Alberto Gonzales and the Death Penalty:
At Time For Candor. A Time For Fairness
Two years ago, as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales faced confirmation hearings, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty stressed that the nation’s chief law enforcement officer “must demonstrate the highest commitment to fairness, due process and equal protection under the law.”
We based our opposition to Gonzales’ confirmation on our belief that his track record on death penalty cases in Texas failed to meet this challenge. Time and again the legal analysis he provided to then-Gov. George W. Bush on the eve of executions failed to include any discussion of the most salient issues, including severe mental retardation and mental illness, abysmally poor legal representation and, in more than a handful of cases, even credible claims of innocence.
With the recent revelations that differences regarding the death penalty played a role in the dismissal of at least three U.S. attorneys, our fears, sadly, have been justified.
Then, as now, Mr. Gonzales placed Bush’s political agenda above honesty, integrity , and commitment to fairness. In Texas this took the form of cursory review – and then denial in every single case but one – of clemency applications as President Bush parlayed his “tough-on-crime” persona into a successful run for the Republican presidential nomination.
Today, Mr. Gonzales’ failed priorities have contributed to a politicized federal death penalty system instead of one based on fairness and integrity. Consider:
- At least three U.S. attorneys – Paul Charlton of Arizona, Margaret Chiara of Michigan, and Kevin Ryan of California – were dismissed after clashing with the Justice Department over death penalty policy. Although the final decision has always rested with the U.S. Attorney General, a U.S. attorney’s recommendation that death should not be sought has traditionally been given great deference – until recently.
- During the six years that President Bush has been in office (a span of time marked by Mr. Gonzales and his predecessor, former Attorney General John Ashcroft) the federal death penalty was sought 95 times, or about 16 times a year. That’s twice as often as the 55 times it was sought during the eight years of the Clinton Administration, roughly seven times a year.
- Ominously, the Bush Department of Justice has sought the federal death penalty in states where voters, through their elected representatives, have rejected capital punishment. These jurisdictions include Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Dakota, and Vermont, as well as Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. (New York, a state without a functioning state death penalty, has a stunning 51 potential federal death penalty cases in the works.)
Perhaps the most telling statistic: The size of federal death row has tripled since Bush took office, while state death sentences and executions are down sharply from their historic highs in the late 1990s. Three federal death row inmates already have been executed under the Bush administration; another four federal death row inmates are nearing the end of their appeals.
What does it say that the federal death penalty under Gonzales is inconsistent with state trends, which show capital punishment is on the wane? It says, simply, that the Bush Administration has chosen to politicize the death penalty. That is wrong.
Both death penalty proponents and opponents agree on this: Fairness and integrity must be present at the highest levels of our criminal justice system, especially when a person’s life is in the balance. That is why, increasingly, groups such as murder victims’ family members, religious groups, and leaders in the law enforcement community are calling for fairness.
Mr. Gonzales promised fairness in 2005 when he faced confirmation hearings. He was not candid about his record on the death penalty then and he is not candid today. It is past time for General Gonzales to tender his resignation, for the President to nominate, and for the Senate to confirm an Attorney General who will “demonstrate the highest commitment to fairness, due process and equal protection under the law.”
Rust-Tierney is executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
I would support the death penalty for war criminals like Gonzales. I think, in these extreme cases, we will need a sense of closure and justice that is extraordinary.
I am opposed to the death penalty for ordinary crimes, but for war crimes of a monumental nature, I think it deserves special consideration.
!!!!!!!!!!!! EMERGENCY CALL TO ACTION !!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t think Bush has any intention of vetoing the Supplemental funding bill if it ever gets to his desk. One of the benchmarks he has to certify turns Iraq’s oil over to the major American and British oil companies is buried in this Supplemental!
Please read Richard Beham’s “George Bush’s Land Mine” just posted here on Common Dreams. Excerpt:
“The Iraqi Parliament has before it today, in fact, a bill called the hydrocarbon law, and it does call for revenue sharing among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. For President Bush, this is a must-have law, and it is the only “benchmark” that truly matters to his Administration.
Yes, revenue sharing is there-essentially in fine print, essentially trivial. The bill is long and complex, it has been years in the making, and its primary purpose is transformational in scope: a radical and wholesale reconstruction-virtual privatization-of the currently nationalized Iraqi oil industry.
If passed, the law will make available to Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell about 4/5’s of the stupendous petroleum reserves in Iraq. That is the wretched goal of the Bush Administration, and in his speech setting the revenue-sharing “benchmark” Mr. Bush consciously avoided any hint of it.
The legislation pending now in Washington requires the President to certify to Congress by next October that the benchmarks have been met-specifically that the Iraqi hydrocarbon law has been passed. That’s the land mine: he will certify the American and British oil companies have access to Iraqi oil. This is not likely what Congress intended, but it is precisely what Mr. Bush has sought for the better part of six years.
