National Public Radio (NPR) and the Atlanta Journal Constitution recently reported that the execution date was set for Troy Davis. His execution date is September 21, 2011. The Davis case is one of the most well-known death penalty cases because it highlights the flaws in our criminal justice system and the lethal consequences of said flaws in the system. It has drawn both national and international attention to the problems with the imposition of death the penalty. Over 20 years ago, Troy Davis, an African American man, was convicted of killing a white police officer in Savannah, Georgia. Troy Davis was sentenced to death for this crime.
Since Mr. Davis’ conviction, seven of the nine witnesses recanted their statements, new witnesses have come forward identifying another man as the murderer, and the alleged murder weapon has not been found. With that said, there is too much doubt to execute Troy Davis. Yet the state of Georgia is set to do just that on September 21st, 2011. The death sentence and assignment of an execution date in the Davis case are clear acts undertaken by an extremely flawed criminal justice system. Many around the world argue that the imposition of the death penalty is inconsistent with fundamental values of a democratic system. The ACLU argues that the state should not arrogate unto itself the right to kill human beings, especially when it kills with premeditation and ceremony, under color of law, in our names, and when it does so in an arbitrary and discriminatory fashion.
Our nation has struggled with the question of the appropriateness of capital punishment as a criminal sanction for decades. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there are thirty-four (34) states with the death penalty and sixteen (16) without this criminal sanction. Opponents to capital punishment assert that the criminal justice system is riddled with injustice and error under these conditions the death penalty must be halted. Some argue that there is a wealth of evidence that proves the ineffectiveness of the death penalty in achieving its states goals.
According to recent opinion polls, the majority of American voters (61%) prefer other criminal sanctions for murder convictions as opposed to the death penalty and some in law enforcement question its effectiveness. A 2009 poll commissioned by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) found police chiefs ranked the death penalty last among the strategies employed to reduce violent crimes[ii] and viewed it as the least efficient use of taxpayers’ money.[iii] Opponents of the death penalty, both in the United States and around the world, assert that not only is it costly, it is also immoral, ineffective, and discriminatory. They assert that the death penalty is often used disproportionately against the poor and people of color. Human beings and systems created by humans are fallible. With that said, the risk of executing innocent persons can never be completely eliminated from the criminal justice system as evidence by the annual number of death row inmate exonerations.
How many death row inmates have been exonerated on average per year? “From 1973-1999, there was an average of 3.1 death row inmate exonerations per year. This has caused many in the legal community to assert that our criminal justice system is riddled with errors.” [iv] Annually, the number of death prisoner exonerations has increased. [v] On average, there has been an average of five (5) exonerations per year from 2000-2007.[vi]
We are reminded about the high costs associated with putting a person on death row by many members of the legal community as well as death row opponents. The costs associated with death penalty cases include but are not limited to: criminal investigation related costs; lengthy trials and appeals; and most importantly, the possible execution of an innocent person. These factors have led many states to reconsider the validity of capital punishment.
In 2009, New Mexico abolished the death penalty.[vii] This year, Illinois’ governor signed a death penalty ban into law in March.[viii] Illinois is the sixteenth state to abolish the death penalty.[ix] In addition to ending capital punishment, Illinois’ governor also commuted the sentences of the fifteen (15) inmates on death row in that state[x]. Instead of death sentences, the inmates will serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.[xi] Illinois’ ban on executions will take effect on July 1, 2011.[xii] According to the Bureau of Prisons, there are fifty-seven (57) people on death role in the federal penal system[xiii]. There are thousands more on death row in state prisons across the country[xiv]. Eighty percent of all executions occur in the southern portion of the United States[xv]. One of the most highly discussed death penalty cases in recent history is that of Troy Anthony Davis[xvi] in Savannah, Georgia. For more than a decade, this capital punishment case has captured the attention of countless people not only in the United States (e.g. President Carter, former Congressman Bob Barr) but also people all around the world (e.g. The Pope and Nobel Prize winner cleric Desmund Tutu).
