Journey into Darkness (55 page)

It seems to me that for serious crimes, retribution through punishment is the only just and moral action that we, as a society, can take. This is not, however, a universal opinion.

As Jack Collins states, “Victims need to put the horror and trauma of the crime behind them as soon as possible and get on with their lives. Victims have a right to expect that defendants will be tried promptly so that, if convicted, their punishment can begin speedily. We’ve been trying to sensitize people to the fact that victims should not be considered outsiders in the criminal justice system. They have a stake; they should be in the forefront. We deserve and demand a place at the table.”

When it comes to the next level of the criminal justice system, he says, “It seems to many observers of appeals courts, including ourselves, that too many of its judges consider the appellate function an academic and theoretical exercise that has more to do with intellectual sleight-of-hand and verbal dexterity than seeing that basic justice is done to victims and punishment meted out to wrongdoers. They appear to fancy the pose of being far above the fray, unaffected in any way by the blood, sweat, tears and violence which started the case’s journey to their very chambers.”

What the Collinses seek, of course, is the execution of their daughter’s murderer in accord with the sentence handed down by his jury and judge.

Capital punishment is one of those issues like abortion. Not many of us are ever going to change anyone’s opinion about it, one way or the other. If you are against the death penalty on moral grounds, I think a case can be made for putting away the worst of these monsters for life with no possibility they will ever be let out or paroled. But we know that there is no such thing. And frankly, in certain cases, I don’t think it’s enough.

As Steve Mardigian put it, “The tremendous devastation against victims warrants that we do something appropriately serious. In my view, we have no reason to keep people capable of inflicting this kind of horror alive.”

Some would argue that capital punishment is “legalized murder” and therefore an immoral act on the part of society. My personal feeling is that these offenders have made a choice to remove themselves from society and therefore it is a moral statement to say that society will not tolerate the perpetrator of this kind of horrible act in its midst.

Asserting that capital punishment is legalized murder does a tremendous injury, in my opinion, to the very concept of right and wrong, in that it trivializes the crucial distinction between the victim of the crime and its perpetrator—the innocent life and the one who chose for his own vile reasons to take that innocent life.

If you ask me if I’m personally prepared to throw the switch that would legally end the life on earth of Sedley Alley, Larry Gene Bell, Paul Bernardo, Lawrence Bittaker, or others of their ilk, my answer would be a resounding “Yes!” And for those who talk of forgiveness, I’ll tell them I am sympathetic to the concept, but at the same time I do not feel I am authorized to forgive; it’s not my place.

Had Sedley Alley
merely
(and I use this word with some trepidation) raped, beaten, and tortured Suzanne Collins, but left her alive and her mental faculties intact, then she, and only she, would have been in a position to forgive him if she so chose. And as far as I’m concerned, she remains the only one capable of forgiving him, but because of what actually did happen, she can only do so now
after
his jury-imposed sentence has been carried out.

That, I think, is what the Collinses mean by retribution rather than revenge.

Now, on the subject of deterrence, I admit that there can be little doubt that as presently administered in the United States, the death penalty is not a general deterrent to murder in many, if not most, situations. Common sense should tell us that if you’re a young urban criminal making your living off the drug trade where there are huge amounts of money at stake and your business competition is out there trying to kill you every day, the dim prospect of a possible death sentence and execution somewhere at the end of a fifteen year procedural morass—that is, if you get caught, if you don’t plea bargain, if you draw a tough judge and a tough jury, if you don’t get reversed, if they don’t change the law, et cetera, et cetera—isn’t much of a deterrent, or a risk, for that matter, compared to the occupational hazards you face on the street every day of your working life. So let’s be realistic about that aspect of the argument.

If the death penalty were applied more evenly and uniformly, and if the period of time from sentence to execution were reduced to a reasonable matter of months rather than a protracted period of years or even the decades that people like the Collinses have had to endure, then perhaps it would become more useful in dissuading would-be offenders in certain types of murders. But frankly, this theoretical speculation doesn’t concern me all that much. Meted out fairly and consistently, perhaps the death penalty could become a general deterrent; I’m not certain and I wouldn’t be optimistic about it.

