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Signs Grow of Innocent People Being Executed, Judge Says
By ADAM LIPTAK
federal judge in Boston said yesterday that there was mounting evidence innocent people were being executed. But he declined to rule the death penalty unconstitutional.
"In the past decade, substantial evidence has emerged to demonstrate that innocent individuals are sentenced to death, and undoubtedly executed, much more often than previously understood," the judge, Mark L. Wolf of Federal District Court in Boston, wrote in a decision allowing a capital case to proceed to trial.
He cited the exonerations of more than 100 people on death row based on DNA and other evidence.
"The day may come," the judge said, "when a court properly can and should declare the ultimate sanction to be unconstitutional in all cases. However, that day has not yet come."
Judge Wolf wrote that the crucial question for courts was "how large a fraction of the executed must be innocent to offend contemporary standards of decency."
His decision means that the case against Gary Lee Sampson, including the capital charges against him, will be tried next month. Mr. Sampson has acknowledged responsibility for three murders in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Over a few days in 2001, he killed three men who had picked him up hitchhiking.
Mr. Sampson was willing to plead guilty to murder charges against him in Massachusetts and accept the maximum sentence available there, life in prison without parole. Instead, the federal government indicted him on capital charges based on the fact that the murders involved carjackings, a federal crime.
Judge Wolf, a former federal prosecutor and official in the Justice Department, was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan. He appeared to be critical of recent changes in Justice Department practices in seeking the death penalty.
"Juries have recently been regularly disagreeing with the attorney general's contention that the death penalty is justified in the most egregious federal cases involving murder," he wrote.
In 16 of the last 17 federal capital prosecutions, Judge Wolf wrote, juries rejected the death penalty. A lawyer for Mr. Sampson, David A. Ruhnke, who specializes in capital cases, said Judge Wolf's numbers were outdated. The count, Mr. Ruhnke said, stands at 19 acquittals or life verdicts in the last 20 federal capital cases. The most recent acquittals were this month in Puerto Rico, which does not have the death penalty. Thirty-eight states do.
The Supreme Court has held that courts may take account of evolving standards of decency in deciding whether punishments violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Those standards may be determined by looking at trends in, among other fields, legislation and jury verdicts.
"If juries continue to reject the death penalty in the most egregious federal cases," Judge Wolf wrote, "the courts will have significant objective evidence that the ultimate sanction is not compatible with contemporary standards of decency."
That statement suggests that the Justice Department, in seeking the death penalty more often and in more places, may actually be engaging in a counterproductive exercise from the perspective of supporters of capital punishment.
Judge Wolf acknowledged that there had been no legislative trend corresponding to the one reflected in the recent verdicts. "However," he wrote, "the increasing and disturbing new evidence concerning the execution of the innocent may generate legislation and jury verdicts which manifest a public consensus that the death penalty offends contemporary standards of decency and should no longer be deemed by the courts to be constitutionally acceptable."
He also noted that the department's policies about whether to take into account local opposition to the death penalty had changed. Until 2001, the policies said the absence of a local death penalty did not by itself justify a federal capital prosecution.
"It appears," Judge Wolf wrote, "that the fact that a state's laws do not authorize capital punishment may now alone be deemed sufficient to justify a federal death penalty prosecution."
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Monica Goodling, said it had an obligation to ensure the fair and consistent application of the federal death penalty.
One federal jury has sentenced a defendant to death in a jurisdiction that did not have its own death penalty since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988. The case was last year in Michigan.
The only other federal judge in Massachusetts to hear a federal death penalty prosecution in recent years later described what he had learned in The Boston Globe in 2001.
"The experience," Judge Michael A. Ponsor wrote, "left me with one unavoidable conclusion: that a legal regime relying on the death penalty will inevitably execute innocent people — not too often, one hopes, but undoubtedly sometimes."
The murder rate decrease was nationwide. Oregon also saw a decline in its murder rate over the 90's. And yet, no executions were carried out until 1997.
