At Last, Punishment Fits the Crime : Death penalty: It has wide support because ordinary citizens identify with media images of brutalized victims.

On the first Sunday of spring, Stephen Souza was outside San Quentin prison fasting to protest the death penalty and the pending execution of Robert Alton Harris.

While Souza, a membership coordinator for Amnesty International, explained to me what’s wrong with capital punishment, a handful of other protesters flashed signs at the cars filled with visitors on their way into San Quentin. Occasionally a car horn honked in support of the protesters.

For Souza, Sunday was another day of action against what he and other activists call a symbol, not a solution. His arguments against the death penalty all seemed valid at that moment:

--The death penalty has not deterred murderers in Texas, Florida and Louisiana. Murder rates in those states have climbed since the nationwide moratorium on capital punishment was lifted in 1978.

--Costs incurred during death-penalty trials and the many subsequent appeals far exceed what life imprisonment would total.

--The death penalty is not an equitable punishment, in that people convicted of equally horrible (and worse) crimes may serve less severe sentences and may even be released on parole.

What Souza said had me softening my stance on the death penalty. That was until, on my way home, I picked up the Sunday edition of the Marin Independent Journal. On the front page, just beneath a color photograph of the gas chamber, a headline read, “Boy, 8, slain; ex-school employee held.” An introductory caption summarized this murder’s particularly horrific angle: “Youth’s gagged body found burned near L.A.”

Souza’s arguments were suddenly invalidated. No rational argument could calm the disgust resulting from what I read in that story. There seems to be no end to the cruelty that murderers are capable of; and, unfortunately, California has an astounding number of cases each year to remind us of that.

I just as quickly realized how victims always get the first headlines, but when their murderers are caught, they are almost always the first to be forgotten. The lasting suffering of their families and friends are afforded even less respect.

In their arguments and demonstrations against capital punishment, activists overlook yesterday’s victims, just as they do the legitimate need of the state to hold individuals accountable for their crimes. Most important, they overlook the emotions of ordinary people.

Not everyone has the detachment of a legal scholar or moral philosopher. The common person identifies with a victim, not with a defendant. What the activists call cruel and inhuman punishment, a victim’s family calls justice and the ordinary person calls a punishment fitting the crime.

Ordinary people remember the family snapshots and yearbook photos of victims in the newspapers, and they remember the catchy names given the murderers by the police and the press. What results is outrage and fear when other ordinary, innocent people fall prey to the likes of the Hillside Strangler, the Trailside Killer, the Night Stalker. Ordinary people, asked to respect the humanity of the murderer, ask what respect, what mercy he extended to his victims.

There is no escaping emotions when innocent people die at the hands of cold-blooded killers. As the father of one of Harris’ victims asks of protesters like Souza, “How many sympathy cards have they sent to the victims?”

There is also no escaping the political groundswell of support for capital punishment in California. In 1972 and 1978, California voters affirmed statewide initiatives to enforce the death penalty. If Gov. George Deukmejian does not commute the death sentence of Harris at the last minute, it will also be the culmination of the stance that brought Deukmejian to the pinnacle of success in state politics.

Like Deukmejian, all three candidates hoping to succeed him this year are well aware of how widespread support for the death penalty is among California voters. Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, a liberal Democrat personally opposed to the death penalty, is nevertheless playing up his record of sending 42 defendants to Death Row while serving as district attorney for Los Angeles County. Republican Sen. Pete Wilson is holding steady with the traditional conservative pro-capital punishment stance. And Dianne Feinstein, former Democratic mayor of decidedly liberal San Francisco, is putting out a strong pro-capital punishment message as well.

“It’s a terrible commentary on society,” Feinstein said recently, as if tapping the roots of how ordinary people feel, “but I think we have reached that point where people by their acts do in fact give up the right to survive.”

On Tuesday, as Robert Alton Harris is escorted to the gas chamber, Stephen Souza will probably be continuing his fast and some of those who share his convictions will be staging a vigil outside San Quentin. But that may not be of much use on that day or in the near future. For Tuesday, April 3, may also be the long-anticipated day when the political will of California’s electorate--in addition to Robert Alton Harris--is executed.