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slowpoke

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islandboy said:
Death row. Love it - hate it. Is it making people on it crazy? Although I am an attorney I frankly forget if they have to wait until the person is well to execute them.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/02/01/death.row.syndrome.ap/index.html
It amazes me how the laws in the US vary so much from state to state. The state of Connecticut stayed the execution of this self confessed multi murderer who wants to die - yet in Texas, then governor Dubya and his legal defence counsel, Alberto Gonzales, took only 30 minutes to deny clemency to a mentally retarded man with an IQ of only 65. The accused was a dirt poor black man who had been abused savagely as a child and who had obviously been represented by a terrible defence lawyer who did almost nothing to actually defend him.

This is an article by Sister Helen Prejean who is a long time opponent of the death penalty and the author of the books "Dead Man Walking" and "The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account Of Wrongful Executions". I heard her interviewed a few days ago on CBC Radio and she blew me away with her extensive knowledge about capital punishment in the US and the near impossibility of a poor person getting justice in many states.

"...He might have succeeded in bequeathing to history this image of himself as a scrupulously fair-minded governor if the journalist Alan Berlow had not used the Public Information Act to gain access to fifty-seven confidential death penalty memos that Bush's legal counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, whom President Bush has recently nominated to be attorney general of the United States, presented to him, usually on the very day of execution.[1] The reports Gonzales presented could not be more cursory. Take, for example, the case of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded man of thirty-three with the communication skills of a seven-year-old. Washington's plea for clemency came before Governor Bush on the morning of May 6, 1997. After a thirty-minute briefing by Gonzales, Bush checked "Deny"— just as he had denied twenty-nine other pleas for clemency in his first twenty-eight months as governor.

But Washington's plea for clemency raised substantial issues, which called for thoughtful, fair-minded consideration, not the least of which was the fact that Washington's mental handicap had never been presented to the jury that condemned him to death. Gonzales's legal summary, however, omitted any mention of Washington's mental limitations as well as the fact that his trial lawyer had failed to enlist the help of a mental health expert to testify on his client's behalf. When Washington's postconviction lawyers took on his defense, they researched deeply into his childhood and came up with horrifying evidence of abuse. Terry Washington, along with his ten siblings, had been beaten regularly with whips, water hoses, extension cords, wire hangers, and fan belts. This was mitigation of the strongest kind, but Washington's jury never heard it. Nor is there any evidence that Gonzales told Bush about it..."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17670
 

islandboy

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This is part of a private post I send slowpoke.

I used to oppose the death penalty and see the problems with its application. However, having also seen the depravity of murder, I also say that there are times when the evedence is so clear that after the lengthy process of appeals (although in death penalty cases some states need to revisit the grounds that can be preserved for appeal) that death is the only fitting and right solution. It is a very dad thing to see and now know that the right to live is something that can and should - in some cases - be forfit. When saying this I do not argue with ANY safeguards that can be thought up and implemented to be certain that life is not taken mistakenly. But life can and should be in some cases forfit. Would that we all live in a better world!

I should note that in New York attorneys handling captital cases have to be specially trained and certified. this should be a MINIMUM is any state which has such laws but it is not.
 

onthebottom

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slowpoke said:
It amazes me how the laws in the US vary so much from state to state. The state of Connecticut stayed the execution of this self confessed multi murderer who wants to die - yet in Texas, then governor Dubya and his legal defence counsel, Alberto Gonzales, took only 30 minutes to deny clemency to a mentally retarded man with an IQ of only 65. The accused was a dirt poor black man who had been abused savagely as a child and who had obviously been represented by a terrible defence lawyer who did almost nothing to actually defend him.

This is an article by Sister Helen Prejean who is a long time opponent of the death penalty and the author of the books "Dead Man Walking" and "The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account Of Wrongful Executions". I heard her interviewed a few days ago on CBC Radio and she blew me away with her extensive knowledge about capital punishment in the US and the near impossibility of a poor person getting justice in many states.

