quote:

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Originally posted by Doran Williams:
Tell that to the innocent people in Tulia who were prosecuted, John.

And no, Turley being a professor doesn't tell us all we need to know about his courtroom experience. We need to know more. Can you check it out for us please, and present us with facts about his courtroom experience rather than snide innuendo????

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Interesting juxtaposition.

1. Just because someone was improperly targetted and had their criminal charge dropped doesn't mean they were innocent.

2. How many of the Tulia defendants have been subsequently successfully prosecuted for the same or similar charges and convicted?

3. Funny that you'd tell John to go do research then do none yourself.

quote:

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Originally posted by Doran Williams:
Turley's "attack" on prosecutors is of the same cloth with the attacks on liberals, science, and certain opinions of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that appear almost daily on this forum: They all resort to shameful hyperbole, innuendo, ad hominem arguments, and unabashed exaggertion to make political and doctrinaire points.

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Your undefined personal pronoun accentuates the point you're making, but not in your favor. All the 'they' out there who make the arguments you claim are completely unreferenced prior to the offending sentence. Subsequently, you generalize against those who hold points of view that are different from your own; then you claim that those who do are prone to exaggeration and hyperbole. You're either a very clever ironic writer who is intentionally mocking the left, or you're not. I'm thinking not.

Back on point:

1. The annexation of Tulia into this conversation is clearly the very thing that said professor is doing to which my collegues object: One example, poorly used and explained is painted across a conversation like graffiti in the Bario.(Did you know the singular of graffiti is graffito? I didn't.)

2. Reading articles where Law professors are pontificating just makes me tired.

As for the Tulia defendants why don't you tell the little girl and little boy that were severely beaten by one of those "innocent" Tulia Defendants. Guess he was just having a good time on his drugs when he made a 4 year old little boy's back look like ground hamburger meat! Good thing all those "innocent" people got out so they could live their upstanding out lives out in the community. Gee if that "innocent" person had not been released maybe we wouldn't have a little boy that will have scars on his back from severe beatings for the rest of his life.

Drive-by opinion pieces like that are nothing new. For a detailed response to a previous (and spurious) attack on prosecutors, see here:

Sept.-Oct. 2003 issue of the Texas Prosecutor

Of course, we have innocent people convicted. It is very unfortunate and, thanks to the efficiency of our criminal justice systems, rare. Not one of us would condone the practice and we all take measures to prevent it. But mistakes will always occur, as long as we remain human (no, I don't know anything you don't!).

The reality is that society has far more to fear from the unapprehended guilty, though. If only the same groups who challenge the guilt of the purportedly innocent, who all too often are confirmed guilty, would apply equal energy to securing the conviction of the guilty. Let's not forget all those guilty individuals who walk out of court free people too--perhaps, because our systems are too favorable to the guilty. These two groups are simply massive in comparison to the small element of wrongly convicted.

Do I mean give up looking for the convicted innocents? No, but enough already. We have a plethora of actual innocence groups across the nation. If one thing is clear, despite the zeal and efforts of these groups, they are not revealing regular gross miscarriages of justice.

The good professor needs to add a little context to his emotionally charged article. A little more "scholarship" would suffice.

JAS

[This message was edited by JAS on 07-16-07 at .]

To revive an old saw, a liberal is a person who hasn't been ripped off yet. I'm just a misdemeanor prosecutor, but, recognizing that most offenses I deal with usually stem from some lifestyle problem (alcohol, anger management, etc.), we try to tailor the disposition to attack the problem, not just get a "pound of flesh." And most prosecutors I know do likewise...no fanfare, no press conferences, etc. To take a few bad apple situations (found in any barrel of occupations) and paint with a roller to stigmatize all prosecutors is truly unfair. Let's talk about unscrupulous defense attorneys, corrupt politicians, bad doctors, teachers who sexually assault their wards, Catholic priests, etc. etc. I don't sense that a very few bad prosecutors present some national crisis.

"Lots of Prosecutors Go Too Far. Most Get Away With It."