Also, why would you compare a huge state, with lots of rural areas and small communities, to a city whose boundaries contain a large volume of inner-city ghettos? You'd have to compare Texas to the entire state of Michigan.
you're the one singling out Texas, which happens to share a ginormous border with the rampantly outlaw country of mexico.. ever think to factor that one in?? check out murder rates in Laredo, Brownsville and other border cities and also factor in the amount of murders that aren't reported because the person didn't exist (legally).. a politician was just murdered yesterday in a city near Del Rio and it was a hit from someone in mexico..
also check out this chart and count down how far you have to go to get to a Texas city.. and remember Texas has two of the 10 largest cities in the country... http://www.morganquitno.com/cit05r.pdf
I guess you are ok with executing innocent people, it HAS happened.
Wonder if you would feel the same way if a family member of yours were excecute and later found out to be innocent.
no family member of mine would be in a situation where that mistake could occur..
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bunky39
i am not nuts about george bush but i am nuts about texas.
lets here it for texas law.
stephen s
san diego ca
hellz yeah
Quote:
Originally Posted by person
So now that death penalty turns out to be more expensive than you thought, you want to make it even more expensive by trying to streamline it without guarantee that it will be be shorter.
How about not wasting my tax dollars.
I find your support of criminals to be that way too.. if people like you didn't come up with excuses for them then maybe we could actually get rid of the problem..
no family member of mine would be in a situation where that mistake could occur..
yeah, sure, bet that is what others have thought.
So, no comment on those that were innocent and executed.
Oh, well, not worth my time to discuss this anymore.
no family member of mine would be in a situation where that mistake could occur..
hellz yeah
I find your support of criminals to be that way too.. if people like you didn't come up with excuses for them then maybe we could actually get rid of the problem..
I am for supporting getting rid of criminals using less tax payer money, and life imprisonment is as good as death, actually a better punishment at cheaper rate. If ppl like you didn't come up with ways to to try waste money on something that already has a solution, we would have less problems.
so letting people rot in jail and corrupt others encarcerated in there with them is a solution? how many criminals have left prison a better person? and contrast that with how many have left much worse.. remember, not everyone gets to stay in for life, most (unfortunately) get paroled.. and then get to test out all those neat new things they learned inside..
I am for supporting getting rid of criminals using less tax payer money, and life imprisonment is as good as death, actually a better punishment at cheaper rate. If ppl like you didn't come up with ways to to try waste money on something that already has a solution, we would have less problems.
I don't agree - someone with a life sentence is far better off than getting the death penalty, and can continue to maim and murder his fellow inmates with little fear of further punishment (he's already in for life, yanno?). So what's the solution to that?
I have ideas on how to arrange death for sentenced inmates that would cost a fraction of what it costs tax payers to keep these people alive.
I don't agree - someone with a life sentence is far better off than getting the death penalty, and can continue to maim and murder his fellow inmates with little fear of further punishment (he's already in for life, yanno?). So what's the solution to that?
I have ideas on how to arrange death for sentenced inmates that would cost a fraction of what it costs tax payers to keep these people alive.
Isn't that even better for ppl who want death to all criminals. Let them kill each other. But taking someone out of death penalty, you create more death penalties.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rd2007
so letting people rot in jail and corrupt others encarcerated in there with them is a solution? how many criminals have left prison a better person? and contrast that with how many have left much worse.. remember, not everyone gets to stay in for life, most (unfortunately) get paroled.. and then get to test out all those neat new things they learned inside..
So you think putting folks on death row would make the rest of the criminals reformed, and they would all leave prison a better person? Does that mean Texas do not have repeat offenders
Isn't that even better for ppl who want death to all criminals. Let them kill each other. But taking someone out of death penalty, you create more death penalties.
I don't "want death to all criminals" - how draconian for anyone who would support that! But I don't think that someone who is serving a 12 year sentence should have his life cut short because a crazed murderer didn't like the way he looked at him in the shower.
Sorry, but the whole "let them kill each other" theory you are promoting doesn't fly.
The statistics and research has proven it cost more to EXECUTE an individual than to house that same individual for life. I had this same argument with a friend and they gave me facts and showed me. I was the one arguing that putting them in prison cost taxpayers too much money and I was proven wrong.
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