Funny how many conservatives don't trust the government to be fair, just, or even competent when it comes to enforcing gun laws, delivering the mail, or distributing health care, but suddenly they're infallable [sic] paragons of virtue when it comes to strapping the right ne'er-do-well in the chair.I don't have a problem with the idea that there are certain people who need to be dragged out behind the barn and Ol' Yellered. The guy who shot up the theater in Colorado? Or what's-his-face in Norway? That's The Guy. He admits to being The Guy. Those guys are wasting precious oxygen that paramecia could be using to evolve.
If society wants to get all squeamish in those cases, then hand me the claw hammer and I'll go in there and administer 28 ounces of Estwingazine intracranially and we'll be done after you pass me that Handi-Wipe.
On the other hand, various pinko commie-symp crusaders keep turning up guys on death row who are apparently there because they committed the all-too common crimes of Having A Bad Lawyer and Looking Really Black In A Lineup, and when DNA evidence is finally examined it turns out that they couldn't have done it, yet we were all ready to let Ice Dog die for Ray-Ray's sins.
If we do kill the wrong guy, who gets the death penalty for that? Or do we all just get 1/300.000.000th of a death sentence, and so that's not so bad?
77 comments:
I don't have a problem with the idea that there are certain people who need to be dragged out behind the barn and Ol' Yellered.
Neither do I. But I do have a BIG problem, as any decent human should, with the idea that the wrong person might end up riding the lightning. Which is why I think the death penalty should only be an option when multiple independent lines of evidence confirm that yes, this is the right guy. Even a confession is not enough. I want more.
Good morning!
As I see it, the executing the wrong person problem is a subset of the convicting and punishing the wrong person problem. Prison changes a person -- but especially an innocent person -- in many painful and terrible ways.
So I'd focus on strengthening due process protections as best we can. And wolfwalker is right -- a bare confession* might not be enough. Too many mistaken convictions have rested on false confessions.
After that, we do have to accept a mistaken execution or imprisonment more than once in a blue moon, just as we accept the occasional car accident or industrial accident, and for exactly the same reason: We have no alternative.
As Thomas Sowell has pointed out, it's not a simple matter of avoiding innocent deaths by not executing anyone. If capital punishment (1) incapacitates certain criminals like nothing else can (remember, folks can kill even in prison, let alone if they're paroled, furloughed or just escape), (2) deters other criminals and (3) inculcates a general horror of starting on a life of crime -- and I believe it does all of these -- we have a sometimes unhappy trade-off here. Innocent people will die either way.
[*] Bare confession as distinct from any evidence uncovered thanks to said confession, like, say, the victim's corpse, the murder weapon, etc.
What do you think?
Jeff Deutsch
I have seen it argued (but have no links to evidence to back up the assertion) that your point #2 is not correct, Jeff.
And to some extent, I can certainly see it. I don't think a lot of the people who justifiably end up in prison have very good "predict the future" skills.
I work in software QA. We have a saying, the farther along in the process that you find a bug, the more expensive it is to fix. By the time you have someone in a cell (especially prison vs jail cell) there is a lot of institutional momentum that wants to keep him there. And if that cell happens to be on Death Row, the same rules still apply.
To release a prisoner, someone in the long chain that put him there has to be proven to have done something wrong - the arresting officer, the forensics lab, the prosecutor, the guy's own attorney - somewhere there was a mistake. Usually they don't get discovered and dealt with until a new person occupies the office of the one that was wrong. Thus, 20 years after a wrongful conviction, the guy finally walks free.
Another QA phrase - for every 1000 lines of code, 60 bugs are introduced. Maybe if weren't spending so many resources on a ridiculous War on Drugs, we might make fewer mistakes on the important cases.
I fight with myself whenever this subject comes up. I believe there are people in this world who "need killin" for the betterment of society. However, our current system of justice seems to reward prosecutors on the basis of number of convictions, without having any real consequences for coloring outside the lines to get those convictions, or even really a good way of identifying when such things occur.
In my opinion, a prosecutor (or LEO for that matter) who ignores or hides evidence of innocence, or "creates" evidence of guilt and puts someone on death row is guilty of attempted murder. If the death sentence is carried out, murder. They should be prosecuted as such.
s
"Which is why I think the death penalty should only be an option when multiple independent lines of evidence confirm that yes, this is the right guy."--wolfwalker
I agree with wolfwalker's idea. I wouldn't have a problem with expanding the list of crimes where you get the death penalty to include second degree murder, framing someone for a capital crime, and perhaps some other things, as long as the application of it was restricted to those cases with Multiple independent lines of proof.
Everyone thinks about how the Bible was so bloody with all the capital crimes in it, but it required 2-3 eyewitnesses before such a sentence could be carried out.
It wouldn't be a bad idea to carry such a principle into the present by requiring multiple lines of independent evidence such as credible eyewitnesses, DNA, video, confession, etc.
I'll make a deal:
We run whatever test the ACLU wants on every Death Row inmate, coast to coast, and exonerate every last innocent party we can clear with scientific proof.
Provided that 5 minutes after the results are in, we start executing the other multiple thousands of them in batches sufficient to empty all their bunks from coast to coast by noon the following Friday.
Then we can start seeing what the recidivism rate is for all of them, and talking intelligently about what a deterrent looks like, starting with the people deterred by being dead.
And we disbar in perpetuity every lawyer who argues for DNA evidence for exoneration, but screams about its unreliability every time an NFL superstar cuts his ex-wife's head off, and the like. If it's that unreliable, send all those supposedly exonerated jokers right back to the big house, and fire up Old Sparky. We can even run it with solar, wind, and hydroelectric power, just to make Ed Begley Jr. happy too.
And if Montana ever gets the balls to vote in death penalty via being eaten by a wolf pack, we need to move the nation's capitol to Helena.
I'm repeating myself, but I can't bring myself to jump on board with government doing the Ol' Yellering. I've seen too much crap way up close in the legal system to be comfortable with the idea. I don't trust bureaucrats to either deliver mail or zap the right Bad Bart.
I'm more than fully in favor of the miscreant being introduced to room temperature by the intended victim at the scene of the crime; despite the left continually claiming self defenders become stricken with hysteria, I place a great deal more faith in the involuntary participant viewing the front sight from the right end than I do the decisions of a semi-random dozen after several days of lawyerly obfuscation, all well removed from the original action.
That said, there's still the question of dealing with those who avoid the immediate on-scene corrective process. There does seem a need for post-event resolution; the problem, as I see it, is that the farther one gets from the predicating event the greater the chance of error due to the vagaries of time and imprecision of memory and evidence. No system is perfect, at least not on this planet, and I'm not convinced that ignoring such imperfection makes for a reliably better outcome.
There are so many good quotes from this post and the comments I don't know where to start. The next time I have to take out a four legged varmint that's sniffing around the house, I am definitely replacing my standard "he's taking a dirt nap" with "he got Ol' Yellered".
Thanks for brightening up my Wednesday morning.
I'm ambivalent on the death penalty, too, for all the same reasons. I usually don't advertise it, because it always results in an argument from someone on either side of the fence that I'm sitting on. But I just see China's mobile death vans, and Saudi Arabia's horrific execution rate, and just don't want to go there.
Doesn't the government already have enough power over our lives?
jf
I'm an appellate criminal defense lawyer who got a guy off death row once. All the focus on actual innocence aside, unfair proceedings happen - perhaps more frequently in cases where the DP charges the emotions on all sides.
You folks okay with unfair proceedings? I'm not. And I suspect you all would be howling for blood if the same sort of unfairness popped up even in your wife's trial for DWI.
I used to be hardcore in favor of the DP - until I saw how things actually happen. Now, I no longer trust the .gov to do it right in my name. (Like Breda's comment on FB, I've got no problem with someone making it happen at the moment of necessity.) No insult intended, but this is my area of practice and it seems to me that a whole lot of people who are rabidly in favor of "Put 'em down now! Right now!" either don't understand the system very well well or haven't thought it through.
cheers and have a Easter, karl erich martell
albuquerque nm
It's easy enough to change the standard of proof to beyond all doubt: that's the ones who were caught in the actual act, with multiple witness and/or video evidence of the deed. Jack Ruby, for instance. The problem with these is that when it's provable beyond all doubt, they always claim to be insane or retarded.
I'm getting religious on y'all, but I believe even a murderer can be saved and forgiven by God for his/her sins.
Since we can't tell when that change is genuine, I favor life without parole.
Well since Nifong is the world's most famous prosecutor, who can argue with that?
No time to chat, have to destroy some more exculpatory evidence so I can get that bonus.
/sarc
To be serious, the death penalty that we have is useful only to the defence bar. It certainly doesn't act as a deterrent. Anyone who does a needle-worthy act is not engaged in ANY rational process.
Even among death penalty worthy crimes, there is such a wide variety of narrowing factors that actually being sentenced to death is like winning an academy award- tremendous effort AND tremendous random chance play an equal part, with chance being far more determinative.
And finally, once the death penalty is ordered, there are years and years of appellate review, each step played for maximum delay and confusion by defence lawyers with essentially unlimited budgets.
A person sentenced to death in the United States is far more likely to die a natural death than to be executed. Certainly in my State that is true.
The original comment from the MyFace conversation is the usual straw man. Human beings err. The question is one of balancing the risks and the benefits. If you punish people, occasionally you will punish the wrong ones.
And you can replace punish with tax, bomb, release, promote, fire, or subsidise, anything Government- or actually the people in Government- does.
Speaking from inside the apparatus, I HOPE that conservatives, of which I am one, are as suspicious of the criminal justice process as they are of the arts grant award process or the Afghanistan conquest process.
To me that's what conservatism is- a mistrust of Government power generally, and an opposition to its deployment without the very best of reasons and under the most limited and carefully controlled circumstances.
@anonymous: I am religious too. But what does God's forgiveness have to do with society and the state's penalty?
If I steal your car, and then ask for forgiveness, do I keep the car?
Not to make light of a serious situation, but is that one swing with a really heavy estwing or two with a light-ish one?
staghounds,
"Speaking from inside the apparatus, I HOPE that conservatives, of which I am one, are as suspicious of the criminal justice process as they are of the arts grant award process or the Afghanistan conquest process."
Ray Bolger over at MyFace was merely lamenting how rarely this seems to be true. ;)
I used to be full on in favor of the death penalty. The thing that changed my mind was the McMartin Preschool fiasco. There, prosecutors made up their mind that the McMartin’s were guilty...and manufactured evidence to convict. Any parent that didn't play along by letting their little ones be brainwashed into remembering things that didn't happen were grouped in with the McMartin’s.
Since then, we've seen it over and over...a prosecutor decides someone is guilty, and come hell or high water they find a way to convict...especially if you're too poor to afford a good lawyer.
Just think about our recent history...the LaCrosse players...Zimmerman...cases where the facts be damned, the prosecutor is/was trying to make a name for themselves.
So...now, stop the war on drugs to open up the jail space...and keep the murderers in with no chance of parole. Unless of course, later evidence proves they were innocent.
Better a thousand guilty parties go free with insufficient evidence to convict than one innocent person suffer a bad prosecution.
I may be paraphrasing, but that's my opinion.
And...a 28 ounce hammer? Yeesh, that guy in Colorado, I think maybe the 4 ounce ball peen hammer I got as a starter for my son when he turns 4 (or maybe 5), something of that size would be better for that guy.
Secret code: urgasca 2709
I can't add anything to that.
Me, I prefer the balance and the nearly straight claws of the 20 oz Estwing Ripping hammer.
If we can't get the Justice system to operate properly there is NO punishment that is a good idea. If we don't want to kill someone just in case they didn't do X, why is it better to let them rot in prison for not doing X?
The solution is not to eliminate any form of punishment, but to make the system work. maybe we need to get some estwingazine for the lawyers.
I have moral qualms about killing someone who's not an immediate threat. I have moral qualms about locking social creatures in solitary cages. And I have moral qualms about locking people in with other people under conditions where rape and murder are not only common but considered acceptable. To me, that these things are so common makes them seem even more cruel.
I want low crime and a fair and just legal system. The guilty should make equitable restitution to their victims, and be able to return to being free to become full and productive members of society. The innocent should be free to go about their business unsuspected and unmolested by both law enforcement and their fellow citizens. I don't really care how that's achieved any more than I care about how ketchup gets to the grocery store.
The real problem with a state run legal system seems to be that the incentives are structured, like they are with all state institutions, to do more of X when X proves to be not so brilliant at solving whatever problem it was originally implemented to solve. If Heinz ever stops making good ketchup, Hunt's will take up the slack. Why can't a legal system work the same way?
This stings a lot, especially since it seems like a direct response to some things I wrote on my blog over the weekend. But the truth often stings.
In particular, I've given a lot of thought to the "if I don't trust the government to deliver mail, how can I trust them to kill people?" argument. The best response I can come up with is that it isn't the government deciding; it is the citizens (in the form of a jury). But that seems like a cop-out.
Jeff and others have beat me to the other point I was going to make: yeah, you can't restore somebody to life after you execute them. But you can't give a 40-year-old man back the 22 years he spent in jail after being wrongfully convicted when he was 18, either. Maybe part of the solution is to fix the problems in the system that lead to wrongful convictions for all crimes, not just capital ones.
And maybe we still need to keep the death penalty as an option, but only use it in special, very rare, cases and only when the evidence is unambiguous.
"Leatherwing said...
@anonymous: I am religious too. But what does God's forgiveness have to do with society and the state's penalty?"
Society's and the State's penalties are imposed on wrongdoers on this earth. Killing a man before he has received forgiveness for his sins has eternal consequences. If he is locked away from society, I am willing to give him all his natural life to see the truth and seek forgiveness. If necessary, I will use deadly force to protect innocence, but I do not wish to kill a person who is no longer a threat.
"Too many mistaken convictions have rested on false confessions."
Unless the confession in question was obtained by coercion, I have no sympathy. If an otherwise rational adult wants to freely confess to a capital crime, they are perfectly free to make that decision and face the consequences without interference.
Otherwise, I think Wolfwalker's idea is the best balance - multiple independent lines of evidence confirm that "yes, this is the right guy."
Here's one I think is an ideal death-penalty case.* A verifiable paper trail, multiple eyewitnesses, and ballistics evidence all support and confirm his guilt.
Plus, he killed someone while escaping from jail. That should be an automatic capital charge all by itself - proof that someone is too dangerous to society even while locked up.
But, as part of my distrust of government, I also believe in the idea of criminally charging crooked prosecutors, and if it was a capital case, charging them with attempted murder or actual murder.
* Disclosure: As a member of one of the local rescue squads, I knew both of his victims, and worked with them. "Professional acquaintances" is probably the best term, but it was enough that it does make the case a bit personal for me.
One thing to start improving matters: take away qualified immunity from prosecutors and cops. Make them PERSONALLY liable when they hide exculpatory evidence and so forth. Or lie on the stand. All the crap they largely get away with now. It'd probably make an amazing change in things.
I'd be a helluva lot more likely to drop my support of the death penalty if a "life" sentence actually meant that the person responsible would, you know, stay in jail until the conclusion of their life.
More and more, though, "life" tends to mean "the life of your average small dog", or, more often than not, "until the horror of the murder fades enough to let him out".
Keep the really bad folks in jail for life; stick them in a 8X8' cell for 23 hours a day if they prove themselves to be a danger to others; make it so that jail time is seen as something to be avoided at all costs and the death penalty would no longer be needed.
Shorter: How do you think the families of Charles Manson's victims feel seeing him come up for parole?
There is the problem: there are tons of incentives for prosecutors and cops to lie in order to get a conviction, and no disincentive.
As far as the problem of life in prison not meaning life, that is caused by prison overcrowding incident to drug conviction mandatory minimums.
Sorry, but there are enough people being exonerated with DNA evidence by the innocence project to make me not trust that the government employees are getting the right guy.
Just like a group of people cannot morally grant a power to government that the individual does not possess, neither can that same group of people be innocent when they commit the murder that they are trying to blame on an individual.
Execute the wrong guy, and you now have two murders, and we are all guilty of the second one.
To act as a deterrent, any penalty should be imposed and enacted quickly. A month between event and arrest, two years until trial, and twenty years of appeals do not a deterrent make.
The truth is that between bail and the legal system, most career criminals will see very little time behind bars. So the legal system provides very little reason not to choose a life of crime.
So we HAD terribly high violent crime rates. After 20 years of gradually loosening gun laws and increasing "three strikes and you're out" violent crime is down by 74% - or so says the DOJ.
Given the history, I am reasonably certain that more of the same will get us closer to where we were in 1900. With 12 murders and 820 crimes per million population.
But what do we do about miscarriages of justice. Firehand's suggestion would make a good start.
Stranger
The US government is the same bunch of people who literally could not manage to run a frigging whorehouse. Look it up sometime, it's painfully funny, or funnily painful, after you realize you're paying for these dolts. I do not trust the government with the authority to execute people. Not saying people dont need killing from time to time, but these assclowns are not up to standard.
I think they should reserve the death penalty for public acts of unrecoverable violence.
And require at least three witnesses, or one witness and a video camera or DNA.
This should allow us to execute school shooters, terrorists, and those few who we are dead certain did it.
The rest need to be in jail. Mistakes and railroadings do happen.
Jake wrote If an otherwise rational adult wants to freely confess to a capital crime, they are perfectly free to make that decision and face the consequences without interference.
Sounds good. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases it seems like the person who confesses isn't doing so "freely." Cops and prosecutors have all sorts of ways to get you to say what they want you to say. Your average critter isn't very smart to begin with, probably isn't well educated, and sure isn't up to matching semantic skills with a good lawyer. Or even a bad one. I can't call any specific cases to mind at the moment, but I know I've read of cases where men were maneuvered into "confessing" to serious crimes they didn't commit. Usually it was because the prosecutor or cops told him he'd get a plea bargain if he confessed, but going to trial would risk a life term or even the death penalty.
I also like the idea of prosecutors being liable for misconduct, even criminally liable in some cases.
For those who would like to see the incarcerated actually doing something to make restitution, as Anonymous at 10:30 said, I offer this idea from LawDog, which isn't perfect but is a damn sight better than what we've got now.
If you didn't have little enough faith in the criminal justice system
Wonder how many decades it's gonna take to unsnarl THAT mess?
Once the government has a perp in a cell, there is no need to cap them. Just weld the bars shut, and fill the cell in with concrete when the perp dies.
Let them exercise in their cell. Let them eat in their cell. Hard time is hard. Let the perp be forgotton, to grow his fingernails and hair long. Install a wash system so his excretement can be washed off the walls periodically, and a ventilation system so his air does not mix with that of other inmates.
I may need to, in the urgency of the moment, to use deadly force, when the situation is uncertain, when I and my family are at hazard.
When the perp is in jail what is the urgency? What is the hazard? Why kill, when the disease can be isolated, contained, and studied?
take away qualified immunity from prosecutors and cops. Make them PERSONALLY liable when they hide exculpatory evidence
Add judges too and I'm all in.
The guy who says "I did it, I liked it and I'm going to do it again Mother Fracker!" is moved to the front of the line and dealt with.
Any convictions that bank on eyewitness testimony are suspect at best. The 'that's the guy' crap is so unreliable it's sickening it is given so much weight.
With the system we have now - from LEO agencies getting to keep goods to pad their budgets, DAs racking up points to run for higher office, judges and prosecutors immune from the justice of their injustice, I don't trust any .gov agency to do it right.
Remember - we DON'T HAVE A JUSTICE SYSTEM, WE HAVE A LEGAL SYSTEM. One that can be purchased if you have enough $$$ or connections.
I don't trust our current governments, either state or federal, to perform ANY basic functions. I'm certainly not going to favor trusting them with the power of almost-arbitrarily-inflicted death.
Once you've taken someone's life, you can't give it back. Someone noted that you can't give back wasted years of life in a cell if innocent, but at least they've got the REST of their life to live.
My opinion (unsupported by any facts what-so-ever) is that life imprisonment should be offered for what are now "death-penalty" crimes...but with an assisted-suicide option. When life in that minimalist prison cell is no longer preferable to death, we'll help 'em out.
"Take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure" is a nice concept, but I'd only want it applied when the perpetrator has been FAIRLY convicted, and has confessed, AND opts for death rather than a life sentence. As long as someone is claiming that they're innocent, we have to acknowledge the possibility that they're telling the truth. I no longer trust eye-witnesses (notoriously unreliable), and with modern technology, even video is now highly suspect (when they can seamlessly and in high-definition make things look real, imagine what an artist could do with a crummy-resolution security camera tape).
I think the "why kill" is a human imperative. The idea that hard working people have to be taxed to feed the very worst- the OK City or Norway island beasts- grates. And that they live, feel dawn, see sunset glow seems somehow wrong.
And what, I wonder, makes numbers more awful? The Norway island slug only did the same things the Knoxville ones did, just more of it. Does quantity have a quality all its own?
And how much quantity? The Knoxville monsters had two victims. What if one had lived, would that have changed the needleworthiness calculation?
What if both had survived, but been comatose on ventilators forever?
These hairs are too fine for me to split.
And Police officers and prosecutors are NOT personally immune from liability for intentional acts. In fact, we are subject to special criminal statutes that allow multiple trials and penalties for the same conduct.
I've got a few problems with the death penalty...
1. Have you ever seen "Law Abiding Citizen" (you know, the movie where that Irish guy is playing the good guy going after all the lawyers who were ok with letting the bad guys get off easy)? In the execution chamber scene, one lawyer (the swarthy fellow) says to the chick lawyer that it's "just like watching somebody fall asleep"
...this is a problem. Regardless of justification YOU'RE STILL TAKING A HUMAN LIFE! This should be a big F***ING deal. This fact should be impressed upon EVERY person at EVERY level of the investigation, arrest, trial...Require attendance (possibly not for jurors...those poor bastards didn't ask to be a part of it), and make sure that they realize that a human being is dead, and they had a hand in it (and that they should be proud of having removed that particular defect from society...?).
And what the hell could possibly be inhumane about a frangible round to the back of the head?
2. We're not allowed to use it on rapists (regardless of number of offenses), child molesters (regardless of number of offenses), or anybody else whose victims didn't actually DIE...
We need to use it more often.
3. The system is stacked too heavily in favor of sociopaths running the CJ system. If they think you did it (or want to prove you, or SOMEBODY did), you might not stand much of a chance.
So...fix the system to make sure only the right guy gets popped, pop more of them for more offenses, and make sure everybody knows what they're actually doing, and the severity of it.
staghounds,
I was using the Norway guy as an example of fair certainty that the right guy was got. Ol' Yeller doesn't need to take multiple bites in Tamaraland.
Why are you guys so upset about Old Yeller? It's Old Yeller, it's a happy movie. Happy family gets a dog, frontier fun.
@ anonymous: Sometimes they remain a threat although locked up. A Death Row Inmate knows something the rest of us do not: The date and time of their end. If that is not encentive enough to get them on the right with God, the end of their natural life won't either. When I was younger, we had a saying about an appearently "rightous" shooting death. We called it DSF for "they Done Society a Favor" by eliminating the expense of trial and incarseration by taking them out. Sometimes they need killin'.
No government is competent enough....or legitimate enough, to kill one of it's citizens. Lock 'em up forever and leave our options open plus...make the government back...up.
In Texas we are having a little cluster of folks locked up due to bad lawyers and worse prosecutors. I think that qualified immunity ought to be looked at pretty hard in cases like these. That would bring us a LOT better law on the day-to-day level.
"@ anonymous: Sometimes they remain a threat although locked up."
See, e.g., the example I linked to earlier. He beat one deputy senseless, used his gun to murder a hospital security guard, and then while in hiding murdered another deputy by shooting him in the back of the head.
Sometimes a rabid dog just needs to be put down.
I want low crime and a fair and just legal system. The guilty should make equitable restitution to their victims, and be able to return to being free to become full and productive members of society. The innocent should be free to go about their business unsuspected and unmolested by both law enforcement and their fellow citizens. I don't really care how that's achieved any more than I care about how ketchup gets to the grocery store.
And that, in a nutshell, is how this country got to its current perilous state.
People want what they want, they want it now, they don't care how they get it, and they can't be bothered to roll up their sleeves and work for the society they really want.
staghounds,
And Police officers and prosecutors are NOT personally immune from liability for intentional acts. In fact, we are subject to special criminal statutes that allow multiple trials and penalties for the same conduct.
Maybe in theory, where you live.
Tell me, who is going to arrest and prosecute those errant police and prosecutors?
Oh, that's right--other police and prosecutors. We've seen how well that works.
How about the death penalty keeping people from exacting revenge on their own, and maybe screwing up? Preventing blood feuds is a good thing too. If someone caps my brother or my wife the chance that the State might deal out Justice just might let me pause a while before I run out and take care of bizness on my own, and burning the SOB's house down, and whoops his kids and gramma were the only ones home ...
When I first moved to Chicago, there were 12 people on Death Row in Illinois.
I lived there for 4 years. In that time, 10 of those people were proven innocent. Not just "released on a technicality," but actually innocent, as in, didn't do that crime.
In two of those cases, the prosecution had exculpatory evidence on file, that they did not share with the defense.
I'm still in favor of the DP as a matter of principle. But as a practical matter, they way it plays out in our system, I am opposed.
If you think killing someone without justification is such a horrible crime you want the perp to die for it, you should think twice about clamoring in support of a system that demonstrably kills people without justification.
Alath
Carmel IN
I found elements I liked in the commentary of Aesop, Staghounds, and Packin'Poppa. Coming from a four generation Irish cop family with relatives who were killed in the line of duty lends a certain cynicism, and I think the guy who gunned down Uncle Mike got just what he deserved when they threw the switch up in Sing-Sing.
I also have a narcotics detective son who has survived a number of gunfights. So far, he's been faster and better than any of his opponents. But, if someday I have to put on a black armband and walk behind the piper as he plays Amazing Grace, I want the Son Of A Bitch who did it DEAD!
That being said, of course I don't think anyone with even a chance of innocence should be executed. However, consider that, to the best of my knowledge, nobody innocent has been executed in the last 90 years or so. Not one.
The system is loaded toward letting people off (look at O.J.), and even when there is a conviction, the slightest possibility of innocence can keep the case in appeal for decades.
I suspect we could keep the flexibility that allows even the most slender possibility of innocence to maintain a prisoner's life while doing something quite permanent in the 99.9+% of cases where there is absolutely no doubt.
We're looking at observational error here, of two kinds. First, on the part of the mostly left-leaning governments. Violent crime is overwhelmingly urban, and our cities are culturally European transplants.
Secondly, on the part of the media, also predominantly leftist, but with a uniquely American twist.
The urban political machine maintains itself through a system of favors, predominantly to self perceived minorities.
Divide and conquer. The more competing entities created, the more secure the tenure of the political class that adjudicates that largess.
This multigenerational con game has created intrinsically sociopathic cultures that are a cancer waiting to seize the entire country, and the usually quite stupid members of such cultures more closely resemble rabid animals than they do reasoning beings. We selectively breed them for dumb, because bright people advance beyond the handouts easily in a society that offers even the most tenuous capitalism or affirmative action.
When you're dealing with I.Q.'s in the 65 to 85 range (the vast majority), it is usually quite easy to figure out what happened, and the perpetrator is as likely to boast of the exploit as try to hide it.
In that culture, three hots and a cot, plus world class medical care and the prison status of being a "Made Man" is an incentive, not a punishment.
Concerning the media, as W.R. Hearst said, "Good news doesn't sell". So constantly stirring the pot is good for accounts receivable. But there is another thing I've noticed about liberals that hasn't commonly been commented on. They want to live forever.
Seriously. I'm talking about common conversations among "well" educated relatives and their friends. Interest in life extension and medical immortality is a seriously important part of their lives. It generates everything from Veganism to cults. Actually, I repeat myself.
A healthy fear of death is a great life extender, or at least a preventer of premature death. But these people jump at every chance to gain their immortality, and this unhealthy fear colors everything they do.
Bottom line. They don't even want the State to have the power of life and death over human beings, much less some sister-marrying Redneck with a shotgun in the closet.
I deal with people like this all the time (mostly in New York), and they are often distraught to the point of physical illness when they find out I design guns for a living and shoot them five or six days per week. I'm talking hyperventilation and abject terror.
Like all totalitarian societies, they believe in the "End Of History", the idea that cultural perfection was achieved by them, and if only those insane "conservatives" were eliminated or reeducated, perfection would last forever.
Also, like all other totalitarian societies with a pseudo-intellectual justification, they are ruled from the top down, with a sheep-like adoration of the "Great Man". It's no accident that Bloomberg gets reelected automatically.
Look at the demographics of Americans who vote Democrat. Lots of people at the top. A majority of Americans with advanced degrees vote Democrat, a skew induced by all those teachers intent on padding their pensions.
Lots of people at the bottom, mostly full-time welfare recipients or the infrequently employed who wander back and forth between welfare and entry level jobs depending on what is most easily available at the time.
In the middle, not so much. Bureaucrats, and the police and fire departments, who are essentially brave mercenaries whose loyalty is to their departments and each other. Even then, I question how many cops vote liberal, unless cousin Brian or Pat is running for D.A.
Seriously, I think a squeamishness concerning capital punishment where justified, certainly the overwhelming majority of first degree convictions nowadays, is a timid prejudice of our self selected elites that has been rammed down out throats by the media.
The same dramatic improvements in mechanical forensics, DNA, and chain-of-evidence strictures that have freed a dozen or so improperly charged inmates collected over as much as a half century has also convicted beyond any reasonable doubt every murderer since slightly post O.J.
Given today's controls, I can possibly see a very rare "squeeker" sending someone to prison on a second degree rap, but the hotseat? I doubt it.
And given the character and intellect of the typical killer, I question how effective the plea bargain system would be without the possibility of the Big Drop.
I have only been on the job since shoulder pads for women went out, but I haven't dealt with thirty cases- all told, not just homicides- in which DNA was at all probative one way or the other. I've had a couple of fingerprint cases, never a ballistics or toolmark one.
The truth is that EVERY criminal conviction rests on witness testimony. Even a DNA murder case- whoever found the stiff, the crime scene tech who collected the DNA, the people who transported it, the chemist. The medical examiner who establishes cause and time of death.
In almost NO rape or murder case is identity the defense. In homicide, it's self defense or trying to make it a lesser degree plus devalue the victim.
In rape cases, it's mainly "it never happened" for children and consent for adults.
I just don't see many who dun it homicides. Remember that death penalty cases are very rare. My jurisdiction has thirty to fifty homicides a year (since the Reagan administration) and we've had probably six death filings during all that time.
@Ed F
"freed a dozen or so improperly charged inmates collected over as much as a half century"
Wonder about your numbers: as I noted above, during four years I lived in Chicago, there were 10 Illinois death row inmates exonerated - and in two cases, it was proven that the prosecutors knew about, and suppressed, exculpatory evidence.
If there have only been a dozen or so in the last fifty years, and 10 of them happened in a 4-year period in Illinois, then that is a very odd distribution.
Alath
Carmel IN
@Ed Foster, have you heard or read about the case Cameron Todd Willingham? Convicted of arson that killed his 3 daughters. Conviction hinged on evidence interpreted by arson investigators. Their interpretation is questioned and considered outdated by other arson investigators.
There is good reason to believe that he was innocent. There is certainly reasonable doubt. He was executed in TX in 2004.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham
Alath,
Corruption and incompetence in part of Cook County goverment you say?
Shocked sir, I am shocked!
Gerry
Ed Foster: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham
28 ounces of Estwingazine intracranially....That is funny.
Alath, I will check the numbers, but again, THEY WERE STILL ALIVE to be exonerated, and as Staghounds points out, DNA is usually not the determining factor in late exonerations, although it is a standard means nowadays to eliminate potential suspects. Usually it's because a witness recants.
The quote on zero wrong deaths during most of the 20th century came from an FBI interview in one of my son's cop magazines and seemed pretty authoritative. I can dig around downstairs and find the issue if you want.
Bottom line, if it comes down to "He said, She/He said", then the person seems about 100% likely to be kept alive, either by pleading to a lesser charge, or through constant and (here I probably disagree with most of my cop friends) reasonable reviews of the case by the judiciary.
It's not a perfect system, what could be, but it seems to have avoided the unjust death of innocent men, who would have spent all those years in prison anyway, even in a society without capital punishment. What infinitesimal fraction of one percent of all prisoners are we discussing?
As to being "Too Black" as a crime, I was a northern Navy Brat in rural northern Florida in the 50's, and could still show you the telephone pole a black man was lynched on (and castrated) after being caught with a white prostitute.
I'm fully aware of the things done in the way back beyond, and I have mostly racially mixed grandchildren. I didn't raise my kids to think like that.
But what has happened since the mid-60's has thrown the switch totally the other way. The FBI reports 806,316 murders in the U.S. between 1965 and 2004. 588,611 (73%)were perpetrated by African-American men. Let's look at that figure for a moment.
Black men between 15 and 40 make up 1.45% of the American population, but commit three-fourths of all murders. I don't care that they're "poor".
My father was in and out of orphanages during the depression, and lived on ketchup sandwiches made on stale bread for years. He never killed anybody.
What counts isn't the color of their skin. Rather, it is the totally depraved culture most are raised in, compliments of the Democrats who farm them for their votes.
Perhaps it's not fair to some of the whites I've known, but I generally rate classy black people higher than comparable whites, because I understand how easy it is for so many blacks to accept the self-serving lies and fall back on the government teat.
And I understand the pressure upwardly mobile Blacks face if they try to do it "Whitey's" way.
I know some damned fine people who are the Whitest folks around. They just happen to have brown skins. And I respect them all the more for the extra class and hustle it took for them to get there.
As to the Democrats, Ted Kennedy made a speech shortly before he died concerning the disproportionate number of Blacks on Death Row. He pointed out that 48% of the men on Death Row were Black, but they only made up 12% of the population.
Hmmmm.... 73% of the murders, but only 48% of the people being punished. Sounds like the Caucasians are the ones getting chopped for being "White In A Public Place". 27% of the murders and 52% of those getting the needle or electricity.
We simply have to stop talking race and start talking individual culpability.
Ed,
"Alath, I will check the numbers, but again, THEY WERE STILL ALIVE..."
That's why we checked 'em; they were still alive.
Wonder what'd happen if we applied some of that same scrutiny to the ones that aren't? Or do we want to know?
I still like B. W. Clough's premise in the "Crystal Crown" novel. Lapidation.
Premise 1) No jail time in excess of seven (7) years.
Premise 2) If seven (7) years jail time is insufficient for the crime, the only alternative is lapidation.
Lapidation -- take the offender to the public square. Lay the offender out; cover with wood platform. Have members of the community come by, lay one stone each, if they wish, from the nearby stack, onto the wood platform. If said deemed-miscreant is still alive at sundown, roll off the stones, let him/her go.
Premise 3) In case the convicted miscreant survives the lapidation, the sentencing judge assumes the position under the platform the next day at noon, and members of the community are invited to file by.
Now, me, I wonder if exile wouldn't be an effective way to recycle those individuals contributing to the woes and violence level of a community. Maybe even a merc force like the French Foreign Legion -- forbidden by law to enter the home nation, ten year hitch, shoot deserters and miscreants, and launder identities of inductees, so that every (surviving) veteran returns with a clean slate and ten years of disciplined life amongst disciplined (and armed) people.
Gosh, if we're going to go all squishy, I feel pretty put out about being falsely accused of a moving violation. And I want fries with that. And a pony.
So since we're demanding a ridiculous standard of perfection and epistemology in capital cases based far more on maudlin appeals to sympathy than an actual numeric accounting of hits and misses, why stop there?
Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere, right? Simply let everyone go for everything, and return to jungle law. Because we can't ever be absolutely sure.
The issue with prison time is another twelve rants, but if we replaced the fatuous 24 Hour Fitness model of corrections with the implementation of the Chateau D'If School of Penal Theory, and simply locked miscreants in a solo cell and slid a plate of food under the door twice a day until either their sentence expired, or they did, for every felony, I could grudgingly settle for retiring the death penalty.
Of course, now you've bootstrapped the argument that if you aren't willing to kill your own citizenry for petty offenses like a school rampage with a battle rifle, where in sweet suffering f**k do you get off thinking you can start killing people who aren't your citizens, for offenses alleged on far less stringent evidentiary guidelines?
And when you can't maintain peace within nor without, exactly how long do you expect to exist as a society?
The Amish and their outlook are quaint, but we don't turn over the management of either the police department nor the State and Defense departments to their tender consciences, and for good cause.
Aesop,
"Of course, now you've bootstrapped the argument that if you aren't willing to kill your own citizenry for petty offenses like a school rampage with a battle rifle..."
Uh, now, who are you reductio ad absurduming at? Not me, I hope?
And I have to wonder about how many people who are so cavalier about the idea of whacking the occasional wrong dude would go blithely to the wall with a song in their heart and a Sydney Carton quote on their lips themselves for the good of society should they be the one to get caught up in the gears?
Tam: A legitimate point, even if it effects only a fraction of a percent. I wouldn't want to be the innocent exception. But we can't go back and change history.
However, given the dramatically improved science and procedure we have today, isn't the death penalty more useful today, rather than less?
I hear the horror stories every day from family and friends who are cops. Even the most hardened 40-something cons are terrified of the teenagers coming into the prison system. They are stone cold killers without a shred of compassion, complete maniacs.
Psychopaths are essentially untreatable, and we grow more of them every day. The culture is on the downhill side of the curve, fragmenting into ever more isolated and frantic subgroups.
I doubt we could ever whack enough bad guys to stop the growth of the gangbanger culture. It's financed by the welfare system's destruction of traditional values and is a growth industry.
Our murder rate has dropped by half in the last 20 years, but the drop is almost entirely among groups other than gang members. Given the utter disfunction found in that culture, I question whether law enforcement could even function without the possibility of a death penalty. A lesser punishment is nothing but a trophy to be worn and bragged about.
If nothing else, it's a great incentive to a plea bargain. I suspect there are a lot of uncontested Murder 2nd and Manslaughter 1 convictions due to the possibility of a needle.
The prison status of being a "Made Man" is an encouragement. Imagine how much more status a convict would have as a cop killer should the death penalty be withdrawn.
A generous majority of our murders are gang members killing other gang members. Criminologist John DiIulio, as close to a liberal as you can find in that field, wrote an article a few years back on the number of crimes committed before violent offenders were caught. The numbers are absolutely staggering.
I think we all agree that borderline cases should be treated in a different manner than hardcore butchers who have often been killing since their early teens. But the borderline cases are a minority, and one that is dwindling.
My son had a $40,000 hit put on him from a major drug gang. His department had a snitch in the room when the contract was issued. The guy who was supposed to nail his partner was caught, but the Dominican shooter aimed at Son One is still at large.
If all the trigger man has to fear is a position as BMOC back at the jail, what is my kid's life expectancy?
staghounds offered: And Police officers and prosecutors are NOT personally immune from liability for intentional acts.
So the prosecutor or the cops say it wasn't intentional and its "Olly olly oxen free", that's the way it seems to work.
Pretty weak since the cops and the other DAs are the ones doing the QA.
Consider the number of DAs that have actually been charged, found guilty of misconduct in prosecution, disbarred + the number of cops fired and prosecuted for same vs the number of convicted - now aquitted offenders.
cue the crickets...It's not even close.
"If society wants to get all squeamish in those cases, then hand me the claw hammer and I'll go in there and administer 28 ounces of Estwingazine intracranially and we'll be done after you pass me that Handi-Wipe."
I officially love you and want to have your children. If that's not too creepy. And maybe even if it is.
"And Police officers and prosecutors are NOT personally immune from liability for intentional acts."
In theory, perhaps. But we all know the difference between theory and reality. How often do you see malicious cops/prosecutors actually punished? Like, say, the LAPD twits that opened up on the two ladies for the horrible crime of driving a pickup? Or anyone involved in the Jose Guerena murder?
In reality, between the fact that it's usually coworkers and fellow corrupt cops/prosecutors who are responsible for investigating and prosecuting the scum, and the high standards required to overcome qualified immunity, police and prosecutors being held liable for intentional bad acts has become the exception rather than the rule.
perfect example of comparing apples and oranges. A jury of one's peers decides the death penalty, not a government bureaucracy.
Circa Bellum,
I have received many thoughtful, intelligent, discussion-provoking responses to this statement at the original forum, on Facebook, and here at the blog.
Yours was not one of them.
Every time someone tells me that it is okay to occasionally be wrong and execute the wrong guy because it is for the greater good of society and, hey, no one is perfect, my response is typically that if they feel that waythey should volunteer to be next. Because, hey, good of society and all. Ill bet none of these folks would be cool with the occasional innocent man getting fried if they were that man, meaning that they are perfectly cool with killing people as long as its not them.
If that isn't fucking evil I'm not exactly sure what is.
No Tam, not at you personally. That was the group "you", not the Host "you".
But given the unarguable existence of the Mike Farrell Brigade, it's far less a reductio ad absurdum than today's news telecast.
I'm not arguing that anyone accused nor convicted, rightly or wrongly, be denied due process. And I want the process as error-proof as possible. But when that process reaches its conclusion, so should the convicted, ideally with their legs kicking a time or two to consider their deeds, however briefly, before the final curtain falls.
But asking for or expecting 100% certitude is absolutely a reductio ad absurdum, unless I get to demand the same standard from such demanders before they are permitted anything less than eating germ free food, breathing clean air, and drinking pure water. And if it takes a few months of oxygen starvation before we can meet the standard, oh well.
We have to deny that to them, for the children.
Personally, I'd start with insuring ths safety of those convicted of murder, by enforcing that standard. Fair is fair. 100% sure, all the time, that's my new motto.
Maybe when the ACLU is accused of condoning the inhumane treatment of criminals by foisting less than absolutely pure sustenance on defenseless criminals, they'll STFU about agitating for ending the death penalty.
While Bruno Hauptman may not have kidnapped the Lindbergh baby, OJ damned certain chopped his ex's head off, despite the curious juxtaposition of the one who was actually executed with one who never will be.
The pussification of our legal system doesn't argue that it has improved, nor that it bodes well for society.
If thinking that makes me cavalier with the lives of the randomly possibly innocent, then I'll need to get me some jinglebobs for my spurs, and a new feather for my hat.
(And for the genii who argued against accepting eyewitness testimony, why stop there? Let's hire and arm blind cops, because who're we gonna believe, me, or your lying eyes? Let's eliminate eyewitness juries too, and just go to trial by judge - or removing fallible humans entirely, trial by ordeal! Now verdicts are the Will of God! Because things worked sooooooo much better jurispridentially before 1215 when the divinely ordained king could simply have the magistrate declare you a witch, and take you for a swim under a few rocks, than when we got those danged unreliable humans involved in the process!)
I say, you either want people in the process and you accept the flaws, or you get them out, and accept those flaws.
Despite imperfection in the system, I'm putting my chips on common law since Magna Carta, thanks. Which includes getting a handy rope and a suitable tree ready, in certain cases.
I think of that gal in Texas who was on death row for an horrible axe murder. She had that very rare thing, a genuine jailhouse conversion. She told her lawyers to stop all appeals, and that she was ready to take her medicine.
It is sound Christian doctrine that even if you ask forgiveness from God and the one you wronged, and it's granted, that does not excuse you from the temporal punishment.
I don't think anybody (anybody sane at least) is arguing for eliminating eyewitness testimony, just for putting it in its proper context.
From the whole classroom full of preschoolers that was convinced that they saw all kinds of satanic things to my own memory quietly editing itself while I wasn't looking, we are bombarded with reminders that the human brain is not quite the infallible RAID array we'd like to think it is.
Yup, Tam, as much as I hate the idea of copcams everywhere , as they have it in Britain, video evidence might just exonerate you. I think I recall reading that the first result of fingerprint technology was to spring an innocent man from prison.
Well, the first clue on human recollection is that microphones, cameras, video lights, and reporter's notebooks tend to bring out the worst in people. Either that, or Art Bell is the greatest journalist since Edward Murrow, take your pick, and the lack of his peers' accolades is a tragedy.
There's a reason they don't swear people in on the Jerry Springer show.
Having lived through it locally, let's remember the aberation that was the McMartin Case was ginned up wholesale by a local TV reporter who was dating the social worker "helping" the children invent the fantasies about flying teachers, satanic rituals, and undergound labyrinths (because, seriously, how you anyone run a proper preschool without all that?), and reporting same breathlessly, and the editor of the L.A. Slimes was engaged to the prosecutor in the case. Conflict of interest much? No way, said KABC and the Slimes. News flash: little kids lie, fluently. Especially when pressured by scary grownups. Most of us figured that out by kindergarten, because we'd delivered a whopper or two our ownselves by that age.
When one starts with a hysterical ex-wife, and adds gasoline and matches liberally, you get what one ought to expect. That shouldn't be an excuse to discount the system, just an excuse to criminally prosecute some former govt. employees and reporters. I'll bet sensationalism that lands you in prison wouldn't be nearly as appealing on the back end. But no one talks endlessly about journalists covering for each other just like they berate crooked cops for doing. Color me shocked.
When both the detectives' and prosecutors' best instincts based on the evidence are that ____ did it, we run that by a jury of citizens, with a referee, and they get their own counsel to counterspin and question to levels of farfetched ridiculousity that only the televised evidence of the OJ trial revealed to the average person at home.
If they passed a law requiring a three judge appellate panel to sit in a soundproof box behind a one-way mirror over the judge during every capital trial, and do an on-site review on the spot for reversible judicial error, I'd say let's foot the bill, as a society, for that standard.
But twelve months and 30 seconds after the guilty verdict beyond a reasonable doubt was reached and sustained by said process, absent amazing new evidence, someone should be getting rolled into the little green room with a priest and prepared for final launch.
(cont.)
(cont.)
And all the hand-wringing about how many people "the system" incarcerates here is infuriatingly obtuse. I've seen any number of Trashcanistan countries, including some we'd think of as First World. Their justice systems suck harder, their societies are less free, and they're suckier places to live overall. Too many people disconnect the fact of our society from the number of certified douches we lock up, as if one had nothing to do with the other. And quite a number of them deserve to be "Old Yellered".(And in probably 100+ countries, the low incarceration rates are due to police either issuing citations via baton, or suspects "shot while trying to escape" during field interrogations. Saves court and prison costs.)
That total hogwash about "not a threat anymore" is world-class magical-thinking diaper spackle too. The avg. crook is a 300 felony/year machine (that we can document). And violent criminals repeat, endlessly, into their Social Security years. Anyone who thinks the sort of people who kill others by stabbing them 47 times, or setting them on fire, or beating them to piles of goo with tire irons is "no longer a threat" just because two months' time and a clean orange jumpsuit have intervened, is a moron of the type formerly diagnosed by suitable-sized metal rings slid over the cranium.
We don't, and shouldn't demand 100% flawlessness for anything in creation. So unless we're going to expect that about everything, let's don't start with the justice system. If we identify a correctable flaw, by all means, have a go at fixing that. But the problem isn't that we execute too many posibly innocent people, it's that we *don't* execute too many utterly guilty ones. The current ratio, just in my lifetime, is what?...0:50,000, or something like.
Fire up Old Sparky. Global Warming can take it on the chin.
(Apologies for length. Sometinmes a good rant doesn't fit in 80 lines or less.)
"... the aberation that was the McMartin Case..."
Stop it! You're killin' me ovah heah! *snif* *wipes tear from eye* ;)
In case it's not apparent from the number of cops, defense attorneys, and prosecutors littering my comments section and sidebar, I'm not encountering a lot of revelations about the existence of dirtbags in our society from the comments above.
I maintain that the safest person to handle the disposition of the aforementioned "felony machine" is the intended victim. (Of course, press hand-wringing aside, the vast vast majority of violent crime in the US is of the "NHI" variety.)
No arguments on citizens saving the court's time with one pull of the Glock voting machine.
I was refering to the Art Bell-worthy malarkey in McMartin, not the lapses in jurisprudence in general. GIGO. Remember, we're starting with lawyers, cross-pollinated with criminals and people unable to dodge jury duty.
Compared to the Ringling Bros.' 400 sex-starved monkeys with a defenseless football that was McMartin, the OJ Circus was a Jack Webb teleplay. You got the highlights, I got to see it on local TV daily.
Just curious: If the process is too flimsy to zap someone, what makes it okay to use the same results delivered by the same shaky standards sufficient to lock a person in a hole for 80 years?
Isn't "a little bit guilty" rather like "a little bit pregnant"?
@Tam at 9:22 am: Well, yes. If you plug the guy who came in through your bedroom window at 0300, It is obvious to anybody of the meanest understanding which was in the right, and which was in the wrong.
Lotsa people, I believe, do deserve the death penalty for awful things they've done, but somehow I just don't trust the State to get that right, 'specially with the expanded powers and ulterior motives the State has, these days.
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