Death penalty questioned

Stephen Hartnett, a well-established death penalty abolitionist and distinguished professor of rhetoric, spoke to an eager crowd Friday afternoon at the Department of Communication and Culture.\nIn his speech, titled "Speaking Justice: The Waiting Room and Community Conversations about Crime, Punishment, and the Death Penalty," Hartnett discussed how the death penalty does not lower the crime rate or make the streets safer.\nThe department's Director of Graduate Studies John Lucaites invited Hartnett to discuss his thoughts on the death penalty and his involvement with Richard Kamler's program "The Waiting Room," a re-creation of San Quentin Prison as a multimedia, interactive art installation.\n"Stephen is a great interest to this campus and this department," Lucaites said. "His work is without question some of the best work being done in rhetorical studies today."\nHartnett, who teaches at the University of Illinois, was recently presented with the Winans-Wichelns Award for his book "Democratic Dissent and the Cultural Fictions of Antebellum America." \nHe said he was honored to be invited to IU.\n"I have always thought of Bloomington as this little paradise, so coming here just feels like a treat," Hartnett said.\nHe began his presentation by citing statistics about violent crimes and executions in the United States.\n"The number of violent crimes makes us by far the most violent and murderous country on the face of the earth," Hartnett said. "You can see that the percentage of people executed in relationship to the number of murders and violent crimes might as well not exist."\nAfter Hartnett delivered a thought-out presentation of facts, he reached a final conclusion of his stance against the death penalty.\nHartnett said all the figures he presented show the death penalty does not lower the violent crime rate, nor does it make our streets safer. He suggested we seek other methods of punishment and treatment for criminals.\n"If the death penalty does not serve a criminological function, it must serve some deeper function," Hartnett said.\nHe went on to discuss his involvement with "The Waiting Room," an interactive program for opposing groups to discuss the implications of the death penalty.\nHartnett said the idea behind "The Waiting Room" is to get citizens talking about crime and violence.\n"We want to move beyond the yelling back and forth," he said. "It's about creating a space of trust, letting that kind of crust of trauma break away and then letting the real humanity come together."\nFollowing the speech, Hartnett answered a few questions from the audience. Janet Cheathem Bell, a Bloomington resident, brought up the race factor in the justice system. \nBell said she believes blacks are being disenfranchised as a political maneuver to make non-blacks feel that they are in control. \nBell also said many blacks cheered at the O.J. Simpson decision in 1995 because he "represented one who got away."\nHartnett agreed with Bell, and noted that factually, more black men are executed each year than white men.\n"There's this entire cultural production of a mythology of the pathological black criminal that has no bearing on reality, though everybody buys it," he said.