Sunday, March 07, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: More on the 'torture' on death row

A lady named Joan writes in from Houston:

"Dear Mr. Suprynowicz:

"I read your column of Feb. 22, regarding Steve Woods on Texas death row. I do not know Mr. Woods; however, I do have a friend there. You obviously have never had a loved one that ended up in prison, at least not on death row, and for that you are very lucky. If you did, you would not be so quick to dismiss his claims, nor would you be so flippant about sanctioned murder by the state.

"Regardless of what these people did, the state has a duty to treat them humanely. Our Constitution guarantees that for all human beings. People are not sent to death row to be tortured or even to further be punished for their crimes. You might be surprised to know that the inmates on death row are not behavior problems. They are sent there to await their death. That really should be enough punishment for any human being.

"I do not dismiss what Mr. Woods and many more like him did to get to death row. As a matter of fact, if Texas death row were made up of men only like Mr. Woods, I would not be writing to you. The fact is about 1/3 of death row is made up of people that did not actually commit murder. In Texas it is called the law of parties. You need only be present during a murder to receive the same punishment.

"This seems highly unfair to me being that there are murderers, rapists, men who have killed small children and committed heinous crimes in the process that received prison sentences but not death. Where is the justice there? ... My point is that what Mr. Woods writes to you effects about 450 other men, many that should not even be there.

"There cannot possibly be anything worse than having a loved one murdered, so to families of murder victims my heart goes out to them. I have also seen what it does to families of men on death row that are killed by the state. It is still murder, and it still devastates. It is hard enough to go through the pain of having a loved one end up on death row. It is even worse when mothers, fathers, wives, and children have to worry whether their loved one is getting food, are they being mistreated? I don't expect you to understand this, but there are two sides to the pain in a situation like this.

"I don't know why Mr. Woods chose to write to you to begin with, but I would think as a reporter you would be a little more interested in whether there is corruption within the prison system rather than make a mockery of the situation. ... "

I replied:

Hi, Joan:

You say that in Texas, "You need only be present during a murder to receive the same punishment." You're telling me that if I'm a customer in a bank during a robbery gone bad, I can receive the death penalty? Give me a break.

If I'm willingly and with malice aforethought participating in an armed robbery and one of my armed associates murders an innocent party, then I'm subject to the death penalty, and rightly so. Otherwise, a couple of us really smart guys could hire Larry the Retard to pull the trigger, and skate on some minor charge of "armed trespass."

Being fed meals that are sometimes cool, off a cracked food tray, is "torture"? Requiring death row inmates to receive visitors behind a glass partition rather than allowing these desperate killers to be smuggled weapons is "torture"? Funny Steve Woods would leave out the parts about being chained up to his neck in icewater (or swampwater full of leeches), the bamboo splinters shoved up under his fingernails, all the times he's been marched down to the death house and strapped in, only to be told, "Ho, ho, we were only joking." Those are the kinds of things the Viet Cong did to our POWs ... the kinds of things the communists like to do to political dissidents. You disgrace the brave people who have stood up to real "torture" when you so seriously misuse the word.

This guy didn't even allege any "torture." What's going on in Livingston, Texas, is that the new warden is locking prisoners down because they try to riot whenever there's an execution ... and a letter-writing campaign organized by a bunch of hand-wringing anti-death-penalty German socialists -- who write me to snivel that murderer Woods' "childhood was full of difficulties" -- is trying to build public pressure against such strict measures by recruiting muddleheads who don't bother to ask what those prisoners did to get where they are.

The irony here is that you're arguing with someone who would like to see prisons eliminated, and who has serious doubts about the death penalty as currently enforced and imposed. But when people like me start to discuss the kinds of pragmatic things we'd need to do to eliminate prisons, people like you shriek and howl. What would you suggest we do with career criminals who graduate to committing multiple cold-blooded murders -- give them a 30-minute "time out," sprinkle them with magic fairy dust to "make them nice again," and set them back on the street with $50 and a new suit of clothes?

I said I have many reservations about authorizing the state to kill people. But killing a duly convicted murderer is hardly "murder," any more than it would have been "murder" for Steve Woods' victims to have killed him at the time of his offense, if they'd had the means.

If your "heart goes out" to the families of murder victims, take 10 minutes to go read www.murdervictims.com/Voices/Bethena_Brosz.htm.

Because of Steve Woods, that family will never get to attend a young girl's wedding. They'll never get to see her with her first baby. But you're going to tell them that occasionally serving Steve Woods a cold meal on a cracked tray is "torture"? A sign of "corruption within the prison system"?

If you know about real torture, real corruption ... innocent men on death row ... document your case. Till then -- though I'm sorry your friend did something that now finds you waiting for him to die -- I'm not impressed.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "Send in the Waco Killers" and "The Ballad of Carl Drega." His Web site is www.privacyalert.us.