After deciding to pursue the execution of the man charged with fatally shooting 12 people in a Colorado movie theater last summer, the prosecutor declared that "for James Egan Holmes, justice is death." By that definition, he might have added, justice is also highly unlikely.
Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler might have resolved this case quickly, simply and inexpensively. Holmes' lawyers say their client would be willing to plead guilty for a sentence of life without parole. But the prosecutor declined.
Not much should be made of this announcement, since he has plenty of time and many reasons to change his mind. Arizona prosecutors had no apparent qualms about a plea bargain with Jared Loughner, who agreed to spend the rest of his life behind bars for killing six people and wounding 13 others in Tucson.
Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head, and her husband approved the deal. The Wall Street Journal reported that "victims and their families largely welcomed" it.
It's not hard to see why. A plea bargain may deprive them of the satisfaction of seeing the killer pay the ultimate price, but it avoids years of uncertainty and frustration. If we know anything about the death penalty in this country, it's that there is nothing swift or sure about it.
Colorado is less than zealous in its commitment to this particular sanction. The state has executed only one person since the death penalty was restored in 1975 — and he'd been on Death Row for 10 years. One current resident was sentenced in1996.
Nationally, it takes an average of nearly 13 years for a death sentence to be carried out. Holmes could be condemned to die and still be breathing oxygen in 2030.
Getting a conviction and death sentence is no cinch. His lawyers are expected to ask for his acquittal on grounds of insanity. Holmes saw a psychiatrist at the University of Colorado Denver while he was a student there, and a gun range refused to do business with him because the owner found him "creepy." Even if a jury is not willing to find Holmes innocent, it may decline to execute someone with serious mental problems.
If the prosecutors insist on going to trial, the public will need an excess of patience.
The presiding judge stepped aside because of other duties, forcing postponement of the trial until next February at the earliest.
Holmes' lawyers want to put it off till the summer or fall of 2014. The trial is supposed to take four months, though the defense says it could go on for nine. So a verdict may be more than two years away.
By that time, many stacks of taxpayer money will be gone. A capital murder trial costs far more than a non-capital one, because of the extra sentencing proceeding, the special protections mandated by law and the huge amount of time required.
The Death Penalty Information Center notes that the difference can exceed $1 million. And the additional cost may be wasted, since "only one in every three capital trials may result in a death sentence" and "only one in 10 death sentences handed down may result in an execution."
Given diminishing public enthusiasm for capital punishment, there is no guarantee that if Holmes wound up on Death Row, the sentence would ever be carried out. Michael Radelet, a professor with the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, notes that a future governor could decide to commute all outstanding death sentences — as Illinois Gov. George Ryan did. "The odds that he'll be killed are about the same as the odds of a snowstorm in Orlando tonight," he told me.
Death penalty advocates will argue that prosecutors owe it to the victims and their families to demand the death penalty. But that path offers cold comfort.
Marilyn Peterson Armour of the University of Texas at Austin and Mark Umbreit of the University of Minnesota conducted interviews with families of murder victims in Texas, which has capital punishment, and Minnesota, which doesn't. Those in Minnesota, they found, "show higher levels of physical, psychological and behavioral health" — apparently because "the appeals process in Texas was drawn out, elusive, delayed and unpredictable."
Prosecutors can put Coloradans through that maddening process in the Holmes case. Or they can save everyone a lot of trouble by locking him up for good.
Steve Chapman blogs daily at newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/steve_chapman. To find out more about Steve Chapman, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM
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Sir;... We are very much a death society... I remember once reading a critique by D.H. Lawrance of American Literature in which he said: it is all about death... True, very true, and truest... We are used to Freud by now, and his awareness of the Death Wish, Thanatos... What would capitalism be without the will to destroy all upon which life depends so you can sell what remains at a profit??? Within such a scheme of things, what is a little death between friends...
There is no justice in this world, and it is possible we create God for those qualities we most desire: Justice, though we call in vengeance, and power... Some time vengeance is justice, but what can we do to one who has taken so much from us??? Every child when they learn the facts of life, the terrible reality most sense but cannot define, that we live for now and die; will be struck with the unfairness of it all... It is enough to make a kindergartener philosophical, if not resentful... What is this crap, oh God, if you exist in fact, to give me life and snatch it back???
