Re: A 1993 study of 49 patients found that 18 of them, or 37 percent, "were diagnosed inaccurately.
Qui sine peccato est vestrum primus in illam lapidem mittat....
(John 8:7)
Likewise:
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE DEATH PENALTY?
[...]
1. The risk of convicting, condemning and executing the innocent is too high.
In Illinois, 13 men have been released from death row after they were shown to be innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death. One of those who would later be exonerated, Anthony Porter, was granted a stay only 50 hours before his scheduled execution. More death row inmates, including some tortured in Chicago Police Areas Two and Three and convicted largely on the strength of coerced confessions, await hearings or appeals related to their innocence claims.
Nationally, researchers have documented the cases of more than 20 wrongfully executed people since 1900. And that number would be much higher if efforts to prove legal innocence did not end with execution.
DNA testing, an increasingly effective tool in determining innocence or guilt in some cases, has also exposed widespread flaws in the administration of capital punishment in our society. In numerous cases where DNA results have exposed wrongful convictions, we have discovered that victims, witnesses, police, prosecutors, judges and juries who have been certain about guilt and been wrong, have paved the path to death row.
A 1999 Chicago Tribune study found that the system in Illinois has been plagued by investigatory error, official misconduct, unreliable snitch testimony, disbarred and otherwise disciplined defense attorneys and other problems. With such a track record, can we ever be certain that we will not execute an innocent person?
2. The death penalty is applied in an inherently random and arbitrary way.
Of all those doing time for murder in Illinois, only a fraction are on death row. At one point in 1999, there were 7,153 convicted murderers in the Illinois prison system. 161 of them were awaiting execution, barely over two percent. But if justice is to be served, the two on death row should be the "worst of the worst," those most deserving of the harshest punishment. But in practice, the use of the death penalty is more random than that and no one, not even the strongest proponents of capital punishment, have been able to demonstrate that it is only those who commit the most heinous crimes who face the death penalty. The death penalty process begins with the State's Attorney in each county, who must determine whether to bring capital charges in any murder case. And it is at that point that arbitrary judgements begin to figure in who gets the death penalty and who does not. There are 102 counties in Illinois and, thus, as many as 102 separate and distinct judgements about whether to seek a death sentence.
The record of capital proceedings also discloses numerous instances in which different judges presiding over original trials, retrials and appeals in the same case, reviewing essentially the same evidence and hearing essentially the same arguments, have come to dramatically different conclusions about both innocence and guilt and about appropriate sentence - death, life in prison or finite term.
And though our judicial system holds jury decisions almost sacrosanct, different juries, too, in trials and retrials of the same defendants, have varied substantially in their verdicts. In a system that seeks justice for all, is it right to tolerate those differences when the penalty is death?
Political considerations, too, influence the process at many steps along the way. The Washington, D. C. -based Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) has documented the extent to which political factors have influenced the administration of the death penalty. The DPIC report cites numerous instances around the country in which both judges and prosecutors used the death penalty to secure election or reelection to office. The report quotes Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens decrying the practice. "The 'higher authority' to whom present-day capital judges may be 'too responsive' is a political climate in which judges who covet higher office - or who merely wish to remain judges - must constantly profess their fealty to the death penalty," said Stevens, whose statement would apply equally to prosecutors "... who covet higher office - or who merely wish to remain [prosecutors.]"
In a system where punishment was fairly and appropriately determined, death sentences would not depend on where the crime occurred or the date of the next election. Any perception that the death penalty is reserved only for a tiny fraction of crimes, those perceived to be most heinous, is contradicted by the demonstrably random and arbitrary ways in which it is administered.
3. The capital punishment system is racially biased.
Though we do not have full information about the role that race plays in the administration of the death penalty in Illinois, we do know that at least two-thirds of death row inmates are African American and Hispanic, compared to a statewide minority population of less than 35 percent. African Americans make up only 14 percent of Illinois' population, but they make up over 60 percent of Illinois' prison and death row populations.
Minority inmates also constitute 83% of those who have thus far been shown to be wrongfully convicted. Minorities, the numbers show, are far more likely than the white majority to be imprisoned, condemned to death and wrongfully convicted. Nationwide, prosecutors are more likely to request the death penalty and juries are more likely to impose it, when the defendant is black or when the victim is white. In 1990, the U. S. General Accounting Office (GAO) released a report about the impact of race in capital cases. The GAO's conclusion was unequivocal:
"Our synthesis of the 28 studies shows a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing and imposition of the death penalty," the study said. "In 82 percent of the studies, race of victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty," the study continued, "... those who murdered whites were found to be more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks."
In pursuing and obtaining death sentences, the federal government, too, is deeply affected by race factors. A Justice Department study released this year showed that minorities made up 75 percent of the defendants for whom federal prosecutors sought the death penalty between 1995 and 1999. Addressing and correcting the documented effects of race on the administration of the death penalty would seem to be an impossible task for a society that has been unable to correct the way race affects other equally important social outcomes.
[...]
Excerpted from:
icadp.org |
