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Death to the Death Penalty
A few days ago, Anthony Graves called his mother and asked what she was cooking for dinner. She asked why he wanted to know. He said, "Because I'm coming home."
Maybe it sounds like an unremarkable exchange. But Anthony Graves had spent 18 years behind bars, 12on Death Row, for the 1992 murder of an entire family, including four children, in the Texas town of Somerville. It wasn't until that day, Oct. 27, that the district attorney's office finally accepted what he'd been saying two decades: He's innocent.
So the news that Graves would be home for dinner was the very antithesis of unremarkable. His mother, he told a news conference the next day, couldn't believe it. "I couldn't believe I was saying it," he added.
Graves' release came after his story appeared in Texas Monthly magazine (texasmonthly.com). The article by Pamela Colloff detailed how he was convicted even though no physical evidence tied him to the crime, even though he had no motive to kill six strangers, even though three witnesses testified he was home at the time of the slaughter.
The case against Graves rested entirely upon jailhouse denizens who claimed they'd heard him confess and upon one Robert Carter, who admitted committing the crime but initially blamed Graves. Carter, executed in 2000, recanted that claim repeatedly, most notably to District Attorney Charles Sebesta the day before Sebesta put him on the stand to testify against Graves. Defense attorneys say Sebesta never shared that exculpatory tidbit with them, even though required to do so.
Awful indifference
Colloff's story drew outraged media attention, including from yours truly. But the attention that mattered was that of the current DA, Bill Parham, who undertook his own investigation. He was unequivocal in explaining his decision to drop charges. ‘‘There's not a single thing that says Anthony Graves was involved in this case," he said. "There is nothing."
One hopes people who love the death penalty are taking note. So often, their arguments in favor of that barbarous frontier relic seem to take place in some alternate universe where cops never fabricate evidence and judges never make mistakes, where lawyers are never inept and witnesses never commit perjury. So often, they behave as if in this one critical endeavor, unlike in every other endeavor, human beings somehow get it right every time.
I would not have convicted Anthony Graves of a traffic violation on the sort of evidence Sebesta offered. Yet somehow, a jury in Texas convicted him of murder and sent him to die.
When you pin them on it, people who love the death penalty often retreat into sophistic nonsense. Don't end the death penalty, someone told me, just enact safeguards to ensure the innocent are never sentenced. Yeah, right. Show me the safeguard that guarantees perfection.
Stubborn and cruel
Those who propose to tinker with the death penalty until it is foolproof remind me of the addict attempting to negotiate with his addiction, desperately proffering minor concessions that will allow him to continue indulging in this thing that is killing him. But there comes a day when you simply have to kick the habit.
As a nation, we are stubbornly addicted to the death penalty, strung out on exacting retribution and calling it justice. Even though we know innocent men and women have surely died as a result.
Or, like Anthony Graves, been robbed of irreplaceable years. He was 26 when he was arrested. He is 45 now. When he made that call home to his mother, he borrowed his lawyer's cellphone.
The lawyer had to show him how to use it.
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Show AllI am sorry that Mr. Graves had to waste 18 years of his life behind bars for a crime he did not commit. I am also glad that he was not executed for a crime he did not commit. Unfortunately, Todd Willingham was not so lucky. Gov. Perry needs to be removed from office.
http://camerontoddwillingham.com/?page_id=6
no civilized country still retains the death penalty,
What defines a civilized country? Would that be a country whose leaders set up false flag operations to start wars? ...Who retain the death penalty? ...Who waterboards a single individual eighty-odd times? ...Who was borne of true genocide?
Texas leads the country in crispy convicts, and W was once of the worst offenders when he was governor, having put 167 people to death. Current studies say that around 11% of those on death row are actually innocent, which means that 16 or 17 of those people W put to death were actually innocent.
The racism involved in the conviction rates for minorities VS whites are also examples of a system that is NOT designed for justice, and is NOT reversible when mistakes or blatant racism happen. It costs more, with our system of appeals and re-appeals, to put them to death than just keeping people alive in prison, and if mistakes are found (and they ARE), you can at least let them out. Kill them and the game is over.
Not to mention, as vdb points out, we are in the company of the least democratic, least fair, and most oppressive regimes in the world in our support of this barbaric practice. It's time we grew up, get over this right wing blood lust, and join the CIVILIZED world.
