Death Row emptied in Illinois, courtesy of soon-ex Gov. Ryan

Great Debates
81

Milroy
Well let me see, you have been reading the whole of this thread haven’t you ?

Out of 170 death row murder convictions in the state of Illinois, 13 prisoners have had those convictions overturned and 4 of them have been released.

The governor of this state has decided for whatever reasons that this figure is not acceptable and has commuted the death sentence and the other cases are to be reinvestigated just in case there are other wrongful convictions.

This is just for one state too, it makes you wonder if other states are better at obtaining proper convictions, if you have any slight doubts whatsoever, then this, IMHO, is good enough reason to abolish the death penalty.

Laws are not just there to ensure that the guilty are punished, they are also there to protect the innocent, looking at a few absolutely heinous crimes is not a very good basis for making blanket rules that have no discretion whatsoever.

It really does not matter who it is that discovers a miscarriage of justice, what this shows is that had it not been for these college students and their experts, these individuals would certainly have faced execution.Should we rely on charities and campaign groups to deliver justice or should we just let the innocent die ?

Nice to be so certain of life and death decisions, can I borrow your crystal ball, because I, for one, do not regard the state as infallable.

82

THIS IS NOT A DEATH PENALTY RIGHT OR WRONG ISSUE PEOPLE.

This is about a governer abusing his powers. It would be like a a governer who decided hat abortion was wrong an made it illegal only until he stepped out of office. He didn’t change the law. He commuted the death sentence of fetuses, and therefore took the rights of all women in his state just for a period of time. He didn’t change the law in Illinois you hand wringers. He abused his power to let knowingly guilty murderers off of their sentence.
This is not a death penalty issue. This is not a death penalty issue. This is not a death penalty issue. This is not a death penalty issue. This is not a death penalty issue. This is not a death penalty issue. This is not a death penalty issue. This is not a death penalty issue.

He usurped the will of the people in his state. ot because of extrenuos circumstances. He did it just because he could. No one has yet proven to me that his replacement would have recalled the moratorium wihtout looking at the issue. He did it just because he could. No one has proven to me tat if he did not do this then more innocent or underserving people would have been put to death without the states utmost effort to make sure that didn’t happen. He made a mockery. And the anti-death penalty people just got a crumb of the cookie they want when justice was not done for anyone.
If the governer did try to changethe law and was rejected and decided to do this because he was ADP then that makes his actions criminal. He is abusing his power to subjugate the law and the people he represents. And no man is above the law. If Illinois decides today that the death penalty was cruel and unusual and commutes the sentences of all DR inmates then I would applaud it right beside all of the ADP people. But that did not happen. The moratorium was the right thing to do. This was the wrong thing to do.

83

I don’t believe this was the case. As far as I know the whole program was six students, Professor David Protess, and private investigator Paul Cirolino, who worked pro bono.

84

He didn’t usurp anything. That power is given to him by the State Constitution. He used it. You may argue that he shouldn’t have had the power, but the fact is that he did. He didn’t “abuse” anything. He used it. Pure and simple.

85

Right, showing that the system, however flawed, does actually work. The innocent had their convictions overturned and/or have been released.

Unless, of course, you have evidence that an innocent person has been executed in Illinois? Now, I have asked several times, and if it were true, I’m sure some intrepid Doper could ferret out the facts, yes?

86

milroyj, you want a discussion of people executed wrongly. I just found a good one that specifically addresses your argument. A couple quotes from the beginning of the article:

Of course, when somebody said this earlier here, you blew it off. This article, however, goes on to list some interesting cases.

87

He did it because innocent people would have definately have been executed.

The incoming governor would not have been inclined to reinvestigate those cases, the clock toward their execution was still ticking down, there was significant evidence of wrongful conviction.He had run out of time to get this through his local legislature, and your constitution has built in a number of checks and balances for exceptional situations.

You may or may not agree that the impending state murder of innocent people is an exceptional situation.

If the law causes the state to kill innocent people then no matter what the will of the people, no matter what the law states and no matter what you see as an abuse of power, you are all wrong, absolutely and incontrovertably wrong, unless you are saying that it is fine to kill people on the basis of wrongful convictions ?

What part of that do you not understand, the law wants to kill innocent people, the law is wrong, this is not a very difficult concept.

There is a good argument here that if his inaction had allowed inoccent people to die, and he had the power to prevent this and did nothing, then he would be party to a state sanctioned murder.

88

Incidentally, your assertion that we need to find somebody who has been improperly executed is also a rather poor argument. It assumes we need to murder somebody before we stop the system from murdering somebody. If we see enough problems where an innocent has come close to being wrongly executed, I really don’t understand why you seem to think we have to wait until it actually happens before we take action.

89

Just because he had the Constitutional authority, doesn’t make his blanket commutation the right decision.

90

That’s precisely one of my points. Because somebody was convicted and sentenced to death wrongly, should not be a basis for a blanket commutation in every case.

This kind of comments, and your “let the innocent die” is really starting to annoy me. I know your rhetoric is that anyone who is pro-death penalty must not mind executing innocents and think the State can’t make mistakes, but try and keep it to a minimum please. No the State is not infallible, but the vast majority of people that Ryan commuted the sentences of, are, in fact guilty.

91

There is a point where use turns to abuse, though, and George Ryan jumped right over that line with both feet.

92

It actually proves the complete opposite.

Had the original trial been conducted properly, and had the evidence been gathered properly, these people would not have been convicted at all.

Instead they have been held in prison for lengthy periods of time, with all the hazards and restrictions that entails and have had to rely on charities to prove their innocence.

How on earth do you suppose that is the system working correctly in any way ?

