[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 2



TEXAS:

Is the death penalty about to die?----Millions of dollars wasted on capital 
punishment in Texas.


In 2003 there were 28 death sentences handed down in Texas, and last year, only 
eight. Harris County, which accounts for more than 100 of the 314 people on 
death row, saw no new death sentences in 2008 or 2009 and only two in 2010. 
Bexar County has seen only three death sentences since 2007.

It looks like Texas is having second thoughts about death sentences, and 
executions.

In 2010, Texas carried out 17 lethal injections, the fewest since 2001. Texas 
isn’t about to abolish the death penalty, but it may be starting to move away 
from its infamous grip on the death penalty.

There are 3 factors afoot:

There is mounting concern about the execution of innocent people. No one wants 
to see an innocent person executed. With 12 individuals exonerated and freed 
from Texas’ death row since 1987, we know the system isn’t faultless.

Has Texas actually executed an innocent person? No one knows for certain, but 
death penalty scholars point to 3 executed prisoners who had credible claims of 
innocence: Cameron Todd Willingham, Ruben Cantu, and Carlos De Luna.

The Texas Forensic Science Commission’s April 15 report did not address 
Willingham’s actual guilt or innocence in the Corsicana house fire that killed 
his 3 daughters. However, 9 fire experts who reviewed his case concluded there 
was no evidence of arson.

Investigative reporting by the Chicago Tribune on the De Luna case and by the 
Express-News and Houston Chronicle in 2006 on Cantu threw considerable doubt on 
the actual guilt of both men. It is immoral to have executed an innocent one.

The financial costs of the death penalty are staggering. Fiscal conservatives 
question whether it is worth the price. The cost of a capital trial, the 
appeals process, time on death row and the execution itself cost an estimated 
$2.3 million in 1992, according to the Dallas Morning News. In today’s dollars, 
that would be more than $3.6 million.

In short, millions of dollars are wasted on a capital sentencing system in 
Texas. The money could be much better spent on improving policing functions, 
expanding restitution programs and developing more drug treatment programs — 
all of which would do far more to enhance public safety than having a death 
penalty.

Finally, there is an alternative to the death penalty — a sentencing option 
that Texas lawmakers adopted in 2005: life without parole. In 2010, Texas 
juries handed down three life-without-parole sentences in capital cases. The 
point is, juries don’t have to hand out death sentences.

Texas may be the death penalty capital of the United States, but, even here, 
the tide may be starting to turn.

(source: Roger C. Barnes chairs the Department of Sociology and Criminal 
Justice at the University of the Incarnate Word;

GEORGIA:

Troy Davis Mourned as a Martyr by 1,000 in Ga.


Sent to death row 20 years ago as a convicted cop killer, Troy Davis was 
celebrated as "martyr and foot soldier" Saturday by more than 1,000 people who 
packed the pews at his funeral and pledged to keep fighting the death penalty.

Family, activists and supporters who spent years trying to persuade judges and 
Georgia prison officials that Davis was innocent were unable to prevent his 
execution Sept. 21. But the crowd that filled Savannah's Jonesville Baptist 
Church on Saturday seemed less interested in pausing in remorse than showing a 
resolve to capitalize on the worldwide attention Davis' case brought to capital 
punishment in the U.S.

Benjamin Todd Jealous, national president of the NAACP, brought the crowd to 
its feet in a chant of "I am Troy Davis" — the slogan supporters used to paint 
Davis as an everyman forced to face the executioner by a faulty justice system. 
Jealous noted that Davis professed his innocence even in his final words.

"Troy's last words that night were he told us to keep fighting until his name 
is cleared in Georgia," Jealous said. "But most important, keep fighting until 
the death penalty is abolished and this can never be done to anyone else."

After 4 years of extraordinary appeals, every court that examined Davis' case 
ultimately upheld his conviction and death sentence for the 1989 slaying of 
Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail, who was shot twice while trying to help 
a homeless man being attacked outside a bus station. MacPhail's family and 
prosecutors say they're still confident Davis was guilty.

Regardless, questions raised by Davis and his lawyers garnered support from 
thousands worldwide, including dignitaries such as former President Jimmy 
Carter and Pope Benedict XVI. The night Davis was executed, protests were held 
from Georgia to Washington, from Paris to Ghana.

