May 12
CALIFORNIA:
Death Penalty Sought In Forestville Triple Murder Over Marijuana Deal
Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch said she will seek the death
penalty for Mark Cappello, the alleged gunman in a triple homicide during a
marijuana deal in Forestville last year.
"It will be up to a jury of Sonoma County residents to determine whether the
death penalty is appropriate in this case involving the alleged execution of 3
unarmed individuals for the purpose of financial gain," Ravitch said in a news
release late this afternoon.
It's the 1st time the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office has sought the
death penalty since Robert Scully was sentenced to death row for the murder of
Sonoma County sheriff???s Deputy Frank Trejo in 1995.
Cappello, 47, of Central City, Colorado, is charged with the shooting murders
of Raleigh Butler, 26, a former Sebastopol resident, Todd Klarkowski, 42, of
Boulder, Colorado and Richard Lewin, 46, of Huntington, New York on Feb. 5,
2013.
Cappello's co-defendants Odin Dwyer, 39, of Denver, Colorado, and Odin's father
Francis Dwyer, 66, of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, also are charged with
the murders and being an accessory. The murder complaint alleges the killings
were for financial gain, were committed while lying in wait and involved
multiple victims.
Investigators believe Klarkowski, Lewin and Cappello traveled separately to
California to buy marijuana from Butler, and that Cappello recruited the Dwyers
to transport it to Colorado.
Cappello allegedly shot Klarkowski, Butler and Lewin in Butler's mother's
Forestville cabin while the victims were packaging the marijuana for transport.
Then Cappello and Odin Dwyer allegedly left the cabin with 69 pounds of
processed marijuana.
Cappello and the Dwyers then allegedly split the marijuana into thirds, but
Cappello then gave his share to the Dwyers and told them to give him $90,000
when they sold it, according to testimony at Cappello's preliminary hearing.
The Dwyers, who do not face the death penalty, waived their right to a
preliminary hearing. All 3 defendants are scheduled for a trial on May 23.
(source: CBS news)
*********************
Death penalty sought in Sonoma County triple killing
Sonoma County prosecutors said Monday that they are seeking the death penalty
against a man accused of a triple killing near Forestville tied to a marijuana
deal that went bad.
Mark Cappello, 47, was seeking money when he shot and killed Raleigh Butler,
26, of Sebastopol; Richard Lewin, 46, of Huntington, N.Y.; and Todd Klarkowski,
42, of Boulder, Colo. on Feb. 5, 2013, said District Attorney Jill Ravitch.
Cappello has been charged with murder and the special circumstances of murder
for financial gain, murder by lying in wait and alleging committing multiple
murders.
"I have decided that this case warrants seeking the ultimate penalty," Ravitch
said, adding that it would be up to a jury to decide whether Cappello, if
convicted, will die by lethal injection or instead be sent to prison for the
rest of his life with no chance of parole.
The victims intended to buy a large quantity of marijuana but were shot dead
instead in a home rented by Butler's mother, authorities said.
Cappello, of Central City, Colo., was arrested in Alabama nine days after the
slain men were found.
2 other defendants, Francis Dwyer, 66, and his son, Odin Leonard Dwyer, 39, are
also facing trial. The father and son were seen traveling with Cappello through
Wyoming, Nevada and into Napa County in the days before the victims were found,
authorities said.
Ravitch said this is the first time Sonoma County prosecutors have sought the
death penalty since the 1995 shotgun slaying of Deputy Frank Trejo. Robert
Scully Jr. was sentenced to death two years later and is still on death row.
(source: Associated Press)
**************************
Jury to decide if killer gets death in 2004 murders and robbery spree
A gang member convicted of killing 3 men during a string of robberies in 2004
has had a record of violent crime including pulling off 2 other armed heists,
fought with other inmates, had a prior weapons conviction and punched his
pregnant girlfriend during a fight, prosecutors said.
As they argued for the death penalty, deputy district attorneys Frank Santoro
and Tamar Tokat played surveillance video of a store robbery where a clerk
begged Leonardo Cisneros and an accomplice not to hurt them plus showed photos
of the slain victims Joseph Molina of Whittier and Dianqui Wu of San Gabriel.
They listed the number of times razors were found in Cisneros' cell while in
custody and also played a recording of his girlfriend, Mitzi's Oso, crying and
telling a friend that Cisneros hit her on the face.
Tokat told the jury they will also hear from relatives of the victims.
She said the jury heard about the last few minutes of Wu and Molina's life
during the trial.
