Does anybody understand why Gissendaner got the death penalty? As far as I could gather, she didn’t even do anything aside from saying something to her boyfriend. I mean, put her in jail if that’s the law, but the death penalty? For talking?
Like in the case of Charles Manson, I don’t get the tradition of punishing people who pronounce words more harshly than those who commit murder using those words as an excuse.
Clarissa's Blog 
There was a plea bargain made by the boyfriend, so instead of also being executed he got life in prison instead. It was a “you testify against her and we’ll let you live” sort of thing.
But that still doesn’t change the fact that all she did was talk. I’m confused about that, too.
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Also, what happened with Charles Manson? I’d look it up now but I’m in the middle of writing a paper.
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IIRC Manson got the death penalty but it was set aside once California did away with capital punishment (foggy memory but I’m fairly sure that’s how it happened).
I’m also fairly sure that if California reinstituted the death penalty then it couldn’t be reapplied when the sentence had already been changed to life imprisonment.
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The real killers, in the meanwhile, got much lighter punishments. I don’t get this.
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I wrote about it before: https://clarissasblog.com/2011/08/10/death-penalty-and-charlie-mansons-cult/
He’s an unpleasant individual, that’s for sure but he wasn’t even there when the murders were committed.
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I might be talking out my ass but I’ve never let that stop me before….
My guess is that they tried to get each to rat on the other one to secure a conviction and he jumped first. Had she taken the offer she’d be locked up for life and he’d have gotten the death sentence.
And I think that it might be a conspiracy charge (I might have the name wrong) but for some crimes in some localities “conspiracy to X” carries penalties that are just as harsh as committing X.
As for logic, do not look for it in any legal system. Think of it as being more something like chess (a hermetic game with lots of arbitrary rules). There’s no logical reason that a bishop can only move diagonally, it’s just an arbitrary rule that anyone who wants to play or understand the game has to learn.
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I’m still not managing to get over that horrible woman who shot her sleeping husband in the back and was let free. And this woman committed no violent act, yet she got the death penalty.
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It’s sexism. Juries and judges tend to not take crimes committed by women as seriously as equivalent crimes committed by men.
Just found this old quote from Camille Paglia on Karla Faye Tucker:
Karla Faye Tucker’s predicament was tragic, but she committed acts of barbaric savagery for which a man would be expected to pay the price. As an equity feminist, I believe that women cannot demand equal opportunities in society without also being ready to accept equal risks and responsibilities. Women should not ask for special protections based on gender — on death row or on the battlefield, where women with the right level of physical stamina and training should be sent into combat.
Tucker’s conversion to evangelical Protestantism cuts no ice with me. As an atheist, I feel that no sect has a right to intervene in the legal process. As a pugnacious Amazon, I also dislike the way Tucker’s new, very breathy, very feminine persona played on conservative heart-strings. There have been plenty of black men on death row who experienced similar spiritual transformations, but they couldn’t play Pollyanna, could they?
Despite the advances of feminism, most people still don’t believe that a woman can be as criminal as a man. And despite the confused claims of those who have never deeply studied the historical record, we have yet to find a single woman who has committed gruesome atrocities of the level of Jack the Ripper, Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer. The isolated stalker as rationally systematic, sex-tinged murderer remains a male phenomenon. Karla Faye Tucker, like the giddy girls of the Charles Manson gang, seems to have been on a manic lark with her boyfriend. But that should not let her off the hook. Justice must be blind to gender.
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Yes, absolutely. It’s nothing but sexism. Karla Homolka, the Canadian rapist / murderer is another example.
And here’s the preacher’s wife I still can’t get over: https://clarissasblog.com/2011/02/01/mary-winkler-and-the-price-of-patriarchy/
Her victim was a preacher, and even that didn’t help the jury see him as not deserving of murder.
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You could kill a lot of people with just words. Adolf Hitler didn’t kill a single person in his life, not even as a soldier in the WW1 *1. The same is probably true for other top Nazis like Heinrich Himmler – and also for Joseph Stalin . But they were responsible for the misery and death of millions. In Sweden, an Egyptian man was divorced by his wife. He hired a contract killer, who shot her in the head in front of her kids. This is in a way worse than murder, as it is planned over a period of time and in cold blood.
*1: [Hitler served as a messenger – a very dangerous task. It meant that you got up from the trench and ran along the front line, while every sniper on the enemy side shot at you. WW1 was too early for radio in the battlefield. They rolled out telephone wires at night- also very dangerous – but soon the artillery bombardments tore them up. The armies at the time tried carrier pigeons and dogs, but the method was somewhat unreliable for important messages when they were short of time.]
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She did more than just talk to her boyfriend, according to this account from CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/23/us/georgia-execution-kelly-renee-gissendaner/index.html
Clarissa really should do a little research before writing about anything in the news these days.
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She didn’t commit a violent act, did she? Do you really believe this deserves death?
