On March 29, 2021, the trial of Floyd, an African-American man who was killed by police brutality, floyd's lawyer, Benjamin Klempo, raised his arm before entering the courtroom. According to the Acliberties Union, only 25 people in the United States were sentenced to death by court in 2018, but police shot and killed 992 people in the course of law enforcement, including a certain number of "street manslaughters." (Xinhua News Agency/Photo)
In the early hours of January 13, 2021, on the day Trump was about to leave the White House, the U.S. federal government quickly executed 52-year-old Lisa Marie Montgomery by drug injection.
"Without hesitation in killing this traumatized and delusional woman, the Trump administration's execution of Lisa Montgomery is far from justice." Lisa's defense attorney, Kelley Henry, publicly accused those involved in the executions of "ought shame."
Lisa was notorious but also ill-fated and sympathetic, and her death became the fuse of a new round of death penalty controversy.
<h3>"The most murderous American woman"</h3>
The sluggish-eyed, slightly chubby Lisa was called "the most ferocious American woman" by Fox Television.
In the summer of 2004, at the age of 36, Lisa met Bobbie Jo Stinnett, a 23-year-old dog breeder, at a pet show in Kansas. Soon, the two met again in an online chat room.
After learning that Stenett was eight months pregnant, Lisa, alias Darlene Fischer, agreed to go to Stinette's house to buy a dog.
On December 16, 2004, after entering Stenett's house, Lisa used a nylon rope to strangle Schineter and used a kitchen knife to take the baby from the other party's abdomen with great cruelty.
Two days later, police investigators managed to recover the surviving baby girl, but Stenett died of excessive blood loss. A forensic doctor later testified in court that after the victim had been disuted, he woke up from a coma and tried to fight back, eventually being strangled to death by Lisa.
U.S. prosecutors indicted Lisa for "kidnapping to death." Lead defense attorney Dave Owen argued that Lisa suffered from "pseudocyesis delusions."
However, Lisa had already been sterilized before the crime. Her family testified in court that Lisa had repeatedly claimed to be pregnant and that her ex-husband had threatened to regain custody of the child.
One prosecutor countered in court that Lisa's ability to spend months planning the murder and researching how to perform a caesarean section via the Internet showed that Lisa did not have "false pregnancy paranoia."
According to the description of "false pregnancy" in clinical medicine, patients must not only subjectively admit to be pregnant, but also have physiological characteristics such as abdominal bulge and hormonal changes.
In October 2007, Lisa Montgomery was found by the court to not meet the defenses of mental illness such as "delusional pregnancy" and sentenced to death. Since then, the District Court, the Circuit Court and the Supreme Court have also rejected Lisa's appeal application.
She has been held in a federal prison in Texas, where she has also received psychiatric treatment, and the prison administration once held her in solitary confinement to prevent her from committing suicide. It was not until August 2019 that then-U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced the reinstatement of the federal death penalty.
However, the execution of Lisa was postponed twice. On October 16, 2020, Lisa's execution date was announced to be set for December 8 of the same year. After visiting Lisa, a defense attorney contracted COVID-19, which in turn affected the filing of applications for leniency within the stipulated time limit.
Lisa's execution was postponed for the first time. On November 19, 2020, an Indiana judge abruptly demanded that the death penalty procedure be terminated by lethal injection until the hearing to determine the mental state was over.
Lisa's execution was once again tossed and turned. Four days later, three judges at the District of Columbia Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the decision of the above-mentioned judge in Indiana was "wrong" and demanded that Lisa be executed on January 12, 2021.
Lisa's death caused widespread controversy in American society. At one point, her defense attorney, Sandra Babcock, called on Trump to use presidential prerogatives to pardon Lisa.
"She (Lisa) suffered from severe mental illness throughout her life as a result of abuse and sexual violence, and Lisa is not the most heinous person, she is a person whose heart and spirit are torn apart." Sandra Babcock appealed.
<h3>"The state betrayed her again"</h3>
In February 1968, her mother, Judy Shaughnessy, became pregnant during an alcohol attack and gave birth to her, resulting in brain damage at birth.
Her mother had 6 marriages and often brought different men in and out of the house. According to court statements, at the age of 3, Lisa watched as her 8-year-old half-sister Diane was raped by her mother's boyfriend. Later, Diane received assistance from child protection agencies and was adopted by other families.
Lisa's stepfather, Jack, not only drank heavily for years, but also often beat up their mother and daughter. From the age of 11, Lisa began to be sexually abused by her stepfather for a long time. To hide her sights, her stepfather also built a small house deep in the forest dedicated to evil. One day, Lisa's mother finally discovered her stepfather's bestiality.
"How can you treat me like this?" Lisa's mother pointed a gun at her daughter's head and roared.
Since then, abuse from the family has intensified. Stepfather Jack even found evil friends to take turns abusing Lisa, while her mother forced her to have sex with electricians and plumbers.