The challenge of humanity in negative terms is not to endure reality, but to deserve it, to know true guilt, to draw back from death and pain with horror, finally, and say: See??? I am not an animal... But we are...
We could not live for an instant without death.. As Lincoln said as a child to others who were heaping coals on the backs of terripins to free them from their shells: An Ant has as much regard for his life as you do for yours... Life is will, and if that means the slaughter of your incidental chicken, or the massacre of a field of buckwheat, we eat, and let our will be done... And what is so bad about that except in our ability to identify with the chicken, we say: there for the grace of God go I... And we will, regardless...
We are so casual in the land of death... I fear to hear people talk about the circumstances under which they would kill... Ask a presidential candidate what he would do if his wife was raped and murdered... No one wants goodness when they can have the original human being before them... What would I do??? What would any man do??? But to revisit the event that has not yet occured so we can anticipate the joy of the feeling of vengeance is obscene, and too often seen...
People think about killing, and they would not buy a gun without the thought of it... If they are decent, they do so with regrets, and wish the day forever away when it may become necessary to use that gun in anger; and yet they can conceive of it, and this does not make them less than human, but human all too human...
The point here is that together we should mean to be better than we are alone, that is: we want to be improved by society and removed one step from our animal nature...Though the purpose of law should be the denial of vengeance and the pursuit of justice, we see so often that politicians, as prosecuters are, seek vengeance and call out out our animal nature in a long bloody howl...
I don't mean to judge the criminal Holmes... He is not human, and that fact is obvious; but his humanity is not the issue that my humanity is...I do not wish justice so much as fear it... I am a moralist and have almost always been so; but that does not mean I have been moral... In fact; as with so many youths, I could only see morality as it is from the land of immorality that surrounds every community...Murder may be the only commandment I have not trashed; but what is that??? I have wished death... I have looked forward to death with joy and anticipation...I have benefitted from the deaths of many thousands, not to mention, those of fish, deer, cows, and fowls... Upon what basis can I condemn another to death??? On the basis of justice??? What would I know about that...
In the matter of fair play alone, there is no way that one death can atone for the deaths of twelve... The real value of the death penalty is awarness... When you see some one awaiting execution say: I am not the same person who did those terrible deeds; then you do not have your reason for clemency; but your warrant of execution...
That is the object of it all: for people to grow what they should have had all along in a sense of conscience, and a consciousness of the enormity of life, its meaning, its promise, it pain, and its tragedy... What is the cost of it when it buys such a treasure as dies in the heart of a human being??? That is the whole object of the death penalty, perhaps the object of all human fatality, to make us aware of the beauty and wonder of life... That is the fact that Mr. Holmes needs to learn, and not alone he; but all those who make a fetish and a fantasy of death...
When we lose with life all that gives the stuff of life- meaning and value, then we can see what we have taken in the process of living... Life is not death, but it is the nearest thing to it... And when we reach that end, that final futility of life, and we will know everything and nothing without point one to it, then we will see what graces life has given us, what courage and what power... What we have so long grasped we must let go...What we have sought we must surrender... What we have loved and hated with equal fervor we must care nothing for...Sans everything, and finally, even the meaning of it...
In every essential detail we are the same as Mr. Holmes, and even the equal of the chicken... We all pay for our lives with our lives... What can we with our poor powers doing when we deny some one a moment, an hour, or a life time??? We take no more than fate and fact has written... We do Mr. Holmes slight injury in hustling him out of his miserable existence, but as much as we try to make it about him; we cannot... We too much value the idea of life without the substance... Mr. Holmes was all idea and no substance... His ability to grasp what he was about as he conceived of it was nil...
What can you kill in such a man??? If it were possible for him to conscieve of the value of his life he would have conceived of the value of all life... And we see it... People forever say: My Life... My Life is worth more than your life... They conceive of themselves as created, metaphysically... If they could see the obvious, it is that life for us may be that quality we share with all living plants and animals, and that may only exist in this one place in the cosmos...I live with our life, but we exist together...
Thanks....Sweeney
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Thu Apr 4, 2013 5:44 AM
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