This week is shaping up to be a very bad one for death penalty opponents in the United States. If all goes according to plan, states will put five people to death in a one-week span ending Thursday. That is an unusual, though not unprecedented, number of executions in such a short period of time.
To understand just how unusual it is, consider that in 2023, the total number of executions for the entire year was 24, less than one execution every other week. In 2022, 18 people were put to death, for a rate of roughly one execution every third week.
Indeed, one would have to go back almost three decades, to 1997, to find a parallel to what may unfold this week. During a seven-day period in May that year, Texas executed five people.
But unlike 1997, this week’s executions will occur in five different states.
It all started on Friday when South Carolina executed Khalil Allah, formerly known as Freddie Owens, its first execution since 2011. The others are planned for Tuesday and Thursday in Texas, Missouri, Alabama, and Oklahoma, all of which regularly carry out executions.
It is just a coincidence that all these states are moving in lockstep. Coincidence or not, a close look at each of the cases in which someone will be executed this week highlights not just the kind of horrible crimes that can land someone on death row but also many of the death penalty’s crippling problems.
This week’s executions include two cases in which there are substantial doubts about whether the person being executed is actually innocent. Two others illustrate the fact that the death penalty is often used against people who are poor, vulnerable, abused, and in many ways broken, not against the worst criminals. The fifth highlights America’s futile search for a method of execution that will be safe, reliable, and humane.
And the fact that three of the five people who will be executed this week are Black only underlines the continuing salience of race in determining who gets sentenced to death and executed.
All told, this week’s execution spree should unsettle all Americans, whether or not they support the death penalty. It will offer further reasons for why capital punishment should be abolished everywhere in this country.
To see why, let’s start with last Friday’s execution of Khalil Allah. He was convicted of the 1997 murder of Irene Grainger Graves, a single mother of three who worked as a convenience store clerk.
No physical evidence connected Allah to the crime. The key evidence against him was testimony from his co-defendant, Steven Golden, who said Allah shot Graves.
Golden did so after reaching a deal with prosecutors that he would not be given a death sentence in return for his testimony. Allah maintained his innocence from the time he was arrested to the day he died.
And just before South Carolina put him to death, new evidence came to light suggesting that what he had been saying for years was true. Last Wednesday, Golden recanted his testimony and signed an affidavit saying, “Freddie Owens is not the person who shot Irene Graves at the Speedway on November 1, 1997. Freddie was not present when I robbed the Speedway that day.”
But, neither the South Carolina Supreme Court, the state’s governor, nor the United States Supreme Court was moved to save Allah from the ultimate punishment for a crime he may not have even committed.
On Tuesday, Missouri may follow South Carolina and execute Marcellus Williams, another person who is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. He would be the third death row inmate executed in the state this year.
As Newsweek notes, “Williams was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in connection with the 1998 death of social worker and former journalist Felicia Gayle.” None of the physical evidence collected at the scene pointed to Williams.
Williams’ conviction, like Allah’s, Newsweek suggests, “turned on the testimony of two unreliable witnesses who were incentivized by promises of leniency in their own pending criminal cases and reward money.”
Eventually, even the prosecutor’s office that originally brought the case against Williams asked the courts to stop the Tuesday’s execution, so far to no avail.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Texas plans to execute Travis Mullis, making him the fourth person the state has executed in 2024.
Mullis was found guilty of capital murder in 2011. According to Newsweek, “He was accused of sexually assaulting his 3-month-old son, Alijah Mullis, then stomping on his head and choking him, resulting in death.”
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No one contends that Mullis is innocent of that horrible crime. But his case shows the way that America’s death penalty is used against troubled and vulnerable people.
Mullis has a mental illness resulting from a troubled and abusive childhood. His attorneys say that he “was in and out of mental health treatment centers, diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, and attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder.”
Mullis also was ill-served by the lawyers in his original trial who did “a poor job of describing the depths of his mental illness.” As a result, “The jury heard just a fraction of the horrors in Mullis’s life.”
Like with Mullis, if Oklahoma goes ahead with its plan to kill Emmanuel Littlejohn on Thursday, it will execute someone who was abused throughout his childhood and whose formative years were marked by “frequent exposure to violence and drugs.”
Littlejohn was 20 years old when he murdered Kenneth Meers, during a robbery. His lawyers contend that because of the abuse he suffered, at the time of the killing, Littlejohn’s brain was “less developed than the typical 20-year-old’s.”
In addition, they note that “a death sentence in a case with similar facts hasn’t been handed down in more than 15 years.” Those facts convinced a majority of the members of the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board to recommend that the governor commute Littlejohn’s sentence.
So far, the governor has not said what he will do.
Finally, this week Alan Eugene Miller is scheduled for a second trip to Alabama’s death chamber. In 2022, the state failed to complete its first execution attempt using lethal injection when they were unable to access a vein.
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Miller joined a long list of people whose executions by lethal injection were seriously botched. Now, Alabama plans to kill him using nitrogen hypoxia.
It would only be the second time that this method has been used anywhere in the country. The first time was in January of this year when Kenneth Smith was executed. It did not go well. Witnesses say Smith suffered greatly.
That gruesome spectacle does not bode well for Miller.
Five executions in seven days will give America a vivid picture of what happens when the state kills. We should take this opportunity to consider whether we want to continue using unreliable methods of execution, risking killing people who just might be innocent, or are the victims of abusive childhoods or mental illness, or who get a death sentence because of their race or the race of their victims.
In the end, this week will not just be a bad week for those who wish to abolish the death penalty. It will be a bad week for everyone who hopes to make this country a fairer, more just, and more compassionate place.
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Publish date : 2024-09-23 11:06:00
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