Posted on 07/01/2002 9:04:54 AM PDT by Dog Gone
NEW YORK (AP) -- A judge declared the federal death penalty unconstitutional Monday, saying too many innocent people have been sentenced to death.
U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff issued a 28-page ruling reaffirming his earlier opinion that the death penalty act violated the due process rights of defendants.
The federal government was expected to appeal the ruling, which would not affect individual states' death penalty statutes.
The court found that the best available evidence indicates that, ``on the one hand, innocent people are sentenced to death with materially greater frequency than was previously supposed and that, on the other hand, convincing proof of their innocence often does not emerge until long after their convictions.''
Rakoff had indicated in April that he was considering declaring the federal death penalty unconstitutional and gave prosecutors one last chance to persuade him otherwise before he ruled on a pre-trial defense motion to find the statute unconstitutional.
In papers filed May 16, U.S. Attorney James B. Comey urged Rakoff to resist ruling on the issue at all until after a Sept. 2 drug conspiracy murder trial.
Prosecutors noted that the Supreme Court had already concluded that the due process safeguards of the Constitution do not guarantee perfect or infallible outcomes.
They also challenged the judge's conclusion that studies had shown numerous innocent individuals were being sentenced to death, saying the studies all involved state courts.
In 14 years that the federal death penalty has been in place, none of the 31 defendants sentenced to death have later been found to be innocent, the government said.
In the case before the judge, Alan Quinones and Diego Rodriguez, alleged partners in a Bronx-based heroin selling operation, are accused of hogtying, torturing and killing an informant, Edwin Santiago, on June 27, 1999.
If it would help you hold your water, we could just adjudicate it as treason--after all, setting off a 5,000-pound explosive charge outside a Federal building IS making war against the United States.
But, what if I agreed with you here. Would you then agree that the State could not be able to prosecute for murder if it involved a federal officer?
If the feds opted to prosecute, then the state would be excluded due to double jeopardy. If the Feds, for whatever reason, opt to NOT prosecute, then the state may do so.
It's not like the are found guilty and trotted out the door and hung - they have appeal after appeal. From the dawn of time I'm sure that somewhere innocents have been executed. But the number of innocent victims is vastly greater than all them.
Of course, the mouth-breathing and Oprah-watching segment of the public that always gets picked for juries will never vote to convict Clinton.
No, the State has the Constitutionally provided jurisdiction, its the feds usurptation of power that creates a double jeopardly scenario. That's standing law on its head to say that "States" could/should be excluded due to double jeopardy. What you are supporting is the creation of new laws that gives a new entity jurisdiction, when all such crimes that the new laws would cover are already crimes under appropriare jurisdictions. The feds having the power to punish the same crimes as the States creates double jeopardy. Period. Although the writers of the Constitution made some errors, they knew exactly what they were doing when they spelled out what crimes the feds had jurisidction over - and mured isn't one of them(for very good reasons).
Bad news, double jeopardy doesn't apply between state and federal courts. Florida has been running drug cases through the courts that way for years. They try the cause in state court and if they fail, then they let the feds have a crack at it, and you get to defend yourself all over again.
If you read the specifications carefully, they are different crimes.
Ah, now I know why the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional. A judge thought too many people were reciting it.
"I don't like it, so it's unconstitutional!"
No they are not. Stop acting like "jurisdiction" defines a crime. In fact, crimes have to have a victim who is an individual, so I reject that under either jurisdiction its(drug cases) a crime. Jeez, you just keep making my entire point about the mess that's been created since the federal government usurped the States explicit power to punish crimes.
We would not even be having this conversation if the Feds would stay within their Constitutionally prescribed boundaries.
You point out exactly what any reasonable person knows that the writers of the Constitution envisioned if the Feds had been given the power to punish the same crimes as the States.
Even if EVERY SINGLE ONE of them were in fact innocent, this is dwarfed exponentially by the number of parolees who have murdered victims who would otherwise have been safe.
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