Denial of Clemency in Death Penalty Cases

[wcknight]

DreadVandal:

The chances of an innocent person being executed in our system are practically nil (in these days that is, I’m not talking about 40 years ago). I have a good friend; a smart lawyer, former public defendent, and law school professor who is convinced that it is virtually impossible for an innocent person to be executed in our system today. He said that 99.9% of the people he has defended were guilty.

When, we get rid of the .1% then we can talk about keeping the DP. Even one case is one too many. How would you like to be the one exception in a thousand ?

IF you happened to see the play “exonerated” there were a half a dozen cases (and these were not 40 years ago) where an innocent man got convicted of murder and were scheduled to be executed, luckily these folks were not killed. Some of these folks had legitimate alibi’s. Some just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Some even passed lie detector tests but were convicted anyway. Who knows how many others were not so lucky.

Just a few unlucky circumstances can land you in jail facing a first degree murder charge, and an aggressive DA and some ignored details can end your life with a DP.

Your friend may have run into all guilty clients, but like I said even one innocent person, dying unjustly, can not make the DP palpable. Just how does anyone appologize for mistakenly executing someone’s friend or loved one. No amount of money and no amount of sorry’s can ever fix that problem.

 

[wcknight]

At the very least, we should give the condemned the benefit of a doubt. A couple of years back, in Virginia, a condemned man appealed to Gov Warner. Warner at least offered to stop the execution IF the man could pass a lie detector test. The man failed, BUT he was given a chance to prove his claim of innocence.

Sure, lie detector test are not 100% accurate, but they can be close to 100% if given by a well qualified tester.

At the very least every DP case should be changed to life in prison IF the condemned can pass a lie detector test. This still leaves open the possibility of an innocent person, not staying calm enough to pass a test or maybe a guilty man being able to fool the test, BUT it may save an innocent life or two.

 

[Brad]

wcknight:

That is a problem in the penal system as well as the case where a prisoner who may kill a prison guard or another prisoner. The DP does put a final end to their killing spree. BUT these types of problems can be solved with more secure prisons and more careful handling of inmates.

This is exactly a point I would like to make. Pope John Paul II said the death penalty SHOULD never be necessary in modern societies today. But until our judicial and prison systems are cleaned up, many can make a strong and legitimate case for the death penalty. These systems must be cleaned up first if it the death penalty is ever to be abolished with success. There are too many serious criminals that are captured and then repeat their crimes.

wcknight:

However, the problem of wrongly executing an innocent person can never be solved. No change in the system and no amount of technology and no amount of compensation can ever bring someone back after they are executed.

This is true. Any wrongful conviction is a violation of justice. Spending life in prison for a crime not committed is no good either. Travesties of justice are a terrible thing and must be minimized to the largest extent. However, this is a non sequitor to the death penalty argument and needs to be solved separately.

We could say that because, in some vary rare cases, people are given the wrong instructions on medication and die as a result. This does not mean we should stop prescribing medicine.

 

[Brad]

wcknight:

Your friend may have run into all guilty clients, but like I said even one innocent person, dying unjustly, can not make the DP palpable. Just how does anyone appologize for mistakenly executing someone’s friend or loved one. No amount of money and no amount of sorry’s can ever fix that problem.

As I stated above, this is a non sequitor from whether the death penalty itself is just or not. Your argument is one from emotion and that is not a bad thing. However, the use of capital punishment requires more thinking from different angles. It is not an open and shut case so to speak.

A wrongful conviction implies faults in the process of conviction, not faults in the system of applying punishment to a particular conviction.

In war we have “friendly fire” that sometimes kills. That does not mean we should never shoot the gun. It means we need to shoot the gun properly and only when necessary.

 

[Andreas_Hofer]

I would like to think that if I were the 0.1% that fell through the cracks of a system I would be able to accept my fate for the general good. Just as in the friendly fire example, to say that one innocent person is too many is the same as advocating a virtual refusal to ever use force, even in self-defense, because there might be some freak accident that leads to the death of an innocent. The “one is too many” argument leads to certain conclusions that I’m not sure all its proponents are willing to follow to their logical ends.

 

[Andreas_Hofer]

BTW, traditional teaching on the death penalty has seen it as an opportunity for the criminal to make restitution for his crimes. So if Williams was truly penitent, his execution does not have to be seen as a total negative. Talk about time out of purgatory.

 

[Ray_Scheel]

wcknight:

When, we get rid of the .1% then we can talk about keeping the DP. Even one case is one too many. How would you like to be the one exception in a thousand ?

Point of clarification: the .1% left was the percentage of people that made it to trail where the defense lawyer wasn’t convinced of their guilt, not the percentage of people wrongly conviced. The chance of an innocent even getting to the point of having ot defend themselves in court for a felony is very small, the chances they will be convicted despite thir innocense a small percentage of that .1%, the chance of a capital sentence instead of life a percentage of that, and the chance they won’t get hte DP successfully challenged on appeal is a percentage of the small percentage of the small percentage of the .1%… We are talking about much, much, less than a 1:1000 chance of an DP sentence for an innocent in the USA.

 

[Ender]

LSK:

Does the denial of clemency to a man who witnesses to a conversion during his time in prison seem right or wrong?

Even if a true conversion occurred that would be no reason to grant clemency.

“Properly understood, justice constitutes, so to speak, the goal of forgiveness. In no passage of the Gospel message does forgiveness, or mercy as its source, mean indulgence towards evil, towards scandals, towards injury or insult. In any case, reparation for evil and scandal, compensation for injury, and satisfaction for insult are conditions for forgiveness.” (JPII)

Tookie Williams owed a debt to society because he murdered four people; his personal conversion does nothing to pay restitution for that debt.

“There is no contradiction between forgiveness and justice, for forgiveness neither eliminates nor lessens the need for reparation which justice requires” (JPII)

Ender

 

[pnewton]

wcknight:

BUT these types of problems can be solved with more secure prisons and more careful handling of inmates.

I have to agree with stanley123 on this. We are no where hear escape proof prisons or being able to keep officers and fellow inmates from being murdered behind prison walls.

I have been in the business for almost twenty years and there will always be a small minority that will be a danger to the lives of others until the day they leave this world. Just today I received news that one such person had stabbed another inmate behind bars. He has been in that facility less that a year.

 

[LSK]

pnewton:

I have to agree with stanley123 on this. We are no where hear escape proof prisons or being able to keep officers and fellow inmates from being murdered behind prison walls.

I have been in the business for almost twenty years and there will always be a small minority that will be a danger to the lives of others until the day they leave this world. Just today I received news that one such person had stabbed another inmate behind bars. He has been in that facility less that a year.

Yesterday on Catholic Radio I heard someone bring up another point. If a prisoner, convicted of a capitol crime, presents both a moral and physical danger to others - inside AND outside the prison in which they are incarcerated would this be considered an appropriate reason for application of the death penalty? The discussion was confined to political prisoners. However, pnewton could probably attest to the power and control someone like a Tookie Williams can have over gang members both inside and outside of a prison. I use as an example the fact that at Pelican Bay those prisoners who choose to leave the gang life are isolated immediately from the rest of the population and their immediate families (on the outside) are offered protection. Catholic teaching regarding the Death Penalty acknowledges that secular government can take the moral and physical threat a prisoner convicted of a capital crime poses to the community into consideration…this could, in theory, be easily applied to those who are members of violent gangs, correct?