|
|
News Commentary Archive from 2007
- Archive
of News Commentary
See all CADP News Commentary links
and excerpts from the years 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003
| 2004
| 2005 | 2006.
- About
Broken Links
- Veteran Police Officer Concludes "Death
Penalty is Inefficient and Extravagantly
Expensive"
Norm Stamper, a 35-year veteran
police officer from San Diego, recently
wrote in The Mercury News that from his
experience, "the death penalty is
inefficient and extravagantly expensive."
Instead of spending millions of dollars
on the death penalty, Stamper writes, "Spending
scarce public resources on after-school
programs, mental health care, drug and
alcohol treatment, education, more crime
labs and new technologies, or on hiring
more police officers, would truly help
create safer communities." (11/12/07, DPIC Update)
- Death Penalty Impact on Families
of the Condemned Examined
The piece also highlights the impact of
capital punishment on family members and
close friends of those facing execution.
It notes, "Lost in the shadows of
these central arguments is something that
defines us human beings: Taking care of
our own. Unseen, unheard family members
and close friends of those on death row
have committed no crime, have done no wrong,
yet they must suffer the sterilized and
calculated execution of their loved one.
When the state shuffles a mother's son
into the death chamber, her heart hurts
just the same as the loved ones of the
person her son murdered. She becomes another
in a long line of grieving human beings
- victimized by a system unintentionally
designed to spread a wide net of emotional
pain."
(11/12/07, DPIC Update)
- Experts Explain Why the Death Penalty
Does Not Deter Murder
Following the release of a new study published
in the Journal of Adolescent Health concerning
the failure of deterrence in drug use, medical
experts commented that deterrence also fails
in the area of capital punishment. "It
is very clear that deterrents are not effective
in the area of capital punishment," said
Dr. Jonathan Groner, an associate professor
of surgery at Ohio State University College
of Medicine and Public Health who researches
the deterrent effect of capital punishment. "The
psychological mind-set of the criminal is
such that they are not able to consider consequences
at the time of the crime. Most crimes are
crimes of passion that are done in situations
involving intense excitement or concern.
People who commit these crimes are not in
a normal state of mind -- they do not consider
the consequences in a logical way," Groner
observed. Deterrents may work in instances
where the punishment is obvious and immediate,
neither of which are true for the death penalty.
(10/29/07, DPIC Update)
- Death
Penalty vs. Humanity
In the days since the Supreme Court decided
to take on another death penalty case,
11 states - including Texas, the
capital of capital punishment - have
suspended executions. In two more states,
inmates slated for death next week may
be granted a reprieve. Even the Europeans
who led Wednesday's World Day Against the
Death Penalty must have missed having their
favorite international target.
But there isn't much hoopla among death
penalty opponents or much anger among proponents.
The case that
will be heard this session isn't about the
morality or constitutionality of the death
penalty itself. It's about the way execution
is executed. The case brought by two death
row inmates in Kentucky doesn't ask whether
the death penalty constitutes "cruel
and unusual punishment," but only whether
lethal injection is cruel and unusual. The
justices will be asked to rule on the method,
not on the madness. ... But as the Supreme
Court takes up this issue again, I remember
what Justice Harry Blackmun said after a
20-year struggle about just ways to administer
the death penalty: "From this day forward,
I no longer shall tinker with the machinery
of death." We are still tinkering. This
time, we're tinkering with the dosage and
the training. Tinkering with competence and
mistakes. We are tinkering, tinkering, tinkering
to avoid the possibility that we can't have
our death penalty and our humanity too. (10/15/07,
The Camera. News commentary by Ellen Goodman.)
- Brother and Sister Fight for Life
Troy Anthony Davis and his sister, Martina
Correia, are fighting for their lives.
Troy faces death by lethal injection at
the hands of the state of Georgia, and
Martina has breast cancer. Their parallel
battles against insuperable odds will remain
an inspiring story - provided they
live. Time is running out. ... While Martina
battles for her brother's life, she is
fighting for her own: "I've been
battling metastatic breast cancer for
six and a half years. In 2001, I was
told that I had six months to live, and
I asked God to just give me the strength
to see my son grow up and watch my brother
Troy walk free. And I've dedicated my
life - even though I have not worked
in almost seven years due to constant
chemotherapy and treatment, I volunteer
in my community, and I work and do human-rights
work to not only help Troy, but to help
other people who are facing the same
situation. So my battle is more than
just for Troy. My battle is for everyone
to fight injustice." Davis' case
is a textbook example of the racial disparity
in the U.S., principally the Deep South,
in the imposition of the death penalty.
