Death Penalty FAIL?

At the urging of several different friends, I read The New Yorker piece last month about Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas for a crime that may never have happened. This is the most prominent case right now of potential death penalty applied to an innocent man.

I won't go into all the details, and you can read the piece here, but essentially he was convicted of murdering his two young children by arson, on evidence which has arguably been disproven by breakthroughs in arson detection science, evidence provided by what appear to be woefully underqualified arson "experts" in northeast Texas.

I thought the story would be an uninteresting low-life tale; in fact it's a page-turner. But a new story is emerging, one of potential cover-up by Texas Governor Rick Perry (R), who is looking at a difficult primary battle against popular Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), who's going after his job.

Perry has removed officials on the science panel investigating the Willingham case, just 48-hours prior to a key hearing with the scientist disproving the Willingham arson evidence, and replaced them with his own people. Sure looks like he's covering for a failed death penalty system -- and Perry's own failure to commute Willingham's sentence to give time for the evidence to be fully examined.

Hutch

Perry's going the demonization route, calling Willingham a "monster." Hutchison's campaign are using the apparent conflict of interest against Perry with a press release including:

The issue is Rick Perry’s heavy-handed politicization of a process and Commission established by the legislature to provide critical oversight. First, Rick Perry delayed the formation of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, then he tried to ensure it didn’t have funding and when all else failed, he fired everyone he could. The only thing Rick Perry’s actions have accomplished is giving liberals an argument to discredit the death penalty.

Nothing like watching GOPers fight it out, but the bigger issue here is the finality of the death penalty. Look, when I hear about a villain who kidnaps, rapes and murders a fourteen year-old girl, I say fry 'em. But justice is imperfect, especially in certain parts of the country, and arson is perhaps the hardest crime to pin down as murder. Even decades in prison capped by exoneration is better than exoneration post-lethal injection.

So what wonder is, with exonerations based on DNA evidence happening routinely these days, is there still a perfect argument for the state putting convicted individuals to death, rather than life imprisonment?

The Main Argument

I'm sure I'd be as righteously vindictive as anyone should a criminal hurt one of my own family members, but in philosophical terms, in moral terms, the one reason I've always ended up against the Death Penalty is fall conviction.

The New York Times has a powerful piece on one man, Jeffrey Deskovic, who was freed a little over a year ago for a murder/rape that DNA evidence proved he had not committed (and which nailed the actually perpetrator). What's so heartbreaking is that Deskovic, 34, was falsely convicted when he was a shy kid of 17. After seven hours of questioning, during which he was browbeaten that he had failed his lie detector test -- a ruinous lie itself by some lawman who no doubt wanted an easy, face-saving solve -- and promised psychiatric treatment rather than incarceration, the poor kid (age 16 at the time) signed a false confession.

Deskovic missed growing into the real world during the crucial formative young adult years, a whopping seventeen of them. He's doing as many speaking engagements as he can book, telling his story, wearing a suit, advocating for Death Penalty abolishment. No one is exempt from false conviction, he says. But he's clearly having a hard re-entry, feels he's still in prison mentally, misses the routine, and worries most that he'll wake up and release will have been a dream.

The a/v slide show tells the story best. There's also an interactive feature with a slew of cases and voices. The fact is that the stolen decades and inculcated horrors can never be compensated, no matter the size of the settlement or the publicity of the exoneration. But it's better than being executed for false conviction.

The government has a fundamental responsibility to remove those who commit grave crimes from society, for both individual safety and the health of society as a whole. But execution?

I guess I ultimately don't care if it's a deterrent or not, although I understand the value as a bargaining chip for law enforcement interrogators. I don't think it is moral for the state to put someone to death, but there's a number of grown adults who have deserved it. I can't imagine the feeling I'd have were, God forbid, someone still alive, even in life imprisonment, who had killed, worst of all, one of my boys.

When Robert Chambers was convicted in a plea deal of killing Jennifer Levin in NYC back in the 1980's, her father said in no uncertain terms that of course he wanted to kill Chambers, but he was a sane man living in civil society. Chambers was released a few years ago but clearly there was nothing to reform, as he's been in and out of jail on drug dealing charges.

It's a shame that scum like Chambers get to reemerge into our society. One expects it won't be for long, hopefully without taking anyone else down with him again.

But it's worth it for every single falsely convicted citizen like Jeffrey Deskovic to go free.