VERY FEW PEOPLE under the age of seventy will remember Caryl Chessman. His execution in the San Quentin gas chamber on 2 May 1960 was the occasion for an international outpouring of condemnation and disgust. The good and the great of the United States (from Aldous Huxley and Norman Mailer to the former First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt) had appealed for clemency, but the State of California killed him anyway. Not for murder, mind, but for robbery, kidnapping and rape. The Supreme Court of the State of California had confirmed Chessman as the notorious “Red Light Bandit”. He’d managed to keep the cyanide out of the hole for 11 long years through numerous appeals and stays of execution, but California got him in the end.
The execution of Chessman unleashed a wave of popular revulsion against the death penalty in the United States. Over the course of the succeeding decade-and-a-half, state after state either abolished sentences of death altogether, or operated as if they had by commuting them to life imprisonment.
Not in the Deep South, of course, where the death penalty operated as an unacknowledged form of judicial terrorism against the black population of the old Confederacy. So extreme was the sexual psycho-pathology of the Southern Baptist male that Black American men were as frequently put to death for rape as they were for murder. The alleged “defilement” of a white woman by a black man drove Southern juries (and lynch mobs) into murderous frenzies.
With debate still raging in the lengthening shadow of Chessman’s execution, New Zealand finally rid itself of the death penalty in 1961. The legislation was made the subject of a conscience vote because in the years since 1949, when the First National Government had restored the death penalty (Labour having abolished it in 1941) a growing number of National Party members and MPs had found themselves conscientiously opposed to its retention. Interestingly, the liberal National Party Justice Minister, Ralph Hanan’s, majority for repeal included the new back-bench MP for Tamaki, Robert Muldoon.
The news media’s progressive role in the abolition of the death penalty might seem strange to a generation raised on the vicarious cruelty of reality television. Perhaps it was because journalists, as proxies for the crowds that once gathered to watch these grim events, were required to witness executions.
Only a pathological sadist could derive any pleasure from watching a defenceless man, often crying uncontrollably and begging for mercy, being frogmarched to the centre of a platform, where a canvas hood is thrust over his head, a noose tightened around his neck, and, at a signal from the Sheriff, dropped through a trap-door to his (hopefully) instant death. Seasoned reporters dreaded the execution assignment and their stories tended to be terse and generally sparing of the readers’ feelings.
There were exceptions. The relentlessly factual and highly detailed description of the February 1957 hanging of wife-murderer, Walter James Bolton, so horrified the public that it ended up being the last execution ever carried out in New Zealand.
With the end of capital punishment, however, the news media entered into a new relationship with the ill-fated “cast” of the standard homicide case.
The victims of deadly violence have always supplied reporters with sensational copy, but, in the days of the death penalty, the apprehension and conviction of the murderer naturally shifted the focus away from the dead to the one about to die. Often, the public found themselves caught up in the defence lawyers’ appeals for mercy on behalf of perpetrators who often turned out to be as much sinned against as sinning.
But when the worst that could happen to a murderer was being locked in a prison cell for a couple of decades (at most) journalists began to look elsewhere for the sort of pain and pathos that sells newspapers. The murder victims were, of course, beyond the reporter’s reach, but their family and friends were still very much alive. What’s more, the new, humane, Justice System often left the murder victim’s family and friends feeling cheated of the revenge they so desperately wished to see exacted upon the body of the person who had robbed them of their loved one.
Thus began the inexorable rise of “the victim’s family” as an unassailable source of commentary on the whys and wherefores, rights and wrongs, of contemporary crime and punishment. It was from distraught parents, heartbroken husbands and wives, and bereft children that journalists sought definitive judgements on the conduct of the accused’s trial and the appropriateness of any sentence. From the intense pain and suffering of these stricken human-beings the news media was happy to mine bitter attacks on the rights of accused persons, the leniency of judges and the manifest inadequacies of the nation’s laws.
Not surprisingly, politicians of every hue have been quick to attach themselves to the public outrage whipped up by this sort of journalism. The consequent electoral auction has seen an alarming narrowing of the crucial distance which jurists, over many centuries, have laboriously imposed between the raw grief of the victim’s family and the need for justice to be dispensed dispassionately, without fear or favour. The whole purpose of the Crown making itself the aggrieved party – as opposed to the victim’s relatives – along with the state’s insistence on being the only agency legally entitled to exact retribution for proven offences, is at risk of being forgotten.
It all raises a very uncomfortable question. Which is worse: the death penalty, or what happens to society’s understanding of justice when capital punishment is abolished?
Hmmmmmmm
Nice article, Chris. I personally find the prospect of mob rule more frightening than the usual level of crime.
I’ll offer a simple solution, maybe it’s time we moved towards more restorative justice system – and accept that a level of revenge, will be involved in that system as well.
Very perceptive Chris. These days not many people have been intimately involved with an execution. I have. Almost 50 years ago I was attacked by a mob in central Africa, where I lived. Somehow I managed to escape with only moderate injuries, but a couple of days later the guy who had led the attack went on to kill an elderly couple. He was tried for murder and sentenced to death.
Suddenly I had to confront my anger and desire for revenge, and decide if this was what I really wanted. I even knew the hangman – a half-crazed character who used to terrify the locals by sticking a human skull on his table at the bar and buying drinks for it.
But even as a wronged 20-something, I could see how hideous the death penalty was. What could be uglier than the sanitised state murder of a human being?
The problem, as you point out, is that once you remove such an overwhelmingly powerful emotional element from the equation, the journalists are left scrambling for material. Not surprisingly they aim for the softest targets: the victim’s family, followed by the perpetrator’s family.
