Speaking on the floor of the House of Commons in Ottawa in 1976 in support of a bill to abolish capital punishment in Canada, then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau reminded the members of the Commons: “It is not open to anyone among us to take refuge in the comforting illusion that we are debating nothing more than an abstract theory of criminal justice…. I want to make it very clear that if the majority of the Honourable Members vote against abolition, some people are going to be hanged…. [I]t is inevitable that the defeat of this bill would eventually place the...

Between 1930 and 1967 there were 3,859 executions carried out under state and civil authority in the United States (U.S. Department of Justice, 1986). The peak year, 1935, saw 199 executions, but not since 1951 has the annual figure surpassed. 100. Between then and 1967 the pace of executions declined to the point where, in the decade of the 1960s, a total of 191 executions were carried out. After 1967, in fact, challenges to the constitutional validity of death penalty statutes led to a ten-year moratorium. Executions resumed in 1977 (with that of Gary Gilmore in Utah), and on 14...

In 1977 the California state legislature passed Senator George Deukmejian’s bill establishing death as punishment for certain classes of first-degree murder. In 1978 California voters passed the Briggs initiative, which widened the scope of the death penalty’s application.

From that time until 1 November 1987,265 death sentences or resentences have been meted out, all for the crime of murder. One of the condemned, Chol Soo Lee, had his death sentence reversed and was later acquitted of the crime for which he was sent to prison. Four others committed suicide on death row. Of those cases remaining, 195 are currently pending...

Only one who has endured the experience can fully understand the thoughts and emotions of a person who has been condemned to die at the hands of the executioner. Such an individual is kept in close confinement, deprived of all the creature comforts of life, forced to contemplate a sudden and violent death by a means already ordained and known to him or her. It is a period during which the soul and spirit of any mortal is severely tested. In this chapter I will illustrate, by factual examples, the manner in which some of those who have been judicially...

Over the last three and a half centuries, American jurisdictions have executed 281 people for crimes committed while they were under the age of 18 (see Streib, 1987:55–71). Their ages at execution ranged from 12 to 28. All were healthy young people with no reason to expect to die from natural causes in the foreseeable future. All came to contemplate their deaths from execution during waiting periods that lasted from a few weeks to over ten years. The focus of this chapter is on the attitudes and perceptions of these executed young persons as they face execution.

First consider...

I stared at my client, John Evans, sitting on Alabama’s electric chair. They call the chair “Yellow Mama.” John’s head was shaved; he had declined the State’s offer to let him wear his own clothes and was wearing prison garb. His hands and legs were strapped to the chair. The witnesses were now in place in the observation room, separated by a glass partition from the execution chamber. John was sitting no more than fifteen feet away. The warden was about to begin the ritual of the execution.

My mind flashed to a conversation I had had with attorney Millard...

As the number of condemned prisoners in the United States grows, so does the problem of finding competent attorneys to handle death penalty cases when the execution date draws near (Mello, 1988). In this essay, I would like to reflect on the motivations, rewards, and frustrations connected with this type of work, based on my five years of defending those who live under a sentence of death in Florida.

“Why do you represent people who are sentenced to death? Isni’t it depressing?” I have been asked such questions so often, by so many people with different degrees of seriousness, that...

Representing an inmate on death row in collateral proceedings, which occur after the trial and initial appeal have run their course, is an unusual undertaking for volunteer lawyers. But it can be one of the most important, and even one of the most rewarding, experiences in a legal career.

Handling capital cases in their collateral phase is unusual partly because there are relatively few lawyers who do it; hence the experience is reserved to a small but privileged minority. It is also unusual because it presents—or may present—special and difficult problems of advocacy, some of which are ethical...

I am firmly convinced that if the citizens of the United States fully understood the nature and effects of the death penalty, we would no longer allow the punishment to be imposed. Unfortunately, however, many people have been misinformed or have closed their minds about this issue, and the media coverage of executions, if present at all, is steadily shrinking. Furthermore, the media that still provide coverage have continually failed to describe what the inmate is actually like and what he and his family experience during his final hours. We learn about the final meal, the last statement, and the...

The experiences of the families of the terminally ill and the institutional supports available to them have been extensively studied. In contrast, the literature on the families of homicide victims is surprisingly sparse, and almost nothing has been written about the families of condemned prisoners. To some extent, this may reflect the number of people involved in each situation. Each year, thousands of Americans die after prolonged illnesses, and some 19,000 are the victims of homicide (U.S. Department of Justice, 1986), whereas between 1977 and the end of 1988 there were just over a hundred executions, and the death row...

We were perplexed by the resurgence of enthusiasm for the death penalty in the United States. According to a 1986Gallup Report, support for the death penalty in America has reached a nearrecord high in 50 years of polling, with 70 percent of Americans favoring execution of convicted murderers (Gallup, 1986). In a 1983 poll conducted in Florida, 72 percent of respondents were found to support the death penalty, compared with 45 percent in 1964 (Cambridge Survey Research, 1985). Still more perplexing is the finding that nearly half of those supporting the death penalty agree that “only the poor and...

To many it may still seem strange that sociocultural anthropology should be concerned with an indigenous institution such as the death penalty. Even among those anthropologists who might support such an interest, there would probably be a sharp divergence as to the approach, both methodological and theoretical.

The divergence I can accept, for such differentiation is most often healthy and constructive. But I cannot and will not accept that antiquated view that anthropologists should not concern themselves with their own society, least of all with issues of deep concern and emotional impact in that society. If we have anything at...

The previous excerpt exemplifies the relative nonstatus of death row prisoners. They are segregated from the general inmate population and simply “warehoused for death” (Johnson, 1981). Death row inhabitants are in limbo, and time spent on death row is a period of waiting. Forgotten by society, these persons are left to die a slow death before being legally executed by the state.

Little attention is paid to death row prisoners, with the exception of occasional news flashes about appeals, stays, or executions. Pretending that these prisoners do not exist ignores the reality that death rows across America are holding more...

Argument over the death penalty—especially in the United States during the past generation—has been concentrated in large part on trying to answer various disputedquestions of fact. Among them two have been salient: Is the death penalty a better deterrent to crime (especially murder) than the alternative of imprisonment? Is the death penalty administered in a discriminatory way, and, in particular, are black or other nonwhite offenders (or offenders whose victims are white) more likely to be tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and executed than whites (or offenders whose victims are nonwhite)? Other questions of fact have also...

Seven years ago I began the process of awaiting my man-made appointment with death. Since being condemned to death, my days have been spent dealing with the guilt of having been convicted of taking the lives of two human beings, confronting the very real possibility of my own violent death, and coping with the anger, resentment, frustration, helplessness, and grief of having five friends taken from my side to be ritualistically exterminated. These have been nine long years of fighting to maintain my sanity, of growing, and of holding onto a sense of humanity in an environment maintained specifically for...

It is no secret among American jail and prison inmates that the conditions of confinement in the states’ maximum-security institutions are such that coping with one’s day-to-day existence requires constant struggle. Yet, having heard these stories, I must admit that their simplifications and exaggerations create an unrealistic picture of what the experience of being placed in solitary confinement while awaiting my date with the executioner is really like. In this essay, I will not attempt to generate sympathy by trying to convince the reader of how rough life on death row can be. Instead, I would simply like to describe,...

Ironically, there is probably more hope on death row than would be found in most other places. Each of us has been convicted of murder. Some are guilty and a few are innocent. But the one thing we all have in common is that we await our demise side by side—the innocent and the guilty alike. We hope because it would be so easy for our fate to be changed. Hope is one thing we have in common with those stricken with a terminal illness.

Every person in our society is capable of murder. Who among us can say...