Is it likely that a charity with limited resources is going to continue to investigate the case of an executed person, especially when there is a massive hole in the case, ie the main witness is dead ?

Do you imagine that every single case gets picked up by a charity ?

93

Oh, so this is not a death penalty issue?

OK, this is also an issue for any other act of law that cannot be reversed. Any other instance where no remedial action is possible would fit just as well. Kindly list them for our edification.

And Hamlet, on what possible knowledge to you base your insistence that no innocent person has been executed in Illinois? So far, you seem to base it on the absence of conclusive proof otherwise, and your standard for conclusive proof is very narrow.

Innocent person convicted. Nope. Sentenced to die? Not good enough. Lashed to the gurney, needles inserted. Close, but not yet. Dead. Ah, there you go. Dead.

As to the moratorium being right and the commutation wrong: did Mr. Ryan have any reason to believe his successor would continue the moratorium? If not, he wouldn’t have accomplished anything, would he? His successor cannot rescind the commutation, and that was the only way to be sure. Further, it offers his successor “cover”: rather than face the same moral quandry from a position of political vulnerability, he can say “Hey. wasn’t my idea, my hands are tied.”

You know, when I first heard about the death row exonerations, it was only a couple, and I thought “Well, that’s it. Americans are a fair minded people, we will be shocked and horrifed to hear that two men almost died for nothing.”

How wrong can one man be? Not two, but thirteen! And some convicted entirely due to malicious and vile conduct on the part of the men entrusted to deliver justice.

Blood lust runs too deep in our souls to be rooted out with mere reason. As Jefferson had it: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”

94

milroyj said:

You’re correct. It may not have been “right” – which is what this debate is all about. But nor was it "usurp"ing anything or “abuse,” both of which were asserted in the message to which I was replying.

95

Interesting math there. 13 out of 154 wrongly convicted adds up quite differently than being right 99% of the time.
And exactly how well is the system working when confessions are beaten out of innocent men?

96

Here are some more links for you to ponder:

Executions with Reasonable Doubts: A Brief Analysis of Some post-Gregg v. Georgia Executions

Group says 16 executed in U.S. were probably innocent

Are YOU willing to be the innocent person executed? (This one has another link at the top of the page as well)

And there are many more. If you’re so interested in finding out, I suggest you do some research. I did a quick Google search and came up with these.

97

Didn’t the death penalty moratorium already take care of that issue? No one was being executed, anyway. But why commute the sentence of Fedell Caffey? I don’t get it.

I know you all don’t care for my Gacy example, but I will continue. The man had 33 dead bodies in his house. The 33 boys and young men, presumably healthy, did not enter his crawlspace voluntarily, and then expire naturally. He killed them all. There was neither police torture, nor prosecutorial misconduct. Should he have had his sentence commuted, too?

98

I have never stated at any time that I believe that anything more than a minority of death row prisoners are anything but guilty as hell.

The problem is that I am not arrogant enough to believe I can get it right every time, and I would not execute on that basis, but it seems that some folk feel able to make that call.

In the UK there is absolutely no doubt at all that the so-called Birmingham pub bombers would have been executed if we had the death penalty.They appealed three times and at each and every occasion the evidence was said to be ovewhelming, except of course that it was not.

Yes we have some utterly horrible beasts in our jails who do deserve to die most horribly and painfully, but not at the risk of killing the innocent, this is not an acceptable price for our society to pay, it is cheaper to keep them locked up for the rest of their days than to pay the unquantifiable price of the burden of state murder.

You cannot, and never will be able to guaruntee that every person convicted of a capital crime is actually guilty, and given the worryingly high percentages of wrongful conviction in Illinois(and yes I think that 10% wrongful conviction is way too high) it seems to me that that state is morally incapable of deciding wether to kill or not.

Hamlet
Using powers in a hamfisted way to save life might seem like abuse, balance that against doing nothing and allowing innocent people to be murdered by the state.
There really is no comparison at all, the scales are tipped way over in one direction.
The problem here lies with the absoluteness of the death penalty.

99

milroyj said:

I don’t know if you are unclear about the way things work or are trying to purposely misstate something to help with your argument. For the moment, I’ll assume the former and explain to you that the moratorium was imposed by Governor Ryan, who will be out of office in a day. He has no guarantee that Governor Blagojevich will continue that moratorium. The only way he can be sure that no innocent man will be executed after he leaves is to commute the sentences of all of them.

It’s not that I don’t care for your example, it’s that I’ve already explained this and what I think Ryan’s motives were in doing it this way. And you haven’t bothered to reply to it the first time, so why should I do it again?

100

Let me try a different angle here… and note I’m not trying to argue capital punishment is wrong… more… whats the big deal?

The statistics certainly seem to show (google it, or click here) that the death penalty costs the system more then life imprisonment.

Maybe I watch too much Oz… but damn… some people are trying to make it sound like these people are getting away with something. Am I crazy when I say its obvious to me that I’d rather face the death penalty then LIFE in prison plus all the nastiness that includes?

All those nasty people milroyj mentioned? They are still going to suffer… they will suffer for the rest of their lives. Killing them isn’t goig to change ANYTHING. It won’t save us money, it won’t teach anybody anything, and they damn sure ain’t getting off scot free.

As mentioned nobody was getting executed anyway… this way the legal system saves some money, we don’t have to worry about killing innocents, AND the crooks are still being punished.

Why isn’t this a good solution again? Can someone explain to me why killing these people is so much better then life imprisonment that killing innocents is worth the risk??

I stand by this statement… while I may personally be against capital punishment I have no desire to dictate my beliefs as law to the rest of the world. But if this is the best the state’s system can do then it’s obviously flawed. A flawed system has no moral right to sentence a human to die.