Dead Letter

Dead Letter

COMMENTS (9)

09/01/2009 - 4:43pm EDT | icarusr

Thanks for this. We in Canada have, for the most part, resolved the issue both politically and constitutionally. (Morally, it will never be resolved to the satisfaction of all.) A trio of cases shook the conscience of the country: Donald Marshall, Guy Paul Morin and David Milgaard. Marshall spent eleven years in jail; Morin about ten; Milgaard 23 years. This latter was shot once while trying to escape soon after he was raped repeatedly. In each instance, while police and prosecutor bad faith was suspected, incompetence and careerism were blamed for the railroading of the victims. In one case, even after the accused was finally and fully exonerated by DNA evidence, the police inspector on the file refused to admit his mistake, his manipulation of the evidence and his evident lies ("loner, possibly schizophrenic, unable to hold a job" was his description of a shy, soft-spoken clarinet player). Oh, and when a juror was asked what she felt now, knowing that she voted to convict an innocent man? "He wouldn't look into our eyes. How can you believe a man who doesn't look into your eyes?" she said. With a justice system as flawed as this, one should never, NEVER, put a convict to death.

09/01/2009 - 5:00pm EDT | ndmackenzie

And then there is this story (<-link) from last week:

Soft-spoken and a devout Christian, Judge Sharon Keller presides as chief justice of Texas' highest criminal court. She's also known as "Sharon Killer" by her opponents, who are going to see her in court next week on charges of judicial misconduct. They charge that Keller refused a condemned man a last-minute appeal in 2007. Now she faces a trial in a San Antonio courtroom that could lead to her removal and will certainly focus wide attention on Texas' enthusiasm for the death penalty.

Keller finds herself at this pass because of a four-word sentence ... view full comment

And then there is this story (<-link) from last week:

Soft-spoken and a devout Christian, Judge Sharon Keller presides as chief justice of Texas' highest criminal court. She's also known as "Sharon Killer" by her opponents, who are going to see her in court next week on charges of judicial misconduct. They charge that Keller refused a condemned man a last-minute appeal in 2007. Now she faces a trial in a San Antonio courtroom that could lead to her removal and will certainly focus wide attention on Texas' enthusiasm for the death penalty.

Keller finds herself at this pass because of a four-word sentence she uttered on Sept. 25, 2007: "We close at 5."

I don't know why this women is considered a "Christian" because she appears to be one fish short of a miracle.

09/01/2009 - 5:10pm EDT | blackton

I was already familiar with the story from a TV broadcast but couldn't muster the stomach to read this story. That said I disagree with "If you make it to the end without having your conscience shaken" simply because I am and have been against the death penalty (as I am also against abortion). I shall not share in the guilt of those ignorant Texans.

09/01/2009 - 5:41pm EDT | ndmackenzie

Andrew Sullivan guest host Jonah Lehrer has posted (<-link) a pertinent comment from a reader:

As the Texas Monthly profile reveals, Sharon Keller is a model of an individual who believes that the world is just and that all trials are fair. As an appellate judge, she almost always votes on the side of the state, even when there is clear and compelling evidence that a trial was unfair or that key evidence was ignored. She simply doesn't believe that the state ever gets these things wrong. The Roy Crimer case, in which DNA evidence proved a convicted rapist hadn' ... view full comment

Andrew Sullivan guest host Jonah Lehrer has posted (<-link) a pertinent comment from a reader:

As the Texas Monthly profile reveals, Sharon Keller is a model of an individual who believes that the world is just and that all trials are fair. As an appellate judge, she almost always votes on the side of the state, even when there is clear and compelling evidence that a trial was unfair or that key evidence was ignored. She simply doesn't believe that the state ever gets these things wrong. The Roy Crimer case, in which DNA evidence proved a convicted rapist hadn't committed the crime, is the most egregious. It took a pardon from then-Governor Bush to right that wrong.

Lehrer also links to a recent article by one of the prosecutors in the Willingham case.

