Execution imagery

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

“Image,” tennis player Andre Agassi said in a commercial in his younger, long-haired days, “is everything.”

That’s not true, of course, and Agassi grew to deeply regret uttering the words. But for any state trying to compete in a global economy, while image isn’t everything, it’s certainly a lot.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who has crisscrossed the globe trying to sell Arkansas to potential investors, knows this. That’s why in this past legislative session he played defense against any potential bill that would impose state bathroom standards like North Carolina’s law, which cost the state 400 jobs from Paypal alone and was recently repealed. It also was a motivation for his spending a fistful of political capital moving the state’s commemoration of Gen. Robert E. Lee to a Saturday in October, far from its previous home on the same day as the Martin Luther King Holiday. Now only two former Confederate states, Mississippi and Alabama, celebrate the civil rights leader and the Civil War general on the same day.

Despite those efforts, Arkansas’ image has taken a bit of a hit the past couple of weeks in the eyes of some people. For a few days, the law allowed concealed carry permit holders to take their guns just about everywhere, including into Arkansas Razorbacks games. Fair or not, the idea of gun-toting fans made a lot of national headlines and was a step too far for the Southeastern Conference – not exactly a left-wing organization. After the SEC released a statement warning the law could affect the Hogs in a variety of ways, including, ominously, “scheduling,” the Legislature quickly passed another law restricting guns in those venues as well as other places.

That national story came and went. Another story will have a more lasting effect. As you probably know, Arkansas is set to execute eight convicted killers over 10 or 11 days, depending on how you do the math, from April 17-27.

Why so many so quickly? A U.S. Supreme Court decision in February set the stage for the eight to become the first in Arkansas to be executed since 2005 – the long delay caused by legal challenges and difficulties obtaining the three drugs used in the lethal injection. The makers of those drugs, which have other uses, do not like being associated with the death penalty for moral or public relations reasons. Many refuse to sell the drugs to Arkansas, while others will do so only anonymously, which Arkansas obliged with a state law now being challenged in court. The state’s supply of midazolam, used to render the condemned unconscious, expires April 30, so it’s a case of “use it or lose it” or try to find more.

Arkansas thus has become a center of attention in the international debate over the death penalty – illegal in all but one country in Europe, which Hutchinson has visited attempting to woo jobs to Arkansas. In a press conference Monday, he said other states have not suffered economically after carrying out the death penalty in the years since Arkansas last did, including Texas (187 since Arkansas’ last, according to the Death Penalty Information Center), Florida (33) and South Carolina (8). He said it would be unfair to punish Arkansas for taking longer than other states to carry out executions.

But those states did not perform eight executions in 10 or 11 days. In fact, no state has ever matched that pace in recent memory, which is why it’s being referred to in some quarters – and I’m just reporting this – as an “assembly line.” A state’s image is not based on fairness but on attention, and this is getting attention.

Image, as Agassi knew, is not everything. The state’s policies on the death penalty should not be controlled by the fear of being called uncivilized by a European continent that plunged the world into war twice in the 20th century.

At the same time, how Arkansas is seen does matter – even more so the way it sees itself. The second half of this month could be a sobering, reflective time to live in Arkansas.

At least, it ought to be, regardless of where we stand on the death penalty. Right or wrong, let this month not simply be a source of headlines. After all, we’re talking about killings here – the eight the state is preparing to administer to those men on Death Row, and the 10 that put them there.

Passion beats polling

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Here’s how Arkansas state politics really works: a disconnected majority often matters far less than a passionate few.

Certainly, the majority matters – particularly on Election Day. That’s when 1.1 million out of 3 million Arkansans went to the polls in November and cared deeply about who won the presidential race but not always some of the other races, including state legislative ones.

Once the campaigning ends and governing begins, Arkansas state politics becomes more about very concerned groups – “stakeholders,” they are called – who know those legislators well and lobby them on their particular issues. Hang around the Capitol when the Legislature is in session, and you’ll see 135 legislators and a governor being influenced by a relatively small number of lobbyists attending committee meetings and really paying attention on behalf of their groups – those groups usually being composed of ordinary Arkansans with legitimate concerns, so there’s nothing inherently wrong with this. Their arguments often will carry the day.

And that leads us to guns at Razorback games.