During a call-and-response litany at the funeral, the congregation chanted in 
unison: "We pray to the Lord for our souls and the soul of Troy Davis, martyr 
and foot soldier."

"He transformed a prison sentence into a pulpit," the Rev. Raphael Warnock, 
pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, said in his eulogy Saturday. "He 
turned death row into a sanctuary."

Other than expressions of outrage at Davis' execution, there was little doom 
and gloom at his funeral. Warnock's congregation at Ebenezer, the church where 
Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, helped raise money for the 3 ½ hour 
service, which carried more than a hint of celebrity sheen.

Davis' closed casket was piled with a spray of blue and white flowers — a color 
scheme decoded by a close friend who mentioned his love of the Dallas Cowboys. 
Attendees each got a glossy, 22-page program filled with a scrapbook's worth of 
photos, many of Davis in his white prison garb posing with family members 
during weekend visits.

A song by the Billboard-charting gospel singer Dietrick Haddon got the crowd so 
excited that ushers walked the aisles stopping people from taking video and 
photos with their cell phones.

And the comedian and activist Dick Gregory, who joined the others in an 
impassioned call to end the death penalty, first brought people to their feet 
in laughter.

Gregory said he needed to apologize to Davis' family after the way he handled a 
recent phone call from a bill collector. "He said, 'Are you Dick Gregory?' And 
I said, 'I am Troy Davis!'"

Davis' nephew, 17-year-old DeJaun Davis-Correia, was the only family member to 
speak during the service.

He recalled Davis, the uncle who had been in prison his entire life, spending 
long hours with him on the phone helping with homework, particularly math. 
Davis-Correia, whose mother is Davis' older sister, said the family always knew 
when he had tests in school because Davis wrote them all down on his calendar, 
the same calendar he filled with the birthdays of all his friends and 
supporters. And he said his uncle would have wanted a note of celebration at 
his funeral.

"You really shouldn't be sad all the time, you should be happy and be 
positive," Davis-Correia said. "That's the attitude my uncle instilled in me."

Amnesty International, which worked for years to exonerate Davis, urged its 
supporters worldwide to remember him Saturday by wearing black armbands and "I 
am Troy Davis."

The advocacy group's U.S. director, Larry Cox, spoke from the dais behind 
Davis' casket Saturday urging those who fought to spare his life not to give up 
until America ends its use of the death penalty.

"If you thought you saw us fighting to save Troy Davis, now that we've been 
inspired by Troy Davis, you ain't seen nothing yet," Cox said.

(source: ABC News)

******************************

'Usual' anti-death penalty claims given


Editorial Director David Hampton in his ongoing crusade against the death 
penalty recently told us that "seven of nine eye witnesses" against convicted 
killer Troy Davis had recanted ("Events call to rethink the death penalty," 
Sept. 25). The implication being that there were only nine. Actually, there 
were some 34 witnesses for the prosecution at Davis' trial and the seven were 
all reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court!

Mr. Hampton gave us all his usual arguments against the death penalty; it's 
arbitrary, it costs more, mistakes are made, it's not a deterrent, it's 
immoral. While guarantees are impossible to us in this life, the rule of law 
and the jury system have combined to serve us very well since about the 12th 
century.

As for deterrence, never in the history of mankind has a single executed 
murderer ever gone on to kill again. It is moral because it gives support to 
the victims!

The only thing flawed about justice in this case is that it took 22 years!

Noel Funchess----Cleveland

(source: Letter to the Editor, Jackson Clarion-Ledger)






USA:

Davis execution renews death penalty debate


When Troy Davis was executed in Georgia last month for the 1989 murder of 
police officer Mark MacPhail, opponents of capital punishment nevertheless took 
solace in hoping that the death penalty was on its way to being abolished.

After all, Davis had more going for him than almost any of the 1,270 U.S. 
prisoners put to death since 1976. About 650,000 Americans had signed petitions 
opposing his execution. Those pleading for his life included Pope Benedict XVI, 
ex-president Jimmy Carter and former FBI director William Sessions.

7 of the original 7 eye-witnesses had recanted their testimony. Thus, the 
possibility remained that Davis was innocent. But likely, we will never know. 
Once a suspect has been executed, the justice system does not encourage further 
investigation.