To the shock of American society, Lisa's tragic experience was known to judges, police, and schools. In divorce proceedings between the mother and her stepfather Jack, her mother admitted to witnessing Jack sexually assault her daughter Lisa. A judge reprimanded Lisa's mother in court: Why didn't you call the police in time?
However, the judge did not investigate Lisa's abuse case.
"Lisa said that [the act of reincarnation] is repeated over and over again, and one man is followed by the next man... I now regret that I didn't do anything about the tragedy that happened to Lisa. Lisa's cousin, a local police officer, expressed "regret" in a 2005 testimony.
A middle school classmate recalled that Lisa had been in a "trance" since she was a teenager, her academic performance had regressed, and she was finally transferred to a "special education class". At the time, teachers and the school also suspected that there was something wrong with Lisa's family and eventually did not intervene.
"From her childhood, officers, judges, and school administrators have been told or suspected of sexual abuse on several occasions, but no one has taken any action to help her. The State never provided her with protection or remedies. Recently, a U.N. human rights expert publicly denounced, "What is even more shameful is that after years of sexual abuse and state neglect, she has suffered gender discrimination and judicial injustice, and the state has betrayed her again." ”
The 10 experts from the U.N. Human Rights Council also wrote to the U.S. federal government, alarmed by the failure to take into account Lisa's personal experience, physical devastation, and mental state during the trial, and condemned the U.S. government for repeatedly missing opportunities to intervene to stop Lisa's abuse.
At the age of 17, under the coercion of her mother, Lisa became engaged to Carl Boman, and her mother married Carl Boman's father, Richard Boman.
It was the beginning of another nightmare, with stepbrother and fiancé Carl Boman not only abusing Lisa, but also recording the scene as a video clip. Later, another of Lisa's stepsisters testified in court, "The picture is very violent, it is simply a terrorist film." ”
Within five years of her marriage to Carl Bauman, Lisa gave birth to three daughters and a son. The Lisa family lived in extreme poverty, according to the description of the social welfare agency: the house had no walls, no floor, no running water, no furniture, and several children slept on the ground and ran around the courtyard naked...
Before committing the "caesarean section" murder, Lisa moved at least 61 times, and also divorced, remarried, and divorced her stepbrother Carl Bauman, and repeatedly sued for custody of her minor children.
A series of physical and psychological traumas have led to Lisa suffering from severe mental illnesses such as depression, borderline personality disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. In the many trials of the "baby by caesarean section" case, neither the prosecution nor the defense had much dispute over Lisa's mental illness.
After entering the 21st century, the US Supreme Court has successively issued a series of judgments: it is forbidden to execute prisoners under the age of 18 and persons with mental and intellectual disabilities. However, the jury and the victim's family believe that Lisa's crimes were so cruel that she should be executed regardless of her mental health.
<h3>Two social forces are pushing for the "abolition movement"</h3>
In history, the U.S. federal government has executed only three women, and Lisa has become the only female prisoner executed by the federal government since 1953.
"The death penalty is not good for justice, the United States has modern prisons, and we don't need to use the death penalty to ensure our own safety." Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City and Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City called on Congress to pardon Lisa and abolish the death penalty.
For many years, the Church has been one of the main forces of the "abolitionist movement" in the international community. Under the system of voting party competition, the church is also a force that neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party dares to ignore. Before Lisa's execution, about 20 states, as well as Washington, D.C., had officially abolished the death penalty.
In March 2021, the "abolitionist movement" was the next state, and Virginia became the first state in the southern United States to abolish the death penalty. In the 29 states that have not yet abolished the death penalty, the death penalty is also rarely used.
The gallup survey also found that states that have abolished the death penalty tend to be areas with a large Christian population. Among them, in New York, New Jersey, Illinois and other states, the proportion of Christian believers exceeds one-third of the local population.
The battle over the abolition of the death penalty has lasted for more than two hundred years in the United States, and anti-racists are another force in the abolitionist movement.
During the colonial period, the use of the death penalty was almost arbitrary. In 1612, the then Governor of Virginia issued a decree punishing those who committed minor offenses such as stealing grapes, killing chickens, trading with Indians, leaving the colonies, and blaspheming three times.
Before the end of the Civil War in April 1865, black slaves who tried to escape or resist were usually executed in public. Even black slaves who "spoke ill of" whites could be sentenced to death.
Beginning at the end of the 18th century, some anti-racists began to oppose the death penalty. It was not until 1846 that Michigan became the first state to abolish the death penalty.
Nowadays, a kind of "death penalty racial discrimination" has gradually become the mainstream trend of thought in American society, and gradually penetrated into the American judicial system.
The June 1994 Simpson wife murder case has been called "the most controversial case of the century in American society." Among them, the key witness, Officer Mark Fuhrman, made racist remarks, which were successfully caught by Simpson's defense lawyers and became one of the important reasons for persuading the jury to acquit Simpson.
