By Paul Mills
It was the leading topic of President Trump’s visit to New Hampshire last week. A few days earlier the New Hampshire Senate took steps to repeal it. At the same time, a Florida prosecutor announced he intended to seek it in a high profile case.
It’s the “death penalty.” No two words seem to have captured as much attention in recent days as these. During the President’s appearance here in New England he renewed his call for imposing it on high impact drug dealers convicted in federal courts.
The New Hampshire State Senate weighed in when just a few days earlier it voted 14 to 10 to repeal it at the state level there.
This was at the same time as the Broward County Prosecutor in Florida announced his intention to seek it against Nicholas Cruz in the Parkland School shooting case.
Action by the New Hampshire Senate a few days ago in voting to repeal it in the only New England state where it is still on the books is likely to be only a symbolic exercise. That is because on the one hand Republican Governor Chris Sununu has vowed to veto it. Its use has been academic in any event because the last time the state put anyone to death was 1939.
Though Maine was in 1876 the fourth state in the nation to do away with the penalty (something that it would briefly reinstate in the 1880s) we were in 1790 host to the first execution under the new United States government. This occurred when a British seaman who had been stationed off Cape Elizabeth was convicted in the murder of the master of his merchant ship when it had been anchored off the coast of Africa. His hanging occurred near what is now Maine Medical Center.
By the time Maine became a state in 1820 it carried over from Massachusetts the death penalty for several serious crimes including murder and rape.
From that time until 1887 when the death penalty was taken off the books for good over 35 persons were sentenced to death. The actual death penalty itself was imposed on only nine of them, however.
The executions themselves were often major public spectacles. Take for example, the public hanging in Augusta the first week of January 1835 of Joseph Sager, who had been convicted of slowly poisoning his wife to death.
Despite a northeaster snow storm, over 4,000 people turned out from miles around to attend the event. They included many women who held infant babies in their arms. Dozens of drunks attending the event were rounded up, some being placed in a cell recently occupied by Sager himself.
Such a Roman Holiday phenomenon helped influence the Maine legislature in 1837 to take a step which had the effect of suspending as a practical matter imposition of the penalty for nearly 30 years.
That was a law that required a one year waiting period after sentencing along with the requirement that the governor sign a warrant to carry it into effect. This for a long time no governor did. There were thus over 20 murder convicts languishing in the state prison between 1837 and 1864 without the sentence having been imposed.
This changed in 1864. That’s when a state prison inmate who killed the warden left Governor Cony with little alternative but to carry out the penalty.
Later on in the same decade Maine had a governor who was freshly accustomed to making executive decisions with life and death consequences. This was Civil War hero Joshua Chamberlain.
Chamberlain used the case of a sensational murder of an elderly widow and her deaf elderly companion in an apparent rape/robbery murder in Auburn to revive implementation of the penalty. The convicted perpetrator was a 19 year old Afro-American Civil War veteran named Clifton Harris.
The execution itself was, however, attended by embarrassing and unusually inhumane circumstances. The gallows had been so rarely used that hanging, the method that Maine always used, far from being swift and painless wound up through the incompetence of the executioner being a protracted strangulation.
The public outcry was such that Chamberlain withheld his signature on the death warrants for several others then on Maine’s death row.
Harris’s fate also attended the execution of the last convict upon whom the death penalty was imposed a few years later. This was in 1885 when Daniel Wilkinson whose slow death in front of thousands of spectators – because the knot around his neck was improperly tied – resulted in such a public outcry that it was a factor in the legislature’s final abolition of the penalty in 1887.
Back then as now the penalty seemed to be disproportionately imposed upon “outsiders.” Of the nine put to death under Maine law most fell into that category. Besides the Afro-American Harris those condemned included two Italian immigrants, a Prussian immigrant and Wilkinson, a British sailor who had recently jumped ship at Bath before killing one of its police officers.
Periodic attempts over the years have been made to restore the penalty, a process encouraged by the fact that so few other states had followed Maine’s lead in doing away with it. As recently as 1999 only 10 other states had done so and today that number stands at 19, over 31 states thus keeping it on the books even though it is rarely used except in Texas and Florida.
Among those who in modern times have sought to revive the practice was Westbrook Republican “Tuffy” Laflin. His proposal in the 1970’s was attended by a pronouncement on Laflin’s part that he would welcome the opportunity to “pull the switch” at the first opportunity if his law went into effect.
Hampden Legislator Debra Plowing won over 44 votes in the Maine House in her losing bid to restore it in 1999, while subsequent attempts such as those in 2005 by Sanford’s Senator Jonathan Courtney also failed.
These and other efforts have not seemed to have gained much traction in the state despite the fact that for the first time in nearly 50 years Republicans gained simultaneous control of both the Blaine House as well as the House and Senate in 2010. One would have expected the cause of the death penalty to have been infused with new life at that time. But capital punishment was not a Tea Party priority.
Ironically, a leading effort just three years ago came from a prominent Democrat. That is when Senator Bill Diamond, himself a former Maine Secretary of State, floated a proposal to bring back the death penalty to those convicted of killing children who had been victimized in pornographic films. That bid also did not get off the ground.
Despite the ardent advocacy of President Trump and the adherence of New Hampshire Governor Sununu there thus remains some continuing resonance to a 1901 study by State Librarian Leonard Garver that concluded “The sentiment of our people is now so strong against capital punishment that it may be safely assumed that the law will never be enacted in Maine.”
