NEWS: "Culture of Life" Shifting to Encompass Death Penalty in Catholic Church

McCarrick of Washington, who played a leading role in developing the new campaign, said the bishops sense that public opinion is shifting against capital punishment, partly because genetic testing has proved that scores of death-row inmates were wrongfully convicted.

"I think the DNA evidence has really shaken up people," McCarrick said. "I think this is a moment, a very special moment, where we can talk about this and people are ready to listen."

"Evangelicals are the religious group in the United States that are the most pro-death penalty," said James L. Guth, a political scientist at Furman University in Greenville, S.C., who studies conservative Protestantism. "But as long as both groups place a higher priority on other social issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, I think their cooperation will continue unimpeded."

There is a growing bipartisan consensus that flaws in America's death-penalty system have reached crisis proportions. Many fear that capital trials put people on death row who don't belong there. Others say capital appeals take too long. This report—the first statistical study ever undertaken of modern American capital appeals (4,578 of them in state capital cases between 1973 and 1995)—suggests that both claims are correct.

Capital sentences do spend a long time under judicial review. As this study documents, however, judicial review takes so long precisely because American capital sentences are so persistently and systematically fraught with error that seriously undermines their reliability.

Our 23 years worth of results reveal a death penalty system collapsing under the weight of its own mistakes. They reveal a system in which lives and public order are at stake, yet for decades has made more mistakes than we would tolerate in far less important activities. They reveal a system that is wasteful and broken and needs to be addressed.

Our central findings are as follows:

* Nationally, during the 23-year study period, the overall rate of prejudicial error in the American capital punishment system was 68%. In other words, courts found serious, reversible error in nearly 7 of every 10 of the thousands of capital sentences that were fully reviewed during the period.

* Capital trials produce so many mistakes that it takes three judicial inspections to catch them—leaving grave doubt whether we do catch them all. After state courts threw out 47% of death sentences due to serious flaws, a later federal review found "serious error"—error undermining the reliability of the outcome—in 40% of the remaining sentences.

* Because state courts come first and see all the cases, they do most the work of correcting erroneous death sentences. Of the 2,370 death sentences thrown out due to serious error, 90% were overturned by state judges—many of whom were the very judges who imposed the death sentence in the first place; nearly all of whom were directly beholden to the electorate; and none of whom, consequently, were disposed to overturn death sentences except for very good reason. This does not mean that federal review is unnecessary. Precisely because of the huge amounts of serious capital error that state appellate judges are called upon to catch, it is not surprising that a substantial number of the capital judgments they let through to the federal stage are still seriously flawed.

* To lead to reversal, error must be serious, indeed. The most common errors—prompting a majority of reversals at the state post-conviction stage—are (1) egregiously incompetent defense lawyers who didn't even look for—and demonstrably missed—important evidence that the defendant was innocent or did not deserve to die; and (2) police or prosecutors who did discover that kind of evidence but suppressed it, again keeping it from the jury. [Hundreds of examples of these and other serious errors are collected in Appendix C and D to this Report.]

* High error rates put many individuals at risk of wrongful execution: 82% of the people whose capital judgments were overturned by state post-conviction courts due to serious error were found to deserve a sentence less than death when the errors were cured on retrial; 7% were found to be innocent of the capital crime.

* High error rates persist over time. More than 50% of all cases reviewed were found seriously flawed in 20 of the 23 study years, including 17 of the last 19. In half the years, including the most recent one, the error rate was over 60%.

* High error rates exist across the country. Over 90% of American death-sentencing states have overall error rates of 52% or higher. 85% have error rates of 60% or higher. Three-fifths have error rates of 70% or higher.

* Illinois (whose governor recently declared a moratorium on executions after a spate of death-row exonerations) does not produce atypically faulty death sentences. The overall rate of serious error found in Illinois capital sentences (66%) is very close to—and slightly lower than—the national average (68%).

* Catching so much error takes time-a national average of 9 years from death sentence to the last inspection and execution. By the end of the study period, that average had risen to 10.6 years. In most cases, death row inmates wait for years for the lengthy review procedures needed to uncover all this error. Then, their death sentences are reversed.

* This much error, and the time needed to cure it, impose terrible costs on taxpayers, victims' families, the judicial system, and the wrongly condemned. And it renders unattainable the finality, retribution and deterrence that are the reasons usually given for having a death penalty.

Erroneously trying capital defendants the first time around, operating the multi-tiered inspection process needed to catch the mistakes, warehousing thousands under costly death row conditions in the meantime, and having to try two out of three cases again is irrational.

dead_ringer said:
HenryTMensch said:
A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995

Ugh, Liebman... What does he know?

HenryTMensch said:

I know, right? What a loser.

I worked for him during my 1L summer on his next death penalty study.

joe_n_bloe said:

So, what percentage of death penalty cases are "fully reviewed"? The way this is phrased leads one to believe that 70 percent of death penalty convictions are flawed. And yet, this is not the case. This is a page right out of How to Lie with Statistics.