Race does play a role, but not the role you perhaps think. Studies have shown that the race of the victim, rather than the race of the accused, is actually a greater indicator as to whether the death penalty will be issued or not. If could be argued that's actually worse.
The fine film, "The Exonerated," which stars Susan Sarandon and Brian Denehy recounts the true life stories of a number of persons placed on death row on the basis of faulty evidence. It's a profound and powerful film that I recommend.
Thanks for the recommendation; I had not heard of that one and will look for it.
Justice Scalia actually stated publicly that he's sure the US has executed innocent people-- and his religion opposes the death penalty, yet in spite of his own admission and his religious "views" he supports the death penalty. Says something about this poor excuse for a human being.
And yet, if Scalia ruled that his religion opposes abortion, and he ruled in accordance with that belief, you would scream again that he is a "poor excuse for a human being". To his credit, based only on your statement, Scalia seems to be following the course of the law and Constitution, instead of his personal leanings.
This scum scalia has voiced his opinion that torture does not constitute punishment - as in "cruel and unusual" - if the victim has not been convicted of a crime. I wonder what his view would be on "targetted assassinations", which also lack a conviction?
I got that you don't like Scalia. But what does his opinion on war-fighting have to do with criminal justice?
May I also recommend if you haven't already seen it, Paul Hamann's excellent '14 Days In May'.
The death penalty is messy and inconvenient. I don't oppose it on moral grounds; there are clearly some people who are so inherently dangerous that they must, for the safety of others in society, be removed permanently from contact with that society. This is not about punishment -- it is about protection. Psychiatrists generally agree (at least the DSM does) that some people simply cannot be trusted to place any limits on their actions, making them incapable of meaningful rehabilitation.
Whether the people are executed or simply locked away until their natural death, the result is nearly the same. The remaining question then is what is the most effective method to permanently remove them from society, at the least possible cost. Until a few years ago, a swift execution was the answer of choice. Recent trends have made executions no longer swift, nor simple. Lifetime incarceration seems to be a good alternative, except for the danger to other inmates. Prison rape is rampant, and the murder rate in high-security facilities is extreme.
Punishment is another question, about which reasonable people may disagree. Are there crimes so heinous that nothing but the severest punisments must be inflicted? I certainly don't have a good answer. On one hand, who am I to judge, and on the other, who am I to tell the child who was kidnapped, raped, tortured, and then mutilated and left to live with that pain that punishment is not deserved?
It seems that there is no great answer to either question: punisment or protection. Any strokes of brilliance out there?
If I'm not mistaken, child molestors are almost impossible to rehabilitate, and yet for that crime we generally don't imprison for life and it's never been a capital crime, so while I agree some people can not live in society, I don't really agree that the death penalty has ever been about that at all.
Also, you talk about "the least possible cost," but if we go down that road we are directly equating human life with cash, something that most of us (I would hope) find morally repugnant. I think that one is a non-starter.
The thing is, once it's been decided that someone can never again live in our society, the question is no longer about his at all. Rather, it's really about us. We have to decide what kind of a society we want to live in. One that demands blood? One that, without any passion or anger, calmly slaughters those who have been rendered helpless? I'd prefer to have a society a step above that, honestly.
As for the other things you said, sure, I agree that we need prison reform, and I think a greater emphasis on rehabilitation, for many first-time non-violent offenders especially, could be a very good start, but those issues are unrelated to the death penalty. The only question is how do we respond. We can choose blood or not. I choose not.
Yes, equating human life with cash may be morally repugnant, but it's done every day, by all the "upstanding" citizens of this country. Namely, the House and Senate of the U.S. Then the insurance companies, the banks etc. follow suit. Why should we expect anything different from our so-called justice system after these role models set such sterling examples? Throw in what has happened at Guantanamo and all the torture that has come to light, really, isn't the death penalty just an extension? My heart has been breaking every day as I read this site and others like it. Maybe if we as a country can get the death penalty repealed then there may be some hope. But I am not holding my breath. Our society is, IMHO, going down the tubes, faster and faster. These poor souls, mostly men of color, are the real examples of the true hypocrisy of not only our justice system, but also the lie about our American dream. Just one lie after another.