"...He might have succeeded in bequeathing to history this image of himself as a scrupulously fair-minded governor if the journalist Alan Berlow had not used the Public Information Act to gain access to fifty-seven confidential death penalty memos that Bush's legal counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, whom President Bush has recently nominated to be attorney general of the United States, presented to him, usually on the very day of execution.[1] The reports Gonzales presented could not be more cursory. Take, for example, the case of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded man of thirty-three with the communication skills of a seven-year-old. Washington's plea for clemency came before Governor Bush on the morning of May 6, 1997. After a thirty-minute briefing by Gonzales, Bush checked "Deny"— just as he had denied twenty-nine other pleas for clemency in his first twenty-eight months as governor.

But Washington's plea for clemency raised substantial issues, which called for thoughtful, fair-minded consideration, not the least of which was the fact that Washington's mental handicap had never been presented to the jury that condemned him to death. Gonzales's legal summary, however, omitted any mention of Washington's mental limitations as well as the fact that his trial lawyer had failed to enlist the help of a mental health expert to testify on his client's behalf. When Washington's postconviction lawyers took on his defense, they researched deeply into his childhood and came up with horrifying evidence of abuse. Terry Washington, along with his ten siblings, had been beaten regularly with whips, water hoses, extension cords, wire hangers, and fan belts. This was mitigation of the strongest kind, but Washington's jury never heard it. Nor is there any evidence that Gonzales told Bush about it..."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17670

What was Washington convicted of?

OTB
 

slowpoke

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onthebottom said:
What was Washington convicted of?

OTB
So far I have only managed to find out that he killed a woman:

"..The life of Terry Washington was doomed even before he was born. It was fetal alcohol syndrome that probably caused his brain damage, the experts said. He grew up in extreme poverty, one of 11 children living in a two-room shack with no running water or electricity. The children were beaten often, their mother was hospitalized in a mental institution and their father abandoned them for the bars. Mr. Washington's mental retardation was recognized when he entered school, and tests throughout his short life (he died at 33, after 10 years in prison) showed an I.Q. ranging from 58 to 69. His reading never advanced beyond the second-grade level. His communication skills were at the level of a 7- year-old and his social skills at that of a 5-year-old.

The brain damage was separate from the mental retardation and affected Mr. Washington's speech and his ability to understand and order concepts. His ability to put events in sequence was impaired, so that he was unable to recall the happenings in a given day in the order in which they took place. Imagine such a person sitting in a courtroom attempting to follow his own trial.

Speaking to Mr. Washington, the lawyer who represented him in his trial for the 1987 murder of Beatrice Huling may have at first concluded that his client was a shy, quiet man. A common trait of the mentally retarded is the effort to hide their disability. Any real conversation would have made Mr. Washington's problems apparent. The lawyer also had school records showing the special education courses and I.Q. results. Still, at no point during the short trial did the lawyer bring the subject of Mr. Washington's mental retardation or brain damage to the attention of the judge or jury. At the sentencing phase, the sole witness presented by the defense was Mr. Washington's mother, who told the jurors that her son was a nice boy.

During the years in which we pursued his appeals, I spent time with Terry Washington at the Huntsville prison and received many letters written in his childlike scrawl. I learned later that he dictated these letters to a fellow prisoner, then copied them into his own handwriting. He dotted his i's with little hearts. During my last visit, he proudly announced that he could spell my whole name. He made me boxes with Popsicle sticks. He told me that when they let him go he wanted to come to visit in New York City so he could see the tall buildings.

It seems obvious that if the jurors who decided his fate had known the Terry Washington that I knew, they would have understood that killing this man served no valid purpose. The theory of retribution demands that punishment relate to personal blameworthiness; adults who function at age 7 are no more blameworthy than actual 7-year-olds. Nor is deterrence served by this sort of execution, since a mentally retarded man would hardly pause before a murder to contemplate legal consequences.

