Look, here’s what you said earlier:
“5. That leaves us with… the Lust for Vengeance. Not a very good reason for most of us, I’m afraid.”
Are you abandoning this argument or not?
Well…I’m a strong opponent to the death penalty, and I fortunately live in a country where it’s banned.
Nevertheless, I perfectly understand why the court would decide that evidences can’t be handed to the press for independant examinations.
Let’s assume I run an independant “paper”, that I hand away for free to a dozen of friends. Now, i’m convinced that Mr X, accused to have attacked one of these armored fund-transport trucks (I don’t know the english name of those…If anybody can help, you’re welcome), has been unjustly accused and jailed. So, I’m going to ask the court to hand me over the bazooka used during the attack for an independant testing of the fingerprints by an “expert” of my choice (that could be me, for instance). Don’t you see there could be an issue, there? .
What if the magazine “Modern Astrology” want the evidences to be handled by their favorite diviner/medium/tarot reader?
What if i ask for the evidences when I’ve a personnal interest in the matter (a personnal grudge, for instance)?
What if I want the evidences in order to prove that a person acquited was actually guilty? Or that the actual criminal is Mr Y, according to some crackpot theory of mine, or just because I don’t like Mr Y?
What if 47 different journalists (and anyway, why only journalists? Why not 2 412 private citizens? Have journalists, or writers, or whatnot special priviledges that other private citizens don’t?) ask the same DNA sample for various more or less reliable tests?
So, the concept of not handing out the evidences for independant testings seems to make a lot of sense to me
lucwarm, I think that Early Out’s point is that his statement could not be properly characterized as an appeal to popularity, since the comment about what “most of us” think is more of a ironic addendum, than “x is true because everybody thinks so.”
For comparison, if someone said “Most people know that gravity is the force responsible for making objects fall towards the earth,” and you argued against Newton because of an appeal to popularity, you would be engaging in sophistry. (Not that there’s any analogy between the two situations, but you get the drift.)
OK, if it will make you happy: if the best reason you can come up with to defend the death penalty is that it satisfies your lust for vengeance, you’re unfit for civilized society. I don’t care whether one person gets his jollies by executing someone, or knowing that someone they hate has been executed, or whether everyone in the world feels that way. It’s still a lousy reason, and reveals a depravity that needs to be censured.
There, no logical inconsistency. Asshat.
I never tried to argue his innocence.
I never said the conviction was unjust. It probably wasn’t. But why not find out for sure. (I know this drives Hamlet crazy that I keep saying we don’t know for sure, but that’s my point. A test like this would shut people like me up.
I realize that CP is really a separate issue, and is probably more suited for GD. (in fact, I’m sure it probably has been) I guess I was only trying to say that especially in capital cases we should not leave any doubt. Some of the arguments of prosecutors and the courts, while they may be legally correct, sound more like gamesmanship to me than a genuine search for truth.
I object to the destruction of evidence after an execution. I object to the preemptive obstruction of tests which may potentially show that an injustice has been done
But that’s the point – there’s no way that further testing could show any such thing. IANAL, but it seems to me that since the testimony of the jailhouse informant (which has stood up on appeal) indicates two rapists, the presence of some else’s semen wouldn’t change things a bit. I’m not sure about Virginia, but in many (most?) jurisdictions, Coleman would still be considered guilty of rape even if it could be conclusively shown that he never penetrated the woman, which a mere absence of his spunk does not prove.
So the results of new DNA tests would be totally moot.
What about the destruction of evidence in ALL cases after execution? Do you think this should be done as a matter of course as the CoV proposes.
I’m not at all sure the factual basis for this criminal defendant’s conviction and sentence has much to do with the guts of this controversy. To a great extent the evidence is irrelevant to our problem since the almost universal standard of appellate review for sufficiency of evidence (as opposed to procedural or substantive error) in criminal cases is not whether or not the evidence is sufficient to persuade the appellate judges that the defendant indeed did what he was convicted of doing. The standard of review is whether there was any credible evidence which will support the jury’s finding. Seldom does an appellate court deal with credibility in a criminal case. The jury is empowered to disbelieve or believe anything it wants. To put it crudely, the sun could be convicted of rising in the west on the strength of one witness saying it happened and in the face of thousands of witnesses saying it did not happen. An appellate court would be compelled to conclude that the evidence that the sun rose in the west was sufficient to sustain the conviction.
The disconcerting thing here is that the State (Commonwealth?) of Virginia is making no bones about saying that it will not tolerate any second guessing of the conviction and will certainly not let anyone who might conceivably conclude that its justice is not perfect and beyond doubt have access to the information that might allow its justice to be questioned.
