Eliza Steelwater Transcript (1)

January 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Narrator: You’ve been listening to Sound Authors where authors sound off. If you’d like more information about Sound Authors and Dr. Kent’s guests visit soundauthors.com. Now back to Dr. Kent and friends.

Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. Today is the five-year anniversary of Governor Ryan of Illinois commutation of 167 sentences to death. Tell me a little bit about–my guest joining me is Eliza Stillwater, author of The Hangman’s Knot and the upcoming book The Murder Industry. Tell me a little bit about what the candidates might think about the death penalty. I’m putting you on the spot here.

Eliza: As far as I know–I just saw something on the Internet–every single one of them claims to support it except maybe Dennis Kuchenich(?).

Kent: Except Kuchenich. Isn’t that interesting?

Eliza: Kuchenich. Thank you. Of course he’s pretty unelectable it would seem because he’s quite far to the left. But both Obama and Clinton are apparently on the record as supporting the death penalty. It would not be a good idea if they were elected to a post. I think they just don’t want to make it an issue.

Kent: They don’t want to bring it out.

Eliza: Right. The whole campaign could start getting twisted around that and we have other important issues like health care and Iraq that have to be dealt with.

Kent: Do you think the American people are coming around with this New Jersey declaration and with Illinois? Do you think the American people are changing their minds about the death penalty?

Eliza: Well maybe very slowly but as a matter of fact New Jersey citizens were polled and were solidly in favor of the death penalty when it was abolished. And as far as I know, every single state that has abolished the death penalty has done so while there was a majority of support. But what’s happened is just that legislatures are–they’re concerned about what kind of political trouble they can get into if they execute an innocent person now that we have good ways of finding out such as DNA. They don’t really want to have to tweak their budgets around so we spend all our money on capital trials. And I think it’s what it’s always been. There’s going to be a gap between public support and what legislators and governors do and in my mind, that’s appropriate because they’re the people that think about it harder. Most people you know if someone calls them on the phone ‘are you in favor of the death penalty?’ ‘Oh, yeah.’ It was–I think it was in New Jersey it was 62 percent for but when they were asked about if life without parole were available, support for the death penalty dropped to only 52 percent.

Kent: And speaking about the death penalty I can understand that people favor it in some ways but I do know that a lot of these methods are not humane and I know you think about that as well. Can you tell me a little about the humanity of some of these punishments?

Eliza: Well I don’t think execution and humane belong in the same sentence but we’ve been looking for an acceptable method of execution since at least the 1890s and in my view it’s actually an attempt to keep the death penalty going. We have to satisfy supporters of the death penalty with an execution but we can’t make them feel like they’re blood thirsty barbarians. Actually the most humane method of execution is probably a gunshot to the back of the head at point blank range as the Chinese do but as you can imagine that’s pretty messy. As far as the lethal cocktail, so called, we can’t know if it’s humane because the person is paralyzed before death. In fact that chemical is forbidden for animal execution who are killed with a simple overdose of a barbiturate. But it’s all about not feeling bad about ourselves and not having something messy happen. Sometimes in legal hangings the drop was miscalculated and the person was decapitated and blood got all over the witnesses. Well you know that didn’t go down well.

Kent: Isn’t that similar to what happened to Saddam Hussein?

Eliza: Is that right? Was he decapitated?

Kent: I’m not sure but I know that it was a very inhumane and poorly done execution and there was footage on uTube or whatever and I found it appalling that that kind of thing could end up on uTube.

Eliza: Well you know there are those among death penalty proponents that say we should televise all executions.

Kent: Ugh.

Eliza: I have mixed feelings about that. I mean would everyone go ‘yeah, way to go!’ or would be people be horrified? I’m not sure.

Kent: Yeah, that’s true. If we televised what we’re actually doing wouldn’t that put it right into the public eye? Well let’s talk a little bit about your book and where we can find it and all of that. The Hangman’s Knot has been available for a little while.

Eliza: Yes, It’s on amazon.com and other online booksellers. You can also get it from the publisher. It’s now under the aegis of Perseus Books. P-E-R-S-E-U-S. I suspect it’s cheaper from amazon.com. I did want to say one more thing about my upcoming book The Murder Industry if that fits with you. . . .

Kent: Wonderful.

Eliza: I’m afraid my summary wasn’t too succinct. What I’ve been investigating and what I’ll talk about in the book is the ways that the media and the justice system exploit victims and also paint a false picture of crime in the United States. The families that I’m working with mainly as informants who lost their parents to murder. Their case has to compete for public attention with about half a million televised instances of murder that an average 16-year-old has seen in his lifetime. TV simulates reality. They use techniques like crime scene details and documentary style camera work to convince watchers they’re receiving real information. But in fact studies have shown that media crime depiction included-let’s see I have the figures here–47.9 percent murders whereas the real rate of murder among all crimes is one percent. Also the media show crimes that are solved. 61.5 percent of the crimes that are discussed on the media were solved. In real life it’s 18 percent that even get arrested.