It all started when Rep. Charlie Collins, R-Fayetteville, introduced a bill that would have allowed college faculty and staff with a concealed carry permit to carry guns on campus. His logic was that they could deter crazed killers from targeting the campuses and, if necessary, shoot those killers if the campus police took too long to arrive. The bill was strongly opposed by the colleges and universities and by a small band of red-shirt-wearing moms, but it passed the House easily and was amended in the Senate when Gov. Asa Hutchinson and some senators decided it needed a training requirement of 16 hours.

That’s when Arkansas’ most powerful group of passionate true believers, the National Rifle Association, stepped in. Arkansas is a pro-gun state anyway and so are all Republican legislators and many Democrats, but many NRA members believe Second Amendment rights are basically absolute, and they’ll base their votes entirely on that issue.

In other words, they’re passionate, which matters a lot. The political reality is that while each House member represents 30,000 constituents and each senator represents 86,000, what they’re most worried about are their party primary voters: 3,000-6,000 in the House and 10,000-14,000 in the Senate. Many legislators desperately want an A rating from the NRA because anything less might draw a primary opponent or cost them hundreds of votes – enough to make the difference.

As a result, the final bill, passed into law, went much farther than the original. In fact, it allowed anyone age 21 with a concealed carry permit and eight additional hours of training to carry a gun not just on college campuses but almost anywhere, including the State Capitol and Arkansas Razorbacks football games.

I haven’t seen a poll about that, but I suspect the majority of Arkansans are pro-gun but would be uncomfortable with that mixture of 70,000 people, youth, alcohol, frustration and firearms. But what the polls say about a particular issue often means little, anyway. What matters is not if a large majority of voters disinterestedly share an opinion. What matters are who cares, how much, and what they’ll do about it. Gun rights supporters care a lot, and they vote.

The story moved into the sports section and made national news. On Tuesday, the Southeastern Conference joined the conversation, saying the new law might negatively affect the Razorbacks with recruiting, officiating and, ominously, “scheduling.” When that happened, opinions across the state became less disinterested.

Legislators were then in a no-win situation between guns and the Hogs. A bill was written that would exempt sports stadiums along with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and the Arkansas State Hospital, an inpatient psychiatric facility. That bill passed the Senate and then, on Thursday, the House despite the NRA’s objections, but legislators know their votes will be remembered.

Even a passionate few, or a passionate many in the NRA’s case, don’t get everything they want. Still, the general rule remains: On any particular issue, a passionate minority will have far greater influence than a disconnected majority, and legislators will continue to listen to those who are speaking.

Reform instead of repeal and replace

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

After the American Health Care Act failed in the House Friday, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said this: “I don’t know what else to say other than Obamacare is the law of the land. It’s going to remain the law of the land until it’s replaced. We did not have quite the votes to replace this law, and so, yeah, we’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.”

For seven years, Ryan and other Republicans, including Arkansas’ congressional delegation, have said Obamacare is ruining the health care system – and by extension, the rest of the country. But once they gained control of everything in Washington, they obviously did not have a replacement ready, spent a total of 18 days debating a very bad one, held one vote and then announced their focus will now be on tax reform, though now they’re talking about revisiting health care again.

Because Republicans believe Obamacare is bad for the country but repealing and replacing it is very hard, why not try plan B – reform it? Members of Congress could do what once was done often with major legislation – reach across the aisle, compromise, and produce something that a majority coalition from both parties can support, even if some on both sides are unhappy. That would give shared ownership in the project and therefore less desire by one party to see it fail. Then, later, they could work to change it again.

Naive, I know. In today’s political environment, everything is about total victory and defeating the enemy, once known as “your fellow Americans.” Republicans know if they compromise with Democrats on health care, they’ll be scorned by conservative media sources and attacked by big money. Democrats are hoping the whole effort fails, knowing if it does, they get to be the majority again.

But not so long ago, Congress acted quickly and spent billions on a bipartisan basis to save the banking industry. We’ve been told by Republicans for years that Obamacare is a disaster already happening and a crisis in waiting. Maybe sooner rather than the “foreseeable future” is the best time to act.

