MyNorthwest.com reports from Washington State,
In Utah, Dennis Romboy reported for Deseret News last week on the failure of the death penalty repeal bill there.
Although it appears the threat has been turned back this year, these efforts have gotten farther than they should have. The propaganda effort of the other side has been successful in convincing people who should know better of "facts" that just aren't so.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard the so-called "innocence list" cited as a list of people who have been proved not to have committed the murders, when we know it is chock full of murderers who got away with it. Time and time again we hear it said that there is massive discrimination in capital sentencing against black defendants, when the other side's own studies have time and again failed to find evidence of that. Over and over, we hear that the long, dragged-out, expensive appeals are necessary to prevent execution of innocent people when everyone actually involved in this business knows that most of the litigation is over issues with little or no bearing on actual guilt of the crime. The number and length of reviews could be cut substantially by limiting repeated reviews of sentence-only issues, but there seems to be little leadership for such reforms.
It's the Lenin theory of truth. Just repeat it enough times and it becomes the truth.
SB 6052, which removes the death penalty as an option for aggravated first-degree murder cases and replaces it with life in prison without the possibility of parole, died in House committee on Monday.Curiously, I can't find any mention of this in the Seattle Times or the Post-Intelligencer.
In Utah, Dennis Romboy reported for Deseret News last week on the failure of the death penalty repeal bill there.
Although it appears the threat has been turned back this year, these efforts have gotten farther than they should have. The propaganda effort of the other side has been successful in convincing people who should know better of "facts" that just aren't so.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard the so-called "innocence list" cited as a list of people who have been proved not to have committed the murders, when we know it is chock full of murderers who got away with it. Time and time again we hear it said that there is massive discrimination in capital sentencing against black defendants, when the other side's own studies have time and again failed to find evidence of that. Over and over, we hear that the long, dragged-out, expensive appeals are necessary to prevent execution of innocent people when everyone actually involved in this business knows that most of the litigation is over issues with little or no bearing on actual guilt of the crime. The number and length of reviews could be cut substantially by limiting repeated reviews of sentence-only issues, but there seems to be little leadership for such reforms.
It's the Lenin theory of truth. Just repeat it enough times and it becomes the truth.
Part of the problem is an imbalance in funding. The Death Penalty Information Center has its whole budget just for pumping out information carefully filtered to include only support for the anti-death-penalty side. There is no similar organization on the other side. Trying to counter this is only a small fraction of CJLF's workload.
Another problem is that all the academics in the area are advocates for one side. Academics who do studies that show a pro-death-penalty result (e.g., deterrence) are hounded out of the field.
Finally, there are journalists who, whether through gullibility, laziness, or bias, uncritically report the DPIC's output as objective fact and don't bother to check with anyone on the other side.
It is important for organizations of prosecutors and peace officers who really know what these monsters have really done to become proactive and fight back. That is how we got Proposition 66 passed and repeal initiatives defeated twice.
Another problem is that all the academics in the area are advocates for one side. Academics who do studies that show a pro-death-penalty result (e.g., deterrence) are hounded out of the field.
Finally, there are journalists who, whether through gullibility, laziness, or bias, uncritically report the DPIC's output as objective fact and don't bother to check with anyone on the other side.
It is important for organizations of prosecutors and peace officers who really know what these monsters have really done to become proactive and fight back. That is how we got Proposition 66 passed and repeal initiatives defeated twice.
Yeah, people like Anthony Ray Hinton and Lawrence William Lee, both of whom spent decades on death row due to gross proprietorial misconduct, really got away with something. Actually, the prosecutors, who are almost never punished no matter how appalling their conduct are the ones getting away with something.
Then there are people like Damon Thibodeaux, who spent 25 years in prison based on a confession the DA admitted was coerced. Any consequence for the cops who coerced it. Nope.
If you look at this list you will find lots of people who got away with something without being punished, but they are prosecutors and law enforcement officers. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row
The DPIC is an anti-death penalty organization which has been caught misrepresenting cases on its "innocence list" for decades. Years ago two California Murderers, Jerry Bigelow and Patrick Croy were on the list until California District Attorneys published the actual facts of the case and court findings on appeal, and the DPIC removed their names. In 1989, accused murderer Timothy Hennis was found not guilty and the DPIC put him on their innocence list. He got away with it until advancements in DNA testing tied him to the 1985 rape and murder of a woman and her two young daughters. This resulted in his conviction by a military jury and the DPIC took his name off the list. In an April 1, 2010 New York Times Story by reporter John Schwartz, DPIC head Richard Dieter admitted that being found not guilty is not the same as being innocent, "we never said that's what the innocence list is about."
The DPIC is several notches below SNOPES on the accuracy scale.
There are currently 161 people on the list. Can you point to any who "got away with it." Are you at all concerned about the corrupt prosecutors and cops who got away with putting innocent people in prison for years?
Fuzzy, are you *actually* unaware that there are lots of guilty people on that list?
http://www.cjlf.org/files/CampbellExonerationInflation2008.pdf
While Campbell has lots of nits to pick where are the "lots of guilty people" the article. He identifies a small number of cases in which people were acquitted who he suggests might be guilty, but does not make a very convincing case of it. I take it you have nothing to say about the egregious misconduct that has led to decades in prison for innocent people. Will you be joining CATO in the fight against the qualified immunity that protects these scoundrels. https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-daily-podcast/case-against-qualified-immunity
Far more than "nits." For example, the evidence that showed Jeremy Sheets was guilty was excludable from the criminal case, but in the civil case the Eighth Circuit found no reason reason to doubt its reliability.
There are indeed cases where prosecutors have suffered serious consequences for Brady violations, but that is not the topic of this post.
No, I will not be joining Cato's effort to ensure that nobody in their right mind would want to be a prosecutor. Qualified immunity protects dedicated people who have, in fact, done their jobs legally and correctly, from the expense and wasted time of defending against garbage lawsuits. It is essential.