Currently, half the states allow execution of the mentally retarded. But, as polls have confirmed, even to many people who support capital punishment this kind of execution feels wrong. That visceral aversion should tell us something about justice..."

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=17&did=436

"...Execution of the mentally retarded was already under a shadow at that point - a shadow has only deepened over the ensuing years. In 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, a majority of the Supreme Court held - too late for Washington - that executing the mentally retarded is "cruel and unusual" punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.

And plainly, Washington's counsel had been ineffective: his strongest argument was never pressed. (Similarly, with respect to death row inmate Carl Johnson, "Gonzales failed to mention that Johnson's trial lawyer had literally slept through major portions of the jury selection.")

For these reasons, Gonzales' silence about Terry Washington's retardation is both inexplicable and stunning.

But according to Berlow, Gonzales went even further: "I have found no evidence that Gonzales ever sent Bush a clemency petition - or any document," Berlow writes, "that summarized in a concise and coherent fashion a condemned defendant's best argument against execution in a case involving serious questions of innocence...." This suggest that even the crucial issue of guilt versus innocence was frequently ignored...

http://www.yuricareport.com/Law%20&%20Legal/Alberto%20Gonzales'%20Execution%20Memos.html
 

slowpoke

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onthebottom said:
What was Washington convicted of?

OTB
Washington apparently stabbed a woman to death for $628.00. I don't know the circumstances but none of the writers who chronicled his crime and punishment mentioned any doubt about his guilt.

"...Just as he had been left to fend for himself as a child, so he was left to fend for himself as an adult. But the retardation and violent childhood produced a violent adult, and Terry Washington stabbed Beatrice Huling to death in 1987 for $628. His lawyer presented no mitigating evidence of his upbringing, and was unaware that he could have hired a mental health expert for a pre-trial examination. Mr. Washington was found guilty and sentenced to death. Post-trial medical evaluations concluded that he had no idea what had been going on around him during his legal proceedings.[6]..."

http://www2.bc.edu/~sydnor/2.html
 

langeweile

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I have a hard time with the concept of clemency, because of any mental or physical handicap.
If a person commits a murder and couldn't help it, doesn't that make him even more dangerous than a "normal" person? Shouldn't that be even more of a reason to lock him/her away for good?
 

slowpoke

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langeweile said:
I have a hard time with the concept of clemency, because of any mental or physical handicap.
If a person commits a murder and couldn't help it, doesn't that make him even more dangerous than a "normal" person? Shouldn't that be even more of a reason to lock him/her away for good?
I guess it depends on what you mean by "lock him/her away for good". Life imprisonment for the protection of society or the lethal injection?
 

langeweile

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slowpoke said:
I guess it depends on what you mean by "lock him/her away for good". Life imprisonment for the protection of society or the lethal injection?
It is hard for me to be a good judge of that. On one hand i am not sure we should execute people. On the other hand I have never been in a situation were someone close to me, has been brutally murdered.

I was thinking back on the Polly Klaas(or something like that)were the fellon was mocking her dad in the court room. Telling him in the court room how much his daughter enjoyed her rape, and how she said "Just like Daddy used to do it to me" and how he killed her, right after the rape.The poor dad broke down in court.
Does a punk like this deserve to live? Gee, he is really making it diffcult to let him live.
If you are not directly affected by it and many times don't know the details of the case, it's easy to call for an abolition of the death penalty.

Yes and there are cases, were the death penalty was wrongfully applied. That's why it is so important to be absolutely sure. DNA testing will go a long way towards that.
 

slowpoke

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langeweile said:
It is hard for me to be a good judge of that. On one hand i am not sure we should execute people. On the other hand I have never been in a situation were someone close to me, has been brutally murdered.

I was thinking back on the Polly Klaas(or something like that)were the fellon was mocking her dad in the court room. Telling him in the court room how much his daughter enjoyed her rape, and how she said "Just like Daddy used to do it to me" and how he killed her, right after the rape.The poor dad broke down in court.
Does a punk like this deserve to live? Gee, he is really making it diffcult to let him live.
If you are not directly affected by it and many times don't know the details of the case, it's easy to call for an abolition of the death penalty.