Some of those who favored the execution say they did so on the premise that the 
death of Davis will bring closure to the family of Officer MacPhail.

But Jeanne Woodford doubts that assessment. As former warden of San Quentin 
State Prison, she became so distressed by a lifetime of helping administer the 
death penalty that on May 12 she took on a radically different post: executive 
director of Death Penalty Focus, a San Francisco-based group opposed to capital 
punishment. She was one of six ex-wardens opposed to the killing of Davis.

"The death penalty serves no one." Woodford has said. "It doesn't serve the 
victims. It doesn't serve prevention. It's truly all about retribution."

She is not alone. In the following paragraphs, 25 other notable people express 
their views on capital punishment, a subject which may well be on the 
California ballot next year.

A justice's view

1. "... the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory 
manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are actually 
innocent."----Supreme Court Justice William Brennan Jr.

2. "I was 8 years old when my father was murdered. It is almost impossible to 
describe the pain of losing a parent to a senseless murder ... But even as a 
child, one thing was clear to me: I didn't want the killer, in turn, to be 
killed. I remember lying in bed and praying, 'Please, God. Please don't take 
his life, too.' I saw nothing that could be accomplished in the loss of one 
life being answered with the loss of another."----Kerry Kennedy, daughter of 
the late Sen. Bobby Kennedy.

3. "If not remedied, the scandalous state of our present system of capital 
punishment will cast a pall of shame over our society for years to come. We 
cannot let it continue."---- ustice Thurgood Marshall, 1990.

4. "You believe an eye for an eye until you are put in that situation. If they 
kill those guys, it really doesn't mean much to me. My father is gone." 
----Basketball player Michael Jordan on the murderers of his father, James.

5. "Government ... can't be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect 
taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to 
kill."----Sister Helen Prejean, author of "Dead Man Walking."

6. "Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human 
soul."----Mark Twain.

Primitive nation?

7. "It's just really tragic after all the horrors of the last 1,000 years we 
can't leave behind something as primitive as government sponsored 
execution."----Sen. Russ Feingold.

8. "... to top it off, for those of you who are interested in the economics, it 
costs more to pursue a capital case toward execution than it does to have full 
life imprisonment without parole."----Ralph Nader.

9. "Capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a 
government program, so skepticism is in order."----George Will.

10. "A humane and generous concern for every individual, his health and his 
fulfillment, will do more to soothe the savage heart than the fear of 
state-inflicted death, which chiefly serves to remind us how close we remain to 
the jungle."----U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark.

11. "When you execute a man who has been on death row 7, 8, 10 or 12 years, you 
are not executing the same man that came in."----Don Cabana, former warden of 
Parchman Penitentiary, Miss.

12. "Here I want to say that one must be careful in searching his soul ... one 
may just find that God is there and that he does not support the barbaric idea 
that man should execute man."----Ron McAndrew, former warden of Florida State 
Prison.

13. "To me the death penalty is vengeance, and vengeance doesn't really help 
anyone in the healing process."----Bud Welch, board president, Murder Victims' 
Families for Human Rights. His daughter, Julie, was killed in the Oklahoma City 
bombing.

14. "No man has the right to take God's place and say another man should die. 
It destroyed my life."----Perry Cobb, who spent 8 years on Illinois' death row 
for a crime he did not commit. He was exonerated in 1987.

DA's view

15. "California's death penalty is ... an incredibly costly penalty, and the 
money would be better spent keeping kids in school, keeping teachers and 
counselors in their schools and giving the juvenile justice system the 
resources it needs."----Former Los Angeles County district attorney Gil 
Garcetti.

16. "Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders."----French 
philosopher Albert Camus.

17. "My overriding belief is that it is always possible for criminals to 
improve and that by its very finality the death penalty contradicts 
this."----The Dalai Lama.

18. "People who are well represented at trial do not get the death 
penalty."----Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

19. "To say that the death of any other person would be just retribution is to 
insult the immeasurable worth of our loved ones who are victims."---- Marietta 
Jaeger. Her daughter, Susie, age 7, was kidnapped and murdered in 1973.

