Patterico's Pontifications

11/23/2005

An Unscientific Survey

Filed under: Crime,General — Patterico @ 12:01 am



A follow-up to my post yesterday on the death penalty:

Let me know if there are any of you out there who:

1) support the death penalty;

2) believe that it has not been proven that we have wrongfully executed someone in the modern era (after the reinstatement of the death penalty in the 1970s); but

3) believe that, if it were conclusively shown that we had executed a completely innocent person in the modern era, such a revelation might undermine either a) your support or b) society’s support for the death penalty.

Just curious.

42 Responses to “An Unscientific Survey”

  1. Well I qualify for (1) and (2). I would not qualify for (3a) but as far as (3b) goes, I think elements of society would clearly dislike knowing someone had been wrongly executed. This would result in an erosion of support for the death penalty on its own and more so once the left got done beating us over the head with it.

    On the other hand, modern DNA testing and every other forensic improvement makes it less and less likely we will get it wrong in the future. So for me even if technological advances show we blew it in the past, we are less likely to get it wrong in the future, and I will still support it.

    As to some guy changing his story after an execution, I am not convinced. It is a little late for an attack of conscience but the book deal and leftwing icon status are still available.

    CAL

    CAL (fc6837)

  2. 1) I very strongly support capital punishment as the standard punishment for first-degree murder.

    2) Particular instances of wrongful execution have not—to my mind—been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

    3) Even if such instances could be proven beyond any doubt, my support of the death penalty would not be lessened at all; society’s probably would, which is a pity.

    clark smith (c0e604)

  3. 1) No. I do not think our system of justice is sufficiently foolproof to allow it to be in the business of deciding who should live and die.

    Nor do I think a conservative view permits execution, as conservative are inherently distrustful of government, which cannot even competently run a social security office, or patrol a border.

    Nor does it accomplish anything for the victims, who sit around waiting for an execution for a decade only to find out it doesn’t make them feel any better anyway.

    Nor is it a real deterrent. I seriously doubt anyone sits around thinking about the possibility of a death penalty before they commit a capital crime.

    The death penalty is more about vengeance than it is about justice. Just read all the “kill them all” type the responses in the previous thread.

    2) No. And the Houston case is far from proof of that. The local coverage is much more detailed than what was posted yesterday and there’s more to the story.

    3) Yes. Since I already think the death penalty is dubious it wouldn’t affect my point of view, but evidence that we had executed an innocent person would certainly undermine the broader public’s support for the death penalty, I think.

    Dwilkers (a1687a)

  4. I’m glad to see some moderation on this issue from you Patterico and Dwilkers.

    The only time I believe that I could support the death penalty is when monsters like The Iceman are caught. He was cruel enough to tie people up and let them be eaten alive by rats. He also video recorded it. It seems like mass murderers like him escape the death penalty somehow – I’d like to know more about why that happens.

    I believe in 3 a and b as well.

    Tillman (1cf529)

  5. 1) Support

    2) Not sure, but I think it is an important consideration. If you support the death penalty that means you must be sure about the conviction 100 % therefore, do not go on about how they are gaming the system by filing appeal after appeal. I would rather spend 100 million dollars to make sure that they are guilty if it takes 30 years.

    3) Yes it does because we aren’t making sure of compentent defense all of the time.

    Wayne (b0dfd3)

  6. Here is an excerpt from the Stanford Law Review and contained in the 5/2/94 issue of National Review.

    “Of the roughly 52,000 state prison inmates serving time for murder in 1984, an estimated 810 had previously been convicted of murder and had killed 821 persons following those convictions. Executing each of these inmates…..would have saved 821 lives….”

    One could conclude that if all 810 murderers had been executed and say 10 were innocent more than 800 lives would have been saved.

    rab (c79661)

  7. Check this New York Times story out.

    It doesn’t really address the issue the way you phrased it, but it makes me wonder about all the efforts that have been put in trying to free innocent convicts. We tend to forget in our effort to pursue perfect criminal justice that a lot of these guys, even if innocent of the particular crime, are total scum.

    And that assumes we’re talking about innocence instead of trial error, which is the more common basis for habeas petitions.

