Hollywood's flailing with the death penalty - something Canada needs (and apparently wants too)

Capital punishment is probably the earliest form of “punishment” created by Man. Since jails weren’t exactly built in the caveman age, it was probably a lot easier to just murder the guy who raped your wife rather than charge him with adultery. As time progresses, the “death penalty” was being used less and less often, and for less and less reasons. The intent of the death penalty originally started off as “revenge” but transgressed into “determent” and “getting equal with the state”. By the 20th century, the death penalty was almost solely used for murder or military crimes. But just because the pattern has been reducing capital punishment’s usage in society, that does NOT mean we should completely discard capital punishment as a legitimate means of punishment for society’s lowest scum.

In Canada this is especially troubling. There are many horror stories going around about Canada’s justice system. A system in which armed burglars are able to sue the person they robbed – for shooting them back. Read that sentence over a couple more times and soak it in. Gun owners can’t shoot armed robbers who invade their homes with the intent of stealing their money and property and possibly raping the inhabitants inside? The list goes on and on. Another homeowner in Hamilton was charged for beating up a young lad who snuck into the house to steal alcohol. And it wasn’t too long ago I read in the papers that a burglar sued a homeowner…..because he got stuck in their chimney while trying to escape. Ahh yes, the brilliance of our justice system. Apparently it’s our fault that bad things happen to people who trespass on private property with the intent of breaking and entering. You know, I think I’ll build a stone path on my property that leads into a nice opened window. From there, the criminals can find all of my money waiting for them nicely in a bag, and they can go right ahead and take everything and leave without hurting themselves! That might just be the only option for Canadians if we were to have another decade of Liberal government.

But that’s not the greatest pain in the backside for our miniature justice league. The greatest injustice we have right now is the fact that capital punishment is no longer administered. Not only is it removed as a punishment for crimes, but now the Canadian government has decided to preach its smug attitude to the rest of the world by refusing to send convicts back to their country of origin unless their government issues a written guaranty to our government that they will NOT execute this convict. To be opposed to the death penalty has now become synonymous with being “civil” or being “compassionate”. But really, to be opposed to the death penalty is to simply be stupid. There’s little doubt in my mind that tomatoes will be thrown at me for saying such a thing. After all, Hollywood has such a grasp and influence on American and Canadian public minds, it’s not surprising at all that our society has little room for realism and intelligent debate. Many films encompass the theme of “capital punishment” and often depict the prisoners in sympathetic roles in order for the audience to feel sorry for them, and come to their own conscious decision that the death penalty is wrong based on emotions. Last Dance (Bruce Beresford, 1996), Chicago (Rob Marshall, 2002) and Dead Man Walking (Tim Robbins, 1995) are just a small list of films apart of Hollywood’s crusade to declare capital punishment as inhumane. However the films will often portray things in an emotional manner and will leave out many factual justice facts in order to portray the system as “mean and green”.

One of Hollywood’s most influential anti-death penalty movies is The Green Mile (Frank Darabont, 1999). Before I go into detail about this, I’ll make it clear now that The Green Mile is a fine piece of art. It’s one of my favourite films, and the acting, writing, and cinematography is absolutely brilliant and beautiful. Now getting back to the facts, The Green Mile is pretty much a pile of cow turd when it comes to depicting “actual justice”. We see four inmates die throughout the film (three of them get the chair, one of them gets shot). The first to go is a Native American named Arlen, who killed someone in a drunken brawl. The second to go is a Cajun named Del, who burned his victims to death. The third to go is a lunatic rapist nicknamed Wild Bill, who has done a series of crimes in his lifetime. The last one to go is the star of the movie, John Coffey, who is black, and is accused of raping and murdering two young girls. It turns out that not only is John innocent, but Wild Bill was the actual rapist and murderer. Nonetheless, John never proclaims innocence once, and accepts the death penalty anyways. The movie, I’ll admit, brought me to tears on one occasion (the music and acting are terrific) but what we have here is the display of a failed justice system – not the one I am endorsing at all. Unfortunately not many people can make that distinction between a fair justice system and one that is corrupt and inefficient (as portrayed in the movie). With today’s modern technology and with the laws that I am endorsing: A) John Coffey would’ve been found innocent. DNA samples from Wild Bill (who was captured) and the specimens found on the dead girl’s bodies would’ve made that connection and cleared his name. B) Prisoners are executed way too soon after their incarceration. Instead of executing someone within 10 days of their sentence (the movie doesn’t make anything clear, and because of this, it almost maliciously implies that prisoners are executed very early in their sentence) what we should have is prisoners serving at least 20 years before their execution. Usually any evidence brought in during this period can either clear their name (a rarity) or just make it more justifiable (quite common). C) Arlen was under the influence when committing the crime, which usually means you can’t receive the maximum penalty for murder since ones intentions are muffled when intoxicated (this goes hand-in-hand with the various degrees of murder). However we are, yet again, led to believe that possibly racism played a part in his execution. Since I don’t advocate racism whatsoever, this man would not have been executed at all. Instead a 20 year sentence with parole would’ve been fair and justifiable. With good behaviour, participation in rehab, sincere remorse, and hard labour in the prisoner’s work force – Arlen can expect to get out of jail within 12 years. That’s a fair system.