The evidence will show that when Cisneros killed these innocent people, she
said it wasn't only their lives that were destroyed.
Monday was the start of the penalty phase for Cisneros who was convicted last
week of killing Wu and Molina during a slew of robberies across the San Gabriel
Valley and Whittier area in 2004.
The jury will now decide whether the 29-year-old Cisneros will get the death
penalty or life in prison.
There were 5 defendants in the case. All but Cisneros took plea deals.
In addition to 2 counts of 1st degree murder, Cisneros was also found guilty of
18 counts of robbery and 1 count of attempted robbery.
Jurors also found true the special circumstances of multiple murders, murders
during the course of robberies and personal use of a gun in the vast majority
of the crimes. The special circumstances make him eligible for the death
penalty.
The 1st fatality occurred Aug. 2, 2004 in a parking lot in the 1800 block of
South Del Mar Avenue in San Gabriel.
Dianqui Wu, 50, of Rowland Heights and his friend were accosted by 2 robbers
who were later identified as Cisneros and 36-year-old Jose Resendez.
Cisneros robbed Wu while Resendez robbed Wu's friend.
Wu ran. Cisneros chased him about 40 feet, pushed him to the ground and shot
him once in the torso, according to Jane Robison, spokeswoman for the District
Attorney's Office.
Cisneros took Wu's wallet and left.
4 months later, Cisneros killed again.
Whittier resident Joseph Molina was a Pasadena City College student who worked
at a Subway sandwich shop in Norwalk and Beverly boulevards in Whittier.
He was working at the shop on Dec. 4, 2004 when it was robbed.
Detectives said Cisneros fatally shot Molina when he didn't remove the money
from the cash register fast enough.
3 other defendants in the case, Resendez, 32-year-old Bernadette Corvera and
35-year-old Mitzie Oso, testified for the prosecution.
They will be sentenced June 2.
Resendez pleaded guilty to the 2nd-degree murder of Wu and is expected to be
sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. Corvera also faces 15 years to life
for pleading guilty to the 2nd-degree murder of Molina and robbery.
Oso pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the killings of Wu and Molina
and will get 8 years.
Sara Lopez, 30, was another defendant in the case. She pleaded guilty to being
an accessory after the fact in the murder of Wu and was sentenced on Jan. 8,
2010 to 3 years probation.
(source: San Gabriel Valley Tribune)
**********************
Good news: Effort to speed up California's death penalty delayed
Amid great fanfare this year, a prominent group of California politicos -
including former Gov. Pete Wilson and Gray Davis - threw their support behind a
fall 2014 ballot initiative that would have amended the state Constitution to
speed up executions. Organizers announced late last week, though, that they
were pushing the effort back to the 2016 election to give themselves more time
to raise money and collect signatures - which is political shorthand for the
effort failed to gain enough support..
"As a society, if we think killing is wrong, we should not sanction the act by
our government."
They should drop it altogether. As I've written before, the death penalty does
not belong in a civilized society. Convicted killers should be separated from
the rest of us to live out their lives in whatever minimal conditions pass
constitutional muster. But as a society, if we think killing is wrong, we
should not sanction the act by our government. That is nothing more than giving
in to the impulse for revenge, not justice. We should join the bulk of the
industrialized world and scrap the barbaric practice.
The proposed ballot measure, though, sought to speed up that process. Among
other things, it would have amended the state Constitution to put a 5-year cap
on the appeals process, limited the number of petitions that could be filed,
expanded the pool of available lawyers to handle death penalty cases (that is a
good idea) but also removed regulatory controls over how the state devises its
lethal-injection protocol. That last bit was a bad idea, but it provides an
opportunity to look at the status of California's efforts to reform its death
penalty protocol.
It is nowhere.
In July, Gov. Jerry Brown announced that he would no longer appeal a 2010 court
ruling that said the state had failed to follow proper procedures in devising a
new 3-drug lethal-injection protocol aimed at addressing an earlier court
ruling. That decision found the execution method left open the possibility of
inhumane suffering by the condemned, and thus was a potential violation of the
constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Jeffrey Callison, spokesman
for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said recently that
it was still devising a single-drug protocol but that there was no time line
for completing the process.
If the state is going to continue down this road, it should at least look to
the recent examples out of Oklahoma and Ohio, and the legal fights there as
well as in Missouri and Texas, as it figures out what to do. It should ensure
that the process is transparent, from the selection of the drug to be used to
the place where it is manufactured. The condemned have a due process right to
know whether they have an argument that the execution drug could violate the
cruel and unusual punishment protection.
