Watch: Myth #8 - Executions help victims' families to heal

MYTH

Executions help victims’ families to heal.

"I said to the warden, 'Could you give me his body so I could kill him again?' I was filled with much hate. Then I felt like I knew what it was like to be a killer because I felt I could be one". - Sandra Miller, a mother's comment on her son's murderer

FACT

Whilst we cannot speak for all victims’ families, it is clear that not all families are healed after the execution. Rather, the death penalty creates more victims and more brutality.

Sandra Miller, 2 years after the execution of her son’s murder, testified:

“It [the death penalty] doesn’t bring closure.  It’s an impossible thing. Nothing can bring closure to the death of a child”.

While waiting for "closure", Miller says she became an alcoholic, had two heart attacks, fell into a deep depression and attempted suicide several times. (Interview of Sandra Miller, Does the death penalty bring closure?)

• On the side of the victim's family

Society tells us that justice is punishment for the offender. Punishment also helps victims' families to find some sort of closure. However, many families find that an execution does not bring the relief they were hoping. The pain remains.

Death penalty trials often become media shows and the dignity of the loved one is lost. Furthermore, the appeals process may last for decades, delaying any sense of closure the execution may bring to a victim's family. However, alternatives such as a sentence of life without the option of parole may allow families to see the offender punished in a more timely manner.

“When the execution does happen, they [the victim’s family members] find that they are still left empty, unsatisfied and unhealed and afterwards. They have been victimized again, this time by the system they sought to give them justice. Capital punishment desperately disappoints the families, and it degrades, dehumanizes and debilitates us as a society.”  - Marietta Jaegger Lane, Senate Judiciary and murder victim family member.

Alternative “restorative” programmes have been shown to be more meaningful and effective solutions in helping victims' families to heal. The programmes recognize that to heal the effects of crime, the needs of the individual victims and communities must be met. They give offenders the opportunity to become meaningfully accountable to their victims and hold them responsible to repair the harm they have caused.  Retributive justice, on the other hand, only punishes the offender by “throwing him away” without requiring him to take responsibility.

Restorative justice includes programs such as victim-offender mediation, reparative probation, restitution programs and community service programs. Read more about the Murder Families Victims for Reconciliation and the Journey of Hope. These organizations led by murder victim family members and address alternatives to the death penalty.

Watch here murder victims families debate the death penalty

• On the side of the family of the executed member

Execution is another homicide, creating more grief in another family: his own. This leaves scars on the lives of many people, possibly for longer than just one generation.

A testimony from Robert Meeropol (born Rosenberg), son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed in 1953 when he was six, states:

“As far as I know no one has studied how the execution of an immediate family member impacts children. We don’t even know how many children have an immediate family member on death row in the United States today. Worse, we don’t know the effect that having a parent executed will have upon their impressionable lives, and the cost society may pay, for that impact. As far as I can tell no one has bothered to study this even though these children are all innocent victims of the state’s efforts to kill their loved ones. 

And this disregard is matched by apparent indifference to the families of the executed. I was also unaware of their needs. But I’ve begun to redress that ignorance today. (…) I’ve met my brothers and sisters of shared suffering. We’ve been isolated for too long. We’ve been silent for too long.  We have gathered here to end our isolation, and to proclaim to Texas, the USA and the World that we will bear our victimization in silence no longer.”

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