[Deathpenalty]death penalty news --- USA

[Joerg Sommer]

death penalty news

July 30, 2004


USA:

It's time to re-examine the death penalty

Earlier this month, 48 nations and a host of religious groups and other 
organizations filed briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to abolish 
the execution of minors in this country.

Those filing included former President Jimmy Carter, former Soviet 
President Mikhail Gorbachev, the American Bar Association, the American 
Medical Association, countries from the European Union, and Canada and Mexico.

As the Supreme Court ponders whether or not the U.S. will continue to allow 
those under 18 to be subjected to the death sentence, perhaps it should 
consider whether or not the criminal-justice system is flawless enough to 
support the death penalty at all.

In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled in Furman vs. Georgia that capital 
punishment as it was administered by the states was "cruel and unusual 
punishment" and therefore violated the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. 
Constitution. The decision was based on findings that the death sentence 
was disproportionately imposed on minorities and the poor; it resulted in 
the commutation of the death sentences — from death to life with the 
possibility of parole — for the more than 600 people on death row in 38 
states around the country.

Among these inmates was a man named David Keaton. He was sentenced to death 
in Florida in July of 1971, after he was convicted of killing a police 
officer during an armed robbery, based on a coerced confession. In 1974, he 
was exonerated. He was released from prison in 1979. Keaton has never fully 
recovered emotionally and psychologically from the experience. Had his 
sentence not been commuted under Furman, he may have been executed as an 
innocent man.

The Supreme Court, however, left the door open for states to reform their 
death-penalty statutes to make them fairer and less discriminatory, and, in 
1976, the court allowed the states to resume capital punishment.

But has the system really been reformed?

Last year, Illinois Gov. George Ryan decided to grant clemency to all 167 
death-row inmates in his state after holding exhaustive clemency hearings 
prompted by the discovery that 13 inmates on death row were in fact 
innocent. Ryan, a conservative Republican who had long been a staunch 
supporter of the death penalty, was so disturbed by the uneven way in which 
capital-punishment cases were being handled that he could no longer allow 
the practice to continue in good conscience.

As Ryan explained, "We now have 13 death-row inmates exonerated. That means 
that we have more people exonerated from death row than the 12 we executed 
out of 25. It's like flipping a coin, heads or tails. Live or die. Can you 
believe that?"

It would be naïve to think that Illinois is the only state in the union 
that was capable of putting an innocent person to death, and that the 
problems Ryan encountered were absolutely unique and isolated aberrations.

In Washington state, Benjamin Harris was sentenced to death in 1984 for the 
alleged murder of an auto mechanic. In 1994, U.S. District Court Judge 
Robert Bryan ruled that his case had been handled so incompetently over the 
years (he was misadvised by his original attorney to confess to the murder 
in order to avoid the death penalty, among other things) that he had 
serious questions about Harris' guilt, and ordered that Harris be retried.

During those 10 years of appeals, Harris came close to being executed on 
several occasions. Had one of his subsequent lawyers been as incompetent as 
his first, or an appellate judge not quite as attentive, Washington could 
have executed an innocent man. While the system did eventually prevent this 
from happening, it is chilling and unjust that Harris was ever in the 
position to be racing against the clock to save his own life because he was 
appointed a lawyer who didn't spend enough time to properly defend him.

Discovering the innocence of any person who has had to live under the 
ominous shadow of execution is an alarming indication that there are still 
rampant problems with the machinery through which the death penalty is 
administered.

Ryan, the former Illinois governor, is currently encouraging all governors 
to impose moratoriums on the death penalty in their states until these 
problems are truly resolved beyond any doubt. They would be wise to heed 
his call.

[The author, Kirsten Johnson, is a documentary filmmaker originally from 
the Seattle area whose most recent film, co-directed with Katy Chevigny, is 
"Deadline," a documentary about capital punishment in the U.S. It will air 
in a special two-hour presentation of "Dateline" on NBC tonight.]

(source: Column, Seattle Times)