CAPITAL Punishment and Serial Killers

Always controversial in America, imposition of the death penalty for murder (or other serious crimes) remains a constant point of heated debate. Serial killers, whose multiple murders frequently incorporate brutal torture and sexual assault, are often described as “poster children” for capital punishment, but abolitionists would spare all felons, without regard to the nature or number of their crimes. Arguments range from the moral (“All killing is wrong”; “All lives are precious”) to the economic (“Life imprisonment is cheaper than lengthy death-sentence appeals”), but results of every published poll to date suggest that a majority of those surveyed support execution in cases of first-degree (premeditated) murder.

The 1960s saw a sharp decline in American executions, with seven inmates executed in 1965 (down from 152 in 1947), and only one in 1967. No more had been dispatched by 1972, when the US Supreme Court ruled that all American death penalty statutes, as currently written, were unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Across the country, 648 condemned inmates—including such notorious serial killers as Richard Speck and six members of the MANSON FAMILY—saw their sentences commuted overnight to life imprisonment with possible parole (though few of the repeat offenders have been freed to date). By 1976, a groundswell of public opinion induced the high court to revise its opinion, permitting execution in the case of certain felonies specifically defined by law. Multiple murder (or murder accompanied by torture and/or sexual assault) is among those crimes authorized for capital punishment in all 38 death-penalty states. Texas was the first state to specifically list serial murder as a capital offense.

The first condemned inmate to die in America after a nine-year hiatus in executions was serial slayer Gary Gilmore, shot by a Utah firing squad in January 1977. Between that event and September 2004, at least 81 other serial killers were executed in 19 American states. In retrospect, there seems to be no statistical validity for the abolitionist argument that suicidal slayers migrate to death-penalty states in search of an “easy” death. New York, as a prime example, has consistently ranked among the top five U.S. states in cases of serial murder reported, although the state banned capital punishment for more than 20 years, from 1972 to 1994.