The End of Innocence

NY Times ^ | 6/16/06 | David R. Dow

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court decided, in a 5-to-3 opinion, that a Tennessee prison inmate named Paul G. House was entitled to prove he did not commit the crime for which he was sent to death row. On the same day, I received a letter from Centurion Ministries, which argued for more than a decade that a Virginia man named Roger K. Coleman had not committed the crime for which he was executed in 1992. The letter admitted that Centurion had been wrong.

These cases have something in common: they pivot on the question of innocence. For too many years now, though, death penalty opponents have seized on the nightmare of executing an innocent man as a tactic to erode support for capital punishment in America.

Innocence is a distraction. Most people on death row are like Roger Coleman, not Paul House, which is to say that most people on death row did what the state said they did. But that does not mean they should be executed.

Focusing on innocence forces abolitionists into silence when a cause célèbre turns out to be guilty. When the DNA testing ordered by Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia proved that Mr. Coleman was a murderer, and a good liar besides, abolitionists wrung their hands about how to respond. They seemed sorry that he had been guilty after all.

I, too, am a death penalty opponent, but I was happy to learn that Mr. Coleman was a murderer. I was happy that the prosecutors would not have to live with the guilt of knowing that they sent an innocent man to death row.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

We keep them alive far too long as it is. Mr. Dow made the point that humans are fallible, that's what the civil courts are for.

[Hegemony Cricket]

"Innocence is a distraction"

Apparently for Mr. Dow, logic and cause-and-effect is an illusion. From the article:

"...my client Johnny Joe Martinez was executed in 2002, because his court-appointed appellate lawyer neglected to file a proper appeal..."

Uh, nice try Mr. Dow. Your client was not executed because of some stupid paperwork screwup. Your client was executed because he was duly convicted by a jury of his peers under the laws of this country, and of his particular state, of crimes he committed, by which he knowingly forfeited his right to life.

[Ready4Freddy]

"Innocence is a distraction" is merely a summation of Scalia's statement that actual innocence isn't a bar to execution.

You conveniently left out the phrase at the beginning of the sentence regarding Dow's client - "As a result of this syllogism...".

Here's the real problem I see with capital punishment. My experience is that police & prosecutorial misconduct runs rampant, especially in DP cases, where 'win at all costs' is king:

...in 49 out of 50, there were appalling violations of legal principles: prosecutors struck jurors based on their race; the police hid or manufactured evidence; prosecutors reached secret deals with jailhouse snitches; lab analysts misrepresented forensic results.

[Hegemony Cricket]

I will not disagree with you about police and prosecutorial misconduct, however, eliminating a punishment solely because the system applying the punishment is imperfect, is folly.

I would agree that we need to address this issues of misconduct, but throwing out the baby with the bath is not the answer. The logical conclusion of your position is to never punish anyone, because there is always a risk of incorrectly applying punishment to an innocent. Is that what you really want?