GUEST COLUMN
By Dudley Sharp
Justice Matters
Often the death penalty dialogue gravitates to the subject of innocents at risk of execution. Seldom is a more common problem reviewed. That is, how innocents are more at risk without the death penalty.
Living murderers in prison, after release or escape or after our failures to incarcerate them, are much more likely to harm and murder again than are executed murderers.
This is a truism.
No knowledgeable and honest party questions that the death penalty has the most extensive due process protections in US criminal law.
Therefore, actual innocents are more likely to be sentenced to life imprisonment and more likely to die in prison serving under that sentence, than it is that an actual innocent will be executed.
That is logically conclusive.
Sixteen recent studies, inclusive of their defenses, find for death penalty deterrence.
A surprise? No.
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life.
Some believe that all studies with contrary findings negate those 16 studies. They don't. Studies which don't find for deterrence don't say no one is deterred, but that they couldn't measure those deterred.
What prospect of a negative outcome doesn't deter some? There isn't one...although committed anti death penalty folk may say the death penalty is the only one.
However, the premier anti death penalty scholar accepts it as a given that the death penalty is a deterrent, but does not believe it to be a greater deterrent than a life sentence. Yet the evidence is compelling and unrefuted that death is feared more than life.
"This evidence greatly unsettles moral objections to the death penalty, because it suggests that a refusal to impose that penalty condemns numerous innocent people to death." (1)
" . . . a serious commitment to the sanctity of human life may well compel,rather than forbid, (capital) punishment." (1)
"Recent evidence suggests that capital punishment may have a significant deterrent effect, preventing as many as eighteen or more murders for each execution." (1)
Some death penalty opponents argue against death penalty deterrence, stating that it's a harsher penalty to be locked up without any possibility of getting out.
Reality paints a very different picture.
What percentage of capital murderers seek a plea bargain to a death sentence? Zero or close to it. They prefer long term imprisonment.
What percentage of convicted capital murderers argue for execution in the penalty phase of their capital trial? Zero or close to it. They prefer long term imprisonment.
What percentage of death row inmates waive their appeals and speed up the execution process? Nearly zero. They prefer long term imprisonment.
This is not even remotely in dispute.
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life.
Furthermore, history tells us that "lifers" have many ways to get out: Pardon, commutation, escape, clerical error, change in the law, etc.
In choosing to end the death penalty, or in choosing not implement it, some have chosen to spare murderers at the cost of sacrificing more innocent lives.
Furthermore, possibly we have sentenced 20-25 actually innocent people to death since 1973, or 0.3% of those so sentenced. Those have all been released upon post conviction review. The anti death penalty claims that the numbers are significantly higher are a fraud, easily discoverable by fact checking.
Six inmates have been released from death row because of DNA evidence.
The "innocents" deception of death penalty opponents has been getting exposure for many years. Even the behemoth of anti death penalty newspapers, the New York Times, has recognized that deception.
"To be sure, 30 or 40 categorically innocent people have been released from death row..." (2)
This when death penalty opponents were claiming the release of 119 "innocents" from death row. Death penalty opponents never required actual innocence in order for cases to be added to their "exonerated" or "innocents" list. They simply invented their own definitions for exonerated and innocent and deceptively shoe horned large numbers of inmates into those definitions--something easily discovered with fact checking.
There is no proof of an innocent executed in the US, at least since 1900.
If we accept that the best predictor of future performance is past performance, we can reasonable conclude that the DNA cases will be excluded prior to trial, and that for the next 8000 death sentences, that we will experience a 99.8% accuracy rate in actual guilt convictions. This improved accuracy rate does not include the many additional safeguards that have been added to the system, over and above DNA testing.
Of all the government programs in the world, that put innocents at risk, is there one with a safer record and with greater protections than the US death penalty?
Unlikely.
- Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters e-mail sharpjfa(at)aol.com, 713-622-5491 Houston, Texas
Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS and many other TV and radio networks, on such programs as Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O'Reilly Factor, etc., has been quoted in newspapers throughout the world and is a published author.
A former opponent of capital punishment, he has written and granted interviews about, testified on and debated the subject of the death penalty, extensively and internationally.
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Full report - All Innocence Issues: The Death Penalty, upon request.