Somehow this claim of infallibility is offensive. Many people are not willing to afford the Pope infallibility in spiritual matters, yet the State of Virginia thinks that it ought to have the same sort of immunity from critical inquiry in a matter of legitimate public interest. This sort of arrogance and obvious butt covering just does not go down well in a society that thinks that government is not the exclusive custodian of truth.
Perhaps, but in that case his point was just a conclusory statement.
If I were to say “Capital punishment is good social policy, as most people agree” (and nothing more), then I’m either offering an argument to popularity or a bare conclusion, neither of which is terribly satisfying.
In any event, I notice that Early Out has offered some additional analysis, which I will address below.
What can I say? It gives me satisfaction to know that the likes of Ted Bundy, who destroys life after life, causes incredible suffering and misery, etc., has been executed. It makes me happy to know that the guy in Texas who killed a totally innocent guy by chaining him to the back of a truck and dragging him to death will (hopefully) pay the ultimate price for his outrageous crime. If that makes me depraved and unfit for civilized society, then so be it.
**
Agree.
**
Whatever.
How is my answer wrong? Prosecuting attorneys present facts that support their cases and, when judges permit it, suppress those that don’t. If that goes against the code of criminal procedures, then how do prosecuters get away with it?
zwaldd, do you have any cites for this statement. From what I recall, most cases of evidence being supressed are those where the criminal defense attorney has evidence supressed which was illegally obtained such as in violation of constitutional rights.
Just the case that this thread is about. But you hear about stuff like this on Dateline all the time. Some guy is in jail or on death row, there’s a key piece of evidence that may exonerate him, and the State refuses to review it.
What…‘I saw it on Dateline’ isn’t SDMB worthy?
The problem is that what you are talking about is whether new evidence can be introduced after the trial has ended, but the statement you made makes it sound like the prosecutors are trying and succeeding in suppressing evidence during the trial.
As we have discussed in this thread oftentimes the evidence is not nearly as conclusive as one is led to believe.
For example regarding the Coleman case, the DNA evidence as done at that time, indicated that Coleman was among the 2% of people who could have committed the rape.
I saw it on Dateline is rather vague. A better cite would be something specific, such as a link to a reputable website.
Frankly, I don’t care what people think about the death penalty, I’m not out there to convince anyone to go either way. As someone who works the front lines of the judicial system though, I thought I migh tell alittle story:
I have’nt had much experience as a police officer, but about my 4th month into it, I got called to help escort an 11 year old girl to the hospital to have a sexual assault kit done on her. The suspect was already in custody, he sort of just sat there with a half grin on his face. He knew the real danger came from the family of the victim, not the police officers. He was safe, for now. So far I’ve been pretty good at staying detached from most of the calls I’ve done. You just pretend it is’nt real, like you’re watching it on the TV, and as soon as you go to sleep, it all goes away. The minute you start to care for someone, that’s when you start dying, peice by peice. So I watch as the paramedics remove the little girl from the ambulance. She was a skinny hispanic girl, the cutest thing you’d ever see. She had this little orange dress and her hair was long with a tiny berret in it. Just looking at her would make you want to hug the breath out of her. There she sat, on the gerny, crying, but not just a quiet sob, she was hysterically crying to the point where it was haard for her to breathe. Later, I sat there, opposite of the little girl’s bed, in the room where she was waiting for her sexual assault kit to be done. The room was designed to be alot more comforting for children who have been sexually assaulted and there were a multitude of nurses there doing a good job at entertaining the little girl. I was powerless, there was this huge lump in my throat and if felt as if every move I made was somehow slow, and uncoordinated, almost like I was’nt in full control of myself. There was nothing I could do to make that little girl feel better. I just had to sit there, and wallow in my own impotence. All I could do was try not to break down in front of the little girl, I knew I could’nt show her emotion because she looked up to me. Later, the staff comes in with their various instruments and gets ready to perform the kit. I’m not allowed to be there while the kit is being done so I wait outside the door with her mother looking at me from the end of the hall. Outside the door, all I hear are the occasional screams, and crying, lots of crying. It seems that the nurses had told hold her down while the doctors were poking and prodding this girl with all sorts of instruments in an attempt to remove evidence from her body.
