Wonder if they know how enlightened we are down here?


An Idea Whose Time Should Be Past

New York Times
Editorial
December 20, 2007

The mandatory sentencing craze that began in the 1970s was a public-policy disaster. It drove up inmate populations and corrections costs and forced the states to choose between building prisons and building schools or funding medical care for the indigent. It filled the prisons to bursting with nonviolent drug offenders who would have been more cheaply and more appropriately dealt with through treatment. It tied the hands of judges and ruined countless young lives by mandating lengthy prison terms in cases where leniency was warranted. It undermined confidence in the fairness of the justice system by singling out poor and minority offenders while largely exempting the white and wealthy.

The Supreme Court recognized the flaws in this system last week when it ruled that federal judges were justified in handing out lower sentences for drug offenders than were laid out in federal sentencing guidelines. The United States Sentencing Commission, the independent body that sets those guidelines, has called for easing drug-crime sentences for some categories of offenders and for doing so retroactively. In addition, bills pending in Congress would rewrite federal drug statutes, making treatment more readily available and sentences fairer and more sensible.

Nowhere is repeal of mandatory-sentencing policies more urgently needed than in New York, which sparked an unfortunate national trend when it passed its draconian Rockefeller drug laws in the 1970s. Local prosecutors tend to love this law because it allows them to bypass judges and decide unilaterally who goes to jail and for how long.

But the general public is increasingly skeptical of a system that railroads young, first-time offenders straight to prison with no hope of treatment or reprieve. In an often-cited 2002 poll by The New York Times, for example, 79 percent of respondents favored changing the law to give judges control over sentencing. And 83 percent said that judges should be allowed to send low-level drug offenders to treatment instead of prison.

The State Legislature has tinkered at the margins of these horrific laws, but stopped short of restoring judicial discretions. The time is clearly right for that crucial next step. The Legislature needs to gear up for the change, and Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who has thus far tiptoed around the subject, needs to set the stage when he delivers his State of the State message early next month.

That didn't last long ...


State Without Pity

New York Times
Editorial
December 27, 2007

It is a shameful distinction, but Texas is the undisputed capital of capital punishment. At a time when the rest of the country is having serious doubts about the death penalty, more than 60 percent of all American executions this year took place in Texas. That gaping disparity provides further evidence that Texas�s governor, Legislature, courts and voters should reassess their addiction to executions.

As Adam Liptak reported in The Times on Wednesday, in the last three years, Texas�s share of the nation�s executions has gone from 32 percent to 62 percent. This year, Texas executed 26 people. No other state executed more than three.

It is not that Texas sentences people to death at a much higher rate than other states. Rather, Texas has proved to be much more willing than others to carry out the sentences it has imposed.

The participants in Texas�s death penalty process, including the governor and the pardon board, are more enthusiastic about moving things along than they are in many states. Texas�s system also contains some special features, like the power of district attorneys to set execution dates. Prosecutors are likely to be more eager than judges to see an execution carried out.

While Texas has been forging ahead with capital punishment, many other states have been moving away from it. New Jersey abolished the death penalty this month, and other states have been considering doing the same thing. Illinois made headlines a few years ago when its governor, troubled about the number of innocent people who had been sent to death row, put in place a moratorium on executions.

These states have had good reasons for their doubts. The traditional objections to the death penalty remain as true as ever. It is barbaric � governments should simply not be in the business of putting people to death. It is imposed in racially discriminatory ways. And it is too subject to error, which cannot be corrected after an execution has taken place.

In recent years, two other developments have undercut the public�s faith in capital punishment.

There has been a tidal wave of DNA exonerations, in which it has been scientifically proved that the wrong people had been sentenced to death. There is also increasing awareness that even methods of execution considered relatively humane impose considerable suffering on the condemned.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments next month in a case about whether the pain caused by lethal injection is so great that it violates the Eighth Amendment injunction against cruel and unusual punishment. Those who study the death penalty say that if current trends continue, eventually almost all of the nation�s executions will occur in Texas. That is not a record any state should want. Some states, such as Illinois and New Jersey, have already had wide-ranging discussions about what role they want the death penalty to play in their criminal justice system. Texas is long overdue for such a debate.

If it is unwilling to abolish the death penalty, which all states should do, Texas should at least take a hard look at a system that still produces so many executions and is so wildly out of step with the rest of the country.

That is some sad reasoning. And a lot of exaggerated rhetoric. You could take everything that was said, claim the opposite, and still pretend to be the most righteous state in the land. What a game. Shame on the newspapers.

Is anyone "addicted" to executions? Capital punishment is hardly a blood sport in Texas or anywhere else. I think everyone recognizes it is a serious business. And what constitutes a "tidal wave" of exonerations? This article is better used as an example of the art of hyperbole than anything else.

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Originally posted by Martin Peterson:
And what constitutes a "tidal wave" of exonerations?

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One -- if that one exoneration is useful to the NYT editorial board in their end-determines-the-means thinking.

"But the general public is increasingly skeptical of a system that railroads young, first-time offenders straight to prison with no hope of treatment or reprieve."

Leave it to the NYT to define a voluntary plea of guilty or a jury verdict based on evidence as "railroading"? And I'm certain that many of these poor, unfortunate youths being portrayed as victims are in reality street-wise, hardened criminals who have no desire to rehabilitate themselves. That's why we lock them up - to protect the rest of society that wants to live their lives free of fear.

And as for the "tidal wave of exonerations", chalk it up to wishful thinking on the part of arch-enemies of capital punishment.

Thank God we live in Texas where sanity and truth are still appreciated.

You have to ignore her editorial page. When it comes to opinion, she's a leftist whore.

"Texas's system also contains some special features, like the power of district attorneys to set execution dates. Prosecutors are likely to be more eager than judges to see an execution carried out."

I don't really see the term "hyperbole" applying here. "Fiction" is the polite term, but I can think of a few others, too. I thought maybe I'd just gone batty and forgotten this, cause I'd certainly always thought it was the convicting court that set the execution date. But I just looked it up, and sure enough, that seems to be exactly what the Code of Criminal Procedure has to say on the subject. (Art. 43.141, C.C.P., "Scheduling of Execution Date; Withdrawal; Modification"). Oddly enough, it doesn't seem to mention anything at all in there about the D.A. being the one to set the date. If the NYT says it's so, I guess my code book must be wrong.

"percentage of executions has risen to 62%"

The problem is not that Texas is executing too many killers. The problem is that the other states are executing too few killers.

Surely one of the first steps to the destruction of a nation is the loss of its corporate will to defend itself. I present New York and New Jersey as Exhibits 1 and 2.

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It is not that Texas sentences people to death at a much higher rate than other states. Rather, Texas has proved to be much more willing than others to carry out the sentences it has imposed.

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This is the language that baffles me, as if this is a bad thing. Why would it be preferable to not carry out an imposed sentence? Since when is being, "all bark and no bite", a good thing?

I believe there is a simple explanation for many of the disparities in sentencing for capital and non-capital crimes from county to county and state to state: Generally speaking, people in some areas are more tolerant of violent crime than others.

But if I acknowledge that, who would buy my paper or give to my organization?