Spirit in Action
Wisconsin Coalition Against the Death Penalty
I have no hands but yours to tempt my sheep No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep I have no arms but yours with which to hold The ones grown weary from the struggle and weak from growing old I have no hands but yours with which to see To let my children know that I am out and out is everything I have no way to feed the hungry souls No clothes to give, and they give, the ragged and the morn So be my heart, my hand, my tongue Through you I will be done The enders have I none to help and time The tangle knocks and twists the chains that strangle fearful minds Welcome to Spirit in Action, my name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all, I'll seek out light, love and helping hands Being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life I have no way to open people's eyes, except that you will show them how to trust the inner mind I guess today on Spirit in Action is Arthur Thekston. Arthur is active with the Wisconsin Coalition against the death penalty, as they oppose the upcoming state referendum Arthur speaks not only as a religious individual, but as a former district attorney and deputy sheriff Arthur does his work against the death penalty with dedication and thoughtfulness, seeing state-sponsored executions as a serious erosion of civilized behavior In addition to his personal experience with law enforcement and the legal system, he draws on a wide variety of sources for his informational and persuasive work Some sites you might want to check out are No Death Penalty Wisconsin and Death Penalty Info Arthur is a lifetime Unitarian Universalist and a member of the James Reeb UU congregation in Madison Arthur, welcome to Spirit in Action Thank you so much for having me Mark It's generous of you to extend your work day to continue talking to us. Do you do this often? I do talk about the death penalty a fair amount. I am an active Unitarian Universalist and am speaking at Gosh 8 or 10 UU congregations around the state between maybe June and November I also spoke to an ethical culture group a couple of Sundays ago If you're speaking primarily to Unitarian groups, I'd say you're most likely preaching to the choir Do you also go out and speak to groups where you could possibly get stoned for your opinions? Well, I'm happy to say that stoning is no longer common in Wisconsin because we are a civilized state. Indeed, because we are a civilized state, we do not need the death penalty anymore If indeed we ever did. But yeah, I have participated in some public forums where there was certainly a mixed audience What's the political climate in the state of Wisconsin at the current point regarding the death penalty from the governor on down to the legislature? Well, I have to say that the death penalty really is a non-partisan issue There are many Democrats who favor the death penalty or at least say they do And likewise, there are many Republicans including some very conservative Republicans who oppose the death penalty for any number of reasons So although I have to say that the current battle does seem to be cast in a partisan light in that we have a Democratic governor and a Democratic Attorney General Indeed, both candidates on the Democratic side for Attorney General oppose the death penalty and on the Republican side, both the gubernatorial candidate and both candidates for Attorney General favor it The fact is that once you get beyond that sort of electoral partisan battle, there's a great deal more diversity and variety on both sides of the political aisle It is a source of great regret to me that the death penalty issue has become a partisan battleground much as abortion has become Really, this is not a partisan issue at all and we should try to keep it not a partisan issue You know Arthur, since you work in state government for the Department of Regulation and licensing Do you have to be careful to avoid taking sides in this issue because of your employment in the state? Well, I am a civil servant and in the classified service of the state of Wisconsin I'm also a member of the Wisconsin State Attorneys Association and it is our union's members who will be prosecuting these cases and who will be defending the convictions and sentences upon appeal Therefore, I think it entirely right that our union, our state attorney's union and I as a state prosecuting attorney speak out on what a death penalty would mean for Wisconsin Well, let's talk about that then because you at one point were the district attorney for Taylor County And I think it's pretty much the mainline viewpoint, mainline belief that people like district attorneys, prosecutors and sheriffs are all going to favor the death penalty You know that is true, people have that preconception which turns out to be a misconception I have spent my entire professional career in law enforcement of one kind or another I have been a police officer, a district attorney and an assistant district attorney, a special prosecutor I am now a state prosecuting attorney for the various licensing boards I don't do criminal work anymore but it is law enforcement in another forum I have from a very early age opposed the death penalty as being really not what our society is about Public policy is supposed to uplift us and help us to aspire to our highest and best ideals and to