What the movie did do a good job on however, was showing the one individual who did deserve the death penalty. That being Wild Bill of course. And this is the type of criminal that should be executed. The repeat offenders, the ones that show no remorse or respect, the ones that display attitudes and personalities that surely predict future destructive behaviour – these people cannot be rehabilitated. Instead of wasting tax dollars to give this man a free university degree (*cough* Karla Homolka *cough*) it would’ve been the public’s best interests to deal with the man the proper and fair way. Many serial killers (like Paul Bernado, Robert Pickton, the BTK killer) are just too dangerous to keep alive, and it would be a highly popular decision to execute them. After all, this is the only possible way they can get “equal” with the State after committing such an array of disgusting and horrifying crimes. Wild Bill wasn’t a serial killer, but he was the class of criminal that fits death penalty criteria. Even the film portrays his death in a positive light. John Coffey (a reincarnation of Jesus Christ) says that Wild Bill is a “bad man” and he got what he deserved. I mean, that says it all, I got a black guy on my side (that’s a joke for you Liberals reading this).

What Hollywood will never make a film on is what capital punishment truly brings – justice, fairness, and a realistic approach to crime. There are many antsy fancy peace-lovers out there who claim the death penalty does not deter crime. In fact, some of their reports even claim that the death penalty leads to an increase in crime……Huh? Let’s just take a look at this hypothetical situation: You’re a defence lawyer and your client is accused of murdering and raping two people. The evidence is overwhelming (DNA, video, dozens of witnesses, you name it, they have it). The punishment for the crime is the death penalty – if he pleads innocence that is. However if the client pleads guilty, and aides police in helping to solve the crime (one of the bodies still hasn’t been found), his sentence will be lowered to 25 years in prison with parole. Only the sick serial killer type wouldn’t mind being murdered anyways, so I can almost guarantee that the client would tell his lawyer that he would rather plead guilty and help solve the crime than be a stubborn dick and get the chair (though I wouldn’t allow the chair as an option for the death penalty, but for humour’s sake, I’ll say the chair anyways). Does this make sense now? The death penalty does act as deterrence in some ways. It does and can help solve crimes, and with Pickton being accused of murdering up to 50 women (but only being charged for murdering 6 of them) you can almost see why I bring this point up.

But let's put all this Hollywood garbage away for a second, and get back to my original topic of why the death penalty should be brought back into the Canadian justice system. We all noticed crime rates were unbelievably high in the 1980’s up till 1991. Mind you, the death penalty was abolished before the crime rates started to rise. But then magically, in 1991, crime rates started to lower. They got lower and lower every year. The same pattern was seen in the United States. Are we safer now? Why did this happen? To answer the first, no we are not safer now. Soft liberals might claim that crime is at an all-time low and that harsh punishments for crime are no longer useful. A lie at its best, crime is LOWER than 1991, but crime is not at an all time low. Back in 1960, when organized record-keeping on crime began, was probably Canada's safest year in its history. We also had the death penalty back then, and the harshest punishments available. Well then, where did we go wrong? Why did crime rates rise? It might be safe to say that crime rates rose due in part to two things A) The death penalty was abolished. B) Affirmative action programs meant that tall and strong white men were put aside in favour of short white women and often illiterate black men (this is not a racist comment, this just based on statistics alone). Crime rates started to lower in the United States when the death penalty was re-imposed and began wide-spread usage in the early 1990’s. Why exactly did this happen? Well it’s apart of human nature. Humans will be extra cautious when it comes down to protecting their own lives. A criminal who commits a capital criminal has a 1 in 278 chance of being executed, and what that comes down to is criminals doing everything in their power to protect their own asses. The states that reinstituted the death penalty had about a 38 percent drop in crime by 1998 upon the reinstatement. Another factor in lowering both American and Canadian crime was law enforcement itself. The size of the police forces increased dramatically in the 1990’s, and more funding was put into technology dealing with crime. One of the greatest factors in lowering crime in the 1990's, in simple terms, was an increase in confidence in law enforcement. There’s a difference between “crimes committed” and “crimes reported”. Are there fewer crimes? Yes, mostly because of the deterrence’s put in place. But what’s amazing is how much higher victims are likely to report the crimes now. With more confidence in our police, people are likely to report the most serious of crimes, and the ones that are most likely to be solved.

Crime rates did not lower because of rehab or anything artsy. They lowered because of Conservative-leaning decisions to increase police funding, to put harsher sentences in place, and in the case of the Americans, reinstate the death penalty. And that’s the final milestone Canada has to make if we want to return to the glory days of peace in 1960. Reinstate the death penalty for the most dangerous of offenders and bring true justice to the streets. No matter what Hollywood movie comes out, Canadians must come to realize what must be done to ensure our streets continue to stay safe. It seems that Canadians already do (recent polls put capital punishment support at roughly 60% nationwide) but our politicians don’t seem to grasp the will of the people. Reinstating the death penalty may not be considered as dire of an issue as saving the environment, but it is nonetheless, an important element in lowering crime rates, and fixing our flawed and relaxed justice system.