Post by marion on Jun 30, 2006 4:31:32 GMT -5
An innocent is executed
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, Editorial
June 29, 2006
On Monday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia issued a scathing
opinion insisting there has never been a single proven case in which an
innocent person was executed in the past three decades. The opinion's timing
has an irony overshadowed only by its tragedy: Just the day before, the
Chicago Tribune published a detailed account of what was mostly likely just
such an execution.
There is no stronger argument against the death penalty than the fact that
in an imperfect justice system, there is too much of a chance of the
ultimate mistake being made, that someone could wrongly be executed.
Lacking incontrovertible DNA or other physical evidence, it cannot be proved
beyond a scintilla of doubt that the state of Texas wrongfully put Carlos De
Luna to death in 1989. But all evidence indicates another man, Carlos
Hernandez, killed a convenience store clerk, Wanda Lopez, six years earlier.
De Luna had always said he was the victim of mistaken identity and had even
named Hernandez as the killer.
"Ending years of silence," the Tribune reported Sunday, "Hernandez's
relatives and friends recounted how the violent felon repeatedly bragged
that De Luna went to death row for a murder Hernandez committed.
"The newspaper investigation, involving interviews with dozens of people and
a review of thousands of pages of court records, shows the case was
compromised by shaky eyewitness identification, sloppy police work and a
failure to thoroughly pursue Hernandez as a possible suspect."
In a case involving Kansas' death penalty, Supreme Court Justice David
Souter laid out the argument that too many people have been wrongfully
sentenced to death. The court upheld Kansas' law in a 5-4 ruling, despite
its unacceptable provision that if aggravating and mitigating circumstances
are equal, they cancel each other out, and the defendant is sentenced to
death. "A law that requires execution when the case for aggravation has
failed to convince the sentencing jury is morally absurd, and the Court's
holding that the Constitution tolerates this moral irrationality defies
decades of precedent aimed at eliminating freakish capital sentencing in the
United States," Souter wrote.
Souter's opinion so incensed Scalia that the conservative justice wasn't
satisfied with Justice Clarence Thomas' majority opinion and felt compelled
to write his own, specifically to rebut Souter. After complaining that
Souter's opinion was inappropriate for its denunciation of the death penalty
as it is now carried out, Scalia launched into a passionate defense of the
state-sanctioned killing, a practice most other nations have rejected as
barbaric.
"There exists in some parts of the world sanctimonious criticism of
America's death penalty, as somehow unworthy of a civilized society. (I say
sanctimonious, because most of the countries to which these finger-waggers
belong had the death penalty themselves until recently - and indeed, many of
them would still have it if the democratic will prevailed)," Scalia wrote.
"It should be noted at the outset that the dissent does not discuss a single
case - not one - in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime
he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would
not have to hunt for it; the innocent's name would be shouted from the
rooftops by the abolition lobby."
Justice Scalia and other enthusiastic death penalty proponents should
listen: That is the name of Carlos De Luna being shouted, and it isn't just
coming from lobbyists, it is coming from the voices of simple Americans who
object to their government killing people in their name.
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, Editorial
June 29, 2006
On Monday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia issued a scathing
opinion insisting there has never been a single proven case in which an
innocent person was executed in the past three decades. The opinion's timing
has an irony overshadowed only by its tragedy: Just the day before, the
Chicago Tribune published a detailed account of what was mostly likely just
such an execution.
There is no stronger argument against the death penalty than the fact that
in an imperfect justice system, there is too much of a chance of the
ultimate mistake being made, that someone could wrongly be executed.
Lacking incontrovertible DNA or other physical evidence, it cannot be proved
beyond a scintilla of doubt that the state of Texas wrongfully put Carlos De
Luna to death in 1989. But all evidence indicates another man, Carlos
Hernandez, killed a convenience store clerk, Wanda Lopez, six years earlier.
De Luna had always said he was the victim of mistaken identity and had even
named Hernandez as the killer.
"Ending years of silence," the Tribune reported Sunday, "Hernandez's
relatives and friends recounted how the violent felon repeatedly bragged
that De Luna went to death row for a murder Hernandez committed.
"The newspaper investigation, involving interviews with dozens of people and
a review of thousands of pages of court records, shows the case was
compromised by shaky eyewitness identification, sloppy police work and a
failure to thoroughly pursue Hernandez as a possible suspect."
In a case involving Kansas' death penalty, Supreme Court Justice David
Souter laid out the argument that too many people have been wrongfully
sentenced to death. The court upheld Kansas' law in a 5-4 ruling, despite
its unacceptable provision that if aggravating and mitigating circumstances
are equal, they cancel each other out, and the defendant is sentenced to
death. "A law that requires execution when the case for aggravation has
failed to convince the sentencing jury is morally absurd, and the Court's
holding that the Constitution tolerates this moral irrationality defies
decades of precedent aimed at eliminating freakish capital sentencing in the
United States," Souter wrote.
Souter's opinion so incensed Scalia that the conservative justice wasn't
satisfied with Justice Clarence Thomas' majority opinion and felt compelled
to write his own, specifically to rebut Souter. After complaining that
Souter's opinion was inappropriate for its denunciation of the death penalty
as it is now carried out, Scalia launched into a passionate defense of the
state-sanctioned killing, a practice most other nations have rejected as
barbaric.
"There exists in some parts of the world sanctimonious criticism of
America's death penalty, as somehow unworthy of a civilized society. (I say
sanctimonious, because most of the countries to which these finger-waggers
belong had the death penalty themselves until recently - and indeed, many of
them would still have it if the democratic will prevailed)," Scalia wrote.
"It should be noted at the outset that the dissent does not discuss a single
case - not one - in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime
he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would
not have to hunt for it; the innocent's name would be shouted from the
rooftops by the abolition lobby."
Justice Scalia and other enthusiastic death penalty proponents should
listen: That is the name of Carlos De Luna being shouted, and it isn't just
coming from lobbyists, it is coming from the voices of simple Americans who
object to their government killing people in their name.