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Posted by Brian Stull, Capital Punishment Project
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
Executing Failure
(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)
Last night, I saw a grown man cry like a baby. He was kin to Kenneth
Wayne Morris, executed by the State of Texas yesterday on his 38th
birthday. I was on my way from a capital hearing near Dallas to
Texas’s death row in Livingston to visit clients. On my way I stopped
in Huntsville, where Texas conducts its executions. I had two
thoughts when I saw Morris’s relative, crying in grief while standing
among a crowd of people protesting Morris’s death outside the walls
of the Huntsville unit, the prison that contains Texas’ death chamber.
My first thought was of a story renowned death-penalty lawyer Bryan
Stevenson often tells, and my second was of a recent Pew Study
concerning prison spending.
In the hour before his execution, the client remarked:
"Mr. Stevenson, today people have offered to meet my every need. That
has never happened to me before. No one asked if I needed anything
when my father beat me as a child. No one asked if I needed anything
when my family lost its home. No one asked if I needed anything
something when my school placed me and other poor African-Americans
in special education, even if we could have succeeded in regular
classes with a little help. No one asked if I needed anything when I
started to run with a gang because it was the only place I could find
safety, protection, and acceptance. No one asked if I needed anything
when my time in state prison taught me more violence, rather than a
skill I could use when I got out."
As I stood outside the prison last night, I wondered not about how
Morris, who is also African-American, was treated on the day of his
execution, but about what happened in the years leading up to his
capital crime. Stevenson’s story is a familiar one to capital defense
attorneys: we see the government pouring extraordinary resources into
obtaining and carrying out death sentences after doing next to
nothing to help our clients before they become occupants of death
row. Not enough is done when they could have been helped or
rehabilitated.
A study published by the Pew Center on the States helps to explain
the lack of adequate help for our clients earlier in their lives.
The
study found that the growth in state prison spending, which has
quadrupled in the last two decades, outpaces state budget growth in
every area except Medicaid - including education, transportation, and
public assistance. The study also found that one in 11, or 9.2
percent, of African-Americans are under state correctional control,
compared with one in 45 whites, or 2.2 percent. Thus, money that
could be used to help disadvantaged African-Americans in need is
spent to imprison them. Notably, Morris spent time in state prison
before his capital crime.
Ideally, society should encourage and help its people to realize
their full God-given potential. At a minimum, it should help
youngsters and their families when doing so could prevent them from
turning to crime. When society fails in this regard, it
simultaneously falls victim to crime and puts one of its own behind
bars at state expense. And while prisons do have an appropriate role
in incapacitating dangerous criminals, they are equally a place
where, all too often, inmates who could be rehabilitated learn,
instead, more violence and how to be a better criminal.
Because we fail so dramatically to devote resources to help young
people in desperate need, we often end up paying far more later on.
We know Morris had the potential for rehabilitation and redemption:
he issued a sincere apology to the victim’s family in his final
statement. His capital murder and the execution represent yet another
failure of society to help someone who could have been helped as a
youth, or rehabilitated in prison.
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