But taking a step back, and as our colleague Maura Dolan reported last year,
the reality is that it will probably be years before the state can devise new
regulations, have them vetted by the courts, survive inevitable legal
challenges and then procure the new drug in an environment in which
pharmaceutical companies decline to provide the drugs to prisons that will use
them for executions. Ultimately, the state may have to get into the drug-making
business just to ensure a supply is available.
The best solution? Just ban the practice. We came close two years ago when a
ballot initiative to abolish executions failed with 48% of the vote; a new run
at it might do better were it to come up again, especially given the botched
executions this year in Ohio and Oklahoma. California should join the other 18
states that have abolished the death penalty and instead devise a more
pragmatic, cheaper and morally defensible way to deal with those convicted of
murder. The killers don't belong in society; they shouldn't be coddled; but
they also shouldn't be killed by their government.
(source: Opinion, Scott Martelle; Los Angeles Times)
OREGON:
Penalty phase in Taylor murder trial starts Tuesday
The same jury that last week convicted David Ray Taylor of murdering a
22-year-old Eugene man will return to Lane County Circuit Court Tuesday to hear
a 2nd round of evidence in the case.
This time, the 7-woman, 5-man panel will be asked to decide if Taylor should be
sentenced to death for the brutal killing of Celestino "Tino" Gutierrez Jr. in
August 2012.
Jurors could learn much about Taylor during the penalty phase of his trial.
Prosecutors are sure to remind them that Taylor spent 27 years in prison for
murdering a Eugene gas station attendant in 1977, and will likely share details
of other crimes and misdeeds involving the 58-year-old Eugene man.
Taylor's attorneys, meanwhile, have subpoenaed 2 convicted murderers and a
serial rapist - all of whom served prison time with Taylor - to testify on his
behalf.
The jury also may hear emotional testimony about Gutierrez from members of his
family, who attended every day of the first phase of Taylor???s trial.
"In these types of cases, pretty much everything can come in, including the
kitchen sink," longtime public defender Ken Hadley of Baker City said Monday,
of prosecutors' ability to present a wide range of evidence to a jury in a
death penalty case.
Hadley, who retired in January, represented Eugene resident Angela McAnulty in
her 2011 capital murder trial. A jury in that case decided that McAnulty should
pay the ultimate penalty for the torture killing of her 15-year-old daughter,
Jeannette Maples.
McAnulty, 45, is the only woman on death row in Oregon. Hers was the most
recent Lane County case in which a jury considered sentencing a murderer to
death.
If given the death penalty, Taylor would join McAnulty and 34 male inmates on
Oregon's death row.
The details of Gutierrez's murder are gruesome. Prosecutors said Taylor
enlisted 2 younger accomplices to lure Gutierrez to his home, where Taylor and
one of the other suspects killed the victim and dismembered his body.
Gutierrez's car was used hours later as a getaway vehicle in a bank robbery
that Taylor had planned.
Jurors already know about those crimes. But they haven't heard much about
Taylor's criminal record, other than the fact that he went to prison in 1977
for the shotgun slaying of Connie Roland, a 21-year-old gas station attendant
whose body was found in the same forested area southwest of Eugene where
authorities dug up Gutierrez's buried remains.
The state parole board ordered Taylor's release from prison in 2004, and he was
discharged from post-prison supervision in 2007.
In 2009, Taylor went back to jail after being convicted of strangling and
assaulting a Madras woman. He dodged a return to prison one year later, when a
Deschutes County judge acquitted him of raping a 72-year-old woman who was a
former cellmate's grandmother. Taylor admitted having sex with the woman, who
had moderate dementia and had trouble remembering what had happened during the
encounter, according to police reports.
It's not unusual for prosecutors in death penalty cases to present evidence
about suspicious incidents that don't result in criminal convictions, Hadley
said.
After prosecutors rest their case against Taylor, his attorneys are expected to
counter with evidence that attempts to put their client in a more favorable
light.
A judge can't sentence a murderer to death unless all 12 jurors agree that's
the appropriate punishment. If just one panelist decides that Taylor should not
receive the death penalty, Judge Charles Zennache will either sentence him to
life in prison without parole, or impose a lifetime sentence that allows him to
apply for parole after 30 years.
"The defense's job is to try and save him, to get him the least (serious)
penalty possible," Hadley said. "If you can get (a) true life (sentence),
that's a victory."
It's unclear if Taylor intends to give his side of the story to the jury.
