Capital Solutions

That there are some seriously damaged and dangerous persons alive in the world is a given. That we need to be protected from them is also a no-brainer. But, where we differ is on how we deal with them and how we protect ourselves from their destructiveness. I have met many intelligent people during my lifetime who say that there are cases when capital punishment is the appropriate response when we encounter the monsters in our midst. My initial emotional response is to agree, on a purely theoretical level.  After all, it is easy to list recent serial killers who are, beyond a doubt, guilty of the crimes they have been convicted of.

But...then I stop and think of the many people (mostly men) who have been convicted by a legal system that, presumably, was absolutely convinced of their guilt, and yet they have been found, later—sometimes very many years later—to have been demonstrably and convincingly not guilty of committing the crimes of which they were convicted. It is a very difficult situation all round when this occurs: how do you give someone back twenty or thirty years of their life? Even worse: how do you even begin to rectify things if the party has been put to death?

That, to me, has always been the central objection to capital punishment that I hold highest. It recognizes that we can be absolutely convinced that something has occurred and yet discover later that we were absolutely wrong. It happens all the time, though usually involving less momentous events.

My second-highest objection has always been that the commission of an evil act can never justify an equally evil response. If the purpose of capital punishment is to prevent someone from repeating a criminal act then there are other routes that can be followed to achieve the same end without crossing an absolute line from which there is no return or redress. If the purpose of capital punishment is to seek revenge, then, in what way does that make us in any sense morally superior to the criminal? What about victim’s rights? many say. Well, what of victim’s rights? I respond. I would not feel any better about my death by murder knowing that my murderer will be put to death. My rights were violently and finally ripped away from me when I was murdered—and no subsequent action on anyone’s part can ever undo that violation and set things to right.

 I think that many support the concept of capital punishment because it is something that will never touch their lives. Let’s just get rid of all the bad guys and be done with it; no further thought on the subject is required. That’s an understandable response. But, whatever power we give to the state can be misused and directed against us. So, it does matter whether or not we grant the state power over the life and death of its citizens. Also, whatever the state does it does, presumably, is in the name of all of us. Frankly, I do not trust a state that can recognize people such as Dr. Charles Smith, formerly Ontario’s top forensic child pathologist, as being qualified to pass judgement on me, or anyone I know—or don’t know—if a child in my care dies. Chances are pretty good that Dr. Smith would find evidence that you had shaken the child to death—as he did in so many cases where the condemned were eventually found to have been innocent.

People who support the death penalty would be advised to read something on the subject. I just finished reading a book by David R. Dow called The Autobiography of an Execution (New York, Grand Central Publishing, 2010). Mr Dow is a lawyer practising in Texas who specializes in defending death penalty cases. Oh sure, another liberal softy, right? Not quite: Mr Dow was, for many years, in favour of the death penalty and freely admits that there are those whose crimes are so aberrant, so disgusting, so cruel, so evil that it would seem that even putting them to death was letting them off easy.

But…of the approximately 200 cases Mr Dow was involved with, seven of the men put to death by the state were clearly innocent. The jury agree they were innocent, the judge agreed they were innocent, the guards and prison warders all agreed they were innocent…but, they were put to death anyway. Why? Well, there’s a process in place…and what that process does is relieve anyone involved in that process of personal responsibility. The book is centred around the case of such a man whose only “crime”—ultimately—was to be appointed an incompetent lawyer at his trial. For that “failure” on his part, he was put to death.

As Mr. Dow points out, the police are not accountable: they simply turn over whatever evidence they have to the state attorney’s office. The state attorney is not accountable because all he does is present the evidence that someone else collected to a court that makes the decision. The jurors are not responsible because they weigh the evidence that was presented to them and must make a decision based only on that. The judge can’t help anything: it was the jurors’ decision. The appeal courts have no responsibility in the matter because they rule only on legal issues. Texas takes the process a step further: though, technically, the state governor makes the final decision on whether to grant clemency or insist that the death penalty process proceed, he, in fact, does not. The Texas governor has a panel comprised of political friends that he has appointed to the position that reviews all death penalty appeals and makes it recommendations to the governor, who, subsequently, stands before the television cameras and says he has no choice in the matter: he must abide by the panel’s recommendation.

