Accelerated sense of closure dept.

February 24, 2003 3:30 AM

The innocence of the accused should not necessarily prevent an execution (NYT link) "The word 'innocent' has been tortured beyond recognition", say U.S. prosecutors. Question is, by who?
posted by magullo (57 comments total)

"Courts are beginning to express concern that they may be parties to the occasional miscarriage of justice."

well, i'm just speechless.
[thumbs nose, waggles fingers]
posted by quonsar at 5:18 AM on February 24, 2003

What the h*ll is wrong with these people?

I've only read the first page so far, but I have say that someone that finds it harder to phone relatives of a victim than to execute an innocent human has no business in a court of law other than as defendant.

And wouldn't it be harder on the victim's family knowing that an innocent person was killed to satisfy them, and that the real killer might still be on the loose?
posted by spazzm at 5:36 AM on February 24, 2003

Please ignore my spelling. It's late here.
posted by spazzm at 5:37 AM on February 24, 2003

Better that n guilty men go free ...
posted by monju_bosatsu at 5:38 AM on February 24, 2003

From the article: "Is the state required to prove every day that someone committed an offense beyond a reasonable doubt?" Mr. Nixon asked.

Yes, moron, that is the prosecutor's job in a criminal case. We are innocent until PROVEN guilty BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT. It doesn't matter if that doubt is today or tomorrow or six years from now, if there's doubt, there's innocence.
posted by Pollomacho at 6:06 AM on February 24, 2003

The justification for closing off innocence-based challenges is that eventually we reach a point where allowing them will prevent very few unjust executions, but will undermine the deterrence and retribution justifications for the death penalty by letting prisoners engage in endless delay. [emphasis mine]

In other words, killing an innocent person every once-in-awhile is not only necessary, but good since it will prop-up our rickety justification for revenge. Wow.

The state sponsored killing of an innocent person is the worst crime a civilized society can commit.
posted by jsonic at 6:10 AM on February 24, 2003

Franz Kafka doubted the existence of guilt; Archibald MacLeish doubted the existence of innocence. Albert Camus doubted both, and Pontius Pilate doubted truth.

I feel ill.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:20 AM on February 24, 2003

This is insane to me; the argument basically boils down to, "It's too expensive to make sure someone is really guilty before we execute them." I wonder how many dollars an innocent human life is worth. Obviously more than most people can afford.
posted by RylandDotNet at 6:22 AM on February 24, 2003

Hey jsonic, how about the state sponsored killing of millions of innocent persons
posted by PigAlien at 6:31 AM on February 24, 2003

What if one were to lynch a straw man?
posted by srboisvert at 6:32 AM on February 24, 2003

USA citizens;
Would you guys (and gals) mind awfully having an armed uprising to overthrow your government and institute some sort of democracy? Cheers!

That aside, does anyone else think it's odd that someone would say "we neeed to keep on executing people, regardless of innocence/guilt, in order for the death penalty to retain its deterrent effect", when logically the very fact that you're executing people in the first place kind of disproves that there is a deterrent effect?
posted by gusfoo at 6:33 AM on February 24, 2003

Hey jsonic, how about the state sponsored killing of millions of innocent persons

Are you asking if i think that's ok?
posted by jsonic at 6:44 AM on February 24, 2003

I'm with gusfoo.
posted by twine42 at 6:47 AM on February 24, 2003

That aside, does anyone else think it's odd that someone would say "we neeed to keep on executing people, regardless of innocence/guilt, in order for the death penalty to retain its deterrent effect", when logically the very fact that you're executing people in the first place kind of disproves that there is a deterrent effect?

Logically, that proves no such thing. You can still have deterrence if, say, fewer people commit crimes that now have the potential for capital punishment than they would if there were no possibility of such punishment.

That being said, I've not yet seen any evidence that would suggest capital punishment is a real deterrent either and am personally against it on principle. I'm just not a big fan of pithy, yet innacurate argument.

I think the prosecutor being quoted was speaking in rarefied legalese that amounts to a complaint that the system he is working in isn't set up to handle an increasingly large number of retrials, an increasing number of which are frivolous shots in the dark. He doesn't suggest that trials beset by constitutional violations shouldn't be revisited. Neither does he suggest that a condemned prisoner should have no recourse once the case has been closed. He specifically mentions Executive clemency.

