If you're one of those people who still believe that the death penalty is a good thing, tell me: How can you justify the risk of executing an innocent person? After all, we see numerous cases all the time of people being released from death row after new evidence proves their innocence. Is it because these victims of a flawed justice system are faceless strangers? Would you still favor the death penalty if your brother, sister, father, mother, son, or daughter were sentenced to death for a crime that he or she did not commit?
A recent article in the St. Louis Review provides a case in point.
An excerpt:
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Juan Melendez lists a number of reasons why people should support abolishing the death penalty.-----
But the best reason is one he has experienced. He knows that an innocent person is at risk of being killed by any state that has the death penalty because he is one of those people, he told an audience at St. Louis University last week.
The native of Puerto Rico spent 17 years on death row in Florida after being convicted of the first-degree murder and armed robbery of Delbert Baker, a beauty-shop owner.
In 2001, Judge Barbara Fleischer overturned the conviction. She noted there was no physical evidence which connected Melendez to the murder and that additional information attacked the credibility of the state’s key witnesses’ testimony.
Evidence that was not presented at the trial showed that three witnesses provided an alibi. Another man had been seen at the home of the murder victim on the night of the homicide, had been wearing bloody clothes and admitted to other witnesses that he had killed Baker.
"The evidence also helps to substantiate the defense theory that someone other than the defendant committed the homicide," the judge wrote.
The St. Petersburg Times reported that prosecutors withheld evidence from defense lawyers. A tape that emerged contained the confession of the real killer, now deceased, who said Melendez was not present.
"Check the record. It’s all in black and white," Melendez said of those who might doubt his innocence.
Surviving 17 years on death row, knowing he did not commit the crime, tested Melendez, a Catholic. "Without God I never would have made it. I wanted to commit suicide. But God sent me beautiful dreams. That gave me hope that one day I would be out of there, that I would be free."
Melendez was interviewed by the Review while in St. Louis Feb. 22 for a talk at SLU about his experiences. When he was released from prison Jan. 3, 2002, he became the 99th death-row inmate in the United States to be released since 1973.
Now, 123 people have been let off death row. Another 1,062 have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated, he said. "Only God knows the (innocent) ones who did not have the luck I had," Melendez noted.
[Read more.]
Yes, only God knows.
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ReplyDeleteRead about how he wrote hundreds of letters and appellate briefs in his own defense and immersed himself in an intense study of law. He was a school teacher and a ordinary man whose wife was brutally murdered in 1975 by a deranged 17 year old neighbor. On May 8th 1987, Five years after Debbie Sue Carter's rape and murder he was home with his young daughter and put under arrest, handcuffed and on his way to jail on charges of rape and murder. After 10 years in prison he discovered The Innocence Project, a non-profit legal organization. With the aid of Barry Scheck and DNA evidence Dennis Fritz was exonerated on April 15,1999 Since then, it has been a long hard road filled with twist and turns and now on his Journey Toward Justice. He never blamed the Lord and solely relied on his faith in God to make it through. He waited for God's time and never gave up.
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What Mary avoids is the threat to innocents if we don't execute murderers.
ReplyDeleteLiving murderers harm and murder, again, in prison,after escape and after we fail to capture or incarcerate them.
Executed ones don't.
Regarding deterrence, recently there has been a number of studies finding for a deterrent effect of the death penalty. This is not surprising.
Is there any prospect of a negative outcome which doesn't deter some? Of course not.
Possibly, 25 actual innocents have been sentenced to death in the US since 1973, or about 0.3% of the some 7800 so sentneced. All were released.
There is no proof of an actual innocent executed in the US since 1900.
Yes, all know there is a very small risk of executing an innocent.
But a far greater risk to innocents is by allowing murderers to live.
Actually, Dudley, studies have shown that the death penalty is most certainly not a deterrant.
ReplyDeleteAccording to research by Amnesty International, "a September 2000 New York Times survey found that during the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48 to 101 percent higher than in states without the death penalty."
Furthermore, "FBI data showed that 10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average."
See more real facts and statistics, with pretty charts and stuff, here.
Dear Mary:
ReplyDeleteYour comments really go to the misundertanding of deterrence.
