Questions About an Execution

[groovedaddy]

People should have no illusions about the brutal injustice of the death penalty after all of the exonerations in recent years from DNA evidence, but the case of Cameron Todd Willingham is still shocking.

Mr. Willingham was executed for setting a fire that killed his 2-year-old daughter and 1-year-old twins, but a fire expert hired by the State of Texas has issued a report casting enormous doubt on whether the fire was arson at all. The Willingham investigation, which is continuing, is further evidence that the criminal justice system is far too flawed to justify imposing a death penalty.

After the fire, investigators decided, based in large part on burn patterns on the house’s floors, that it was intentionally set. Prosecutors charged Mr. Willingham, who escaped from the burning home, with capital murder. Mr. Willingham protested his innocence until the day the state killed him by lethal injection in 2004.

The following year, Texas created the Forensic Science Commission to investigate charges of scientific mistakes or misconduct, and the panel began looking into the Willingham case. It commissioned Craig Beyler, a nationally recognized fire expert, to examine evidence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/opinion/31mon2.html?th&emc=th

[MineralMan]

1. Cases like this are why I categorically oppose capital punishment.

Too much risk, and an executed man cannot be released if later found to be not guilty of the crime.

[imdjh]

2. I don't even bother with the moral aspects. DP is not practical or logical.

It costs more to execute than it does to imprison.

You cannot undo it in the case of an error.

A jury is less likely to convict a criminal if the DP is the presumed penalty because jurors don't want to be responsible for a death.

The last one suggests that when a jury actually does convict someone in a DP case, the chances of there actually being reasonable doubt are slim. But I am pretty sure that I am not alone in my feeling that should I be a juror in a DP case, and should the prosecution be stupid enough to "go for it" in an all or nothing gamble, I am only going to convict if I think the criminal is likely to do it again.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. 'Reasonable doubt' can only be a factor if you assume that most

people are reasonable - and the evidence is that many, if not most, people are NOT reasonable and are therefore unable to determine if there is a 'reasonable doubt'.

[imdjh]

4. Overall, I have a great deal of confidence in the legal system.

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. I have a few major problems with it.

Too often it is not about who is guilty or innocent, but who can afford the better lawyer.

Plea bargaining encourages the prosecutor to throw up a vast multitude of charges against a defendant, with the ultimate intent of dismissing most of them once the defendant is terrified into confessing to one of them, whether he is guilty or not (remember the Central Park jogger case, where the kids all confessed to something they did not do, in order to avoid extraordinarily harsh penalties they were told would be the result of conviction by jury on all charges?). This also affects the guilty parties to plea-bargaining - when somebody up for attempted murder bargains down to 2nd degree battery, he moves WAY up on the list when they start considering who gets early release due to overcrowding, so people who have no business being on the street wind up making room for drug convictions that have mandatory minimums. Justice is NOT served.

And that's without even touching the problems with the DP.

[imdjh]

6. Sort through this with me: plea bargaining is good, but being done wrong.

Obviously the state has an interest in making deals, but it's a perversion for that interest to be in essentially extorting what might be an innocent person into pleading guilty.

So I am thinking that for that reason and the conflict of interest (person interest v justice served) of the prosecutor, that it should not be the prosecutor making the plea bargain. A judge ought to review cases which are about to come to trial, and plea bargains should only be offered in cases where the review judge has no question about the guilt of the defendant.

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. I don't believe that plea bargaining is good in the first place.

You posit the judge could make the bargain - but the judge can only make a bargain when he has something to judge, i.e., after a trial, and that is what the plea bargain is meant to avoid. The entire purpose of a plea bargain is to get a conviction without going into court.

If plea bargaining is being used to keep the justice system from overloading, perhaps the answer might be more judges, and more courtrooms.

A great many people serving life w/o parole are there because they were assured (by the DA's office, of course) that a jury would convict them and give them the DP - but if they cop a plea then the DP would be taken off the table. Many of those people would, had they gone to trial, be serving much lesser sentences for 2nd degree murder or manslaughter, but were terrified into pleading guilty by the threat of the DP. Does that serve the best interests of the state OR the defendant?

Prosecutors love plea bargaining because it makes their jobs easier - it is simpler to terrify some undereducated kid than it is to do the work of trying a case.

IMO, if your case is too weak to put in front of a jury, don't file it. It it is strong enough to get a conviction on the heaviest possible charge, file for that heaviest possible charge. If it is somewhere in between, THEN, MAYBE you can talk about plea bargaining. But it should be a LAST resort, not the preferred mode.

We are guaranteed a trial by jury by the constitution. Plea-bargaining is a way around that constitutional guarantee, and results in terrorism by the DA's office. That's not justice.