be all that we can be The death penalty drags us down and therefore is unwise public policy and in the long run destructive to society Is it not a common opinion in the courts in law enforcement to favor the death penalty to favor having that as one of the tools they can use as a deterrent? Certainly many law enforcement officers, meaning line police officers would tell you that they favor the death penalty But I think that thoughtful police officers realize that if they are going to apprehend somebody who is to be charged with murder that they would much rather do so in a situation where there is no death penalty at all You put yourself in the position there of being a person who is about to be arrested And if you think you have absolutely nothing to lose because you are going to be put to death Wouldn't you be more likely to try to shoot it out with the police? Whereas if you know that you are going to be treated humanely and that you will not be put to death I think you are much more likely to surrender peacefully And I think when thoughtful police officers consider being in the position of having to arrest such a person They would rather do so in a situation where the person didn't feel that sort of desperate fear that he or she is going to be killed by the system So I actually think that thoughtful police officers would also oppose the death penalty merely on self-preservation grounds But beyond that there is no evidence, no legitimate scientific evidence whatsoever that shows that the death penalty has any deterrent effect Studies have shown that indeed right around the time of highly publicized executions There actually is an increase in violence in the community including murder, domestic violence, bar fights, those sorts of things People seem to react to a well publicized execution by letting out their violent impulses I think you could fairly argue from this evidence that the death penalty actually causes murder rather than deterring it And also many police officers do oppose the death penalty and you can find out more about that at deathpenaltyinfo.org That's the website of the Death Penalty Information Center, a well regarded non-partisan research group in Washington DC which compiles all sorts of information and statistics and does not take sides You know Arthur, one of the reasons I've heard that we need a death penalty is because it allows the victims or the families of the victims to move on after the crime that it allows them to have some degree of closure that things are finally over, it's done Is this a valid reason to have capital punishment? Well, I certainly think not, I've heard this argument myself, we need this for the families so they can have closure And we actually heard that from some family members when Timothy McVay was executed That was an interesting case because he had so many victims that there were family members who were in favor of the death penalty and a number who were opposed to the death penalty so he had a very interesting juxtaposition there of family members The whole argument about closure in my view is one that is extremely intellectually shallow How is it that we can assume without any evidence or even any reasoned analysis that family members of a murder victim cannot have closure while the murderer is still alive? You know, there's just so much wrong with this argument First of all, what is closure? What does that really mean? And is it different from revenge? Even if the death penalty allows some people to feel that feeling of relief that I think they're talking about when they say the word closure What about the vast majority of murders that will not result in a death penalty? Under any circumstances being spoken of by any proponent of the death penalty, the death penalty will be imposed in a tiny minority of cases And even then it will only be imposed when we actually catch the murderer And somewhere, depending on where you are, between a quarter and a half of murders are never solved in the first place So those families don't even have the closure of knowing who it was who killed their loved one Much less is seeing him held accountable So what are we going to say? Well, they're just not closed, they're never going to have closure I just have to ask, what is more closing for a family if we accept this whole argument about the concept of closure? The knowledge that the murderer has been caught and convicted and is being held in prison Or is it the degree of punishment involved here? I just have to believe that what gives families closure, meaning the ability to work through their feelings and their pain Get on with life in a way that allows them to achieve a reasonably happy life Given that they have lost something that can never be given back to them Is not whether or not there's a death penalty It has a lot more to do with success in holding the right person accountable And in using perhaps even some public resources to assist those people in working through the pain With mental health counselors or whatever other resources we can bring to bear on this Arthur, in that three year period when you were a DA Did you have much in the way of frustration that criminals were not getting convicted enough Not getting appropriate punishments, severe enough punishments for their actions? You know, I did not feel that at the time I was district attorney in the early