{"id":2594,"date":"2008-05-12T10:12:20","date_gmt":"2008-05-12T10:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/05\/12\/why-capital-punishment-is-a-ba\/"},"modified":"2008-05-12T10:12:20","modified_gmt":"2008-05-12T10:12:20","slug":"why-capital-punishment-is-a-ba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/05\/12\/why-capital-punishment-is-a-ba\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Capital Punishment Is a Bad Idea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Kuffner reports on<\/a> an “Innocence Summit” in Texas last week, and points to two<\/a> more<\/a> reports from Grits for Breakfast that provide more colorful detail. The news story<\/a> already says most of what needs saying, though:<\/p>\n

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AUSTIN — Nine wrongfully convicted men who spent a collective 148 years in Texas prisons met with a select group of prosecutors, judges and police chiefs in the Senate chamber Thursday to urge the state to establish a commission to investigate claims of innocence.<\/p>\n

“I’m crying out for mercy today for someone who may still be in prison,” said James Curtis Giles, who served 10 years in prison for rape before DNA testing proved him innocent.<\/p>\n

[…]DNA testing in recent years has cleared 33 men of charges related to rape, kidnapping and murder.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s conceivable that, given a perfect and infallible court system, there might be an interesting discussion to be had about the ethics of capital punishment. With the court system we have, particularly in the state that is most gleeful about executing people, it’s just not a conversation worth having.<\/p>\n

The second Grits for Breakfast post also adds some really good material, which I’ll quote below the fold in case you have some good reason for not going over there:<\/p>\n

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Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire had several poignant comments and questions that are worth recording. For starters, he declared (with Chief Harold Hurtt in the audience) that he thinks Houston PD should not operate its own crime lab, that forensic science work should be done by an independent body who think of themselves as scientists first instead of police. Good point! Regular readers know I’m not a great believer in the supposed neutrality of most forensic science.<\/p>\n

Whitmire told the public officials in the room that “You need to read your mail,” implying (accurately) that many elected officials pay little attention to jail mail and don’t take letters from prisoners seriously. That mentality has contributed to wrongful convictions by sweeping legitimate voices under the rug, he said.<\/p>\n

He also emphasized that any legislator who wants to be “tuff on crime” should also be tough on wrongful convictions, because that meant the guilty person went free. Whitmire criticized the Houston crime lab for ending its investigation into possible wrongful convictions before the lead investigator, Michael Bromwich, thought he was finished.<\/p>\n

An audience member from Houston protested that they only ended the investigation after the city spent $6 million dollars on it, but Whitmire shot back that they hadn’t gone through all the cases, and the Harris DA had $20 million sitting in its asset forfeiture fund that Chuck Rosenthal could have used to finish the job. No rebuttal was offered amidst the awkward silence that followed that declaration!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As Chuck says in his post, “Ensuring that the guilty are convicted and the innocent are not is not and should not be a partisan issue.” The justice system we have in many parts of this country is a complete travesty, and we need less grand-standing about crime, and more real efforts to fix what’s broken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charles Kuffner reports on an “Innocence Summit” in Texas last week, and points to two more reports from Grits for Breakfast that provide more colorful detail. The news story already says most of what needs saying, though: AUSTIN — Nine wrongfully convicted men who spent a collective 148 years in Texas prisons met with a… Continue reading Why Capital Punishment Is a Bad Idea<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}