
          Waiting for the Gag Reflex
          By Teepen, TomTom Teepen
          Vol. 9, No. 5, 1987, pp. 1-2
          
          The killing is picking up, not that anyone notices much any
more.
          We killed a man in Georgia the other night. The paper front-paged
his execution, but most of the TV stations ho-hummed it. Just another
electrocution, now commonplace enough that it was reported somewhere
around the fund-raising banquet for the musically incontinent, TV's
equivalent of a newspaper fate among the truss ads.
          There were three executions on a recent Friday, in Alabama, Utah
and Florida. Even the hat trick didn't attract great notice. The last
time three had been executed in one day was twenty-five years ago, but
the event this time was a big yawn.
          You can expect an increased rate of executions--and of general
indifference about them.
          A majority of the U.S. Supreme Court's justices kissed off a major
challenge to the death penalty in April--the last major challenge,
most experts feel-by saying they don't really care if the death
penalty is applied with apparent racial or other inequity. That put a
number of death sentences, held in abeyance, back on the killing
track.
          The persons who follow such matters do not expect exactly a blood
bath in the nation's death chambers, but on the other hand the
prospect is for a steadily rising frequency. The court of last resort
has made it plain that it is impatient with challenges and doesn't
want to be bothered on the point.
          The previous high for any year since the Supreme Court reinstated
the death penalty in 1976 was twenty-one executions, but there have
been about thirty this year, with a month to go. We are working our
way back to the time when executions occurred every other day, or 

more
often. There were 199 in 1935, the record. We may be only a few years
from the dubious achievement of rivaling, or even exceeding, our worst
year.
          There are 1,900 men and women on the nation's death rows. About 250
are being added annually.
          Is all this killing doing any good? No, if by "good" you mean
reducing either the general crime rate or specifically the murder
rate.
          There were 18,784 murders nationally in 1976, and 20,616 last
year. In between, the numbers rose to a high of 23,044 in 1980 and
dropped to a low of 18,692 in 1984. Georgia had 692 murders in 1976
and 653 last year, with a low of 460 in 1983 and a high of 877 in
1979.
          And if executions are supposed to deter murder, the lesson loses
even the possibility of working when it becomes so common it goes
virtually unreported.
          The simple truth is that the death penalty brutalizes our society
without providing any offsetting advantages. It does nothing more, or
finer, than throw bodies to a public bloodlust. And far from deterring
killers, the death penalty may incite them. It is a statement,
officially endorsed, that killing is sometimes a good way to solve
problems.
          We are not only failing to send the right message with
executions. There is a very high risk we are sending just the wrong
one.
          Most countries that presume to the description
"civilized" have quit this pointless
business. Britain's and Canada's parliaments recently have firmly
rejected proposals to resume the practice. The few putatively
civilized nations that retain capital punishment used it rarely.
          Execution is quite the popular thing with Americans just now. All
the polls show it. All the polls know it. It is not going to be
stopped, at least not anytime soon.
          But we are killing the retarded without serious qualm. We are near
the point of killing persons for crimes they committed as
children. And it is increasingly difficult not to notice and admit we
are mainly executing people of marginal intelligence, doubtful sanity,
debilitating poverty. The death penalty has become an act of class
warfare, fought top-down against the poor and incompetent.
          America may no longer have a heart in such matters, but perhaps, at
some point, we will prove still to have a gag reflex.
          
            Tom Teepen is editor of the editorial page of the Atlanta
Constitution
          
        