09/01/2009 - 5:52pm EDT | iambiguous

If you are seriously interested in discovering how and why the debate over capital punishment will never be resolved to the satisfaction of all you should rewind the film Dead Man Walking.

By the time the credits are rolling at the end of it, you are either reasonably [and appropriately] flummoxed or you fell asleep somewhere at the beginning.

Like most moral issues, our individaul reaction to capital punishment will depend on a combination of the following factors:

what we were taught about it as children in families and communities and cultures that react to it vastly different ways

none of which are necessarily more reasonable and ethcial

the particular personal experiences we have had w ... view full comment

If you are seriously interested in discovering how and why the debate over capital punishment will never be resolved to the satisfaction of all you should rewind the film Dead Man Walking.

By the time the credits are rolling at the end of it, you are either reasonably [and appropriately] flummoxed or you fell asleep somewhere at the beginning.

Like most moral issues, our individaul reaction to capital punishment will depend on a combination of the following factors:

what we were taught about it as children in families and communities and cultures that react to it vastly different ways

none of which are necessarily more reasonable and ethcial

the particular personal experiences we have had with respect to it

the extent, in other words, to which it becomes less and less an abstraction

the particular books, films, relationships etc we ccummulate over the course of living our lives that ever change the way we view the world of value judgments

Cameron Todd Willingham and the role he played or did not play in the burning death of his children bespeak what can be truly excruciating consequences of the life and death decisions we make both in and out of prison.

Is there anything new here? Not really. It is how things always work when we don't have access to an omniscient and omnipotent point of view. We can only try to mitigate the most egregious consequences. But even in doing this we often end up just shifting the excruciating consequences from one person to another.

That's the whole point of religion, of course. There is no escaping the eyes the God. And though some may slip the noose on this side of or Heavenly Father they never do on the other side. Divine Justice sees to that with the incarnation of Hell itself.

george walton
d/a

09/01/2009 - 8:39pm EDT | michael

As cultures wean themselves from the application of the death penalty, it is probably more necessary for them to reserve its use in the most concrete and narrow instances. Thus, as we decide who the state will put to death it is probably less an abstraction than a century ago.

I'm even certain that if all fifty states had banned execution, only a paltry minority would reason Timothy McVeigh deserved to live. No, people don't condone killing in the abstract and I'd wager we'd find clear and absolute reasons to execute some of the Germans and Japanese we sent to the gallows in the 40's - Even if we'd choose to spare a few, by our standards of sixty years later. ... view full comment

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As cultures wean themselves from the application of the death penalty, it is probably more necessary for them to reserve its use in the most concrete and narrow instances. Thus, as we decide who the state will put to death it is probably less an abstraction than a century ago.

I'm even certain that if all fifty states had banned execution, only a paltry minority would reason Timothy McVeigh deserved to live. No, people don't condone killing in the abstract and I'd wager we'd find clear and absolute reasons to execute some of the Germans and Japanese we sent to the gallows in the 40's - Even if we'd choose to spare a few, by our standards of sixty years later.

Thus, modern forensics combined with the decreasing frequency of executions mean the people will die when they qualify by committing crimes which defy cultural sensibilities. We are a long way from addressing the state's right to execute and any debating is around the margins. That is, in the US it is OK and will remain so for a long time...even if it will appear less OK for some people to be killed by the state than for others.

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09/01/2009 - 9:29pm EDT | frippo

Well, everyone knows that the state is most qualified to make unerring life-and-death decisions. Just ask any conservative.

(I would thank Christopher Orr for the link to this story, but it's too disturbingly haunting for me to be unambiguously grateful. I do think more people should read it, though.)

Well, everyone knows that the state is most qualified to make unerring life-and-death decisions. Just ask any conservative.

(I would thank Christopher Orr for the link to this story, but it's too disturbingly haunting for me to be unambiguously grateful. I do think more people should read it, though.)