It's possible (perhaps probable) that Executive clemency is too scattershot and/or political to be relied on for something of such gravity. Perhaps the court system needs some work to enable it to accomodate this relatively new development in a more rigorous, systematic manner.
posted by rocketpup at 7:00 AM on February 24, 2003

Hey jsonic, how about the state sponsored killing of millions of innocent persons

Jesus H. Christ, can't we talk about ANYTHING without somebody bringing Iraq into it, come on!

Anyway, excellent point gusfoo on the lack of deterrent, as for the message to "USA citizens" I suppose that's some sort of joke, look at your own country before you point a snide finger at mine, cheers yourself.
posted by Pollomacho at 7:05 AM on February 24, 2003

I have no particular desire to get up on any pedestals, but while we're at it... The US is responsible for the deaths and miserables lives of millions of 'innocent' people besides those in Iraq. And we claim to be a 'civilized' country. Or do we?
posted by PigAlien at 7:34 AM on February 24, 2003

Killing innocent people caught up in a faulty and corrupt egal system is not close to the top of the list. What about people subjected to syphillis against their will? Millions of native americans slaughtered and all-but-enslaved? Millions of un- and underinsured children. What's a few executed innocent people in comparison?
posted by PigAlien at 7:36 AM on February 24, 2003

I apologize, really. I have no intention to troll, exaggerate or throw this thread off-topic. Unfortunately, once you begin to ask the question of what a just, civilized society is, its too easy to start ticking off atrocity after atrocity (and Americans aren't the only country prone to such behavior).
posted by PigAlien at 7:39 AM on February 24, 2003

Jesus H. Christ, can't we talk about ANYTHING without somebody bringing Iraq into it...

sure we can. we just probably can't talk about KILLING without someone bringing iraq into it. duh! and jesus h. christ has nothing to do with it.
posted by quonsar at 7:50 AM on February 24, 2003

this is just sick
posted by signal at 7:54 AM on February 24, 2003

The prosecutor in this case made an extreme statement that makes for good press - in answer to a hypothetical question from a judge that itself seems meant to inflame rather than inform.

The larger issue is hardly new, and is one of balance. Of course no one wants innocent men executed. By the same token, however, as any prison guard will tell you, there's virtually no "guilty" men in prison. Everyone was "framed", or had a biased judge, or jury, etc., etc.

The larger issue has to do with extremes. This judge was pushing the attorney to a hypothetical extreme - but perhaps the attorney should have answered the question with one of his own - a hypothetical about the other extreme: Should any claim of innocence by a convicted killer, no matter how frivolous, be considered cause to re-open a case?

So far as "Yes, moron, that is the prosecutor's job in a criminal case. We are innocent until PROVEN guilty BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT." ... this actually is only true in the initial trial. We are talking about appeals here. Once one is found guilty by a jury one's peers, the assumption is that they are guilty unless they prove otherwise.

I think rocketpup was right. I'd like to see a federal review system set up to handle death row cases. Executive clemency as the last resort is too arbitrary - depends too much on a single person. Legitimate appeals should be heard - but the increasing burden on local prosecutors offices, and the additional, sometimes severe pain the families of victims are caused by re-opening old wounds should be avoided unless the appeal is really legitimate.

Democracy is odd - things are always argued in extremes, but practiced somewhere in the middle. It is always about finding the point of balance between coflicting interests. Innocent men should not be executed. But there are also people that do commit brutal murders, cause innocent families unimaginable grief, and would be quite content to appeal their conviction several dozen times over the next 50 years if they could.
posted by MidasMulligan at 8:47 AM on February 24, 2003

I'm sure there will be PLENTY of posts about Iraq/syphilis/Atrocities/Human Rights/etc. today and we can talk about those things there, I'll be glad to, this post just happened to be about the death penalty however. Please, one atrocity at a time folks!

Legitimate appeals should be heard - but the increasing burden on local prosecutors offices, and the additional, sometimes severe pain the families of victims are caused by re-opening old wounds should be avoided unless the appeal is really legitimate.