    As for your actual question here, I do think it would tend to undermine society’s support for capital punishment, partly because the coverage in the media would parallel the coverage of military casualties in Iraq. I would be angry about the particular case, but it wouldn’t make me doubt the merits of the punishment in general.

    Attila (Pillage Idiot) (471b7c)

  8. I support the existence of the death penalty in the US justice system.

    I believe that, per the Dec. of Ind., that all begin with the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” However, I believe that one can LOSE those rights: forfeit them. Thus, if one can “lose” the right to liberty (i.e., imprisonment) than one can “lose” the right to life (i.e., death penalty).

    Society should have the right to defend itself. Thus, just as one is generally absolved if using lethal force in self-defense, so should society (which is all of us humans) be able to exercise similar rights. Thus, just as one should not use lethal force simply in defense of property, so should society use proportionate force in its own defense, employing forfeiture of liberty for crimes against property. Alternatively, fines or such (which I guess could be analagous to reductions in the perpetrators’ ability to pursue own happiness) may be appropriate measures in property cases.

    Nontheless, crimes of great violence against society (and these could well include some non-homicide crimes, kidnapping might be one, forcible rape might be another, some child crimes could be others) should allow for lethal self-defense.

    On executing a not-guilty person, I would be open to a high standard in the sentencing phase. In fact, I would be open to a sentence change to death with later evidence, not just to easing. Imprisonment w/o parole could then become death, later. After all, if one is in prison w/o parole, how can society protect that person’s guards or other inmates who do not have parole? What deterrent is there for such a prisoner? What can society do if such a one kills an innocent guard? Or another inmate who maybe WAS innocent? Must all such be in continuous solitary confinement for the rest of their lives?

    jim (6482d8)

  9. Patterico:

    The death penalty in the body politic serves exactly the same function as the immune system in the human body. You must have it, the society will die if it’s missing, and while there are problems caused if it targets overzealously, they are far rarer than if it fails to target at all.

    SDN (23debd)

  10. One could conclude that if all 810 murderers had been executed and say 10 were innocent more than 800 lives would have been saved.

    Wow! Re-read that statement. I’d potentially concede that conclusion, and even the 10 “innocent” hypothetical dead people may have been low-life scum (or whatever), but where do you draw the line with “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”? Just questioning…

    I’m in favor of the death penalty (though the blogging on this the past couple of days is making me reassess things personally — good supporting evidence that Patterico needs that Nobel Peace Prize). Not as a deterrent (get real – anyone who’s wacko enough to kill someone is not going to be deterred by this potential consequence, especially if there’s just as much potential to either get away with it or go [back] to prison instead), but as a punishment for heinous crimes.

    Do I believe that it’s not been proven that someone has been wrongfully executed since the 1970’s? With my limited knowledge, I honestly don’t know for certain one way or the other. I’d think it’s a rather safe bet that someone has been wrongfully executed, though.

    Does that belief undermine my support for the death penalty? No. Would such proof undermine society’s support for the death penalty? Given the fact that people seem to base their convictions on a headline or two, of course. It depends upon how much press the issue gets. I don’t think people even think about issues like this until it’s shoved in their faces — when some media outlet decides that it’s something they should run with.

    Laudio (06d15b)

  11. I wish I could edit my post. Commenting at patterico.com using poor grammar (particularly in that last paragraph — “issues like this…” “until it’s…”) is akin to asking someone to bloody your nose. So consider my nose self-bloodied.

    Laudio (06d15b)

  12. 1. Support, tentatively. I have zero objection to executing those who deserve it. My problem isn’t innocence, it’s efficiency; Death Penalty litigation is ineffective (few on Death Row die from the needle) and costly.

    2. I don’t think this has been shown.

    3. Not mine. I expect *some* error; one would not sway me. Ten would sway me a lot. Society’s? Probably.

    As to those who note that the wrongfully convicted are usually scumbags, this is certainly true. It’s also a view which alarms me – people go down for the crimes they did, not for being scumbags. If the dude ain’t good for it, he shouldn’t go down.

    Also, the death penalty *isn’t* a necessary cog in the criminal justice system. Again, I support it – I think the gains are worth the losses, and these folks have forfeited their right to live. But you can efficiently administrate justice without it. It’s a matter of degree.

