WP Editorial: Stop This Bill - limiting reviews of Death Penalty cases

[Pirate Smile]

Stop This Bill

Sunday, July 10, 2005; Page B06

CONGRESS HAS a novel response to the rash of prisoners over the past few years who have been exonerated of capital crimes after being tried and convicted: Keep similar cases out of court. Both chambers of the national legislature are quietly moving a particularly ugly piece of legislation designed to gut the legal means by which prisoners prove their innocence.

-snip-
For a great many capital cases, the bill would eliminate federal review entirely. Federal courts would be unable to review almost all capital convictions from states certified by the Justice Department as providing competent counsel to convicts to challenge their convictions under state procedures. Although the bill, versions of which differ slightly between the chambers, provides a purported exception for cases in which new evidence completely undermines a conviction, this is drawn so narrowly that it is likely to be useless -- even in identifying cases of actual innocence.

It gets worse. The bill, pushed by Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Calif.) in the House and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) in the Senate, would impose onerous new procedural hurdles on inmates seeking federal review -- those, that is, whom it doesn't bar from court altogether. It would bar the courts from considering key issues raised by those cases and insulate most capital sentencing from federal scrutiny. It also would dictate arbitrary timetables for federal appeals courts to resolve habeas cases. This would be a dramatic change in federal law -- and entirely for the worse.

The legislation would be simply laughable, except that it has alarming momentum. A House subcommittee held a hearing recently, and the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold one and then mark up the bill this week. Both Judiciary Committee chairmen surely know better. House Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), after all, has fought for better funding and training for capital defense lawyers. And Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has long opposed efforts to strip federal courts of jurisdiction over critical subjects. Neither has yet taken a public position on the bill. Each needs to take a careful look. It is no exaggeration to say that if this bill becomes law, it will consign innocent people to long-term incarceration or death.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/09/AR2005070900951.html

[mcctatas]

1. Well that's the compassionate conservative approach to the prison

overcrowding problems for ya. Yet another in a long line of ironies from the ruling party that changed the rules to make it easier for guilty elected officials to escape punishment. The same consideration is not apparently offered to potentially innocent, albeit poor and primarily minority people (therefor not important to the repukes) to offer them a chance to escape death at the hands of the state!:wtf: :argh:

[craychek]

2. Oh my lord

if this makes it to the president's desk... the damage that would do would completely screw any chance innocent people might get off of death row. And I know he would sign it too since he's pro-death penalty. However, I feel that if this gets through it is likely to be struck down by the supreme court(even a republican controlled one) because it violates due process if it prevents innocent poeple from having their cases reviewed.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. Remember Scalia...

Mere factual innocence is not sufficient reason to set aside a conviction properly arrived at.

Also remember that Scalia is a moderate, according to at least one pundit (whose name escapes me).

[craychek]

6. innocence isn't enough is it?

Wow, the evidence can say someone is innocent of a crime and they still won't over turn... wow... that sucks balls, and I don't use that term lightly.

Morality... who needs it anyways?

*sarcasm*

[Vitruvius]

7. When somebody like Scalia says it's OK to execute the innocent,

it's enough to make one yearn to try the experiment on him.

But of course Scalia knows it can never, never, never happen to himself. Which is one reason why he's so vicious.

There's nothing like utter immunity to bring out the most vicious streak in a craven sociopath like Scalia.

[Vitruvius]

3. Every innocent person put to death has family, relatives, and friends

who will remember. Which is why when there are revolutions, members of the murderous former ruling class are often put to death.

And one sign that a ruling class is on its' last legs is when they start executing people wholesale, on whim, and without concern for guilt or innocence. It's the last rage of the dying dinosaur.


I do not approve of wholesale executions of members of a former ruling class -- no more than I approve of the current wholesale executions of innocents. But -- historically -- the latter often begets the former.

[MasonJar]

5. Read Richard North Patterson's most recent novel; it is called

Condemnation, I believe. The book takes a look at this very topic. Patterson's novel just before this one was about the NRA and its mammoth control.