So how much does a prosecutor need to be unencumbered before a person's appeal becomes legitimate? We're not talking about locking someone in prison on false pretense, which is bad enough, we're talking about killing someone. Killing an innocent person is murder, so yes there ARE people who "commit brutal murders, cause innocent families unimaginable grief" they are called over zealous prosecutors. There is no appeal of a death sentence once the guy is dead. Whether you advocate the death penalty or not as a punishment, a condemned person must be permitted to seek every last possible means of recourse no matter what the financial burden grief to victims' families, otherwise we are no better than the cold blooded killer that shows his victims no mercy. If a jury can find OJ not guilty, the guys that whipped the truck driver to a pulp in the LA riots and the cops in the Rodney King case not guilty, they can just as easily be duped into finding an innocent man guilty. Its obviously happened before, how many more times is too many?
posted by Pollomacho at 9:01 AM on February 24, 2003

the increasing burden on local prosecutors offices, and the additional, sometimes severe pain the families of victims are caused by re-opening old wounds should be avoided unless the appeal is really legitimate.

First of all, who decides when is an appeal legitimate or not? Furthermore, as it is mentioned on the article, this attitude comes is part from the many appeals based on DNA avidence. This is a relatively new technique which is not only being applied to some old cases, but to all new cases. So if crime figures are on the decline, and unearthing DNA evidence of past crimes is an interim state of affairs, what are they argueing for here? The system is a bit clogged at present, so we might as well proceed with unchecked eliminations? Lastly, I couldn't care less for the victim's pains and rights when there is a remote possibility that the accused is / could be found innocent. Let me put it on no unclear terms: YOU MIGHT HAVE THE WRONG MAN! And an innocent person in prison comes before any victim, if only because the innocent are themselves *VICTIMS OF THE SYSTEM*. If the system produces victims and does nothing about it, then teh system doesn't work.
posted by magullo at 9:45 AM on February 24, 2003

If a jury can find OJ not guilty, the guys that whipped the truck driver to a pulp in the LA riots and the cops in the Rodney King case not guilty, they can just as easily be duped into finding an innocent man guilty. Its obviously happened before, how many more times is too many?

No one is arguing that a robust process isn't necessary to assure that only those truly guilty be executed. Again, this is about balance. For every dramatic example of a jury duped into finding an innocent man guilty, there are dozens of examples of genuinely guilty men that launch appeal after appeal - often based entirely on technicalities (i.e., they don't even try to claim they didn't do it), and often knowing full well it is unlikely to succeed ... but doing so simply to buy another year while the appeal winds its way through the courts. Every time this happens, the families of the victims are once again dragged through hell - and they, too, often wind up asking "how many more times is too many?"

I personally haven't been able to reach a conclusion on the death penalty. I don't think it serves as much of a deterrent. I do believe, however, that there are some tiny percentage of people in every population who (perhaps, for all I know, due to sort of odd chemical imbalance in the brain) really are true sociopaths - capable of cold-blooded killing with no remorse ... who scare the hell out of even the guards and prisoners in the Hobbsian world of maximum security prisons. They will kill in prison unless isolated, and would kill without thought should they ever escape. I really don't know what should be done with these men. But I do think that if they are caught and convicted for a crime that causes families untold grief, they should not be able to continue to cause those families grief year after year.
posted by MidasMulligan at 10:03 AM on February 24, 2003

Question: If a prosecutor withholds evidence that he knows can exonerate a defendant, and that defendant is subsequently executed, how is that different from murder?
posted by salmacis at 10:06 AM on February 24, 2003

Midas, you paint an excellent picture of my own angst about the death-penalty. I have no problem with turning Ted Bundy into a crispy-fried-sociopath. But if our legal system is to be trusted by those who must support it to be efficable, we must take the extreme measures necessary to make certain that not one single innocent person is subjected to death. Socrates aside, we do not have the rule of State, we have the rule of law. If that law is misapplied, even in only the rarest cases, then the law doesn't work.