“Obamacare” has always been a political term meant to fire up the political base, but solving a problem requires first defining it accurately, and Obamacare is not the root of the problem. Yes, the Affordable Care Act made significant changes to the health care system, but the system’s fundamental processes have remained the same. Profit-driven medical providers make more money when Americans are sick than when they are well, while insurance companies and government programs give Americans limited financial incentives to control the costs of their own health care. Meanwhile, the modern American lifestyle is simply too unhealthy to be cheap. We really can’t decide if we want a free market system or not. As a result of all this, health care was really expensive and didn’t insure everybody before Obamacare, and it’s really expensive and doesn’t insure everybody now.

Simply repealing and replacing one law isn’t enough to fix all that. The whole system – really, the culture – needs a reorientation, which the Republican leadership is clearly not ready to do if they can’t pass a single bill through one house of Congress. So if the status quo is unacceptable and radical change proves to be impossible, then the only alternative is incremental change the way the Constitution meant it to occur – through debate and compromise.

I’m not sure if congressional leaders even consider that possibility anymore. Ryan opened his press conference by saying, “Moving from an opposition party to a governing party comes with growing pains,” which would cause George Washington to roll over in his grave. The Constitution does not say anything about opposition parties or governing parties, or even mention parties at all. It’s as if we’ve become a British parliamentary system led by a prime minister and a king, rather than an American constitutional republic.

The system can’t work that way. Health care can’t be “fixed” by one piece of legislation, but it can be made better many small steps at a time. Let’s go back to the drawing board, give everybody a piece of chalk, and keep the eraser handy.

Doubt and the death penalty

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Next month, the state of Arkansas is scheduled to execute eight convicted murderers in 11 days after not executing any since 2005 because of legal challenges and difficulties obtaining the drugs. On Tuesday, legislators considered three bills that would make executions less likely to happen or not at all.

Well, “considered” is too strong a word. “Listened to presentations about” in the House Judiciary Committee would be more accurate, because the bills were never going to pass. While polls by Opinion Research Associates show Arkansans’ support for the death penalty has slipped since 2002 – from 77 percent then to 67 percent in 2014 – it’s still favored by a strong majority of Arkansans and probably a stronger majority of legislators, including one committee member, Rep. Rebecca Petty, R-Rogers, whose daughter was murdered.

Two of the bills were presented by Rep. Vivian Flowers, D-Pine Bluff – the first bill to abolish the death penalty entirely, and the second to ban applying it to those with a serious mental illness. After a lengthy discussion, Flowers pulled the first to make a technical correction, but it’s not going anywhere. The bill banning it for the mentally ill failed on a forceful “no” voice vote.

Among the arguments made by Flowers and her witnesses is that the system is wrong too often to trust it with something as final as death. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 157 death row inmates across the nation have been exonerated and released since 1973, on average after 11 years on death row. (None are from Arkansas, including West Memphis’ Damien Echols, presumably because the type of plea deal he accepted did not make him technically “innocent.”) Meanwhile, 1,448 people have been executed nationwide since 1976.

It’s beyond a reasonable doubt that innocent individuals have been executed. And that leads us to the third bill that committee members listened to a presentation about. House Bill 1798 by Rep. Charles Blake, D-Little Rock, would have made one small change to existing law: Where the sentence of death would be applied, the words “beyond a reasonable doubt” would be replaced with “beyond any doubt.”

“If we’re going to be cutting someone’s life short, we should be absolutely sure that that person is guilty beyond any doubt of the crime that we’re executing them for,” he said.

That bill never had a chance, either. Bob McMahan, the state’s prosecutor coordinator, said “beyond any doubt” is an impossible standard to reach. Again, the voice vote was overwhelmingly “no.”

It should be emphasized that Blake’s bill would not abolish the death penalty, but instead raise the standard for applying it. Executions could still occur for someone like Dylann Roof, who in 2015 sat through a Bible study in a South Carolina church and then repaid the warm welcome he’d received from its African-American members by murdering nine of them. There’s no doubt at all in that case. We know he did it. In fact, he’s proud of it.

But the death penalty would not be an option in cases where the puzzle pieces merely fit so well that a jury must conclude the guy did it. At least 157 times since 1973, the pieces seemed to fit, but the jury got it wrong.

The death penalty is one of those issues where emotions run high and where people tend to be segregated into two camps. Reasonable people get mad at each other, quickly, on this one.