Hadley, who handled several capital murder cases during his career, said
defendants "almost always" provide unsworn statements to juries in capital
cases. Such statements are not subject to a prosecutor's cross-examination.
Taylor's attorneys have subpoenaed 3 convicted felons to testify on his behalf.
All 3 served time with Taylor in the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem, and
remain behind bars.
While prosecutors may try to convince the jury that Taylor is too dangerous to
be anywhere other than on death row, it's possible that the 3 prisoners -
murderers Dwain Lee Little and David Allen Peel, and rapist Ronald Ray Weaver -
will testify regarding Taylor's interactions with other inmates during his
previous stint in state prison.
After his release from prison in 2004, Taylor worked as a self-employed
silversmith and was closely involved with Phoenix Rising Transitions, a
Portland nonprofit group that helps inmates adjust to living outside prison.
The jury will consider 3 questions before deciding whether Taylor should be
sentenced to death: did Taylor deliberately killed Gutierrez; were his actions
unreasonable in response to any provocation; and does Taylor present a
continuing threat to society.
No prisoner has been executed in Oregon since 1997, and it could be years
before another murderer dies by lethal injection. Gov. John Kitzhaber has said
that he would not allow any executions during his time in office. Kitzhaber is
currently running for a 4th 4-year term.
(source: The Register-Guard)
USA:
How to make death penalty less unfair
Capital punishment is unjust, immoral and prone to error, as most of the
world's developed nations have figured out. But the United States, unwilling to
put aside a desire for revenge, continues to kill its own citizens; 32 states
and the federal government still impose the death penalty. At the very least,
they ought to perform that barbaric task as fairly and humanely as possible.
A report released Wednesday by the Constitution Project, a bipartisan think
tank that includes both death penalty abolitionists and death penalty
supporters, calls for a complete overhaul of the process, from arrest to
execution.
Given the human factor in capital punishment - prosecutors, witnesses, judges,
jurors - this page does not believe the system can ever be "fixed." It should
be abolished. But there are changes that can reduce errors, misapplication and
misconduct. Many of the recommendations of the Constitution Project would move
the system in a positive direction, so policymakers would be wise to read the
report closely.
The 208-page report offers 39 proposals - most of them reasonable, some crucial
- including dropping the widely used three-drug execution cocktail (California
has already scrapped it under the weight of a legal challenge) in favor of the
single-shot method. Administering a single overdose of a barbiturate, according
to the report, would decrease problems associated with the administration of
drugs as well as the risks associated with the use of paralyzing and painful
chemical agents. Presumably, that would lead to fewer torturous executions such
as the one that occurred earlier this year in Oklahoma, in which the condemned
man said after the 1st injection that "I feel my whole body burning," and in
Ohio, where it took a convicted murderer 25 minutes to die.
A recent study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
concluded that at least 4 percent of death row inmates are likely to have been
wrongfully convicted.
The report says - as this page has - that there should be complete transparency
in how the drugs are obtained, which has become an issue in Oklahoma, Missouri
and Texas. Laws in those states bar disclosure of the sources of the drugs,
without which condemned prisoners can't determine whether their execution would
violate the U.S. Constitution's protection against cruel and unusual
punishment.
The report also calls for changes in the legal process, including allowing the
introduction of exculpatory evidence at the appellate court level, even if the
evidence was not part of the original trial. That is an issue of basic
fairness. And the report suggests that jurisdictions - it could be the state or
the county - should conduct a review of death penalty cases in which the
convicted were later exonerated in order to identify systemic problems and to
devise mechanisms to avoid them in the future.
Coerced confessions are a source of continuing problems. It makes sense to
require, as the report recommends, that all interviews with murder suspects in
custody be recorded when practical, and that a jury be allowed to consider the
lack of a taped interview in weighing the veracity of an alleged confession.
Similarly, the independence of laboratory analysis of evidence would be
enhanced if the federal government were to establish national standards and if
crime labs were not affiliated with law enforcement departments. According to
the report, forensic scientists who work for police agencies and prosecutors'
offices are "subject to a general risk of bias."
The decision to seek the death penalty now lies, in most jurisdictions, solely
in the hands of the prosecutor. A "charging review committee" within the
prosecutor's office to approve those decisions could help reduce that
objectionable concentration of power in a single individual and perhaps reduce
the over-application of capital punishment to people of color (states should
also collect and analyze data to detect race-connected patterns). We would
suggest that the committee be created at the state level; county district
attorneys within the same state can have different standards for seeking the
death penalty, which means a capital crime can unfairly hinge on where in a
state it occurs.
