‘The Death Penalty Has No Place in This Country'

The Atlantic

10 hours ago

Witness
In the July issue, Elizabeth Bruenig documented sin and redemption in America's death chambers.
I am deeply grateful to Elizabeth Bruenig for her unflinching reporting on the death penalty, and for telling the stories of the men she's met on death row. I have always thought that the death penalty was morally reprehensible and incompatible with American democratic principles. But thanks to people like Bruenig and Bryan Stevenson, whose memoir, Just Mercy, I read as an incoming college freshman, my understanding of the death penalty has shifted from the theoretical to the deeply personal. Their witness has confirmed my belief that the death penalty has no place in this country.
On September 24, 2024, the state of Missouri executed Marcellus Williams, despite evidence of his innocence. My family, alongside other concerned Americans, petitioned state and local officials on his behalf during the period leading up to his execution. His death haunts me still.
Cynthia Wynn
Brighton, Mich.
Robert Bowers, who murdered 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, was tried in federal court. There was no question about his guilt, and his attorneys were eager to trade a guilty plea for a life sentence.
Instead, prosecutors insisted on pursuing the death penalty, dragging survivors, victims' families, and the city through a long trial and taking us back through the whole horrible day. Bowers has since been sentenced to die—which will likely mean more appeals, forcing survivors to relive the day again and again. A life sentence, in this case, may have prevented much grief.
Jean Martin
McKeesport, Pa.
Elizabeth Bruenig and I have something in common—we have both witnessed executions in America. I watched a man named Alton Waye die in the electric chair at the Virginia State Penitentiary in 1989. I did so as an employee of the American Correctional Association, an organization that accredits prisons, where I worked at the time.
Waye had been convicted of the rape and murder of 61-year-old Lavergne Marshall in 1977. Marshall had been bitten, beaten, and stabbed 42 times before being dumped nude in her bathtub and doused with bleach. Waye confessed to the crime.
At the execution, I stood with the warden, the prison chaplain, and others directly next to the electric chair. After Waye had been strapped in, the warden asked for his last words. Waye responded, 'I would like to express that what is about to occur here is a murder,' without a word of remorse for his victim. I wondered if someone had coached him to say that. When the electrical current was administered, Waye quickly lost consciousness.
Now, 36 years later, I continue to support capital punishment as an option for aggravated first-degree murder. I've noticed in the intervening years that many condemned inmates are seen as victims, while the real victims are forgotten. I give Bruenig credit for including details of the crimes of the men she watched die, as well as for admitting to 'overidentification' with them. Most death-penalty opponents choose not to.
Death-row inmates are human beings, no more or less than the rest of us. On this, Bruenig and I agree. But I respectfully disagree with her on the notion of the 'dignity of human life' applying to all. I was relieved that Waye didn't appear to suffer in his final moments. But I also thought of Marshall and the suffering she had endured, alone, as Waye took her dignity through rape and murder. There are instances when executions should not be dismissed as vengeance, but seen as justice.
I was disappointed that 'Witness' does not focus on one of the principal reasons the death penalty ought to be abolished: the possibility that an innocent person might be executed. My brother's case is an example. When he was 20, Subramanyam was arrested for a murder and later convicted on circumstantial evidence. At his initial trial, prosecutors attempted to 'death qualify' the jury, to ensure that they would be open to sentencing him to death. If they had succeeded, he may well have been killed. Instead, he has spent more than four decades incarcerated, trying to prove his innocence. In 2021, the district attorney's office fully opened Subu's case file. Within the more than 3,000 pages of documents, Subu's lawyers say they found materials that had never been turned over to the defense, including some potentially exculpatory evidence. He now awaits a new opportunity to challenge his conviction.
Over the past 42 years, my brother has helped hundreds of inmates earn their GED. He started a literacy council and helped with the prison 'Runathon' to benefit the local community. He does yoga daily, keeps abreast of the outside world, and calls his family. He has finished three degrees by correspondence and was, to my knowledge, the first Pennsylvania inmate to earn a graduate degree while incarcerated. But he has had to miss all of our family events and even the last rites of our beloved parents. Subu is a calm, kind, concerned, and brilliant human. He lives in an 8-by-10 cell and somehow stays hopeful.
Elizabeth Bruenig replies:
The death penalty is a complicated subject that tends to stir strong emotions. I'm grateful that so many readers spent time with this story and reached out to express their thoughts. There are a number of legitimate reasons to oppose the death penalty: concerns about the risk of executing innocent people, objections related to race and racial prejudice, a principled respect for human life. I am convinced on every count. But I welcome dialogue with people who disagree—if the death penalty in the United States is going to end, we will need many more voters willing to elect the prosecutors, judges, and lawmakers who oppose the practice, and so people who are against capital punishment must be prepared to patiently make their case. I hope that this story has provided readers with tools for arguing against the death penalty in their own communities, and that we may one day achieve a more just world.
Behind the Cover
For this month's cover story, 'This Is What the End of the Liberal World Order Looks Like,' the Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum reported on the civil war in Sudan, accompanied by the photographer Lynsey Addario. America's withdrawal from the world has left a vacuum, Applebaum argues, and greed, nihilism, and violence have filled it. For our cover image, we selected a photograph taken by Addario in El Geneina, a city in western Sudan where thousands of civilians have been killed. Two siblings, Adam Abdullah, 11, and Hawa, 7, sit in a window; Hawa lost her leg in an air strike three months earlier.
— Bifen Xu, Senior Photo Editor
' The Clones Are Here ' (July) stated that Panayiotis Zavos was a physician. In fact, Zavos has a doctorate in reproductive physiology.