The above headline is misleading and inaccurate. Are there Texas prosecutors who play fast and loose with the rules? Yes, there are a few, but it does not mean that "Lots" of them do.

The headline tarnishes all prosecutors just as Nifong tarnished all the Duke lacrosse players.
I am personally horrified at the course of conduct displayed by prosecutors in a recent book: Chasing Justice by Kerry Max Cook.

There is no doubt that there are some bad apples among every socio-economic group in this nation, whether it be lawyers, politicians, or used car
salesmen. My problem is when the professor makes it sound like a great number of prosecutors engage in this kind of illegal conduct. They do not, and he makes my job harder when his headline misrepresents the facts.

quote:

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Meet this guy on the substance and quality of what he says, not on whether he is a "liberal."

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I fail to see any substance or quality in Turley's article. He makes a broad generalization about prosecutors and then cites a 1921 case, a 1931 case, and then gives an anonymous quote from an alleged Texas prosecutor.

Substance? Quality? Both are seriously lacking in Turley's poorly written article. And I don't consider "liberal" a bad word. Turley has an agenda, he is not objective, end of story.

John L. Pool

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Martin Peterson:
Each prosecutor draws that line with each case.

What a good statement! True for every ethical attorney, whether defense or prosecution. I'm glad my work is mainly civil now, as the toll of criminal law is harsh. ("Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.") I've had to put aside "Relentless Pursuit" by a D.C. homicide prosecutor, because his case is so horrible. The observations he makes about how different homicide prosecutors are from "civilians"(their rule that they would not joke about a homicide for 24 hours,for example) are good; very astute.

The lacrosse case seems to emphasize once again the role that money plays in our system. Would that DA have backed down, ever? Having wealthy parents helped those boys to justice. We see this imbalance everywhere, don't you agree? It's usually the guilty rich who get acquitted, this time it's the innocent rich who are vindicated.

I'm surprised that no one's mentioned "The Innocent Man" by John Grisham. That book involved the sort of trouble-prone underclass that is interchangably now the victim, now the perp, now the victim, etc. It's a sad and wretched case; appalling that the D.A. there is reelected over and over without repercussion.

The other side of the coin is the hell of being accused of Brady violations. A member of my own family suffered through this; what is worse than having your whole honorable career placed into such false distortion? The press doesn't care about accuracy. Real suffering results. We are held to such extremely high standards! We are the good guys!

All in all, I think we should be united in the condemnation of such abuses as the lacrosse case, the Grisham case, and Tulia. Nancy Grace appalls me, denying the presumption of innocence as she does. Although some of the Tulia cases involve unsavory characters, can't we concede that we should be specific enough to convict them for crimes they've actually done?

A very exciting book out now is "The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival" by a NYC prosecutor who is kidnapped on his birthday. Truth is harrowing, stranger than fiction, and really, really funny!

Thanks for letting me express my thoughts.

Greg, I think it is high time that we had more literal prosecutors. I absolutely hate the illiterate ones. Oh, I'm sorry, I meant to talk about the illiterate ones who draft the laws, literally. Philip, are you guys having problems with grafitto up in 'rillo. What really distiguishes between a grafitto and the other variety? What a wonderful objective, the "world's best grafitto artist."

Etta, you are right, it is amazing that the good professor overlooked Ron Williamson's case. Maybe in a free society our jobs are supposed to be made harder by articles like the one in question. Although it seems hard enough already.

[This message was edited by Martin Peterson on 07-16-07 at .]

"Prosecutors who struggle to outdo one another as camera-ready, take-no-prisoners avengers of justice"

I know there are a few out there that love to talk to reporters but, having worked in lots of counties, the general reaction I see from prosecutors who come back from court to a message from radio/newspaper/television is not one of joy and excitement at the prospect of being interviewed. If I can get away with it,I usually scratch my name off the top of the message and put it in my bosses box. If he makes me call them back, I hope while I'm dialing that I get voice mail !

