The Death Penalty Ruled Unconstitutional
Mi Querido Jefe: Hector A. Chavana
My father, an attorney for thirty years, came in this morning to the office with a funny smile, which made me know something was up. We exchanged our morning greeting, and I paused, knowing that he had something to say.
I was eating some oatmeal at the time, and he told me that the courts are a buzz with a recent decision. I bit. “What is it I asked?” He told me that a judge had made a very “courageous decision,” by ruling that the death penalty was unconstitutional.
I quickly tried to clarify whether he had ruled the entire death penalty was unconstitutional or whether something specific to this case made its application unconstitutional. I guess I was a little too quick to react, and ended up literally choking on my oatmeal before I could get the question out. Just another normal morning at Oficinas Chavana.
It’s true. Check out what Judge Kevin Fine said as quoted in the Houston Chronicle.
A Houston judge on Thursday granted a pretrial motion declaring the death penalty unconstitutional, saying he believes innocent people have been executed.
“Based on the moratorium (on the death penalty) in Illinois, the Innocence Project and more than 200 people being exonerated nationwide, it can only be concluded that innocent people have been executed,” state District Judge Kevin Fine said. “It’s safe to assume we execute innocent people.”
Fine said trial level judges are gatekeepers of society’s standard for decency and fairness.
“Are you willing to have your brother, your father, your mother be the sacrificial lamb, to be the innocent person executed so that we can have a death penalty so that we can execute those who are deserving of the death penalty?” he said. “I don’t think society’s mindset is that way now.”
I have personally known (before their legal troubles) five or six people who have been sentenced to death row (that makes for a different blog post). It looks like a sixth might be headed there soon. One of them, Johnnie Bernal, was removed from death row because the crime that he committed occurred one night before his eighteenth birthday. All of them are minorities.
I stand against the death penalty due to the decidedly prejudiced form in which the death penalty is applied to minorities and the poor.
The chances are that this ruling will be promptly overturned, but this judge has taken a bold stance toward a more human outlook from the bench.
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The problem is not the deat penalty .. The problem is waiting on deathrow for 40 or more. I don’t need to be paying for medical,dental,HBO,3 meals a day, and first class workout facilities, that I don’t even have to enjoy myself.. My tax dollars can be spent on better things than murder’s ,rapest, and child molesters, I see the coast on what we pay a year, to house these crazy people. Bullets,a little bit of electricity,and needles are cheap.. “Hell use the same needle ” my point.. just get it done .
From Dudley Sharp, contact info below
In finding the death penalty unconstitutional, Judge Fine could hardy be less judicious or more irresponsible.
Preliminarily, it appears Judge Fine based his unconstitutional finding upon executing innocents. It also appears that he just accepted defense attorney claims without fact checking them.
The 200 released number used by Judge Fine appears to be an inaccurate counting of DNA freed cases, as per the Innocence Project, for the entire prison population, not just death row. I suspect the judge received that inaccurate number from defense counsel.
The decision appears similarly based to the one made by New York Federal District Court Judge Jed Rakoff in the Quinones case, whereby Rakoff found the federal death penalty statute unconstitutional. I stated, then, that it was an obviously idiotic decision which would quickly be overturned. It was. At least Rakoff fact checked.
There is no proof of an innocent executed in the US, at least since 1900.
In the modern death penalty era, possibly, 25 inmates have been released from death row based upon actual innocence.
That is about 0.3% of those sentenced to death since 1973.
Likely, there is not a more accurate sanction when it comes to convicting the actually guilty and freeing the actually innocent.
In addition, innocents are more protected with the death penalty than with the lesser sanction of life without parole.
“The Death Penalty: More Protection for Innocents”
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/07/05/the-death-penalty-more-protection-for-innocents.aspx
The 130 (now 139) death row “innocents” scam
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/03/04/fact-checking-issues-on-innocence-and-the-death-penalty.aspx
“The Innocent Executed: Deception & Death Penalty Opponents”
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/10/08/the-innocent-executed-deception–death-penalty-opponents–draft.aspx
Sincerely, Dudley Sharp
e-mail sharpjfa@aol.com, 713-622-5491,
Houston, Texas
Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS , VOA 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.