I spoke with the mother in the waiting room, just made some small talk with her. Both of us were still sort of ghastly numb from all this. The mother was stoic, while her eyes betrayed her. She was on the verge of crying and it was all I could do just get her mind off of it. I realized all this was real, it happens,not just on TV, but in real life. When it was all over, I left to finish the rest of my shift. I had to not let it affect me and the rest of the work I had to finish. While I never shed a tear, I could’nt sleep the entire night. I was more angry than sad. I later asked to be transfered to a different district for awhile, because the sight of the district I worked in just disgusted me. I lost all my vigor for the job. You get over it. After about two weeks of anguish I just got numb. I learned not to think of it anymore, but I don’t think it was so easy for the family of the victim.
The point is this: If you ask me if I’d gladly volunteer my innocent death so that we can wantonly kill innocent prisoners. I’d probably say no. But if you asked me if I’d volunteer my life to have the guy who raped the little girl, the guy who’s existence is an affront to all of humanity, well if you asked me if I’d volunteer my life so that he would be dead, then I’d say skip the 12 appeals, the post-conviction petitions, the governor’s stay of excecution, the last meal, and the preist, and just tell my family I loved them.
OK, I may be wrong here, but during a trial, doesn’t it happen that the prosecutor sidebars with the judge and says ‘This witness has no bearing on this case’. Or ‘that evidence is not relevant’. Or maybe the defending attorney makes a statement that impugns the character of a state witness and the prosecutor objects? And the judge has to decide if the law allows the evidence the prosecutor is objecting to to be suppressed or not? Or is it only the defense attorney that objects and sidebars to block testimony and evidence.
Has anyone mentioned Albert Kent Johnson? DNA tests proved that he couldn’t have commited the rape he was serving 24 years for.
But he is still locked up on a second charge, because the police can’t find the evidence. Oh well, sucks to be him.
There certainly are all sorts of cases where the government has not disclosed exculpatory evidence. We know about cases of non-disclosure when the government comes to the trial judge and says that there was a failure to disclose and the cases when the matter came up on appeal. As with most stuff of this sort the explanation is more often incompetence than malice. Sometimes, however, it is malice. I suspect that in most cases of malicious non-disclosure we will never know about it because the prosecutor doesn’t ever reveal the concealment of evidence.
I can say that I have dealt with only one prosecutor who I thought capable of this sort of abuse of power. He was caught sicing the IRS on defense counsel and was disappeared from office almost over night. It is the rare professional prosecutor who does not play by the rules. The ones who see them selves as the flaming sword of truth and rightness tend not to be around very long.
Do not confuse the concealment of exculpatory evidence with the ordinary every day fights about the admissibility of evidence. An evidentiary objection in open court is hardly an effort to subvert justice, especially when the excluded evidence can be preserved in the record by on offer of proof outside the presence of the jury. Do not fall into the trap of thinking the stuff you see on TV has much to do with the gritty and sometimes boring work of trying court cases.
Coleman’s guilt was established beyond a reasonable doubt, and that proof survived the multiple appeals at every level of the criminal justice system. Every single person who has been executed in the US since the re-instatement of the death penalty - same thing.
No new evidence of his innocence has surfaced since his conviction. The only new information we have is that DNA testing established his guilt to within 0.2% of the population - in addition to all the evidence necessary to establish his guilt beyond any reasonable doubt. Now we want to assume that all this was invalid, and apply the standard that a suspect is presumed innocent until proven guilty, and if subject to the death penalty, after that as well.
It is, in fact, entirely unreasonable.
No reasonable doubt exists that any of the 712 executions were of innocent people. If you assume that any of them were, you are doing so in the absence of any evidence to prove this, and in the teeth of all the evidence presented under oath at trial, and subject to impeachment by defense attorneys.
So far, in the Coleman case, all we have gotten are lots of people who want to ignore all the evidence collected and presented to date, and assume that he was innocent. Then, when DNA testing is refused, they will point to Coleman as a person innocently executed.
We hashed over the conviction of Coleman thru the appeals process for years. We even did DNA testing after his conviction, based on the same rationale as we have seen in this thread. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
And the T-shirt says in big bold letters all over the front, “Guilty as charged.”
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan:
If there are over seven hundred people with beyond-a-reasonable-doubt guilty verdicts, subsequently exonerated by DNA evidence, do you contend that only they were wrongfully convicted?
In other words, you’re convinced that no innocent person has ever been executed, despite the fact that many innocent people were convicted and sentenced to death. What about cases in which there was no DNA evidence to begin with? What’s the basis for your belief that the system failed only in the cases we’ve discovered?
nd while you’re at it – do you believe that there are any other persons right now in prison, or on death row, that are innocent?
- Rick