But of one thing I am certain: it is, by God, a specific deterrent. No one who has been executed has ever taken another innocent life. And until such time as we really mean it as a society when we say “imprisonment for life,” I, and the families of countless victims, would sleep better at night knowing there is no chance that the worst of these killers will ever again be able to prey on others. Even then, I personally believe that if you choose to take another human life, you ought to be prepared to pay with your own.

Our justice system is imperfect. Some monsters can be rehabilitated and go on to live useful and productive lives. Nathan Leopold, who partnered with Richard Loeb in the 1924 thrill killing of young Bobby Franks in Chicago, was paroled in 1958 and went on to finish out his years respectably
and productively as a social worker and lab technician, volunteering for studies in malaria research. But you know something? I don’t think that would be the case with a Lawrence Bittaker, and I’m not anxious to keep him around long enough to find out. Once you’ve done something this horrendous, you forfeit your claims to rehabilitation.

Then there’s the argument that rather than killing these guys, we should keep them alive “for study.” I’m not sure what people mean by this; I don’t think they know, themselves. I suppose they mean that if we study enough of them long enough, we’ll figure out why they kill and what we can do to stop them.

Now as it happens, my colleagues at Quantico and I are among the few professionals who actually have studied these people. If anyone has a stake, therefore, in keeping them alive for intellectual reasons, it’s us. And here’s my response to that: If they’re willing to talk to me at all, there is plenty of time during the protracted appeals process. If they’re only willing to talk—as Ted Bundy ultimately was—as a bargaining chip for staying alive longer, then what they tell me is going to be tainted and self-serving anyway. When you tell me we should keep someone like Bundy alive to study, I say, “Fine, keep him alive six hours longer; that’s all I need.” I really don’t think we’re going to get much more beyond that.

I don’t hate these people. Some of them, I even kind of liked. I happen to like Ed Kemper, for example. I got along with him well and we enjoyed good rapport. I respect his mind and his insight. Had he been given the death penalty, I would have been personally sorry and sad to see him executed. But I certainly wouldn’t have been willing to argue the point with the families of any of his victims, because I know what they’ve gone through and continue to go through. Compared to their feelings, mine are irrelevant.

But no responsible discussion of the death penalty can fail to include reflection on the fact that our legal system is imperfect and there is always the chance that the wrong man will be convicted. Inevitably, in any consideration of capital punishment, we must confront the example of David Vasquez. And much as we may hate to admit it, his copping of an Alford plea might have saved his life.

The fact that this was a rare, odd type of case in which the defendant actually confessed, not once, but three times, should not give us too much comfort or reassurance. At the same time, I don’t think this is a valid argument for scrapping the death penalty altogether.

What I think it is a valid argument for is the insistence on an overwhelming amount and degree of proof. And while some might argue that you can never be absolutely sure, I think in the kinds of cases I’m talking about, you can be sure enough that innocent people like Vasquez will not go wrongly to their deaths.

The types of offenders I most want to see face the ultimate penalty are the repeat, predatory, sexually motivated killers. By the time we catch them there is generally a mountain of solid, behaviorally consistent, forensic evidence against them. As with Cleophus Prince, if he did one of the murders, he did all of them. If there isn’t a sufficiently formidable mountain of evidence, then don’t execute. But if there is, as there was against Bell, as there is against Alley and Bernardo and Bittaker and so many others, then do what needs to be done.

As Steve Mardigian puts it, “I would hope that the proof is overwhelming, that there would be no question of being able to support the guilt. From this unit’s perspective, in Vasquez, there would have been questions. They didn’t have the solid physical and lab evidence, and the confession from this type of individual under these circumstances was not enough.”