Yes and there are cases, were the death penalty was wrongfully applied. That's why it is so important to be absolutely sure. DNA testing will go a long way towards that.
There are some crimes that are so vicious and the guilt seems so certain that I'd be tempted to throw the switch personally. But DNA testing has shown that there have been many executed and many more waiting on death row who were innocent. So, with such a terrible track record, how can you be sure?

"...PHOENIX — As former death row inmate Ray Krone celebrated his first full day of freedom Tuesday by taking a swim and eating steak, national justice groups used his decade-long ordeal to press for an end to capital punishment.

Krone was freed from prison after serving 10 years for a murder he didn't commit.

He is the 100th condemned American to be freed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 and, as such, instantly emerged as a poster child in the national debate..."


http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/04/10/krone.htm
 

islandboy

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I would think that DNA could be a prerequisite to impostion of the death penalty so long as there was a no parole alternative for equally henious crimes without DNA
 
Y

yychobbyist

The problem of course is that this assumes that every death penalty case will consist of circumstances in which DNA evidence is applicable. Certainly there are death penalty cases where DNA may not even be an issue.

My views on the death penalty is that there are just too many circumstances in which innocent people have been wrongfully convicted. We see that in Canada with Milgard, Morin and others (I've often wondered why guys whose last names start with "M" are at such risk in Canada). In my view there must not be guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to put someone to death but utter and absolute moral and scientific certainty. The state must have the absolute highest standard of proof.

In some cases your gut, though, just tells you that someone should die. I think we have to put aside those visceral emotions and always remember that what we're talking about is a human life here and we, as sane, rational people, have to be better than those who've ended the lives of other humans. Paul Bernardo and Clifford Olson are stains on humanity and should have absolutely no right to take part in human society for what they've done but that doesn't mean I support the state taking their lives.
 

danmand

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All canadians should be gratefull to the Honourable Brian Mulrooney, who singlehandedly kept the death penalty out of Canada against the wishes of the majority of his conservative constituency.
 

Peeping Tom

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The canadian "state" considers Bernardo et al to have more rights than their victims in this specific and that criminals have more rights than citizens in general, a common trait in those barbaric states without capital punishment.

Answer this: if the State lacks the right to impose capital punishment, what right does it posess to jail anyone, or for that matter levy a parking fine, let alone make law in the first place?

yychobbyist said:
Paul Bernardo and Clifford Olson are stains on humanity and should have absolutely no right to take part in human society for what they've done but that doesn't mean I support the state taking their lives.
 

Asterix

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Peeping Tom said:
Answer this: if the State lacks the right to impose capital punishment, what right does it posess to jail anyone, or for that matter levy a parking fine, let alone make law in the first place?
I'm sorry, but this is the most specious argument I've read on here in a long time. Basically what you're saying is that if the state can't kill anyone convicted of a capital crime, it has no right to make any law at all. Bizarre.
 

slowpoke

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Peeping Tom said:
The canadian "state" considers Bernardo et al to have more rights than their victims in this specific and that criminals have more rights than citizens in general, a common trait in those barbaric states without capital punishment.

Answer this: if the State lacks the right to impose capital punishment, what right does it posess to jail anyone, or for that matter levy a parking fine, let alone make law in the first place?
The Canadian "state", as you've so idiotically put it, has put Bernardo behind bars for life. With the exception of Jane Doe, his victims are dead. Citizens who are not in jail, including Jane Doe, have more rights than prisoners like Bernardo who have almost no rights. Those barbaric states that don't have capital punishment have at least managed to avoid killing innocent prisoners which is more than you can say for the barbaric states that do have it.

Canada once had capital punishment. If Canadians elected a majority government that wanted the death penalty, we could have it again. We have the right to punish lawbreakers with jail sentences or with fines such as parking tickets etc. You seem to lack even the remotest understanding of how our democracy functions.
 
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