The vast majority of people on death row are guilty of the crimes of which they were convicted.

That isn't to say that I am a proponent, but we should keep it in perspective.

The "overall success rate" of capital judgments undergoing judicial inspection, and its converse, the "overall error-rate," are crucial factors in assessing the effectiveness of the capital punishment system. The "overall success rate" is the proportion of capital judgments that underwent, and passed, the three-stage judicial inspection process during the study period. The "overall error rate" is the reverse: the proportion of fully reviewed capital judgments that were overturned at one of the three stages due to serious error.39 Nationally, over the entire 1973-1995 period, the overall error-rate in our capital punishment system was 68%.40

DADB; Appendix C; HCDB. Because 41% of the capital judgments reviewed on state direct appeal were found to be tainted by serious error, only 59% of those judgments were available for state post-conviction review. Because at least 10% (this figure is probably higher, see supra note 39; infra Appendix C, pp. C-1 to C-2) of that 59%-meaning at least 5.9% of the original pool (³.10 x .59 = ³.059)-failed this second, state post-conviction inspection, the overall rate of error found by state courts is 47% (41% + 6%) of the original pool. Then, of the 53% (100%-47% = 53%) of capital judgments that were available for federal habeas review, 40%-meaning 21% of the original pool (.40 x .53)-failed the federal inspection. The "overall error rate" thus is at least 68% of the overall pool (41% +³6%+ 21% = ³68%). In other words: At least 68% of the capital judgments that were fully inspected were found seriously flawed at some stage.

(We have simplified the above calculation by omitting fractions represented by numbers after the decimal points. In computing overall rates in the various report cards, we included the numbers after the decimal point until the error rate was obtained, at which point we applied the normal rounding convention.)

Our "overall error rate" is not the rate of error in the 5,760 death sentences imposed between 1973 and 1995. That number cannot be calculated because, at the end of 1995, many of those death sentences were pending in some court awaiting review, but had not yet been finally resolved at one of the three inspection stages. This rate instead uses the outcomes of the 4,578 cases in which state direct review occurred during the study period, and the 599 of those cases in which subsequent federal habeas review occurred, together with the 248 known state post-conviction reversals (taken as a proportion of the 2,693 capital judgments that had "cleared" state direct appeal) to calculate the error rate found in capital judgments that were finally reviewed.

"Serious error" is error that substantially undermines the reliability of the guilt finding or death sentence imposed at trial.41 Each instance of that error warrants public concern. The most common errors are (1) egregiously incompetent defense lawyering (accounting for 37% of the state post-conviction reversals), and (2) prosecutorial suppression of evidence that the defendant is innocent or does not deserve the death penalty (accounting for another 16%-19%, when all forms of law enforcement misconduct are considered).42 As is true of other violations, these two count as "serious" and warrant reversal only when there is a reasonable probability that, but for the responsible actor's miscues, the outcome of the trial would have been different.43

JunkiePuppy said:
Someone who falls into criminality is a victim also, victim of themselves.

crucifiedalien said:
Whether or not they finally find some consistancy in that clouded philosophy of theirs doesn't mean much to me.

Cash said:
As much as it might suck being wrongly imprisoned...you can always let someone out if you find out you made a mistake. What can you do if you execute the wrong person....shrug your shoulders and go "Oh...sorry...my bad"?

Capital punishment is outdated....and the frist person who mentions "closure" gets a middle finger from me.

HenryTMensch said:
In fact, 70% of all death row convictions are overturned on appeal. I posted a link to the study. Read it.

JunkiePuppy said:
Considering the society we live in, I think it is false to say that each people are responsible of their acts. They should be, but obviously most aren't. That's the problem.

Personal responsibility is a level that people have to ACHIEVE, it is not a natural thing. Childrens are not responsible....

joe_n_bloe said:

"Appeal" can mean different things. That means overturned on any appeal? Or what? In states that have automatic appeals?

In general, convictions are overturned without prejudice due to procedural errors. I won't say "technicalities" because some of the errors are serious. But what percentage of the defendants are convicted on retrial? In what percentage of cases do appeals courts release defendants on bond because the defendant apparently did not commit the crime and is not serving a sentence for some other felony or felonies?

The simple fact is, again, most death row inmates (the great majority) are guilty of the crimes of which they were accused. They are not sympathetic figures if you actually look at what they did. Whether the process of obtaining convictions is generally flawed is another matter.

I think capital trials are a waste of time and money and I agree that the process is apparently discriminatory in many jurisdictions. Absolutely I think it should be abolished, because it is unnecessary. But I don't believe that the fate of capital punishment should rest on cases where the defendants are clearly innocent, because the great majority are clearly guilty.

I know you're not saying that "better all murderers go free than one innocent man be executed," but some people will say that without considering its implications or the actual character of the people who make up the abstract term "murderers." My belief is that whatever the system, mistakes will be made, but I'd prefer to err on the side of keeping the guilty out of society, at least when we are correct in determining who's guilty. And by and large we are.