(Midas - Excellent comments, by the way.)
posted by Wulfgar! at 10:19 AM on February 24, 2003

By the same token, however, as any prison guard will tell you, there's virtually no "guilty" men in prison. Everyone was "framed", or had a biased judge, or jury, etc., etc.

That's exactly what you'd expect, though. Good old Bayesian updating says that even if the prosecutorial-and-trial process correctly classifies someone as guilty or not guilty 99% of the time, a very high fraction of people in prison will actually be not guilty because 1% of the innocent population can easily be a significant percentage of or even more than 99% of the guilty population. Some back of the envelope calculation shows that it wouldn't be hard to have a process that's 99% correct still result in 90% of convictions being false.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:23 AM on February 24, 2003

ROU:

Huh?

I'd like to see those calculations. Care to post them?
posted by deadcowdan at 10:31 AM on February 24, 2003

First of all, who decides when is an appeal legitimate or not?

A judge. That's what judges do.

Furthermore, as it is mentioned on the article, this attitude comes is part from the many appeals based on DNA avidence. This is a relatively new technique which is not only being applied to some old cases, but to all new cases.

Actually, the article itself mentioned that it is only a small number of cases that involve DNA.

Lastly, I couldn't care less for the victim's pains and rights when there is a remote possibility that the accused is / could be found innocent.

Certainly your right. I do care about the victims pains and rights (you might too if you knew a family personally). And the phrasing of your statement is exactly the point: just as someone can be found guilty who isn't guilty, so can people be found innocent who are not innocent. For the accused, there's a double jeaprody - if OJ is acquiited, he can't be tried again. The guilty, however, can try over and over again to retry their case - and in fact have nothing to lose by playing a big crap-shoot ... by trying angle after angle.

Let me ask you this (seriously, not in a snarky way) ... if your mother, or sister, was raped, murdered, and dismembered (as inconceivable as the act is for most human beings, there are men on earth that do these sorts of things), and the fellow was caught, and you went through months of pre-trial turmoil, and withstood the trial itself (with the pictures and testimony) - and you were certain this was the guy that did it ... and this guy then spent the next 5 years appealing the conviction (and causing you to spend the next five years in the same turmoil, bringing up the event again and again) - would you still be arguing your present perspective as strongly? Would you continue to believe society had the duty to consider every single appeal to be legitimate, and that it had no duty to consider you at all?
posted by MidasMulligan at 10:34 AM on February 24, 2003

and you were certain this was the guy that did it

That is not the law. Period. All sympathy aside, America is not a Vigilante state.
posted by Wulfgar! at 10:39 AM on February 24, 2003

if your mother, or sister, was raped, murdered, and dismembered

The feelings of the victim or the victim's family should be irrelevant and have no weight in any of this. Justice demands impartiality, and bringing up "What if it was your family" is a play for emotion. It is not the purpose of the justice system to try to spare anyone's feelings.
posted by tolkhan at 10:49 AM on February 24, 2003

If we're going to play at hypotheticals, than I ask anyone here to put themselves in the position of sitting on deathrow, your life measured in minutes and hours instead of days, suffering with the sure and certain knowledge that you were found guilty by a group of strangers more interested in getting home to Kentucky Fried Chicken than in actually considering that they were murdering you for a crime you did not commit. The symapathy for victims argument only goes so far, and has no relevance here.
posted by Wulfgar! at 10:57 AM on February 24, 2003

deadcowdan:

900 people tried
9 people wrongly convicted
1 person correctly convicted.
890 people correctly found innocent.

very unlikely numbers of course, but theoretically possible.
posted by boltman at 11:03 AM on February 24, 2003

I'd like to see those calculations. Care to post them?

Assume for argument that murderers are rare -- say, 1 in 10000 people is a murderer. In a population of 1,000,000, then, there will be 100 murderers and 999,900 innocents. We run them through The Justice Mill, which is 99.9% correct -- it misclassifies only 1 in 1000 people.

So, we'll get
(100)(.999)~=100 guilty men on death row, and:
(999,900)(.001)~=1000 innocent men on death row.
And Bob's yer uncle.

Tests for rare conditions (like weird cancers, or the condition of being a murderer) routinely result in very high numbers of false positives no matter how accurate the test, merely because of the vast disparity in size between the population who has the condition and the population who does not.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:12 AM on February 24, 2003

Oops, what boltman said.