mid-1980s Which is now a full generation ago, but I felt that the system, if it was used properly By the people in the system, the prosecutor, the district attorney, on the one side The defense attorney and defendant on the other, and then the judge playing his or her role That the system that we have was adequate to provide appropriate outcomes And really substantially all cases One of the things that concerns me individually now as a matter of policy Is that our society and our criminal justice system have become so oriented towards punishment And towards, you know, just lock them up and throw away the key That really every transgression is treated as if it were So serious as to threaten the very foundations of our society And really relatively minor offenses have become major felonies I just see a whole trend here, which I think is destructive to our society And which we cannot sustain in the long run And I see the current move in Wisconsin towards adopting capital punishment As a part of that larger trend towards being more punitive and angry Instead of becoming a more humane, thoughtful society I am not opposed to capital punishment because I think that somehow the murderer does not deserve it I am happy to acknowledge that I feel in my gut that he and it usually is a he Does somehow deserve it, or at least I feel that he does But why would my own feeling translate into proper public policy? You know, I have been asked, how would you feel if it was your wife, mother, daughter? They always ask about female relatives, they never ask about male relatives They never ask you, how would you feel if your father or brother was killed? It's always your mother, your daughter, your wife or sister But wouldn't you want to see that person pay the ultimate price? This is the question that is posed And I have always wanted to look back that person in the eye and say Not only would I want to see that person pay the ultimate price I'd want to exact it myself, I'd want to push the needle, throw the switch And not only that, I'm thinking in terms of hot poker and pliers and electrodes At this point, I hope that the person I'm talking to is having big eyes And a mouth that's forming a circle and trying to back away But really, the point isn't how angry I would be Or how much the murderer deserves punishment The issue is how we as a society, as a matter of public policy, are going to respond to evil Great evil, huge evil And are we going to have a public policy that calls us to rise above our anger and our pain? Or are we going to have a public policy that says yes, give in to your anger? If that is our public policy, I wonder why we bother to have it at all Because really, we should be called to something better than murder Organized, thoughtful, planned murder Amen [MUSIC PLAYING] Light on the tear, there's a dead man walking I'm the tear, dead man walking [MUSIC PLAYING] One comes in with his hands, all a sweat, stealing his eyes and a beer on his bread [MUSIC PLAYING] Three stands by with a prayer, but go over [MUSIC PLAYING] He's preaching my forgiveness in the language of death [MUSIC PLAYING] One last meal, one last cigarette One last phone call at the sermon little talk [MUSIC PLAYING] In the last words and you've been anything queer [MUSIC PLAYING] Because eternity's waiting at the end of the war [MUSIC PLAYING] I said, quite on the tear, there's a dead man walking [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] One on the tear, there's a dead man walking [MUSIC PLAYING] I ain't asking for favors, and that's a pity I ain't got no right to ask for forgiveness at all [MUSIC PLAYING] The vengeance in his mind says the Lord and the Bible [MUSIC PLAYING] But he don't know a thing about the root down the hall [MUSIC PLAYING] Good men and women all come and collect it [MUSIC PLAYING] So he asked souls God to burn for you right [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] But an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind [MUSIC PLAYING] I said, quite on the tear, there's a dead man walking [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Quite on the tear, there's a dead man walking [MUSIC PLAYING] One hand on the trigger, and you're there on the switch. One of them is in a circuit, and say, "Witch." And that's not a dream, I've seen my mother, she was standing in the kitchen staring out of the yard. She had her hands on her hips, her eyes on the garden like sprouted me apart, and you've prayed real hard. 'Cause in July morning, church bells are ringing, heart of oak pew, and the sun day bends. Now I'm sitting here, waiting on the angel band. In my last pseudocodes, with the strap across my chest. White on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. White on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. From the very first steps, the last of their lives. We'll be more to kill 'em in the seed and survive. I said, "Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking." Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. I said, "Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking." Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. Quite on the teeth, there's a dead man walking. [Music] That was John McCutchen's song, "Dead Man Walking", from his CD, "My Dear Than The Sword". You're listening to an interview with Arthur Thexton. He's with the Wisconsin Coalition Against the Death Penalty, speaking out, against the upcoming referendum on the death penalty in Wisconsin. You can find more about them at WCADP. That's Wisconsin Coalition Against the Death Penalty, their initials, .org. Arthur was the DA in Taylor County for three years, he was a police officer. He speaks about law enforcement from the point of view of someone who's actually served there. And he speaks out strongly as a Unitarian Against the Death Penalty. You know, Arthur, if the point is not punishment, but still someone is judged to be a lifelong danger, someone who is simply not going to mend their ways, then the alternative truly is life imprisonment. Is that an adequate alternative to capital punishment, given the expense, given the possibility of escape? Why is that a better alternative than ending a life, if in essence you're trying to end their life by locking them away for the rest of it? Life without parole and the death penalty are certainly thought to be the two alternatives from which we choose, in dealing with the most heinous of crimes, murder, treason, that kind of thing. As between the two, either would adequately protect the public from future depredations of the defendant, assuming, of course, that the prisons are properly managed and we do not permit escapes, either one would do fine. The question then becomes not what is more punishment, less punishment, better punishment, but really which of those alternatives is more in keeping with our values and our goals and aspirations as a society. We have a choice here of holding someone and preserving his or her life while allowing that person to reflect upon what it was that brought him or her to this place, or the other alternative is for us to descend to the level which that person has already taken us to, that is to say death, killing. As between those two, it is far more consistent with my values to require that that person live in a manner that allows him to and encourages him to reflect upon why he's there. I'm just unwilling to kill other people, period, and I want to live in a society in which we hold it as a very high ideal that we don't kill people, we cannot do that if in fact we do kill people by government action. Does your opinion, your value, and I don't know if this is only a personal value or part of your identity as a Unitarian Universalist, does your belief that you shouldn't kill extend very widely to the point where you could be called pro-life in terms of war and all the other ways in which we kill people? No, it does not. I am not a pacifist. I was a police officer I carried again. It was loaded. I was prepared to use it in defense of myself or others. And I am not anti-choice. I believe that women have and may exercise the choice to have an abortion. So I am not pro-life in the classic sense, classic in the sense in which the language is used in the United States. But I do think that killing a human being, by which I mean someone who has been born alive, is to be avoided whenever possible, whenever possible. Now, in self-defense you have to choose between allowing yourself or another person to die or killing the attacker and I think it's legitimate to defend your own life in that even extreme way. And war, at least in the sense of a just war, is the defense of your society which has been attacked. And so that isn't merely an extension of individual self-defense to corporate or national self-defense. So I think that those are legitimate, or at least they can be legitimate. So I am not a pacifist and not opposed to all killing under all circumstances. Nor am I a vegetarian, I might have had. So. Have you had these attitudes, these beliefs about the death penalty, long-standing? Yes, indeed. You know, I have given some thought to how I formed this belief and I think that it must go back to when I was a boy, maybe an early adolescent. The book about the trial and execution of Bruno Hauptman, who was convicted of the kidnap and murder of the Lindbergh baby in the early thirties. And this book raised some doubts about that case. But that is, I think, when I first really thought about the death penalty and I remember thinking even then that it was wrong to use it because of the possibility of error. It is still wrong to use the death penalty because of the possibility of error, but my own thinking has evolved far beyond just that reason. Can you give me a little bit of an overview of the history of the death penalty in the United States? Well, the death penalty has been a part of really substantially all societies since the beginning of recorded history, Eastern and Western, what we used to call primitive or tribal and modern. And really the anti-death penalty movement didn't come about until the 19th century when progressive thinkers, including a lot of Quakers, who were interested in correctional reform and in thinking more clearly about public policy and how we might bring religious values to help in the formation of public policy, started to think about whether or not the death penalty really was appropriate. So really all societies used the death penalty in one way or another until the 1800s when places began to sort of experiment with abolishing it. And Wisconsin was just one of those places. Death penalty was abolished here seven generations ago in 1853, following really what can only be characterized as a