A Texas man who unsuccessfully challenged the safety of the state’s lethal injection drugs and raised questions about evidence used to persuade a jury to sentence him to death for killing an elderly woman decades ago was executed late Tuesday.
Jedidiah Murphy, 48, was pronounced dead after an injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the October 2000 fatal shooting of 80-year-old Bertie Lee Cunningham of the Dallas suburb of Garland. Cunningham was killed during a carjacking.
“To the family of the victim, I sincerely apologize for all of it,” Murphy said while strapped to a gurney in the Texas death chamber and after a Christian pastor, his right hand on Murphy’s chest, prayed for the victim’s family, Murphy’s family and friends and the inmate.
“I hope this helps, if possible, give you closure,” Murphy said.
With the systems we have in place today, I agree that we should never execute anyone, there’s too much room for error and even a single wrongful execution is inexcusable. And we should be focused primarily on rehabilitation and reintegration.
That said, playing devil’s advocate a bit, I’m not opposed in general principle to the death penalty provided that
Guilt can be proven with absolute certainty. I would even go to almost comically paranoid extremes on this, like if the suspect was off camera for even a second between committing the crime and execution the death penalty is off the table because we can’t be 100% certain that they weren’t somehow swapped for a body double in that second. This is of course a very difficult, maybe even impossible standard to meet, but there cannot be any doubt that the preson being executed is guilty. Any tiny inconsistency, mishandled piece of evidence, broken chain of custody, conflicting witness accounts, etc. and the death penalty is off the table.
The person is unable to be rehabilitated. This is probably beyond our current ability to determine with our current understanding of psychology and such, so again that puts the death penalty off the table for the foreseeable future. Maybe we’ll reach a point where we can actually determine that, but we’re not there yet, and possibly never will be.
They will continue to present a danger to others (whether in regular society or to others in prison.) I think the point of execution is that the person is likely to cause enough harm to others that they are unsafe to be allowed to continue living. Even if someone is determined to be guilty beyond any doubt and totally beyond rehabilitation, if they were to, for example, end up as a quadriplegic before they were executed, it would no longer matter that they’re an incurable homicidal psychopath, if they can’t act on it they’re no longer a danger and so execution is no longer called for (at that point they may opt for assisted suicide, but that’s their choice and really a separate conversation)
There must be a humane execution method. My current understanding tends to favor nitrogen asphyxiation, but I’m certainly no expert and there may be other options that may be as good or better.
As a final check, I think the judge, jury, prosecutor, etc, provided that they’re still alive and able to, should have to be present to witness the execution and take part in it by flipping a switch or something. If they were willing to pass down that sentence they should be willing to see it through to its completion. If they have any misgivings or doubts about their verdict, it gives them a final chance to act on them, and it would make the consequences of their decision more “real” by taking an active part in the actual execution as it happens compared to making a decision in a courtroom that likely won’t be carried out until years later. They each go into a private booth, flip their switch or don’t, and if anyone doesn’t, the sentence is commuted to life. It’s never revealed who or how many of them chose to or not to flip their switch.
Killing someone ONLY should be used as a last resort to stop a current, and immediate threat. Never towards someone who has already been stopped and restrained.
Like I said, we aren’t there yet, and may never get there, any hypothetical death penalty cases that would meet that standard would have to be decades if not centuries into the future with the benefit of all the scientific advances that come to us in that time. It’s probably more likely that we’ll have a 100% effective way to treat and rehabilitate people by then, but if we ever do reach a point where we have hit a complete dead end in psychology/neurology, in some hypothetical far-off, post-technological-singularity future where we can definitively say that we have exhausted every possible avenue for rehabilitation, then we can consider the death penalty.
And I disagree that it can only be applied to current and immediate threats, because people who have shown that they are likely to harm people again would then have to spend the rest of their lives restrained and/or in solitary confinement if they’re unable to be rehabilitated, and arguably I think death may be a more humane sentence.
Regarding #1, “that video was generated by AI” is a broadly applicable objection to video evidence if “that could be a body double” would work.
I agree with you in principle, both that it would have to be an exceptional case and that the evidence would have to be overwhelming. Absolute certainty is tough though.
I wonder if there are alternatives that would work. For example, is it possible to have a case against somebody that does not rely on ANY human being acting in good faith? If you have to rely on some person’s word to build a case, whether it’s a witness or a cop or a priest, that puts it on shaky ground as far as near certainty.
I actually thought about mentioning AI or other tampering with the footage but didn’t want to make my comment even more long-winded than it already was. But suffice it to say the requirements for that would be similarly cartoonishly paranoid with strict rules about how and where it could be stored, who could have access to it under what circumstances, probably going so far as to say that if it had ever been stored on a device that had been exposed to the Internet it couldn’t be used as evidence for a death penalty.
It’s probably a standard that could only be met by only one in a billion cases even if we retooled all of our surveillance systems, body cameras, etc. to try to meet it, and I’m not saying that we should try to because it would probably mean some egregious privacy violations, but if by some miracle the evidence manages to meet that standard then they can begin to consider the death penalty. It should be an incredibly tough, nearly impossible bar to meet.
I also very much appreciate your point of view, thank you for sharing.