Post by Anja Nieser on Sept 26, 2006 16:06:51 GMT -5
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT---- A high moral, economic price
There is new evidence that use of the death penalty is a failed policy. It
retains support only because its backers can't find another political
symbol adequate for their outrage and fear.
Capital punishment has its vocal and stubborn adherents, even though no
one can attribute any downturn in the murder rates in states like Florida
that promote it.
Few murderers analyze the consequences before they act.
Even death penalty supporters working in the criminal justice system
believe it is fraught with problems, but they are reluctant to give it up.
How else would the country have dealt with the likes of Timothy McVeigh?
No justice or fairness
Opponents point to unfairness and racial bias in its application, its
distortion of the justice system and the moral ambiguity of
state-sanctioned killing.
The latest analysis raising questions about it comes from the American Bar
Association, which is amid a review that measures the death penalty
process and procedures of various state judicial systems against a set of
protocols designed for justice and fairness.
Last week, the ABA released an assessment of Florida, and while the ABA
did not call for the abolition of the death penalty here or even a
moratorium, it did find severe shortcomings.
The most shocking finding is that Florida leads all states with the
highest number of exonerations of death row inmates -- 22 since 1973, or 1
set free for every 3 prisoners executed in that time. Given the supposed
extra care and appeals taken with death penalty cases, that's a statistic
that makes one wonder how many of those imprisoned for lesser offenses may
also be innocent.
There's another big reason for abolishing the death penalty, though:
money. The costs simply aren't worth the results (killing a person in the
false hope of detering crime) and the lost opportunity to spend that money
more wisely to keep us safe.
I could find no current Florida figures on the total cost of the death
penalty from trial through appeals to the injection of poisons.
Unlimited prosecution costs
The state now allocates a mere $3,500 for trial counsel if neither a
private lawyer or a public defender is available. You might spend more on
a vigorous defense of a drunk-driving charge. Florida also caps appellate
counsel fees at $100 an hour for a maximum of 850 hours to find the errors
created by that inexpensive, inexperienced trial counsel. (State Supreme
Court Justice Raoul Cantero, a Miamian appointed to the bench by Gov. Jeb
Bush and no liberal, has called the work by some of those appellate
attorneys ''some of the worst lawyering'' he has seen.) There is no cap on
how much the prosecution spends, and the other sundry costs such as
transcripts are huge.
Florida also pays $26,422 a year to house death row inmates, $8,315 more
than other inmates. The average length of stay until execution now is
11.92 years, a figure that is growing despite all of the legislative and
judicial efforts to short-circuit the appeal process.
In 1988, a Miami Herald study estimated that the state spent only 1/6 the
total costs of capital cases on prisoners sentenced to life, or in 1988
dollars, $3.2 million per capital case.
A more recent estimate for Texas, which ranks with Florida in its fondness
for the death penalty, was $2.3 million per case.
Better social services
Even if we take the lower Texas estimate, Florida will spend $864 million
from trial to execution on the 376 current death row inmates. If none are
exonerated, that is.
That's irrational. If Florida took 5/6 of that sum attributed to the extra
cost of the death penalty and spent it on better social services for
children now destined for crime, on prison rehabilitation for those who
will get out, on more sophisticated policing, on just about anything, we'd
be a lot safer.
Perhaps we need a death penalty for the Timothy McVeighs among us, but our
present costly system dealt him the same punishment for mass murder as it
deals the bank robber who kills security guards. Both crimes are heinous
but surely not equivalent. We pay a mighty price for this failure to
distinguish between those crimes.
(source: Miami Herald)
There is new evidence that use of the death penalty is a failed policy. It
retains support only because its backers can't find another political
symbol adequate for their outrage and fear.
Capital punishment has its vocal and stubborn adherents, even though no
one can attribute any downturn in the murder rates in states like Florida
that promote it.
Few murderers analyze the consequences before they act.
Even death penalty supporters working in the criminal justice system
believe it is fraught with problems, but they are reluctant to give it up.
How else would the country have dealt with the likes of Timothy McVeigh?
No justice or fairness
Opponents point to unfairness and racial bias in its application, its
distortion of the justice system and the moral ambiguity of
state-sanctioned killing.
The latest analysis raising questions about it comes from the American Bar
Association, which is amid a review that measures the death penalty
process and procedures of various state judicial systems against a set of
protocols designed for justice and fairness.
Last week, the ABA released an assessment of Florida, and while the ABA
did not call for the abolition of the death penalty here or even a
moratorium, it did find severe shortcomings.
The most shocking finding is that Florida leads all states with the
highest number of exonerations of death row inmates -- 22 since 1973, or 1
set free for every 3 prisoners executed in that time. Given the supposed
extra care and appeals taken with death penalty cases, that's a statistic
that makes one wonder how many of those imprisoned for lesser offenses may
also be innocent.
There's another big reason for abolishing the death penalty, though:
money. The costs simply aren't worth the results (killing a person in the
false hope of detering crime) and the lost opportunity to spend that money
more wisely to keep us safe.
I could find no current Florida figures on the total cost of the death
penalty from trial through appeals to the injection of poisons.
Unlimited prosecution costs
The state now allocates a mere $3,500 for trial counsel if neither a
private lawyer or a public defender is available. You might spend more on
a vigorous defense of a drunk-driving charge. Florida also caps appellate
counsel fees at $100 an hour for a maximum of 850 hours to find the errors
created by that inexpensive, inexperienced trial counsel. (State Supreme
Court Justice Raoul Cantero, a Miamian appointed to the bench by Gov. Jeb
Bush and no liberal, has called the work by some of those appellate
attorneys ''some of the worst lawyering'' he has seen.) There is no cap on
how much the prosecution spends, and the other sundry costs such as
transcripts are huge.
Florida also pays $26,422 a year to house death row inmates, $8,315 more
than other inmates. The average length of stay until execution now is
11.92 years, a figure that is growing despite all of the legislative and
judicial efforts to short-circuit the appeal process.
In 1988, a Miami Herald study estimated that the state spent only 1/6 the
total costs of capital cases on prisoners sentenced to life, or in 1988
dollars, $3.2 million per capital case.
A more recent estimate for Texas, which ranks with Florida in its fondness
for the death penalty, was $2.3 million per case.
Better social services
Even if we take the lower Texas estimate, Florida will spend $864 million
from trial to execution on the 376 current death row inmates. If none are
exonerated, that is.
That's irrational. If Florida took 5/6 of that sum attributed to the extra
cost of the death penalty and spent it on better social services for
children now destined for crime, on prison rehabilitation for those who
will get out, on more sophisticated policing, on just about anything, we'd
be a lot safer.
Perhaps we need a death penalty for the Timothy McVeighs among us, but our
present costly system dealt him the same punishment for mass murder as it
deals the bank robber who kills security guards. Both crimes are heinous
but surely not equivalent. We pay a mighty price for this failure to
distinguish between those crimes.
(source: Miami Herald)