Those who are interested in justice, whether they are supporters of the death
penalty or opponents, owe it to their fellow citizens to embrace the kinds of
systemic changes the Constitution Project advocates. A recent study published
by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that at least
4 % of death row inmates are likely to have been wrongfully convicted. While
that represents a relatively small number of people, it amounts to a lot of
innocent blood if they are executed. Any steps to lessen that miscarriage of
justice would be welcome, particularly by the innocent facing death at the
command of their own government.
(source: Los Angeles Times)
***************************
If It Weren't for Jesus, I Might be Pro-Death Too
Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler wrote a piece this week defending the
death penalty. In his 1200 word argument for why Christians should support the
death penalty, he does not mention Jesus a single time.
Digging deeper, as you read the official pro-death penalty statement of the
Southern Baptists, there is not a single reference to Jesus or the Gospels.
There are plenty of other problems with the scriptural maneuvering used to
justify the contemporary practice of the death penalty with a few verses from
the Bible, in the same way that a few verses were misused to justify slavery.
For starters the Biblical death penalty was required not just for murderers,
but also for folks that committed adultery, disrespected their parents,
collected too much interest, had premarital sex, and disobeyed the Sabbath. But
I want to stick with the nagging problem of Jesus, the greatest obstacle for
pro-death penalty Christians.
In a recent Barna Poll, less than 5% of Americans think Jesus would support
capital punishment, and less than a quarter of young Christians support it.
Nonetheless some Christians find ways to sidestep Jesus, the lens through which
all of us who claim to be Christians should interpret the Bible and the world
around us.
Gandhi was once asked if he was a Christian and he responded by saying, "I love
Jesus, I just wish the Christians took him seriously."
Consistently, Jesus said things like "I did not come for the healthy but for
the sick, not for the righteous but for the sinners"... "blessed are the
merciful for they will be shown mercy"... "inasmuch as you forgive you will be
forgiven"... "judge not lest you be judged" ... "you've heard it said 'an eye
for an eye' but I tell you there is another way."
Setting aside other compelling arguments against the death such as the fact
that the determining factor for execution is often not guilt but economics and
race, and the fact that nearly all executions come from 2% of US counties, and
that 144 folks have been exonerated with recent studies showing 1 in 25 folks
sentenced to death are likely innocent... all that aside, I want to focus on
Jesus.
There is an incident in the Gospels where Jesus is asked about the death
penalty. Here's the scene. A woman has been humiliated and dragged before the
town, ready to be killed. Her execution was legal; her crime was a capital one.
But just because it's legal, doesn't make it right.
Jesus interrupts the scene -- with grace.
He tells all the men who are ready to kill the woman, "Let the one who is
without sin cast the first stone." And of course he reminds us all that if we
have looked at someone with lust in our eyes we are adulterers. If we have
called our neighbor a fool we are a murderer. You can hear the stones start to
drop, as the men walk away.
The only one who is left with any right to throw a stone is Jesus -- and he has
absolutely no inclination to do so. We can see that the closer we are to God
the less we want to throw stones at other people.
It is this dual conviction that no one is above reproach and that no one is
beyond redemption that lies at the heart of our faith. Undoubtedly it's why the
early Christians were characterized by non-violence, even in the face of brutal
evil, torture and execution.
For hundreds of years, Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius, and other early
Christians explicitly forbid other Christians from participating in or
supporting capital punishment. Other writings (such as the Apostolic Tradition)
go so far as to prohibit the baptism of Christians who participate in the
apparatus of killing. It was inconceivable to worship Jesus, a forgiving victim
of the death penalty who died with grace on his lips, and call for the
execution of others. Of all people, we who follow the executed and risen Christ
should be people who are consistently pro-life, pro-grace and anti-death.
Here's when I realized the death penalty was a spiritual issue, not just a
political one... I was talking to a man on death row, and he told me his story.
He confessed to having done something terrible, which he will regret for the
rest of his life. But then it got even more interesting. He told me the story
of his trial. During the course of his sentencing, the victim's family argued
that his life should be spared, that he should not be sentenced to death. "They
were Christians... so they talked a lot about mercy," he told me
matter-of-factly, as if every Christian was against the death penalty. He went
on, "They believed that Jesus came not for the healthy but for the sick. And
they argued that God may not be done with me yet. So I was spared the death
penalty because of the victim's family." Finally he said, "I wasn't a Christian
then. But you better believe that I am one now."
Grace shines bright in the face of evil. But grace can be a scandalous thing,
as we can see Jesus forgiving those who kill him - and as we see the stunning
stories of murder victim's families who stand against execution, many of whom
are fueled by their faith.
