The case of Troy Davis and his execution amid serious doubts about his actual guilt focused the nation on the death penalty last week, but the truth is the focus has been on the death penalty for a lot longer than that.
The fact remains that while California has been shelling out hundreds of millions each year for the death penalty, only 13 have been executed since 1978 and 714 remain on death row, with a huge cost to taxpayers.
The effort to end the death penalty is being spearheaded by unlikely opponents such as Don Heller, who helped write the original death penalty law, former LA DA Gil Garcetti, a longtime death penalty supporter, and former San Quentin Warden Jeanne Woodford.
For Mr. Heller, he has said of his law, “It was a mistake because it doesn’t function the way it was intended.”
The big problem for him is cost, as the cost of executing people has risen dramatically during a time of tremendous economic hardship and cutbacks to law enforcement officers charged with investigating and arresting individuals for murder.
“The cost far outweighs any benefit, as long as the person convicted is going to be placed in prison without the possibility of parole,” said Mr. Heller.
But others disagree.
Assemblymember Jim Nielson argued, “It’s reprehensible when you equate money with justice. This is not a matter of money, it’s a matter of justice.”
Yolo County recently put that into motion, trying Marco Topete, accused of the 2008 murder of Sheriff’s Deputy Tony Diaz, and seeking the death penalty. The case has dragged on for over three years and the guilt phase is about to wrap up, but there will be a second lengthy and expensive penalty phase, assuming he is indeed convicted, which will determine whether he gets life without parole or death.
KCRA in Sacramento interviewed Yolo County Sheriff Ed Prieto on the death penalty. He said he is concerned about the rising costs, but while he sees the need for reform, he does not support abolition.
“I do support capital punishment to a degree,” said the Sheriff. “I think there are certain individuals that commit such hideous crimes, they forfeit the right to walk among us.”
But Yolo County, which is also considering seeking the death penalty in a recent West Sacramento stabbing, is actually an anomaly, as fewer and fewer counties seek the death penalty for the simple reason that a man like Marco Topete is more likely to die from natural causes in prison than be executed by the state.
This has led people like Don Heller to turn against the death penalty.
He argued recently that “the death penalty initiative that I drafted was drawn up without fiscal study, input from others, or committee hearings. I made sure that the legal structure that I created would meet tough constitutional standards and checked my work against relevant U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence. But there was none of the give and take envisioned by our forefathers when they created the legislative process more than 200 years ago. Essentially, I wrote alone and the fiscal impact was never considered by the sponsors or myself.”
He argues against a faster death penalty as well: “Those who call for a ‘faster’ death penalty should know that this can only be done with a huge additional expenditure of millions of dollars annually, plus a special court for death penalty appeals, and a constitutional amendment to create that court.”
Besides, with the amount of errors that occur even in death penalty cases, faster would mean a higher risk of the innocent getting executed.
Many think that may have happened last week, despite the unusual lengths to which they went to assess new evidence and witness recantations in the Troy Davis case.
At issue were problems with witness identification that many called tainted, the suspicion of coercion by law enforcement to convict the killer, and the reliance on discredited jailhouse informants – who also recanted.
This occurred despite the highly unusual step of a new hearing ordered in June of 2010 by the US Supreme Court, where Mr. Davis’ attorneys were allowed to present evidence of innocence to a federal judge.
“I am not proud for lying at Troy’s trial, but the police had me so messed up that I felt that’s all I could do or else I would go to jail,” one witness has said in an affidavit.
Many legal experts argued that the recantations and allegations of coercion were sufficient to undermine the state’s case.
Russell Covey, a law professor at Georgia State, said, “”The record is shredded. What was presented to that jury is no longer valid evidence.”
However, that was not enough for Judge William Moore, who placed the burden to overturn the verdict at “clear and compelling” proof of innocence.
He finally ruled against Mr. Davis, arguing that while the state’s case had flaws, Mr. Davis failed to make a showing of actual innocence and therefore was denied a new trial.