For persons opposed to capital punishment or those seeking a moratorium, the Davis case undergirds their assertion that wrongful convictions occur and the death penalty must be halted at a minimum until the errors which occur in the criminal justice system have been remedied. Opponents to the death penalty assert that not only do wrongful convictions occur in this country but also innocent people have been sentenced to die[xvii] and some have been executed. With that said, should the death penalty be abolished nationwide?
The number of death row prisoner exonerations which occur on an annual basis as well as high profile death penalty cases such as Troy Davis where there is no physical evidence linking him to the crime serve to remind us that serious questions still persist about the legitimacy of the death penalty as a criminal sanction. The topic of capital punishment often generates lively discussions about the appropriateness of government sanctioned taking of human lives. It is my hope that this post will generate thoughtful conversations about the death penalty and action to abolish it nationwide.
For further information concerning this pressing topic, an important resource is the Death Penalty Information Center’s website. If you are interested in working to abolish the death penalty, many resources can be found on the Amnesty International website including: petitions, fact sheets, organizing materials, as well as helpful suggestions on how to get involved and take action to end the death penalty.
It is my hope that you will join me and countless others around the world seeking to ensure that justice is served in the Davis Case. It is important to act now to let the state of Georgia – and the world – know that you stand by Troy Davis in his fight for justice by join the efforts undertaken by Amnesty and/or NAACP to halt this injustice. This is a matter of life and death, and time is running out.
See also .. Poll of Police Chiefs Shows Death Penalty Ranked Least Among Crime-Fighting Priorities
Written by David Greenwald Saturday, 24 October 2009 04:13 .. excerpt ..
According to the report, a nationwide poll of police chiefs found that they ranked the death penalty last among their priorities for crime-fighting, do not believe the death penalty deters murder, and rate it as the least efficient use of limited taxpayer dollars. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=66944667
Fighting to Repeal an Execution Law They Championed
Ron Briggs, who was once behind Proposition 7, a tough death penalty initiative passed in 1978, now wants it repealed.
By ADAM NAGOURNEY .. Published: April 6, 2012
PLACERVILLE, Calif. — The year was 1978, and the California ballot bristled with initiatives for everything from banning gay teachers to cracking down on indoor smoking. Both lost. But one, Proposition 7, sailed through: expanding the state’s death penalty law to make it among the toughest and most far-reaching in the country.
The campaign was run by Ron Briggs, today a farmer and Republican member of the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors. It was championed by his father, John V. Briggs, a state senator. And it was written by Donald J. Heller, a former prosecutor in the New York district attorney’s office who had moved to Sacramento.
Thirty-four years later, another initiative is going on the California ballot, this time to repeal the death penalty and replace it with mandatory life without parole. And two of its biggest advocates are Ron Briggs and Mr. Heller, who are trying to reverse what they have come to view as one of the biggest mistakes of their lives.
Partly, they changed their minds for moral reasons. But they also have a political argument to make.
“At the time, we were of the impression that it would do swift justice, that it would get the criminals and murderers through the system quickly and apply them the death penalty,” Mr. Briggs, 54, said over tea in the kitchen at his 100-acre farm in this Gold Rush town, where he grows potatoes, peppers, melons, cherries and (unsuccessfully, so far) black Périgord truffles.
“But it’s not working,” he said. “My dad always says, admit the obvious. We started with 300 on death row when we did Prop 7, and we now have over 720 — and it’s cost us $4 billion. I tell my Republican friends, ‘Close your eyes for a moment. If there was a state program that was costing $185 million a year and only gave the money to lawyers and criminals, what would you do with it?’ ”
California is not the first state to reconsider the death penalty in an era of questions about its morality and effectiveness. And even with these unusual advocates — and a new argument, that the death penalty has cost the state a fortune but produced only 13 executions in 34 years — the repeal faces tough going.
This is a state with a history of colorful crimes and criminals; polls here invariably find strong support for executions. Indeed, the older Mr. Briggs says that, unlike his son, his mind remains unchanged.
But Ron Briggs and Mr. Heller bring to this campaign a powerful and evocative story: a bid for personal redemption and a call for renewed consideration of the arguments they themselves once made in favor of the death sentence.
