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News Commentary Archive from 2001
- Archive of News Commentary
See all CADP News Commentary links and excerpts from the years 2000 | 2002.
- About Broken Links
- Confessions of an Abolitionist
An Interview with Don Cabana, Former Warden, Abolitionist, Professor and Author of Death at Midnight: The Confessions of an Executioner.
- DNA: Another DNA Exoneration
The case illustrates the noxious effects the death penalty is capable of producing -- particularly when combined with police misconduct -- even in situations where capital punishment is not ultimately sought. The mother of the victim responded to the case by urging abolition of the death penalty "so that it can no longer be used as a threat to coerce confessions from the innocent." (1/24/01, Editorial by The Washington Post.)
- Executions Are Not for Prime Time
"Have you had any sleep?" That's the question reporters who have witnessed executions asked me after I witnessed the lethal injection of double- killer Robert Lee Massie in March. The fact is, I didn't sleep much for days. ... Death should never be trivial. (4/29/01, San Francisco Chronicle. News commentary by Debra J. Saunders.) - Executions Wanted
State lawmakers are calling once again for reform of the system they put in place six years ago to determine which convicted murderers will live and which will die. And once again, they're acting for the wrong reason -- because some of them want to see more killers executed in Colorado. (3/13/01, Editorial by The Daily Camera)
- Ghost of Karla Faye Still Hovers Over Death Chamber
"What I want to know and what Karla Faye wanted to know," said Dana Brown, the widower of Karla Faye Tucker, who in 1998 became the first woman in Texas to be executed in 134 years, "is where do you draw the line on mercy?" ... For President George W. Bush and conservative, evangelical Christians, Karla Faye Tucker, a murderer who had a jailhouse conversion 14 years before she was executed, continues to be the ghost that haunts the debate over the death penalty. (5/19/01, San Antonio Express-News. News commentary by Jan Jarboe Russell.)
- Is the Death Penalty What "God wants"?
The American people are starting to understand. The polls show a certain slippage in support for the death penalty. Most people -- 68 percent in a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll -- believe innocent people are sometimes executed, and nearly as many (63 percent) were troubled by the death penalty's uneven application from state to state. What's more, most people no longer believe the death penalty is a deterrent. (5/18/01, The Daily Camera. News commentary by Richard Cohen.)
- Issues in Mental Retardation Case Outweigh McVeigh
It is too bad the death-penalty case with more weight -- a case just accepted for hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court -- will not get the all-night talking-heads talking. This is the matter of Ernest P. McCarver, a North Carolina convict whose attorneys put his IQ at 67. The high court accepted McCarver's appeal so it can reconsider whether executing the mentally retarded is "cruel and unusual" punishment barred by the Constitution. (4/19/01, Newsday. News commentary by Marie Cocco.)
- Lying Prosecutor Eroded Legal System's Credibility
The man lied. He greatly abused his position of public trust and now wants us to applaud him. Yet he's done more damage than he, or his bosses -- who applaud him, too -- know. How dare they? (3/14/01, Rocky Mountain News. News commentary by Bill Johnson.)
- McVeigh, Timothy: Death Debate Continues
In our view, nothing mitigates the fundamental barbarity of the death sentence. Although lethal injection is touted as a more humane method of execution, we suspect this is intended more as a salve for the public's conscience than an act of mercy for the condemned. There are substantial questions about how painless the procedure really is. If anything good can come from this execution, perhaps it will be a renewed debate about whether we should continue to impose the ultimate sanction or choose a more humane option -- one beyond the comprehension of a killer like Timothy McVeigh. (6/12/01, Editorial by The Denver Post)
McVeigh, Timothy
News stories and commentary about Timothy McVeigh, the first person to die by federal government execution in 37 years.
- One Fatal Mistake Not Made
If you read about Earl Washington Jr., the Virginia man freed this week after serving 17 years in prison, much of it on death row, for a rape and murder he did not commit, you will come across some version of the phrase "exonerated by DNA testing." This is not the full story. What's missing is the phrase "almost murdered by the police." (2/21/01, The Daily Camera. News commentary by Richard Cohen.)
- Page, Donta: The Politics of Death
It would seem the Senators have forgotten that the three-judge panel they're out to ax was actually put in place in 1995 to prevent death penalty decisions from being influenced by such things as poorly-informed, rhetoric-spouting politicians-politicians like Chlouber and Hernandez. (3/15/01, Boulder Weekly. News Commentary by Joel Dyer.)