But on this issue, almost all of us are on the same team. It’s us against the murderers. Death penalty supporters and opponents should agree that, for the most serious crimes, the prison system’s job is no longer to rehabilitate, but only to exact justice, deter others, and ensure the offender can’t kill anyone else. The only argument would be whether to kill Dylann Roof quickly or lock him up while he dies slowly – preferably, as one reader suggested, with images of his victims staring at him from his cell walls.

Blake’s bill, dead this session, would err on the side of certainty lest the state, in all our names, irredeemably insert the needle in the wrong person’s arm. It’s not unreasonable.

Blessed is the peacemaker

Rep. George McGill, D-Fort Smith, left, and Rep. Andy Mayberry, R-Hensley, share an embrace after McGill’s speech.

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Over the course of a three-month session, legislators make thousands of speeches at the Capitol. Last Friday, Rep. George McGill, D-Fort Smith, gave one of the most memorable – ever.

The issue was Senate Bill 519 by Sen. David Wallace, R-Leachville, and Rep. Grant Hodges, R-Rogers, which reserves each third Monday in January as a day to honor Dr. Martin Luther King.

This year, Arkansas was one of three states, the others being Alabama and Mississippi, that honored King and Gen. Robert E. Lee on the same day – the result of an unfortunate historical coincidence along with a lack of sensitivity. In 1947, Arkansas made a state holiday out of Lee’s birthday Jan. 19. King’s birthday was made a federal holiday in 1983, which meant there would be two state holidays at about the same time each year. Lawmakers did not want state employees to have another paid vacation day, so in 1985, Gov. Bill Clinton signed a bill combining the holidays.

It’s impossible to know every lawmaker’s intentions in 1985, but regardless, for some people it reasonably has felt like this once-Confederate state was unwilling to give Dr. King his own day. Visitors to the State Capitol on the holiday have been greeted by a sign saying offices were closed to celebrate both King, the civil rights leader, and Lee, the Southern Civil War general. For some, that combination was hurtful.

Two years ago, legislators made an effort to separate the holidays, but it failed under heavy pressure from opponents and fans of Lee and because of the Legislature’s general aversion to upsetting the status quo. For a mostly white Legislature, the combined holiday didn’t seem that big of a deal.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson, newly elected at the time, supported that bill but did nothing to pass it. This year, he announced before the session that a separate King Holiday was one of his priorities, and he testified about the bill before House and Senate committees – the first time he has done so.

The bill says Arkansas will now celebrate only King’s birthday on each third Monday in January while Robert E. Lee Day will be the second Saturday in October – a state memorial day, not a holiday, coinciding with the time of his death. Schools are required to develop teaching materials about the civil rights struggle and the Civil War corresponding to those days.

That arrangement felt to some legislators less like a separation and more like a demotion for Lee. On the House floor Friday, one said it appeared the state was ashamed of its past. Another feared the next step was to remove the star in Arkansas’ flag commemorating its membership in the Confederacy. There was some emotion in the room.

That’s when stately, gray-haired McGill sensed the mood and made his way to the well. “Good afternoon,” he said with a smile, and then repeated the greeting so the House would return it. He then spoke highly by name of his fellow legislators, including one who had vocally opposed the King bill.

Speaking off the cuff, he talked about his great-great-grandfather, also named George McGill, who had fought in the war on the Union side, and he wondered what it had been like for him when the war ended. Did they let him keep his weapon or give him rations? He talked about his own experiences at the University of Arkansas when he was denied a dormitory room because of his race. Looking back at his youth, he recalled his afro hairstyle, his use of the black power salute, and his vow never to return to the University of Arkansas – now, he said, “one of my favorite places to go.”

McGill told House members that Senate Bill 519 would be just one more piece of paper stuck in a big binder in a room full of other big binders. What mattered, he said, was legislators were giving educators space to teach about the past.

No way anyone was following that speech. The vote was 66-11, with 5 voting present and the rest not voting. Hutchinson signed the bill into law Tuesday.

McGill’s biggest accomplishment wasn’t the passage of the bill. It was going to pass anyway. His greatest achievement was bringing healing to what was becoming a racially divisive moment in a chamber that has seen many others through the decades. He reminded everyone listening that it’s possible, even necessary, to both remember and forgive.

He was a peacemaker. Someone once said such are blessed.

Note: Here is the speech. Great job, Brian Fanney.