Numbers like that are, to be sure, unlikely. But it's not hard to find numbers so that, say, 1/3 of prisoners in general are innocent (of that particular crime), and the numbers get worse the more serious the crime is since we'd expect fewer people to be capital-murderers than noncapital-murders, and fewer people to be murderers than pot dealers.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:14 AM on February 24, 2003

just as someone can be found guilty who isn't guilty, so can people be found innocent who are not innocent.

So? Its still better to free a guilty man than to murder an innocent one. Guilty prisoners go free all the time due to the legal system's errors, miscalculations and inefficiencies. One of my close friends was kidnapped, tortured, raped and (after 2 days) murdered by a man who had 6, yes SIX violent felony convictions on his record, including manslaughter and two kidnapping and rape convictions involving teen girls. Even that guy deserved to be tried fairly and have every means available given to him to prove his innocence and to appeal any conviction, most especially if the state is proposing to put him to death (my friend's mother testified FOR him in the sentencing phase and, at her request, he was given a life sentence with no parole as well as having his previous paroles permanently revoked for violating them). For justice to be truly blind "victim's rights" and the families of victims must have NO say in the trial, sentencing or in the appeals process, I am totally with tolkhan on this. The judicial system must be absolute and impartial for it to truly provide justice.
posted by Pollomacho at 11:16 AM on February 24, 2003

If that law is misapplied, even in only the rarest cases, then the law doesn't work.

Then the law will never work - because it has to applied by men and women, and we are not perfect beings. But this doesn't mean we throw out the law altogether.

I do agree that it's application needs to reach a point of being as objective as possible - and in the case of the death penalty, society has a duty remove anything arbitrary about the application. This is what I think we don't do well right now. No single person should have the power - or the responsibility - to condemn someone to death. If a governer of one state never overturns death sentences, but the governer of another state overturns them all ... then it is not the crime, but the (completely arbitrary) place it happened to take place that determines whether someone lives or dies.

I think there's an element here that hasn't been mentioned yet - in most of the cases that have been overturned (i.e., an innocent man got a re-trial, and was released because he was found to be truly innocent), almost invariably there was a big disconnect - in the original trial - between the resources of the state and the resources of the accused. I suppose, if I had my druthers, that I'd like to see something like this:

A federal appeals process be instituted, and automatic. Any man convicted, and sentenced to death, would be automatically granted an appeal in two years. Over the course of those two years, the state would be required to provide the man with resources equal to those of the government - i.e., the law firm of his choice (within reason) ... i.e., not a legal aid attorney with 50 other cases, access to private detectives and other evidence gathering tools, & etc. In other words, make certain every tool required to make the strongest possible case is available, and enough time is provided. However, it would also be understood that every element of the appeal would take place in that second hearing. If, with all of those resources, the conviction was not overturned, then the penalty would be applied with waiting for more years of endless appeals.

To be too extreme about letting folks appeal forever is only looking at one part of the equation. The purpose of the justice systems is not just to punish the guilty (in which case, obviously an extreme punishment creates a duty to make certain you've got the right guy), it is also to protect the innocent ... from futher crimes perpetrated by sociopaths, but also (I'd argue) from the tremendous pain felt by families forced to re-live a crime over and over.

Right now we don't do either very well ... in rare cases, innocent men have been put to death. But in far more than rare cases, the families of victims not only are forced to deal with the initial effects of the crime, but are forced to bring those raw wounds up over and over again.
posted by MidasMulligan at 11:21 AM on February 24, 2003

While I agree with Wulfgar!'s comment regarding Ted Bundy, I cannot support the death penalty in this country. Having seen compelling documentaries like Frontline's "requiem for Frank Lee Smith" makes me realize the imperfections in our "justice" system. Moral, racial, and financial issues aside, our justice system has to be absolutely perfect in order to support such an absolute sentence. Our adversarial system has less to do with justice and finding truth than the idea of winning and losing at all cost.
posted by Eekacat at 11:25 AM on February 24, 2003

Oh goodie!!! Another death penalty debate on Metafilter!!! I can never get enough of that. I wonder if it will be any different than the last 43 death penalty debates we've had here. [reading reading....] Nope, same exact thing. Same positions from the same people. Oh joy.

