House Speaker Mike Chenault and Judiciary Chairman Jay Ramras have introduced a capital punishment bill. The bill was heard three times before Ramras' committee. I attended the first two hearings and saw part of the third on "Gavel to Gavel."
Speaker Chenault was straightforward enough in explaining why he wants his bill: Punish the worst offenders and guarantee they never kill again. But the first hearing was amateurish because the committee -- and more specifically the chairman -- was so badly prepared to grapple with the big questions.
How many executions will occur in the foreseeable future? How much will they cost? Who will be executed from a category of killers identified as "heinous offenders"? How will the state comply with federal law? How will the state ensure innocent people are not executed? How will the state guarantee defendants, especially members of minorities, receive equal justice under the law at sentencing?
In leading the committee through the first airing of the bill, Chairman Ramras often rambled and made an embarrassing mistake when referring to the Mindy Schloss slaying of 2007. He got her name wrong and placed her death in Fairbanks.
The chairman performed much better 48 hours later, conducting a lengthy hearing that combined public testimony with discussion of the big questions.
A fiscal note established a base line of what Alaskans can expect if they adopt capital punishment. "The Department of Corrections anticipates approximately 2 offenders annually to be sentenced under this legislation. The national average length for the appeals process is 13 years." Appeals will be expensive, probably in the millions of dollars, requiring the government to hire additional lawyers. The state will have to monitor federal law carefully -- that will cost money.
The advocates of capital punishment who spoke at the hearings -- several of them old friends of mine -- were forceful if predictable. They argued an eye for an eye, heinous killers deserve to die, and if the state executes a murderer at least that murderer will never kill again. (The word heinous was used so often I felt an obligation to look it up. Heinous comes from the French -- "outrageously evil or wicked.")
The opponents were predictable in their own way, employing the traditional theological arguments and personal revulsion at the state taking life. Plus, they noted the long history of racial disparity in sentencing -- a subject that makes legislators uncomfortable while they seem helpless to do anything about it.
The opponents also made a point that should trouble all Alaskans. Since 1973, 130 people on death row -- some on death row more than a decade -- have been exonerated, mostly as a result of intervention by the national Innocence Project.
As former United States Attorney Robert Bundy testified, it is easy to believe only the guilty will be executed but hard to dispute the record. (Rep. John Coghill took Bundy's argument one step further. If courts err in capital cases, don't they err in other cases? How many innocent people are in jail right now because of the failure of the system?)
The history of capital punishment -- eliminated in Alaska by the Legislature in 1957 -- is fascinating if you can stomach the facts. For centuries, men and women throughout Europe were executed for heresy. The Quakers for instance. Their proselytizing was considered heinous. Many common crimes were considered heinous too. Forgery for example. The last forger executed in England, Thomas Maynard, was hanged in 1829.
The guillotine, which one witness before the committee advocated, deserves a whole chapter in the history of capital punishment, but we don't have space for it now. Instead, here's what Ivan Turgenev, the 19th century Russian writer, said after he saw the guillotine blade fall on the neck of a Parisian murderer: "Then something descended with a hollow growl and stopped with an abrupt thud. ... Just as though a huge animal had retched. ..."
I will give the House Judiciary Committee and Chairman Ramras credit. By the end of the third hearing, lawmakers had enough information to understand the difficulties and dangers of re-instituting the death penalty. If they pass the bill, it won't be in ignorance.
Michael Carey is the former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News. He can be reached at mcarey@adn.com.
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