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Monday, June 17, 2019

REQUIEM FOR THE DEATH PENALTY

UPDATE: The best federal blog in the business looks at Judge Altman's remand at sentencing policy and discusses something we missed: the cost to the system of housing defendants in local facilities for upwards of a month before transporting them to their designated prison. DOM's blog has it here. 
http://sdfla.blogspot.com/

Since 1973 the Death Penalty has been wrongly imposed 165 times. By "wrongly" we mean the condemned individual was later exonerated- meaning they were innocent. Let that number 165 sink in. Can you do 165 pushups? If you lined each exonerated individual up on a football field, you would need two fields. The number of wrongly convicted individuals sentenced to death is most likely higher. Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in Texas in 2004 for murdering his three children by splashing gasoline around the house and setting it on fire. Except subsequent  forensic analysis shows there was no gasoline used and the fire was probably caused by faulty electrical wiring. 

Clifford Williams Jr.  and Herbert Meyers were  sentenced to death in Florida in October, 1976 for breaking into a woman's home and shooting her in the head. Except Williams and Meyers had been at a birthday party miles away, confirmed by dozens of witnesses. And the small fact that the State alleged Williams shot the victim in the house, when there were bullet holes through glass and curtains showing the shots came from outside the house. Williams and Meyers were indigent African American men  with appointed lawyers who didn't call one witness.  Meyers who was 18 at the time and the nephew of Williams turned down the prosecution's offer of five years in prison to testify against his uncle. 

The jury was never told about their alibis; the jury didn't hear from the alibi witnesses; and the jury didn't know about the forensic evidence contradicting the prosecution's case. Both men were spared from death by a 4-3 vote of the Florida Supreme Court and languished in prison for 42 years- innocent men- and would have died in prison but for Jacksonville State Attorney Melissa Nelson. The Jacksonville SAO has a Conviction Integrity Unit. Here is their report on the Williams/Meyers exoneration. The Miami SAO, believing themselves to be perfect, does not have a process to review convictions. 

Here is the NY Times article  by Nicholas Kristoff on all you want to know about the death penalty and its abject failure in this country. 

Someday, perhaps in our lifetime, we will shake our heads at the dark days when state's executed inmates-innocent and guilty alike. 
And someday, someone with an ounce of brains and some courage in the Dade County State Attorneys Office will look at the numbers and say something like "Hey, if 165 innocent people were sentenced to death, how many innocent people are serving non-death prison sentences? Maybe we should do something about that."

It's an absolute stain on our country's soul that resources are not spent on examining wrongful non-death penalty convictions in a  systemic manner. An innocent  person serving a life sentence has to hope he or she can get an experienced lawyer interested in their case within the time periods set by law. 

Of course the US is currently in good company, with nations like North Korea, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, contributing to the most executions by nations. Bastions of enlightened judicial systems all. 




10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Poor poor innocent people. How many of those 165 had done so many other crimes and not held accountable. Pass a law that you have to be executed within 10 years of the imposition of the death penalty by a judge. 40 years on death row is a joke. I could build schools with the money wasted on babysitting these assholes. Now that should get the blood flowing of you bleeding heart intellectuals opposed to everything. Get rid of the death penalty so they spend life in prison being receptacles.

Anonymous said...

9.:07 It's like you don't even see it, even though you wrote it.

Anonymous said...

You need to break eggs to make an omelet. We need the death penalty even though a few slip through the cracks. It has been an indispensable law which has led to a deterrent in violent crime and murder and has caused us to be a non-violent society and an example to the rest of the world. All one has to do is turn on the nightly news in south Florida and one is inundated with stories like missing dogs, too many snakes in the everglades, a flooded street. Since the death penalty one never sees stories on the news of violent crime in south Florida, one of the safest places on earth. I love to stroll through Opa Locka when the sun goes down, with the cool breezes. Piss off 1005 1102. I bet you would have a different outlook if your kid was raped and murdered.

Sir Wilfred said...

Better to execute 9 Innocent poor people then let one guilty one get Life

Anonymous said...

Oh Boy! New JAC rules.

I cannot wait to see the PD's and RC's writing these conflict reports:

As part of the budgeting process, the Senate has included new language in the bill implementing the General
Appropriations Act (GAA): Senate Bill (SB) 2502. SB 2502 contains numerous amendments to ss. 27.40 and
27.5304, F.S. In summary, the changes create several new requirements.
1. Requirement that certification of conflict be written and specific. The first amendment requires
both the public defender and regional counsel to certify in writing that the office has a conflict. The conflict
must be specifically identified and described. Payment to private court-appointed counsel would be
contingent upon such a certification of conflict. For off-registry appointments, payment would be contingent
on the court finding there are no registry attorneys available to accept appointment as well as the written
certification of conflict. Because the certification requirement arises only when a public office is appointed, it
would not apply when a court sua sponte appoints a lawyer pursuant to s. 27.5303(1)(c), F.S. Further, s.
27.5303(1)(c), F.S., already requires the court to specify the basis for the conflict and the clerk of court to
notify the public office and JAC. Attorneys are responsible for verifying that the public offices have filed the
necessary certifications of conflict. Failure to do so may constitute a waiver of any right to compensation.
SB 2502 makes payment contingent on these certifications of conflict (except in those
instances where the court sua sponte finds conflict).

the trialmaster said...

Remember our own Pitts and Lee. But for the efforts of Phil Hubbart and Irwin Block the death total would be 167.

Anonymous said...

exactly, now you've got it.

Anonymous said...

9:07 and 11:21. You better bank on there being no God because both of you flunk the morality and the ethics test of being a lawyer.

Anonymous said...

5:08: More like Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Gene Miller.

Anonymous said...

it never ceases to amaze me how the people who read and post on this blog take themselves so seriously, never even deign to contemplate that some people just post to be sarcastic, make fun of the absurdity of the criminal justice system and its hypocrisy and ineffectiveness, or to just f k with people. signed the author of 3 of the posts on this topic. when will you bleeding hearts advocate for a law that makes it almost impossible for a teenage boy to drop of school before age 18 and other penalties such as no dl, no government assistance for school. Oh, I get it, if we stop letting children drop out of school, especially minorities, then crime is cut in half and more lawyers will be without work.