Kent: My goodness.

Eliza: So you know–violent crime is big business for both media and politicians and that’s why the book is called The Murder Industry.

Kent: And what are your hopes for the future? Do you see a change?

Eliza: Yes, I do see a gradual change. There’s sort of two scenarios that seem possible to me. One is that we do in fact drop the death penalty nationwide and work out some sort of way of keeping people incarcerated for life or long enough to satisfy public expectations. Another scenario which I hope will not happen is that certain–because the states have quite a lot of autonomy on this question, another possibility is that certain states, notably Texas, will go on indefinitely holding executions while the whole rest of the country is moving on.

Kent: Right. Well thank you so much for being on the show. It’s been a pleasure speaking about this very serious subject. Eliza Stillwater is the author of The Hangman’s Knot and we’ll look for that next book, The Murder Industry, soon. Thanks for being on the show.

Eliza: Oh, my pleasure. Thank you.

Kent: My next guest is going to be William Fedderer, author of What Every American Needs to Know About the Quron. Come on back.

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Eliza Steelwater Transcript

January 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Announcer: Welcome, and thanks for tuning in to Sound Authors, with host, Dr. Kent. Get set for candid conversations about everything, from cuisine to culture, and from nature to nurture. Now, here’s your host, Dr. Kent.Kent Gustavson: Welcome to Sound Authors Radio. It’s January 11th, and today’s the fifth anniversary of a day few folks remember, but a day important in history nonetheless.Governor George Ryan of Illinois, calling the death penalty “arbitrary and capricious, and therefore immoral, ” commuted the sentences of 167 condemned inmates on January 11th, 2003, five years ago, clearing out death row in his state before leaving office, now, this last year, on December 13th, New Jersey lawmakers were the first to abolish the death penalty in their state since the Supreme Court brought it back in 1976.Whether or not that stands is to be seen, but this is a hot issue in the year 2008.My guests on the show today are Eliza Steelwater, a writer, poet, and death penalty expert; William Federer, with his book, “What Every American Needs to Know about the Qur’an”; and the breathtaking vocal duet of Robin and Linda Williams at the end of the show. So, welcome to my first guest, Eliza Steelwater.Eliza Steelwater: Hi. How’s it going?Kent: Very good. And your latest book is called “The Hangman’s Knot.” And her upcoming book is called “The Murder Industry.” Give me a little bit about what are the goals of these books, and give me a little bit about you.Eliza: Well, I’ve been researching the death penalty and lynching, especially from a historical background, for about 25 years now, as a doctoral student, a professor, and now a full-time writer.My colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Hines, and I have originated something called Project HAL, or Historical American Lynching, which is a database of historical lynching in the US that’s used and contributed to by scholars and students.As far as my two books, it’s been a real journey for me to write them. And I’ll take them in turn, as far as saying what my objectives are.As I began to research capital punishment and its history, the first thing that jumped out at me were some people were executed and others were not, for equally heinous crimes.You have the example of mob enforcer “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, who’s known to have killed 19 people, and will never do a day in prison for any of them. Whereas individuals who commit one murder, which arguably may not even have been premeditated, are executed.So then the question becomes: what’s really going on? And as I looked back through American history–and let me underline that I’m talking about the US death penalty, because there are other histories in other countries–my book, “The Hangman’s Knot,” brings out that, historically, execution was a political matter.Out of office political cliques in localities would seize or use the power to execute in order to intimidate their rivals and the voters who supported those rivals.A really great example is the San Francisco lynching spree of the 1850s. The lawful government was simply taken away by a vigilante force that was paramilitary in nature.And they claimed that murderers were not being executed. However, in fact, there were as many legal executions in the county during those years as there were vigilantes lynching.And one can go on with these examples through a number of political moments in our history, be it slavery, terrorism after the Civil War by the Ku Klux Klan, industry persecuting organized labor, and Southern whites maintaining dominance by lynching.Again, in the case of Southern lynching, the execution rates were very high at the same time the lynching rates were very high. So, what all this reflects is a way of using the penalty of death, be it legal or illegal, as an intimidation tactic.Now, interestingly, I don’t believe that’s any longer true, because the number of executions now is so low as to be tokenism. And I don’t think it threatens anybody.It’s just become, so to speak, a political cash cow. People who haven’t thought about it favor the death penalty, and a few who even have thought about it. And it has been a knee-jerk reaction that you get elected, as a prosecutor, let’s say, or a legislator, if you support the death penalty.But one-third of one percent of all people who have actually been convicted and sentenced get the death penalty as a sentence.Kent: What started your interest in this, at the beginning?Eliza: Well, it was somewhat of an accident. I was at a graduate seminar, and our