Posted on 01/02/2005 6:54:24 AM PST by Brilliant
It's the judge's job to make sure the innocent don't get executed, and that the guilty do have their sentences executed. If he can't do the job, then he should retire and let someone else do it.
”Guns Before Butter.”
As I understand it, judges are supposed to make their rulings based strictly on the evidence presented to them.
In this case, the judge went out and did his own research and then made a ruling based on evidence not presented to him in the case.
That doesn't sound legally proper to me. In the Scott Peterson case, a juror was booted for doing this.
Judge Rakoff, who joined the federal bench in 1996 after his appointment by President Bill Clinton
And FOR the record this 'judge' is a jackass. The Federal Death Penalty can't be "unconstitutional" because its IN the freaking Constitution! That's WHY his moronic 'decision' was probably overturned.
This borders on the recent asinine statement of SCOTUS 'justice' Stevens(?) where he posited that the Death Penalty in general bordered on 'cruel and unusual punishment' because... are you ready....
BECAUSE of the time delay in carrying out the executions which are caused by all the DEFENDANTS appeals!
So just that we all have this right; The DEFENDATS cause the multi year delay, so its then 'Cruel and Unusual' to execute them. How about THAT for 'SUPREME' logic!
I agree, if the prosecutor is aware of the innocence. But sometimes they sincerely believe that the person later shown to be innocent was indeed guilty.
As I understand it, cops and prosecutors who conspire to convict a person they know to be innocent are already liable to criminal penalties.
I don't think cops and prosecutors try to have people they know to be innocent executed. But I know that they can be mistaken, and become committed early on to theories that they may not abandon even after they have been factually eroded. It's not like it is on TV, where you know the person is guilty from the beginning and the fun is watching the heroic prosecutors see to justice.
There are things that can be done to prevent innocent people from being convicted and sentenced to death. Allow only experienced defense lawyers who can demonstrate competence and special training to defend such cases. Make sure the defense is adequately funded. Require police to videotape all homicide interrogations. That is the core of the necessary reform, and Illinois has already done these things (and a few more).
I don't have any problem with giving judges the power to set aside death penalties based on doubts that don't rise to a "reasonable" doubt. I would rather make sure that only the guilty get the penalty, even if that means some of the guilty only get life. It would only take one or maybe two mistakes to completely undermine the death penalty in this country, and the left is searching high and low to find one.
So9
It is also implied in several of the Amendments...
All they would have to do is go to Planned Parenthood and witness pre-natal summary executions of the truly innocent convicted without a trial by a jury of their peers...
The judge is not very competent either. He is a lawyer who could not stand the stress of the modern law practice; didn't want to work as hard as successful lawyers work; may have not been able to make a living as a lawyer. The fact that successful lawyers make between two and five times as much money as judges reflects the differences.
And criminal law is the bottom of the barrel--the area of the law where the better lawyers don't want to go. Again, there are some brillent criminal lawyers; but it is not viewed as the attractive end of the business.
The drift in the mainstream meadia to exposure of serious crimes and the broad criminal element in our society has led individuals who serve on juries to believe that defendants would not be charged and on trial unless they were guilty. So the instruction that the prosecutor must prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt" is usually ignored.
In this environment, it should come as no surprise that we convict lots of innocent people--probably many more than this article contemplates; because for all those defendants who have supporters outside the walls who work up the evidence which proves them innocent, there are two or three more who have no connections and never get to the evidence that would exonerate them.
"It's the judge's job to make sure the innocent don't get executed, and that the guilty do have their sentences executed. If he can't do the job, then he should retire and let someone else do it." Fine. But that's not the way it works and it is not very likely that it will ever get back to that system.
"I was told that the vast majority of those cleared by later DNA testing were cleared because the DNA had degraded or that the samples were contaminated. Does anyone know if this is true or not?" The prosecutors say this kind of stuff all the time but there is no evidence that it is true in any broad sense. In fact, at the time where one of the bar journals I read looked at the issue, DNA evidence was not the primary evidence resulting in exhoneration--we convict lots of innocent people who ultimatly prove innocent from all kinds of evidence.
Scott Peterson is the hot button of the moment. A complete slime bag with few if any redeeming personal characteristics. The jury came to hate him as did the overwhelming majority of the general public who came to know him through coverage of the trial.
Police and prosecutor decision making here is also pretty clear. They found he had a girl friend whom they concluded was the motive; they figured out what a bad guy Scott was; and concluded, rightly or wrongly, that he was probably guilty. They stopped looking for evidence of guilt or third party guilt because they had no body, knowing that if they could tie a body to Scott, they should be able to convict him and if they didn't come up with a body, they would not convict anyone else either.
