Today’s Topic: Writing Law For or Against One Individual
I have to admit I didn’t like the fact that an obvious murderer, O.J. Simpson, was acquitted, but I also have to admit that the prosecution didn’t do their jobs well enough. I tried to sit through the trial and assume the mantle of a juror, and with what was presented and what was withheld, I would have voted for acquittal myself.
So when it came down to the civil wrongful death suit filed by Ron Goldman’s father and Nicole’s family I figured some measure of justice would be accomplished. I was wrong. Californians decided that they needed a new law that takes the right of confronting your accuser for purposes of cross-examination away and so enacted such a law that allowed the dead victim’s diary to speak for them. The concept was to establish a frame of mind but I can tell you from experience that frame of mind isn’t always accurate and thus cannot be used for purposes of judgement.
For instance, the frame of mind of most inmates would be that they are innocent, and apparently in death row cases at least 1% have been, as shown by Barry Scheck’s Innocence Project (yes, the same Barry Scheck who worked on O.J.’s defense). My ex-wife's diary and letters surely would have convicted me even if I was seven states away and in the hospital were she to have been murdered.
But my point isn’t that O.J. was determined innocent or guilty, but the fact that making law designed to convict one person is bad law, and bad law comes back to haunt us. The longer bad law is in place the more it will haunt us and the wider spread it's use.
And so it is that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 has placed our court system into such a quandary that a person convicted of killing an off-duty cop cannot get recantations of testimony before any appeals court. This law was primarily aimed at making sure Timothy McVeigh didn’t have any means to escape justice, but when the chips are stacked against you, one has to wonder whether justice is the actual outcome. Justice only comes when both sides have the chance to properly and legally present their sides.
When the witnesses who helped put a man on death row recant their testimony the entire trial’s outcome becomes suspect. When witnesses then say that they were pressured by the police to testify in a specific way, our system of justice becomes suspect. When Troy Davis, 38, takes that last walk all of America should be held accountable for continuing to allow this country to use the death penalty.
Allowing eyewitness testimony to help put someone to death has been proven time and again to be specious at best. Psychological studies have proven that even two witnesses to a staged event could not agree on what they saw, much less assume what the motivations precipitating the even could have been. Not only is it most likely that witnesses to any event wouldn’t perceive that event in the same way, but it is highly likely that they wouldn’t perceive the event in its entirety, regardless of what their testimony might indicate. If a person is having a picnic and paying attention to their romantic inclinations it is far more likely that an event could come and go before any attention is paid at all. Then a person reports what they half heard as an event they fully witnessed. In the case of the recent VA Tech killings, it is more likely that most "witnesses" were actually possessed of a strong sense for survival rather than paying attention to the events at hand. Had the shooter not killed himself it is likely that there would have been at least several different versions of the events that transpired, and none of those eye witnesses would have had an inkling of the motivations.
And as I said, at least 1% of all death row inmates have been recently shown to have been convicted and sentenced to death whilst being innocent. The problem is that prosecutors now have the legalistic tools to present their suppositions to a jury as if those suppositions were facts in evidence. And they can do this because they can use the testimony of particular individuals whose testimony matches the information they wish to present. In other words, prosecutors can pick and choose. Defendants cannot.
When law is written as a knee-jerk reaction to events or individuals, then we as a society fail the test. More than likely there are plenty of laws on the books that deal with the problems we experience as a society, so why enact what became the "car jacking" law in the 90s? Congress jumped to make special law involving car jacking and yet we already had all the law necessary to prosecute criminals who would perpetrate a car jacking.
Another law so aimed at particular types of individuals was introduced during the "cocaine" days of the 80s and 90s. Suddenly there was a special law involved with possession of cocaine, which was already covered by numerous prior laws, but there was a special twist. Since white people were more likely to possess cocaine in powder form and blacks were more likely to have "crack" cocaine, an imbalance of sentencing guidelines put those possessing powder cocaine into a separate category. Thus, white people could be sentenced to lesser time of incarceration or even get probation whilst black people mostly went to jail for the maximum duration. It didn’t matter if a white and a black had exactly the same amount of cocaine in their possession. It only mattered whether one had powder and the other crack. Had it been a reversed situation where the white person had crack the guidelines were thrown out and the white person was allowed to be prosecuted by the state rather than in federal court. But if the person were black, regardless of powder or crack possession, we’re talking about federal prosecution and stiff guidelines.
William S. Sessions, FBI director under both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush said, "There is no more serious violent crime than the murder of an off-duty police officer who was putting his life on the line to protect innocent bystanders." But he admitted that "serious questions have been raised about Davis’ guilt," and that it would be "intolerable to execute an innocent man."
And this is the crux of my argument, which is when we design law to specifically address one action or one individual we set a precedent which allows innocent people to fall victim to an unbalanced judicial system.
People shouldn’t be put to death when even the smallest possibility of innocence exists. Personally I believe that the state for the reasons I’ve stated above and others should never execute people, but even I have to be a realist. We do have death sentences and as the state is sworn to protect innocent citizens it seems ridiculous to me that anyone might be put to death with the possibility of them being innocent. Hence, the state is NOT protecting the citizens if it cannot protect an individual citizen who might well be innocent.
There is something wrong with our judicial system when citizens can be convicted of heinous crimes based on specious or pressured testimony from eyewitnesses. Forensic science has come far enough to free 1% of death row inmates so shouldn’t we rely more upon a science that can free innocent people rather than unreliable eyewitness accounts that can kill innocent people?
9:15:46 PM 
|