We dare not forget the story - of a God who so loved the world that Jesus was
sent, not to condemn the world but to save it. We must not forget that much of
the Bible was written by murderers who were given a second chance. Moses.
David. Paul.
The Bible would be much shorter without grace. And our churches would be empty
if we killed everyone who was deserving of death.
We cannot ignore Jesus as we discuss the death penalty. As was the case with
slavery, many Christians misused Scripture to justify injustice and ended up on
the wrong side of history. It is my hope that Southern Baptists will reconsider
their statement on capital punishment in light of Jesus, and not have to
apologize 100 years from now for being on the wrong side of history.
(source: Shane Claiborne; Activist and bestselling author, 'The Irresistible
Revolution'----Huffington Post)
*****************************
There is no defense for the death penalty in the U.S.
Opponents of the death penalty have to understand that supporters of the death
penalty will not be moved by the botched execution of Clayton D. Lockett in
Oklahoma.
They don't care.
Given their perspective, their apathy is understandable. He was a horrible
person who kidnapped a woman and then buried her alive.
What is not understandable is their support for the death penalty more broadly.
The distinction is between philosophical support of the death penalty, and its
practical application. Because here is the difference: Philosophical support
for the death penalty is defensible and is rooted in a persons' sense of
justice, which is subjective. The available data on who is more likely to
receive the death penalty and how it has been misapplied is not subjective.
John Stuart Mill, a famous philosopher of the 19th century, delivered a "Speech
in Favour of Capital Punishment" in 1868. In the speech, Mill said a man who
takes another man's life forfeits his own. A majority of Americans believe the
way Mill did, 60 % to 35 %, according to a poll conducted by Gallup in 2013.
This high rate of support is strange. It's one thing when it's a person whose
family member was killed. The inner turmoil is understandable then. But most
people who support the death penalty haven't been affected by a capital crime,
and so their support for the death penalty comes across as entirely
voyeuristic.
In the 1988 presidential election, Former Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts
was asked whether or not he would support the death penalty for a man who raped
and killed his wife. An unanswerable question, and it isn't unanswerable
because Dukakis couldn't respond, but because of how ridiculous it is.
If he says yes, then he appeases the crowd with their pitchforks. More to the
point, he succumbs to a definition of justice that is based on our individual
circumstances and inner turmoil rather than a justice system, which can be
applied to society fairly and rationally.
If he says no, well, then he comes off as cowardly, as if he were to be the man
to lower the ax in any case.
Given the state of our prison system, you would think the voyeurs would prefer
a sentence term where the prisoner will have to contemplate their crimes until
death. Which until then, they'll likely be underfed, held in solitary
confinement until they lose they're already lost minds, or be subjected to
molestation by either their wards or fellow inmates. (Statistics show prisoners
are more likely to be sexually abused than those outside of the criminal
justice system).
But the point of our justice system isn't - or at least shouldn't be - how we
can inflict the cruelest punishment. Prison is used to sequester harmful
individuals away from what otherwise is a peaceful society.
The death penalty's objective is curious, and more primal. There isn't any data
to show that it deters crime. In fact, new data show that the severity of
punishment for certain crimes actually doesn't matter. No criminal has
decidedly committed statutory rape, instead of a violent sexual assault because
the former carries with it a lighter sentence. What matters is the certainty of
punishment for the crime, not the severity of the punishment.
For example, Hawaii discovered that following the failure of drug tests by
those on probation, an immediate and automatic 2-day stint in jail sharply
reduced recidivism.
Public policy has to have an objective, and the death penalty - as it is
applied by the state - is public policy. What is then the objective of the
death penalty in its practical application?
It is, as they say, a crowd pleaser. Which is exactly why Michael Dukakis would
have been better off politically had he said yes, when he was asked whether or
not he would sentence a man who raped and murdered his wife to death.
Philosophically, support for the death penalty is debatable. But support for
the death penalty's practical use is sadistic. It is a certainty that we have
executed innocent men and women in the past, and there is substantial evidence
that there are innocent men and women on death row today.
Our justice system, which is certainly superior to that of others, is still
imperfect. In this imperfect system, it defies rationality to think that
systematically we would apply a punishment with such finality, where there
isn't the possibility of correction.
States should decide whether or not they intend to use the death penalty
without federal intervention, but the botched execution of Clayton D. Lockett
only shows how indefensible the use of the death penalty is in America.
(source: Opinion, The Eastern Echo)
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