This may be helpful.
Death Penalty and Deterrence: Let's be clear
by Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters, 0104
In their story, "States With No Death Penalty Share Lower Homicide Rates", The New York Times did their best to illustrate that the death penalty was not a deterrent, by showing that the average murder rate in death penalty states was higher than the average rate in non death penalty states and, it is. (1)
What the Times failed to observe is that their own study confirmed that you can't simply compare those averages to make that determination regarding deterrence.
As one observer stated: "The Times story does nothing more than repeat the dumbest of all dumb mistakes — taking the murder rate in a traditionally high-homicide state with capital punishment (like Texas) and comparing it to a traditionally low-homicide state with no death penalty (like North Dakota) and concluding that the death penalty doesn't work at all. Even this comparison doesn't work so well. The Times own graph shows Texas, where murder rates were 40 percent above Michigan's in 1991, has now fallen below Michigan . . .". (2)
Within the Times article, Michigan Governor John Engler states, "I think Michigan made a wise decision 150 years ago," referring to the state's abolition of the death penalty in 1846. "We're pretty proud of the fact that we don't have the death penalty."(3)
Even though easily observed on the Times' own graphics, they failed to mention the obvious. Michigan's murder rate is near or above that of 31 of the US's 38 death penalty states. And then, it should be recognized that Washington, DC (not found within the Times study) and Detroit, Michigan, two non death penalty jurisdictions, have been perennial leaders in murder and violent crime rates for the past 30 years. Delaware, a jurisdiction similar in size to them, leads the nation in executions per murder, but has significantly lower rates of murders and violent crime than do either DC or Detroit, during that same period.
Obviously, the Times study and any other simple comparison of jurisdictions with and without the death penalty, means little, with regard to deterrence.
Also revealed within the Times study, but not pointed out by them,: "One-third of the nation's executions take place in Texas—and the steepest decline in homicides has occurred in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas, which together account for nearly half the nation's executions." (4)
And, the Times also failed to mention that the major US jurisdiction with the most executions is Harris County (Houston, Texas), which has seen a 73% decrease in murder rates since resuming executions in 1982 -- possibly the largest reduction for a major metropolitan area since that time.
Also omitted from the Times review, although they had the data, is that during a virtual cessation of executions, from 1966-1980, that murders more than doubled in the US. Any other rise and fall in murders, after that time, has been only a fraction of that change, indicating a strong and direct correlation between the lack of executions and the dramatic increase in murders, if that is specifically what you are looking for.
If deterrence was measured by direct correlation's between execution, or the lack thereof, and murder rates, as implied by the Times article, and as wrongly assumed by those blindly accepting that model, then there would be no debate, only more confusion. Which may have been the Times goal.
Let's take a look at the science.
Some non death penalty jurisdictions, such as South Africa and Mexico lead the world in murder and violent crime rates. But then some non death penalty jurisdictions, such as Sweden, have quite low rates. Then there are such death penalty jurisdictions as Japan and Singapore which have low rates of such crime. But then other death penalty jurisdictions, such as Rwanda and Louisiana, that have high rates.
To which an astute observer will respond: But socially, culturally, geographically, legally, historically and many other ways, all of those jurisdictions are very different. Exactly, a simple comparison of only execution rates and murder rates cannot tell the tale of deterrence. And within the US, between states, there exist many variables which will effect the rates of homicides.
And, as so well illustrated by the Times graphics, a non death penalty state, such as Michigan has high murder rates and another non death penalty state, such as North Dakota, has low murder rates and then there are death penalty states, such as Louisiana, with high murder rates and death penalty states, such South Dakota, with low rates. Apparently, unbeknownst to the Times, but quite obvious to any neutral observer, there are other factors at play here, not just the presence or absence of the death penalty. Most thinking folks already knew that.
As Economics Professor Ehrlich stated in the Times piece and, as accepted by all knowledgeable parties, there are many factors involved in such evaluations. That is why there is a wide variation of crime rates both within and between some death penalty and non death penalty jurisdictions, and small variations within and between others. Any direct comparison of only execution rates and only murder rates, to determine deterrence, would reflect either ignorance or deception.
