Each time I hear Andrea Yates mentioned on the radio — and each day as I read about her murder trial in the newspaper — it strikes me how sad it is that a woman whose name should be associated with motherhood and child rearing has instead become known as an infamous child murderess. But then, there are few moms who’ve achieved national notoriety just because they stayed home and took care of the kids.
Now, though, as Mrs. Yates stands trial for murder, she has focused national attention on a recurring social issue: capital punishment.
I’m upfront about my position on the death penalty. I am against it, in Yates’ case or anyone else’s. In Yates’ specific case, there are several problematic issues. For example, what exactly is the purpose of the death penalty? If it’s to protect the public from a murderer, then you have to question using the death penalty in this case. Cruel as it sounds, her children are all dead, and her own children were apparently her only targets. I am not sure that even her harshest critics are willing to suggest that she is a menace to the public.
If, however, the point of capital punishment is to punish a person who has committed a murder, then putting Yates to death seems even more indefensible. It’s extremely likely that she suffered from some kind of mental impairment when she decided to murder her children. Yates simply isn’t a Susan Smith-style child murderer. There is no evidence that Yates intended to reap any kind of personal benefits from the deaths of her children; in fact, she was the one who notified others of what she had done. Punishment of an insane person, whom the law defines as someone who’s not able to discern right from wrong, seems ineffectual at best.
Now, if the point of the death penalty is to make a statement to other potential murderers, then I don’t think the message is getting through. If society wants to “send a message” that crime doesn’t pay (or whatever), aren’t there better potential examples than an at least partially insane ex-mom? Andrea Yates, whatever else she is, certainly isn’t the average murderer by any stretch of the imagination.
Her case is fairly rare (although not as rare as we’d hope, I guess), so in a way it’s paradoxical that I should use her story as part of my tirade against the death penalty. On the other hand, she’s a well-known murderess, so her case is as good a place as any to start.
Quicker than you can say “bleeding heart liberal,” let me say that I’m not actually opposed to the death penalty in concept, only in its application. I’m willing to grant you that there are dangerous criminals out there, some of whom are so unlikely to reform that, short of permanent isolation, nothing besides death will contain their criminal impulses. One only has to read accounts of certain merciless serial killers to understand that this is true. And I don’t value the life of the criminal over the life of the victim or future victims either.
In an ideal society, people who murder other people in cold blood should probably be put to death. This isn’t to say, though, that my opposition to the death penalty has to do with my worry that too many innocents are put to death by our current system. I think that the risk of an innocent person being killed occasionally is worth the deterrent to violent crime.
So, all that being said, what’s not to love about the death penalty? It’s a solid system, having been around at least since someone jotted down “an eye for an eye” in Hebrew once upon a time. But the current incarnation of capital punishment as it’s practiced here in the United States is inherently based on one’s socioeconomic status rather than one’s “worthiness” as a criminal — and that’s not acceptable in our theoretically democratic society.
There can be little argument that there is a correlation between the quality of legal aid one receives and the amount of money one has to pay for such legal services. In a capitalist economy, there are few alternative outcomes. (This isn’t to say that I’m opposed to capitalism, but I suspect that capitalism and capital punishment cannot coexist without unfair advantages being given to the rich.) It should not be surprising, then, that the majority of inmates on death row are of low socioeconomic status and that nearly half of them are non-white. This information comes from a report compiled by the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
It comes down to the fact that you’re more likely to be given the death penalty if you are poor. So I’m not opposed to the death penalty per se, but I am opposed to having the death penalty for the poor but not for the rich.
Which I suppose leads us back to Mrs. Yates, a white middle-class woman, and her embroilment in this very issue. Yates’ murder of her own children inspires a strong emotional response in most people. Most of us have a natural desire to protect children, and we instinctively feel that Mrs. Yates has committed a crime against nature.
But when it comes to justice, I’m not so sure that we should rely on our hearts. We may all feel that she deserves death and it may seem that we are finally putting an atypical murderer to death, but intellectually we must understand that our current political status leaves us in no position to impose death on anyone. Killing off one middle-class white woman does not an equitable system create. Lock her up, put her in jail, don’t let her “get away with murder,” but let’s not allow our emotional reactions to perpetuate a cycle of unfair punishment. When we can supply legal defense the quality of which does not depend on the financial status of the accused, then maybe we’ll be able to take on the responsibility of imparting life or death to criminals. *
This article appears in Mar 13-19, 2002.
