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Death Penalty

I think there's something very sick in American society. I see a peculiar culture of violence that ties together guns, self defense, and the death penalty.

The only right punishment for your children is spanking them with a nail-studded paddle, as some people swear their parents did them, the only righteous criminal justice involves long prison sentences to make would-be criminals think twice, and we should expand the death penalty to non-murder cases, even thought crimes. It's okay to shoot a thief for stealing a bag of chips, provoke a conflict then shoot them and get away with it cause you feared for your life, etc.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
How did AEDPA affect the states?
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Effectively removing oversight. Much rarer for the federal courts to overrule obvious bad legal rulings against unpopular defendants (AKA "The Dirty Bastard Rule"). I can remember a few total howlers in my state that probably would have lasted ten minutes in federal court but were time barred as they weren't afforded a lawyer for a non-death penalty federal habeas petitions. If there was more risk of being embarrassed by a federal court those would be less common.


(Also as an example of ways for states that aren't interested in accuracy over finality to cut off access)
 
Venom said:
I think there's something very sick in American society. I see a peculiar culture of violence that ties together guns, self defense, and the death penalty.

The only right punishment for your children is spanking them with a nail-studded paddle, as some people swear their parents did them, the only righteous criminal justice involves long prison sentences to make would-be criminals think twice, and we should expand the death penalty to non-murder cases, even thought crimes. It's okay to shoot a thief for stealing a bag of chips, provoke a conflict then shoot them and get away with it cause you feared for your life, etc.
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We are by and large punishment fetishists.

Unfortunately that simple. There is some weird transgressive eroticism energy to this. A nation of sexually frustrated 1970s elementary school principals taking out their frustrations on naughty children. Etc.
 
A catch-22

At WaPo Radley Balko wrote, "But last week the Supreme Court snuffed it out. Led by Thomas, the majority ruled that while the court’s 2012 decision did allow the federal courts to find that Jones’s post-conviction attorney was ineffective, AEDPA still bars Jones from using the evidence those attorneys failed to find in federal court. According to the majority, the federal courts can acknowledge that a prisoner’s state-appointed attorneys failed him at two critical points in his case, but they’re barred from actually doing anything about it.
It’s an illogical and profoundly cynical ruling, one that will almost certainly mean innocent people will remain behind bars — or be executed."

Mr. Balko recounts the cases of Henry McCollum (Scalia's poster case for the death penalty) and of Paul House, noting how Justice Thomas was wrong in both instances. Justice Thomas is frequently wrong but never in doubt.
 
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Chris_Halkides said:
At WaPo Radley Balko wrote, "But last week the Supreme Court snuffed it out. Led by Thomas, the majority ruled that while the court’s 2012 decision did allow the federal courts to find that Jones’s post-conviction attorney was ineffective, AEDPA still bars Jones from using the evidence those attorneys failed to find in federal court. According to the majority, the federal courts can acknowledge that a prisoner’s state-appointed attorneys failed him at two critical points in his case, but they’re barred from actually doing anything about it.
It’s an illogical and profoundly cynical ruling, one that will almost certainly mean innocent people will remain behind bars — or be executed."

Mr. Balko recounts the cases of Henry McCollum (Scalia's poster case for the death penalty) and of Paul House, noting how Justice Thomas was wrong in both instances. Justice Thomas is frequently wrong but never in doubt.
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It's fun to examine where core dishonesty resides in these cases. Formalistic reasoning is similar to jailhouse lawyering in that they both depend to some degree on freeing precedent from context. Formalistic opinions do this subtly, while a jailhouse argument is generally cartoonish.

Anyway, where I think Thomas first gives away the game here comes on page 7 of the slip opinion with this passage:

(I haven't read the dissents so they might have brought this up)

(“When previously convicted perpetrators of violent crimes go free merely because the evidence needed to conduct a retrial has become stale or is no longer available, the public suffers, as do the victims”). “Only with real finality can the victims of crime move forward knowing the moral judgment will be carried out.” Calderon, 523
U. S., at 556. “To unsettle these expectations is to inflict a profound injury to the powerful and legitimate interest in punishing the guilty, an interest shared by the State and
the victims of crime alike.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
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On it's face it is bad enough as weighing the state's right to punish above the need for the rule of law and a careful determination consistent with the rights of the accused should be alarming. But hey, precedent, right?

