TNC on the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham:
The death penalty promotes our sense of order–it offers assurance that those who savagely violate our most cherished morals will be harshly penalized. The question, for me, is what will we tolerate to preserve that assurance? What I hope will come out of this case is a more honest debate about the death penalty. I strongly suspect that Rick Perry–at this point–knows that something went badly wrong in Willingham’s execution, and yet still believes in the death penalty. What I hope will emerge is death penalty advocates honest enough to admit that no system of state-sponsored execution can be infallible, because people are fallible. I want them to come out and say what’s clear–innocent people will be executed. I want them to stop treating us like children, and make the argument.
Unfortunately, this is not what will happen. Death penalty advocates will simply argue that we can’t say for sure that Willingham was innocent and so on. The burden of proof will shift, or has already shifted: it now must be proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that an innocent man has been executed.
Americans’ support for the death penalty is not isolated. It is of a piece with Americans’ (negative) attitudes about evolution, just to cite one example (I’m sure I could find others but I find the topic depressing); that is to say, it has more to do with superstitions and conceptions of good and evil than with reason. Probably the most we could ask for right now is to have the people administering the lethal injections dress as pimps so that in the event of another wrongful execution the New York Times and Washington Post treat it as an important story.
I think it’s important to highlight what happened in Texas, both with the conviction and with the cover-up. Because — not but — when it comes to reversing attitudes about the death penalty, it’s a long, long road.
cjdavis
And that is a major reason why this isn’t and won’t be a big news item. It is depressing. What kind of advertiser wants to support a show that talks about stuff that depressing?
Lee
huh?
Edit: +4, so that might have something to do with it :)
DougJ
huh?
I tried to elaborate.
cjdavis
Wow, the Palin ads return for this story. Always interesting to see where she pops up when she’s not the topic (and never mentioned.)
LD50
I think he was commenting on the phrase ‘it if of’.
General Winfield Stuck
I am having a hard time digesting this one. My brain just isn’t ready to wrap around the State of Texas killing a man when there was solid evidence he was innocent; And they apparently didn’t want to consider it. I’m just not ready to process the rage I know I will feel when it becomes clear this occurred, if it isn’t already. But the concept of giving more weight to some sick sense of process of justice than to the accused himself is beyond my realm of consideration for right and wrong having grown up in this great country.
JR
Back in the 60s we were much more evenly split as a country on the death penalty. I think the reason why supporters gained so much ground is, in large part, because we improved Southern ‘justice’ far beyond what it was like during Jim Crow. No, it isn’t perfect (in fact, it’s still largely horrific), but at least formally it became far less blatantly unfair, and it became much less obvious that innocent men were being executed by a biased system: the iconic Tom Robinson from “To Kill a Mockingbird” became a historical character rather than a contemporary one, in the minds of many would-be reformers.
So now we have Willingham, who was white but poor and uneducated, killed by a system he couldn’t effectively combat. And those same questions about fundamental justice are now re-emerging: can everyone get a fair trial, especially in capital cases? Can the process ensure the accuracy of convictions before executions take place? These are the same sorts of questions that predominated when the justice system was obviously faulty because it was obviously racist, and it’s likely that the Willingham case–where the errors are obvious and the mistakes irreversible–will lead to the same level of doubt about and opposition to the death penalty as existed in the 60s.
mclaren
Absolutely. Random innocent people will be killed when we push forward with the death penalty.
So why not just get a head start on the process right now, and tell police officers to take out their 9mm Sig-Sauer automatic pistols and shoot random people on the street? Then we can have a judge and jury declare ’em retroactively guilty and people’s “assurance” will be “preserved.”
DougJ
I think he was commenting on the phrase ‘it if of’.
I corrected that too. I think even beyond that, it wasn’t clear what I was trying to say initially.
General Winfield Stuck
Since I am very likely an adult dyslexic, this did not of bother me.
Zam
The argument I have been hearing is that he was a criminal anyway so why should we care that he was executed. As if small crimes should warrant the death penalty
Just Some Fuckhead
Is TNC making the argument that it’s okay to kill the occasional innocent person in the interest of order and stability? It’s not clear to me.
DougJ
Is TNC making the argument that it’s okay to kill the occasional innocent person in the interest of order and stability?