It's the old is/ought problem. That some equate cash with life doesn't mean it's a good starting point when dealing with an issue, of course.
One factual correction, most of the people executed are white. It's the race of the victim that truly shows the racial bias in death penalty cases. I found a .pdf file that was updated this September that sheds light on this:
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/FactSheet.pdf
--"Also, you talk about "the least possible cost," but if we go down that road we are directly equating human life with cash, something that most of us (I would hope) find morally repugnant. I think that one is a non-starter." --
As Kizzy says above, the cash portion of the equation is a part of every decision everywhere. It only becomes equal to a human life when money is the 'only' consideration. It is not morally repugnent to consider the cost of one's actions. Indeed it is foolish to do otherwise.
It is understandable that you "choose not" to condone blood penalties. Many others would prefer to avoid that greatest of unpleasantness. That really isn't the question. The question was, what is the most effective solution to the person who cannot ever be trusted among his fellow man again? What does "effective" mean?
Complete frontal lobotomy goes a long way, but the issue becomes that of =cruel and unusual punishment=.
When I worked a one-year contract at New Jersey's MH cesspool called Marlboro Hospital (now decommissioned), I had the unpleasant experience of dealing with a young man who killed two young women by electrocution, but got off due to =insanity=. I could find no clinical or observational basis for that claim or diagnosis. And the bogus diagnosis led to his entitlement to SSDI funds. Each time I saw him, I asked myself: Where's the justice in this? How do the families of the victims feel?
This young man illustates an enormous fallacy of the capital crime theory in this country. By equating sentence with punishment rather than protection of society, we award little or no consequence to the "insane", that is, people without the capacity to appreciate the punishment. If the rule was protection first, society would gain a greater safety from those who "cannot" control their actions.
Btw, "insanity" of course has not coherent definition in criminal justice. The questions should be, did the person commit the illegal act, was the act done intentionally, and what is the likelihood of them committing other similar acts in the future. On these answers should ride the future of the prisoner.
There are so many things wrong with this, I don't know where to begin--or whether to. If you pay attention to the relevant news releases, you know that many people on death row are ultimately found to be innocent. Swift executions would preclude rectifying those poor judicial decisions.
And who is it who gets to decide who is too dangerous to live among us? However those decisions are made, if the likes of Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Yoo, Rice, Addington, or Rumsfeld continue to get a pass, then the system is too broke to rely on. It makes no sense to pull out the small fish while allowing the killer whales to swim free.
There seems to be a lot you don't know. I do pay attention; to lots of information sources. The statistical likelihood of a truly innocent person being sentenced to death row is quite small. Certainly not unheard of, but very small. Further, the automatic appeals process that so extends the execution of sentence so absurdly, reduces the chances of an actual execution even more. The cost, decades-long duration, and turmoil to the victims' families, trial witnesses, and the convicted, drive my assessment that the death penalty is at best messy and inconvenient, and quite worthy of investigating alternatives.
Who gets to decide who is too dangerous to continue in society? An absurd question, given our system of guaranteed jury trial by peers, impartial judges, right to (free) legal representation, and all the other trappings of our justice system. Is the system perfect? No. To paraphrase one of the Supreme Court justices, "We have the worst justice system in the world, except for all the others."
All frivolity aside, why not have a real discussion about these issues?
If you can get me to believe that there's such a thing as an infallible death penalty, then perhaps there's such a thing as a ship that can't sink.
All's we need is a law stating that in the case of a wrongful execution, the judge, jury, and prosecutor are given the death penalty for murder. Let's see how brave our citizens are.
Slight sidetrack I admit - but speaking of Texas Governor Rick Perry - The more I think about it, the more I wonder why this backwards buffoon can't be removed from office as a traitor to our country, after proffering the idea that Texas succeed from it.
As for the death penalty - the reasons for removing it so overwhelm the reasons for keeping it.
not so fast. i want to have death penalty as an option until the worst elements against humanity get what they have earned.
1) what constitutes a crime and 2) what is considered to be a justified response to the crime are only reflections of the power structure of the society.
i would have no moral compunction agreeing on death sentence for the worst who commit crimes against humanity.
and that would be for pure punishment.
for the lesser crimes, seperation or rehabilitation should be the goal.