“It’s been a colossal failure,” Mr. Heller said in his Sacramento office. “The cost of our system of capital punishment is so enormous that any benefit that could be obtained from it — and now I think there’s very little or zero benefit — is so dollar-wasteful that it serves no effective purpose.”
Mr. Heller said that when the elder Mr. Briggs asked him to draft the initiative, using skills he learned working for the legendary Manhattan district attorney Frank S. Hogan, he wholeheartedly supported executions. “The fact that it was upheld every time it went to the Supreme Court shows it was well drafted,” Mr. Heller said ruefully. “I don’t take pleasure in that anymore.”
The two men add a personal element to a death penalty debate that is clearly evolving here, as opponents marshal an argument of waste in a state that is bleeding money. A report last year found that California was spending $184 million a year on a cottage industry of lawyers, expert witnesses and supersecure prisons to deal with the death row population created by Proposition 7.
“The cost is the most politically neutral argument,” said Paula M. Mitchell, a Loyola Law School professor and one of the authors of the report. “We’ve debated the morality of the death penalty for decades. We’ve tried very hard to focus on the objective cost issue, because that’s something that people who differ on all the other issues can reach a consensus on.”
Mr. Briggs said that argument “is going to capture a lot of Tea Partiers.” He continued: “Conservative Republicans should take a real hard look at it. I’m going to do my best to make sure they do. I have very good conservative credentials.”
A Field Poll in September found a jump in the number of Californians who would favor life without parole over the death penalty for someone convicted of first-degree murder, to 48 percent last year from 37 percent in 2000. Still, over all, 68 percent said they supported the death penalty for serious crimes. The report said that keeping inmates in prison for life would cost substantially less than executing them.
“Whenever you just ask about the death penalty in and of itself, the public continues to support it,” said Mark DiCamillo, the director of the Field Poll. So the attempt to rescind it is “going up against established opinion, which is a tall order,” he said.
Kent Scheidegger, the legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports the death penalty, said cost “is probably the only argument that has any chance. The people have heard all the other arguments for years, and it has never gotten any traction.”
But he added: “Justice is what we have government for. Why forgo justice for dollars?”
Mr. Briggs and Mr. Heller are not the only high-profile names associated with the campaign to end executions. Jeanne Woodford, a former warden at San Quentin State Prison, is one of the leaders, along with Gil Garcetti, a former Los Angeles district attorney. “We’re laying off teachers, we’re laying off firefighters,” Mr. Garcetti said. “This is crazy.”
Mr. Briggs said his views began to change after he learned about the case of a woman who had been shot and sexually assaulted in 1981. The attacker — who also killed a woman in the assault — remains entangled in appeals, forcing the victim to continue to face him. “I just thought about the horror for her that we did,” he said. “He committed a crime in ’81. What a lousy system.”
The other factor? “I started going back to church,” said Mr. Briggs, a Roman Catholic.
When he wrote the initiative, Mr. Heller said, he gave no thought to its cost. “I am convinced now that it has never deterred anyone from committing a murder,” he said. “In my mind, I realized what I did was a big mistake.”
The older Mr. Briggs, who is 82, was nationally known as an advocate of conservative causes, especially an initiative, which failed to pass, requiring the dismissal of homosexuals who worked as schoolteachers. Leaning out the window of his pickup truck along a narrow road on the farm, Mr. Briggs said the other day that he was as sure of the death penalty today as he was in 1978.
“One guy said to me, ‘How do you know it works?’ ” he said. “ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I went to see Aaron Mitchell get executed, and I never read in the paper that he ever killed anybody again.’ ” He was referring to a man executed in 1967 for killing a police officer.
“It’s the system that doesn’t work,” Mr. Briggs said. “Your car’s not working either if you can’t turn the damn key on, and they’ve turned the damn key off.”
How will he vote on his son’s initiative? “I’m going to vote no,” Mr. Briggs said with a laugh, flipping the ignition on his truck.
Not that Ron Briggs has given up. “I have made it my mission to get his support for life without parole,” he said. “That may be a high bar, but that’s my mission.”
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