    –JRM

    JRM (de6363)

  13. I continue to use the automobile even though every year thousands of innocent people will die in accidents through no fault of their own. The good outweighs the bad. Every so often someone commits a crime so outrageous, with such certainty of guilt, that the victims cry out from the grave for justice.

    dchamil (04ded7)

  14. 1. Support.
    2. No.
    3a). Hell no.
    3b). Slightly. I think most death penalty supporters already take into account that no system is 100% failsafe, so “just one life” in an isolated case here and there won’t do it. A pattern of wrongful executions – or anything the media could make look like a pattern – might.

    Xrlq (6c76c4)

  15. 2 should read yes, as in, “Yes, it has not been proven.” Nice double negative.

    Xrlq (6c76c4)

  16. 1. I support the death penalty.

    2. While I don’t know of any proven cases of an “innocent” being put to death, sheer probability would favor it. Even so, probabilities also favor the person executed being a career criminal, with more than a small chance that they have killed before. There are quite large numbers of murders not solved and even many never discovered. So am I saying that a life of minor crime justifies the death penalty? No, but it should, and probably does, lower the burden of proof.

    3a. From the above it should be clear that a proven case would not change my view.

    3b. Good examples must be hard to find, or the anti-execution lobby and the MSM would have screamed their heads off. If they find one, perhaps there would be a small shift in public opinion, possibly mostly due to the biased way it would likely be presented to them. Thoughtful people are likely to have already crossed this bridge. Of the rest, a few of the ones who could bring themselves to confront this might move towards opposition. Large numbers would simply ignore it because it would make their heads hurt.

    Gary S (081b8e)

  17. 1. Yes, you deliberately take a life, you forfeit your own. Exceptions allowed for extenuating circumstances as determined by Judge and Jury.

    2. I know of no specific instance where an innocent has been executed, but it is possible. No system is completely foolproof. However, the number of checks and appeals in a death penalty case make it highly unlikely, but not impossible, to execute wrongly.

    3a. No, it would not change my overall support for a death penalty.
    3b. Yes, to some extent. How much would depend on the details of the specific case.

    Black Jack (ee9fe2)

  18. SDN said:

    The death penalty in the body politic serves exactly the same function as the immune system in the human body. You must have it, the society will die if it’s missing, and while there are problems caused if it targets overzealously, they are far rarer than if it fails to target at all.

    If I have read this correctly, every society which does not have the death penalty will die.

    I am opposed to capital punishment in all instances, although that isn’t precisely how our esteemed host framed the question.

    Dana R. Pico (3e4784)

  19. Laudio-

    I rationalize the potential execution of an innocent person as follows:

    During wartime our nation has sent to their death hundreds of thousands of men and women to protect and preserve our liberty.

    If an innocent is executed it was in an effort to preserve law and order, a component of liberty.

    I grieve for both.

    rab (c79661)

  20. 1. I support the death penalty in cases of first degree murder.

    2. To my knowledge it has not been proven that an innocent person has been executed under the modern death penalty. However, given the fallibility of the judges, jurrors, prosecutors, defense counsel, and police I think it is likely that innocent people have been executed.

    3. If it were proven conclusively that an innocent person was executed it would not change my mind about the death penalty unless it were also proven that there were more than isolated instances of innocent people being sentenced to death.

    Stu707 (0b2aa6)

  21. I support the death penalty for murder and would approve of its extention to other crimes. I would be disturbed by the execution of anyone who is later proven to be innocent but then I’m disturbed when people spend 20 years in prison and are then proven to be innocent of the crime.

    Something to think about; if the death penalty were abolised for all crimes and replaced with life without the possiblity of parole, would as many appeals be filed and as many innocent be freed or would they be forgotten, effectively executed by society but tortured for many decades first?

    Tob

    toby928 (99ba2b)

  22. I generally support the death penalty but with reservations similar to Pat’s. The problem is that in our current legal system those with sufficient resources can often buy “reasonable doubt” and those with few or no resources have to rely on public defenders who are often overworked and occasionally incompetent.

    Therefore, to eliminate any possibility for error, and I would submit that the possiblity is always present, I would be willing to accept Life Without the Possibility of Parole at hard labor as an alternative to the death penalty.

    DNA testing isn’t the final answer either. DNA testing only works where DNA can be found at the scene of the crime. It is often valuable in proving who didn’t commit a crime but I would submit that it is less useful than we might think in determining who did commit a particular crime.