After the court declared Simpson "innocent," ABC conducted a poll in which 81 percent of black respondents thought Simpson innocent, compared to just 37 percent of whites.
Racism has always haunted justice and the abolition of the death penalty. In August 2018, the Pew Center published a survey showing that at least 59 percent of whites supported the death penalty, compared with only 36 percent of blacks.
"To a large extent, the color of a defendant determines whether a person will be sentenced to death." The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) statistics on cases from 1976 to the present show that 43 percent of all executed prisoners are black and 55 percent are black to death row.
In the United States, whites and blacks have comparable crime rates in murders. Blacks make up only about 13 percent of the U.S. population, though. The ACLU argues that blacks are more likely than whites to be sentenced to death.
<h3>Three factors have led to the death penalty oscillating at both ends of the moratorium</h3>
Although religious forces and anti-racists have been sparing no effort to promote the "abolition movement", statements such as "judicial manslaughter" and "the death penalty is useless" are also popular. But Gallup's October 2020 poll showed that 55 percent of the population in the United States still supports the death penalty.
At present, "using heavy codes in a chaotic world" and "killing people to pay for their lives" are still the common social and psychological habits and expectations of most people. According to the FBI, the national murder rate surged by 30% in 2020. In the 34 sample cities, the number of homicides increased by more than 1,200 year-on-year, and the proportion of police shots fired by the United States also increased by one-third.
In the eyes of some anti-death penalty supporters, the police pulling out a gun is a "habitual action" and shooting is a death sentence. According to the Acliberties Union, only 25 people in the United States were sentenced to death by court in 2018. This year, U.S. police shot and killed 992 people in the course of law enforcement, including a certain number of "street manslaughters."
Crime rates have remained high for years, and some states have swayed left and right at both ends of the death penalty. In 1972, after Furman v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court suspended all executions.
"As long as capital punishment is used fairly and equitably, it is not always cruel and abnormal." Four years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled very differently in Greg v. Georgia.
Since then, the state has reinstated the death penalty. Whether the death penalty can reduce the crime rate has always been the focus of social controversy. Back in 2009, a sample survey of criminal law scholars across the United States showed that at least 88 percent of respondents believed that "the death penalty does not help reduce homicide rates."
The annual report of the American Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) can provide further corroboration. In 2017, the three southern states carried out more than a third of the nation's executions, and their homicide rate was still 6.4 per 100,000 people, much higher than the 3.5 homicide rate per 100,000 people in the northeastern states.
The high cost of death penalty trials is also an important factor in the abolition of the death penalty in some states. Between 1978 and 2011, the California Department of Justice spent $4 billion on death penalty cases. In 2014, the Kansas State Judicial Commission said the average defense cost of death penalty cases in the state was more than $400,000. In 2017, the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission also announced that the average cost of death penalty cases is 3.2 times that of non-death penalty cases.
"The death penalty does not help reduce violent crime, it only wastes taxpayers' money." Michelle Aloys was a criminal justice witness in a southern state for seven years, witnessing and verifying every death penalty case.
Alois told me that his annual salary at the time was $500,000, the smallest beneficiary of the death penalty. In the fall of 2010, Alois qualified as a lawyer, and he was responsible for more than $1 million in defense fees for each death sentence.
From conviction to execution, a death penalty case takes an average of 25 years. A report by the American Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) also shows that the average judicial cost of a death penalty case is as high as $300 million from investigation, detention, prosecution, trial to execution.
States have expressed difficulty in bearing the financial burden of the death penalty. In April 2012, California's referendum abolished the more expensive death penalty.
Currently, 20 states and Washington, D.C., have abolished the death penalty. However, the federal judiciary still has priority jurisdiction over crimes such as treason, the murder of the president, drug trafficking, etc. After coming to power in 2017, the Trump administration reinstated the 17-year moratorium on the death penalty at federal level and executed 13 executions in just a few months.
Four years later, the Trump administration stepped up executions of Lisa Montgomery and others before stepping down. Recently, President Joe Biden, from the Democratic Party, has repeatedly called for states to abolish the death penalty, and he promised during the campaign to fight for the abolition of the federal death penalty system.
The abolition of the death penalty has always been the main position of the two parties in the United States. In the 1988 election, Democratic candidate Dukakes briefly led Republican George H.W. Bush by 10 percent, but the former lost his way in a televised debate.
"If Kitty (Dukakis's wife) had been raped and killed, would you still approve of the execution of the killer?" The moderator asked. Dukakis replied, almost grimly, "No, I will not insist on the death penalty for the rest of my life." ”
Most Americans considered Dukakis impersonal, and his approval rating plummeted. In recent years, the two parties have become increasingly divided over the death penalty. A Pew Research Center survey shows that about 77 percent of Republicans support the death penalty, compared with only 35 percent of Democrats.
Southern Weekend contributing writer Liang Qingchuan