botched execution in 1851 of a John McCaffrey. John McCaffrey murdered his wife by throwing her down a well. He was unquestionably guilty. He confessed. He apologized to the public at the time of his execution while he was standing on the scaffolding. At the time, this is sort of an interesting little side light. The reason that the execution was botched is that they were trying out new technology in execution and they had a mechanism which instead of being the traditional hanging method, which is, you know, you put the noose around the neck and there's a trap door under the feet and the trap door opens and the person drops and the rope is only so long and when you get to the end of the rope, the neck is broken. Well, this mechanism actually was supposed to lift him up and to jerk him up sharply with the same result that his neck would be broken, but it didn't work. And as a result, the crowd, the assembled crowd, hundreds of people saw John McCaffrey strangled in full view of everyone there. And it took 10, 15 minutes for him to die. So it was a failure of modern technology of the time that so horrified people and really led to the abolition of the death penalty in Wisconsin. I have to wonder, as a historical question, whether we would have had abolition, had the execution gone as planned, I do think that there are different cultures in different states. The states that have and use the death penalty a lot, states like Texas, Florida, California, even Oklahoma, Virginia, these are states that simply have a different history and culture than Wisconsin. Now, I don't think that it's right for them to use the death penalty either and I think that what the death penalty does is it sort of perpetuates a cycle of violence and violence, response to violence and then more violence. But in Wisconsin, and really in the upper Midwest, generally, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, we have a tradition, perhaps because of the peoples who settled here and the reasons that they came, that is far more respectful and valuing of life. We don't think life is cheap here. And as a result, we have a lower crime rate because we have a culture of respecting each other. And we have, I think, a lower murder rate because we respect each other's lives and value them. And the last thing we need, the last thing we need, is to adopt a feature from a culture which is different from our own, like the death penalty, which would teach us as a state and as a culture that life, in fact, is not as valuable as we used to think it was. And that the government will take your life and therefore, as long as it's in a good cause, as long as you're acting correctly, rightly, justly, you can do it too. And I would predict that if we had a death penalty in Wisconsin, that you would see more killing in what was thought to be self-defense. You'll see people try to justify that as self-defense more, but people will be quicker on the trigger. If we teach ourselves as a society, that it's okay to kill as long as you're doing so in the name of justice, self-defense, righteousness, something like that. Wouldn't we be taking a step in that direction already with the carry concealed type provisions? Well, that would, that would be a step in that direction. We have not taken that step because our governor at the request of law enforcement everywhere has successfully vetoed those bills. You mentioned that Wisconsin and the upper Midwest in general has this history of a lower murder rate. Just very recently, last couple weeks, there was some news from Milwaukee about some really horrific violent crimes down there. Are we perhaps losing our history of connection to this kind of respect and non-violence? Is it maybe not only the populace as well as the legislature that's drifting away from this more respectful society? Well, Wisconsin is certainly subject to the larger social and economic forces of the nation, and I don't want to suggest that we're somehow immune to them. There have always been individual, horrific crimes, stories of viciousness and cruelty abound in human history and in states with and without the death penalty. The question of whether or not, as a matter of public policy, we should change our law to respond to an individual case, I think, is one that we can debate. Part of that is a prediction of the future, you know, what would happen if we did thus and so, and it's very difficult to do scientific experiments that would actually show you what would happen. Without, in any way, trying to minimize the pain of the families of the victims of these kinds of crimes, whether they be committed by a Jeffrey Dahmer or a Timothy McVay or anybody else, let me just say that as a matter of public policy, there is no evidence to believe that having a death penalty would statistically reduce either the numbers of murders or the viciousness of them. Murderers, when in the heat of passion and most murders are committed in the heat of passion, do not think about whether or not there's going to be a death penalty at the other end. Murderers who are truly planning murderer and might be expected to think about the consequences assume that they're not going to be caught and plan to avoid being caught so the death penalty isn't an issue for them because they're not going to be caught anyway. Either way, the death penalty, in my view, would not affect either