Chances are pretty good that if you are black or Latino and have been arrested and charged with murder in Texas that, no matter how flimsy the evidence or how lackadaisical the defence, you will wind up on death row. Is that a price we are prepared to pay?

I know that some people say well, that’s tough. Yes, we make mistakes, but, so what? It is worth it if it keeps a few more monsters off our streets. Yes, killing some insanely evil people after they have created their pain and mayhem will mean that they will not ever repeat their acts. But, does killing them prevent any other lunatic from committing his outrageous offences? Not very likely. Unfortunately, even the most sane and well-balanced criminals do not include the likelihood of their capture and punishment when they set out on their paths—and that is even more so for the truly unbalanced who commit the worst acts imaginable.

Capital punishment does not, in the end, protect anyone. In fact, the inverse appears to be true: a society that makes liberal application of capital punishment is far more likely to have higher murder and violence rates than states that put their resources into prevention rather than after-the-fact punishment.

Taxing Times

I worked for a tax preparation firm for six years preparing personal income tax returns. As we often pointed out to ourselves, preparing a tax return is the most complicated job the average person faces every year; for me, it was easy. Plug a few facts and numbers into a software program, et voilà, one return ready for filing.

Of course I cannot reveal anything about any individuals’ return—not even the fact that we prepared their tax return—but I can talk in general terms without giving away identifiable information.

When I think back on my years as a tax preparer there are certain events that stand out in my memory. One such event occurred during my first season. It was April 30ieth, the final date for filing personal returns, and as expected, the waiting room was crammed with folks who had waited until the very last minute. All you can do in that situation is put your head down and take the clients one at a time, acting as though you had all the time in the world to deal with the person sitting on the other side of the desk.

Late in the evening, as the crowd was starting to thin, I noticed a very thin young man, shabbily dressed, with dried blood on his upper lip, head into the cubicle of a colleague—an older woman who generally did not have much empathy with the many welfare recipients we dealt with. A few moments later I saw the young man leaving the cubicle looking downcast. Definitely not enough time to have prepared his return.

After the madness of April 30ieth, May 1^st is generally a very quiet day. All the regular tax preparers left at the end of the last shift, not to return until late fall, early winter. I was fortunate enough to be one of the very few kept on staff during the off season. So, later in the afternoon the young man I had seen the night before came into the office. I invited him into my cubicle. The blood on his upper lip was gone. After we settled into our chairs he said in a quiet voice, “Help me straighten out my life.” It turned out that he had not filed a return in five years, having spent most of that time addicted to an illegal drug. However, he had just come out of rehabilitation and was determined to get back on track.

The ideal way to work through that kind of situation is to prepare the oldest tax return first, then ask the client to pay for it after he receives the refund for that year. Then we’d go onto the second eldest and work our way forwards. It took a long time, but it was the best way to help someone with no or very little income to catch up. It was win-win: he’d get his taxes caught up without a financial blow and we’d be paid for preparing five years worth of returns.  It was one of those procedures management disapproved of, as they wanted the returns to be paid for before we filed them, but, when you are on the front lines you have to adjust to the real circumstances you face every day. The company would not go bankrupt if someone neglected to pay for one tax return after we had filed it.

As I worked with the young man that summer, I was impressed by his progress. Every time I saw him he was a bit cleaner and a bit healthier looking. I was quite proud of myself for having taking the time and steps to help him out—and was annoyed with and felt superior to—the tax preparer who had turned him away on April 30ieth. But now, from the perspective of someone older and—hopefully—less judgmental I have come to realize why she had turned him away that night.  First there was no rush to get his returns prepared—they were already very late. Secondly, if she had prepared five years worth of returns that night he would have been unable to pay for them. And, thirdly, it would take a long time to prepare those five returns and we had a lot of people waiting who did have to meet the filing deadline.

So, in summary, I had judged someone for judging someone else, when, in fact, she hadn’t. She was being practical and I was being the smug idealist. And, when I think of it, if it had been my cubicle he was in on the evening of April 30ieth, would I have gone ahead and prepared his delinquent returns right then? I don’t know; it was my first year and I was fairly naïve. I know that I would have acted the same way as my colleague had if I had been in that situation a few years later once I had had some experience.