Professor Turley started at GWU Law the same year I became a 2L. I never had him as a teacher, but my husband at the time did. Turley was a young, hip wunderkind who really appealed to the only-slightly-younger students. Over the years, he's definitely developed and taken advantage of that reputation to speak out on political issues. The law school I'm sure has benefited in the long run. . . What is it they say about bad publicity? . . . Too bad us prosecutors are the casualty in that quest for media attention.

Anyway, I shot him an email and a link and asked him to join this discussion, although I have my doubts: I sent him a letter the same day I posted his article on this thread, and he has not yet responded (although I did hear back from the law school Dean).

"Prosecutors in Dallas have said for years - any prosecutor can convict a guilty man. It takes a great prosecutor to convict an innocent man."
--Melvyn Carson Bruder, The Thin Blue Line (1988)

This is the only citation I have found other than Turley's assertion that a "Texas prosecutor" said it. Note that Bruder is not the Texas prosecutor who supposedly said it, but he instead attributes the quip to "prosecutors in Dallas" generally.

What irks me the most about this recitation in the article is that no prosecutor has ever said this seriously--it is clearly a joke. Perhaps in bad taste, especially if used in reference to an actually innocent convict, but a joke nonetheless.

I have actually said this line myself; when a defense lawyer told me his client was innocent, I replied, "Then I guess I'll have to work a little harder to convict him." In case it wasn't clear, I still thought the guy was guilty.

On the few occasions when I have begun a prosecution and then become convinced that I had the wrong man, I didn't look at it as a challenge for my courtroom skills, I looked at it as one less case to have to worry about and dismissed it.

Does anyone actually believe that a Texas prosecutor has ever spoken with pride about the skill with which he framed an innocent person for a crime? It may have happened that a prosecutor intentionally convicted an innocent person before...but I'll bet he kept darn quiet about it afterwards. And if he did it unintentionally? Well, look for how many cases prosecutors have come forwards to ask courts to release an innocent man from prison, and compare to the number of cases you can find where prosecutors intentionally railroaded someone. I guarantee that the numbers will reflect that more prosecutors are concerned with justice than with politically expedient convictions.

[This message was edited by Wes on 07-18-07 at .]

"Prosecutors in Dallas have said for years - any prosecutor can convict a guilty man. It takes a great prosecutor to convict an innocent man."
--Melvyn Carson Bruder, The Thin Blue Line (1988)



How irresponsible to actually attribute this to someone.

OK, Kim, here is what you do:

click here.

better now.

punishment fits the times

The Supreme Court just heard the case brought to determine whether lethal injection constitutes �cruel and unusual punishment.� But perhaps society isn�t as caught up in the method as in the verdict itself. From the Brazen Bull to hanging to the electric chair, the death penalty has evolved through the ages. Have we?


By Jonathan Turley

Nothing becomes politics quite like death. With a presidential election approaching and three important cases before the Supreme Court, the country is once again grappling with the death penalty. Politicians and citizens alike are debating how � and whether � we should kill those who kill others.

It is a debate with particular importance to Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr., death-row inmates who are challenging the constitutionality of lethal injection as a method of execution in Kentucky. The court is set to issue its first ruling in more than 100 years on the method of executions.


The debate over the mechanics of execution stretches back to the earliest forms of capital punishment. It seems that, like madness, there must be a method to our morality � at least when it comes to executions.

As the public has grown more uneasy with the death penalty, it has insisted on less painful methods of execution. Indeed, in the current cases, one of the drugs in the standard "three-drug cocktail" appears primarily for the benefit of onlookers by preventing any manifestation of pain by the subject, even if he is in agony. It reflects a long desire to somehow take the discomfort out of execution. But for whom, the executed or the executioners?

Pain has long been a surrogate issue for a deeper unease with death as a punishment. At one time, pain was part of the purpose of the moral execution. Early practitioners sought ever more gruesome and prolonged methods. Phalaris, the tyrant of Agrigentum (571 to 556 B.C.), used his infamous Brazen Bull, which was designed so that a man placed inside over a fire would roast while his moans were amplified through a series of tubes as soothing music for the tyrant. The Romans punished parricide (murder of a parent) by putting the condemned into a sack with a dog, a rooster, a viper and an ape � then throwing the sack into the water.

