Zach LarkinsCAPITAL PUNISHMENT II
DNA evidence weighs heavily on whether or not capital punishment should be continued. Cases such as that of Kirk Bloodsworth, sentenced to death in Maryland for raping and murdering a nine-year-old girl before a DNA test identified another man as the killer, are giving Americans pause for thought. And perhaps well they should.
Kirk Noble Bloodsworth is an ex-con who spent 9 years in prison after being convicted twice for the rape and murder of nine-year-old Dawn Venice Hamilton in Maryland. He is also the first death row inmate in the United States to be exonerated by DNA evidence. He was convicted once, appealed, convicted again and then set free. I see no problem here. This was all done within a 10 year time span. Those who keep appealing for the most miserable of grounds irk me. Ten years is a long time and it should be long enough to clear up any DNA evidence, lying witnesses or incompetent representation. When those appeals go on for 20 or 30 years, can we not say enough is enough and let's be done with it?
Mr. Bloodsworth tells his tale in bookstores, in school gyms, in the hallways of state legislatures. He describes the cockroaches that swarmed on the ceiling of his cell and dropped on him as he slept one floor below the gas chamber. He talks about his friend on death row, Blue, who shoved a pencil in each of his eyes in the hopes it would kill him, but only made him blind. A heart wrenching story that is all the more pathetic because it is true. In bizarre irony, the man who did rape and kill Dawn was someone Mr. Bloodsworth came to know inside the prison, a prisoner serving time for another rape. They lifted weights together. Mr. Bloodsworth even delivered books to the man's cell. But Mr. Bloodsworth got out alive. DNA evidence exonerated him. But what if he'd been convicted 20 or 30 years ago, before DNA was the be all to end all speculation? Would he have been freed then? Probably not. His family would still be mourning him and proclaiming his innocence. Mr. Bloodsworth was lucky that modern technology saved his life. But it should not be applied retroactively.
When the science of understanding DNA came into focus, the law should have been changed to allow those tried for crimes to introduce it at once. For those who sat on death row before that, sorry, the new law does not apply. You don't get a pass just because the rules changed. You were found guilty, had your appeal, were found guilty again and so now you must say good night. Mr. Bloodsworth is the embodiment of one argument in the debate against capital punishment: His story illustrates that not every man awaiting execution is guilty. It is one of the most persuasive arguments abolitionists employ, if an innocent convict is executed, there is no way of turning back. "What DNA shows us is that there are inherent flaws in all convictions," says Mike Radelet, a sociologist and expert in wrongful convictions and the death penalty at the University of Colorado. "As long as we have the death penalty, some innocent people will be executed." Fair enough. As the old saying goes, better to free 500 guilty men than kill one innocent man. But is this what we really want? How about, better to kill one innocent man than let 500 guilty men run free? When I think about keeping my family safe, I would be inclined to go for the latter.
Robert Blecker is a law professor at New York Law School and death penalty advocate. He calls himself an "emotive retributivist" and believes the "worst of the worst" must die. He has no problem with convicts experiencing pain when they are killed, if they consciously caused their victims pain with their crimes. And neither do I. In a true ‘eye for an eye' type of punishment, anyone who raped, tortured and then killed their victim would have the same done to them. I won't go quite that far, but if the killer experiences a bit of pain on his way out of this world, so what? It is still more humanely done than what he put his victim through. "One word: justice," says Blecker, "Or three words: They deserve it."
The debate in New Jersey is centred not only around the morality of right and wrong, but the issue of whether killing is practical, whether keeping prisoners on death row indefinitely is money well spent, or in a different moral question, whether putting victims' families through the pain of testifying at a convict's seemingly endless appeals is right. All I can say is that if anyone harmed any member of my family, I would endure the pain of the seemingly endless appeals until I saw justice to be done. Again, we can rid ourselves of this dilemma by putting a time limit on the appeals, or the number of appeals a convict is allowed to have. Clifford Olsen, a dangerous offender, will spend the rest of his life behind bars because Canada does not have a death penalty. He was very content to look through law books and launch frivolous lawsuits against the state whenever he was bored. The court finally woke up and saw how much of their time he was wasting and banned him from launching any more. Olsen was convicted of kidnapping, raping and then killing some 13 (I believe) little boys. He says he killed more, but without getting any money from the state, he refuse to tell them where he buried them. And I am supposed to feed, clothe and shelter this monster until he dies?
But the pendulum advocating the death penalty is swinging the other way. The Quinnipiac University Polling Institute last month asked residents whether they prefer the death penalty or unequivocal life sentences for convicted murderers. 41% chose the death penalty, while 51% preferred life without parole. The numbers were reversed when Quinnipiac asked the same question in a separate poll in March, 2003: 49% of New Jerseyans preferred death and 45% preferred life sentences. Kip Bateman, a Republican assemblyman who co-sponsored a bill to repeal the state death penalty late last year at the urging of his long-time church minister, says, "The trend is definitely changing in New Jersey. People have changed, and public opinion has changed." This is very true and unfortunately, I think, bodes ill for all of us.
In nature, the weak or lame are left behind as they are a liability on the herd as a whole. They may be eaten by wolves or lions, but the herd marches on without much thought given to the ones who are lost. The aboriginals of our continent sustained those too weak or feeble to contribute for as long as they could, then cut them loose in order not to endanger the tribe any longer. The Inuit of the north used to put their old ones on an ice floe to make the clan strong again. If we look at the death penalty not as ‘legalized murder' but as a way to keep our society strong by weeding out the miscreants, it is a bit more palatable.
Is the current death penalty inhumane? Not when compared to hanging, guillotining or beheading with a sword. Is it cruel? Not when compared to what the killer put his victims through. Should we keep it? Definitely. A rapist, molester or murderer killed is one who will never threaten my daughter or wife.