No, he’s saying that death penalty advocates should admit that that is what their argument actually is here.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Just Some Fuckhead: I didn’t get that impression. I think she’s simply trying (and–imho, doing a good job of it) to understand the psychological impetus that leads people to defend the death penalty as a warranted action of the state.
me
Ship -> Sailed
They are going to want it proved beyond all doubt.
jibeaux
I don’t know, I did some work with an innocence project some years ago and heard a prominent speaker on the subject — I am thinking now it was Barry Scheck, but I would not swear to that — giving his opinion that support for the death penalty was a mile wide and an inch deep, and was on the cusp of a sea change from some high-publicity exonerations. On the other hand, the possibility of executing an innocent person is to me probably the most compelling argument against the death penalty; if you aren’t swayed by that, you aren’t going to be swayed by anything. So we’ll see.
I need to go completely and totally O/T but I find this place as good a source of information as any. Let’s just say that I did some sub-par driving at a drive through pharmacy, and that I scraped my car against one of those yellow barrier things they put up, and there isn’t any real damage but I did swap paint with the yellow thing. How can I get the yellow paint off of my car without removing my car’s paint?
Linkmeister
I found that post of TNC’s uncharacteristically naive. He says, “I strongly suspect that Rick Perry—at this point—knows that something went badly wrong in Willingham’s execution”
I disagree. I think Perry is willfully trying to cover up a disaster.
jibeaux
EDIT: Okay, okay, it was a drive through Place to Purchase M e d i c a t i o n s!!!
I don’t know, I did some work with an innocence project some years ago and heard a prominent speaker on the subject—I am thinking now it was Barry Scheck, but I would not swear to that—giving his opinion that support for the death penalty was a mile wide and an inch deep, and was on the cusp of a sea change from some high-publicity exonerations. On the other hand, the possibility of executing an innocent person is to me probably the most compelling argument against the death penalty; if you aren’t swayed by that, you aren’t going to be swayed by anything. So we’ll see.
I need to go completely and totally O/T but I find this place as good a source of information as any. Let’s just say that I did some sub-par driving at a drive through ***censored***, and that I scraped my car against one of those yellow barrier things they put up, and there isn’t any real damage but I did swap paint with the yellow thing. How can I get the yellow paint off of my car without removing my car’s paint?
thomas Levenson
After X years of the Innocence Project — from which I just pulled this quote …
…it should long since have become obvious that the price of the death penalty was/is state sponsored killing of innocents.
(Not that it wasn’t obvious prior to the technologically satisfying advent of DNA testing.)
TNC is right: if you want to go all-in on the death penalty you have to admit your willingness to take responsibility for the deaths of those who did not commit the crimes for which they die. I’m not — and I frankly don’t see how anyone whose moral system condemns the instrumental use of people could either. “Collateral damage” is not acceptable as state policy for fighting crime; civil society is civil precisely because it denies the acceptablity of the claim “I didn’t mean to…”
Ash
Oh yes, according to Governor Good Hair, this nationally renowned arson expert (and all around scientific genius) is just some hack who doesn’t like the death penalty.
I think it’s time to bring the DIAF (die in a fire) phrase over to BJ.
jibeaux
@Linkmeister:
Well, those aren’t inconsistent beliefs. He knows something went wrong, that’s why it’s so important to get the wingnuttiest wingnuts he can find in those chairs instead of the people who know the evidence. He’s trying to cover up what he knows was wrong, because he doesn’t care that it’s wrong. He cares about his own reputation, and about maintaining the death penalty.
Warren Terra
I remember a couple of years ago the state of Virginia executed a man about whose guilt there was some controversy (a bunch of the witnesses who’d put him on death row later recanted, leaving a jailhouse snitch as the only living witness to stick by their story iirc), and even after the guy was executed the controversy persisted. Now, in the time this guy had spent awaiting execution DNA forensic technology had been invented and been proven reliable, so even after the execution some people wanted to test the remaining evidence collected with the case, to see whether the executed man indeed could be linked to the crime. The state fought to prevent having people use modern technology to reexamine the process under which it had executed a man, and fought to keep the evidence from being tested all the way to the Supreme Court (and won, iirc).
Moral of the story: the people claiming to support a responsible death penalty, or at least the officials making such claims, are unwilling to address this most serious of questions, the premeditated taking of a human life, with the solemnity of purpose that any sane person would insist it demands.
Ash Can
The argument in favor of the death penalty is, at best, that anyone crossing a certain line of behavior won’t just be punished, they’ll be eliminated. It goes beyond an issue of justice; it’s an issue of vengeance. American society has an unseemly streak of barbarism running through it, and our adherence to death penalties is a prime illustration.
