Judges, Heretics, and Capital Punishment
As you’ll have seen, the Legal professional Basic of Oklahoma filed a motion asking that the Oklahoma Court docket of Felony Appeals decelerate the tempo of executions in that state. Legal professional Basic Gentner Drummond argued that killing somebody on the schedule set by the courtroom—each 60 days—imposed a psychological {and professional} burden on an overtaxed jail employees that was “too onerous and never sustainable.” He requested that executions happen each 90 days as an alternative.
Decide Gary Lumpkin wasn’t having it. At a hearing on the movement, he mentioned he wasn’t impressed with the “sympathy stuff” and pointed to the slippery slope that had fashioned in his head. “Who’s to say subsequent month you received’t are available in and say I want 120 days? These items must cease, and folks must suck it up, understand they’ve a tough job to do, and get it finished in a well timed, proficient, skilled manner.” A recording of Lumpkin’s remarks is obtainable here.
It might be that Decide Lumpkin is just morally obtuse, and that he’s both detached or oblivious to the toll inflicted on executioners, as a number of commentators have advised. If that’s true, then there’s actually nothing extra to be mentioned. Generally folks say silly issues, and highly effective folks appear to place their foot in it much more than the remainder of us. At a sure level, nevertheless, that reality is not surprising and its reaffirmation is not newsworthy.
However I believe one thing way more attention-grabbing is happening. I believe the decide’s hostility to Drummond is much less a response to his movement than an try to guard the integrity of his tribe. I believe Decide Lumpkin suspects the lawyer normal is a heretic and is punishing the lawyer normal for his deviance. The entire imbroglio is an instance of what social psychologists describe because the “black sheep impact.”
The logic of the black sheep impact is easy. Individuals are tribal; they type and be a part of teams. A few of these teams grow to be important to their id, and folks derive very important psychological consolation from realizing that their group exists, that it’s safe, and that they and their fellow group members are meaningfully totally different from outsiders. As a result of these teams can serve such an indispensable psychological position, many individuals are apt to defend them with explicit ferocity. This leads them to police the metaphorical bounds of the group as if their life relied on it (suppose “tradition wars”), but in addition to be hyper-vigilant concerning the risk that imposters are masquerading as members and thus weakening the group from inside. Consider the assaults on RINOs—Republicans in Title Solely—who’re shamed and purged from the group for not being ideologically pure. On the left, cancel tradition works a lot the identical manner and serves the identical exclusionary goal.
You will discover a abstract of the literature on the black sheep impact here.
***
To see how the black sheep impact is perhaps enjoying out within the tiff between Decide Lumpkin and Legal professional Basic Drummond, we’d like somewhat context. To start with, Oklahoma is a staunchly conservative state that retains and nonetheless actively makes use of capital punishment. Because the restoration of the dying penalty in 1976, solely Texas has executed extra folks, and no state has executed more people per capita, than Oklahoma. In 2016, a state-wide referendum that amended the state structure to ensure the state’s energy “to impose capital punishment and set strategies of execution” handed 66% to 34%. Amongst different duties, the lawyer normal represents the State in courtroom and defends its dying sentences from post-conviction assaults. In the case of capital punishment, the lawyer normal is probably essentially the most seen face of ingroup membership.
In Oklahoma, execution dates are set by the Court docket of Felony Appeals, the place Lumpkin sits. In July 2022, the courtroom scheduled execution dates for 25 folks, with an execution scheduled for practically each month from August 2022 to December 2024, an unprecedented schedule, particularly given Oklahoma’s well-documented historical past of botched executions. Drummond took workplace January 9, 2023. Shortly afterwards, he asked the courtroom to delay the tempo of executions, spacing them each 60 days as an alternative of each 4 weeks. The courtroom agreed.
Then, in April 2023, Drummond filed a motion within the Court docket of Felony Appeals to vacate the conviction of Richard Glossip, whose case has attracted nationwide consideration based mostly on the cumulative proof of official misconduct. On the request of Oklahoma legislators, a non-public legislation agency performed an exhaustive reexaminationof the case and concluded there have been “grave doubt[s] [about] the integrity of Glossip’s homicide conviction and dying sentence.” Based mostly on this overview, Drummond mentioned he had reached “the tough conclusion” that Glossip deserved a brand new trial. Noting a prosecutor’s obligation to hunt justice, Drummond said that the numerous issues with the case “set up that Glossip’s trial was unfair and unreliable. Consequently, the State will not be comfy advocating that the results of the trial would have been the identical however for these errors.” Notably, in taking this place, Drummond reversed the place taken by prior attorneys normal.