20. "I do not think that God approved the death penalty for any crime, rape and 
murdered included. Capital punishment is against the best judgement of modern 
criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the 
nature of God."----Martin Luther King.

21. "I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. 
I don't think it's human to become an Angel of Death."----Nobel laureate, 
Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

22. "The reality is that capital punishment in America is a lottery. It is a 
punishment that is shaped by the constraints of poverty, race, should be at the 
service of death." ---- Bryan Stevenson, death row lawyer.

23. "Most people approve of capital punishment, but most people wouldn't do the 
hangman's job."----George Orwell.

24. "I believe that no one should be executed, guilty or innocent. There are 
appropriate sanctions that protect society and punishment wrongdoers without 
forcing us to steep to the level of the least among us at his or her worst 
moment."----Actor, activist Mike Farrell.

25. "I have come to think that capital punishment should be abolished."----Jack 
Kemp, Republican vice presidential candidate, 1996.

(source: Column, Tom Hennessy, Long Beach Press-Telegram)

***********************

Death penalty is dead wrong: It's time to outlaw capital punishment in America 
- completely


I have studied the death penalty for more than half my lifetime. I have debated 
it hundreds of times. I have heard all the arguments, analyzed all the evidence 
I could find, measured public opinion when it was opposed to the practice, when 
it was indifferent, and when it was passionately in favor. Always I have 
concluded the death penalty is wrong because it lowers us all; it is a 
surrender to the worst that is in us; it uses a power - the official power to 
kill by execution - that has never elevated a society, never brought back a 
life, never inspired anything but hate.

And it has killed many innocent people.

This is a serious moral problem for every U.S. governor who presides over 
executions - whether in Georgia, Texas or even, theoretically, New York. All 
states should do as the bold few have done and officially outlaw this form of 
punishment.

For 12 years as governor, I prevented the death penalty from becoming law in 
New York by my vetoes. But for all that time, there was a disconcertingly 
strong preference for the death penalty in the general public.

New York returned to the death penalty shortly after I was defeated by a 
Republican candidate; the state's highest court has effectively prevented the 
law from being applied - but New York continues to have the law on its books 
with no signs of a movement to remove it.

That law is a stain on our conscience. The 46 executions in the United States 
in 2008 were, I believe, an abomination.

People have a right to demand a civilized level of law and peace. They have a 
right to expect it, and when at times it appears to them that a murder has been 
particularly egregious, it is not surprising that the public anger is great and 
demands some psychic satisfaction.

I understand that. I have felt the anger myself, more than once. Like too many 
other citizens, I know what it is to be violated and even to have one's closest 
family violated through despicable criminal behavior. Even today, I tremble at 
the thought of how I might react to a killer who took the life of someone in my 
own family. I know that I might not be able to suppress my anger or put down a 
desire for revenge, but I also know this society should strive for something 
better than what it feels at its weakest moments.

There is absolutely no good reason to believe that using death as a punishment 
today is any better an answer now than it was in the past - when New York State 
had it, used it, regretted it and discarded it.

Experts throughout the nation have come out strongly against the death penalty 
after hundreds of years of lawyers' cumulative experiences and studies revealed 
that the death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent.

Some of history's most notorious murders occurred in the face of existing death 
penalty statutes.

Psychiatrists will tell you there is reason to believe that some madmen - for 
example, Ted Bundy - may even be tempted to murder because of a perverse desire 
to challenge the ultimate penalty.

It is also unfairly applied.

Notwithstanding the executions of mass killers like Timothy McVeigh, capital 
punishment appears to threaten white drug dealers, white rapists and white 
killers less frequently than those of other races. Of the last 18 people in New 
York State to be executed (ending in 1963), 13 were black and one was Hispanic. 
That racial makeup seems an extraordinary improbability for a system operating 
with any kind of objectivity and consistency.

Because death penalty proponents have no other way to defend this policy, they 
cling unabashedly to the blunt simplicity of the ancient impulse that has 
always spurred the call for death: the desire for revenge. That was the bottom 
line of many debates on the floor of the state Senate and Assembly, to which I 
listened with great care during my tenure as governor. It came down to "an eye 
for an eye, tooth for a tooth."