the numbers of murders or the viciousness of them. When you were at the DA in Taylor County, did you actually deal with some murders? Absolutely, I prosecuted one that had some traction at the time in terms of publicity, a very sad story of a young father who had, as a teenager, he and his girlfriend had managed to get her pregnant and then they got married because they felt they had to. Then there they were unemployed and having to care for this newborn and he was just emotionally unequipped for this and he ended up treating this baby in a most cruel, vicious fashion, putting him in a clothes dryer and holding his head under water. And really, things that came out of trial that did curl your hair and he eventually beat him so savagely that the baby died. It was just a case of unspeakable horror and I prosecuted him and he went to prison, as he quite rightly should have. But really, the death penalty would have done nothing to bring that baby back and would have done nothing to ease the pain of the other family members involved in the case who were just as much of the victims as that sad infant. And I guess it just goes without saying that it wouldn't have done anything else to deter anybody else from committing that same kind of a crime with a child. No, consequences were the furthest thing from the young man's mind at the time. He was incapable of thinking more than 10 minutes in the future. He was frustrated and angry and immature. Whether the penalty was 30 days in the county jail or death meant nothing. The upcoming referendum on November 7th has some very specific wording. Do you have it in front of you so that you could share it with folks? Well, I have it clearly in mind. It is an advisory referendum. It asks voters to weigh in on the question of whether or not Wisconsin should have a death penalty in cases of first degree intentional homicide or murder, which is intentional in the sense of the person intends that the victim die. If there is DNA evidence that supports the conviction, there's nothing in the referendum that would require that the particular crime be especially heinous or vicious. And there is no statement in the referendum question about what the concept of supporting a conviction might mean. So it's a little unclear what you would actually be voting for there. There are lots of ways in which DNA evidence might support a conviction without actually having any particular meaning in terms of the outcome of the case or the degree of heinousness or viciousness. And thus, in the determination of whether or not the death penalty was actually appropriate. Also, I don't understand and really no one can explain why DNA evidence is any better than fingerprint evidence. If you have a fingerprint of the murderer at the scene, that's pretty good evidence that he was there. What's the difference between that and leaving a drop of blood, which would have DNA in it? Either way, the proof is positive that the defendant was there. Why, in one case, would you be eligible for the death penalty and not in the other? There's no decent public policy reason to support this kind of distinction. And in fact, the reason it's there is because polling data suggests that when you mention the word DNA in connection with the death penalty, support for the death penalty goes up 10 points in the polls. And the reason for that is because people do, in fact, fear executing the wrong person and they think at least initially in terms of a quick reaction that if you have DNA evidence, then you won't make any mistakes. But that isn't true either because DNA evidence is subject to all sorts of conditions that are not scientifically controllable. DNA degrades at the scene. It depends on who's collecting it, how good it is. Once you get it to the lab, it still has to be analyzed and processed and interpreted by human beings. You hope that they're honest. Occasionally in other states, there have been problems with this. Not in Wisconsin, fortunately. And the fact is that anybody who thinks that DNA evidence will all of a sudden mean that there will be zero errors is just fooling himself. As long as this is a system which is owned and operated by human beings, there will be mistakes. They are inevitable. We don't know when, we don't know how, we don't know where, we just know that eventually one will happen. One of the things you mentioned along the way is that some people oppose capital punishment because it's such a final decision, you know, can't be corrected. And there are errors made, and that evidence comes along, maybe DNA evidence, maybe someone else confesses, maybe something else, which then exonerates the person mistakenly convicted of the crime. There is also the concern that you send people to be killed who are minorities or undesirable defendants in other ways, much more frequently than desirable defendants, white, wealthy, maybe female, even if the desirable and undesirable defendants have committed exactly the same crimes with the same conditions, same history, that are prejudices more often than the facts end up keeping some groups of people alive and condemning other classes of people to death. Are these concerns of yours as well? Well, sure, they're concerns, and they should be concerns. And I think that those are absolutely legitimate reasons for being against the death penalty. As long as the system is