When Michael Tisius (photo, left) was 19, he participated in a jailbreak. He killed two unarmed guards, and landed on Missouri’s death row (see story here).
Twenty-three years later, as his execution approached, Huffington Post ran a story (here) pleading for commutation of his death sentence.
That story featured photos of Tisius as a young child (right) and as a baby with his parents and older brother (left below).
It talked about how Missouri was “pushing” to execute him “despite pleas from legal, human rights and religious groups to spare his life.” It said the state was “fighting in court to kill” him.
“Like the overwhelming majority of those on death row in the U.S., Tisius faced profound neglect, violence and poverty as a child,” Huffington Post said, pointing out he was born to “young parents who made clear they did not want him and had little ability or interest in taking care of him,” and “was deprived of affection, … beaten frequently by his brother …. His self-esteem was shattered, and he often wrote himself notes documenting his self-loathing,” according to the lawyers who drafted his clemency petition.
It said a psychiatrist who evaluated him over the years “confirmed in his last report that Tisius had indeed matured and grown with age,” commenting he “has learned self-control, has empathy for others, shows empathy for the men he killed, is no longer impulsive, and is seeking to make the best life he can in his current situation,” and noted “Tisius has spent his past 23 years of incarceration [making] art. He has painted murals throughout the prison and donated his art to an auction to raise money for a domestic violence center.”
The article concluded, “As his execution date approached, Tisius rushed to finish a painting with a motivational phrase on the wall of a rehabilitation unit for those in long-term segregation. He wanted to finish it before he was killed.”
Opposing the death penalty is a liberal cause. There are valid arguments against it: It’s randomly imposed, almost exclusively against the poor, often tainted by racism, and DNA testing has exonerated hundreds of death rows inmates. It takes decades to execute someone, costs millions, and puts victims’ families through years of agonizing appeals. Executions have been botched. And studies indicate it has no deterrent effect.
This article doesn’t make any of those arguments. Nor does it say anything about the horror of Tisius’s crime, or the loss experienced by the families of the victims. Instead, it fawningly portrays him as a reformed man, an artist, a contributor. It excuses what he did by arguing he was young, impulsive, easily manipulated, and had a miserable childhood. It treats the victims almost as if they didn’t exist (find out about them here and here).
Why is it propaganda? Because it seeks to create empathy for the killer, while offering none for his victims, in an effort to boost political pressure against his execution for ideological reasons, divorced from the facts of his crimes.
But there are states where killing a police or corrections officer practically guarantees a death sentence. Missouri is one of them, and Tisius probably knew this when he agreed to participate in the jail escape scheme and took a gun to the jail.
Missouri executed him on Tuesday, June 6, 2023 (story here).