The American Bar Association has singled
out Georgia's racial disparities in capital-offense
sentencing, allowing inadequate defense
counsel, and being "virtually alone
in not providing indigent defendants sentenced
to death with counsel for state habeas
proceedings." (10/14/07,
The Camera. News commentary by Amy Goodman.)
- The
Death Boys, Bush and Gonzales
George
W. Bush, as governor of Texas, and Alberto
Gonzales, as his then legal counsel, never
met an execution they didn't like. They
even were reported to have shared a chuckle
about one woman's death.
It is good news, then, for the mortuary business
that, thanks to the hurried, ill-examined
reauthorization of the Patriot Act last year,
as urged by Bush, Gonzales is now in a position
to rush executions along just on his personal
say-so. The death boys are together again,
a sort of dark Superman and Superboy for
the morbid. A provision in the rejiggered
Patriot Act authorizes Gonzales, as attorney
general, to review state systems for providing
legal representation to capital defendants.
(8/26/07, The Daily Camera. News commentary
by Tom Teepen.) - Uneven
Justice: State Rates of Incarceration
by Race and Ethnicity
Examines the racial and ethnic dynamics
of incarceration in the U.S. with tables
by state and by race. The report notes
that African Americans are incarcerated
at nearly 6 times the rate of whites
and Hispanics are incarcerated at nearly
double the rate of whites. One in nine
(11.7%) African American males between
the ages of 25 and 29 is currently incarcerated
in a prison or jail. ... "Racial
disparities in incarceration reflect
a failure of social and economic interventions
to address crime effectively and also
indicate racial bias in the justice system." (7/23/07, DPIC Update)
- Scientific
American on the Death Penalty: "Bad
Execution"
The July 2007 issue
of Scientific American magazine contains
both an article discussing the medical
implications of lethal injection and
an editorial discussing the humaneness
of capital punishment generally. The
editorial suggests that capital punishment "can
never be anything but inhumane," and
offers the opinion that it is "wrong" and
an "outrage." But it further
states that even those who believe the
death penalty is acceptable, should agree
that it not be carried out cruelly. The
editorial calls for a renewal of public
discussion of the death penalty in all "its
distasteful details." (7/2/07, DPIC Update)
- Chicago Tribune Changes Position and
Calls for Abolition
Little has been done to guard against situations
in which witnesses to a murder mistakenly
identify an innocent person as the suspect,
the single greatest source of wrongful convictions.
No mechanism exists in Illinois to review
what went wrong in cases of wrongful convictions,
or to ensure that the death penalty is evenly
applied across geographic boundaries. Efforts
to address mistakes or bad actors at forensic
labs have gone nowhere. We don't see the
prospect that there are better fixes for
these gaps. Meanwhile, the list of crimes
eligible for the death penalty has been expanded.
... The evidence of mistakes, the evidence
of arbitrary decisions, the sobering knowledge
that government can't provide certainty that
the innocent will not be put to death--all
that prompts this call for an end to capital
punishment. It is time to stop killing in
the people's name. (5/7/07, DPIC Update.
Editorial by The Chicago Tribune.)
- Alberto Gonzales: Bush's Loyal, Incurious
Attorney General
Dead men tell no tales. But
if they did, the ones they would tell about
Alberto Gonzales would by now be familiar:
an expert in giving his boss, George W.
Bush, precisely what he wanted. The dead
men in this case are the ones who were
executed while Bush was governor of Texas
and Gonzales was his legal counsel. Sometimes,
as often seems true with Gonzales, the
details eluded him. Clearly, those details
could have made the difference between life
and death - or,
given the realities of the Texas system,
death and a remote chance of a reprieve.
But since Bush was not likely to temporarily
block any execution or even to raise his
voice in mild objection to a particularly
heinous railroading, Gonzales kept his
death penalty memos short and to the point.
Almost always, the point was that the execution
should proceed. (4/11/07, Camera. News commentary
by Richard Cohen.)
