OK, so the next question is: where did the 112 number come from? Is the source reliable? What criteria did they use for determining “evidence of innocence” versus procedural error?
I think that the party who has been wronged (victim or victims family if they have been killed) should have the final say. They should be able to decide what form of punishment is appropriate seeing as they are the one’s who have been wronged they should be able to decide what would make them feel better - torture, death penalty, prison, whatever, however and for as long as they like.
112 were let go because of evidence of that they were innocent. There are more that got out on technicalities. Just google “innoncent death penalty” and you will find loads of resources. Like I said, I’m not against the death penalty per se.
Also, even if only 4 innocent people were put to death, that would be too much for me. Yorrick, im not sure what you are trying to get at. How many innocent people would be enough for you. Do you really think that anti-death penalty people make up statistics?
Finally, if the police and prosecution were more careful and thorough, less people would get off on technicalities. I realize that both of them have tough jobs, but that is no excuse when someone’s life is on the line.
Again, I have nothing against the death penalty other than the way it is applied.
Sure, some innocent people have been convicted, but is there any evidence an innocent person has ever been executed?
Also, if you have a case where you know beyond a doubt that the person is guilty, then how would the death penalty be unfair or racist? If you know he’s guilty, then all the other arguments against the DP go right out the window. Because they are all “What if” questions and arguments.
Yes, it would be unfair if you sentenced everyone to death for every crime.
Yes it would be unfair if you only sentenced blue-eyed, left-handed Mongolians to death.
No, it’s not unfair if you know the SOB killed someone.
And if it was my child he had killed, and he didn’t get the death penalty, he better beg the state to keep him locked up forever. Because the day he got out, he’d be dead.
I`d just be curious to see what percentage of f***ing hypocrits (or the consistency challenged for the PC crowd) when someone close to them gets offed.
Now youll see those humanitarian`, give-them-the-benefit-of-the-doubt, one-live-is-too-much change sides in an eyeblink.
Yeah, principles are fine until its the other guy whos a victim.
I expect the percentage to be high. Fuck `em.
Yeah, principles are fine until its the other guy whos a victim.
Woops! It should read:
Yeah, principles are fine as long as its the other guy whos the victim.
“Ahhh, if they ain’t guilty for what they’re fried for, they’re probably guilty of somethin’”
Bangs, I had the misfortune of once serving on a jury with some asshole who felt the same way. During deliberations he actually said: “Well, he obviously isn’t guilty. But he’s probably guilty of something or they wouldn’t have put him on trial. I say we go ahead and convict him just to be safe.”
I hope that someday if you are charged with something you didn’t do and you ask for a jury trial, you don’t get a few jurors with that same fucked up attitude.
Roark –
Interesting – I looked up the ACLU link that had the listing of 112 “innocent” people. It was basing its point on a study by Professor Liebman.
To begin with, they chose some interesting cases to highlight – several of their case studies had actually confessed, and were later shown not to have committed the crimes. That’s not the type of error that most systems are going to catch.
Secondly, I’ve seen some critiques of Professor Liebman’s study, and I stand by what I said earlier on technicalities. This is a very complex area of the law. Say someone is killed in the course of a robbery. Say that particular murder is attributed to one of the robbers, who was indisputably shooting at people. Say evidence comes out later that shows he could not have fired the bullet that actually killed the person he was convicted of murdering.
By the standards applied by Liebman, that person has just been proved innocent. To me, that’s a technicality – and one of the reasons I highly support the felony murder rule. I think he’s still guilty as sin, and the felony murder rule, were it applied, would still have him guilty. However, not all jurisdictions apply the felony murder rule. Thus, his proved “innocense” in the study. There are a good number similar to that, although you won’t find the details on the ACLU highlight reel (in fact, you won’t find many details at all – wonder why that is?).
BostonBarrister:
I agree that most systems will not catch errors such as a person confessing to a crime they did not commit, but it happens, and a confession shouldnt be sufficent, by itself, to sentence someone to death. There should be other evidence, especially if the person confessed, since he would give the prosecution/police leads which they would not otherwise have. If we insist on maintaining the death penalty we must come up with a system that will address such errors.
Im not sure if your saying that in a jurisdiction that lacks a felony murder rule, where someone who didnt actually commit a murder, but was present at the crime and helped in the endeavor, got off death row because he did not shoot the person, and shooting the person is necessary for a conviction of murder, then that is getting off on a techincality? I would disagree. He didnt commit the crime for which he was charged; he was innocent. He should have been charged with something else. Thats not a technicality. I could have read what you wrote wrong, forgive me if I did.
Im not saying that any of these people are good people, or even that the don’t deserve to die for being terrible human beings. but the law is the law. Change it if you must.
Having a felony-murder rule poses its own problems. There are plenty of stupid people who get caught up in bad situations (where people are killed), however I dont think all of them deserve to die. However, I do understand that most people know what they are getting themselves into. I dont trust prosecutors to make these decisions without pandering to the public.
I think I’m opposed to rape and torture in general, even the prison rape of assholes like that killer. All that does is increase the amount of pain in the world, and I think pain and suffering is bad even when it’s an asshole who suffers.
The death penalty is fine by me, but I think they should be snuffed out humanely – torture serves no logical purpose.
From a utilitarian standpoint, I think I agree with Dan McV – it costs more (with numerous appeal trials) to execute someone than to lock him up forever, and it’s dubious that it’s a deterrent. However, from a moral standpoint, I support the death penalty. Consider Timothy McVeigh, who was executed a few years ago – he did not deserve to live, and I think it was worth the money spent in order to take him out of this world.
Even though I’m opposed to prison rape, I must admit, I think it’s the biggest deterrent that has kept me on the straight and narrow when I feel like doing something of questionable legality.
Kill em all, let god sort them out
Actually, you pretty well got it. I’ve always believed – especially while I was sitting through Crim Law and all that falderal about the Model Penal Code – that our system has set itself up over the past 50 years with the goal of minimizing punishments, and especially minimizing the applicability of the death penalty.
From a societal perspective, I fail to see why we should distinguish between these two cases: guy robs bank, shoots at cop and misses, vs. guy robs bank, shoots at cop and hits him in the head. Or, to be even more blunt about it: guy rapes girl, guy hits girl in the head, girl lapses into coma but recovers, vs. the same thing but the girl dies. I know all the academic arguments concerning the necessity of some ridiculously direct causation (remember that CA case where the guy killed the little girl with a large # of small cuts, and the court decided there was no causation because none of the cuts individually was the cause of death?), and I remain unconvinced.
I’m a big proponent of the school of thought that highly values protection of the law abiding as a justification for punishment. To me, that is the most important function of the police/prison system. Not the rights of the criminals, but the right of the law abiding to avoid being victims. While this does need to be balanced with individual liberties (in other words, don’t give me a reductio ad absurdum counter argument that goes into how bad it would be if we completely ignored individual rights and civil liberties), it needs much more prominence than it currently receives in the “Model Penal Code” quarters, or in the case law precedent from the 60s and 70s.
And I don’t think that the concept of displacing private vengeance is misplaced either – but for that, you need punishment, and it needs to be of a sufficient level to satisfy the victims. However, our system has moved toward a rehabilitation model – even though rehab programs have been spectacularly unsuccessful thus far (and the success cases one does find can largely be attributed to how much older the former felons are after they get out).
So, suffice it to say, I am a big proponent of felony murder, and a big proponent of weighing the rights of the law abiding more heavily than those of the criminal – especially in cases like those I described in which there is no doubt whatsoever of the criminality, dangerousness, or intent of the accused.
To tie it back to the death penalty under both the above theories, the only way to ensure society is safe from someone with a demonstrated capacity for premeditated murder is the death penalty. And, I guarantee you, in the displaced vengeance model, the satisfaction of most people who lose a family member to senseless, horrible crime will not be obtained via a life sentence, especially given the shifting political winds that would have the possibility of giving such convicts parole or freedom irrespective of the sentences they receive when the case is fresh in the minds of the public.
I dont think that our system has set itself up with the goal of minimizing punishments. Consider all the people in jail for long prison terms for non-violent drug-related offenses.
In my opinion there is a difference between someone who kills someone and someone who doesnt. If the legislature wants to change that distinction (and as you have noted, some of them have), then so be it.
Also, im not talking about “some ridiculously direct causation” requirement. The case you mentioned is clearly absurd. Since you obviously appreciate logical fallacies, I point out that you have created a “straw man” with that point.
I dont believe that our system has moved towards a “rehabilitation model.” We do not try and rehabilitate prisoners and programs intended to do so have been and are consistenly cut. Also, in my opinon cold-blooded murderers cannot be rehabilitated and we should make no attempt to do so.
I am not opposed to harsh penalties for harsh crimes, but I would require something more than just being there with the intent to rob a bank (while an associate decides to be a dick and shoot people) to sentence someone to death.
If you believe that both rapes should be punished equally, then your problem is with the law. My problem is with people who want to sentence someone to death without changing the law first. Prosecutors are there to see that justice is done. Justice is not done by circumventing the law.
Finally, what we have here is a difference of opinion, and it is a good thing that people have them. Our (read “our” to mean America’s) different opinions ensure that one side does not go to far and that a middle ground can be found, which embraces the opinions of both sides.
It just amazes me how many people are fighting for the rights of the criminal. These bastards should have their rights revoked once they are found guilty. All this bullshit about the death penalty being “cruel and unusual” punishment, based on the method used. Well, don’t they think kidnapping an eleven year old girl and killing her(not to mention whatever else he did) is CRUEL AND UNUSUAL. Fuck that, who should care if they die painfully. Certainly not me.
I’m with Billy Boy on this one. I would die for my girls and kill any mother fucker that tried to harm them.
Looking at all this, I am sure animals and insects have a more efficient than ours.
Ever seen the documentaries where soldier/guardien bees prevent pollen gatherers from entering the hive when they are ‘too drunk’ (it happens, because of pollen). They butt him out 2 or 3 times. And when the sucker tries again, they rip either his wings or his ‘legs’. Other animals use ostracism combined with bouncers, to make sure ostracized Joe never comes back into the pack.
Oh well, ‘humanity’. Survival of the weakest at its best.
roark:
Yes, it is good that we can have an intelligent discussion on policy issues such as this, regardless of differing opinions. Hat tip to you on that.
However, I want to go back to my original point, which has been lost in our digression: The criteria McVicker set up, and with which you agreed, are mutually exclusive – at least given current technological and systematic restraints. You can’t have it both cheap and thorough; and you can’t have it expensive (especially procedurally, which here is short hand for minimizing Type I error) and as an effective deterrent. You might as well just say the underlying point that you disagree with the ethics of the death penalty - it would be the same thing as setting up criteria that are impossible to satisfy simultaneously.
Also, I agree with you generally about drug offenders. Perhaps I should have stated my point more clearly – we have been moving toward lesser and lesser sentences for violent offenses (at the same time we have been moving toward greater sentences for pecuniary crimes (i.e. stock fraud) and other non-violent offenses.).
As far as it goes, with respect to your point that there is a difference between one who kills someone and one who doesn’t, perhaps that is true as a general statement. It is also true from the perspective of punishment for moral value and vengeance. However, from the perspective of protecting the innocent in society against predation by dangerous criminals, I maintain there is no difference between one who completes all the actions and intent necessary to kill someone, but through chance does not succeed, and someone who does. As an example, I say there is no difference, from that perspective, between someone who aims his gun at a cop, shoots, and misses, and someone who does the same but hits the cop in the head and kills him.
Now, with respect to the legislature and the law as it stands, I agree with you. I’m not arguing for prosecutors to act outside the law. I’m arguing that I think the law should be changed – and not by the judges who usually take it upon themselves to change things either.
On that note, it’s funny that you had a problem with my example of “some ridiculously direct causation” requirement. The case I mentioned was absurd. Unfortunately, I remember many more like it on the general subject of causation from my Crim Law class. And, in those cases, it was judges expanding upon the legislature’s simple causation requirement that effectively imposed a ridiculous causation requirement – they changed the law by changing the interpretation, without any legislative action on the subject.
I agree with you on the futility of rehabilitation in general – for me, I think it’s futile for most violent criminals, not just cold-blooded killers. Some people have things wrong with them that simply cannot be fixed. While that is sad, the responsibility of the government, and the reason for the police power, is to protect the law abiding from these people. As far as it goes, I believe the death penalty is the single most effective tool in this regard, and I am willing to accept a greater degree of Type II error (back to my original definitions) in order to accomplish this. This is not to say I do not believe all error should be minimized. Simply, there will be some error, and society as a whole would be better off by moving the bar slightly more toward Type II error from its present position.
Now, I’m not a criminal lawyer – I’m a corporate guy. I don’t have trial experience. I’m not in the trenches of the criminal justice system. I realize there are bad lawyers out there – both prosecutors and defense lawyers. But even with all of those, which nothing we’ve discussed will change (and which add to the overall error rate), I think the death penalty should be more broadly, rather than less broadly, applied, according to my previous posts. This is a moral stand on my part – I am valuing the rights of the victims (including the victims that could be avoided) more highly than those of the accused in the marginal cases that would be affected.
I support the death penalty.
One thing is that once you’re in a prison or other such environment longer than about 6 or 7 years it’s no longer punishment, it’s just where you live. Prisoners adapt to the system and while they’d rather be free to rape, pillage, and redundantly enough plunder the rest of us they don’t do anything like “suffer” behind bars.
Secondly the people that get death are the worst of the worst. They committed cold blooded, premeditated murder and usually more than once. They aren’t going to pine away in their cell tortured by the guilt of what they did to get there. They’ll blame everyone but themselves for why they are in the “big house”.
There was a murderer that got executed in WA quite a few years ago. Charles Rodman Campbell I think his name was. He got out on work release for rape and went to the home of the woman that testified against him and cut her throat, her 10 year old daughter’s throat, and the lady that happened to be visiting got her’s slashed too. He never showed remorse in all the years he spent on death row but he sure lost his cocky attitude the day before he went to the gallows for the short drop to eternity. That one day of all the time he spent in prision was the only day he really paid for his crimes. It was the only day he showed fear or remorse, even if it was shitting in his pants fear of dying himself. It was then that he felt the terror those three people felt.
You can’t get to guys like him by locking them up, but you can by taking their life.
Just one example, but I think it’s very indicative of the “innocence” of a lot of the people whose death sentences are overturned (this was a stay of execution, but I think you know what I mean):
http://www.nationalreview.com/dunphy/dunphy200402130842.asp
On those occasions when the Muse is elusive, when the words don’t flow as I might wish, when the writer’s demon, the blank page, stares me squarely in the face and says, “Now, what?” I often look to the justices of Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for inspiration. They have seldom failed me.
The latest outrage to issue from this court is the stay of execution granted to convicted murderer Kevin Cooper, who was scheduled to die at California’s San Quentin Prison at 12:01 Tuesday morning. Some background: On June 2, 1983, Cooper escaped from the California Institute for Men, about 35 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. He had been housed in a minimum-security area of the prison after being convicted of burglary under the alias David Trautman. (California authorities did not learn until too late that Cooper was an escapee from a Pennsylvania prison. Advances in fingerprint technology presumably would prevent such a lapse from occurring today.) There is uncontroverted evidence that Cooper, after fleeing the California prison, broke into and hid in an empty house in Chino Hills, about two miles away. Cooper made several calls to his girlfriend from the house, the last coming at about 8:00 P.M. on June 4.
On the night of June 4, four people were savagely murdered in the house next door to the one where Cooper had been hiding. A fifth victim miraculously survived the attack. The bodies of Doug and Peggy Ryen, their ten-year-old daughter Jessica, and eleven-year-old houseguest Chris Hughes were discovered the next day by Chris’s father. Clinging to life was eight-year-old Joshua Ryen, who had spent some eleven hours with his fingers pressed to his bleeding throat while lying next to his dead mother. All the victims had been stabbed and hacked with a buck knife and a hatchet.
Cooper fled to Mexico, but was apprehended in July 1983 when he was accused of raping a woman at knifepoint. He was returned to San Bernardino County, tried, and convicted for the Chino Hills crimes, and sentenced to death. His case has wound its way through the various appellate courts ever since, and on Monday the U.S. Supreme Court refused to vacate the eleventh-hour stay granted by an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit.
Cooper’s defense team is today led by Lanny Davis, best remembered as the shameless mouthpiece for an even more shameless former president. “We got ?em!” exclaimed Davis when the Supreme Court refused to vacate the stay of execution. “The Supreme Court of the United States tonight ratified the fundamental concept of the American justice system, which is the truth must come out before we kill a man.” Mr. Davis’s commitment to the truth has not visibly advanced, it seems, since the days he spent shilling for Bill Clinton.
So, what is the truth? The truth is that Kevin Cooper is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, indeed beyond any doubt, of the crimes for which he was convicted. To obfuscate this inconvenient fact, the Cooper defense team has woven a phantasmagoric tale of previously ignored witnesses and evidence, imaginary suspects, and, of course, police corruption and planted evidence. The defense contends that the strands of blond or light brown hair found clutched in Jessica Ryen’s hand eliminates Cooper, a black man, as a suspect. But this hair proves nothing. As was shown at the trial, these hairs were cut, not pulled, and were in all likelihood deposited by a houseguest sometime before the murders only to be picked up as Jessica writhed on the floor before dying.
The defense also attempts to make an issue of a shoe print left at the crime scene. The print was linked to a type of shoe distributed in California prisons, and a representative of Stride Rite Shoes testified at trial that the shoe in question, the “Pro-Ked Dude,” was manufactured solely for distribution in prisons and other institutions. To bolster Cooper’s claim of an alternate suspect (known around the courthouse as the “Some Other Dude” defense), Davis produced a statement from Midge Carroll, who served as the prison warden at the time of Cooper’s escape. “I learned that the shoes we carried were not prison-manufactured or specially designed prison-issue shoes,” Carroll wrote. “I learned that the shoes were common tennis shoes available to the general public through Sears and Roebuck other such retail stores . . .”
From this the Ninth Circuit’s majority opinion draws the following inference: “[I]f Warden Carroll had been put on the stand and had been believed by the jury, the jury would have known that Cooper was almost certainly not wearing ?Pro-Ked Dude’ shoes.” But the jury would have known no such thing. The most favorable conclusion the jury might have drawn for Cooper was that, by some incalculably improbable twist of fate, Some Other Dude had committed the murders while wearing shoes exactly like those issued in prison, and had done so only minutes after Cooper left the house next door. Inconveniently for Cooper, similar shoe prints were also found in that home, and they were the only prints discovered there.
But Cooper hangs his greatest hope on science. A bloodstained T-shirt was found some distance from the crime scene, and DNA testing performed at Cooper’s request during the appeal process (such testing was not available at the time of the trial) revealed the presence of both Cooper’s and Doug Ryen’s blood. The cops planted it, the defense now claims, and additional testing will reveal the presence of the preservative EDTA in the recovered blood sample. Some readers will recall a similar claim made during the O. J. Simpson trial, when the blood of both victims was found on a pair of socks recovered from Simpson’s bedroom. I still shudder at the memory of one female juror facing the cameras and explaining the not-guilty verdict: “Well, there was ETA [sic] on them socks . . .” Yes, EDTA is used as a preservative in blood samples, but it is also present in laundry detergent and a wide variety of other common household items, and its presence in Cooper’s case will be no more proof of his innocence than it was of Simpson’s. And this evidence-planting theory presumes a staggeringly uncommon level of genius and cunning on the part of the allegedly corrupt cops: At Cooper’s trial, prosecutors contended only that Doug Ryen’s blood was on the T-shirt. Cooper’s blood wasn’t discovered until years later when the DNA testing was completed. In order for the defense’s theory to hold water, one would have to believe that police officers planted the blood on the T-shirt, but then kept silent about it in the hope that it would be discovered when the science had sufficiently advanced. Not even Johnnie Cochran could tell a whopper like that with a straight face.
None of this matters to the death-penalty opponents who have made a hero out of Kevin Cooper. Jesse Jackson, Sean Penn, Richard Dreyfuss, and Denzel Washington have all joined in the effort to keep Cooper from his appointment with the executioner. And, like fellow convicted murderer Mumia Abu Jamal, Cooper has taken up the pen to become something of a celebrity among the Loony Left. It can only be a matter of time before someone nominates him for a Nobel Peace Prize.
? Jack Dunphy is an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department. “Jack Dunphy” is the author’s nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management.