HRA
Perry knows he got caught on this one. The Ed show on MSNBC had one of the panel working on the forensics of the case. Perrry had incorporated the panel and dissolved it before they had made their judgment or final analysis. It’s sickening to contemplate killing a possibly innocent person.
Correction: Killing anyone is sickening to me. Keeping them locked up for life is what I believe in.
JR
@Warren Terra: You’re thinking of Roger Keith Coleman. Ironically, the DNA was eventually tested in 2006 and proved he was actually guilty.
Just Some Fuckhead
Nevermind
arguingwithsignposts
Didn’t the SCOTUS rule in the last couple of years that if the legal process was followed, future proof of innocence (I think it was DNA) is not enough to reopen a death penalty case? Fucking brilliant.
And yeah, Perry is just a douchebag who wants to be “tough on crime” like his good buddy GWB.
smiley
Innocent people have been executed by the state for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. It’s not supposed to happen in this country? Grow up. It’s going to happen as long as state-sponsored executions are permitted. That’s why it must stop.
Ash
FYI, Cra@arguingwithsignposts:
Scalia’s remarks on that were particularly nauseating.
Warren Terra
Ah, thanks for that. And I see from your link that it was the state supreme court, not the US supreme court. Still goes to my point: even when they’re right most of these officials lack the moral strength to submit to having their actions examined when there’s a fair way to do it – and good on Mark Warner for being an exception to that generalization.
Indeed. Mind you, there are some crimes so unimaginable that I am comfortable with society seeking vengeance – but the idea that we as a society would do so while even the tiniest of glimmer of doubt remains is just disgusting.
Zam
@Ash Can: This
Ron Beasley
Here in Oregon prosecutors no longer ask for the death penalty because to do it right is too expensive. Since they don’t do it right in TX this is not an issue.
The effort to to find a humane execution has always amazed me. The Chinese have what is probably the most “humane ” execution ( although it may be a bit messy), a bullet through the back of the head that turns the cerebral cortex into scrambled eggs immediately. If jurors were required to witness such an execution perhaps it wouldn’t become as common.
jibeaux
@Ash:
They were completely nauseating. I said before, it is the peak of irony that someone whose title is “Justice” uttered them. But, FWIW, it seemed to be dicta in an unrelated case. They were not directly addressing that issue at all, because it wasn’t before them.
Chuck Butcher
If you do a thing enough times something will go awry and TX does by gad do it a lot. Breaking the numbers down by State is horrifying enough, but TX per capita…
Svensker
@jibeaux:
I’d try Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Very gently.
PMWiley
@Warren Terra:
Agree on this point. Particularly eloquent expression of it by Justice Potter Stewart in Gregg v. Georgia:
smiley
@jibeaux: …but I did swap paint with the yellow thing. How can I get the yellow paint off of my car without removing my car’s paint?
The answer is obvious. Pull out your Glock and shoot it off.
ds
What are you? 10? It’s been obvious for years that the state kills plenty of innocent people.
Texas kills like 100 people a year, doesn’t it? Even if they have an awesome justice system and they’re right 95% of the time, 5 people a year adds up.
The really guilty criminals don’t generally receive death sentences, because they sign plea bargains. The people who actually get put on death row are people who tried to plead not guilty.
The death penalty is basically a voodoo ritual that allows politicians to prove how tough they are. Anyone with basic math skills can figure out that clearly some of the people executed for the ritual are really innocent.
Nothing new here. The death penalty is just as evil as usual. And its miles and miles better than it was before the 60s where states routinely executed scores of innocent men just to prove how tough they were on black people.
smiley
@smiley: Block quote fail.
Midnight Marauder
@Ash Can:
Incredibly well said.
@Warren Terra:
I would agree whole-heartedly with those sentiments. It has been fascinating to watch Governor Goodhair double-down recently after shit hit the fan with the dissolving of the Texas Forensic Science Commission. I mean, with the steady-building avalanche of evidence against him growing daily, who says something like this:
As someone born and raised in Texas, I really want to see this son of a bitch go down, and go down hard. A good friend of mine is actually doing Teach For America in Houston (my hometown) and told me the other day that Governor Goodhair would be visiting his school, and quite possibly, sitting in on his class. It led to the following text exchange:
Me:
He responded:
Oh, how sweet it will be to watch him fall.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
As long as it is on the surface and it is a newer vehicle with a two-component (2K) poly paint job, take it to a shop and have them buff it out. If you have a buffer and pads (wool and foam), get the 3M Perfect-It 3000 system (three bottles; rubbing compound, swirl-mark remover and final glaze). Start with the rubbing compound and the wool bonnet and cut the yellow paint (and not overheating the paint while doing so) area until it is removed.
