Isn't this place supposed to be civilized?

by Sara Bollman, daughter of Mark's spiritual advisor Rick Bollman, dated 18th January 2007

For about the first fifteen years of my life, I was under the assumption that America was a civilized nation. I guess the validity of this statement depends essentially on your definition of "civilized.”

For example, if the common and publicly displayed execution of America's own citizens sounds like the epitome of civilization to you then, by all means, America is the ultimate paradigm of social and judicial refinement.

For those of you that haven't caught on yet, I'm alluding to the death penalty - the ultimate in punishment for the most violent of criminals. Statistically, America executes an average of about seventy prisoners every year. Two executions have already been carried out in the year 2007 alone, with a minimum of twenty-seven more scheduled to take place by the end of August.

In the United States, there are currently 3.344 prisoners under the death penalty, therefore, facing the possibility of execution. Twenty of these prisoners live in Idaho. One of these is a man named Mark Lankford.

In 1983, Lankford and his brother were convicted of the murder of two people. While Lankford was not even present at the scene of the crime when the murder took place, nor has there ever been substantial evidence to justly prove that he was, a deal was struck between his brother and attorney. In exchange for being pardoned from a death sentence, Lankford's brother, though guilty of the crime, agreed to testify against his brother. Because of this testimony Mark Lankford was found guilty of a crime that he did not commit and received the death penalty while his brother, received life in prison without parole.

Since the time of the initial trial, Lankford's brother has twice retracted his original testimony, swearing his brother's innocence.

"I know that I was not given a fair trial. I was convicted illegally,” Lankford said, citing the facts that he was tried under a biased judge and accused by a dishonest attorney.

These unmerited circumstances are by no means oddities in the nation's court system. "The death penalty is haphazard in its application. It's only imposed when politically expedient. It's a political tool not a deterrent,” Lankford said. Studies have proven time and time again that capital punishment does not lower crime rates. In fact, it is common for states with the death penalty in place, to actually have higher crime rates than those states where it is not practiced.

After over twenty-two years spent on death row despite his innocence, steps are finally being taken to correct the mistakes of the state. However, the process of retrial is a slow one, and little urgency is being shown by the Ninth Circuit Court. However, when a fair trial is finally granted to Lankford, if found innocent, he could be granted complete exoneration, a miniscule reimbursement of what is really owed to him after nearly a quarter of a century and a great portion of his life spent in prison- innocent but without the chance to prove it.

Lankford's case, as outrageous as it is, is not even remotely a rare occurrence. Since 1973, over 120 prisoners have been released from death row because of evidence of their wrongful convictions. That's countless years, and too many lives permitted to waste away in prison without substantial evidence to prove their guilt.

It's comforting to know that we live in a country where the court system and the people act more nonchalant about disposing innocent lives than they do about throwing out their weekly garbage.

One of the biggest misconceptions about the death penalty is the economics behind it. Despite what most people assume, executions and all of the trials that lead up to them cost far more than funding a life sentence.

Apparently the comfort of knowing that all danger imposing criminals are taken off the streets and buried permanently away in cemeteries instead comes at a high price; literally.

The flaws of capital punishment are too many to count. Aside from the fact that it is expensive and the volatile thief of countless innocent lives, the death penalty shows little mercy to mental illness, is racially biased, is not a deterrent, and could arguably be one of the most unjust worldwide practices. "If you're going to have a system with this many flaws, you can't kill people with it,” Lankford said.

So why, with so many drawbacks, does America remain as one of the few nations in the world to keep the practice alive? "We're a young country. We wish that we were better than we are in that we hang on to these barbaric practices dealing with our own people. We're very militant. We say that we are better but we don't necessarily act better because we haven't matured enough to throw these things off," Lankford said. While crime and more specifically murder, are problems in the United States, the bigger problem lies within the way that we deal with these transgressions. Capital punishment is hypocrisy at its finest.

The concept of killing people because they killed people creates a vicious circle, that will take America a great deal of effort to get out of, and at this rate, it looks as though we might be doomed with this uncivilized system for many years to come.

To Lankford title sheet / To Lankford News folder / Website holder