The Cost of Killing in Idaho

BOISE - Thomas Creech sits and waits on Idaho’s death row.

Creech was already serving a life sentence for a double murder in 1981, when he was convicted of bludgeoning a fellow inmate to death using a sock filled with batteries. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Ada County. But almost three decades later, Creech still doesn't have an execution date.

And your tax money is keeping him alive.

Through a string of appeals over the decades, many of them mandatory in capital cases, Creech waits. And the relatives of his victims wait. And Idaho taxpayers spend.

For that reason alone, Democratic State Senator Elliot Werk of Boise says it's time to toss out the death penalty in Idaho.

"It's just a huge waste of government money and money that could go to other really beneficial uses," says Werk.

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The most amazing quote was provided by Senator Darrington (R- Declo). He states "...the death penalty shouldn't come down to dollars and cents, and feels Idaho would be making a big mistake getting rid of it."

“We do not impose criminal sentences, be it prison sentences or the death penalty, with economics in mind," says Darrington.

Now we know why Idaho has gone from 1 out of 128 adults under some type of correctional supervision in 1982 to out of 18 in 2007. Idaho is second in the nation in terms of this rate. We also know that Senator Darrington will never permit any bill to revise the death penalty through his committee, regardless of the cost or efficacy.

Shouldn't the death penalty and prisons be held to the same standard as any other state policy? Some would say we should not put a price on "justice." But don't we ration other items that are necessary for life, such as health care, education, housing, food, clothing, etc? And does the criminal justice system have unlimited dollars to pursue any policy? Is not the essence of good government setting priorities, tying the budget to intended outcomes, and evaluating whether or not policies are working as intended?

I invite Senator Darrington to reevaluate his stance on capital punishment in Idaho. 11 states considered abolition this year; New Mexico succeeded. One execution in 52 years hardly seems fair to the crime victims' family and friends, to offenders who languish for decades waiting for a sentence that will most likely never be carried out, and to the people of Idaho who have to shoulder the burden of this failed policy.

No Constitutional Protection Against Being Framed

"THERE IS NO Freestanding Constitutional 'Right Not To Be Framed.' " So states a brief filed by Iowa prosecutors hoping to persuade the Supreme Court to dismiss a lawsuit against them for allegedly fabricating evidence that led to the 25-year incarceration of two innocent men. It's a breathtaking proposition that the justices should roundly reject when they hear the case Wednesday.

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"The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor-indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one." Burger v. United States (1935)

It is clear that police and prosecutors can use deception, to a degree, in order to obtain confessions and convictions. However, knowingly allowing the use of perjured testimony goes beyond the use of trickery. There is no defense against unscrupulous prosecutors who will do anything in order to win.

The defendants maintain that prosecutors have absolute immunity for actions during the trial. They maintain that this immunity extends to the pretrial phases. They also argued that modifying absolute immunity would result in a flood of litigation, which would then result in prosecutors "flinching" - they would be reluctant to perform their duties.

Odd that no mention seems to be made of the fact that police officers have a qualified immunity, which does not hamper them from performing their duties. Police can be hed accountable for their actions when they engage in illegal behavior. No one is disputing the facts of this case (Pottawattamie County v. McGhee.). The prosecutors fabricated evidence, coerced perjured testimony, withheld exculpatory evidence, and covered up evidence that led to the real suspect.

Our criminal justice system has enough problems without the U.S. Supreme Court adding another one. The decision in this case should be clear, but it is not clear that members of the Court have the moral courage to arrive at what should be a clear cut outcome. No one, including prosecutors, is above the law.

Here is another report from National Public Radio.

Justices will scrutinize life sentences for youths

It did not take long for the judge to determine that the convicted rapist in front of him was irredeemable.

"He is beyond help," Judge Nicholas Geeker said of Joe Harris Sullivan. "I'm going to try to send him away for as long as I can."

And then Geeker sentenced Sullivan to life in prison without the possibility of parole. At the time, Sullivan was 13 years old.

