Via Sentencing Law & Policy, a Denver Post article raises a difficult and troubling question: What to do with a life who kills in prison? The article asks a somewhat different question reflected in the title, when lifers kill in prison, is it a waste to prosecute them?
Darren Cantor, a Denver defense lawyer who represents high-profile murder suspects, said it can cost about $500,000 to go to trial on a murder case, depending on a variety of factors. The expense can be much less, but it can also go up, costing millions if the death penalty is pursued, he said.
Cantor said those costs don’t always include the expense of courtroom security, court personnel and the intangible cost of the jurors’ time.
But prosecutors counter that you can’t put a price on justice for victims, and punishing people for their crimes sends a message to other inmates that violence won’t be tolerated in prison.
To make it merely a money issue fails to address the larger, systemic issue, instead playing on the concern du jour of whether taxpayer money is wasted on prosecution. While this may be a real concern, it’s hardly the only concern. Clearly, prisons must control internal violence, both for the safety of other prisoners, the safety of guards, as well as the maintenance of order within the facility.
But how to do so?
If a prisoner is already serving a sentence of life without parole, or as Jeff Gamso suggests, the slow death penalty, the options aren’t great. Aside from life plus cancer, the lifer has nothing to lose. For smaller infractions, there’s always smaller punishments like getting tossed in the hole for a while or being put in a cell with a person whose hygiene leaves something to be desired, But significant misconduct, like killing a person, presents the challenge.
There is the death penalty. If you support capital punishment anyway, this is a no-brainer from the deterrent side, and the only question is the money. Chances are, your solution is find a quick and inexpensive way to rid the prison of its problem, but you would still have little difficulty justifying the cost of prosecution and accept it as the price of ridding society of someone who has forfeited his right to live. Got it.
But what if you don’t support capital punishment? Then, the solution isn’t as easy. The article proposes some reasons why it’s necessary to prosecute lifers who kill.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Troyer, who prosecuted Stewart, said victims — even if they were inmates with violent records of their own — deserve justice. “If you don’t prosecute a murder — especially if you have a pattern of not prosecuting a murder because someone is serving a life sentence — it can be an encouragement to that dangerous segment of society to commit murder with impunity because they feel they are not going to be prosecuted,” he said. “You have anarchy if you do not prosecute these crimes.”
Murderers serving life sentences also have seen their convictions overturned on technicalities, and another violent conviction in prison can help ensure they will never get out. “A life sentence isn’t always forever. There is no limitation on how much further down the road they can attack the conviction,” Watson said.
If prosecutors don’t seek convictions, inmates might believe that the U.S. attorney doesn’t care, Troyer said. “That is a hall pass to kill anyone you want,” he said.
What this fails to do is offer any meaningful alternative to the death penalty. Regardless of such existential concerns as victims “deserving justice,”it is undeniable that prisons cannot tolerate inmates committing murder with impunity, or that ignoring such crimes would be disastrous, whether put in terms of anarchy or lack of deterrence.
Having pondered this problem for a few days, I’ve been unable to come up with a viable solution. As I do not support the death penalty, the obvious answer is unavailing. There’s torture, but that would violate the 8th Amendment, as well it should. There’s deprivation, but that’s tantamount to torture if it’s long-term or permanent, and seemingly inadequate if otherwise. After all, some lifers may well do a few months, even years, in solitary confinement if they can get away with murder.
And if the best we can do is come up some half-hearted, kinda-effective remedy, the question of whether it’s worth the expense becomes more significant. It’s one thing to argue that a death penalty case demands an extraordinary price tag, but is a second life term? There isn’t a whole lot of deterrent effect after the first hundred years are served.
To a large extent, this notion relies on personal sensibilities, what any particular person “feels” would suffice. It would helpful to avoid reliance on this, since not too many readers here are likely to find themselves in prison for life in the first place, and fewer still would murder someone once there. In other words, this isn’t about us, but about them.
What works? Is it worth it? Is there an alternative?
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Aren’t supermax style prisons ostensibly for these kind of cases. If you commit a violent crime in prison, you get transferred to supermax. That seems necessary and sufficient.
They are, but is that sufficient?
What happens in states that don’t have the death penalty?