- Nix the CO Death Penalty: Spend State
Funds on Unsolved Murders
On Colorado's
scales of justice, which weighs more heavily?
Pursuing the death penalty, in some cases
for decades, for a handful of convicted
murderers? Or attempting to bring to justice
the perpetrators of some 1,200 unsolved
homicides? A bill making its way through
the state Legislature attempts to answer
that question. Rep. Paul Weissmann, D-Louisville,
is sponsoring the bill. It proposes abolishing
the state's death penalty and using most
of the savings - estimated at about $750,000
a year - to help the Colorado Bureau of
Investigation solve those cold cases, about
40 of which occurred in Boulder County.
... Spending many thousands of dollars
on a ponderous and ineffective system of
capital punishment makes little sense when
hundreds of murderers may be walking the
streets. Apprehending even a small percentage
of them would ease the grief of dozens
of families. Let's make it so. (3/12/07,
Editorial by the Camera)
- PBS
Airing "Race to Execution" March
27
The documentary film Race
To Execution by Rachel Lyon will
air nationally on the Emmy Award-winning
PBS series Independent Lens on Tuesday,
March 27, 2007 at 10 p.m. Race to Execution
offers a compelling and original investigation
of America's death penalty, probing
how race discrimination infects the
capital punishment system. The film
reveals the potential biases in the
racial portrayal of victims and perpetrators
in the media, particularly where potential
jurors internalize these stereotypes
and bring them into the courtroom.
(3/12/07, DPIC Update)
- A
Mythical Penalty: Abolition of CO Death
Sentence Would Only Recognize Reality
For
all practical purposes, the death penalty
already has been abolished here. In the
past 40 years, since 1967, there has been
exactly one execution, and that was 10
years ago. In other words, it would hardly
be a big deal to abolish the death penalty
in statute. It would merely recognize that
for all practical purposes the penalty
no longer exists in any meaningful sense
at all. ... It's time to abolish the death
penalty in statute since its unofficial
demise occurred many years ago. Unfortunately,
HB 1094, which passed out of the Judiciary
Committee last week, oddly links the end
of the death penalty to creation of a "cold
case unit" in
the Colorado bureau of investigation. Those
two propositions should be handled separately.
If that can still be done, lawmakers should
end the waste, frustration and pretense
of the present law and give the death penalty
its permanent burial. (2/13/07, Editorial
by the Rocky Mountain News)
- Saddam Hangs, So Why Am I Not Smiling?
Although
I oppose the death penalty, I toyed for
many years with the notion that all executions
should be televised. The video of Saddam
Hussein's hanging that has popped up on
various Internet sights has disabused me
of that notion. Too many viewers appear
to be enjoying it too much. ... Unfortunately,
the video also gives the unsavory impression
of a sectarian lynch mob, which is not
the form of justice with which Americans
should want to be associated. (1/5/07,
Camera. News commentary by Clarence
Page.)
- Vatican
Daily Denounces Saddam Images as "Spectacle"
The
Vatican's official newspaper on Tuesday
decried media images of Saddam Hussein's
hanging as a "spectacle" violating
human rights and harming efforts to promote
reconciliation in Iraq. The Vatican,
which opposes the death penalty, was
among the first voices abroad to denounce
Saddam's execution Saturday, saying then
that it was "tragic news," even
in the case of someone guilty of grave
crimes, and expressing worry that it
could fuel revenge and fresh violence.
... The execution "represented,
for the ways in which it happened and
for the media attention it received,
another example of the violation of the
most basic rights of man." (1/2/07,
ABC News)
- Saddam
Hussein's Execution Will Do Little
for Iraq
There was no doubt, of
course, that Saddam deserved severe
punishment. But his swift execution
may ultimately prove counterproductive
and, dare we say it, unjust. His trial
was a sham; his lawyers kept getting
assassinated, and his 15-minute "appeal" of
his death sentence was a joke. ... Besides,
this page does not support the death
penalty for anyone, no matter how heinous
their crimes. Studies in the United States
have demonstrated that the much ballyhooed "closure" allegedly
brought about by execution is mostly
fictitious. And, as the bumper sticker
says, killing someone to demonstrate
that killing is wrong is a barbaric,
Kafka-esque absurdity. Saddam's execution
may even amplify the violence. (1/2/07,
Editorial by the Camera)
News | National
News | World News
|
|
|
|
|