Basically the media have weaponised grief, and the politicians fall over themselves to encourage the process. It’s not quite as ugly as executing people, but it certainly comes close!
Never a nice topic,….two thousand years ago German tribes pressed down rapists, child molesters and murderers into the peat bogs after strangling them…then covered them in wicker according to Roman military observers,…100 years ago criminals were hung,..in between those periods we had acceptance of torture as a means to extract guilt,..
But what if you get the wrong person?…we’ve had that here a few times…and if you do get the wrong person…you cant bring them back…
But what do you do to a son of Sam type character…let them carry on merrily?…or bring them to justice, rehab, psychiatric care etc?….or exact pure revenge and retaliate equally as brutally?…ie: death penalty? …in which case it descends into mob rule.
And what of countries like Bosnia etc…where all manner of creeps come out of the woodwork to carry out their malicious racial/ religious dogmas in genocidal self justification – hiding behind their uniforms and rank , – hoping they will be on the winning side when the war ends and there will be no war crimes trials….
To be honest…there are crimes so horrific…that each and every one of us deep down wanted to see the ultimate sentence passed..particularly when children are the victims.
Sometimes it feels like the ‘flavor of the month’ penalty when taken over several centuries…what seemed right to the people of one century is totally unthinkable to people of another century…even within decades.
As every new report and statistical data is collated regards criminality…it seems we are forever caught up in some moral and ethical dilemma – in a kind of ‘ we know best’ because ‘WE’ are modern…a kind of patronizing, condescending moral high ground whereby we look at earlier generations as somehow primitive and short sighted in their judgement’s.
I think its closer to the truth that humanity learns nothing. Sure..they gain ‘knowledge’ – and even that’s forgotten with passing generations. But with all this ‘knowledge’…..and with all this ‘advancement’…..what happened two hundred years ago in every type of crime still happens today. Every type. We are no more superior to them.
What human beings lack is this: Wisdom.
Todays news,
Austerity anger in Rome today as our Masters press us to the peat bog of debt and destroy the majority of our futures both young and old.
So when will our justice system be able to exact the same treatment upon those who plan this austerity harm and cause the many harm of their actions.
Some of those heartless actions of austerity forced on the weak, & the poor and defenceless have driven some already beyond desperation to death by their own choice of committing suicide.
This is serious stuff we are living through today.
How will the wheels of justice level reparation upon these perpetrators of such repressive austerity crimes that drive some to suicide?
There sadly is a law for the poor and a law for the rich and those in power, so until we correct that level of injustice we will still wallow around in an inadequate justice system that is broken.
Hi,
It’s a complicated sort of mess. But what strikes me about your post is that you want to blame the press. My question would be – are they really driving up the orgasm of righteous fury and lust for revenge, or are they simply responding to society who right or wrong, have this primitive need within them?
Do we blame the movies who display vengeance all the time as the victim blows the head off the baddie, or the audience who want to see that?
I think at some point we have to accept that human nature is flawed. We have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. And that’s not going to change in a hurry. All we can do is keep pushing the positive messages. Praising the Ghandi’s and Mandellas of this world, and emphasising the messages that we want our society to value.
And one thing to remember is that the last man hanged in New Zealand, Walter Bolton was quite possibly innocent of the crime of poisoning his wife.
Cheers, Greg.
Yeah, I get a bit fed up with the emotional washing of the news, on TV and in the press. I won’t go into to particulars, because it’s not fair on the people involved, but one widow is regularly trawled out and interviewed for her view on the current state of the investigation. With her young children too. I’m can’t help thinking it’s not healthy for them or us.
And programmes like Campbell Live are the worst offenders. I can’t bear to watch it most of the time. Weeping family and friends pumped to produce prime time tv entertainment. Sometimes we’re even exhorted to support some law or other which will curtail the freedom of the rest of us.
Well, I just strained my thinky thing.
The commercialisation of justice. For the media; easier to capitalise on an emotive issue by peddling an angry hit to those addicted. Interspersed between cooking, property and “reality” programming; countless law enforcement programs easily and cheaply produced catering to viewers voyeuristic desires, with disregard to people’s privacy and dignity, content promoting stereotypes and fear. All much profitable than expending any effort in producing programming to inform, educate, inspire and improve.
Serious consideration of reintroducing the death penalty is out of the question; jeopardises the societal comfort in the pretence of how socially liberal and progressive we are; the delusion of how cultured and enlightened we are. Any deaths in custody often due to medical complications, the influence of social ills is out of the question.
The angry prejudice; imprisoning someone for a crime is outrageous because they are residing in something akin to a resort while many go through the motions of everyday life. Instead the push for user pays incarceration and work to pay their “debt to society” in a pro-business state, the private prison system a way to utilise outsiders for profit. Everyone has their place, know your place in the whole rotten system.
Funny how the uninformed refer to prisons as a “resort” – yet those same people are not queuing up at the prison gates to get inside…
These people are forgetting to place the adjective “last” before “resort”‘when referring to.prisons.
Prison is a dead loss. It is used to incarcerate sick and socially-damaged people as well as depriving others of their liberties. There is no differentiation. It’s all about ‘punishment’.
Alternatives for healing/rehabilitation have been starved of funds and able practitioners.
People leave prison for the big wide world – and their past follows them. There is an ongoing sentence that does not end. Isolation and avoidance by others. Whispering and judging. That is not just or fair. They did the time. They did the time. And still people want more repentence, remorse, apologies, humiliation. Living death, perhaps.
It could be most helpful for the overall health of our society if we followed the example and practices of Norway: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/04/bastoy-norwegian-prison-works
rather than the inhumanities of the American ‘system’ – or even that of UK and Australia.
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