Dr. Allen Ault (pictured), a retired Georgia prison warden, recently appeared on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show, discussing the effects of carrying out executions on prison workers. Dr. Ault was one of six retired prison wardens who had urged Georgia corrections officials and Governor Nathan Deal to do what they could to halt the execution of Troy Davis. Davis was executed on September 21, 2011. Dr. Ault discussed the difficult questions prison officials face when participating in an execution. He said, "You're killing somebody. And there`s no denying that. And especially when we know that several people have been declared innocent with the new scientific techniques, and we're not real sure if the individual we're executing this evening or next week is really guilty - that in itself, that kind of doubt. The other thing most of us know [is] all the research which indicates that capital punishment does not deter... it seems so illogical to say to the public we do not want you to kill, and to demonstrate that, we're going to kill individuals." Dr. Ault also recounted his experience with victims' family members after an execution: "In every execution that I attended, I spent time with the victim's family. And most of the victims' families that I talked with, they thought they were going to get a lot of relief or closure from the execution. And in most cases, they did not."
In a recent op-ed in the New York Daily News, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo called the death penalty a "serious moral problem" that is "corrosive" to a democratic citizenry. He said many of the problems of the death penalty--ineffectiveness as a deterrent, unfairness, and the risk of executing the innocent--are inevitable: "These imperfections - as well as the horrible and irreversible injustice they can produce - are inevitable. In this country, a defendant is convicted on proof beyond a reasonable doubt - not proof that can be known with absolute certainty. There's no such thing as absolute certainty in our law." He advocated for alternative punishments for murder, particularly life in prison without the possibility of parole: "There is a punishment that is much better than the death penalty: one that juries will not be reluctant to impose; one that is so menacing to a potential killer, that it could actually deter; one that does not require us to be infallible so as to avoid taking an innocent life; and one that does not require us to stoop to the level of the killers." Cuomo mentioned the execution of Troy Davis as an example of the risks posed by the uncertainties in the system. As governor, Cuomo repeatedly vetoed legislation to restore New York's death penalty. Read full op-ed below.
The recent Field Poll conducted in California indicated that more voters now prefer life without the possibility of parole instead of the death penalty for convicted murderers. For the first time since the poll began asking the question over a decade ago, more voters (48%) say they would prefer that someone convicted of first-degree murder be sentenced to life without parole than the death penalty (40%). Eleven years ago, only 37% of respondents favored the life sentence and 44% preferred the death penalty, a 15 point change in the spread. Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo said that voters are far more skeptical of the death penalty now than they were twenty years ago: "There has been a change in attitude," he said. "Twenty-two years ago, the death penalty side argument prevailed by a large majority - now voters are divided in their opinions on many statements, including the cost of death versus life in prison, does a life sentence actually guarantee they will stay in prison, whether innocent people are executed, and their views of how it is administered to the ethnic population." A recent study in California found that maintaining the death penalty costs taxpayers $184 million a year more than if the state's condemned killers were kept in prison for life.
In one of the first cases of the new term, the U.S. Supreme Court on October 4 will hear from attorneys for death-row inmate Cory Maples of Alabama, whose appeal was rejected by lower courts because his lawyers quit and missed a critical filing deadline in his state appeal. Copies of an Alabama court ruling in his case were sent to a volunteer New York law firm handling his appeals but were returned unopened to the court because the attorneys representing Maples had left the firm. Maples did not find out about the ruling or the fact that his attorneys had left until the deadline to file his state appeal had expired. Gregory Garre, Maples' new attorney and former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, told the Court in a brief that the case "raises the shocking prospect that a man may be executed without any federal court review of serious constitutional claims due to a series of events for which all agree he was blameless.” Alabama's Solicitor General, John C. Neiman Jr., replied that, "Maples is unquestionably guilty of murdering two people, and his conviction is now 15 years old. He has received some sort of judicial review of every claim he has made." Maples was trying to challenge the competency of his original trial lawyers, who were inexperienced and offered only $1,000 each to prepare for his trial. They presented only 1 hour of testimony in his defense, and told the jury that they "may appear to be stumbling around in the dark." The case is Maples v. Thomas, No. 10-63.
A recent article by Alec Baldwin (pictured) in the Huffington Post offered the actor's reflections on the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia. Baldwin said that his position on the death penalty "has little to do with opposition to any 'eye for an eye' sentiments," but instead, "It has to do specifically with the misapplication of the death penalty in terms of race, in terms of the potency of court-appointed counsel and in terms of the admission of DNA evidence in cases where tragically slipshod work by police and prosecutors is undone by modern technology." Baldwin said that concern for wrongful executions was a significant reason that led to his opposition of capital punishment, even though some crimes evoked an emotional desire for executing the offender. He concluded, "The death penalty costs us a lot money. . . . The death penalty costs us more money than it costs to house an inmate for life. We don't want to kill innocent people. And we don't need to kill the guilty ones either." Read full text below.From DPIC
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DPIC On the Issues
The Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to present this series of podcasts on capital punishment. Episode 16 focuses on the conditions and the people on death row around the country, including a discussion of the length of time inmates spend on the row and the legal issues related to this confinement.
Click the player below to hear the podcast (Running time: 9 minutes 34 seconds). See also Death Row and Multimedia. |