owned and operated by human beings, there will be mistakes. And those mistakes include mistakes of application. The fact that if you kill a white person, you are far more likely to get a more severe punishment and in capital punishment states capital punishment than if you kill a black person is a reflection of really a history in our society of racism. And in Wisconsin, we already send a higher proportion of black citizens to prison than any other state. Any other state, we are number one in this proportionately imprisoning black people. Does anybody seriously think that that would not also be reflected in our death penalty statistics? I think you would have to be seriously deranged to think that it would be different. Clearly, this is a state that has some work to do in dealing with its own racism. Can you tell me, Arthur, what the purpose of this referendum is? Why is this referendum on the death penalty coming up in our state at this time? I mean, it's not decisive, I think, even if 100% of the people voted for it, that doesn't necessarily mean that any change to the law would be made. Does it? Well, that is true. In my opinion, the chief proponent of the referendum, Senator Allen Lassay of Green Bay, is a sincere believer that the death penalty is appropriate to public policy, and he just honestly believes that Wisconsin should have one because it would provide appropriate and just punishment for those few people to whom it should be applied. And I do not question his personal sincerity in believing that. However, that does not explain why it is in fact on the ballot at this particular time. It's on the ballot in November in order to bring out voters who politicians believe are likely to vote a more conservative group of candidates right down the line. It's on the ballot because Tabor did not pass the so-called taxpayer's bill of rights, the tax limiting amendment to the Constitution. Because they couldn't pass that, the death penalty became kind of a substitute to bring out what they believe will be the conservative base to vote for, frankly, Republican candidates. I think that this is going to be an unsuccessful strategy, but I honestly think that notwithstanding Senator Lassay's personal sincerity of belief, that that is the reason that the Republican leadership lined up and turned this into a partisan issue. I'd like to explore with you, Arthur, both your historic Unitarian beliefs with respect to life and death and your personal current views about such issues. You described yourself as not being a pacifist and, in fact, being a supporter of just wars. Was this a belief in the household where you grew up and is it the outlook of the Unitarian congregation you're part of now? Well, I grew up in a household where I was not permitted to play with toy guns or other weapons. You know, we didn't have those little bows and arrows with the suction cup tips either. And it was a serious violation of the household rules to engage in fighting with or hitting of your siblings. My parents, I would not call them pacifists, but they certainly believed in nonviolence. And I was raised in the '50s and '60s, having been born in 1950, under the influence of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his ethic of nonviolence. My parents were active in the civil rights movement, and his example, I think, was always important in our house. So I was raised to avoid violence whenever possible, and I suppose that that could be a part of why I have come to this view about the death penalty. The Unitarian Universalist Association has historically been opposed to the death penalty. The very first year that the association was formed by the merger of the old American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America in 1961. There was a resolution passed against the death penalty, and it has been reaffirmed at least three times since then. So there's certainly a consistency there. I come down in a different place. I am a pacifist, and even worse than that, I am a vegetarian. So I'm curious about how you think about the issues of life, you know, certainly self-defense. I understand is an issue. War I actually have more trouble with. You spoke of your belief in just war, and I assume you know what the defined principles and criteria of a just war are. Have you ever seen a just war? Yeah, I think the war against Hitler was just. You know, I understand that World War II, in terms of the cause and motivation for getting in, comes closer to being what I would conceive of as a just war. Except that in terms of the criteria of the just war doctrine, point seven of the doctrine is that you can't deliberately strike at civilians. And so the attack on Hiroshima or the fire bombing of Dresden were clear violations of just war criteria. So World War II also would not qualify as a just war from our side. That is a question of methods that occurs later. The issue of whether or not we should declare war on Adolf Hitler and take up arms against him is different from how those arms are deployed and the methods used. And I think that you'd get more support for the idea that even in a just war you have to employ methods other than mass fire bombing and nuclear weapons than you would to say, therefore we shouldn't fight the war at all. But again, you know, this doesn't have anything to do with the death penalty. And what I may say