But I’m confident that the legal minds who have expended so much time and energy on other fine points of our criminal jurisprudence system can come up with a standard that will separate out the David Vasquezes from the Timothy Spencers. It’s also possible that murder could be made exclusively a federal crime, which would make standards of prosecution and proof more consistent. On the other hand, it would probably involve revamping the entire judicial system, because federal courts simply would not be able to handle the volume of cases and trials they’d have to take over from the states.

So how do you prioritize all our concerns and all the things we might wish the criminal justice system to be? To
me, it’s innocent potential victims first, victims of violent crime and their families second, and defendants and their families last. First and foremost, I’ll do anything I can to see to it that someone does not become the victim of someone who has already committed a similar crime. Failing that, I want to bring victims and their families to the forefront of the system, to give them the due that is rightly theirs. And then I want to make sure that defendants get a fair trial and convicted felons receive appropriate sentences for their crimes. None of these need be mutually exclusive.

Does this mean I think we need a police state? Of course not. It means simply what it says—that we need to keep our priorities straight if we hope to be a just and civilized society.

Ultimately, no matter what we do with our criminal justice system, the only thing that is going to cut down appreciably on crimes of violence and depravity is to stop manufacturing as many criminals. The courts have a role in this, the police have a role in this, the schools have a role, and so do the churches and synagogues and mosques. But the real struggle must be where it has always been: in the home.

As Sedley Alley’s prosecutor, Hank Williams, observes, “The federal government spends billions of dollars to fight crime, and they have to. But the only real answer is for mommas and daddies to raise their kids right.”

This is easier said than done, but it’s the only factor that’s going to make a real difference.

At the very beginning of this book, I explained that to do what I do and what the people I’ve taught do, you have to be able to put yourself in the head of both offender and victim. When your work on a case is done, you try to get out of the offender’s head as soon as you possibly can. But the fact of the matter is that you never fully get out of the victim’s head, and a part of every victim whose case I’ve ever worked is always with me.

That’s why I feel the way I do and that’s why I’m always trying to get others to make that journey into darkness with me, at least a little bit of the way.

Abbott, Jack Henry, 166, 359

“Abduction of Kristen French, The” (television program), 67

abductors of children,
see
child abductors

Adam Walsh Children’s Fund, 122, 171, 184

Adam Walsh Child Resource Center, 122

Ad Hoc Committee of Federal Habeas Corpus in Capital Cases (Powell Committee), 258

age:

of assassin-type personalities, 34

of infant abductors, 150

of serial killers, 34, 88-89, 107, 130

of victims, 134

Alaska state troopers, 276-77, 283

Alley, Debra, 227, 240, 246

Alley, Jane, 246, 248

Alley, Lynne, 7, 225-27, 243, 246

Alley, Sedley, 6-9, 225-28, 230, 234-48, 250-52, 259-60, 266-68, 270, 273-74, 364, 367

as Billie, 9, 235, 237, 244-46. 267

as Death, 9, 235, 237, 244-46, 267

trial aftermath for, 249-75

trial of, 29, 238, 243-48

Alt, Rich, 305

American Bar Association’s Victims Committee, 261

American Foreign Service Association Scholarship Program, 275

America’s Most Wanted
, 359

Anchorage Police Department, 276-77, 280, 284

Anderson, Terri, murder of, 60, 62

Ankrom, Larry, 17, 36, 41-42, 335

Anthoney, Kirby, 282-93

trial of, 288-93

Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (1996), 269

Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, 16

assassination-style killing, 33, 34

assassin-type personalities, age of, 34

Arthar, Zillur, 245

Atkins, Susan, 361

Atlanta Child Murders, 23. 278, 332, 343

Axley, W. Fred, 238, 248, 259, 366

Bailey, Alfred, 109, 113

Bailey, Ronald Lloyd, 108-19

Baliles, Gerald, 331

Banks, Peter, 139, 142. 166. 168, 172-73, 178-80

Barbieri, Paula, 347