One of my friends is a conservative Republican who is very much in favor of the death penalty. We’ve had a couple discussions on it in the past. One thing that’s always amused/irked me during these talks is he is never willing to answer the following question:
What do we do when we execute someone and later find out they were innocent?
I’m sure we have already executed innocent people in this country, and not just before the Supreme Court started allowing it again in 1976. I’m fairly sure we’ve done it since. Why?
All you have to do is look at stories like this one, of a man who spent fifteen years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of robbery and kidnapping. Fifteen years this poor fellow spent behind bars, all for a crime he didn’t commit. Can you imagine how unpleasant and awful that would be?
Now imagine that you’ve spent fifteen years on Death Row, waiting for the state to murder you, knowing you’re innocent of what you’ve been convicted of. That’s happened. In fact, it’s happened a lot. All you need to do is look at the work of the Innocence Project, who have been instrumental in freeing over 200 people who were wrongly put into prison, some of which were on Death Row.
You know, to me, no matter how much you might be in favor of the Death Penalty, it seems like you have to ask yourself what happens once we find out we’ve killed someone who was innocent? It’s only a matter of time, you know. The fact that there’s even a risk of doing so is inexcusable.
What happened to the value of human life? What happened to the belief that it’s better to let a thousand guilty men go free than to keep one in prison? Have we as a nation fallen so low that we no longer hold to these ideas?
If for no other reason than this one, we need to abolish the Death Penalty. It’s just not worh the risk.
July 4, 2008 at 6:29 am
Wait, but we ‘knew for certain’ that they were guilty. They were found guilty’ by a group of their peers. And we all know that we don’t make mistakes. Oops, ok, maybe we do from time to time. But hey, we were nice enough to let them out of prison. It’s not such a big deal. After all, we would never make that mistake in a death penalty case. Would we… Face it, the death penalty does not prevent crime. If it did we wouldn’t have to ever use the death penalty. If there’s even a very slight chance an innocent person could be executed the death penalty should be abolished. And since there is ‘more’ than a slight chance we don’t need it.
July 4, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Please consider this.
The Death Penalty: More Protection for Innocents
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters, contact info below
Often, the death penalty dialogue gravitates to the subject of innocents at risk of execution. Seldom is a more common problem reviewed. That is, how innocents are more at risk without the death penalty.
Living murderers, in prison, after release or escape or after our failures to incarcerate them, are much more likely to harm and murder, again, than are executed murderers.
This is a truism.
No knowledgeable and honest party questions that the death penalty has the most extensive due process protections in US criminal law.
Therefore, actual innocents are more likely to be sentenced to life imprisonment and more likely to die in prison serving under that sentence, that it is that an actual innocent will be executed.
That is. logically, conclusive.
16 recent studies, inclusive of their defenses, find for death penalty deterrence.
A surprise? No.
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life.
Some believe that all studies with contrary findings negate those 16 studies. They don’t. Studies which don’t find for deterrence don’t say no one is deterred, but that they couldn’t measure those deterred.
What prospect of a negative outcome doesn’t deter some? There isn’t one . . . although committed anti death penalty folk may say the death penalty is the only one.
However, the premier anti death penalty scholar accepts it as a given that the death penalty is a deterrent, but does not believe it to be a greater deterrent than a life sentence. Yet, the evidence is compelling and un refuted that death is feared more than life.
“This evidence greatly unsettles moral objections to the death penalty, because it suggests that a refusal to impose that penalty condemns numerous innocent people to death.” (1)
” . . . a serious commitment to the sanctity of human life may well compel, rather than forbid, (capital) punishment.” (1)
“Recent evidence suggests that capital punishment may have a significant deterrent effect, preventing as many as eighteen or more murders for each execution.” (1)
Some death penalty opponents argue against death penalty deterrence, stating that it’s a harsher penalty to be locked up without any possibility of getting out.
Reality paints a very different picture.