If we adopted this maxim, where would it end? "You kill my son; I kill yours." 
"You rape my daughter; I rape yours." "You mutilate my body; I mutilate yours." 
And we would pursue this course, despite the lack of any reason to believe it 
will protect us even if it is clear that occasionally the victim of our 
official barbarism will be innocent.

It is believed that at least 23 people were wrongfully executed in the United 
States during the twentieth century. Twenty-three innocent people killed by the 
official workings of the state, but it is not called murder.

According to the Innocence Project, 17 people have been proven innocent - 
exonerated by DNA testing - after serving time on Death Row. These people were 
convicted in 11 different states. They served a combined 209 years in prison. 
And government was prepared to end their lives.

Tragically, New York holds the record for the greatest number of innocents put 
to death over the years. According to some, New York leads all states with at 
least 6 (perhaps more) wrongful executions since 1905.

Yet proponents of the death penalty continue to assume that the criminal 
justice system will not make a mistake, or they simply don't care. As was shown 
by the recent Troy Davis execution in Georgia, where shaky witness testimony 
and a lack of physical evidence were considered insufficient to create 
"reasonable doubt," too many people seem unconcerned about the overly ambitious 
prosecutor, the sloppy detective, the incompetent defense counsel, the witness 
with an ax to grind, the judge who keeps courthouse conviction box scores.

But these imperfections - as well as the horrible and irreversible injustice 
they can produce - are inevitable. In this country, a defendant is convicted on 
proof beyond a reasonable doubt - not proof that can be known with absolute 
certainty. There's no such thing as absolute certainty in our law.

We need to continue to do the things that will control crime by making the 
apprehension and punishment of criminals more effective and more precise. We 
need adequate police and prisons and alternatives to incarceration. We should 
also have a tough, effective punishment for deliberate murder. There is a 
punishment that is much better than the death penalty: one that juries will not 
be reluctant to impose; one that is so menacing to a potential killer, that it 
could actually deter; one that does not require us to be infallible so as to 
avoid taking an innocent life; and one that does not require us to stoop to the 
level of the killers.

There is a penalty that is - for those who insist on measuring this question in 
terms of financial cost - millions of dollars less expensive than the death 
penalty: true life imprisonment, with no possibility of parole under any 
circumstances.

True life imprisonment is a more effective deterrent than capital punishment. 
To most inmates, the thought of living a whole lifetime behind bars only to die 
in a cell, is worse than the quick, final termination of the electric chair or 
lethal injection.

I've heard this sentiment personally at least three times in my life. The 
second time it came from a man on the way to his execution in Oklahoma. He was 
serving a life sentence for murder in New York at the same time that Oklahoma 
was eager to take him from New York so they could execute him for a murder he 
had committed in Oklahoma. I refused to release him so that he could be 
executed in Oklahoma, but then the governor who replaced me in 1995 was able to 
get New York to adopt the death penalty - and to prove New York really approved 
of death as a punishment, he released the inmate from prison and sent him to 
Oklahoma, where he was promptly executed.

On the night before he died, he left a note that was published in the New York 
Post that said, "Tell Governor Cuomo I would rather be executed than to serve 
life behind bars."

Because the death penalty was so popular during the time I served as governor, 
I was often asked why I spoke out so forcefully against it although the voters 
very much favored it. I tried to explain that I pushed this issue into the 
center of public dialogue because I believed the stakes went far beyond the 
death penalty itself. Capital punishment raises important questions about how, 
as a society, we view human beings. I believed as governor, and I still 
believe, that the practice and support for capital punishment is corrosive; 
that it is bad for a democratic citizenry and that it had to be objected to and 
so I did then, and I do now and will continue to for as long as it and I exist, 
because I believe we should be better than what we are in our weakest moments.

(source: Guest Column, Mario Cuomo, New York Daily News)

*******************

Sunday Dialogue: The Death Penalty


The Letter to the Editor:

Re “An Indefensible Punishment” (editorial, Sept. 26):

The death penalty is not “immoral,” “grotesque” or “unjust.” Rather, it is a 
just punishment that should be reserved for the grotesque and immoral crimes 
that we hear and read about every day.

However, the administration of the death penalty is a different story. You 
correctly state that it is subject to arbitrariness, discrimination and other 
problems, including that mistakes are made.

