"wrongful convictions" are not the issue...
Wrongful convictions are the issue. A wrongful conviction means the person was and is inocent under the law--just as innocent as you are, even though you may not even have been charged. Further, the person is almost always innocent IN FACT. The cases I referred you to in Canada were only too too clearcut once the evidence was in.
a high rate of overturned convictions in capital cases only proves how well the system of checks and balance is working.
No. It says nothing about how well the system of checks and balamces is working, other than the fact that a frightful number of innocent people are often detained for years under threat of execution only to be exonerated by the evidence. It says nothing about how many innocent people are not exonerated by the evidence. There is no logical connection whatsoever to your inference.
George Ryan, Governor of Illinois in 2000 discontinued the death penalty. The impetus for his decision was the discovery of yet another death row wrongful conviction-the 13th since 1977. During that same period, 12 other death row inmates were executed.
Governor Ryan gave his reason:
"I cannot support a system which, in its administration, has proven so fraught with error and has come so close to the ultimate nightmare, the state's taking of innocent life... Until I can be sure that everyone sentenced to death in Illinois is truly guilty, until I can be sure with moral certainty that no innocent man or woman is facing a lethal injection, no one will meet that fate.
Is it to be expected that a system "fraught with error" has not erred to the point of killing innocent people? Well, it is possible it has not. But why should the lives of human beings rest on the threads and vagaries that influence possibilities? People arrested for murder often have little social support or interest simply because there are a lot of nobodys out there. In an adversarial justice system there is often a disproportionate amount of the adversary on the one side...
As a crime buff, you may be interested to know that after abolishing the death penalty in the mid seventies in Canada, homicides have dropped by 43%.
Let me give you come comments from the NACDL. First, a description of who they are:
"The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) is the preeminent organization in the United States advancing the mission of the nation's criminal defense lawyers to ensure justice and due process for persons accused of crime or other misconduct. A professional bar association founded in 1958, NACDL's more than 10,400 direct members -- and 80 state and local affiliate organizations with another 28,000 members -- include private criminal defense lawyers, public defenders, active U.S. military defense counsel, law professors and judges committed to preserving fairness within America's criminal justice system."
Here are their comments:
Since reinstating the death penalty in 1976, over 600 Americans have been executed.
98 people were executed in 1999. This number is the highest since 1954, when 81 executions were carried out. This is an almost 50% increase from 1998.
The state of Texas executed 25 people in 1999 (as of September 30). Since reinstating the death penalty in 1982, Texas has executed 199 people. In 1997, Texas set new records, executing 4 inmates in one week, 8 in one month & 37 for the year.
Currently, about 3,565 prisoners reside on death row.
The average time between sentencing and execution is 9 & 1/2 years.
84 American citizens have been released from death row as a result of being wrongly convicted.
In 1999, 8 innocent men were released from death row after having their convictions overturned.
Each year, at least 4 innocent people are convicted of capital crimes.
Since reinstating the death penalty in 1977, Illinois has executed 12 men -- and exonerated 13 others upon proof of their innocence. Only Florida has had more exonerations, with 20. Illinois' Governor recently issued a moratorium on executions, while the state's capital system is studied.
67% of law enforcement officials do not believe that capital punishment reduces the homicide rate.
A poll of police chiefs found that they ranked the death penalty as least effective in reducing violent crime.
During the early 1970's, death-penalty states averaged an annual rate of 7.9 criminal homicides per 100,000 population; abolitionist states averaged a rate of 5.1.
A recent report from the Judicial Conference of the United States reported that defense costs were 4 times higher in cases where the death penalty was sought, than in comparable non-capital cases. Prosecution costs for these cases were more than 2/3 higher than defense costs.
Some state governments estimate the typical cost for a single death penalty case -- from arrest to execution -- to be $1 million to $3 million. (Other studies have placed the cost as high as $7 million per case!) Life imprisonment costs have been estimated at about $500,000 per case.
Since reinstating the death penalty in 1995, New York state has placed five men on death row, at an estimated taxpayer cost of 68 million dollars. The cost could be as high as 238 million dollars by the time the first execution occurs.
About half of all death penalty trials in the U.S. result in a death sentence. Of these sentences, about half are eventually vacated.
Since 1976, there have been at least 25 "botched" executions.
Since 1973, over 160 children in the U.S. have been sentenced to die. This is higher than any of the other 5 countries (Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen) which authorize the death penalty for crimes committed by juveniles.
Of the 38 death penalty states in the U.S., 12 have no minimum age for imposing the death penalty.
2 out of 3 children sentenced to death are African American.
More than 300 of those currently on death row are known to suffer from mental retardation. According to some estimates, 10% of the death row population may be retarded.
31 mentally retarded prisoners have been executed since 1976, 19 of these in just the past 5 years.
Historically, more than 80% of those executed were convicted of killing whites, although people of color comprise more than half of all homicide victims in the United States.
A 1991 Florida study showed that people who kill whites are 3.4 times more likely to get that death penalty than those who kill blacks.
The death row population is approximately 42% African American, although African Americans make up only 13% of the general population of the U.S.
Approximately 90% of those whom U.S. prosectors seek to execute are African American or Latino.
In counties using the death penalty in America, nearly 98% of the chief district attorneys are white, and only 1% are African-American.
In a recent study, it was found that blacks in Philadelphia were nearly 4 times as likely to get the death penalty as other defendants under similar circumstances.
According to one study, in Florida, a defendant's odds of receiving the death penalty are nearly 5 times higher if the victim was white, than if the victim was black in similarly aggravated cases. In Kentucky, as of 1996, 100% of death row inmates had been convicted of mudering a white victim -- none were there for the murder of a black victim, despite the fact that over 1,000 African-Americans were killed since instatement of the death penalty. |