Sources: Mary Vallis The Fight To Kill The Death Penalty The National Post
Kirk Noble Bloodsworth is an ex-con who spent 9 years in prison after being convicted twice for the rape and murder of nine-year-old Dawn Venice Hamilton in Maryland. He is also the first death row inmate in the United States to be exonerated by DNA evidence. He was convicted once, appealed, convicted again and then set free. I see no problem here. This was all done within a 10 year time span. Those who keep appealing for the most miserable of grounds irk me. Ten years is a long time and it should be long enough to clear up any DNA evidence, lying witnesses or incompetent representation. When those appeals go on for 20 or 30 years, can we not say enough is enough and let's be done with it?
Mr. Bloodsworth tells his tale in bookstores, in school gyms, in the hallways of state legislatures. He describes the cockroaches that swarmed on the ceiling of his cell and dropped on him as he slept one floor below the gas chamber. He talks about his friend on death row, Blue, who shoved a pencil in each of his eyes in the hopes it would kill him, but only made him blind. A heart wrenching story that is all the more pathetic because it is true. In bizarre irony, the man who did rape and kill Dawn was someone Mr. Bloodsworth came to know inside the prison, a prisoner serving time for another rape. They lifted weights together. Mr. Bloodsworth even delivered books to the man's cell. But Mr. Bloodsworth got out alive. DNA evidence exonerated him. But what if he'd been convicted 20 or 30 years ago, before DNA was the be all to end all speculation? Would he have been freed then? Probably not. His family would still be mourning him and proclaiming his innocence. Mr. Bloodsworth was lucky that modern technology saved his life. But it should not be applied retroactively.
When the science of understanding DNA came into focus, the law should have been changed to allow those tried for crimes to introduce it at once. For those who sat on death row before that, sorry, the new law does not apply. You don't get a pass just because the rules changed. You were found guilty, had your appeal, were found guilty again and so now you must say good night. Mr. Bloodsworth is the embodiment of one argument in the debate against capital punishment: His story illustrates that not every man awaiting execution is guilty. It is one of the most persuasive arguments abolitionists employ, if an innocent convict is executed, there is no way of turning back. "What DNA shows us is that there are inherent flaws in all convictions," says Mike Radelet, a sociologist and expert in wrongful convictions and the death penalty at the University of Colorado. "As long as we have the death penalty, some innocent people will be executed." Fair enough. As the old saying goes, better to free 500 guilty men than kill one innocent man. But is this what we really want? How about, better to kill one innocent man than let 500 guilty men run free? When I think about keeping my family safe, I would be inclined to go for the latter.
Robert Blecker is a law professor at New York Law School and death penalty advocate. He calls himself an "emotive retributivist" and believes the "worst of the worst" must die. He has no problem with convicts experiencing pain when they are killed, if they consciously caused their victims pain with their crimes. And neither do I. In a true ‘eye for an eye' type of punishment, anyone who raped, tortured and then killed their victim would have the same done to them. I won't go quite that far, but if the killer experiences a bit of pain on his way out of this world, so what? It is still more humanely done than what he put his victim through. "One word: justice," says Blecker, "Or three words: They deserve it."
The debate in New Jersey is centred not only around the morality of right and wrong, but the issue of whether killing is practical, whether keeping prisoners on death row indefinitely is money well spent, or in a different moral question, whether putting victims' families through the pain of testifying at a convict's seemingly endless appeals is right. All I can say is that if anyone harmed any member of my family, I would endure the pain of the seemingly endless appeals until I saw justice to be done. Again, we can rid ourselves of this dilemma by putting a time limit on the appeals, or the number of appeals a convict is allowed to have. Clifford Olsen, a dangerous offender, will spend the rest of his life behind bars because Canada does not have a death penalty. He was very content to look through law books and launch frivolous lawsuits against the state whenever he was bored. The court finally woke up and saw how much of their time he was wasting and banned him from launching any more. Olsen was convicted of kidnapping, raping and then killing some 13 (I believe) little boys. He says he killed more, but without getting any money from the state, he refuse to tell them where he buried them. And I am supposed to feed, clothe and shelter this monster until he dies?
But the pendulum advocating the death penalty is swinging the other way. The Quinnipiac University Polling Institute last month asked residents whether they prefer the death penalty or unequivocal life sentences for convicted murderers. 41% chose the death penalty, while 51% preferred life without parole. The numbers were reversed when Quinnipiac asked the same question in a separate poll in March, 2003: 49% of New Jerseyans preferred death and 45% preferred life sentences. Kip Bateman, a Republican assemblyman who co-sponsored a bill to repeal the state death penalty late last year at the urging of his long-time church minister, says, "The trend is definitely changing in New Jersey. People have changed, and public opinion has changed." This is very true and unfortunately, I think, bodes ill for all of us.
In nature, the weak or lame are left behind as they are a liability on the herd as a whole. They may be eaten by wolves or lions, but the herd marches on without much thought given to the ones who are lost. The aboriginals of our continent sustained those too weak or feeble to contribute for as long as they could, then cut them loose in order not to endanger the tribe any longer. The Inuit of the north used to put their old ones on an ice floe to make the clan strong again. If we look at the death penalty not as ‘legalized murder' but as a way to keep our society strong by weeding out the miscreants, it is a bit more palatable.
Is the current death penalty inhumane? Not when compared to hanging, guillotining or beheading with a sword. Is it cruel? Not when compared to what the killer put his victims through. Should we keep it? Definitely. A rapist, molester or murderer killed is one who will never threaten my daughter or wife.
Sources: Mary Vallis The Fight To Kill The Death Penalty The National Post
