ABA questions U.S. death penalty systems

[flashl]

death penalty systems questioned

Serious problems in state death penalty systems compromise fairness and accuracy in capital punishment cases and justify a nationwide freeze on executions, the American Bar Association says.

Problems cited in a report released Sunday by the lawyers' organization include:

--Spotty collection and preservation of DNA evidence, which has been used to exonerate more than 200 inmates;

--Misidentification by eyewitnesses;

--False confessions from defendants; and

--Persistent racial disparities that make death sentences more likely when victims are white.

The report is a compilation of separate reviews done over the past three years of how the death penalty operates in eight states: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

Teams that studied the systems in Arizona, Florida and Pennsylvania did not call for a halt to executions in those states. But the ABA said every state with the death penalty should review its execution procedures before putting anyone else to death.

One day soon this madness hopefully will end. Under this admin, Americans have been given a stark look at its failing justice system from every possible angle. Somehow, there seems to be a persistent belief that there is this one island within the justice system that is working perfectly.

[fedupfisherman]

1. I totally support the death penalty but............

I agree there needs to be more safeguards in the system

[tekisui]

3. The State should never be allowed to take a life.

Mistakes will always be made. If one innocent person is put to death it is too many.

[flashl]

4. How do we get to "safeguards"?

There are crimes against humanity that are more heinous than the single act of one ax murder. With the stroke of a pen, an HMO can lawfully send thousands to their death in the name of profits. We call it a “business” decision, not murder, when an HMO willfully denies health care to Americans who will surely die from treatable diseases. Something is wrong with that type of thinking.

I MAY consider the death penalty as a "just" act IF “businesses” and their leaders that knowingly harm or kill as a practice pay with their lives for their actions. Or, IF more millionaires were sitting on death row.

[tekisui]

2. I would like to see th '08 candidates speak of Prison Reform.

It is desperately needed. Our Prison Industrial Complex is a scar on our society, and it is a purely domestic issue. One that a true leader for the people could fix within an administration.

I know Obama has mentioned problems with mandatory minimums, but I would like to hear Prison Reform: No Mandatory Minimums Decriminalize Drugs. Rehabilitate not Incarcerate. Abolish Capital Punishment. No Prison Slave Labor. Not For-Profit Justice System.

[flashl]

5. The JEC with Senator Webb as chair just had a hearing ...

JEC hearing - Mass Incarceration in the United States: At What Cost?

Thursday October 4th, 2007

The United States has experienced a sharp increase in its prison population in the past thirty years. From the 1920s to the mid-1970s, the incarceration rate in the United States remained steady at approximately 110 prisoners per 100,000 people. Today, the incarceration rate is 737 inmates per 100,000 residents, comprising 2.1 million persons in federal, state, and local prisons. The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population but now has 25 percent of its prisoners. There are approximately 5 million Americans under the supervision of the correctional system, including parole, probation, and other community supervision sanctions.

With such a significant number of the population behind bars, expenditures associated with the prison system have skyrocketed. According to the Urban Institute, “the social and economic costs to the nation are enormous.” With 2.25 million people incarcerated in approximately five thousand prisons and jails, the combined expenditures of local governments, state governments, and the federal government for law enforcement and corrections personnel totals over $200 billion.

The JEC will examine why the United States has such a disproportionate share of the world’s prison population, as well as ways to address this issue that responsibly balance public safety and the high social and economic costs of imprisonment.

Read more ...

[tekisui]

6. Looks like a start, thanks.

:hi:

[gratuitous]

7. Studied eight states, and Texas not among them?

That seems a tad odd, dunnit? I mean, if you're looking for how efficacious the death penalty is, then Texas would seem to be the model state. With all the people the good citizens of the Republic have murdered, the crime rate there should be zero, shouldn't it?

[flashl]

8. Texas nor Alabama

Texas would have been great. Crime labs forced to shutdown by Feds. Crime lab techs exposed as frauds. Harris County the fast track to the death chamber "found" evidence stored in a warehouse that goes back 24 years.

Alabama? Don't get me started.

[SteelPenguin]

9. I misread the title and thought it said ABBA

I thought to myself, "Who cares what a washed up Swedish Super Group thinks about our system."

Then I realized, "Man, they're not washed up, they're classic!"

Then I understood, "Crap, my reading comprehension sucks, it says ABA not ABBA."

Anyway, yeah. Get rid of the death penalty. Giving a guilty man life is prison rather than death, is better than giving an innocent man death, and finding out later he was innocent.

[aikoaiko]

10. "state with the death penalty should review its execution procedures before putting anyone to death

I couldn't agree more -- but to death some people should be put.

[DemGa]

11. Until we evolve sufficiently to move beyond executions

I'm thankful to see these markers along the way. What an inherently strange and abhorrent practice, wholly antithetical to progressive thought.