It is why we went to war.”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ACT NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We have to contact every member in the Congress that is on the panel to reconcile the House and Senate version of the Supplemental funding bill that just passed both houses of Congress. This “benchmark” has to be stripped out of this bill before it goes to Shrub’s desk!
GO! GO! GO!!!
P.S. I’m going to go on over to Move On and see what the can do.
Thanks.
Rebel Farmer: You are so right. The US media seem to be ignoring the oil arrangment that Iraq is to accept. First, our State Dept. designed the agreements BEFORE the invasion of Iraq; then we “helped” Iraq write a new constitition requiring privatization that the Iraqis are not to amend until a certain amount of time has gone by; now we want them to accept a type of agreement used by only 12% of oil fields (all others are nationalized), to give the oil companies guaranteed profits for 25 years, to make the companies’ share 70 percent (this figure varies here and there) rather than the normal 10 to 20 percent until they have recouped their initial investments, that do not require the companies to re-invest any profits in Iraq or to hire Iraqi employees. The agreements seem indeed to be a gift to a small group of megal-corporations at the expense of Iraq’s future.
Iraq really needs to insist on the sovereignty the U.S. keeps saying it has, revert to its old constitution, and nationalize its oil fields. AND refuse to sign over its oil fields to anyone.
may the ghost of carla fay haunt these 2 texas war criminals…..
So, did you write your representatives yet? GET MOVING!!!!
I too oppose the death penalty for ordinary crimes, even multiple murder. I support the death penalty for egregious cases of crimes against peace, especially the crime of international aggression. There is an excellent legal precedent for this. The Nuremberg Tribunal, that was set up to try Nazi criminals after World War II, stated that aggressive war is “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Thus Bush and Blair and their cabinets are legally responsible for the car bombings that kill scores of people in Iraq almost every day, because they are a consequence of the aggressive war they launched.
Mark Marshall
Toronto
Now you understand, why I support Kucinich for president:
He has the United Nations backing the whole pull out of our troops! But, he has other things, too….if only the media would accept him! Where is the media!!?
I went and logged on to my sen.’s site. I hope that’s enough!
Mark Marshall mentions the Nuremberg trials. Stalin wanted the German defendents to read a confession and then take them out and shoot them. Churchill quipped, “Why bother with the confession?”. Time and time again the US, UK or French prosecutors accused the German defendents of committing various atrocities. They simply pointed in the direction of the Soviet prosecutora and said, “So did they.”. THere was also the fact that Hitler and Stalin were allies for 2 years and Churchill betrayed Finland.
To Ken Mitchell: yes, the USSR committed atrocities. So did the USA and the Britain. The Nuremberg trials no doubt were flawed in many ways. Nevertheless, there is abundant evidence that Bush and Blair and Howard and Berlusconi and Aznar and their cabinets have committed the crime of international aggression. And regardless of the shortcomings of the Nuremberg Trials, international aggression is a crime in contemporary international law, under the Rome Statute.
Mark Marshall
Toronto
I have long opposed the death penalty for ordinary crime. I have recently become convinced that the only way to rid ourselves of the ruinous influence of this Neo-Con scum is to seize as many of them as possible and just summarily take them out and shoot them, preferably publically, and in the most humiliating way possible, if we can ever get enough of the left together to overthow this illigimate government and take it over for the people, that is. It will never happen under current circumstances.
Execution by firing squad is reserved for honorable soldiers/officers who made a terrible mistake by following their deranged leaders. Nazi war criminals were hanged. That is still the acceptable method of dealing with inhuman monsters who commit horrific war crimes with impunity - and no regret - such as the bush cabal, blair, aznar, etc. We do need an international war crimes tribunal - but the US has to be restrained first, just as German was defeated. We cannot allow the precedent set with Hiro Hito to continue - war criminals get off scott-free (and that includes the monstrous abominable Churchill who approved and promoted the gassing of Kurds, as well as Carter, who justified slaughtering anyone in the Middle East who dared nationalize their oil and gas).
What about what the Italians did to Mousalini (sp)? Damned impressive public display of rage! But I don’t think Laura should be strung up. THAT would probably be going to far….
I don’t agree with capital punishment in any circumstances. I think for these criminals 50 years at Gitmo wearing orange jump suits listening to daily readings from the Koran with the whole thing streamed on the internet would be a far better punishment.
A Community Singalong to the tune of Masters of War:
hey georgie bush - get your butt over here
got something to tell you that you oughta hear
ain’t nothing but lies when you say you do good
if killing was right then kill you I would
but I know that death is not mine to give
I cannot give life - I can only live
and in the end when you’re dead and gone
this truth in the soul of my child will live on
For those of you who are willing to execute anyone at all, I can only quote Clarence Darrow: “There is only one thing about the death penalty. If you love the idea of killing someone you’re for it. If you hate the idea of killing someone you’re against it”. So which side of that fence do you stand? It is a fence. It is not a matter of degree where the more reasons you have for wanting to kill people the more you love it. No rationalizing allowed.