In the USA, executions were recorded almost immediately upon the landing of Europeans. In 1608, George Kendall was executed in Virginia for plotting against the Crown. By 1612, Virginia Gov. Sir Thomas Dale enacted the Divine, Moral and Martial Laws, which mandated the death penalty for virtually any conceivable crime, from trading with the Indians to killing chickens. Colonial executions included hanging, beheading, drowning, burning and breaking at the wheel (where a person was tied to a wagon wheel and his limbs were broken; then the shattered limbs wrapped around the wheel spokes). With the age of enlightenment, the idea of executing someone in a way to heighten suffering came into disrepute as states sought uniform methods of capital punishment.

A walk through the history of capital punishment in the USA is useful in considering where we've been � and where today's discussion might lead us:


Hanging:

With uniformity now the goal, the preferred method quickly became hanging. By 1853, it was the method of execution in 48 states and territories. The ideal is to break the individual's neck at the end of the initial plunge down the rope. But if the rope is too short, the person is strangled to death and can linger for as much as an hour writhing in pain. If the rope is too long, decapitation can occur (as shown in the execution of Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam Hussein's half-brother).

Hangings also became the focus of public disorder with large crowds and heavy drinking. The method robbed society of a sense of moral superiority as men twisted at the ends of ropes before drunken crowds. This led to the anti-hanging movements of the late 19th century. In 1885, New York Gov. David Bennett Hill condemned hanging as coming "down to us from the dark ages." He called upon legislators to look to science for a way of "taking the life ... in a less barbarous manner." A solution was suggested by none other than Thomas Edison: electricity.


The electric chair:

The use of the electric chair was as much a financial as a moral debate. Edison was in a fierce competition with George Westinghouse over the standard current. Edison wanted the electric chair to use Westinghouse's AC current so that it would be associated with lethality (as opposed to his own DC current). He won both the fight over execution method and the standard current.

The first to be dispatched electrically was William Kemmler in 1890 in New York for the murder of his mistress. It was his case that led the Supreme Court to adopt a hands-off approach on the methods of execution, despite nightmarish failures.

Frederick Leuchter, a mechanical engineer who maintained electric chairs in the 1980s, admitted that, when certain problems occur, "you're literally boiling the person to death." In Wayne Robert Felde's execution in Louisiana in 1988, his flesh was burned off, exposing part of his skull to witnesses. The execution of Allen Lee Davis in 1999 in Florida resulted in blood pouring down his shirt.

The chair can routinely cause hair to ignite, flesh to burn, genitals to explode and ears to burn away. The method is so cruel that it has been denounced in use on animals. Again, society became uneasy with a method that seemed to mirror the overt violence that led to the execution. Though it was used by 26 states in 1949, states soon discovered another appealing method: gas.


Gas chamber:

The first to die in a gas chamber was Gee Jon in Nevada in 1924. The state first tried to simply pump cyanide into his cell while he slept, but the bars allowed too much gas to escape.

The modern desire to minimize pain found a poor outlet in gas. The effect of the gas is to cause "cellular suffocation" and acidosis (production of lactic acid), creating a sense of drowning or strangulation. As courts began to find it to be cruel and unusual, gas chambers fell out of favor as states again sought the ideal method of execution.


Lethal injection:

This form of execution was not particularly new when it became the rage in death circles. The idea of killing someone with injected poisons goes back to 1888. But the method seemed a perfect match for modern sensibilities.

In 1973, California Gov. Ronald Reagan endorsed lethal injection from his personal experience with horses, noting that he knew "what it's like to try to eliminate an injured horse by shooting him. Now you call the veterinarian and the vet gives it a shot and the horse goes to sleep � that's it." The public embraced the idea, figuring that if it was OK for a beloved mustang, it must be OK for a condemned murderer.