However, if we look at the facts and reasoning in Calderon we get a better picture of what is going on here. In Calderon they were talking about the federal courts constantly reviewing their own work. The Federal Courts had already with a full hearing denied relief, and then turned around just before execution and entered a stay to look into it again. The USSC said at that point finality is important. Illustrative passage from page 557 of that decision:

[We] are concerned with cases where, as here, a court of appeals recalls its mandate to revisit the merits of its earlier decision denying habeas relief. In these cases, the State's interests in finality are all but paramount, without regard to whether the court of appeals predicates the recall on a procedural misunderstanding or some other irregularity occurring prior to its decision. The prisoner has already had extensive review of his claims in federal and state courts. In the absence of a strong showing of "actua[l] innocen[ce]," Murray v. Carrier, supra, at 496, the State's interests in actual finality outweigh the prisoner's interest in obtaining yet another opportunity for review.
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So we have Thomas wanting to heavily weigh the state's interest in finality and justifying it by taking passages in an earlier case out of context. The case he cites only goes into finality after acknowledging an extensive review and allowing even further review when new evidence comes to light.

Here, Thomas is using that case to help justify not having an extensive review. There are almost certainly other examples of this slight of hand stuff, but that was the one that jumped out at me.

This is why I get real twitchy about the present court and heavily recommend the 5-4 podcast as a good critique of this sorts of formalism.
 
Paul House wrongful conviction

Brian Haas wrote, "In 1996, the first answer to her prayers came. It didn't set her son free but it set things in motion. When the appeals shifted from state to federal court that year, it brought fresh eyes to the case. Eventually it fell to Stephen Kissinger, an assistant federal community defender out of Knoxville. It didn't take long for him to pick the state's case apart."

The Innocence Project quoted the LA Times: "Long after his conviction, however, DNA evidence proved that a semen stain on the victim's clothes had come from her husband, not House. But the Tennessee courts and the federal appeals court said that evidence did not prove he was not guilty." Sounds like another example of the prosecution's trotting out the unindicted co-ejaculator theory of a crime. The Supremes voted 5 to 3 circa 2006 that his case should be sent back to the courts.

I was unfamiliar with the Paul House case until today, but it illustrates that relying on the state to fix what had become an obvious wrongful conviction will surely lead to the executions of innocent individuals.
 
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one reasons for ineffective assistance of counsel

In the wake of the decision by the SC, Christina Swarns of the Innocence Project wrote, "The vast majority of criminal cases in the United States are handled by state public defenders. Unfortunately, our public defender systems are chronically underfunded, poorly paid and overloaded with cases. Because the Court’s emphasis on finality blinks this reality, it exacerbates the intolerable risk of innocent people languishing in prison and even being executed. It is therefore now incumbent upon the states to ensure that people charged with crimes have qualified and resourced counsel and there is a meaningful opportunity to litigate claims of trial counsel ineffectiveness."
 
Justice Sotomayor's dissent in Martinez

Justice Sotomayor wrote, "Ultimately, the Court’s decision prevents habeas peti- tioners in States like Arizona from receiving any guaranteed opportunity to develop the records necessary to enforce their Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel. For the subset of these petitioners who receive in- effective assistance both at trial and in state postconviction proceedings, the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee is now an empty one. Many, if not most, individuals in this position will have no recourse and no opportunity for relief. The responsibility for this devastating outcome lies not with Congress, but with this Court."

Although Justice Sotomayor's point covers both death penalty and non-death penalty cases, clearly this decision affects both kinds of cases. If the state investigates a case poorly and is responsible (at least some of the time) for ineffective assistance of counsel, then why should one rely solely upon the state to fix these problems at the appeal level. It is worth mentioning that Arizona restricts arguments about ineffective assistance to later appeals beyond direct appeal, if I understand correctly.
 
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Chris_Halkides said:
It is worth mentioning that Arizona restricts arguments about ineffective assistance to later appeals beyond direct appeal, if I understand correctly.
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It's pretty common for IAC claims to not be involved on direct appeal because in all but the most absurd cases there needs to be an investigation and evidentiary hearing in order for a defendant/petitioner to meet the required burden to establish IAC. Plus some conflict of interest attorney/client issues.

That usually means filing a writ of habeas corpus.

Which is fair enough, but there is the issue that outside of death penalty cases there isn't a right to counsel for a habeas petition. Which makes the feds being so nitty about time and thoroughness a bit, or I guess more accurately insanely, inequitable.
 