    Harry Arthur (40c0a6)

  23. 1. Yes I support the death penalty but am leaning towards a change.

    Hell, we don’t end up executing many folks anyway (after many many years of appeals) so why not sentence to life in prison and be done with it?

    Flap

    Xrlq convince me otherwise.

    Flap (a9c192)

  24. #22 Harry

    Just a FYI:

    Murder defendant Dean Eric Dunlap was convicted of kidnapping and killing a 9-year-old girl who disappeared while walking to school in 1992. […]

    Sandra’s murder went unsolved until 1999, when investigators linked Dunlap’s DNA to the crime through a blood sample that he had provided three years before upon being paroled from a prison sentence for sexual assault.

    The jury will begin deliberating on Nov. 8 whether Dunlap deserves the death penalty.

    Darleen (f20213)

  25. a. I support the death penalty in theory.
    b. I think there are cases (including the most recent news story) where there is a possibility that the convicted crimminal was innocent.
    c. I have supported ending the death penalty for strictly economic reasons for years. The legal profession makes so much money from death penalty cases it is cheaper to keep them (the criminals, not the lawyers) in prison for life.

    Life in prison allows the innocent to eventually go free, even if this is exceedinly rare. This is difficult to deal with becasue my son is in law enforcement and how would we punish a “lifer” who killed while in prison? I think we should select four states and try eliminating the death penalty for 10 years. Collect the data on crime rates. Work out extradition treaties with Mexico so the killers that flee to Mexico could be sent back to those four states with no worries that they would be executed. After ten years, we could compare the pro/anti states and see what we see.

    tyree (b2fade)

  26. 1) I support the death penalty.
    – There needs to be a further penalty beyond ‘life’. Otherwise there is literally no increase in penalty from going from one murder to become a Beltway Sniper. Or pilot of a kamikaze 747 that somehow survives.
    – An extension of the above point gives something to plea bargain _from_.
    – It meets neither my definition of ‘cruel’ nor ‘unusual’.
    – More importantly, it doesn’t meet the standards of 1787 for cruel or unusual. Let alone both.
    – The civilian justice system impacts the military justice system.

    2) ‘Proven’ is a strong word. I’d have reasonable doubt given what I know in a small number of cases. But I have neither studied them from a Juror’s perspective, nor investigated them personally. I think it partially comes back to a lack of willingness to prosecute Perjury. That threat is useless against Garza, but the witness Moreno is another story. Is this posing for the press/pressure from the anti-capital crimes folk? Or is this something he’ll admit under oath?

    3a) It won’t change my fundamental support for leaving capital crimes on the books. Sufficient evidence would cause me to desire reform. Overwhelming evidence would cause me to desire drastic reform. Gary Ridgeway, the ‘Green River Murderer’ here in Seattle pled guilty to 48 murders and got life (Washington doesn’t have parole). Here, if the _threat_ of a death penalty case has not existed, we’d have had a trial that lasted for… awhile. Estimated at something like 7 million for the prosecution alone.

    3b) Yes, that will undermine people’s support. On the other hand, Malvo and Ridgeway bolster support. There are cases that can be shown ‘beyond _all_ doubt’.

    Al (00c56b)

  27. Hell, we don’t end up executing many folks anyway (after many many years of appeals) so why not sentence to life in prison and be done with it?

    Four reasons. First, the fact that we do something ineptly is an argument for doing it better, not against doing it at all. Second, the few people we do execute almost certainly deter some murders. Maybe not that many, but certainly more than enough to dwarf the number of innocents we may inadvertently kill by having a death penalty. Third, we actually do use the death penalty a lot more often than you might think: as a bargaining chip. Every time a hardened killer (e.g., the Unabomber) pleads guilty in exchange for life without parole, the death penalty saved us the cost of a trial and the risk of an O.J. acquittal. Take death off the table, and no one will cop a plea unless they can bargain down further. Fourth, slippery slopes may not be a logical proof, but there does seem to be a clear pattern. Show me a society that has abolished the death penalty 20 or more years ago, and I’ll show you a society that has gone soft on other prison sentencing in the interim.

    Xrlq (e2795d)

  28. Proof of an innocent man who was executed would only effect public opinion if the fear-mongers were able to shout down the rational people in the ensuing discussion.