“A federal court simply cannot interpose itself and set aside a jury verdict in this case absent a truly persuasive showing of innocence,” Judge Moore wrote. “To act contrarily would wreak complete havoc on the criminal justice system.”
On the other hand, judges in North Carolina last week exonerated two men who had spent a decade in prison for murder.
According to the Asheville Citizen-Times article, the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission in April found sufficient evidence to indicate the men were innocent. They then forwarded the case to a three-judge panel which released the 31-year-old Kenneth Kagonyera and his 32-year-old co-defendant, Robert Wilcoxson.
The two had pled guilty to second-degree murder in 2000, despite repeatedly claiming they were innocent.
This was not a death penalty case, but instead was one in which they admitted to the murder to avoid life sentences and threats of the death penalty.
The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission had found earlier significant evidence pointing to innocence, including a confession from another man and DNA testing that implicated other suspects.
According to the Innocence Project, a full 28 percent of exonerations have involved defendants who pled guilty, falsely confessed or made incriminating statements to police.
Ken Rose, an attorney with the Durham-based Center for Death Penalty Litigation, said, “Along with executing an innocent person, coercing a guilty plea with the threat of lethal injection underscores the terrific risk associated with having a death penalty…. This case highlights the substantial threat that the use of the death penalty poses to innocent persons.”
He added, “In North Carolina in just the last several years, three innocent men – Edward Chapman, Levon Jones and Jonathon Hoffman – were exonerated from death row.”
—David M. Greenwald reporting
[quote]Many think that may have happened last week, despite the unusual lengths to which they went to assess new evidence and witness recantations in the Troy Davis case.[/quote]
The Troy Davis case is not a good example of why the death penalty should be eliminated. The press selectively chose/cherry picked evidence to fabricate “reasonable doubt”. When the case is taken in its totality, I think the courts did exactly the right thing. I’ve seen this same thing play out over and over again in the wrong cases. In fact many opponents of the death penalty are very frank in saying they don’t care if the defendant is guilty or not – which also does not help the cause of doing away with the death penalty. All of these shenanigans by death penalty opponents/the press is not helping the cause for eliminating the death penalty, but rather giving the proponents of the death penalty the traction they need to keep it in place.
“The Troy Davis case is not a good example of why the death penalty should be eliminated.”
ERM, exactly. Troy Davis was guilty, end of story. Now you can argue whether or not we there should be a death penalty but there was NOT “serious doubts about his actual guilt” as David chooses to put it.
[quote]Troy Davis was guilty, end of story.[/quote]
Actually, the more accurate statement would be: “Troy Davis was executed. End of story.” That’s the sad truth about the death penalty.
Well, Eric, then both statements are accurate.
Saw on internet this morning there was poll showing 2/3 of voters are in favor of death penalty in CA. Have no idea who took poll or if it is true… did anyone else see this, or was it a figment of my imagination?
It’s the Field Poll. But like all questioning on the DP, support plummets when respondents are given a choice between DP and LWOP.
I will cover this tomorrow most likely but:
“Despite Californians’ long-held support for the death penalty, more voters now prefer life in prison without the possibility of parole over the death penalty for someone convicted of first degree murder by a 48% to 40% margin.”
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND ITS COSTS:
“There’s a claim that it is more expensive for the state to execute a criminal than to incarcerate him for life. Many opponents present, as fact, that the cost of the death penalty is so expensive (at least $2 million per case?), that we must choose life without parole (“LWOP”) at a cost of $1 million for 50 years. Predictably, these pronouncements may be entirely false. JFA (Justice for All) estimates that LWOP cases will cost $1.2 million – $3.6 million more than equivalent death penalty cases.
And life without parole prisoners face, on average, 30 or 40 years in prison while the annual cost of incarceration is $40,000 to $50,000 a year for each prisoner or more! There is no question that the up front costs of the death penalty are significantly higher than for equivalent LWOP cases. There also appears to be no question that, over time, equivalent LWOP cases are much more expensive – from $1.2 to $3.6 million – than death penalty cases. Opponents ludicrously claim that the death penalty costs, over time, 3-10 times more than LWOP.”
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