On Oct. 15, 1999, the state executed Joseph Mitchell Parsons by lethal injection for the murder of Richard Lynn Ernest a dozen years earlier.
As a young reporter, I was one of a handful of media representatives who witnessed the state-sanctioned killing, one of just two carried out in Utah in the past 20 years — the other, the 2010 firing squad execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner.
It’s something that sticks with you.
In Parson’s case, I was struck by how important the location of the crime was to his eventual stay on death row.
Ernest was driving across the country to reunite with his sister in Texas when he picked up a hitchhiker. They were at a rest stop in Iron County when Parsons stabbed Ernest to death, stole his car and wallet, and dumped the body.
It was a vicious crime, to be sure. But there are literally scores of criminals who committed similarly vicious murders now serving life sentences. Think of murderers like Mark Hofmann, the forger of Mormon historical documents who killed two people in 1985 in an effort to conceal his crimes.
The difference, it seemed, was that Parsons committed his crime in Iron County, where a law-and-order prosecutor went after the death penalty — and got it.
The problem is that when the state is taking someone’s life, it shouldn’t hinge on arbitrary factors like geography or aggressiveness of a prosecutor.
Nor should it hinge on arbitrary factors like race or mental impairment or socioeconomic background or the quality of the defense the accused receives. Parsons, for example, had a court-appointed lawyer working his appeals who did his best, but his background was in personal injury and malpractice law, not criminal law and certainly not capital cases.
And most of all, we shouldn’t tolerate the possibility that an innocent person may be executed in our name.
Remember the case of Debra Brown, who was convicted in 1993 of murdering her boss in Logan? She spent 17 years in prison before a judge took a second look in 2011. She was exonerated and soon released from prison, thanks to the work of lawyers with the Rocky Mountain Innocence Project.
She was one of the lucky ones, but also proof the courts can get it wrong and those instances are irreversible when the stakes are life and death.
But the threat of the executioner deters would-be murderers, right? It doesn’t.
The murder rate is consistently higher — about 25 percent higher, in fact — in states that have the death penalty than those that don’t. And the National Research Council, part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, concluded in 2012 that research on the topic is inconclusive.
If arguments about failures of fairness and deterrence aren’t compelling enough, then maybe the cost will resonate with fiscal conservatives.
Earlier this month, a task force working with the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice issued a report that looked at the additional cost of the death penalty to taxpayers. The figures varied depending on the methodology and the state, but generally speaking in every state it cost more to impose the death penalty than a life sentence — in states like Colorado and Arizona, as much as $1.9 million more per case.
That lines up with an earlier study by the Legislature’s analysts that found an increased cost of $1.6 million to Utah taxpayers to prosecute a capital case in Utah.
And those studies only looked at cases where the death penalty was ultimately imposed — excluding those where prosecutors sought the death penalty but the convicted was sentenced to life instead.
Rep. Stephen Handy, R-Bountiful, has legislation that would seek a more complete assessment of the costs and that bill passed the House and is awaiting consideration in the Senate.
With all the valid arguments against the death penalty and seemingly only one for keeping it — blood atonement — it’s encouraging to see Rep. Gage Froerer’s bill to get rid of capital punishment clear a committee Wednesday and head to the full House.
And it was even more encouraging to hear Gov. Gary Herbert, a long-time proponent of the death penalty, softening his stance and saying he would consider signing the ban if it reaches his desk.
“I’m to the point of saying for the taxpayer and for justice, it certainly is less expensive I think by all accounts to have life without the possibility of parole as a replacement for the death penalty,” he said.
But the legislation has a long way to go and now is the time that legislators need to hear from voters on this crucial topic, so contact your lawmaker and maybe Utah can join the 19 other states that have chosen a more rational, humane future.