After several legal challenges, delays and pleas to Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee for clemency, Oscar Franklin Smith remains scheduled to die by lethal injection on May 22 for the 1989 killings of his estranged wife and her two sons.
While much of the debate on Smith’s particular case has focused on criticisms of lethal injections – the state’s preferred execution method – and issues with the investigation, the debate around whether or not capital punishment should occur at all is much more systemic, according to Daryl Carter, a local historian and history professor at East Tennessee State University.
Carter says that despite most developed nations shifting away from capital punishment in their justice systems, the issue still remains comparatively contentious in the U.S. On one side of the debate, he said, the penalty is viewed as a prime example of “cruel and unusual†punishment that should be prohibited under the Bill of Rights, while others take an “eye-for-an-eye†approach to justice with an emphasis on victim advocacy.
Setting aside questions of innocence versus guilt, Carter said the topic of capital punishment can hardly be discussed without touching on inequities, both in terms of class and racial disparities. He noted that during the 1980s, for example, several cases reviewed in states such as Georgia showed that Black defendants were much more likely to face the death penalty than white defendants for the same types of violent crimes. Similar patterns are often noticeable when reviewing death penalty cases in Tennessee as well.
“Clearly, execution has been used disproportionately and in many, many jurisdictions across the United States over the last 150 years,†he said. “Black defendants have been more likely to be executed or sentenced to death than white defendants.â€
In addition, Carter said, most defendants who avoid the death penalty have the financial resources needed to stand a chance against prosecutors, who are usually much more equipped to win cases than most low-income defendants across racial groups.
Carter said the odds are generally stacked against low-income defendants who often only have access to a public defender. He added that those who opt to defend themselves are often “personally escorting themselves to death row†due to their lack of resources or general legal knowledge. What’s more, a handful of states including Tennessee have received criticism on numerous occasions from human rights organizations for executing defendants whose mental capacity was in question, further complicating the matter.
“It’s a tricky thing, and money plays a role in that too, because who you have as an attorney matters,†he said.
“You’ll hear all the time from district attorney offices talking about being good stewards of the taxpayer’s money, but when they’ve got a case that really champs their bits, there’s suddenly no lack of money to prosecute that particular case,†he added. “I’m not saying they’re wrong, but the point here is that the state has an advantage.â€
The United States had a de facto moratorium on death penalty cases from 1967 to 1976, as states waited for Supreme Court rulings to determine the constitutionality of capital punishment before ultimately resuming the penalty in 27 states.
But forensic science has come a long way since the U.S. resumed executions.
According to the Innocence Project, a legal nonprofit dedicated to overturning wrongful convictions, at least 21 defendants sentenced to death in the U.S. have been exonerated with DNA evidence since 1989. Furthermore, the nonprofit says at least 4.1 percent of people sentenced to death from 1973 to 2004 were “likely innocent,†and many have been convicted with some degree of reasonable doubt depending on how one measures it.
Carter believes there will likely be several more cases of wrongful convictions and executions moving forward as the science of convicting violent criminals continues to evolve.
“The rise of scientific and forensic DNA evidence has given teeth to the arguments that it’s better to have a guilty man go free than one innocent man be executed,†he said.
As American society works toward settling the debate around capital punishment, Carter said he hopes that both sides of the debate can be respectful of one another’s perspectives and approach discussions empathetically.
“We can engage in thoughtful discussion without being overly emotional and disrespectful to others. There’s not enough of that in American society right now,†he said.
“We’re at a pretty fevered pitch (in American society today), and the death penalty is one more area where we can engage our fellow citizens respectfully on a very serious issue of dealing with people who may be the worst among us.â€