teacher, an anthropologist, said he wanted us to investigate a place that he thought was most significant to human life.And I thought about the place of executions. Maybe, perhaps, [laughs] I’m of a morbid turn. I don’t know. Or perhaps, because I’m a Southerner, I’ve seen a lot of injustice.And as I looked into it, it turned out that the place of execution is really unimportant. There’s all these background dynamics that determine executions. Only a small portion of everyone is even eligible to be executed–mainly people who are poor, because they can’t get a good lawyer.And once I found this, as an idealistic student, I was hooked on it. And I’m now an idealistic writer, 20-something years later.Kent: And your book, “The Hangman’s Knot.” You’ve been teaching for a long time. Why did you decide to become an author? Why did you decide to finally push these books out?Eliza: Well, it came to be more important to me than anything else. I thought that I had information that others did not, and I couldn’t really get that out and pursue an academic career at the same time.Kent: Right. Well, I’m fascinated, as I said in our little intro, that right now, in history, we seem to be starting, as a country, to really think about some of these issues.And in New Jersey, in my political opinion, it’s a great turnaround for people that the death penalty was commuted. Can you give me a little information about that?Eliza: Yes. It should be noted that the governor who supported abolition, like other governors who have supported moratoriums or abolition historically, is an outgoing governor. So his political career is not on the line. But significantly, the New Jersey state legislature’s vote in favor of abolition was a very solid majority.Not to be cynical, but I think an important consideration that people are finally becoming aware of is the dollar cost of trying a capital case and keeping a prisoner on death row, where the security costs twice what it does for a normal incarceration.Kent: Right. What are your personal opinions about the death penalty? It often gets tied up in religion. Are you a religious person? What are your personal feelings about it?Eliza: Why I think people support it, you mean?Kent: No…Eliza: Myself, why I take the position I do?Kent: Yeah. Both, yeah.Eliza: Well, personally, I don’t think that the state has the authority to take its own citizens’ life. And that argument also was made historically. That was the argument that was successful in Michigan’s abolition of the death penalty in, I think it was 1849. That’s probably the strongest argument.It’s personally repugnant to me, as an individual, but that’s just an individual matter. It’s not even a religious question for me. It’s just a question of being a decent human being.Kent: Right. A lot of critics would say these heinous criminals, some of them, that might have raped someone or killed multiple people, is it revenge to say, “We would like to end those people’s lives, as a state”?Eliza: Yes. And I think vengeance–or as they like to call it, retribution–is the current model of the so-called justice system. We don’t any longer think of reforming criminals or heading off criminal careers by taking care of our young people.Kent: Give me a little bit of a nutshell about your next, upcoming project, called “The Murder Industry.” And then we’ll come back after a little break.Eliza: All right. Governor Ryan said–and his action really was the watershed for several reasons. He said something interesting in his speech, that we could use our legal and social resources to really do something for the people whose loved ones were murdered.”Right now, the only people who offer them anything,” and I’m quoting, “certainly, dignity, redemption, and closure, are prosecutors. We shouldn’t be too surprised if what they come up with is the death sentence to ‘make people feel better.’”So that was my starting point. What is done for bereaved people? And Governor Ryan is right, as far as I can tell. The first thing I was told when I met family members who had had a murder victim is, “Don’t talk to me about closure.”My new book focuses on a family that’s waited 12 years to see the convicted killer executed. So far, his death sentence has been overturned twice, and the case could go on for another 10 years.Their pain is unimaginable, frankly, to me. But I don’t like to see that pain has been worsened as it has, and that emotional damage has been done, as well as some family dissension caused, as they go back to court time and time again, for hearings, postponements, and having the prosecutor’s case repeated with all the horrific death scene photos and so on.Kent: And I imagine that anger builds up also.Eliza: Yes, very much so.Kent: Well, we’re going to take a break really quick. We’ll come right back with you.Eliza: All right. Sure.Kent: Come on back.Eliza: Okie-dokie.

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Eliza Steelwater | Death Penalty

January 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Interview with Eliza Steelwater I [12:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We had the honor of speaking with Eliza Steelwater, expert on the death penalty, and author of The Hangman’s Knot. Today is the anniversary of the governor of Michigan’s commutation of more than a hundred death sentences. We speak about that, and also the recent New Jersey legislation to ban the death penalty in that state.
Eliza Steelwater’s biography from www.hangmansknot.com:

I was born and raised in New Orleans–a past I talk about in Chapter 6 of The Hangman’s Knot. My quest to make sense of the death penalty began after I received a four-year Alumni Federation fellowship to study at Louisiana State University. A doctoral degree and fifteen years of research, writing, and speaking followed, culminating in The Hangman’s Knot. I now live in Bloomington, Indiana, with my husband.