Paul H. Mills, is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of public affairs in Maine. He can be reached by e-mail: pmills@myfairpoint.net.
I am all for the “death penalty!” An Eye for an Eye….IMO…One who kills should be killed the same way!!! With the death penalty in place, I believe you would see less murders, killings, etc. No need for jail time.
I should add that self defense is a whole different story..
If the Constitution and the Bible still set the laws of this land, America would be a much different place.
Thanks for sharing this.
You are right https. But which part of the bible. The old that just quotes or the teachings of Christ. Aye there’s the rub for many supposed Christians.
So are they going to have the death penalty for the CEO, board members, and doctors that pushed and still push the opiates. Seems contradictory if not.
“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind” Mahatma Ghandi.
As far as the death penalty goes, I like a button I picked up somewhere:
Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?
The single compelling argument against the death penalty is the fact that innocent people ae often convicted of crimes, and the death penalty is irreversible. When prosecutors say things such as “Anyone can convict the guilty, it takes a real lawyer to incarcerate the innocent,” and we see people freed from Death Row and other incarceration by the Innocence Project, we must refrain from executing people because it is really murder. If police and prosecutors’ lives were forfeit if an innocent person were executed, perhaps the instances of false convictions would be lessened. It is too easy for innocent people to be railroaded, especially thos of low intelligence or without the financial means to defend themselves. People criticize the O.J. “Dream Team” of lawyers who secured his acquital, when all they did was expose the corruption and incompetence of the L.S. poliice/prosecution system. How many low resource people anguish in prison because they can’t affors a Dream Team. Some will say that executing a few innocent people is the price we pay for ridding society of drug dealers. It is always easy to make others pay the price. It is like the people screaming to abolish the Second Amendment and confiscate privately owned firearms; making millions of people pay for the actions of a very few people.
Why should a ‘killer” be treated with empathy when their victim(s) certainly aren’t ??
Keep in mind that the criminal justice system in real life, is about rules and procedures, NOT guilt or innocence.
“Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong”
By that logic why do we kidnap kidnappers to show that kidnapping is wrong?
God will never have a problem sorting out who’s right and who’s wrong. You’ve heard the phrase “kill ’em all and let God sort it out?”
Citizen George, Gen 9: 5-6, 5 And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. 6 “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.
Now, I understand that not everybody believes in the Bible, That isn’t really the point. The point is that, in order for crimes to be punished, the punishment should fit the crime. The 8th amendment of the constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Now taking a pedophile, removing their man parts and letting them bleed out, would probably be prohibited under the 8th, depending on who you asked. But killing unjustly should be met with death. This should be truer today than at any other time in history, today we have DNA teasting and better investigative practices, a person’s guilt or innocence while still up to a judge and jury, is far more determinable than it once was.
I don’t have a problem with the death penalty per se, but what I DO take issue with is the ways it has been historically been implemented.
Not even the methods, which vary quite a bit, bother me so much as the choices of who the penalty shall be imposed upon.
Study after study have shown that the death penalty is disproportionately applied to minorities, “Outsiders”, the mentally ill/infirm, and the poor.
Public pressure and political expediency has also been shown to play a large factor in the use of the death penalty.
And lastly, if we as a society are going to have a death penalty, we will have to accept the fact that sooner or later, despite best efforts otherwise, we ARE going to have an innocent be executed unjustly.
I’ll be more firmly in favor of the death penalty the first time I see a rich guy executed. If I am ever sentenced to the electric chair,for my last meal I’m ordering 2 cups of uncooked popcorn.Might as well put on a show on the way out! Or perhaps I’ll ask for Chinese food.I won’t have to worry about being hungry 2 hours later.
Hrtls
So it is indeed the old testament that you advocate . Rather than the gospel of Christ .that is your prerogative just not Chrstian.
James Q. Wilson, a giant among social scientists examined the evidence with his usual diligence and precision and concluded that there was no convincing evidence of a deterrent effect. Reconsidering later, he decided that some provision for a death penalty was needed to satisfy the public’s desire for justice. CEE TEE, above, points out “Keep in mind that the criminal justice system in real life, is about rules and procedures, NOT guilt or innocence.” This is exactly right. Law schools are not interested in justice. Criminal law is about process,as in “due process” and in bargaining, as in “plea bargaining.”
EVERY STATE IN THIS UNION SHOULD BE THE SAME,POPULAR VOTE PERIOD.
That is a major stumbling block, In cases of Murder, Rape and certain child and elderly abuse cases I cant say I am against the death penalty especially some cases Ive heard BUT it would be hard to ignore the exonerated innocents whom would be dead now.
I can never ever see supporting drug dealers being put to death, That is literal insanity…Maybe just calling it what it is “population control” would at least be the truth. The people who this would apply to are a dime a dozen to their suppliers, There living in a world of life and death as is. This doesn’t make anyone less likely to deal drugs anymore than the chance of overdose stops users. Not to mention the slippery slope of What about Doctors? What about bartenders?
I get that a lot of people have lost family and friends during this heroin epidemic and scourge of methamphetamine that swept our country and hit rural areas the hardest. I understand you want someone to place that blame on and have justice for what you feel was a murder of your loved ones life and a robbery to take them from you, Unless you have some evidence of this being forced upon someone…This is not the way.
Agreed john frary!