The number of wrongfully convicted persons is not just a problem in the U.S. Even China recognizes that mistakes can happen. While it would be preferable for China to abolish the death penalty altogether, this news is encouraging:

China's highest court must approve all executions under legislation enacted Tuesday, prompting human rights activists to express hope that the country will reduce its use of the death penalty.

The amendment to China's capital punishment law follows reports of wrongly convicted people being executed and criticism that the death penalty has been imposed arbitrarily by lower courts.

What is the Bush Administration doing? You guessed it. Nothing. And don't cite the watered-down version of the Innocence Protection Act. That ended up with almost all funds going to test old rape kits to catch perpetrators, with a very small percentage going to test or re-test DNA in cases showing innocence.

I have an op-ed today in The Examiner, Choose Life, End the Death Penalty.

What I’m asking is, assuming arguendo, that a fetus is a live person, which is what those who are pro-life believe, how can these same people justify the death penalty?

The way I see it:

It is hypocritical for those who rely on their religion to support their pro-life views also not to oppose the death penalty. A life is a life and it is not their place to determine which are innocent and which are beyond redemption, particularly when the tenets of their religion provide that such decisions belong to their Maker.

It's time to call them on the hypocrisy. My modest proposal is to start with a small step:

Any state that authorizes license plates to display the words “Choose Life” must do so at the top of the plate, with the phrase “End the Death Penalty” at the bottom.

Fifth Circuit Judge Carolyn Dineen King addressed an audience attending a Red Mass in Corpus Christi. After taking care to disavow the influence of her religious beliefs upon her judicial decision-making, Judge King chided the Catholic Church for its belated recognition that capital punishment is morally wrong:

When I asked one of my friends, who is a professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, about [the church's silence in the death penalty debate prior to 1995], he said that in view of the Church's rather speckled history, one could understand why the Church might not be out front on this issue. Well, I can't understand it. Redemption is possible, even for the Catholic Church.

Judge King used the occasion to criticize the Supreme Court's death penalty jurisprudence:

Wisconsin has not had the death penalty for 150 years. Somehow, it's back on the ballot this November. The LaCrosse Tribune has a concise, well-argued editorial urging voters to reject reinstating it.

• Life without parole keeps the public safe.
• It's ridiculously expensive compared to the cost of incarceration
• It has not been shown to be a deterrence
• It's not applied fairly

I'll add one more: The risk is too great that an innocent person will be executed. Facts and figures are here.

UPDATE by TChris. The death penalty referendum and a referendum to ban gay marriages and civil unions are the product of a cynical Republican attempt to get out the vote for their right wing love child, gubernatorial candidate Mark Green. Green's chances of unseating Gov. Doyle are dismal, but conservative groups of various stripes are working to pass the referenda, and they may well succeed. The linked sites can guide you if you want to assist efforts to defeat either proposal.

The state of Florda executed Arthur Rutherford today. It was the 19th execution performed while Jeb Bush has been Governor. Florida has executed 62 people since the death penalty was restored in 1976.

Rutherford was on the gurney in January when he got a last minute stay from the Supreme Court. For his last meal,

He requested the same meal he had in January: Fried green tomatoes, catfish, fresh water, fried eggplant, sweet tea, and hush puppies (deep-fried cornbread).

He was surrounded by 20 members of his immediate family this morning. He was a handyman and a Vietnam Veteran.

More about his case is here.

I just received this by e-mail and thought it would be of interest:

The Common Sense Foundation today released a ground-breaking study of North Carolina's death row population, titled "Death Row Injustices." Working with Indigent Defense Services and lawyers who represented clients in capital cases prior to the creation of IDS in 2001, Common Sense found that at least 37 people currently on death row did not have counsel that would meet today's standards for capital representation.

Moreover, of those who have been executed since 1976 (when the United States Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment), North Carolina has executed at least 16 people who did not have lawyers with those minimum qualifications necessary today.

The study calls for (1) immediate new trials for the 37 death row inmates identified; (2) a full investigation by the General Assembly to determine how many other death row inmates did not have qualified lawyers; and (3) a two-year moratorium on executions during which time an extensive review of capital punishment in our state should be conducted.