I often deal with these kinds of prosecutions are my old job. I had clients doing LWOP prosecuted for possessing cell phones, assaulting guards, assaulting other prisoners. What was the point? They weren’t eligible for the death penalty. Prosecutors would just say that they were sending a message. I guess it does send one to non-lifers – “we have no problem going after someone we can’t possible punish so imagine what we’d do to you.” We also had clients already on death row prosecuted for things like cell phone possession, which made even less sense. All these new sentences are stacked on the old ones. The State can’t exactly bring the dead body back to serve the new time.
I don’t think any of these deterred the guys doing LWOP. And they certainly didn’t seem worth it.
So what would work?
I’m not talking about piddling stuff, like contraband, but serious stuff. What’s left to do? What would work?
Homicides in state prisons are infrequent (the 2001-7 average was 51 per year). We do not have the DP in Iowa and such cases are very rare because we have about 0.5% of the state prisoners and not all homicides are committed by lifers.
What we do is turn the case over to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the county attorney. If there is a guilty plea the case will get very little attention.
I guess the call on prosecution is made by the County Attorney.
Does it matter? Not to me but I bet it matters to the victims relatives.
I’m not against the DP in principle, but am against it in practice. A second conviction for murder, one committed while serving LWOP, would change my mind. Then, I think, DP is likely the most appropriate punishment. It may not serve as a general deterrent, but a very specific preventative of further murders.
The same problems in practice that infect the death penalty in the first place remain when the defendant is in prison serving LWOP. Propensity doesn’t prove commission.
I don’t know. I don’t agree with the DP, so for me that is not an option. Prison-based discipline maybe, but some guys are already in segregation when this stuff happens. Maybe this question can’t be answered. Is a certain amount of violence in prison just going to happen, and how much is acceptable?
It’s a hard question, and has to be answered, but I don’t know what the better answer is either.
Killing in prison will not be reduced by threatening to make sentences more hopeless or miserable for inmates, whether that be by execution or “special housing.” The inhumanity of prison is what causes most prison killing in the first place. I am not offended that sentences in those cases are not sufficient by free world standards.
Coventry. Up here in Canada, we have a large, underpopulated island called Newfoundland. Move the dozen people who are not currently receiving Unemployment to the mainland and convert the island into a large prison. They would fend for themselves. It would save millions of dollars and ease the conscience of those who are against capital punishment. Canada could import your criminals for 50% of what you are currently paying for their incarceration.
No good. We tried that once, and wound up with Georgia.
US Navy brigs have a reputation for top-notch security. Of course, the navy has a virtually unlimited supply of free labor.
True, but do we do something or nothing?
And that hasn’t turned out well at all.
I should think that prison officials have the general power to carry out a variety of disciplinary actions without bothering with a trial. So why hold one?
Just put the killer in solitary. Or give him less pleasant food. Or find a hard, dirty job and make him do it. Or if you’re already doing all of those things, consider corporal punishments.
Or maybe just tie up the killer, let the other prisoners at him, and look the other way for the next few hours.
I fail to see how this situation presents a problem unless the prison administration is utterly without balls.
There are times I pray you are either trolling or 12 years old. This is one of them.
That’s because you lack the balls, Greenfield.
If that’s what it means to have balls, then I definitely lack them.
If the question refers only to punishment then the answer is nothing, because I do not believe in execution or sensory deprivation, only incapacitation until one is no longer dangerous. If the question refers to changing the conditions that breed prison murder, then there is plenty that can be done.
Such as reducing prison overcrowding.
I think that the death penalty does not really address the issue. If one is facing decades of time in prison, it does not really matter very much whether one dies of old age after forty years or of lethal injection after 15 years from now. The death penalty would only work as a psychological deterrent if it could be executed very soon after the crime. And that is, fortunately, not possible.
In my opinion, the best way to prevent crimes by lifers is to give them a rather large number of privileges that can be taken away as a punishment. The other way is not to have a LWOP. Then, if one knows that there is a chance at liberty, and it slips a decade further away if one commits a murder, there is considerable deterrent.
Fascinating question – first off, prosecute the chain of command in charge of security of the murdered prisoner for negligence. Practically, raising the statute of limitations on murder in prison and collecting evidence for later prosecution in case the original life sentence might be lifted would probably be the most economical solution.
[Ed. Note: Your comments are good, which is why I allow them to post even though you don’t use a real email address, but this will be the last time I let that happen. No more phony email address for you. Sorry.]
Um. Nothing?