GIST: "Most of planet Earth stopped carrying out executions long ago.
Some of the few nations that still do so are China, Iran, Saudi Arabia — and the United States of America.
Yet even here, most states have stopped killing their own people by either law or practice.
Only five states have done so this year, according to new numbers from the Death Penalty Information Center. Florida is one of them. Our colleagues in killing are Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.
Florida, though, was largely responsible for a national rise in numbers. After taking a pause on executions during a Supreme Court review, we shot up from zero to six executions this year, putting Florida in line with countries like Kuwait and Myanmar.
There are many reasons why most parts of the civilized world have stopped ordering executions. Here are four:
- We get it wrong. More than 190 people sentenced to die in America have later had their sentences overturned. Among reasons: Witnesses who recanted or were otherwise revealed to be lying; fabricated evidence; DNA testing and other people confessing to the crimes. And no state has wrongfully sent more people to death row than Florida, where at least 30 capital convictions have been overturned. Those are just the mistakes that were caught.
The state of Florida spent the past 14 years trying to kill Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin. The zeal to execute this undocumented immigrant from Honduras for a gruesome double murder was unrelenting … even after someone else confessed to the crimes. Even after evidence showed his blood wasn’t at the crime scene where victims had been stabbed …
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2. It’s dished out unequally. The mentally ill are more likely to be sentenced to death. So are men. And Black defendants. And the poor. As has often been said of capital punishment: “Those without the capital get the punishment.”
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3. It’s more costly. That’s one of the primary reasons groups such as Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty oppose it, since capital cases can cost 10 times as much because of lengthier trials, jury selection and appeals processes that can last decades. The knee-jerk reaction for some is to say: “Well, let’s just execute them faster.” But for that, go back to point No. 1 and consider all the people who weren’t exonerated until decades after they were sentenced to die. Which of them should we have killed anyway for expediency’s sake?
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4. It doesn’t deter crime. Murder rates in states with the death penalty are actually higher than those without. And the United States’ homicide rate is three to 10 times higher than in many countries that abolished capital punishment, including Spain, France, Canada and the United Kingdom. Most experts, including those at the National Institute of Justice, have concluded there is actually no correlation. Why? Because people commit murder because they’re enraged. Or evil. Or indifferent to human life. Not because they first consider the statutory penalties.
The mission statement of Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty sums many of the above-referenced facts this way: “Questioning a system marked by inefficiency, inequity, and inaccuracy.”
So what are the arguments in favor of the death penalty vs. life without parole? Mainly that it meets some people’s standard of eye-for-an-eye justice. But to accept that, you have to accept everything else mentioned above, including that fatal punishment is sometimes wrongly applied.
And Florida is not only the worst on that front for its sheer number of wrongful convictions, but because lawmakers just voted to make those inaccuracies more likely.
This past session, lawmakers voted to allow judges to order death sentences even when juries don’t unanimously agree the defendant deserves it. The law now allows judges to do so even when only eight out of 12 jurors agree, giving Florida the lowest threshold in America.
To put that split-decision policy on steroids, lawmakers also passed a new law allowing executions for people convicted of sexually assaulting a child, even though the United States Supreme Court has previously declared it unconstitutional.
Places like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia are among the few that endorse government-ordered killing for non-lethal crimes.
There’s no denying that most people are correctly convicted and that many are monsters.
But the problems with mistakes and inequities have been proven, including here in Central Florida in the hard-to-believe case of Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin, who was swiftly convicted of a brutal double murder in Seminole County back in 2004.
Aguirre-Jarquin was an easy target.
An undocumented Honduran immigrant with no resources. And the cops were sure he did it. The jury sentenced him to death. And the judge agreed.
Later, however, someone else repeatedly confessed to the crime and DNA evidence exonerated Aguirre-Jarquin — after an appeals process that was, once again, lengthy and costly.
Both the judge and jury foreman — two men who confidently sent Aguirre-Jarquin to death row back in 2006 — would later say the process changed their worldview.
The foreman even penned a guest column for the Orlando Sentinel a few years ago that detailed his gut-wrenching epiphany.
“I once held a man’s life in my hands,” wrote Mike Powell. “I know how it feels to be sure someone did the crime. I know how it feels to hear about a terrible crime and believe whoever did it deserved a death sentence. And now, for the rest of my life, I will also know just how wrong a person, a group of people, and an entire criminal justice system can be.”
That’s the conclusion most nations and states have come to accept — with the exception of places like China, Iran, Texas and Florida."
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-123488014