Page, Donta: One Size Justice Not A Good Fit for All
Our state legislators want more death penalties. In order to get more, they took the decision from juries and gave it to a panel of judges. Now, in light of the Page decision, some want to give it to one judge. The problem with death-penalty cases is that those in the courtroom don't see only a killer. They see a real person. In Page's case, it was a real person who had been abused all his life. The question was whether death was the only answer to that life. (3/13/01, Rocky Mountain News. News commentary by Mike Littwin.)
Page, Donta: I Never Condoned What Murderer Did
But the application of the death penalty is so arbitrary, so capricious in this state it is virtually meaningless. And I found particularly noteworthy that no one who called or wrote in disgust over the Page column ever mentioned the word "deterrent" to justify the death penalty. It isn't one. (3/11/01, Rocky Mountain News. News commentary by Bill Johnson.)
Page, Donta: Killing Killers May Feel Good, But Darn It, It's Not Right
A state killing of Donta Page, in my view, will let off the hook far too many people, most of whom now seek to hide their complicity in the words justice done for Peyton Tuthill. (2/28/01, Rocky Mountain News. News commentary by Bill Johnson.)
Page, Donta
Additional news stories and commentary about convicted killer Donta Page.
- Perspective Against Capital Punishment by the Mother of a Murder Victim
- Reforms Won't Make the Death Penalty Acceptable
Now here's a nice puzzlement for those of us who oppose the death penalty on both moral and practical grounds. Morally, because executions validate fatal violence as a legitimate problem-solver and put the state -- that is, you and me -- into the business of killing needlessly and for the insupportable pleasures of vengeance. Practically, because no human institution is infallible, certainly not an emotionally charged criminal justice system, and we can never be sure we are executing rightly. There is no margin for error -- death is not reversible -- and error is inevitable. (6/29/01, Cox News Service. News commentary by Tom Teepen.)
- Supreme Court Justice O'Connor's Doubts Are a Start
Just by noting that "serious questions are being raised about whether the death penalty is being fairly administered," Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor signaled how the questions might be answered. As she told a Minneapolis, Minn., meeting of women lawyers, "The system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed." Those statistics show that 90 people have been released from death row since 1973, she said. Her speech, unfortunately, won't halt capital punishment. But it might prove to be one of the most important events in the effort to reform, if not abolish, the death penalty since Illinois Gov. George Ryan imposed a state moratorium 18 months ago. (7/9/01, Los Angeles Times. News commentary by Joe Davidson.)
- Supreme Court Justice's Doubts
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has cast the swing vote on a long list of hot-button issues before the U.S. Supreme Court in recent years. That includes capital punishment, which she has steadfastly supported. Her record and her position give great weight to a speech this week in which she expressed "serious questions" about whether the death penalty is fairly administered in this country. Her new hesitancy, though she was expressing a personal opinion, may also signal a welcome shift on the court. (7/5/01, Editorial by the Los Angeles Times)
- Televised Execution on Horizon
If we're going to have a law that gives government the power to end a human life, shouldn't the public be able to see that law carried out? (4/22/01, The Denver Post. News commentary by Joanne Ostrow.)
- Texas Travesty
The state of Texas is planning to execute Napoleon Beazley on Aug. 15 for a murder he committed when he was 17 years old. ... This is the kind of ugliness that is business-as-usual in Texas. The state should not be executing anyone who was a minor at the time the offense occurred. (Nearly all the nations of the world and most states in the United States have ended this foul practice. But not Texas.) (8/2/01, The Moratorium Campaign. News commentary by Bob Herbert.)
- Watch Bush's Words on Death Penalty
My guess is that within a very few weeks we will learn that George W. Bush is an opponent of the death penalty. Mind you, he won't just come right out and say it. Words will sneak out of his mouth from time to time informing us of his change of heart and, my guess is, it will all be because of the subtle effect of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. (8/4/01, The Daily Camera. News commentary by Christopher Brauchli.)
- WHO OWNS DEATH? Capital Punishment, The American Conscience and the End of Executions
While the execution rate has soared in the past decade, opposition to state killing has intensified dramatically. In this remarkable book, Lifton and Mitchell have drawn two surprising conclusions that challenge conventional thinking: most Americans, they argue, do not strongly support executions; and the days of the death penalty in America are now numbered. (Book by Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell)
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