They came up with a body in a fortutious locaton--the girl friend motive did not play out because Scott didn't care any more about the girl friend than he did about his wife. But the jury convicted him anyway--no motive; no evidence that the wife was murdered; and no evidence other than the location of the body to connect Scott with whatever the cause of death was. Clearly not a record that supports conviction beyond a reasonable doubt. With lots of technical error in the record that also is likely to provide grounds for reversal.
A defendant with no perceived redeeming social value--even if he is innocent, the world would be improved if somebody killed him on the street. Everybody, including the jury, hated him. And he is the only obvious suspect.
Do I think he was guilty? Sure. Did the prosecution prove he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? No way. Could he be innocent? Absolutely--there are all kinds of reasonable explainations for the evidence other than guilt. In his case, an appellate court is almost certain to reverse this decision because it is so clearly flawed.
Point of this article is the death penalty. I think we would be better off executing the guilty. But our criminal justice system is so flawed that there are not very many cases where the penalty is really appropriate.
I think the prosecutor proved Peterson guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It's a close call whether his guilt is clear enough to give him the death penalty.
There are a whole lot of killers, though, for which there is absolutely no issue of guilt. A good example is this DC sniper. I don't see why we should throw out the death penalty for the DC sniper just to protect someone like Peterson who may thru some stretch of the imagination, be innocent. If we don't trust the system to get Peterson's verdict right, then we should not put Peterson to death. But we should still execute the DC sniper.
I would agree with that, but I think that the system would crack and collapse if it could be shown that an innocent person was executed. It doesn't really matter what the Constitution says at that point. Keep in mind that the Supreme Court has repeatedly read the Constitution to say what it wants it to mean. Right now, there is a bare majority upholding the death penalty. A mistake or two, and there will be little, if anything, left of that majority.
I can live without the death penalty, provided that the punishment served makes the criminal wish he were dead!
Life at hard labor on a barren rock in the Aleutians, no amenities whatsoever sounds like a good start. Or dump them in that environment with nothing but the clothes on their backs, a knife and a blanket and let natural selection prevail.
I can't specifically answer that, BUT since you bring up DNA here's what's happened in IL in many of those type cases.
That being said, what is ALWAYS glossed over in the MSM is that there was also invariably a CONFESSION and accomplices involved (who also confessed) and that there was no new evidence that the person didn't actually commit the murder, but only the rape portion of the crimes. And to the best of my knowledge all those 'cleared' by DNA were always charged of rape or rape - murder.
An aside, of the 126(?) Convicted Murders that ex IL Gov George Ryan arbitrarily moved off Death Row, and some subsequently freed, TWO are now right back ON DEATH ROW for new or additional killings and one is under Federal Indictment (and detention) for a slew of NEW crimes.
There are a whole lot of killers, though, for which there is absolutely no issue of guilt. A good example is this DC sniper. I don't see why we should throw out the death penalty for the DC sniper just to protect someone like Peterson who may thru some stretch of the imagination, be innocent. If we don't trust the system to get Peterson's verdict right, then we should not put Peterson to death. But we should still execute the DC sniper."
Your second point is easy--everyone, including me, agrees. One of the problems in requiring conclusive proof of guilt is that you don't get confessions, or even enough evidence to prove conclusive guilt. In the case of the DC sniper, probably no real issue and you ought to execute him.
But your first point focuses on the real issue. If you think he was proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, then there isn't sufficient doubt on the basis of which to let him off the extreme punishment. That is the entire argument.
And of course your "point" demonstrates why you can't convict him--there is in fact reasonable doubt; substantial reasonable doubt. The prosecution failed to prove she was murdered at all; and there is no real evidence that ties Peterson to her death, however it might have occured. This is a case which if it is not reversed on technical grounds which appears likely to me, ought to be reversed on the grounds that there is insufficient evidence in the record to support the verdict.
If the prosecution's theory of the Peterson case is correct, there is in fact evidence out there to prove it. We don't see the evidence, in the case in fact, most likely because the police didn't do the work to find it. And if the police did the work and didn't find evidence, there is a reasonable chance this guy is in fact innocent.
The problem is that the conviction is returned because the defendant is an ultimate bad guy in a position where he is also a logical suspect. That is the reason we get people on death row who are in fact innocent and why we are getting all these people who subsequently prove that they are in fact innocent. And as many people as we are getting who do prove they were wrongly convicted, how many more are we likely to find who were innocent but could not prove it? They are not, under our system of justice, required to do that.
"Reasonable doubt" does not equal "no doubt." There is "no doubt" in the case of the DC sniper, as far as I am concerned. He's the kind of guy who definitely should be executed. It's not so clear in the case of Peterson. Personally, I think he's guilty, but I would rather give him life than execute him and have second thoughts later.
Yes, if you have that kind of a system, you won't get the confessions. On the other hand, there will still be guys like the DC sniper who will get executed.
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