capital punishment – Page 3

More evidence for abolition

The American Bar Association issued a report this week that shows that the problems a state commission found with the death penalty earlier this year were not anomolies and were, in fact, systemic deficiencies that cannot be repaired.

Studying eight states, the ABA discovered:

Every state studied appears to have significant racial disparities in imposing the death penalty, particularly associated with the race of the victim, but little has been done to rectify the problem.

Judicial elections mean that electoral pressures may influence judicial decisions, and candidates for judges in many states discuss their views of the death penalty during campaigns.

States often do not have policies in place to ensure that lawyers representing people with mental retardation or mental illness fully appreciate the significance of their clients’ mental disabilities. And states do not formally commute death sentences when an inmate is found incompetent, and they do not require instruction of jurors on the distinction between insanity as a defense and reliance on a mental disorder or disability to mitigate sentencing.

In clemency proceedings, most states fail to specify the type or breadth of review, or to require the clemency decisionmaker to explain reasons for their decisions.

Most states have had at least one serious incident of mistakes or fraud in crime laboratories. They often do not require that crime laboratories and medical examiner offices be accredited, or that crime laboratories make their standards and procedures public. The laboratories are often seriously underfunded and do not use the most sophisticated testing procedures.

With respect to collection, preservation and testing of biological evidence, most states do not require preservation of the evidence through the entire legal process until the accused is either released from prison or executed. As scientific testing capability advances, evidence that could prove innocence may be destroyed.

Testing statutes create onerous procedural hurdles impeding the ability of convicted persons to file for and obtain DNA testing.

States do not require law enforcement agencies to adopt procedures comporting with national best practices on identification and interrogation, and most states do not require law enforcement agencies to videotape or audiotape custodial interrogations in murder cases.

States are not establishing policies or requiring prosecutors’ offices to establish policies on exercise of prosecutorial discretion, or on evaluating cases that rely on evidence such as testimony of jailhouse snitches, or on eyewitness identification or confessions, considered as less reliable evidence. Many states don’t require specialized training for capital cases, and most states have not disciplined the prosecutors even when serious misconduct has been found.

Some states fail to provide for appointment of defense counsel in post-conviction proceedings, and all states fail to provide for appointment of counsel in clemency proceedings. Capital indigent defense is generally significantly underfunded, and compensation paid to appointed capital defense attorneys is often inadequate. Many states require only minimal training and experience for defense counsel in capital cases.

Some states do not require a meaningful proportionality review to determine whether death sentences are imposed on similarly situated defendants and few, if any, maintain databases adequate to achieve such a review.

With respect to post-conviction review, many states provide unreasonably short time periods in which to petition the courts for review, and most states allow judges in such proceedings to adopt findings of fact and conclusions of law proposed by one party, potentially undermining the judge’s exercise of independent judgment. Some states assign post-conviction review of whether errors were made at trial to the same judge who presided at trial, and many states make it difficult to obtain discovery, or evidentiary hearings.

Jury instructions often are poorly written and poorly conveyed, making it difficult for jurors to understand their roles and responsibilities. States often fail to provide instructions in writing, and instructions fail to define important terms, or to tell jurors that they may impose life sentences even if there are no mitigating factors or where aggravating factors are proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

The list of problems is long and consistent across state borders, similar to the problems found in Illinois, New Jersey and so many other places not studied. Five of the state study groups commissioned by the ABA caled for moratoriums — and the ABA is calling for a national moratorium.

And that’s fine as far as it goes.

But a moratorium is only useful if it leads to the eventual abolition of capital punishment — a barbaric punishment that has been abandoned by the rest of the western world and a growing number of countries in the developing world.

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Death penalty politics in the 14th

This post from Wally Edge offers some pretty interesting speculation on whether the Democrats might want to shield Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein from having her committee review a death penalty repeal bill. The notion is that the Democratic leadership would move the legislation to a different committee to spare her having to take a high-profile stance on a difficult issue in a district that includes Hamilton (considered a bulwark of death-penalty support) — and to keep from angering death penalty abolitionists.

Supporters of ending the death penalty are worried that Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein’s tenuous hold on her own competitive legislative district — past polling has shown support for the death penalty, especially in blue-collar Hamilton Township — and her fear of tough stands, might make her less likely to support their cause.

Amazing what an issue-based story can do for the political process (yes, I am patting the Post on the back).