Now, 20 years after that sentencing in a courtroom in Pensacola, Fla., the Supreme Court will consider whether Sullivan's prison term -- and what his supporters say is an only-in-America phenomenon of extreme sentences for juveniles -- violates the Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

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The U.S. has more juveniles serving life without parole than any place on the planet. We also treat juveniles as adults in an ever-widening net that has yet to produce little in the way of crime control, but has actually made matters worse. Juveniles in adult court and serving adult sentences tend not to receive the necessary treatment, are at higher risk of assault from inmates and staff, and have higher rates of recidivism.

It is time to end this failed public policy and reform the laws on juvenile waivers. Missouri has made good progress on this front. The U.S. Supreme Court should also rule that life without parole is cruel and unusual for all juveniles.

Like Giving Car Keys to A Drunken Teenager

State officials will soon seek bids from private companies for 9 of the state’s 10 prison complexes that house roughly 40,000 inmates, including the 127 here on death row. It is the first effort by a state to put its entire prison system under private control.

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Turning over the prison system to a for-profit company is akin to giving car keys to a drunken teenager - totally irresponsible.

Aside from the malfeasance that continues to surround the for-profit prison industry, there is the issue of the morality of making a profit from other people's misery. The state may think that it is saving money, but the evidence doesn't support this conclusion. Shifting death row into private hands also seems rather macabre. The state is abdicating its role the dispenser of punishment and handing it over to a group with profit as its motive. It would not occur to elected officials to reduce the prison population by reforming sentencing and investing in programs that minimize the likelihood of offenders returning to prison. Very irresponsible.

For a humorous take on this pending tragedy, take a look at this Colbert Report.

The Death Penalty in Texas Looks Bad?

Questions about whether Gov. Rick Perry allowed the execution of a man some arson experts say may have been innocent, and then hindered an investigation into the evidence, continue to reverberate across Texas, where issues surrounding capital punishment have rarely stirred such controversy.

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The criticism of Gov. Perry continues.

But I love the quote from the other Republican candidate for Texas governor, Senator Kay Baily Hutchison - “The only thing Rick Perry’s actions have accomplished is giving liberals an argument to discredit the death penalty,” she said in a statement. “We should never do anything to create a cloud of controversy over it with actions that look like a cover-up.”

Sleeping lawyers, a prosecutor and a judge romantically involved before and during a trial, 10 exonerations from death row, sentence and conviction reversals, botched executions, wrong convictions and executions, but Senator Hutchison would not want to do anything to create a cloud of controversy over the death penalty. Other than this misstep by Perry, there is nothing else with which to discredit the death penalty.

In the words of Rep. Barney Frank, what planet do you live on Senator Hutchison?

An Example of Prosecutorial Misconduct

After spending three years investigating the conviction of a Harvey man accused of killing a security guard with a shotgun blast in 1978, journalism students at Northwestern University say they have uncovered new evidence that proves his innocence.

Their efforts helped win a new day in court for Anthony McKinney, who has spent 31 years in prison for the slaying. But as they prepare for that crucial hearing, prosecutors seem to have focused on the students and teacher who led the investigation for the school's internationally acclaimed Medill Innocence Project.

The Cook County state's attorney subpoenaed the students' grades, notes and recordings of witness interviews, the class syllabus and even e-mails they sent to each other and to professor David Protess of the university's Medill School of Journalism.

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Let's assume that the prosecutors are right - that the professor in the class told students to dig up information or receive a poor grade. Does that change the fact than an innocent person may have spent 31 years in prison for a crime he did not commit?

Clearly the prosecutor is trying to harass and intimidate the professor, his students, and anyone else who is involved with the Innocence Project.

Just as clearly, the argument that the students and the professor are not journalists and are not covered by legal protections is another stab at undermining the effort to exonerate the wrongly convicted.

Misconduct by prosecutors must be challenged at every level. At a minimum, I hope this outrageous act results in a complaint and investigation from the Illinois Bar Association. Politically, I hope the Cook County attorney is driven from office for wrongful prosecutions and immoral acts like this case.

