EDITORIAL Damning evidence supports deep judicial
reform
The new national study showing that
nearly 70 percent of murder convictions leading to the death penalty were
overturned on appeal is one of the more damning pieces of evidence pointing out
the need for deep judicial reform.
Convincing arguments against the death penalty are made from moral
and religious perspectives and on the basis of humanitarian concern. Such
arguments, dependent on belief systems and opinion, are immeasurably bolstered
every time another study shows that the death penalty is disproportionately
administered to people of color, to those who are poor and to those who receive
inadequate or incompetent legal counsel.
This latest study by James S. Liebman and a team of lawyers and
criminologists at Columbia University was touted as the most extensive look yet
at the death penalty in the United States. It examined appeals in all death
penalty cases from 1973, the year the Supreme Court reinstated capital
punishment, to 1995. The study found that during that period 75 percent of
those whose sentences were set aside received less severe sentences after
retrial. Many of those, in turn, had their convictions overturned again in the
appeals process.
We can thank Pope John Paul II and many of the American bishops
for keeping the death penalty before the public as a compelling issue. Most of
the public -- 66 percent, according to one recent poll, though that number is
down from recent years -- support the death penalty. The bishops are bucking
national sentiment, but they make a strong case, linking their concern for the
lives of the accused and convicted to concern for life along the rest of the
spectrum -- victims of crime, those perceived to be foreign enemies, the
poorest of the poor and life in the womb. It is a consistent ethic that cuts
across ideological and partisan lines.
Because of the nature of the punishment, the rate of error in
capital cases is frightening. It is bad enough that states in this country are
increasingly playing the role of executioner while much of the rest of the
world is abandoning the practice as unnecessarily brutal and uncivilized; how
much worse if our justice system is executing innocent people.
Reason, however, can leach out of the argument rather quickly. Ari
Fleischer, a spokesman for Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the presumptive
Republican presidential candidate, was unfazed by the report. It was, he said,
proof that there is an extra level of vigilance and caution in death
penalty cases.
Commenting on the finding that 75 percent of those whose sentences
were set aside on appeal were later given lesser sentences and that 7 percent
were found not guilty, Fleischer told The New York Times, This
shows that 93 percent were still found guilty of a crime. Its
not an error about their innocence. Its just a question of the
appropriate punishment.
Perhaps thats the outlook one must have in a state that has
executed far more than any other -- 218 people since 1976 -- many under
suspicious circumstances and with the aid of notoriously incompetent
lawyers.
The study should have the effect of shocking the political and
judicial systems into taking new measures to protect the innocent and to
diminish use of the death penalty.
Unfortunately, the political direction in recent years has
accomplished just the opposite. Congress and President Clinton have
dramatically cut the time inmates have to appeal to federal courts, cut back
the number of appeals allowed and shortened the process leading to
execution.
At the same time, the study showed, convictions were being
overturned as a result of incompetent defense, prosecutorial errors, police
misconduct, bias on the part of judge or jury and faulty instructions by judges
to juries.
Clinton and others might find the get-tough rhetoric politically
expedient, but diminishing the rights of inmates on death row only exacerbates
the glaring inadequacies of the justice system. Getting rid of the death
penalty would be a logical first step toward cleaning up the mess.
National Catholic Reporter, June 30,
2000
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