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More doubts on the death penalty

The Star-Ledger comments today on the case of Byron Halsey, who had his double-murder conviction overturned earlier this thanks to DNA evidence tying the crime to someone else — someone who had testified against him during the 1988 trial.

The Ledger correctly notes that

The case is cause for grave concern about police interrogation tactics, lie detector tests, confessions and the overall well-being of the justice system.

The Halsey case is another in a long line of cases in which seemingly incontrovertable evidence — in this case a confession — proves not to be so incontrovertable, after all, the confession apprently coming after a long, difficult interrogation.

That confessions aren’t always what they appear to be is yet another lesson. To many, it seems almost incomprehensible that suspects would confess to crimes they didn’t commit, but criminologists say false confessions are not as rare as some believe.

Halsey’s lawyers had argued that the length and circumstances surrounding his interrogation made his statements unreliable.

It’s a lesson that the federal government should take to heart as it attempts to justify its torture program at Guantanamo and one that should be factored into the debate over the death penalty here in New Jersey.

One of the striking things about this case is that the crimes committed are exactly the kinds of crimes that those who support the death penalty regularly point to as a reason to preserve capital punishment. Halsey was sentenced to life in prison — the death penalty was sought by prosecutors because the murder victims were children and apparently raped, but the jury opted not to impose it.

Consider the candidates for state Senate and Assembly from the 14th District. Four of them — the three Republicans, Assemblyman Bill Baroni, who is running for state Senate, and Assembly candidates Adam Bushman and Tom Goodwin, along with Democratic Assembly candidate Wayne D’Angelo — express doubts about the death penalty, but believed it should be retained for cases of terrorism, child murder and the killing of prosecutors, police or witnesses in criminal cases.

“Can you imagine if a convicted terrorist were allowed to stay alive, letting him continue to rally and support his cause?” (Mr. Bushman) said.

Then again, wouldn’t putting a terrorist to death turn him into a martyr? That, however, is a side issue. The question here is whether we can eliminate doubt from the process, whether we can ever be completely certain of the guilt of the men and women being sentenced to death.

There are other issues surrounding capital punishment — moral and ethical concerns, its effectiveness as a deterrent, etc. — but the question of guilt or innocence and our inability to ever be 100 percent sure seems paramount (and tied back to the moral and ethical issues).

Human nature being what it is, there is no way to ensure that we are not sentencing an innocent man or woman to death. That being the case, how can we not abolish capital punishment?

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Three more for our side

Three more major newspapers have turned against capital punishment, more evidence that “evolving standards of decency” are moving us in the right direction. Time to pull the plug on the death penalty.

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Mixed decisions

Buried in Monday’s state Supreme Court decision upholding the death sentence of 29-year-old Brian Wakefield, who was convicted of the 2001 home invasion and beating deaths of Richard and Shirley Hazard in Atlantic County contained a kernel of hope for opponents of the death penalty.

The court ruled that the Wakefield trial and sentencing met all of the criteria under New Jersey law, that it was fair, the death sentence was properly imposed, and his death sentence is not disproportionate.

Justice Virginia Long, in a dissent, offered a concise rebuke not only to the courts immediate decision, but to the ethical underpinnings of the courts willingness to continue endorsing the death penalty. She said the state court in the 1980s relied on evolving standards of decency to uphold that ultimate sanction and that a changing moral climate required the state to reconsider its commitment to the death penalty.

Justice Long’s view of the death penalty is consistent with the recommendations made in a report issued by a state panel that had been charged with reviewing the state’s capital punishment statute.

The key finding of the report, issued in January, was that the the death penalty was inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in New Jersey and elsewhere in the country. The report also found that there is no evidence that the death penalty acts as a deterrent or “rationally serves a legitimate penological intent”; that there remains too much risk that felons who commit similar crimes will face different sentences or that the innocent will be executed; that it is more expensive than life in prison without parole; and there are better alternatives, including life imprison without parole.

Unfortunately, the court may not have the authority to follow Justice Long’s lead — Justice Roberto A. Rivera-Soto, writing for the majority, cited a 1992 constitutional amendment explicitly stating that the death penalty is not cruel or unusual punishment to explain why he believed the court did not have the constitutional authority to strike down the capital punishment statute.

But that does not mean the death penalty cannot be overturned by the state Legislature. With Thursday’s Senate hearing coming up, I am hoping that members of the Senate Judiciary Committee read Justice Long’s dissent and take it to heart.

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