urn. I buried him in Florida because he would not have wanted to go back North, and certainly not come out to the Midwest.
What good would it do to kill Mr. McCutcheon? Well, yes, the certainty of him never killing again is a strong point - irrefutable. Consider the way people die: an accident ("it was no one's fault, really"), old age ("it was just his time"), sickness ("we did all we could"), and murder? Someone wanted your loved one dead, and they succeeded. That's what's different. It's not a bug or a quirk of fate or just something we'll all fall into someday: Corey wanted James dead, and killed him. Yes, there was premeditation. If you can form an opinion of either going through with your attempt at murder or not, that's premeditation. If you succeed, that's murder.
The only redress available is the death penalty. It is far, far, away from restoring life, but it is an attempt to balance the scale. Some things are so heinous (and you lawyers out there know the exact meaning of the term) that nothing less than the death penalty will do. It is the closest we can get. Proof positive? There was a one in six billion chance that the blood on Corey's pants was NOT my brother's. Continued threat? The attempted murder the next day. Final, conclusive evidence? Corey's videotaped confession.
My brother touched hundreds of lives, judging from the overflow crowd at the chapel. My parents are dead, and were at least spared this. But I'll live on, as will my sister and her kids and grandkids. Where is the redress? What do we get back after having a life taken? There was no war, no national emergency, no need to die. Should I sue? Corey makes 37 cents a day. If you're willing to kill, you'd better be prepared to die. There are people in Starke who would be quite happy to off someone for a few bucks, although of course I'd never make such an offer.
A deterrent? I'm not talking about deterrents. I'm talking about avenging an injustice. Avenge, not revenge. Revenge would be killing off one of his relatives. The only deterrent to murder would be a miraculous invention that pops into the air at the time a murder is about to occur. It magically transfers the soul of the murderer into the body of the victim, so that the murderer is the one who dies, instantly. So, if you really want to rape and kill that cute little 8-year old down the hall, go right ahead - sure! Just beware that you will be the one raped, and you will be the one lifeless on the floor as she goes skipping out the door. There are no deterrents strong enough in this society, apparently. That doesn't mean you "should get away with murder."
I'd really like to know how one determines that the death penalty "does not bring closure to the ones left behind." It sure as hell helps, as a lot of survivors will gladly tell. I would have definitely gone to see Ole Sparky light up for Corey, and given him The Finger as his last sight of this planet. Letting this guy live is what doesn't bring closure. I don't even get to piss on his grave, unless I get lucky.
Expense? The State of Florida let my brother down in a big way when it couldn't provide even minimum security with a state trooper barracks a block away. I don't much care what it costs them to let this bastard grind away at successive appeals. I hope he'll get his expectations up, and maybe even psych himself into thinking he might have a case. I was there. He has no case. The State brought in an appellate attorney who specializes in homicide to make sure all the paperwork was in order. I think the cost of maintaining this guy for, oh, 60 years would be offset considerably by a quick death sentence.
There's nothing sick or aberrant about wanting justice. The survivors deserve it. It's "funny", my wife has been a substance abuse therapist for years, and even though she's highly successful (i.e., her patients actually get better), there are some agencies that would not take her because she's not a recovering addict herself. The theory is that you don't really know addiction unless you've lived it. I used to think that was bull, but now that I've seen this experience, there's a certain amount of truth. There's a very large difference between collected data and lived experience.
I used to say, "I hope you never go through what I have" to "outsiders", but I've lately amended that to, "I wish for one day you could experience this" - and then of course, magically wish it all away. Guess what? It's never going away for me.