Follow up with the swirl-mark remover and final glaze and it will look like new. You might even end up doing the rest of the car just to cut the pollution, oxidation and surface scratches off of the surface, making the paint look like new again. I also use the stuff to keep plexi polished like new (motorcycle windshield, tail, turn lenses and such).
Excellent product. You need a ‘real’ buffer, not one of the orbital polishers.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Oh, and use the foam pad and one pass with the rubbing compound after cutting the yellow paint off with the wool/compound combo. Finish polishing with the foam pad from that point on.
Also. ;)
Fulcanelli
If the majority of Texans are really the xenophobic, death happy, religious sociopaths they seem to be, then it should be no surprise, (and actually predictable) to find them picking off the weak and poor every opportunity they get. A perfect example of natural selection in action.
The problem is keeping their lizard brained politicians IN Texas, and OUT of Washington. Texas politicians have been making a mess out of US Politics since “Texas Tea” was first discovered there.
/+3 rheumatiz medicine ftw
Notorious P.A.T.
Couldn’t agree more. You can toss gun ownership in there, too; there is no logical reason for civilians who don’t hunt to own a firearm but millions insist upon it anyway because they think EVIL is going to climb through their window.
Fulcanelli
@jibeaux: Use Enamel Reducer. Very sparingly, with a brand new cheesecloth. That should do it. Get it at a body shop supply store.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
On the topic itself, anyone who thinks innocent people are not wrongly put to death is deluding themselves. Innocent people are wrongfully imprisoned and later released all of the time so it’s not a stretch to figure that people who are put to death can have the very same thing happen to them. As they say, shit happens.
The problem is that our society seems to be willing to accept this but only as long as it does not happen to them or someone they care about. Since the number of people wrongfully put to death is small, most people just don’t care because they believe that the likelihood of it happening to them or theirs is almost nonexistent. It just don’t matter to them, all they care about is the false sense of security the death penalty gives them.
Our system of justice is pretty much geared towards punishment, making prisoners miserable and not considering them worth rehabilitating. Death is just the last step on the road to misery.
The system is set up to fail everyone, even the survivors.
JR
Well, for what it’s worth, I think the question of whether innocent people were put to death in America was pretty well settled in 17th century Salem.
LD50
Not true. We need guns to keep the British from billeting soldiers in our houses.
Ron Beasley
@LD50: Good One!
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
IANAL but is there any way the feds can step in if there is a case to be made that an innocent man was wrongly put to death, the motive may have been political and the state is trying to cover it up? Wouldn’t this fall under a violation of his civil rights, something I thought the feds could step in on?
Just wondering because you would think that there would be some mechanism at the federal level for a state and its governor murdering someone and then covering it up.
freelancer
Really DougJ? Really,
No link? C’mon!
I’m a free born man of the USA.
trollhattan
This poor sod Willingham never had a chance, did he?
And it’s not as though you can pluck the well-hidden wingnut cognitive dissonance heartstring with a well-placed “but the real killer walks free, among us” (armed, since it’s Texas) unless you want to arrest and convict a space heater.
All I can conclude is rat bastard Perry wants to top Dubya and Gonzo’s axis of death penalty evil. Hey, he’s giving it his all.
State executions: critical hallmark of a civilized society.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
I wonder if Gov. Goodhair got a
campaign contributionpayoff from the company that made the space heater for saving them from a huge lawsuit?It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Mike P
Perry is playing war, shooting blanks from behind a wall of mesh at a New Yorker article that’s built like a M1 Abrams. Notice how these cats can’t even bring themselves to mention David Grann by name. They don’t want it with him because they know they’ve got nothing. Do these folks know that the New Yorker is legendary for its fact checking? There’s just no way, especially on a story of this magnitude, that they wouldn’t have everything locked down on this.
I love watching Perry trying to act defiant. Dude, they got you in the mix. Just give it up.
DougJ
Really DougJ? Really,
Yeah, I took the title from that song. But I didn’t want to make light of this issue, you know.
oh really
No, it is more likely that the standard that should be applied to getting a death penalty conviction in the first place — beyond any doubt whatsoever — will be turned on its head and anti-death penalty activists will be required to prove the impossible: that Willingham could not possibly have committed the crime, planned the crime, or even known about the crime prior to its commission.