Ehrlich called the Times study "a throwback to the vintage 1960s statistical analyses done by criminologists who compared murder rates in neighboring states where capital punishment was either legal or illegal." "The statistics involved in such comparisons have long been recognized as devoid of scientific merit." He called the Times story a "one sided affair" devoid of merit. Most interesting is that Ehrlich was interviewed by the Time's writer, Fessenden, who asked Ehrlich to comment on the results before the story was published. Somehow Ehrlich's overwhelming criticisms were left out of the article.
Ehrlich also referred Fessenden to some professors who produced the recently released Emory study. Emory Economics department head, Prof. Deshbakhsh "says he was contacted by Fessenden, and he indicated to the Times reporter that the study suggested a very strong deterrent effect of capital punishment." Somehow,
Fessenden's left that out of the Times story, as well. (5).
There is a constant within all jurisdictions -- negative consequences will always have an effect on behavior.
1) "States With No Death Penalty Share Lower Homicide Rates", The New
York Times 9/22/00 located at
www (dot) nytimes.com/2000/09/22/national/22STUD.html and www (dot) nytimes.com/2000/09/22/national/22DEAT.html
2) “Don't Know Much About Calculus: The (New York) Times flunks high-school
math in death-penalty piece", William Tucker, National Review, 9/22/00, located
at www (dot) nationalreview.com/comment/comment092200c.shtml
3) ibid, see footnote 11
4) "The Death Penalty Saves Lives", AIM Report, August 2000, located atwww (dot) aim.org/publications/aim_report/2000/08a.html
15) "NEW YORK TIMES UNDER FIRE AGAIN", Accuracy in Media, 10/16/00, go to www (dot) aim.org/
copyright 2000-2007 Dudley Sharp
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters
e-mail sharpjfa@aol.com, 713-622-5491,
Houston, Texas
Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS, BBC 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
www(dot)cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DPinformation.htm
www(dot)clarkprosecutor.org/html/links/dplinks.htm
www(dot)dpinfo.com
www(dot)homicidesurvivors.com
joshmarquis(dot)blogspot.com/
www(dot)lexingtonprosecutor.com/death_penalty_debate.htm
www(dot)prodeathpenalty.com
www(dot)prodeathpenalty.org/
www(dot)yesdeathpenalty.com/deathpenalty_contents.htm (Sweden)
www(dot)wesleylowe.com/cp.html
Hey Dudley, would you still favor the death penalty if your brother, sister, father, mother, son, or daughter were sentenced to death for a crime that he or she did not commit?
ReplyDeleteBetter yet, would you still favor the death penalty if you were sentenced to death for a crime that you did not commit?
Mary:
ReplyDeleteI see that you didn't feel the need to poperly debate the facts.
As we all know, innocents are convicted for every sentence. Yet, all of those sentences still exist. Why? Because they are considered just.
Did you know that innocents are more at risk with life without parole than with the death penalty?
First, living murderers - in prison, after escape and after will fail to restrain them - harm and murder, again, Executed ones don't.
Secondly, no one questions that the due process protections of the death penalty far exceed those of any other sentnece. That tells us, unequivocally, that actual innocents are more likely to be sentneced to life without parole and that such innocents are much more likley to die in prison than are actual innocents likely to be executed.
Conclusively, then, Mary, if ANYONE were an actual innocent sentenced to either a life or death sentnece, they would be more likely spared if given a death sentence.
Hah! I've enjoyed reading you guys' argy-bargy here.
ReplyDeleteI'm right in the middle of 'The Innocent Man', the trial of Fritz and Williamson is about to begin.
Grisham's not hiding his contempt for the hick cops' and the DA's self-serving bullshit. His subtle sarcasm is compelling.
A tragic story thus far. I've looked through the pics already (doesn't everyone?) and I gather Ron W is no longer :o(
I've read novelist-turns-true-crime-writer before, namely Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood', so when I read the blurb for the Grisham book, I snapped it up.
I am neither a crime historian nor a forensic psychologist, but it seems to me that typically, the lust-driven personality that commits violent stranger murders, is seldom deterred by anything short of the proverbial policeman at the elbow.
Just thought I'd toss in my tuppenceworth.
A