Though in 1977 Oklahoma became the first state to adopt lethal injection, the first to die by the method was Charles Brooks in 1982 in Texas. Thirty-five states and the federal government now use lethal injection. Where the electric chair became the symbol of cruelty of death, lethal injection showed the banality of death. Indeed, the public continues to view it as a benign, antiseptic and scientifically based process despite its casual and unscientific development.

The three-drug cocktail used in all states can be traced to the Oklahoma medical examiner, Jay Chapman. In 1976, a state legislator wanted to avoid the cost of repairing the state's electric chair or building a gas chamber and solicited his advice on alternatives. Chapman suggested the use of "an ultra-short-acting barbiturate" like sodium thiopental and a neuromuscular blocking drug like pancuronium bromide. A third drug, potassium chloride, was later added to stop the heart. Chapman later admitted: "I didn't do any research. I just knew from having been placed under anesthesia myself, what we needed."

Even the amounts of these drugs in the standard protocol were based on convenience or accident. When a Texas official (who helped develop the procedure) was asked why he specified 5 grams of sodium pentothal, he admitted that "the only thing I had on hand was a 5-gram vial. And rather than do the paperwork on wasting 3 grams, we just gave all 5."

The first drug, sodium thiopental, has proved a particular concern. It is so fast-acting and short-lived that patients have reported waking up in the midst of surgery and, while feeling the pain of surgery, being unable to cry out. In a 2005 study of 49 executions in the USA by the respected British medical journal The Lancet, researchers found that 21 individuals were probably conscious when they were killed by the final dose of potassium chloride.

Notably, the second drug � pancuronium bromide � preserves the appearance of a peaceful and painless end. Yet, it also prevents a subject from manifesting pain. In Tennessee, it is a crime to use pancuronium bromide to kill pets, but it is used for human executions.

Human error also remains a principal cause of botched executions. In Florida in 2006, prison officials succeeded in not only missing the veins of condemned Angel Diaz, but also shoving the needles through his vein and into his muscle. It took 34 minutes and two doses of chemicals to finally kill him. Also last year, Ohio officials took 27 minutes to find a vein on Joseph Clark, only to have the vein collapse. It then took 30 minutes to find another vein as Clark lay moaning on the gurney. He was declared dead 90 minutes after the beginning of the execution.

Once widely accepted, capital punishment's support has been falling significantly in polls. When asked, only half of the public supports it when given the alternative of life without parole.

Last month, New Jersey became the first state in 42 years to ban the death penalty. As many as 120 people on death row have been exonerated through DNA testing, and in the 36 states that allow capital punishment, executions have reached their lowest level in 13 years. (Last year, 42 people were executed.) Likewise, death sentences have dropped 60% since 1999.

Given the current makeup of the Supreme Court, the Kentucky cases will almost certainly result in an endorsement of lethal injection. The court did not appear to have a majority in oral arguments for striking down lethal injection or even tweaking the three-drug cocktail. Indeed, Justice Antonin Scalia objected that "this is an execution, not surgery."

As citizens demand less pain in delivering death, the focus of the capital punishment debate might be shifting. Reducing the levels of pain or error in executions will not alter the fact that this remains a violent act committed by society. In this sense, pain might have lost its viability as a surrogate for this deeper debate over capital punishment.

Perhaps with the reduction of pain through chemicals and the increase of reliability through DNA, society will be forced to move beyond the surrogates and deal directly with the fundamental moral question: Has death itself become the intolerable element of the death penalty?

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

I may have missed it. Was there any reference to the firing squad?

JAS

Not being able to find a vein is cruel and unusual? I've dealt with some nurses who would fall outside the constitution!!!

And the ninety wait is too long? For someone who has been sitting on death row for ten years?

I think Turley's again trying to hide his point in other people's alleged debates / dilemmas--that the death itself is what has anti-death penalty people upset. There will never be a way that makes it okay if you just believe that taking the life is wrong. The above reasons sure seem like stretches to me.

The quote from Turley's article comes from a movie "The Thin Blue Line." The speaker was an actual criminal defense lawyer, Mel Bruder. But before you trash him you might review 768 S.W. 2d 281.