By Lee Lofland © 2005
With all the recent publicity regarding high-profile criminal cases such as the Scott Peterson trial and the child killings in Florida , the issue of the death-penalty is once again in the news. The country is divided in its opinions about whether we should put these killers to death or house them behind bars for life.
Vengeance is not the only issue raised by the death penalty. In every instance, the cost of housing a prisoner, as opposed to killing him, becomes a topic of concern. Texas taxpayers spend approximately 2.3 million per death penalty case, from the onset of the trial, through the execution. This amount is roughly three times the cost of incarcerating that same inmate for forty years. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons statistics, the cost of housing one federal prisoner is $63.51 per day or $23,183.69 annually.
I once served as a government witness to the execution, by electrocution, of serial killer Timothy W. Spenser. Spenser had raped and killed several young women while serving the balance of a prison sentence in a halfway house in Virginia . While residing in the halfway house, he, like the other prisoners, was allowed into the community to work and to gradually return to society. Spenser was convicted of the murders and was the first person in the United States given a death sentence based upon DNA evidence.
I, like many of my peers, took the matter of the death penalty lightly and never gave the subject much thought until April 27, 1994. At 11:15 p.m. on that day, I entered the execution chamber deep within the confines of the prison that housed the condemned man. I walked in, sat down in a plush theatre-style seat, and prepared to watch Spenser die. The atmosphere was heavy and thick and was punctuated with an eerie stillness I can still feel today.
When I first saw Spenser, I was shocked. He was small and almost frail-looking, not at all what I had imagined. He was surrounded by big, burly prison guards standing ready to seat him on the oak bottom of “Old Sparky.” He sat down on his own and then smiled in my direction, where I was seated with eleven other witnesses. The guards immediately strapped him to the chair.
Spenser showed no remorse for what he'd done; he offered no last words; just seconds before the electricity was introduced into his body—he gave what appeared to be a proud “two thumbs up.” The procedure was not nonviolent as we were told it would be, nor was it humane by any means, but Spenser's actions made me wonder if my old captain from the sheriff's office was right when he said, “Forget the appeals, kill ‘em all, and let God sort ‘em out.” I may not wholeheartedly agree with him or the death penalty but skipping the appeals would certainly save us a lot of money.
Until next time, I'm 10-7, out of service.
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