Governor Perry Did What?

DALLAS, Texas (CNN) -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Wednesday shook up the ranks of a state commission that is probing whether a man executed in 2004 belonged on death row, forcing the commission to delay a scheduled hearing on the case.

Read more... Dallas Morning News

I have witnessed some pretty outrageous conduct by elected officials, but this action by Governor Perry is way over the top. Meddling with the commission just days before a public hearing on the execution of an innocent person (based on the evidence presented thus far) is reminiscent of the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" during the Nixon Administration.

What is Governor Perry trying to hide? If he has an ounce of integrity left, he should resign as governor. If he does not, I hope the Texas legislature takes action against him.

Decriminalizing Drugs in Mexico

Reporting from Tijuana and Mexico City - Mired in a bloody battle with major drug traffickers, Mexico is quietly eliminating jail time for possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs.

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This policy change is a great first step in shifting the issue of drug use away from the failed prohibition policies. Portugal has had great success since it took a similar approach in 2001. The problem for Mexico is providing the second step - access to treatment.

The U.S. has the ability to provide more mental health treatment, but has been reluctant to do so as it appears to many to be a sign of weakness. Instead policy makers continue the reckless path of prohibition, which enriches the drug cartels and creates new classes of deviant and criminal behavior.

When will we learn that prohibition does not work?

Priority Test: Health Care or Prisons?

At a time when we Americans may abandon health care reform because it supposedly is “too expensive,” how is it that we can afford to imprison people like Curtis Wilkerson?

Mr. Wilkerson is serving a life sentence in California — for stealing a $2.50 pair of socks. As The Economist noted recently, he already had two offenses on his record (both for abetting robbery at age 19), and so the “three strikes” law resulted in a life sentence.

This is unjust, of course. But considering that California spends almost $49,000 annually per prison inmate, it’s also an extraordinary waste of money.

Astonishingly, many politicians seem to think that we should lead the world in prisons, not in health care or education. The United States is anomalous among industrialized countries in the high proportion of people we incarcerate; likewise, we stand out in the high proportion of people who have no medical care — and partly as a result, our health care outcomes such as life expectancy and infant mortality are unusually poor.

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We waste an incredible amount of money in the criminal justice system if the goal is crime control. As the editorial by Kristof points out, we are the world leader when it comes to incarceration. But we do not need these current levels in order to maintain safe communities. Nationally, crime rates have been dropping since the 1990s. This drop is attributable to a number of factors, least of which is incarceration.

Many of our current policies, such as drug prohibition laws, actually make matters worse. The bottom line is that we can save money, which can be redirected to other needs, while continuing to improve public safety. The question is do we have the political will to invest in people and break the current cycle of ineffective crime control policies?

The Politics of Crime Control

After an impassioned debate over the cost and benefit of California's massive prison system, the state Senate on Thursday narrowly approved a controversial bill to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in spending on state lockups by reducing the time lower-level inmates would spend behind bars and on parole.

But the proposal remained stalled in the Assembly, where a host of lawmakers vying for higher office refused to take a vote that could portray them as soft on crime. Speaker Karen Bass kept her members late into the night in an effort to push through a watered-down version, to no avail. The Assembly adjourned just before midnight without taking action, planning to reconvene Monday.

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We see the first problem in managing a failed prison system - politics - in this story from California. Policy makers - those who played a significant role in creating this problem - are afraid of being labeled soft on crime. Never heard an elected official claim to be afraid of being smart on crime.

Inside the political issue is the fact that many politicians have built their careers being tough on crime. They don't have tangible results of positive outcomes from the pursuit of their get tough approach, but that doesn't matter. They pander to the baser instincts in order to score political points. I don't think that many of these politicos care about victims or offenders - crime is just a means to an end for them.

We also see the typical response to any attempt to be smart about crime control - fear.

Republicans and some law enforcement groups, who characterize the plan as "early release" and "get out of jail free," warned that it would reverse the significant drops in crime of recent years.