The Court docket of Felony Appeals unanimously denied Drummond’s movement.
Drummond then took the unprecedented step of supporting Glossip’s petition earlier than the Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Paroles. Once more, you will need to word precisely what Drummond said at that continuing:
I might verify that I imagine Mr. Glossip is, in actual fact, responsible of a minimum of accent after the actual fact. Extra doubtless than not, he’s responsible of homicide. However I don’t imagine that the proof presents he’s responsible past an inexpensive doubt, and that’s my concern. I imagine that once we view the cumulative nature of the information, I’ve reached the tough determination that the state can not proceed in confidence with the conviction that may end result within the dying penalty.
In the course of the listening to, a district lawyer who was current despatched crude and derogatory texts about Drummond to colleagues that attacked Drummond’s willingness to talk on behalf of a dying row inmate. The Board denied parole by an evenly cut up vote, 2-2, with one member of the Board recusing.
Lastly, Drummond filed a brief supporting Glossip in america Supreme Court docket. The opening line of Drummond’s papers once more reveals his goal. (I’m omitting the case citations):
This Court docket has lengthy held that the prosecutor’s position transcends that of an adversary: he’s the consultant not of an strange occasion to an issue, however of a sovereignty … whose curiosity … in a legal prosecution will not be that it shall win a case, however that justice shall be finished.
On January 22, 2024, the Supreme Court docket agreed to hear Glossip’s enchantment, a minimum of an implicit rebuke of the Court docket of Felony Appeals.
Eight days later, Drummond filed the present movement looking for to carry executions each 90 days as an alternative of 60.
***
This historical past locations Decide Lumpkin’s hostility to Drummond’s movement in a unique gentle. Many media retailers have famous that Decide Lumpkin mentioned he wasn’t impressed with the “sympathy stuff” and that the lawyer normal and the Division of Corrections should “suck it up.” However to my information, none has seen the passage that appears to matter most. After recounting events greater than 20 years in the past when the State of Oklahoma executed folks way more quickly than each 60 days, Decide Lumpkin took a direct jab at Drummond:
That Division of Corrections, that AG’s workplace, these folks did their responsibility. And I’m sorry however I come from the Marine Corps and when we now have powerful duties, we simply say ‘man up.’ … And if these professionals, these folks, these leaders from 2001 to 2003 may perform their duties, in such an expert manner with no hitch, then why can not the management that’s in place right this moment carry out their duties?
The emphasis is in Decide Lumpkin’s unique tone.
The implication appears unmistakable. A actual lawyer normal, an lawyer normal who was a devoted member of the tribe, would by no means carry such a frivolous movement. That this AG ought to litter the courtroom’s docket with this whining simply goes to indicate he actually isn’t one among us. Decide Lumpkin’s very public rebuke of Drummond was an try and sign to the devoted that Oklahoma has a heretic in excessive locations.
And that’s the nice tragedy of the entire affair. There’s nothing in Drummond’s document that implies any hesitation concerning the dying penalty, besides when it interferes together with his superior authorized obligation to hunt justice and his superior ethical obligation to guard jail employees from useless trauma. However Drummond, like his predecessors, clearly has no compunctions concerning the dying penalty. Quite the opposite, all through Drummond’s tenure, Oklahoma has continued to have some of the lively execution chambers within the nation. In accordance with the Dying Penalty Info Heart, Oklahoma is one of only five states to have carried out an execution in 2023, and one of only four that has carried out an execution in 2024.
It might be that Decide Lumpkin is a cretin. But it surely is also that he’s one thing far worse: an ideologue who’s making an attempt to purge Legal professional Basic Drummond for the sin of being extra dedicated to the Structure and to primary notions of decency than to killing folks. As between a cretin and an ideologue, the latter is much extra threatening to the mental cloth of the legislation and the ethical cloth of the nation.
Source / Picture: verdict.justia.com