Metafilter: Same debate, different day.

"Hey y6y6y6, why don't you just skip threads you don't like? I enjoy having the same pointless debate over and over. Why ruin it for everyone here who loves going over the same things and never learning anything new?"
posted by y6y6y6 at 11:46 AM on February 24, 2003

not a legal aid attorney with 50 other cases, access to private detectives and other evidence gathering tools

If I ever get charged with a crime I want an attorney on my team with the most criminal trial, courtroom and criminal defense experience, that would be, hands down a court provided, public defender (I'd probably want to hire on a former local prosecutor as a back up also, but that would be a luxury). I would think that in most places the public defender's office doesn't put some legal aid, 50 petty case, flunky, first year on a CAPITAL felony trial, if they do, then there is a serious problem that goes way beyond a mere technicality, besides that capital trial defense teams spend an excruciatingly large amount of money on the defense and have access to just as much material as the prosecution, some states even require disclosure of all the prosecution materials before trial but not defense materials to the prosecution, besides that as the months roll by in the trial, the defense has months to gather rebuttal materials to use once the prosecution rests.

All that aside, there are many discrepancies in the system, regionally, racially, politically, genderally (is that a word?), etc.

Same positions from the same people.

Hmm, this is the first one I've been in on, you must not have looked very hard. FilterFilter. Was there anything you wanted to add to the discussion or were you just wanting to make noise and get attention? You got some, so you can move on now.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:01 PM on February 24, 2003

900 people tried
9 people wrongly convicted
1 person correctly convicted.
890 people correctly found innocent.

very unlikely numbers of course, but theoretically possible.

Yeah, well, I could come up with a scenario in which one presidential candidate would get more total votes than the other, but still lose the election in the Electoral College. How likely is that? (ducks)


(Slightly OT)

For justice to be truly blind "victim's rights" and the families of victims must have NO say in the trial, sentencing or in the appeals process

Yes! I know that some would say that it gives the victims "closure" to tell the perpetrator to his/her face what exactly the consequence of his/her actions are, but I've always felt a little queasy about the insistence on "victims' rights" in trials. I really don't think it should matter how many people can be found to come forward and describe in heartbreaking detail, say, how special a murder victim was or how much they will be missed. So what that the victim was a popular person? The law should not count that victim as being more valuable than a murdered homeless schizophrenic who has no known relatives or friends. And if the victim or his/her relatives choose to take the forgiveness route? Does that mean the perpetrator should be let go or given a lighter sentence?

Bottom line for me is: The sentence for a crime should not be based on the effect (or lack thereof) to the victim or his/her family. It should be based on the crime committed and the circumstances the crime was committed in.

(Quite OT)

And I've always wondered why attempted murder is generally seen as a less serious crime than successful murder. Aren't we just rewarding the perpetrator for being incompetent?
posted by deadcowdan at 12:07 PM on February 24, 2003

And I've always wondered why attempted murder is generally seen as a less serious crime than successful murder.

On an interesting and slightly related note, I worked with some attorneys in Alabama on a murder case where they even had a confession from the man, witnesses, the weapon, fingerprints, DNA and an admission that the murderer had had sex with the victim. The prosecutors worked diligently to figure out exactly when the sex act occurred and much to their disappointment, it turned out that the accused had actually had returned and had sex with the the victim after the murder. They were disappointed because that meant that the corpse-rape was committed separately and since a capital murder must take place during the commission of another crime, then they couldn't seek the death penalty despite how deranged the murderer was.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:27 PM on February 24, 2003