"We will see mayhem on the streets of California," Sen. Jeff Denham (R-Atwater) told colleagues on the Senate floor Thursday.

Never mind the facts. Cut straight to the fear mongering. Never mind that the inmates who would be released are non-violent. Never mind that many of them are recidivists because of technical violations. Just claim that crime will go up and many elected officials will wilt.

But in this case, the federal courts have gotten involved, which was predictable. If Californai doesn't step up, we will see more riots and lawsuits. Other states - take heed.

When Pigs Fly

The Supreme Court on Monday took the rare step of ordering a federal judge to consider the innocence claims of condemned Georgia prisoner Troy Anthony Davis, who has mounted a global campaign to declare he was wrongfully convicted of murder and barred by federal law from presenting the evidence that would prove it.

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A recent story in the NY Times suggested that some federal judges were pushing back against the effects of the 1996 Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Now this decision - I swear that I saw a pig flying today!

Of course Scalia and his 5th appendage Thomas don't see it that way. "This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent," Scalia wrote. Law professor Alan Dershowitz put Scalia and Thomas' logic into simpler terms: "If a defendant were convicted ... of murdering his wife and then came to the Supreme Court with his very much alive wife at his side ... these two justices would tell him, in effect: 'Look, your wife may be alive as a matter of fact, but as a matter of constitutional law, she's dead, and as for you, Mr. Innocent Defendant, you're dead, too, since there is no constitutional right not to be executed merely because you're innocent.'"

From a legal standpoint, Scalia and Thomas don't seem to believe a person can actually be innocent, only "guilty" or "not guilty," because that's the only thing the system is designed to determine. That's an incredible view of our justice system, one that deserves much more debate. Read more...

Getting Smart on Crime?

After decades of supercharged incarceration rates, our bloated prison system is straining under its own weight, and policy makers are finally being forced to deal with the need to shrink it.

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Asking elected officials to get smart on crime is asking a lot. Many have difficulty in admitting that the get tough approach of the 1908s has failed to reduce street crime. Challenges to the current orthodoxy are frequently labeled as being soft on crime and/or a liberal approach. There seems to be little appetite for changing polices such as mandatory minimum sentences or drug prohibition, except where the budget is forcing some changes such as in California.

The politicization of crime may have left an enduring legacy from which we may never recover.

Death Qualification

NASHVILLE (WATE) -- Death penalty questions in Nashville Thursday brought out tears and hedging from the jury pool for the first trial of suspects accused of killing Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom.

Attorneys for both sides continue questioning potential jurors in Davidson County for the trial of Letalvis Cobbins.

Several potential jurors were dismissed Thursday morning because they're strongly opposed to the death penalty. One woman quoted the Bible during questioning, saying "it's not our place, it's God's place."

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The process described in this article is termed "death qualification." During jury selection, potential members are questioned about their death penalty beliefs. The U.S. Supreme Court held that jurors who are opposed to the death penalty can be excluded (Witherspoon v. Illinois). No only did this decision violate the spirit and intention of the 6th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of a trial by a jury of one's peers, which has been interpreted to mean a cross-section of the community, but it left supporters of the death penalty free to decide guilt and impose the sentence.

27 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court altered the standard in Wainwright v. Witt. Thus prospective jurors who would always vote for a death sentence or who would never vote for a death sentence are excluded from in capital cases. But what about jurors who hold slightly less rigid views on capital punishment?

Enter social science research. While the goal of the jury selection process is to produce an impartial jury, research suggests that the process of death qualification produces a "stacked deck" against the defendant. As this article shows, the process is tilted toward removing death penalty opponents from the jury, which leaves death penalty supporters to render the decision. Research also shows that those who support capital punishment are more likely to convict, are less concerned with due process, are more likely to believe the prosecution than the defense, and are more likely to impose a death sentence than people who oppose capital punishment.

This body of research illustrates one more reason why the death penalty process developed by the courts and legislatures is unworkable.