What percentage of capital murderers seek a plea bargain to a death sentence? Zero or close to it. They prefer long term imprisonment.
What percentage of convicted capital murderers argue for execution in the penalty phase of their capital trial? Zero or close to it. They prefer long term imprisonment.
What percentage of death row inmates waive their appeals and speed up the execution process? Nearly zero. They prefer long term imprisonment.
This is not, even remotely, in dispute.
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life.
Furthermore, history tells us that “lifers” have many ways to get out: Pardon, commutation, escape, clerical error, change in the law, etc.
In choosing to end the death penalty, or in choosing not implement it, some have chosen to spare murderers at the cost of sacrificing more innocent lives.
——–
Furthermore, possibly we have sentenced 20-25 actually innocent people to death since 1973, or 0.3% of those so sentenced. Those have all been released upon post conviction review. The anti death penalty claims, that the numbers are significantly higher, are a fraud, easily discoverable by fact checking.
6 inmates have been released from death row because of DNA evidence. An additional 9 were released from prison, because of DNA exclusion, who had previously been sentenced to death.
The innocents deception of death penalty opponents has been getting exposure for many years. Even the behemoth of anti death penalty newspapers — The New York Times — has recognized that deception.
“To be sure, 30 or 40 categorically innocent people have been released from death row . . . “. ‘ (2) This when death penalty opponents were claiming the release of 119 “innocents” from death row. Death penalty opponents never required actual innocence in order for cases to be added to their “exonerated” or “innocents” list. They simply invented their own definitions for exonerated and innocent and deceptively shoe horned large numbers of inmates into those definitions – something easily discovered with fact checking.
There is no proof of an innocent executed in the US, at least since 1900.
If we accept that the best predictor of future performance is past performance, we can reasonable conclude that the DNA cases will be excluded prior to trial, and that for the next 8000 death sentences, that we will experience a 99.8% accuracy rate in actual guilt convictions. This improved accuracy rate does not include the many additional safeguards that have been added to the system, over and above DNA testing.
Of all the government programs in the world, that put innocents at risk, is there one with a safer record and with greater protections than the US death penalty?
Unlikely.
———————–
Full report - All Innocence Issues: The Death Penalty, upon request.
Full report – The Death Penalty as a Deterrent, upon request
(1) From the Executive Summary of
Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? The Relevance of Life-Life Tradeoffs, March 2005
Prof. Cass R. Sunstein, Cass_Sunstein(AT)law.uchicago.edu
Prof. Adrian Vermeule , avermeule(AT)law.harvard.edu
Full report http://aei-brookings.org/admin/authorpdfs/page.php?id=1131
(2) “The Death of Innocents’: A Reasonable Doubt”,
New York Times Book Review, p 29, 1/23/05, Adam Liptak,
national legal correspondent for The NY Times
—————————–
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters
e-mail sharpjfa@aol.com, 713-622-5491,
Houston, Texas
Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS , VOA and many other TV and radio networks, on such programs as Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O’Reilly Factor, etc., has been quoted in newspapers throughout the world and is a published author.
A former opponent of capital punishment, he has written and granted interviews about, testified on and debated the subject of the death penalty, extensively and internationally.
Pro death penalty sites
homicidesurvivors(dot)com/categories/Dudley%20Sharp%20-%20Justice%20Matters.aspx
www(dot)dpinfo.com
www(dot)cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DPinformation.htm
www(dot)clarkprosecutor.org/html/links/dplinks.htm
www(dot)coastda.com/archives.html
www(dot)lexingtonprosecutor.com/death_penalty_debate.htm
www(dot)prodeathpenalty.com
www(dot)yesdeathpenalty.com/deathpenalty_co
yesdeathpenalty.googlepages.com/home2 (Sweden)
www(dot)wesleylowe.com/cp.html
Permission for distribution of this document, in whole or in part, is approved with proper attribution.