The death penalty is a classist and racist institution more often associated with third world countries. It does nothing to deter crimes, but sometimes may even make certain crimes more severe. If a murderer knows he's just committed a capitol offense, what's to stop them from murdering any possible witnesses? I'd love a national moratorium on the practice of state sponsored executions. With that thought in mind, I feel that a prisoner should have every chance to appeal the sentence of death. If it takes years for the state to provide evidence that shows guilt beyond reasonable doubt, isn't that the state's problem? In short: If we want to end the endless appeals process, we should end the practice of execution.
posted by elwoodwiles at 12:38 PM on February 24, 2003

y6y6y6, what is different about this debate is the underlying assumption that it is okay to err on the side of public safety, rather than face the consequences of more damage to the public well being; a rather timely issue, wouldn't you agree? What is at stake in this discussion is whether we will choose to act by the will of the state, or by the rule of law. That's hardly an inconsequential matter. In fact, its been a matter of debate for over 2400 years. I'm sure you'll forgive us if we take a look at it again in light of current American events and policies.
posted by Wulfgar! at 12:41 PM on February 24, 2003

'This summer, the federal appeals court in St. Louis provided one sort of answer. Despite what the court said was "a nagging suspicion that the wrong man may have been convicted of capital murder," the three-judge panel wrote, the defendant, Darryl Burton, was entitled to "no relief, even as the facts suggest that he may well be innocent."'
'"One hundred cases were removed from death row and not successfully reprosecuted," Mr. Scheidegger said. "That's not the same as being proven innocent. One hundred out of 7,000 people in the modern era is still a small number," he said, referring to the number of people sent to death row since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.'

Crikey! Think of all the wrongfully freed murderers out there on the streets. What does that do to the crime rate?
posted by dash_slot- at 2:29 PM on February 24, 2003

Killing innocent people caught up in a faulty and corrupt legal system is not close to the top of the list. What about people subjected to syphilis against their will?

If you think having syphilis is worse than being murdered by the state, I guess I see your point.

Millions of native americans slaughtered and all-but-enslaved?

Murdering innocent native americans is exactly what I'm talking about, state approved killing of innocent people.

Millions of un- and underinsured children.

Being uninsured is worse than being murdered by the state?

What's a few executed innocent people in comparison?

A travesty of justice and antithetical to the entire point of civilization. If you follow the laws of a society and it still decides to kill you, why would any rational human being want to support it? Or is it ok for society to kill innocent people just as long as it's not you?
posted by jsonic at 2:31 PM on February 24, 2003

The guilty, however, can try over and over again to retry their case - and in fact have nothing to lose by playing a big crap-shoot

If the prisoner was serving a prison sentence rather than on death row this problem probably wouldn't exist. For a prisoner to be released early they have to admit to their crime as part of their rehabilitation, and if they're appealing obviously they can't.

Every time this happens, the families of the victims are once again dragged through hell

This comment reminded me of the other side to the debate about victims families. I read this article about how recent advances in DNA evidence mean that some cases that were unsolved are being reopened. This often means heartbreak for the family but of course they're all hopeful for a result. Naturally you wouldn't do this if you were worried about upsetting families but I ultimately think it's the right thing to do.
posted by dodgygeezer at 2:35 PM on February 24, 2003

And if the victim or his/her relatives choose to take the forgiveness route? Does that mean the perpetrator should be let go or given a lighter sentence?

Actually, it sometimes is taken into account, and sometimes does mitigate the sentence (see Pollomacho's comment in this thread).

Bottom line for me is: The sentence for a crime should not be based on the effect (or lack thereof) to the victim or his/her family. It should be based on the crime committed and the circumstances the crime was committed in.

I understand this perspective - I suppose I see it from a slightly different perspective. To me, discussions about the entire justice system - from catching criminals, to trying, convicting and sentencing, to implementing the punishment itself, is a discussion about the means of accomplishing something. They are not ends in and of themselves.

The end - the essential purpose of a justice system - is to protect the innocent members of society from the actions of criminals. Focusing on an extremes of punishment (like the death penalty) without also looking at the extremes of criminal behavior that leads to it is wrong. If the state executes the wrong man, it makes a grave error. It is also a grave error, however, if a murderer is released, and murders again. In both cases, the system has failed, and another innocent person dies, and another family is torn apart.

