Death Penalty Update

The New Jersey commission reviewing the death penalty held its first public hearing and got an almost steady stream of testimony against maintaining capital punishment in the state. Legal experts, religious leaders and victim’s families all testified against keeping the death penalty in the state of New Jersey.

Larry Peterson, exonerated by DNA testing of a rape and murder for which he spent 18 years in a New Jersey prison said that he was grateful that jurors in his case chose not to hand down the death sentence sought by prosecutors because "if you take a life, you can't turn around and correct the wrong that has been done."

Larry has an excellent point. Why is it that so many people can't seem to understand this simple fact.

Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project in New York City, testified that "It's ridiculous . . .to assume that mistakes will not be made. We have demonstrated that there is a lot of error in the system."

Yeah, and especially in Texas, when you have the most executions I guess that it’s only to be expected that you will make the most mistakes. It’s idiotic to assume the degree of certainty required to justify a sentence of death.

Speaking of Texas, members of the Bexar County prosecutor's office, which is investigating whether or not Ruben Cantu was wrongfully executed in 1993, have been caught on tape indicating that they may have made up their minds before talking to those who now say that Cantu was innocent. One ADA was recorded as saying "They're all lying" and another saying "It's going to go forward with the fact that it was justified and everything was correct and that's the way it is."The District Attorney of Bexar County has been criticized for her office not being impartial in the investigation of the allegations of a wrongful execution.

Gee, ya think? Maybe the fact that the Bexar County DA was the judge that set Cantu’s execution date might have something to do with that?

In Arizona a death penalty assessment team from the American Bar Association's (ABA) has recommended an overhaul of that state’s capital punishment system due to serious problems with fairness and accuracy.

Serious problems with ACCURACY! That should make Arizona stand up and take notice but it probably won’t. This is not an area where mistakes can be tolerated now is it?

Both the American Medical Association (AMA) and the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians (NAEMT) have issued public statements reminding their members of their ethical obligation not to participate in legally authorized executions.

July was a bad month with six executions carried out and still one more scheduled. That brings the total number this year to thirty-one, sixteen of which have been in Texas.

The most recent execution was in Virginia and was carried out by electrocution. Here I thought that we had at least gone beyond frying folks to death. It’s the only execution this year that wasn’t done through Lethal Injection. The last use of the Electric Chair was in South Carolina in 2004.