July 4, 2008 at 6:44 pm
You offer a lot of data to digest here, Mr Sharp. From what I understand, you seem to think the death penalty is worth the risk of executing someone who is innocent, because we never would exectue someone who is innocent.
Why, I must ask, this drive and desire to execute people anyhow? Europe, hardly a cesspool of crime and death, has no death penalty and they seem to be doing fine. Same with Canada and much of the rest of the world.
Given that they can do without the death penalty and do just fine, why should we have it and put anyone even possibly innocent at the risk of being executed? Why not just put people in prison for life? That way, if you find out down the line you imprisoned someone innocent, you can free them with a big apology and a lot of money. If you’ve already killed them, it’s too late.
As for your assertion that no one innocent has been executed since 1900, from what I understand there are serious doubts about the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti, as well as Ethel (but not Julius), Rosenberg.
And are you really saying that every single black person executed in the South since 1900 was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?
To me the fact that anyone who is on Death Row is later proven innocent is a sign that we’ve come to close to executing innocent people, if we haven’t already. I’m not willing to take that chance, and I feel very sorry for you that you are.
July 5, 2008 at 1:45 am
Chris, You misread, completely. Re read.
Chris writes: “you seem to think the death penalty is worth the risk of executing someone who is innocent, because we never would exectue someone who is innocent.”
No. My point was that innocents are more at risk without the death penalty. I said there was no proof of an innocent executed since 1900. I never said it hasn’t happened. The proof is overwhelming that living murderers harm and murder, again
Chris writes: “I must ask, this drive and desire to execute people anyhow? Europe, hardly a cesspool of crime and death, has no death penalty and they seem to be doing fine. Same with Canada and much of the rest of the world.”
But, they would all be protecting more innocents with the death penalty. They spare murderers at the cost of more innocents harmed. BTW, a majority of Western Europeans supported the execution of Saddam Hussein. They did so based upon justice – that by his crimes he had earned execution – the same reason that anyone supports any type of sanction.
With Sacco and Vanzetti, it now seems sure that one was guilty and the other is still being debated – proof is elusive. With the Rosenbergs, the Venona intercepts has confirmed their guilt. You may dispute that with regard to Ethel.
Chris writes: “To me the fact that anyone who is on Death Row is later proven innocent is a sign that we’ve come to close to executing innocent people, if we haven’t already. I’m not willing to take that chance, and I feel very sorry for you that you are.”
I take the chance, but you certainly are sacrificing more innocents by not supporting the death penalty. Feel sorry for yourself, I guess.
Chris are you opposed to parole and probabtion?
July 5, 2008 at 2:23 am
I am all in favor of parole and probabtion for most crimes. There are some so severe that I don’t see any real reason to allow the criminal in question to experience freedom ever again.
The point you seem to be making here, and I could be mistaken, is the old saw that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Under this logic, you’d appear to be willing to risk letting a few innocent people be murdered by the State, and in your name, in order to keep other innocent people from being murdered by criminals. That’s a trade-off I’m unwilling to make.
Why not simply take people and put them in prison for life rather than execute them? As someone who’s been there myself, I can tell you it’s a far from pleasant place, and they’d suffer decades of torment. True, you might protest that they’d get paroled eventually, and maybe they would. But laws that govern that can be changed.
August 15, 2008 at 6:00 am
No, my point was that more innocents are at risk without the death penalty. Your essay was about innocents at risk of being executed.
However, you risk more innocents by not having the death penalty.
So, it very much seems to be a trade off you are willing to make: That is, spare murderers at the cost of more innocent lives.
You could chose to execute murderers and spare more innocent lives.
That is the point.
August 15, 2008 at 7:00 am
Well, if they’re locked up in prison for the rest of their lives, they won’t be able to kill innocent people. Just keep them in a single, high security prison cell. No problem. That way if they turn out innocent, you can release them. Much easier than bringing someone back from the dead.
(btw: Thanks for posting again after being gone a while!)