Justice Thomas and the elaborateness of the hearings

Scott Greenfield wrote, "Thomas goes on the describe the “elaborateness” of the hearings, seven days, ten witnesses, etc. Would five days have been the right degree of elaborateness? Would six witnesses have been okay? The extent of “elaborateness” is a function of what’s needed and what’s available. Most cases won’t have ten witnesses, but if you do, then ten witnesses is what it is. It’s no more or less elaborate than necessary."
 
Chris_Halkides said:
Scott Greenfield wrote, "Thomas goes on the describe the “elaborateness” of the hearings, seven days, ten witnesses, etc. Would five days have been the right degree of elaborateness? Would six witnesses have been okay? The extent of “elaborateness” is a function of what’s needed and what’s available. Most cases won’t have ten witnesses, but if you do, then ten witnesses is what it is. It’s no more or less elaborate than necessary."
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Thomas has consistently been distracted by shiny objects of his own making.

It happens here or there with judges who aren't willing to listen to feedback. They get obsessed with something that occurs to them and nothing on earth will convince them that they have detached themselves from legal and factual reality.

Caring about "elaborate" seems a prime example. It's silly nonsense.
 
Kevin Johnson case in Missouri

The impending execution of Kevin Johnson is another example of a case in which the death penalty was misapplied IMO. At age 19 He killed a police officer who had hours earlier been in the family home. During the earlier visit, Mr. Johnson's brother had a seizure, but the police failed to assist and prevented the boy's mother from helping. There is also more than one hint of racism at play. I have heard it said that the death penalty should be reserved for only the worst of the worst. Second degree murder would have been the more appropriate penalty IMO, and that is what he would have received had it not been for two jurors who made racist remarks voting against this, hanging the jury in the first trial.
 
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Chris_Halkides said:
I have heard it said that the death penalty should be reserved for only the worst of the worst. Second degree murder would have been the more appropriate penalty IMO, and that is what he would have received had it not been for two jurors who made racist remarks voting against this, hanging the jury in the first trial.
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Well...

After the police left, Appellant retrieved his black, nine millimeter handgun from his vehicle.   When talking with friends that evening, Appellant explained his brother's death as, “that's
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******
up, man.   They wasn't trying to help him, that he was too busy looking for me.”   Around 7:30, two hours after Appellant's brother had the seizure, Sgt. McEntee responded to a report of fireworks in the neighborhood and Appellant was nearby.   As Sgt. McEntee spoke with three juveniles, Appellant approached Sgt. McEntee's patrol car and squatted down to see into the passenger window.   Appellant said “you killed my brother” before firing his black handgun approximately five times.
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I won't be shedding a tear when this trash is put to death.

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inadvertent Rule 10 violation in quote
 
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Warp12 said:
Well...

After the police left, Appellant retrieved his black, nine millimeter handgun from his vehicle.   When talking with friends that evening, Appellant explained his brother's death as, “that's ****** up, man.   They wasn't trying to help him, that he was too busy looking for me.”   Around 7:30, two hours after Appellant's brother had the seizure, Sgt. McEntee responded to a report of fireworks in the neighborhood and Appellant was nearby.   As Sgt. McEntee spoke with three juveniles, Appellant approached Sgt. McEntee's patrol car and squatted down to see into the passenger window.   Appellant said “you killed my brother” before firing his black handgun approximately five times.
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I won't be shedding a tear when this trash is put to death.
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What's the significance of the colour of his gun?
 
Special Prosecutor's conclusion

From the link to The Intercept: “'Unconstitutional racial discrimination infected this prosecution,' he [special prosecutor Edward Keenan] wrote, “and this error requires the judgment to be set aside.'" And: "Perhaps most revealing is McCulloch’s history of charging decisions — an area where prosecutors have complete discretion. McCulloch prosecuted five police officer killings during his tenure. Four of them involved Black defendants; in each, McCulloch sought the death penalty. The fifth case involved a white defendant named Trenton Forster. In that case, McCulloch sought life. Forster’s conduct was far more aggravated than that of the other defendants, Keenan found. Among other things, Forster had bragged on social media about wanting to kill cops, suggesting that his attack was premeditated. Nonetheless, McCulloch took the extraordinary step of giving Forster’s public defender nearly a year to provide mitigating evidence that might convince McCulloch not to seek a death sentence. McCulloch did not offer this opportunity to any of the Black defendants."
 
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If the U.S. wasn't one of the few barbarous nations that still permits the death penalty, we wouldn't need to have this discussion. But we let the states decide, and of course, there are quite a few states that are ruled by knuckle-dragging GQP ********. