Death Row: The Only Fitting Punishment (1988)

[Music] i'm afraid that capital punishment in america is a necessary evil it's a sacrifice that we have to make because we live in a free society there is no ironclad guarantee that this person who goes out and stalks young women or innocent children or what have you and murders them rudely is going to not do that again [Music] the only guarantee we have is unfortunately to terminate this individual's existence the only fitting punishment is capital [Music] punishment [Music] gary gilmore john spinkelink julius and ethel rosenberg names that have made headlines in america for one reason they were executed for crimes society deemed worthy of the death penalty [Music] since colonial days the crimes america punishes with death have reflected the social taboos of the times watt espy has spent 17 years chronicling each and every case of capital punishment in the united states since in the 1608. states we've done practically everything except ball and all burnings were very very commonplace uh generally they were reserved for slaves however there was a white woman burned in pennsylvania during the colonial period in many many of the slave holding states of slaves administering medicine to an ill master was a an offense punishable by dale massachusetts in the 1650s passed a law making being a quaker in the colony a capital offense so more people actually hanged for being quakers in massachusetts which i guess is the most blatant example of religious persecution that we have in the history of this country in most states executions were public events invitations like these were sent out to citizens of the community welcoming them to witness the execution the reason deterrent this practice continued up until the early 1900s but america was not alone in this approach to capital punishment to this day some countries still use executions as a warning to its people this scene is in pakistan the year is 1971. the man a rebel was left tied to a tree to die this scene is from vietnam 1961 these traitors are being shot in front of a crowd in the united states public executions occasionally led to violence among the crowds and senseless tragedy for a few unfortunate witnesses one of the reasons why the movement began to move executions behind prisons is the effect that it would have on young people their parents would take them to witness an execution thinking that perhaps it would have some salutary effect they would hold them up so they could get a good glimpse and all of that but i found i guess 30 or 40 cases where after witnessing an execution a child of tender years would hang a playmate or hang themselves the last public execution in america was on august 14 1936 nearly 20 000 people showed up to watch the hanging death of rainey bethea a black man accused of raping a white woman well they sold lemonade on the grounds and of course the saloons did a bunker business and all of that and everybody had a good time and the mob was just totally unruly and time magazine had representatives there as did the new york times and the international press and the state of kentucky was just thoroughly excoriated in the media all over the world the carnival atmosphere convinced the kentucky supreme court to put a halt to public executions from then on the methods america has used to execute its criminals have changed over the years from burning to drawing and quartering to hanging criminals have been axed crucified buried alive pressed with weights stoned impaled starved decapitated and gibbeted givething is the hanging of the condemned man by chains to rot death often takes weeks to occur the reason that we started changing the means of execution was supposedly to seek a more humane way uh hanging was a general means of execution up until 1890 the hanging was far from perfect any number of things could happen if the drop was not enough the poor man or woman strangled to death at the end of the noose we have one case where a man strangled for 53 minutes before he died the electric chair was the uh first new innovation that came along new york adopted it in in 1890 a man named william kimmel became the first man to be electrocuted in this country now there was quite a debate between thomas a edison and george westinghouse over which type current to use one advocated one and the other the other i believe they ended up adopting the westinghouse method and certainly electrocution was not all that humane uh in many many instances a man would be pronounced dead and then start breathing and all of that and they'd have to take him back i'll fight you one example the three van wermer brothers who were electrocuted in new york about 1905 for killing their uncle for an inheritance when the youngest one who was the last one to be executed they had them all three in the morgue with the sheets over them and the youngest one came to and started getting up and they had to take him back in and electrocute him again in 1915 nevada introduced lethal gas as the preferred mode of execution thus the gas chamber was born their original plan was to asphyxiate the man while he was sleeping but they decided that that was not feasible because it would constitute a danger to other inmates so they literally built a cubicle in which to execute lethal injection has been the most recent development in capital punishment it was introduced december 7th 1982 in texas with the death of charlie brooks jr but again there were problems steven marin who was executed in texas was strapped on a gurney and held their mobile uh for 41 minutes while they stuck needles in him they literally stuck needles in his body for 41 minutes trying to find veins strong enough to take the caster he had a long history of drug abuse and it had dried his veins up the states of utah and idaho still use the firing squad in fact in 1608 the first man ever executed was killed by firing squad today the breakdown of execution methods looks like this 17 states use lethal injection the electric chair is employed in 15 states lethal gas is the choice in seven states three states still hang they're condemned and two states execute prisoners by firing squad in 1972 the united states supreme court ruled capital punishment unconstitutional at the time 600 condemned men and women lived on death rows in america each one was removed from death row often to a lesser sentence one of those who is no longer on death row because of the 1972 ruling is charles manson manson soared to national prominence in 1969 after the brutal tate labianca slayings in los angeles at the time he received the death penalty i've been 22 years of my life you know i'm the other end of your society you know so you can ride your bicycles and do your thing i live in your reformed schools and your organizations i'm not excited are you bitter bitter no but you feel you've paid some price so far price to society you said it yeah okay does that make you bitter i don't know what that means how do you feel right now do you feel good feeling for the judgement a little nervous i feel good feeling towards everything i feel no bad i know no bad at california's san quentin prison where charles manson lives out his life sentence dave lagerman is the public information officer he's uh he's got a life sentence like with the possibility of parole and he'll be going before the parole board again in [Music] 89 if he gets out again he will be a the new messiah for a a group of individuals out there that learn about their third generation that um still think he's pretty neat stuff you know there's kids out there that weren't even alive in 1969 that still call me up and write me letters wanting to know all about charlie well they're still showing reruns of health or skelter and the book's still out there and unfortunately we created this cult the effects of the court decision were dramatic in california alone 197 men sentenced to death were released from death row sirhan b sirhan accused of assassinating robert f kennedy also left death row he's now serving a life sentence in soledad richard spence accused of brutally murdering eight student nurses another reduced sentence he faces parole in 1989 but by 1976 the tide had turned headlines like this one from the new york times told the story the supreme court had reversed its previous decision declaring capital punishment legal the mood quickly changed on death row then on january 17 1977 gary gilmore became the first man to be executed in the united states in over 10 years gilmore murdered a motel clerk in provo utah gilmore insisted on the right to die and stood in front of a firing squad only two days after his 36th birthday then there was john sprinkling a 30 year old work camp escapee who killed his traveling companion over a money dispute spinkling got the death penalty in florida and on may 25 1979 he went to the electric chair his was the first involuntary execution in 12 years as of 1987 florida led the nation with 277 inmates awaiting down texas was second with 257 and california was third with 219 the youngest person facing death was 16 years old [Music] the youngest person to be executed in recent history was 14 year old george stinney jr he was electrocuted in south carolina in 1944 he was only 14 years old and a very very small frail young man at that and they absolutely had to make make adjustments to the electric chair in order to accommodate his body of course it had been made for adults the juvenile death penalty has existed for three and a half centuries in the united states in fact more than 300 juveniles have been executed and almost 300 women have been executed over the same time most in salem at least 21 women were hanged for witchcraft in massachusetts they would not hang a pregnant woman now a woman could be sentenced to be hanged when she was pregnant they would respond and spare a life until such time as she bore the baby and then hang her and consequently a lot of women who won the sentence of death would get cozy with the jailers and all that and try to get pregnant before the date of execution velma barfield was the last woman executed in the united states see like so many of the women who have been executed in the history of the country they've been about 350 of them the velma barfield like so many of the women was a poisoned murderer poison is a woman's tool now don't get me wrong we've had men to use poison as as that means of eliminating someone else but primarily it's a woman's truth ms barfield wasn't poisoned murderers one of the century's most controversial cases was that of bruno halpern accused of kidnapping and murdering the baby of aviator charles lindbergh he was sentenced to die in 1936. today his widow seeks to have her dead husband pardon for a crime she and many other experts say he could not possibly have committed of course these are the famous ones the first the last the ones immortalized by the press by books and by movies and with most americans favoring capital punishment by a margin of two to one we can only expect more people think that these killers on death row are these uh these beetle-browed uh hook nose ogres um and they disassociate themselves with them when in reality they look just like everybody else they come from every imaginable walk of life and you could take them out put them in a jc penny suit on a street corner you couldn't tell from anybody else you know they're not these strange looking individuals they're just people with a different uh morality or lack thereof then what makes them different they don't seem to have any social mores against taking a human life [Music] of the 1982 men and women on death rows in 1987 1020 were white 814 were black 113 were hispanic 26 were american indians and nine were asian two-thirds had a prior felony conviction one out of 11 had a prior homicide conviction the median age was 32. 62 of them were from southern states 17 were from the west one third were married 40 percent had never been married so who is this person on death row it's a person who's totally removed themselves from society mentally to where they can actually commit this type of crime to where they can sit down and make that decision that i'm going to stalk this person i'm going to lay and wait for this person and then i'm going to kill this person or maybe i'm going to torture this person to death the men and women on death row live in isolated cell blocks segregated from the rest of the prison population in california where 219 men reside on death row their living quarters are spare advanced cell is 48 square feet it's about four and a half feet wide about 10 feet eight inches deep and the ceiling is about seven feet seven inches high each one comes with a steel bunk a toilet sink and most every inmate that can afford a tvs got one they're all made to operate on a headset so they don't disturb each other condemned row was the most part a very quiet very subdued place it's getting less and less subdued where the death penalty used to be a social concept it's starting to look more and more like a reality with california's first execution in 21 years scheduled to take place sometime in 1988 the mood is changing we give them plastic eating utensils so if they won't sharpen up their knives and forks and spoons so they melt plastic heating utensils together and sharpen it up and now have a plastic weapon there was some knives that were cut out of the supports to the metal bunks at one time on on condemned row there was a man who used to leave a little makeshift weapon whatever he could put together one a day out in front on the floor in front of this cell and that was just his way of telling us the administration that you can lock me up but you can't control me yet mark kinsey who worked on san quentin's death row for several years found a maturity among condemned inmates that didn't seem to exist in the general prison population i thought from my personal views that they were just a better behaved type of person and went along with the program it's like a humbling effect i spent time on death row i know that i could i was going to be put to death and that was something that even though they know deep down inside that they're probably going to sit there a long time they're sitting there a long time still knowing that their sentence is death and some day the two officers may walk down the court or open the cell and escort them downstairs nobody there is any better no one there is doing ten to life as opposed to the guy doing six to ten which makes you worse because of your crime everybody there is under the sentence of death so they are all suffering the supreme penalty and nobody can die but once [Music] first execution i witnessed happened to be uh my own cell partner and i've sailed with this man for 11 months and seen his death warrant sign and watched him eating his last meal and watched him shave his head and uh quite a shattering experience being my first execution also being myself partner because i've gotten to know him so well just like a brother and uh it actually shook me up worse than his show came up and having to watch him eat his last meal and everything and we were so close to the chair at that time that when they executed a man you could actually smell the flesh-burning hill and it turned my stomach so bad that uh i was unable to eat for a couple of days afterwards didn't get much sleep and uh it's still i still think about it often have dreams about it i would say everybody on death row who spends any time on death row has to become a different person whether better or worse depends on the individual i myself think i have improved i've aged i've matured i've had time to think and reflect it'll change anybody when the condemned face death in california the method of execution is lethal gas cyanide and this is where it happens this is california's gas chamber it looks like something that jack stowe would take to the bottom of the ocean floor it looks like a like an old diving bell actually it's um sort of a dentist chair green it's uh it's got some two foot square windows that uh for the witnesses to the execution to actually see into the chamber there are two seats the condemn sits with us back to the witnesses while on duty at san quentin officer mark kinsey once sat in the chair the one thing that i remember was how uncomfortable it was and i always say that i don't know why i just for some reason didn't think it would be that uncomfortable it's a real squared type of a chair short back it's made out of metal and it's perforated so that the gas can come up through it and make sure that it gets you it has straps on the arms along the legs around the waist and around the chest and it's surrounded by windows and if you look to the right you can just look right out to where all the witnesses would be standing and right in front of you is the big door that's hermetically sealed and just to the left of that are the windows where you can see the clock in the warden and where the executioner would stand although he could close some venetian blinds the chamber is closed and sealed and then the chemicals are mechanically introduced to each other that create the gas and as soon as the gas reaches be condemned their unconscious instantaneously and then depending on their their physical makeup death occurs some some minutes after that [Music] according to government figures keeping a man on death row costs taxpayers about twenty thousand dollars a year a life sentence of forty years would be eight hundred thousand dollars an execution can cost up to three million dollars because of the lengthy appeals process sometimes that takes as long as 10 years there is no exhausting of one's appeals for us to put limitations on the appellate process we have to make some more sacrifices in this free society and i don't know what sacrifices you're willing to give up what constitutional and human rights you're willing to sacrifice to see that these people are pushed a little faster towards execution believe it or not there's people on death row who believe in the death penalty they don't believe in the death penalty for their particular case because either they still deny that they did it or that they were somehow justified or was just a fluke of circumstance they went in to rob the place and just happened to kill some folks in the process but they certainly support the death penalty when it comes to this guy who disembowels women or who who uh beats to death children or or disassembles two-year-olds with with vice grip flyers i mean for those folks yeah they'd volunteer to pull the lever inmates in general have a very low tolerance for people who victimize children it's nice to see that there's still that bit of morality among them regardless of their feelings toward fellow inmates the condemned ultimately face their sentence alone the date of execution traditionally is friday black friday and if possible last requests are honored within reason they would allow man to have what he wished generally speaking not always whatever he wished for a last meal of course if he was living in massachusetts and requested fresh watermelon in january there's no way they could give him that but within reason they would allow him to and and in some places you know during the entire period of his confinement awaiting death they would let him align pretty well to have what he wanted to eat we had one there was one case in the late 1940s in new york a man named donald snyder well he thought he could beat the electric chair by being too fat to sit in it and he just while he was on death row for a couple of years all he did was eat refused to exercise and he was enormous when he went to the chair but they greet slid him in somehow and electrocuted him and there have been some memorable last words well you had a man named apple who was executed in the state of new york and his last words were uh you're about to see a baked apple warden clinton duffy tells in his book 88 men and two women about the convict who had killed another convict there in california and the warden went in to see him shortly before the execution and said is there anything i can get for you anything particularly you won't and he said well i would like a pack of tombs i think i'm gonna have gas on my stomach pretty soon this green door leads to the gas chamber at san quentin the lethal fumes escape through this smokestack it's through this door that the witnesses warden and executioners pass on black private most wardens who had to execute carry out this function a number of times became passionate opponents of the death penalty it's not that they were sympathetic toward the criminal as i stated earlier it's very hard to feel sympathy for these people but i think most decent people are compassionate there was a case in north carolina where a warden had to electrocute two black men on the same day and he dropped out of a heart attack about 15 minutes after the last execution the stress and strain on them is terrible uh i know of cases where after conducting executions wardens and literally other people who conducted them have literally turned to drink and became become complete alcoholics as the warden puts it everybody needs to survive the execution except the one being executed so it takes some some fairly strong characters to uh to do the job some states have an executioner who actually pulls a switch but most will have instance three switches to be pulled and no one will know who actually pulls the switch pull the lethal switch the same thing is true in the firing squads as an empty there's a blank fired the debate over the morality and effectiveness of capital punishment continues even after 300 years of legal executions both sides of the battle remain fiercely loyal to their beliefs is the death penalty an effective deterrent to crime on a case-by-case basis yes it's 100 effective i don't believe the death penalty has ended your tariff value whatsoever i'm sure it serves its purpose because if they're put to death they're not out there committing a crime again we have any number of cases of children who have committed capital crimes after losing apparent to the execution how do you gauge the success of deterrence do we do a telephone poll and say were you planning on killing someone and were you deterred when you thought about it again you see the special circumstance killers are not your rational thinking caring boy next door it's a it's a person who's who's totally removed themselves from society mentally to where they can actually commit this type of crime to where they can sit down and make that decision that i'm going to stalk this person i'm going to lay and wait for this person and then i'm going to kill this person another issue is the appeal system as a cop if you're going through a murder trial and somebody gets the death penalty you naturally think oh boy okay he got what he's got coming but if you look at it in reality he may sit on death row the rest of his life and he's doing exactly what the rest of them will be doing he's just in prison serving out his sentence except that he has that stigma someday i may be put to death most of them know that they're going to go through appeals in the court for year after year after year it's not a deterrent in that sense and as long as it's used in that sense and that the punishments a person's sentenced to death the appeal processes are go through in an expedient manner and the death sentence is carried out we're not going to have a death penalty in the united states that is a deterrent you'll hear people say well he's exhausted all his appeals there's no such thing as exhausting all your appeals it's just running out of imagination or sympathetic ears to hear your your appellate issues but what about the issue of innocence what espy estimates that in its 300-year history the death penalty has taken between 200 and 300 innocent lives he figures that in this century alone at least 25 men have been wrongly executed we've got cases where people were hanged for killing someone and three or four years later the alleged victim turned up alive they were innocent one of the saddest cases did occur in this century where a young man was hanged in nebraska for killing his employer's wife three or four years later the employee on his death bed confessed that he had murdered his wife one of the jurors at the trial which had convicted the young man young man hanging himself in remorse of all the cases i've looked at and i've looked at more than i really want to i can't find an individual that i really think is innocent it's inevitable as long as we have the death penalty that some innocent persons are going to be executed i like to think that one of the fundamental differences between our system of government and that of the communists and the other totalitarian forms of government on this planet is the fact that we had rather see nine guilty not be put to death and that one innocent should be while the others [Music] would prefer to see nine innocents put to death and that one guilty not be put to death and what about the future of capital punishment in america while many countries have abolished the death penalty it still lives in many parts of the world most of our friends and allies all over the world have abolished it and i think we in time will but we're a much younger society than most of those are uh canada's abolished and even mexico has abolished and i think we will possibly by the year 2025 we will relegated it into the past and will be something that we're ashamed of even as we're ashamed of the fact today that we once hang people for witchcraft for adultery for sodomy for bestiality if in fact society does have an expectation that the death penalty will be a deterrent the only way any punishment can be a deterrent is if it's swift and sure and right now the death penalty is neither [Music] whether the death penalty is abolished or whether it becomes swift and sure the debate will continue and america will have the distinction of being one of the most civilized nations in the world to practice one of man's most uncivilized acts and while experts will continue to search for more humane methods to execute the result will be the same black friday will leave its mark on the pages of american history now that you guys are off the road uh we're not gonna cater to you down here you're gonna be on your own uh you're expected to conform to the same rules and regulations that you did up there and there's probably gonna be a few different ones some of you will be able to move into the honor units if you have enough clean time but this first week you'll uh consist mostly of just going from yourself to breakfast lunch and dinner and back again yourself you won't have any free time to uh play or whatever have to do you can take care of some business that you have to take care of that's necessary on weekends you'll be able to go to lower yards in the movies and all those worries when you've got men that have been involved in dangerous crimes uh you kind of like the fact that they're likely to like you to repeat that crime but uh out of our population said that now we have roughly uh 450 people who are here for a homicide conviction of some kind or another i think they're pretty generally blamed into our population those that of course have been acting out on their own will be not given the opportunity to act out for some time to come you'd watch them a bit more closely we'll watch a little bit more closely and if uh those that have been uh are either in danger for themselves or we think are constituted a great danger to other people they'll be kept under lock and key uh in spite of the fact that they're no longer under sentence at that percentage of the percentage you

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Length: 39min 26sec (2366 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 11 2021