Full report - The Death Penalty as a Deterrent, upon request
(1) From the Executive Summary of Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? The Relevance of Life-Life Tradeoffs, March 2005Prof. Cass R. Sunstein, Cass_Sunstein(AT)law.uchicago.edu Prof. Adrian Vermeule , avermeule(AT)law.harvard.eduFull report http://aei-brookings.org/admin/authorpdfs/page.php?id=1131
(2) "The Death of Innocents': A Reasonable Doubt", New York Times Book Review, p 29, 1/23/05, Adam Liptak,national legal correspondent for The NY Times
Pro death penalty sites:
homicidesurvivors.com/categories/Dudley%20Sharp%20-%20Justice%20Matters.aspx
www.dpinfo.com
www.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DPinformation.htm
www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/links/dplinks.htm
joshmarquis.blogspot.com/
www.lexingtonprosecutor.com/death_penalty_debate.htm
www.prodeathpenalty.com
www.prodeathpenalty.org/
www.yesdeathpenalty.com/ (Sweden)
www.wesleylowe.com/cp.html
Permission for distribution of this document is approved as long as it is distributed in its entirety, without changes, inclusive of this statement.
4 comments:
Unfortunately, Mr. Sharp presents his usual distorted view of research and statements supporting capital punishment. For example, he criticizes the number of individuals who have been exonerated, yet creates the impression that murderers kill again repeatedly and exit death row in huge numbers via escapes, pardons, and commutations. He fails to report that the research on deterrence he cites is critically flawed. We agree that there may be some general deterrence derived from death sentences, but the research shows that it is no greater than that from life sentences. He fails to cite the many failures of the capital punishment process, how it corrupts the judiciary, and how the majority of the world has abandoned this failed policy. He also fails to note that public support for the death penalty continues to decline, and that the death row population is in decline. While capital punishment may be defended in theory, it cannot defended in practice. If other public polices had the problems and failures of capital punishment, they would be abandoned without hesitation. Time to join the majority of the world and abolish this failed policy.
Dr. Blankenship, I’d be interested in hearing specifics on those flaws you alleged, because I’m not aware of any. I am, however, aware of multiple reputable studies which have found that the death penalty saves lives by its deterrent effect. One published in Time magazine about a year ago was actually conducted by a death penalty opponent who was dismayed by the results, but nevertheless had the intellectual honesty not to bury his results.
You cited the fact that most of the world’s countries have abandoned the death penalty as a reason why we should do so, too. The majority of the world has pretty much abandoned fealty to the concept of personal liberty, instead embracing socialism, which essentially makes people wards of the state. Should we then follow these countries off the cliff? I wouldn’t be surprised if you said yes, give the popularity of socialism today, but any serious advocate of freedom would abhor surrendering our freedom just because Europe has done so. Hitler was pretty popular in Germany in the 1930s, but I think we’d all agree that popularity didn’t make him right.
Finally, while the death penalty has a verifiable and beneficial deterrent effect, the deterrent effect is really a secondary benefit of capital punishment, not the primary reason for it.
The main reason we have and should continue to have the death penalty is this: justice. When someone wrongly takes a human life, God demands according to both Old Testament and New Testament that the state should execute them. In demanding the highest penalty of this highest transgression (murder robs a person of EVERYTHING, and removes from existence a unique personality and soul), our society is making the statement and affirming the ethic that human life is created in the image of God, is utterly unique, of inestimable value, and because the perpetrator has shown profound disrespect for this ethic, he must be permanently removed from society. This is as close as the perpetrator can come for making recompense for his crime—and recompense is a central and vital part of any good justice system.
As far as I can tell, Dr. Blankenship (DB) simply runs away at the first challenge.
I have public challenged him, with no reply.
Please take a look at this.
http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=1745&wit_id=4991
since that testimony, Donahue and Wolfers have been laid waste by the replies of the authors finding for deterrence.
Dr. Blankenship writes:
"For example, he (Dudley Sharp) criticizes the number of individuals who have been exonerated"
That's true. Me and others actually fact checked the claims and found a 70-80% "error" rate in innocence/exoneratrion claims. Are we not to report that? DB?
see my replies to this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-holdridge/number-of-innocents-on-de_b_95524.html
Blankenshop continues: "yet (sharp)creates the impression that murderers kill again repeatedly and exit death row in huge numbers via escapes, pardons, and commutations."
Sadly, murderers do murder, again, also sadly, repeatedly. I have never stated nor implied that murderers "exit death row in huge numbers via escapes, pardons, and commutations."
Never. DB, when do I do this and where? Produce.
However, the facts say that: 167 were commuted in Illinois in 2003 and over 400 were commuted in 1972 via Furman. At least 334 have been commuted after 1973, for a total of some 734 since 1972. I think that's a pretty big number. DB?
DB continues: "He (sharp) fails to report that the research on deterrence he cites is critically flawed.
Actually, I have printed, quite often, the rebuttal to that crticism.
and read this:
http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=1745&wit_id=4991
DB, you there?
I am copying this reply to DB, btw.
Sadly, Blankenship died of a massive heart attack in 2001. My sympaties to his wife and child and all those students who so cared about him.
He never responded, here, nor to my direct email.
The reason is because I was accurrate and he was not.
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