The statistics do show that in our country a sentence of execution is more 
frequently given to minorities and the poor in certain geographic regions. DNA 
evidence has also proved that innocent people have been put on death row.

However, DNA can be used as both a sword and a shield. The same way that DNA 
exonerates the innocent, it should condemn the guilty, but only with additional 
safeguards, including eyewitness testimony, video surveillance and confessions 
that are subject to judicial oversight to test their reliability.

Without indisputable video surveillance or DNA evidence together with other 
forms of reliable evidence, a sentence of life imprisonment without the 
possibility of parole should be applied instead of the death penalty.

ALAN SASH----Chappaqua, N.Y., Sept. 26, 2011

The writer is a commercial litigation lawyer.

**

Readers React


Mr. Sash’s letter speeds right past the central issue. The problem with the 
death penalty is not that we may be executing innocent people; notwithstanding 
widespread concern about the Troy Davis case, we’re doing much better at 
avoiding questionable executions with the help of DNA testing and multilevel 
review of the evidence and trial process.

The problem with the death penalty is not that it fails to provide effective 
deterrence to serious crimes, or that botched executions are cruel and unusual. 
The problem with the death penalty is that it’s just plain wrong for a 
civilized society to kill people.

That’s why all our friends in the community of nations have abolished the death 
penalty or no longer use it, and why China, Iran, North Korea, Yemen and Syria 
continue to use it. Using it diminishes us as a country.

I’m a part-time circuit court judge, and I believe in law and order. But people 
who commit our most heinous crimes should be removed from society for the rest 
of their lives; they shouldn’t be killed.

L. PHILLIPS RUNYON III----Peterborough, N.H., Sept. 28, 2011

**

There are indeed crimes that demand the death penalty, when we can agree that a 
murderer has forfeited his right to live in society, even a society of fellow 
prisoners, and the state must end his life in the name of justice. But these 
are not what Mr. Sash calls “the grotesque and immoral crimes that we hear and 
read about every day” (are there moral crimes?). Rather, the death penalty 
should be reserved for exceptional circumstances.

Even when a killer is guilty beyond any doubt, imprisonment should almost 
always be the default penalty. There must be a compelling reason to justify 
execution.

STEVE NELSON----Washington, Mass., Sept. 28, 2011

**

I support the death penalty. You cannot look at a crime like the brutal murder 
of a mom and her two girls in a Connecticut home invasion and not think “those 
responsible should die.”

In my former career as a military attorney, I both prosecuted and defended 
hundreds of criminal cases, from first-degree murder to shoplifting. Proof 
beyond a reasonable doubt is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. There is no 
higher or better standard of proof.

There is nothing inherently difficult in proving that one human being killed 
another. From a prosecutor’s standpoint, it can be harder to prove a bad-check 
case than a murder case.

Finally, I am fed up with the idea that a defense counsel is incompetent if he 
fails to present, after his client is found guilty, psychological testimony 
about how sad and pathetic the defendant’s childhood was. The jury doesn’t 
care. Its attitude is the same as mine: You committed a heinous crime. Now face 
the consequences.

PAUL McBRIDE----Sacramento, Sept. 28, 2011

**

As with all human institutions, the criminal justice system suffers in various 
degrees from corruption, incompetence and malfeasance. Even the most ardent 
supporter of the death penalty would agree that, in some cases, innocent people 
are convicted, and the guilty walk free. We know this from the 138 exonerations 
of death row inmates.

The penalty of death is too permanent to accept inevitable errors or willful 
misconduct by the police, judges or prosecutors. The danger of executing an 
innocent person is greater than the societal benefit derived from putting a 
guilty prisoner to death, particularly when reasonable alternatives exist, such 
as life in prison with no possibility of parole.

The rationale for imprisoning a convicted criminal is threefold: to protect 
society from future harm, to deter other would-be criminals and to punish the 
offender. Jail fulfills these objectives; no circumstances warrant use of the 
death penalty.

JEFF SCHWEITZER----Spicewood, Tex., Sept. 28, 2011

**

Prison as an alternative to the death penalty, even prison without possibility 
of parole, is sometimes not a suitable punishment for heinous crimes. In 
today’s prisons, inmates participate in sports activities and have access to 
libraries, entertainment and medical care. Thus prison life, while of course 
not desirable, is at least tolerable to many inmates.