    Thousands of innocent people have died this year due to the driving of cars. Does this mean we should all stop driving cars? Nearly every thing that people do involves a risk of innocent people dying. Building a skyscraper, canning vegetables, driving your car to the supermarket, taking your kids swimming.

    Capital punishment is no different. It is something that has to be done because the benefits so greatly outweigh the risks. Like every other significant activity, there is a risk of innocent people dying as a result. We accept that risk as a society because the alternative, that we put a criminal’s lives above the lives of his victims is not acceptable.

    Doc Rampage (47be8d)

  29. Tyree said:

    Life in prison allows the innocent to eventually go free, even if this is exceedinly rare. This is difficult to deal with becasue my son is in law enforcement and how would we punish a “lifer” who killed while in prison? I think we should select four states and try eliminating the death penalty for 10 years. Collect the data on crime rates. Work out extradition treaties with Mexico so the killers that flee to Mexico could be sent back to those four states with no worries that they would be executed. After ten years, we could compare the pro/anti states and see what we see.

    That has already been done: thirteen states don’t have capital punishment at all, and their murder rates are lower, in the aggregate, than the national average. Texas, on the other hand, where capital punishment not only exists but is carried out with substantial frequency, has a murder rate above the national average. The entire South, which carries out executions with more frequency than other states which do have capital punishment, has a higher murder rate than any other region.

    There are all sorts of anecdotal tales about how the threat of capital punishment prevented a specific murder from being committed, but, taken as a statistical average, it doesn’t seem like the possibility of capital punishment deters murder, given that the states without that possibility have generally lower murder rates.

    A good source for information on this is the Death Penalty Information Center.

    Dana R. Pico (8d0335)

  30. Dana, I don’t know what the actual statistics show, but even if all of your facts are true, they are all consistent with the case in which the death penalty does reduce murders.

    In other words, your evidence does nothing to prove your point. In order to turn those statistics into an actual argument for the position that capital punishment does not deter murders, you would have to correct for other factors that cause murder.

    And why in the world would you direct people to a stridently partisan organization for “information”? Could it be that you aren’t really interested in providing information, but only in providing propoganda?

    Doc Rampage (47be8d)

  31. Doc Rampage said:

    Dana, I don’t know what the actual statistics show, but even if all of your facts are true, they are all consistent with the case in which the death penalty does reduce murders.

    In other words, your evidence does nothing to prove your point. In order to turn those statistics into an actual argument for the position that capital punishment does not deter murders, you would have to correct for other factors that cause murder.

    Hardly. The deterrence of murder is not the same thing as the causes of murder.

    If you believe that capital punishment is a deterrent to murder, you would expect to see a general trend toward fewer murders in places where capital punishment is an option, and even fewer in those places where capital punishment is actually employed; such not only is not the case, but the statistical trend is precisely the opposite. State to state, the murder rate is generally lower in states which do not have capital punishment. Looking at other democratic countries, you’ll see far lower murder rates in them as well . . . and they all abolished capital punishment some time ago.

    And why in the world would you direct people to a stridently partisan organization for “information”? Could it be that you aren’t really interested in providing information, but only in providing propoganda?

    That the Death Penalty Information Center is partisan toward abolition of capital punishment is obvious; that does not mean that their facts are faulty. The DPIC is the best source of statistics on capital punishment I have found; if you know of a better one, feel free to share it.

    Dana R. Pico (8d0335)

  32. Dana

    I don’t expect to see any correlation between murder rates and the death penalty, because I have never viewed the DP as a “deterent”. Obviously, once a murderer is executed they cannot kill again..either fellow prisoners, guards, visitors, etc.

    But to me the DP is part of the balance of punishment fitting the crime.

    It is legal (the Constitution says a person can be deprived of their life as long as due process is followed) and it is moral. When a person, with malice of forethought commits a crime so heinous as most reasonable people would react in horror (Gacy, Bundy, Manson, Dahmer, and hundreds of sadistic murderers of little public renown), why should that person be allowed to keep what they have so salaciously taken from others? In CA rarely does a mere 1st degree murder rise to the level of having a prosecutor seek the death penality. It is only with the addition of special allegations and after consultation with supervising and chief DDA’s is such a thing sought.

