Riffs From The Row

By William Van Poyck - May 8, 2007

In the wake of last month’s homicidal rampage on the Virginia Tech campus just up the road from Virginia ’s own death row unit, citizens have mourned, grieved and implored the heavens to answer their universal query: why? It is only natural to try to make sense of such a senseless event, only human to wonder why one young man would be so filled with hate and murderous rage that he felt his only option was to gun down other young men and women before ending his own life. The newspapers and airwaves have been full of such questions and analyses as every second of the massacre has been painstakingly dissected but very little ink has been expended on national introspection, very few voices suggesting that we Americans ponder the secrets of our own hearts. While I don’t have any scientific studies at my fingertips I do know that there is an undeniable statistical correlation between a particular state’s murder rate and whether that state imposes the death penalty. In short those states which have the death penalty invariably have the highest murder rates. And of those states which have the death penalty those which actually execute the most of its citizens on a per capita basis have the very highest murder rates. Moreover, while my own evidence is merely anecdotal, based upon my own lifetime observations, it seems to me that most of the mass killings, the big murder sprees, have invariably occurred in pro-death penalty states. It was 41 years ago when I sat on my living room floor, just a child of 12, watching the live grainy black & white news footage on our family TV as Charles Whitman, perched atop the University of Texas bell tower, and armed with a high-powered hunting rifle, methodically gunned down dozens of pedestrians. A curious person can scroll through history’s intervening decades and examine the dozens of mass killings which occurred since then to determine how many of them happened in those states vigorously advocating capital punishment. Such a search will bring the curious right up to last month’s killing spree right here in Virginia, a state which dearly loves the death penalty. In this time of supposed coincidence that those states which so passionately embrace the concept of executing its own citizens (Texas , Virginia, Florida , Louisiana , California , etc…) also have inordinately high homicide rates? Or is it simply a matter that we have taught our children well? By executing its citizens a state sends a powerful message: Killing people is a good, correct and moral solution to its “problems.” Why then are citizens so bewildered when our youth choose to do likewise?

William Van Poyck was sentenced to death in Florida but was transferred to Virginia’s death row by the governor of Florida after Florida State Prison guards murdered Van Poyck’s codefendant, Frank Vales, in his death row cell in 1999.

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