LEROY KAYSER----East Hampton, N.Y., Sept. 28, 2011

**

A central point in the Times editorial that Mr. Sash does not address is the 
lack of decent counsel for poor defendants, especially at their initial trial. 
Texas, the state that executes the most people every year, has an abysmal 
record of providing defense counsel to the indigent, which includes most 
capital defendants. Even states that have relatively decent public defender 
systems do not spend nearly enough time or money to ensure justice for all.

Should it be any surprise that prisons — including death rows — are filled with 
the poor, especially people of color?

The problem of the unfairness of the death penalty is not separate from the 
rest of the criminal justice system. It is an integral part of a system that is 
often unfair, discriminatory and mistaken at various points. The death penalty 
merely magnifies the inherent unfairness, perhaps because of its finality.

DANIEL E. HOOD----New York, Sept. 28, 2011

The writer is a retired professor of criminology. **

Mr. Sash suggests that the death penalty is acceptable with “indisputable video 
surveillance” and “other forms of reliable evidence” to prove guilt. When he 
can also guarantee perfect judges, infallible juries and error-free defense 
attorneys, then he may have a point.

As long as human beings are part of the judicial system, there will be wrongful 
executions. The question is what benefit do we get from hundreds of “just” 
executions, and is that benefit worth even a single person put to death 
unjustly?

STEVEN COHEN----South Windsor, Conn., Sept. 28, 2011

**

As a European, I am bewildered and disgusted in equal measure by this seemingly 
perpetual American obsession with executing people. Even a seemingly sensible 
person like Mr. Sash thinks it is perfectly reasonable, moral and just to take 
the life of another human being, as if revenge equaled justice.

We dispassionate Northern Europeans tend to be of the opinion that the purpose 
of incarcerating people is to prevent the criminal from continuing to commit 
crimes and, for nonviolent crimes, to deter others. Punishment for its own sake 
doesn’t even enter the equation.

For serious violent crimes, the threat of punishment has no deterring effect 
whatsoever. If it did, Texas would have the lowest violent crime rate in the 
Western world. So even if one ignores the morality (or lack thereof) of the 
death penalty itself, surely we can argue, more prosaically, that it simply 
doesn’t work?

NILS WETTERLIND----Stockholm, Sept. 28, 2011

**

I wish I could share Mr. Sash’s hope that judicial oversight furnishes the 
safeguards necessary to render eyewitness testimony, video surveillance and 
confession evidence, and yes, even DNA evidence, sufficiently reliable in all 
cases to render a death sentence the “just punishment” he and many others 
believe it can be in certain circumstances.

Unfortunately, with rare exceptions, the state and federal trial courts in 
which I have appeared in my 35-plus years as a lawyer defending capital and 
noncapital criminal cases decline to provide that oversight. Trial judges are 
human, and can be as defiant or mistaken about what is required of them as 
anyone else. But most of the time when trial judges fail to provide that 
crucial oversight, it is because the appellate courts tell them they do not 
have to.

ALISON STEINER----Jackson, Miss., Sept. 28, 2011

**

The Writer Responds

I disagree with Mr. Runyon that “the problem with the death penalty is that 
it’s just plain wrong for a civilized society to kill people,” and with Mr. 
Schweitzer that “no circumstances” warrant its use.

Society recognizes that some crimes are so heinous that no other punishment 
besides death will suffice. When you combine that with the certainty that a 
defendant committed the crime, you arrive at Mr. Nelson’s position that “there 
are indeed crimes that demand the death penalty,” in “exceptional 
circumstances.”

Mr. Schweitzer voices the universal concern that we may execute an innocent 
person. To prevent that, the death penalty should be reserved for cases where 
there is 100 % certainty of guilt, subject to appellate review.

This process is fair as long as the defendant has access to effective counsel, 
as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. If, as a society, we believe that the 
death penalty is a just punishment for some offenses, then we need to ensure 
that the system is properly funded.

ALAN SASH----Chappaqua, N.Y., Sept. 29, 2011

(source: Letters to the Editor, New York Times)