Wisconsin has no death penalty. I’m not going to agitate to change that. Texas has one. I’m not going to agitate to change that either.
Some things about the death penalty are revolting; all the more so when we try to pretty it up and make it look easy. The guillotine or the firing squad are ugly but fast. We wanted high tech so we went with electrocution, and the clumsy way we do it is not fast and from all reports is often torture.
That’s not allowed. No cruel or unusual punishments, period. Unusual is not a particularly precise word, but we can all understand that torture is cruel. I’m not saying that it might not be appropriate in some cases (if it were true that the CIA was responsible for initiating the crack trade in US cities, the old hang, draw, and quartering might not be adequate punishment), but that doesn’t matter. Under the rules we made, we don’t do it. I don’t know whether we wrote it that way to protect the accused or the souls of the jailers, but we did and there’s an end to the argument.
Lethal injection is even more horrible. Not so much because it is torture (I gather that is usually isn’t), but because we pervert the healing profession into killers. Would you want your ambulance staffed with EMTs who moonlight at the prison execution room? I want a bright line in the sand: the doctor’s profession does not involve killing. Do something else, something fast, something that doesn't involve doctors.
The human body is resilient, with fall-back mechanisms and a reluctance to quit working. There really isn’t a nice way to make it stop.
That said, the death penalty takes crime seriously in a way other penalties don’t. I hear the call for “life without parole” thrown around by people who don’t work in prisons. Is putting murderers with no incentive for good behavior in with the rest of the inmates really such a grand idea? And the call doesn’t take into account an innocent desire for justice expressed in a punishment that fits the crime.
The “I’m more moral than you because I oppose the death penalty” attitude is pretty revolting too. Mercy is a great thing, but there’s something obnoxious about the uninjured brushing aside the blood of the victims to extend a mercy that costs them nothing. If the victims call for clemency, they shall be called the Sons of God. But the self-satisfied outsiders shall be called presumptuous.
I gather Scalia caused a stir with this:
This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged “actual innocence” is constitutionally cognizable.
I won’t say this is a no-brainer, but it isn’t far from it. The Constitution defines the rules for the procedures of government. They won’t always work; nothing ever always works. As long as there’s no improper bias in the procedures, the Supreme Court assumes the outcome is correct. Weighing evidence is for other courts, not the Supreme Court; they are not supposed to second-guess decisions.
Was Troy Davis guilty of this particular murder? I’ve not a clue. A jury said yes. I don’t know how to weight recanted testimony in that culture and environment, and I don’t think his being a gangster was in dispute. The governor must not have wanted to do anything about him; possibly for political reasons, maybe because he thought the original case was good (though I doubt the governor became an expert on the case for the occasion).
May the Lord have mercy on his soul; and on the souls of the executioners. And on us all, trying to find the best way we can in a broken and violent world.
3 comments:
I sent this comment to my two oldest sons and some other relatives. I have to do it in two parts.
Don't know much, but I have my prejudices, which have held up surprisingly well in these high-profile crime things. First, the legitimate opinion, agree or disagree:
I tend to be against capital punishment, because the police (or prosecutors) get it wrong too often. But the getting it wrong part is often an over-reliance on all the forensic lab stuff and expert testimony. The witness part always looks like the weakest part where unfairness would play out, but that is less common. Juries take credibility into account with people on the stand, and are less likely to be fooled. It's crime lab stuff they believe too easily.
My exceptions, where I feel capital punishment is appropriate, come less from heinousness than from practical incentives. A criminal has no incentive not to kill the police, or the prison guard, or hostages, if there is not some greater risk or punishment. Negotiators have to have something to offer. Secondly, in the case of violent insurrection - internal warfare, really - the perpetrators have allies who might commit further violence to force the release of their imprisoned comrades. Government needs the option of killing people who have no reason to live, or whose only reason is to inspire more violence.
I don't like those exceptions, because the gov't can still get it wrong in those cases, too. But as a practical matter, the alternative is worse.
Now the prejudices:
When celebrities get involved, bet the other way.
Whichever side is playing the media knows it can't win in court.
That someone got screwed over at their first trial is always quite possible. That someone has a string of court screwups and unfairness is less plausible.
When there's a dead cop, the police really, really want to get the right guy, so accusing them of grabbing the first suspect and railroading him doesn't hold. However, their sincerity in the matter, laudable though it is, doesn't make them any smarter or more skilled. Listen to neither side's attorneys on this one.
Witnesses later change their story all the time. Check out what neighborhood they live in. While it is of course always possible that the police pressured them originally, it is far more likely that the community they've been living in the last ten years has pressured them. Memory is malleable, so even very earnest people can talk themselves into different POV's. Unless the witness is claiming to have lied the first time, and is now coming clean, their original testimony is far more likely to be true than their new interpretation. And even in the case of the person claiming to have lied, the odds still favor the original testimony, just not so overwhelmingly.
Half of everyone - maybe more than half - should be ignored in death penalty cases. Half the people who want the execution to go forward desire that because they think scum should be executed, and the idea that we want to identify the correct scum seems to them a bleeding-heart dodge to let the guilty go free. There are people who write very fair words and sound quite reasonable but still boil down to this. OTOH, half of the people with elaborate reasons why the prisoner is innocent and the whole case has been a put-up job and unfair are prepared to believe any damn thing, no matter how unlikely, if it prevents the execution. They are really only against capital punishment in general, and can pound any peg into that hole.
Suspect prosecutors of incompetence. Suspect defense attorneys of dishonesty.
Expansion: Prosecutors can delude themselves, shade the truth, or ignore important parts of the truth, but they usually at least think they believe what they say. Defense attorneys are under no such limitation, and many will make emphatic claims that they know are untrue, but think will help them win. I have to deal with this type of attorney from time to time, and they are scum. (Most mental health attorneys in NH don't fit this category. They're clever and they're tough, but they don't lie.) There are a few firms that are known for lying, however. It goes without saying that they are precisely the ones attracted to high-profile cases.
Thanks for the benefit of your experience here. You're right about all the high profile cases I can think of ("If you have the facts, argue the facts; if you have the law, argue the law; if you have neither, yell"). I have had very little interaction with the justice system.
I used to be more supportive of the death penalty, but a few years back three friends got caught up in the legal machinery in three different cases. 2 were acquitted and 1 convicted, but it was a near thing on one of the acquittals and I have reasons to believe all were innocent. I've had a lot less faith in the prosecutors since then.
By the way, none of them were arrested in a "Round up the usual suspects" sweep. I don't know the source of the claim that 95% of all crimes are committed by 5% of all criminals but it sounds plausible; and if true it would feed an attitude of "We know he's guilty of many things and we can nail him with this" on the part of the police. I spent a 3-month stint on a grand jury in Illinois, and in most of cases the suspects had records already. In the "murder" case we didn't get the backgrounds. (The jury decided that walking up to a man in his underwear and shooting him was self defense--and they may have been right.)
Some good friends have a son doing life for murder. He did it, no question. And in the intervening years he has changed. It isn't easy in prison with the violence and the drugs, but he seems to be really repentant and trying to keep straight. That seems like the biggest argument against--because some of the criminals can actually repent and reform, even though most won't.
I don't want to get started on the penitentiary system... I've lost touch with the prison guard I used to know. He was a decent man. Another friend was looking for work and asked at Corrections. They were eager for warm bodies "As long as you don't have a criminal record; and even if you do we might be able to work something out."
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