Gonzales and the death penalty: I am opposed to the death penalty but in his case I would make an exception. Would beating him to death with Bush’s skull be okay?
I’m curious. Are you people serious about exceptions or is this just wishful thinking? The problem with these people is not that they’re evil, they are mentally ill and spiritually estranged. I don’t think because we don’t know how to heal them the answer is to kill them. I am not proposing we don’t protect ouselves from them either. I just think we can’t act like them.
You are right, Kathy. I would not use the death penalty at all and I am being facetious in my previous comment. The key phrase is “protect ourselves” so I would happily see them thrown in prison forever. The problem with the system is not that there aren’t checks and balances, but they are never used or they are used in a lilli-livered way. To betray the people should be treated as a life sentence in prison offense, not somethng you get censored for.
But the real issue is that either people are put into these positions of power by oligarchies of businesses or they are actually owners of corporate interests themselves. What if politicians were only allowed to run for office if they renounced their wealth or - heaven forbid - they could only be elected from ordinary working families. Once they left office they could not own shares in businesses, sit on boards of businesses, nor profit from their term in office except for writing a book or two, or from a pension which could be the average workers wage.
We apply rules to our juries on profiting from sitting on a jury so why not politicians? If they break the rules they should be slung in jail for life.
The Nuremburg trials were a good case in point of treating the vanquished as the victors hoped to be treated. Churchill made the quip about the confessions, mentioned by Ken Mitchell above, because he thought at first that the Soviets were joking. Believe it or not Churchill actually contributed money to at least Nazi defendent’s defense costs after July 1945. The Nazi defendents were, in the eyes of the British and the US a ruling class like themselves and so they basically spared almost all of them. It is telling that last week Germany released a Bader Meinhoff terrorist, Brigitte Mohnhaupt. She had served a longer sentence than all the Nazi war criminals except Rudolph Hess. She could not be personally implicated in any murders but she was given a sentence that was double that of several Nazi mass murderers. Why? Because Bader Meinhoff targeted industrialists and state prosecutors etc. It is the same in the States: you can launch an illegal war or condemn thousands to die of cancer because of the pollution your company causes; but if you steal three slices of pizza you can face life in jail. Go figure.
Kathy - you are right - I was being facetious about the death penalty. Although I do agree with Voltaire’s assertion that it is good to execute one of your admirals for no reason every now and again to keep the others on their toes. Maybe we should do the same with politicians.
Seriously, if they locked these people up, or better still never allowed them near public office, we wouldn’t need to joke about this. These people are predators, the worst kind of psychotic lunatics, and yet they are in public office. If only ordinary working people were allowed to run the country.
Sorry, Andrew, I guess my sense of humor runs thin on the death penalty. Facetious is OK with me. No matter what horrible thing someone did, when they are killed, some part of me dies with them. I finally understood that on an energetic level, we are all one.
Which is why Bush behaves as he does. In Bush on the Couch, the psychiatrist who wrote it called it projection. Bush’s method of projecting his pain outward is to hurt others. Is being a wounded spirit evil? Just be grateful Barbara Bush wasn’t your mother.
That is very empathetic of you to see Bush’s character in that way. He views crime in completely the opposite way and if someone commits a crime they are evil according to him. If you can be sent to jail for life for stealing that third loaf of bread then why not if you purposely kill and destroy human rights? I appreciate the generosity of your understanding (although i would lay the blame more on George senior being his father - it is all too easy to lay the casue on the shoulders of a woman) but the world has become a worse place because he has been allowed to run riot and no one - apart from that guy in Tbilisi with the hand grenade - has done anything to stop him.
Of course, if he were killed nothing would change and everything would get worse. It would be used to destroy any minute vestiges of freedom in the USA and most other western countries. This is why the system has to change, not one or two of the leaders. As the USA is not a democracy, turning it into one in the first place would be a good way of starting - making sure psychotics do not get into power in the first place.
Andrew, George did get a double whammy, although the problem with his father is that he was aloof, usually absent (curse of the politician), and George was unable to gain his approval. Obviously there’s a lot of rage toward his father - the famous drunken challenge scene for example. His mother, however, was the disciplinarian and their relationship was more complicated. After his sister died (he was 7), he felt responsible to carry her grief and hide his own. He’s the oldest child which can have it’s special burdens. I’m not excusing his behavior, we are all accountable for what we do, I’m just understanding the origins. The psychiatrist who wrote Bush on the Couch had a good understanding of alcoholic family systems and how they distort people’s lives.
Back to the death penalty, if people understood that whatever they do to anyone they do to their own spirit as well, we would be living in a kinder world.
Getting so,ewhat off topic, please check out my last post on Bush Team Adept Only at Bungling. Two Congressmen besides Dennis are willing to present articles of impeachment if they get enough signatories in their districts and we’re being called on to help. How to info is posted there.
bush & co are not sick - they are the disease.
vdb, How can you say they’re not sick? Would any healthy normal person behave like that?
how can you not recognize sarcasm