I oppose the death penalty in all cases, but if a modern society has to have capital punishment, it should at least require that there be no possible doubt about the guilt of the accused. An eyewitness, even a sworn admission, should never be sufficient. The state should have to prove that it is inconceivable that the accused did not commit the crime. By this standard, in the case of the JFK assassination, Oswald could not have been executed, but Jack Ruby could, since he committed his crime in full view of law enforcement officers and more significantly in front of television cameras. His (physical) guilt was not in question. However, the evidence against Oswald could never have satisfied such a standard. Since I favor no capital punishment at all, it doesn’t bother me in the least that it would be almost impossible for the state to get a death penalty conviction. What matters much more is that the possibility of wrongly executing an innocent person would virtually disappear.
Once someone is convicted in the US, the possibility of innocence ceases to be accepted by the state. To get parole, a convict often (if not always) has to admit his or her guilt, accept responsibility for the crime, and show remorse. That is a tall order for someone who is actually innocent. I’ve always found those requirements to be deeply offensive. Every sane person knows the justice system is not infallible, yet it requires an innocent person, who was wrongly convicted, to testify against him (or her-) self, and commit perjury in order to gain freedom. That’s a remarkably perverse system.
To coerce someone into perjury to satisfy the pretense that the justice system can’t make a mistake is an unforgivable violation of human and civil rights.
Jack
@General Winfield Stuck:
The death penalty is human sacrifice. At the risk of reading as a broken record, it’s an attempt at blood expiation, at rewriting the unalterable past by way of present actions, at “righting the order of the world.” Perhaps gods aren’t invoked as often, but the same “balance restoring” logic is still employed: if the Gods/State/Society isn’t expiated with a blood offering, more bad people will [insert unexplained magical mechanism] arise.
People who believe that the social order depends upon this sacred or mystical balance, and also believe in the human sacrifice that is the death penalty (or, let’s be honest here, locking up pot growers for their productive adult lives), will go to great political lengths to preserve that order.
sunsin
Then why is it that so many civilized societies get along very well without this “necessary” function? The person who wrote that drivel was a first-class fool.
bellatrys
@Notorious P.A.T.:
FIFY. At least in / around New England, where you can’t be a courier in Eastern Mass without getting a nearly-lethal dose of FOX, Rush, and Jay Severin in the course of the week…
bellatrys
@Jack:
This is the same magical thinking that requires legal oppression of GLBT citizens and “loose” women, lest Jove or Jehovah smite us for not being stern and manly enough, proven by the fact that our economy continually implodes and our slaves keep revolting and our neighbors keep gunning for us – not because the laws against senators profiting by the laws they make have shot as full of loopholes as sieves and we keep invading other countries to subsidize our system, but because men were lying with men and women with men not their husbands, or other women…
Plus ca f’ing change, folks.
BloodRush
This is so depressing, I hate even talking about it, but I get so angered that so many people are okay with what happened to this man. Ends justify the means for them, and of course because he was poor, and uneducated he is less of a person to them.
I have to second TNC on this, I wish death penalty proponents would just admit, that yes, innocent people will and have gotten executed, and that, that is okay with them. I took a class while in college called “Death Penalty in America” that basically shreds all their arguments about deterrence and recidivism. These people just want their biblical eye for an eye punishment, because that quenches their revenge thirst.
I’m sorry for sounding disjointed, I’m angered, and it’s early.
Jack
@bellatrys:
This.
_______
One of the signature faults of our liberal worldview is that we fail to understand that, at its core, the reactionary opposition is armed with a bronze age sorcerous creed.
Nicole
And yet they are opposed to teaching Darwin in schools. Consistency, thou art a jewel.
BC
But isn’t the perverse thing about the Willingham case that there was no actual crime (arson), that the fire wasn’t started by a person but by something else? This is really the crux – they executed a person for something that wasn’t even a crime. Sort of like being executed because you had a frayed wire on your tv that started a fire and killed your children.
General Winfield Stuck
@ds:
Obvious? give me a list. I’d say it’s likely a few which is plenty too many. But “kills plenty of innocent people” doubtful. Kills more poor guilty minorities than guilty whites who generally can afford good lawyers, yes plenty. Goes for the death penalty more often with minorities than whites for similar circumstances of guilt, yes. But kills plenty of innocent people, you need to provide evidence, smartass.