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She gave her boyfriend the weapons and was an accessory before the fact. Last time I checked, lots of people have been sent to jail or worse even if they didn’t pull the trigger, but were only the getaway driver and the like.
She also had the chance to avoid the death penalty, but chose to go to trial because, like you, she though she wasn’t as guilty as her boyfriend was.
After signaling that it would seek the death penalty, the prosecution offered both defendants a plea deal: life in prison and no chance of parole for 25 years. Owen took the deal and testified against Gissendaner. But she rejected it, apparently because she felt she was less culpable than Owen and deserved earlier parole eligibility.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-w-hawkins/kelly-gissendaner-should_b_8197754.html
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So do you believe that death penalty is appropriate for people who committed no violent act?
To me it seems extraordinarily excessive. The woman literally did nothing. I think this is insane.
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Well she did (according to wikipedia) help set fire to the car and helped hide the body afterward.
And if not for her incitement Owen wouldn’t have killed the husband.
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No, that can’t be a real legal argument. Nobody knows what he would or wouldn’t have done. And “incitement” is just words.
I don’t get this.
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She did nothing but gave her boyfriend the weapons, established an alibi for herself, helped commit arson to dispose of any evidence left in the car, and helped to hide the body afterwards.
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
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Dark Avenger, I’m starting to wonder, do you have autism? It’s ok, I have it, too. You seem to be bothered by figurative language.
“Nothing”, in this context, is shorthand for “committed no violent act” or “did nothing violent.” The issue under discussion is whether death penalty is appropriate for people who did not commit acts of violence. Preferably, egregious or multiple acts of violence.
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Without looking it up I’m assuming that giving planners and masterminds the same penalties as those who do the deed came from dealing with the mafia.
More specifically it was a way of going after mafia heads who usually kept their hands technically clearn.
Whether that was needed (or if it still is) is again treating law enforcement like a logical problem to be solved rather than a complex chess match (where the rules are changed periodically).
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Setting fire to a car isn’t a violent act in your book, Clarissa?
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Are you punking me, or something? I pummeled my printer to death, beat it into a collection of tiny little parts. You think that counts as violent crime???
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you really think torching a car to conceal evidence is the same thing as what you do to your own property?
Okay, except for planning the murder for months, giving her boyfriend the weapons to use on her husband, establishing an alibi, torching the car, and helping to dispose of her husbands’ body, all she did was talk.
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This is starting to go in circles. As I said, I believe that giving death penalty to somebody who committed no violent act is wrong. It is clear that you disagree and believe that death penalty is appropriate for people who committed no violence. To me, that’s deeply immoral because taking someone’s life by the state can only be contemplated in extreme cases of mass murder, accompanied with torture, rape, etc. It is extremely dangerous, I believe to start handing out death sentences for non-violent offenses that you list. But I understand that your position is “Just fry them all indiscriminately.”
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By twisting it so that arson isn’t violence, you can meet your standard, Clarissa. If this was a modern day “Will no one rid me of this troublesome husband?” and the boyfriend did everything about the murder on his own, and she only learned of it afterwards, and being an accessory after the fact, that would be one thing.
But I’m glad to know that if I hire a hitman who carries out his contract successfully, you’ll argue against the death penalty, because I didn’t do anything violent.
She gave him the weapons, for heaven sakes, and he did what she told him to do.
The prison that holds Manson is about 45 minutes from my house. You are welcome to come and stay here the next time he’s up for parole “because he didn’t do anything violent”.
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“But I’m glad to know that if I hire a hitman who carries out his contract successfully, you’ll argue against the death penalty, because I didn’t do anything violent.”
“She gave him the weapons, for heaven sakes, and he did what she told him to do.”
“The prison that holds Manson is about 45 minutes from my house. You are welcome to come and stay here the next time he’s up for parole “because he didn’t do anything violent”.”
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It is old, sad news that the US criminal justice system executes innocent people all the time. I don’t know if this case is any more egregious than many others, I wish we would at least abolish the death penalty (a much simpler thing to do than clean up the rest of the corruption and idiocy in the criminal justice system).
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@cliff arroyo & @clarissa:
I remember the Mason murders well. Here’s what happened: Mason was a cult leader who held his followers completely under the spell of his personality. He ordered the murders hoping to create a violent apocalyptic race war in American (yes, crazy as a loon), and he was legally 100% accountable for the murders under the “joint-responsibility rule,” which makes each member of a conspiracy guilty of crimes committed by fellow conspirators. Mason and all the involved followers got the death penalty, but their sentences were all permanently commuted to life in prison after the supreme court temporarily halted the death penalty.
Gissendaner planned and ordered the murder of her husband and was also 100% accountable for his death under the joint-responsibility conspiracy rule. The man who actually did the killing avoided the death penalty by cooperating with the police and giving evidence against Gissendaner. The is called plea-bargaining, and it happens all the time. In the U.S. justice system, it’s as American as apple pie.