    Believe me, if one is looking at a DP case, one is looking at the worst of the worst. And LWOP doesn’t rise to the level of balancing the crime.

    Darleen (f20213)

  33. PS Dana

    another reason I believe there is little general correlation between the DP and murder rates … NO murderer really believes they are the ones that will be caught. For serial murderers, gang member perps, etc, they believe they have the angle to beat the system.

    Seen it.

    Darleen (f20213)

  34. Darleen said:

    (A)nother reason I believe there is little general correlation between the DP and murder rates … NO murderer really believes they are the ones that will be caught. For serial murderers, gang member perps, etc, they believe they have the angle to beat the system.

    Seen it.

    And I absolutely agree with you. The fact is that there is no crime that is really worth the time, and that every criminal, save those with brains working as poorly as John Kerry’s, would back off if they believed that they were going to get caught.

    Dana R. Pico (8d0335)

  35. Dana, anything that effects the number of murders has to be taken into account in any stastical study that is trying to isolate a factor in murder.

    For example, assume that you have a complete set of factors that influence the number of murders except that the death penalty is left out. Suppose that these factors in Texas and Vermont are such that one would expect the murder rate in Texas to be twice that in Vermont, but that while the murder rate in Texas is higher than Vermont, it is not twice as high. Then this would imply that capital punishment does in fact reduce the murder rate. And there could well be a positive correlation between these factors and having the death penalty, in which case one would expect states that have the death penalty to have higher murder rates even though the death penalty is a strong deterent.

    That’s the reason not to get your “data” from stridenly partisan sites. Any even remotely objective statistician would point this out, but the site you want us to get our information from apparently doesn’t. They give a bunch of deceptive data without explaining why it is deceptive.

    In addition, they have probably culled the data to include only the facts that support their position. For example it may be that historical trends show that states that have instituted the death penalty see a drop in murder, or there may be a correlation between how the death penalty is instituted and the rate of murder. I’m not saying either of these things is true, I’m just saying that if they were true, the site you sent us to would not tell us about it.

    Anyone who goes to a blatantly biased site for “data” doesn’t really want data; they just want a plausible excuse to believe what they already believe. Or they are fool.

    Doc Rampage (47be8d)

  36. Former anti death penalty person. Served on a jury and convicted a person and voted for his death sentence. Some crimes just demand it. BUT you only learn all the details by sitting on the jury. Now believe in it but also believe that some convicted can change and should be given a non-pardonable or non parolable life sentence. More complicated than this but my comment.

    George (77cea5)

  37. If you believe that capital punishment is a deterrent to murder, you would expect to see a general trend toward fewer murders in places where capital punishment is an option, and even fewer in those places where capital punishment is actually employed…

    Only if you begin with the unrealistic expectation that capital punishment is not only a deterrent, but a deterrent so incredibly effective as to outweigh all other factors combined that influence each state’s murder rate. Otherwise, the most one can or should expect is that if the death penalty is a deterrent, any state that has it will have a lower murder rate than that same state would have if it didn’t. Interstate comparisons are worthless. The only comparisons that matter are those involving the same state, before and after, and then only after controlling for other trends (e.g., whether the murder rate was generally increasing or decreasing in the years before the DP was enacted).

    Even if we are to take the Death Penalty “Information” Center at its word regarding a supposed correlation between states having a death penalty and states having higher murder rates, that doesn’t tell us a f’n thing about why they correlate. The least plausible explanation is that the death penalty deters no one from committing murder, and actually “incents” some to do so. Not only is the logic silly; it’s also inconsistent with the facts, as the states that have lower murder rates now are generally the same states that had lower murder rates when all 50 states had a death penalty, and when all 50 did not. A more plausible explanation of the correlation, assuming it exists, is that states with high murder rates have more families of murder victims, and therefore, their legislatures are under more pressure to enact a death penalty.

    Xrlq (428dfd)

  38. Yes, Dana, that is exactly what I mean. Criminals, like bacteria, must be removed. Now, it is possible for the human body to “lock pathogens away”; that’s what a pimple is: the body modifying the site of an infection to isolate the bacteria, even if only until it can kill them. However, killing is still preferred, since it eliminates the possibility of a containment failure.

    And the death penalty is the only 100% cure for repeat offenders I’m aware of.