The bigger point is, however, it makes no sense to say that the victims should have no effect on the means of implementing justice, and their feelings should not be considered at all in the process, when it is those victims themselves that are the entire reason for having a justice system in the first place.
posted by MidasMulligan at 2:48 PM on February 24, 2003

God, the Death Penalty is barbaric. The state should not be in the business of executing people.
posted by dcodea at 3:00 PM on February 24, 2003

If I ever get charged with a crime I want an attorney on my team with the most criminal trial, courtroom and criminal defense experience, that would be, hands down a court provided, public defender

Um, I don't think you'd want that. The recent, well-publicized study of death penalty cases by James Liebman (which found an overall error rate in death penalty cases of 68 percent) found that the most common reason for post conviction reversals (accounting for 37 percent of reversals) was "eggregiously incompetent defense lawyers." Considering that the legal standard for getting a reversal on these grounds is quite high (you'd have to show a substantial probability that the case would have come out differently with competent representation), this suggests that at least quite a few public defenders are lazy or incompetent or both.

Also, I've heard that the vast majority of the public interest lawyer-types that are really passionate about the death penalty tend to limit their work to post-conviction appeals rather than doing actual trials.
posted by boltman at 3:47 PM on February 24, 2003

ROU_Xenophobe:

> Assume for argument that murderers are rare -- say, 1 in
> 10000 people is a murderer. In a population of 1,000,000,
> then, there will be 100 murderers and 999,900 innocents.
> We run them through The Justice Mill, which is 99.9% correct
> -- it misclassifies only 1 in 1000 people.


You're gonna arrest everybody, eh?

If you're not going to arrest everybody then you don't get to run the whole 1M population through the mill to get your numbers, because the "justice mill" never even examines most of them. You only get to do the analysis on that subset which is actually suspected, arrested, charged, and brought to trial; which might possibly skew your results a bit.

Unless of course you're actually claiming that those arrested and tried are a true random sample of the entire population, i.e. that people are brought to trial on pure chance and nothing else, that the ratio of murderers to innocents among those who do get drawn into the justice system is the same as in your entire population (100/999,900 = 0.01%.) That's certainly a possible point of view, but I'd like to hear the justification for it before we worry about your numbers--based, as they are, on presuming this point of view.
posted by jfuller at 3:47 PM on February 24, 2003

I probably should have added "ridiculously overworked" to lazy and incompetent.
posted by boltman at 3:50 PM on February 24, 2003

> God, the Death Penalty is barbaric. The state should not be
> in the business of executing people.

Agreed. Execution should be left in the hands of the people.
posted by jfuller at 3:50 PM on February 24, 2003

Incidently, if we're talking about "victim's rights", there's another legal system in which the families of victims get to have a say during sentancing. I'm talking, of course, of Islamic Sharia Law.
posted by salmacis at 4:15 PM on February 24, 2003

jfuller:I think our signals may have gotten crossed at some point, we don't seem to be effectively communicating.
posted by dcodea at 4:54 PM on February 24, 2003

jfuller: yeah, I know. That's why I said that those numbers were unlikely.

Take the justice system as a whole -- it grabs someone for one reason or another, looks at them, and either lets them go at some point or forces them through to trial, for whatever result. Say that this whole process has a reliability of 0.99, to be generous -- maybe it's this high for capital murder; I dunno.

If you're guilty get examined, you almost certainly get convicted. If you're innocent and examined, you almost certainly are let go (probably before the trial).

So compare (.01)(innocent-but-examined population) to (.99)(guilty population). I don't know how many people are examined by The Justice Mill for an average capital-murder charge. If the number of people examined is 20 times larger than the number convicted -- if 20 people get seriously interrogated for every case, if 20 people get run through the Justice Mill for every conviction -- you'd get about 20% of death row being innocent. It's not hard to play with Bayes' rule to get noticeable proportions of people being whacked by the state being innocent (of that crime).
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:08 PM on February 24, 2003

ROU: a problem with your calculation: at each specific application of the Justice Mill, 1% of the population are not guilty. If a murder is commited, only 1 person is guilty. The other '1%-guilty's are guilty of other crimes irrelevant to this application of the Mill.

It isn't the same as false positives in a disease test where 1% of the population have the disease. That analogy would be the Justice Mill ascertaining whether the accused is guilty - of any crimes.
posted by mediaddict at 3:25 PM on February 28, 2003