Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Blogging on the death penalty, part two

Yesterday we posted comments by Scott Henson of the Texas Civil Liberties Union's Police Accountability Project. Scott commented on what he sees as a lack of success on the part of the abolitionist community when it comes to developing -- and using -- successful messages against the death penalty, i.e., messages that resonate with a majority of the American public.

I agreed with many of Scott's comments. The lone area where I might disagree is that the right messaging does exist. It's just that we're not using it often enough.

During our recent NCADP conference in Austin, we heard from Professor Frank Baumgartner of Penn State University. Baumgartner has engaged in cutting-edge research into what messages work -- and don't go work -- in converting people to our side. You can read all of Baumgartner's research yourself by going here. But allow me to briefly summarize a few of his points:

1. Moral arguments against the death penalty don't work on death penalty proponents. It is difficult for such proponents, who, like us, come to hold their beliefs deeply, to in effect admit their whole way of thinking was wrong. In effect, we are asking them to apologize when we argue morality.
2. If anything, using morality arguments against the death penalty causes proponents to embrace their support even more strongly. Thus, framing the issue in this way actually is equivalent to walking backwards.
3. A relatively new argument -- innocence -- works. Why? Because when we use innocence -- i.e., wrongful convictions, as a means of opposing the death penalty, then we are giving proponents room to examine the issue without sacrificing core beliefs. We are giving them a way out.

That's Baumgartner's findings -- and he tested this stuff on hundreds of college students in some sort of statistically verifiable way that I don't understand. Granted, I have simplified his findings somewhat. I also would qualify his findings by suggesting that we needn't rely on innocence alone -- rather, we can use innocence as a gateway to a larger category: imperfections.

But know this. As a friend of mine put it, "Moral arguments don't win support but innocent people and sleeping lawyers do."

It's hard to force Americans to dramatically shift their core moral beliefs -- look at the abortion debate in this country. And one wonders whether it is even worth trying. But if we can slow down and eventually stop executions by embracing this more pragmatic approach, then I think we can win this battle.

Tomorrow I anticipate wrapping up this series of posts on blogging against the death penalty. Tomorrow I will discuss a hope and dream of mine: that state affiliates will begin launching their own anti-death penalty blogs and that we can all then work together to drive traffic to each other's sites, create messages that work and help facilitate a convergence between blogs, listservs, other forms of Internet activism and on-the-ground grassroots campaigns to build a larger, more successful movement.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Innocence works, but certain cases work more than others. Ray Krone is the singular best post-child against state killing. Why? Middle class white guy, completely and wrongly convicted for no other reason than shear bad dumb luck.

Put another way, this could have been you, or your brother, or your dad, and it terrifies middle class white america.

Gritsforbreakfast said...

Thanks for the plug, David, but I'm afraid we may keep quibbling over that last 10 percent. I agree with the prof you quote, as far as it goes, and it might get some important legislation passed (especially regarding forensics, eyewitness and snitch testimony) but that message won't get the death penalty abolished, IMO.

Innocence works for innocent defendants. It's also an important first step away from the guilting messages you describe. I'm not sure it works as an argument against the death penalty as a whole, though, as well as it does for, say, a moratorium argument. Most capital convicts did the crime they're being punished for. We need new values-based arguments to combat the DP in all cases, otherwise if someone's sure the person "did it," they would have no reason based on the innocence meme to think the death penalty is wrong. Keep up the great work, though, and thanks for having me last weekend at your conference. :-)

the tennessee dude said...

i disagree with grits - in fact, and quite often, i eat grits for breakfast ... but i digress...

innocence does work for abolition and here's why...

* we're not going to lose moral abolitionists because we frame around innocence - if we do they're either vain or not abolitionists or...

* as abolitionists we have to acknowledge the most powerful argument that (reasonable) death penalty proponents pose: there are some crimes so heinous, so depraved that society must respond with the ultimate punishment ... the execution serves then as a moral marker (or beacon) of what is simply unacceptable to us as a society (this argument emerges out of basic contract theory Hobbes et.al...)

* the problem with this reasonable argument is that the system that processes cases and makes these determinations (that adjudicates them) must be dead-on perfect - it can't make a single mistake ... it can't sentence and execute people simply because they couldn't afford a good attorney, because the victim was white, because they're mentally ill, and it certainly can't convict and execute even one single innocent person ... because if it does - and it does - it simply does not (and can not) function as that moral marker...

reasonable people who have no moral objection to capital punishment acknowledge and are moved by this explication and in fact we can not abolish capital punishment without this argument and without these people as part of the active political cover we must generate for politicians to take this action...

the notion that we must wait to move the hearts and minds of x # of americans before we engineer a policy change is a position that draws a parallel between death penalty abolition and the civil rights movement that i find little theoretical or actual evidence to support ... in fact in concrete terms it means accepting more executions, more state engineered homicides than will otherwise be necessary...

bless your litle heart - i find that both immoral and unacceptable...

Gritsforbreakfast said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Gritsforbreakfast said...

@Tennesee Dude: Nobody's advocating "waiting." I'm only predicting that current messages won't get you all the way there, and proposing a method for developing additional message possibilities. With all our forensic lab problems, folks are playing the innocence card hard in Texas, and our state's support for capital punishment hovers around 70+%. Not all, but too many of these guys have confessed -- their guilt doesn't have to be proven.

To me, what innocence gets you to is an opportunity to make a broader case to small L libertarians and the extreme brands of religious conservatism that A) Big Government is irredeemably screwed up and incapable of good decisionmaking, B) the death penalty requires precise decision making, so A + B = C) Big Government can't be trusted to implement the death penalty. That's a meme that would appeal to the same folks, for example, targeted by the GOP's "Southern Strategy." But innocence alone doesn't get you to those people, and none of that message gets you to more mainstream religious conservatives who DO trust the government and see innocence as an aberration. For other constituencies, different types of messages must be developed.

IMO, you're going to need many good messages, each targeted to an audience and using different messengers. Most political messages on the DP right now, to me, are still too monolithic and inflexible to accomodate that kind of nuanced approach.

Finally, to say you won't "wait to move the hearts and minds" of Americans is to say you think Justice Roberts and Justice-to-be-Alito are going to take care of the problem for you. I hope that's true. If you're wrong, though, you better hope someobdy's focused on changing hearts and minds. Why not let bloggers give it some thought while others enjoy the views atop the moral high ground? Best,

Anonymous said...

I have to agree on the innocence argument and the inherent flaws/mistakes that can happen in our legal system. An argument that does not work is to say "the death penalty doesn't work, see all the people still on death row". The same logic can be applied to the statement "the prison system doesn't work, see all the people in prison". So is the solution to get rid of the prison system? No. When we find a solution that stops people committing crimes in general we will have a solution to the death penalty debate. The problem is much like various activist movements you hear all about "the problem is ... it needs to be stopped" without offering a replacement to what function the protested thing is supposed to be solving. In the death penalty's case people say just put them in prison for life. People don't see letting a person live the rest of their life in prison, with the many negatives and the few positive benefits involved in incarceration. (When I speak of positives I speak of things like education, health care, lodging, food. All of these which may have not been as readily available outside of prison.) While the person the death row inmate killed (assuming a valid conviction) will never have the future opportunity to live their life or to have opportunities already given to the inmate such as a trial or a chance to say goodbye to his family. So abolishment of the death penalty for innocent inmates yes, for the guilty i don't think so. So the flaw is who is innocent and who is guilty that is the argument that will be more effective.

Anonymous said...

i believe that the death punishment is illegitmate to our so called democracy. screw bush