Eliza Steelwater Transcript

January 12, 2008

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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