Appendix
Granderson 12
Cohen, Richard. “Vengeance, Not Justice.”
Vengeance, not justice
By Richard Cohen, Published: April 9
When it comes to the death penalty, the only thing the United States can do is plead the insanity defense.
The rest of the advanced world has moved on, but America resolutely remains among the top five
executioners — behind China, Iran and Iraq, and just ahead of Pakistan. In Colorado, prosecutors are
seeking the death of James Holmes, the clearly insane young man who dyed his hair a vivid orange,
allegedly killed 12 people at a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” and made no effort to escape.
“Justice is death,” declared the prosecutor. The Taliban, I tell you, are among us.
That utterance came from the Arapahoe County district attorney, George Brauchler, who said he decided to
go for the max after talking to 60 family members of those murdered. Presumably and understandably, they
all favored the death penalty — and I might, too, if someone I loved was murdered. But this is the crime, as
heinous as it might be, of a crazy person. Holmes’s execution will not deter anyone else — although
sensible gun control might — and so his death, if and when it comes, will amount to vengeance. That’s
understandable, but it is not justice.
Colorado has a long way to go before it can execute Holmes. The barriers to execution are always high, and
in this case they might be insurmountable. Holmes would be in considerably more jeopardy if he were in
Virginia. The commonwealth, sir, is No. 1 in the country in the ghastly statistical category of executions
per sentencing. From 1977 through 2010, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, Virginia
condemned 149 people but executed only 108 of them. This gives the state an execution per sentencing
ratio of 0.725. (Texas is second — 932 death sentences and 464 executions for a ratio of 0.498.) Colorado
handed down only 15 death sentences in that period and executed only one person. The state’s ratio is a
paltry 0.067.
These numbers provide some insight into how randomly and capriciously the death penalty is applied. In
that regard, the Death Penalty Information Center has an interesting list. It’s titled “Those Executed Who
Did Not Directly Kill The Victim.” It contains 20 names, and while these executions might not bother you
— after all, a murder did occur — some of the people were executed while the person who did the actual
killing was not. In Arizona, the New York Times reported last week, a 36-year-old man awaits execution
for a murder in which the trigger man can look forward to eventual release. Three of the four people
convicted of the crime got deals for their cooperation. Okay, maybe they earned some consideration, but
the fourth man, the usual nitwit tough guy, did not by himself earn the death penalty. The others knew how
to game the system.
Sometimes after a mass shooting or some hideous home invasion such as the 2007 one in Cheshire, Conn.,
in which a woman and one of her two daughters were raped and all of them murdered and set on fire, my
opposition to the death penalty is consumed in a furious desire for vengeance. I will not miss Steven J.
Hayes and Joshua A. Komisarjevsky, the two Cheshire killers, if and when they go. But I recognize, too,
that their deaths will deter no one else and that, in other cases, the application of the death penalty might
mean that the less guilty or the outright innocent will die. Mistakes will be made.
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Granderson 13
In Colorado, all systems failed the victims of the Aurora movie theater shooting. James Holmes had
signaled his intent. He related homicidal fantasies to a University of Colorado school psychiatrist. He then
sent her threatening text messages. He assembled an arsenal of weapons and ammunition — and no one
noticed. He booby-trapped his apartment but told the police about it when he was captured. Holmes was in
the throes of a severe psychological breakdown. In pathetic response, his campus key card was deactivated.
In the meantime, he bought more weapons.
We did not know what to do about Holmes before his crime and we don’t know what to do with him now.
The orange is gone from his hair and he looks, more or less, normal. But he is a deranged young man; since
we never knew how to treat him, we will now try to kill him. This may seem barbaric, but rest assured:
“Justice is death,” the D.A. said. In the United States — as well as, say, China — we have an abundance of
justice.
Read more from Richard Cohen’s archive.
Read more from Opinions: Eugene Robinson: With the death penalty, ‘probably’ isn’t good enough E.J.
Dionne: The death penalty and the costs of an obsession The Post’s View: The much-needed demise of
Maryland’s death penalty Charles Lane: Sometimes the death penalty is warranted News story: Ex-Virginia
executioner becomes opponent of the death penalty
© The Washington Post Company
Appendix
Granderson 14
Earley, Pete. “The Mentally Ill Require a Different Calculation for the Death Penalty.”
The mentally ill require a different
calculation for the death penalty
By Pete Earley, Published: April 9
Pete Earley is the author of “Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness.”
As the father of an adult with a severe mental illness, I am dismayed by a Colorado prosecutor’s decision to
seek the death penalty in the Aurora movie theater attack.
Attorneys for the accused gunman, James Eagan Holmes, offered to have their client plead guilty in return
for a life sentence without parole. That was not good enough for Arapahoe District Attorney George
Brauchler.
After consulting with “800 victims and their families” on the July 2012 shootings that left 12 dead and
dozens wounded, Brauchler declared that for Holmes, “justice is death.”
Only the most egregious cases should merit the death penalty, and despite the monstrosity of these
shootings, executing a defendant who was receiving psychiatric care and who appears to have a severe
mental illness violates that high standard.
Although a definitive diagnosis has yet to be made public, Holmes was seeing a doctor who specializes in
treating schizophrenia. News reports say Holmes told a fellow college student before the murders that he
had been diagnosed with dysphoric mania, a form of bipolar disorder. Common symptoms for both
schizophrenia and dysphoric mania can include delusions and impaired reasoning. Both illnesses frequently
surface in men during their early 20s. The causes of both are unknown but are not thought to be brought on
by an individual’s own actions.
My son got sick when he was 22. Chances are, you too know someone with a mental illness. Those of us
with mentally ill family members have seen how schizophrenia and bipolar disorder can distort our loved
ones’ thinking and sometimes cause them to break the law. Their actions are symptoms of their disorders.
Mental illness does not excuse murder — a fact that Holmes’s attorneys readily acknowledged. But
murders spawned in psychosis should be adjudicated differently from those for profit, jealousy or revenge.
Our legal system does a poor job in dealing with mentally ill defendants. The standard legal test is whether
the defendant knew at the time of the crime the difference between right and wrong and whether he
understood the consequences of his actions. But that’s often a fool’s reasoning when applied to an ill
person’s mind. I once asked a convicted murderer with schizophrenia if he understood that murder was
wrong and that if he murdered someone, he would be punished. Of course he did, he quickly replied to both
questions: “Everyone knows you shouldn’t kill people. I didn’t kill anyone. I killed an alien that had
crawled into a baby’s body. I saw it go inside him.”
Appendix
Granderson 15
Brauchler’s Pontius Pilate-style explanation does not absolve him of his prosecutorial responsibility to use
discretion in the face of public cries for blood. Nor is Brauchler delivering “justice” to the victims and their
families. Sending Holmes to prison for life without parole would have brought swift closure while ensuring
public safety. Now victims face a protracted public trial, decades of legal appeals and appellate hearings in
which they will be required to rehash their nightmares.
Prosecutors agreed to spare the life of Tucson mass murderer Jared Lee Loughner, who was diagnosed with
paranoid schizophrenia, after he pleaded guilty and accepted a sentence of life without parole for killing six
and wounding 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
Arapahoe County prosecutor Brauchler should have followed suit. Instead, he chose a road that will add
more pain to an already unbearable tragedy.
Read more from Opinions: Pete Earley: In defense of the mentally ill Pete Domenici and Gordon H. Smith:
Waiting for mental health parity The Post’s View: Another chance to end the death penalty
© The Washington Post Company