You can read the full report here.

by TChris

Last year, Radley Balko brought the nation's attention to the plight of Cory Maye. The police broke down Maye's door during a drug raid in Mississippi. The officers claimed they knocked, but having gone to the trouble of securing a "no knock" warrant, that claim is suspect. Maye, not realizing that the people invading his house in the middle of the night were police officers and concerned about the safety of his young daughter, shot an intruder without realizing he was shooting a police officer. The officer turned out to be the son of the police chief. The police turned out to have busted down the wrong door; their warrant was for the adjoining unit in the duplex where Maye lived. Maye is black; the officer and jury were white; and Maye, who seems to have been acting in self-defense, was nonetheless sentenced to death.

TalkLeft first wrote about Maye here, and followed up here. Thanks to Balko, Maye's case stayed in the spotlight, attracting the attention of Danny Glover (as TalkLeft reported here) among others. Balko's efforts on Maye's behalf also attracted the attention of a lawyer at Covington & Burling, who persuaded the firm to represent Maye pro bono. Balko reports on the results of their work:

by TChris

Today's depressing read: Ohio documents the last hours of the condemned.

After Ohio resumed executions in 1999, the state began documenting prisoners' last days down to the minute and second. Twenty-three convicted murderers have died by injection.

The executions are carried out at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, where guards maintain a running computer log from the time a condemned inmate arrives at the prison in the Appalachian foothills to the moment a funeral director leaves with the body a day later.

by TChris

There's no doubt that affluent defendants who can afford to mount a strong death penalty defense will probably be spared a verdict of death, while those with fewer resources (particularly in states that don't fund an adequate defense for the indigent) are more likely to be executed. That's the message being spread by David Kaczynski, brother of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, and William Babbitt, brother of Manny Babbitt, "a grade-school dropout and paranoid schizophrenic, scarred by Vietnam, who was executed in California in 1999 after a defense lawyer mounted no defense at all."

Race is just as important as income in the inequitable implementation of the death penalty.

Study after study has shown that no matter what the offense, blacks and whites suspected of similar crimes are charged differently, convicted at different rates and sentenced differently.

In a 2000 report, for instance, Human Rights Watch analyzed U.S. Justice Department data and found that while blacks make up only 13 percent of the population, they are 30 percent of those arrested, 41 percent of those in local jails and 49 percent of those in prison. When the organization revisited the issue three years later, little had changed.

by TChris

Missouri's latest attempt to fashion a protocol for executing condemned prisoners by lethal injection failed to satisfy Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. Judge Gaitan wanted a board-certified anesthesiologist to participate in executions to assure that the injected drugs do not cause excruciating pain in a conscious prisoner, but no anesthesiologist was willing to help the state take a life. Judge Gaitan modified his order yesterday to permit "a physician with training in the application and administration of anesthesia to either mix the chemicals or to oversee the mixing of the chemicals for lethal injection."

Gaitan also said the protocol must include additional safeguards for ensuring that inmates were adequately anesthetized before the injection of succeeding chemicals that stop their breathing and heart.

Judge Gaitan barred the doctor who had mixed the drugs in the past from participating in future executions.

In 2001, Oklahoma condemned murderer Alvie "Jim" Hale's last words were:

"I want to say goodbye to my family and friends. Thanks for being there and supporting me," he said. "Watch what you see here. Remember it, and go tell somebody."

In anticipation of the imminent execution of 24 year old Elijah Page who has ended his appeals and now prepares for death, reporter Jeff Martin of the Argus Leader today remembers an earlier execution he witnessed in Oklahoma, that of Alvie "Jim" Hale in 2001. It's a vivid recollection. The part about the "soundtrack of death" is chilling. But not as much as this:

USA Today reports on the number of death row inmates in the U.S. refusing to appeal their sentence. One of every eight persons on death row is now volunteering to die.

Death row volunteers account for 123 of the 1,041 executions carried out since capital punishment resumed in 1977, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a group in Washington, D.C., that opposes the death penalty. That rate -- about 12% -- has held constant for nearly 30 years.

This year, five of the 37 murderers put to death were volunteers. Two of the remaining 14 prisoners scheduled for execution have asked to die. Some volunteers, such as Elijah Page -- scheduled for execution in South Dakota next week -- give no reason for their choice.

Why do the condemned volunteer for death?