09/01/2009 - 11:36pm EDT | jhildner1

I don't think we need to get into the moral debate in the abstract. Is it uncivilized to carry out executions? Should they only be reserved for McVeigh-level atrocities? Urgent events have overtaken such navel-gazing. Those events are the frequent, fairly recent, high-profile demonstrations that our criminal justice system can't be counted on to always get it right. In such circumstances, the death penalty must come off the table or else be radically reformed.

Everyone must read this article. Forget whether it reduces you to tears. It may well. If it doesn't make you *angry*, then maybe you are too at peace. The unreliability of criminal justice -- not just in death penalty cases, of course, but overall -- is one of the great underreported and under-investigated stories. Stories like this one are important. So is the series of stories done by the Chicago Tribune some years back that the article refers to highlighting the unreliability of commonly accepted forensic testimony. Finger prints, for example, are not nearly as clear-cut as TV has led us to believe. Ditto common fallacies in arson testimony, which the Willingham story highlights. We've come to understand that eyewitness testimony is not the rock that the legal system presumes it is. We've come to understand that jailhouse informants are notoriously unreliable. We've come to understand that cops frequently lie like hell. We've come to understand that false confessions are frequent. We've come to understand that witness identifications are unreliable. We've come to understand that the players in the system face perverse incentives and are far too frequently incompetent. We know that defense attorneys for those without access to the best are frequently overburdened, lacking in adequate resources, uncommitted, or don't know what they're doing.

So it is not surprising that we frequently get it wrong, to the point that we have executed an almost certainly innocent man -- Cameron Todd Willingham -- and have almost executed many, many other innocent men. Logic tells us that we have probably wrongfully executed many others we don't know about. We don't know about them because evidence is lost or discarded, innocence can be hard to affirmatively *prove*, and execution signals an end to the usual process by which wrongful convictions are discovered. Without an individual in peril, there are no lawyers or investigators who might be engaged in a fight to save him. After an execution, there is no longer anything to be done, which is the point. Innocence advocates have noticed this problem, and are seeking, as best they can, to highlight cases such as this one where it appears plain that we killed someone who didn't do it. Some on death row manage to get the attention of such advocates. The article discusses a fellow prisoner of Willingham's who was convicted of a similar crime on similar evidence who managed to get the attention of a firm who took his case pro bono and ended up getting him off. Willingham was not so lucky. It seems likely that there are other such cases where an innocent man simply failed to capture the attention of the right people and was wrongfully executed. It is obviously inadequate to rely on the worthy charity of the bar or the few nearly full-time innocence advocates who can only do one thing at a time and can't vet every trial. To fix the system requires serious investigation by policymakers, soul-searching by everyone involved in the system, and major reform.

09/02/2009 - 3:10am EDT | iambiguous

jhild:

The unreliability of criminal justice -- not just in death penalty cases, of course, but overall -- is one of the great underreported and under-investigated stories.

george:

But I repeat myself:

Try this:

Spend a month watching "true crime" programs like 48 Hours, Dateline, Domminic Dunne, The Investigators etc.

You will see close up just how arbitrary, capricious, whimsical, prejudicial and just plain idiotic our criminal justice system can be. Pay particular attention when they interview the jurors after the verdict. The sheer frivolity of the rationalizations they use to set someone free while sending someone else to death row can be nothing short of numbing at times.

Then there are the c ... view full comment

jhild:

The unreliability of criminal justice -- not just in death penalty cases, of course, but overall -- is one of the great underreported and under-investigated stories.

george:

But I repeat myself:

Try this:

Spend a month watching "true crime" programs like 48 Hours, Dateline, Domminic Dunne, The Investigators etc.

Then there are the cops. Over and over and over again they fuck up the investigations. I mean REALLY fuck up. The O.J. Simpson murder trial cops were Lieutenant Columbos next to the Mister Magoos Keith Morrison will introduce you to over and again.

The prosecutors and the judges have their own dubious moments too.

george walton