    SDN (23debd)

  39. > 1) support the death penalty;
    Yes. Strong proponent

    > 2) believe that it has not been proven …

    Not PROVEN but after a person is executed the effort to exonerate him dries up. It probably has happened.

    > 3) such a revelation might undermine either a) your support …

    no.

    > or b) society’s support for the death penalty.

    somewhat. More so if it was a high profile case.

    My main objection to the death penalty is that many defendents get crap representation. My “modest proposal” is that defendants in a capital case get at least as much money for their defense as the prosecution gets (counting both the investigation and trial).
    This would be a large burden for some goverments. They always have the option NOT to go for the death penalty if they can’t afford a decent defense.

    And that was no typo at the start. I support the death penalty. I just don’t like the way it’s current implementation.

    Arthur Kimes (88c324)

  40. What Clark Smith said.

    Craig Hancock (9aa823)

  41. #24 Darleen,

    I understand your point about DNA and am reasonably well aware of the benefit of DNA identification, however, as I indicated in my comment, DNA testing only works where DNA can be found at the scene of the crime. In the case you cite, a sexual assault was involved so there was strong DNA evidence of the perpetrator’s identity and direct involvement with the victim. Blood or other fluids from the victim on his clothing, in his car, or in his home would be equally useful.

    My comment would have been more clear if I had stated that DNA is only useful when it can provide evidence tying the victim to the perpetrator, as opposed to limiting my comments to the crime scene. Thus, DNA is particularly useful in rape cases or when blood or other fluids are found in reasonable proximity to the perpetrator, but less useful on other occasions.

    However, when the body is badly decomposed or where there is no DNA present that ties directly to the perpetrator it is arguably not useful. For example, while DNA was used to identify Scott Peterson’s wife and son, there was apparently little to no DNA evidence tying him directly to their deaths that could provide any insight into the cause of death. Although DNA evidence did at least tie Scott’s wife to his boat, the case remained primarily circumstantial beyond that and I would argue that DNA evidence was minimally, if at all, useful in proving the case.

    The Koby Bryant rape case was another example of whether DNA evidence was all that useful in determining whether a crime had occured. In this case it was clear that sexual activity had taken place but the defense assertion was that it was consensual.

    If Natalie Holloway’s body is ever found in Aruba, it may be so badly decomposed that DNA evidence will not be obtainable.

    My point is simply that DNA evidence may or may not identify the perpetrator to a high level of confidence. I would even suggest that even when a rape is involved, that DNA evidence is good for determining the perpetrator of the rape but may be silent with respect to an associated murder, especially if there were more than one murderer involved. Not being a lawyer, however, I may very well not understand the subject as well as I’d like to think.

    I will strongly agree, however, that DNA analysis is one of a host of investigative tools that are useful in developing evidence in many crimes. Which brings up a topic for another thread and that is whether as a society we should consider requiring DNA/fingerprints to be collected fairly routinely, perhaps at birth, with a driver’s license application, or similar circumstances.

    Having gone off on this tangent, I’m still concerned enough about the possibility for error in DP cases to suggest that perhaps Life Without Possibility of Parole is the better course of action. I don’t have a problem with Charles Manson being in jail for the rest of his life. I definitely have a problem that he is eligible for parole – ever. I would also be willing to stipulate hard labor and solitary confinement for life.

    Harry Arthur (b318a5)

  42. I support the death penalty in theory. In practice, in the United States, you can certainly make a case that it is more trouble than it is worth because endless whining from bleeding hearts like Patterico have made it unreasonably costly to carry out.

    “Wrongfully” is unclear, I will assume you are talking about actual innocence as opposed to due process violations. I don’t think it has been “proven” that an innocent has been executed since the re-instatement of the death penalty. However with about 1000 executions I believe it is likely. My uninformed over/under would be 5. I read another article about the case in your previous post and it does seem to be a good candidate.

    Proof of innocence in a particular case would not affect my opinion much because I already believe it likely that innocents have been executed and because I don’t believe “death is different” ie that there is a big difference between death and life imprisonment without parole (death by incarceration as it has been called). I doubt it would affect society’s opinion much either since with this sort of mostly symbolic issue people’s opinions seem pretty hard to change.

    James B. Shearer (fc887e)


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