And in my opinion, ALL conspirators in a murder case deserve to be executed — nothing unjust about that at all.
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“Mason was a cult leader who held his followers completely under the spell of his personality. He ordered the murders hoping to create a violent apocalyptic race war in American ”
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So… Manson should be free? People who order hits should be free?
Not sure I follow.
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“So… Manson should be free? People who order hits should be free?”
The choice here is between a punishment of imprisonment and the maximum penalty of being executed. Not just setting people free.
But, thinking about your question, what do you mean by ‘order a hit’? For instance, if someone pays for a hit (like by hiring a hitman), I think that’s different than telling someone to go commit a murder. How much power does one person have over the other? How is that measured? What’s triggering the questions here is that the guy who carried out the murder isn’t getting executed (which you’ve addressed already in your previous comment about logic in the legal system).
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Blabberers who deliberately cause murders are also individually responsible for the deaths — and they deserve the ultimate penalty provided by their society, which in the majority of U.S. states is execution. (No, the actual killers “didn’t have to follow any orders,” so they’re clearly murderers. But that doesn’t absolve the person giving the order of responsibility. He didn’t have to give the order in the first place.)
Do you think that Hitler should have been spared from the gallows, had he been captured alive in 1945, while his henchmen who actually slaughtered millions of people received the death penalty?
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“Do you think that Hitler should have been spared from the gallows, had he been captured alive in 1945, while his henchmen who actually slaughtered millions of people received the death penalty?”
Was Gissendaner’s power over Owen the same as Hitler’s power over his army? Would her ‘order’ have the same weight?
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@hkatz
Her order had the same practical effect: the murder of a human being.
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It’s not “an order.” He was her boyfriend. He couldn’t “order” him anything. I can’t even begin to imagine a situation where a boyfriend would “order” me to do something. This would be preposterous. I’d laugh the fellow out of the house in 2 minutes.
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It’s not enough to look at the effect. You have to look at how likely it was for the effect to have been achieved as a result of her ‘order.’ Again, what power does one person have over the other in this type of scenario? (For example, did she put a gun to Owen’s head and order him to kill? Or did Owen have the mental capacity of a child? Or was he a hitman she hired? These are important questions to ask for any such case.)
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@hkatz
Legally and morally, that’s all you need. Both Gissendaner and her boyfriend were both responsible for the murder, and both deserved the death penalty.
Her boyfriend was smart enough to plea bargain, and she wasn’t. Her choice, her death.
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Now I finally understand why the Twinkie defense was so successful.
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The Twinkie defense was totally unrelated to the Gissendaner case. That ridiculous situation allowed a laughable excuse to be given for diminished capacity, effectively letting the murderer off the hook.
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“Do you think that Hitler should have been spared from the gallows, had he been captured alive in 1945, while his henchmen who actually slaughtered millions of people received the death penalty?”
“But that doesn’t absolve the person giving the order of responsibility. He didn’t have to give the order in the first place.”
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This is simply not true. All sorts of people who aren’t legal authorities have de facto control over the behavior of other people:
Parents over their children
Strong spouses married to psychologically weaker, co-dependent spouses
Employers over workers who can’t afford to lose their jobs
Cult leaders like Mason and Jim Jones over their zombie-like followers
Gang leaders over weaker, frightened gang members
Schoolyard bullies over smaller children
The list is essentially endless…
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I believe that except for small children, these are all excuses. As I said, I’m a great believer in individual responsibility. If somebody chooses to be weak and dependent, this means that’s convenient to them, nothing else.
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Hi Clarissa. I’m with you on this one. She did nothing that merits the death penalty; an extensive prison sentence, yes. However, in many states, she would not even have received a life sentence. According to Findlaw, the punishment for first degree murder in NY and California can be as little as 20 and 25 years in prison respectively. That’s for the person actually committing the crime.
A separate issue in the US legal system is the separation of judgement from justice. Assistant District Attorneys are rated based on the proportion or number of convictions they produce. Having someone confess to murder is one notch. Having that person give evidence leading to the conviction of someone else is a second notch (regardless of whether the second person is guilty — its the conviction that counts).
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Gissendaner was directly responsible for her husband’s murder, and she met her just fate. It’s just a shame that the Georgia taxpayers had to provide her with 18 years of free room and board before the sentence could be carried out.
The fact that the death penalty is sometimes applied capriciously (in her case, it wasn’t) isn’t an argument to abolish it. It’s a reason to reform the relevant laws to ensure that capital punishment is applied fairly, justly, and within a reasonable time period.
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I will never understand how anybody can be responsible for the actions of others. Ultimately, the discussion hinges on the belief in individual responsibility. I believe that the only person responsible for 100% of what I do is myself. Any other philosophy is alien to me.
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Illinois established years ago that a majority of those then on death row were quite possibly innocent. That why, while the death penalty may still be on the books, the state has stopped executing anyone.
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Given how carelessly the death penalty sentences are imposed, this is a good thing.
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