about this is not representative of the entire death penalty community or even the Wisconsin coalition against the death penalty. It's just my own view of it. That is a good and helpful clarification. And it is exactly what I'm intending to do here. I'm asking you about your spirit in action and what motivates and upholds you as opposed to just the general group with which you are working. In the case of deciding whether or not to go to war or not, we have choices to make within a range of alternatives. That range tends to be quite limited. You can either respond with force of arms or not. And to not respond with force of arms leaves the aggressor in possession of that which he wrongfully gained. In the case of capital punishment of domestic crime, that whole analysis does not proceed in the same way. If we are to decide whether to inflict capital punishment, our choices are not to let the murderer go free, but to decide whether or not, having him in our captivity, we will kill him, or we will imprison him, or I suppose, you know, we could allow him to go free, but nobody's talking about that. As between the range of choices available to us, my view is, and my value is, that human beings have intrinsic worth and dignity. I do not know or understand the inherent worth and dignity of a guy like Timothy McVey or a guy like Jeffrey Dahmer, but I do take it on faith that there is something there, which is worthy of our respect on some very basic level. And thus I am unprepared to kill him and to kill even that tiny little spark that may be there, which I hope is there, which I'm taking on faith is there, of that person's worth and dignity. Do you have a name that you use for that spark that you're referring to, a name that you use either personally or as a Unitarian? The first principle of Unitarian Universalism is that each person does have inherent worth and dignity in our list of seven. The last one is that there is an interdependent web of existence of which we are all apart, and it is those two principles that I return to in my own thinking on this point. I do not wish to tear the interdependent web of existence of which we are all apart by killing anyone without absolute necessity, when there is no alternative. And we have an alternative. I usually deal with this question in discussion and in talks with Unitarian Universalist groups by saying that ultimately the question about capital punishment is not about murderers. It's not about them. It's not about how much we hate them or angry with them or want to punish them. It's about us. It's about our values and who we aspire to be, who we want to be as a people. You mentioned one website already, Arthur, Death Penalty Info.org. What is the website for the organization that you're with, the Wisconsin Coalition Against the Death Penalty? Sure. It's our initials.org, W-C-A-D-P.org. There is also a campaign committee which we have set up, No Death Penalty, W-I for Wisconsin.org. It has more campaign-related material on it. Yes. Are you supported in this work by the body of the Wisconsin Coalition Against the Death Penalty or by your local Unitarian Universalist congregation? I don't quite know how to ask this question. In Quaker circles, we have a practice of releasing a friend, a Quaker, to carry out a leading. Both affirming their mission, their ministry, if you will, and often offering them practical support in their work. Do you receive any kind of support like that or otherwise? Gee, I'm unfamiliar with this concept of releasing a friend, but it sounds intriguing and I would like to learn more about it. I think that each of us does this kind of on an individual basis and to the extent that we are supported in our work in this area, it tends to be by our families more than by organizational members. Well, I do hope you're getting the support that you need from your family, from your community, from your friends, from your religious community. It's good work that you're doing and I really appreciate you taking time out of a busy professional schedule in addition to your volunteer time to speak to us and to help call us to a higher consciousness as a community, as a civilization. Well, thanks again for having me. Keep up the good work. I certainly will. You've been listening to an interview with Arthur Fexton of the Wisconsin Coalition Against the Death Penalty. Arthur has served as a policeman and deputy sheriff and as a DA in Taylor County in Wisconsin for three years. You can hear this program again via my website, northernspiritradial.org and you can find helpful links and information about the program, the music, and other things on my website. Included in this program was a song by John McCutchen, Dead Man Walking. The theme music for Spirit in Action is "I Have No Hands but Yours" by Carol Johnson. Thank you for listening. I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. You can email me at helpsmeet@usa.net. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. I have no higher call for you than this to love and serve your neighbor. Enjoying selflessness. To love and serve your neighbor. Enjoying selflessness. [Music] You
Arthur Thexton is active with the Wisconsin Coalition Against the Death Penalty as they oppose the upcoming state referendum. Arthur speaks not only as a religious individual, but as a former District Attorney and Deputy Sheriff.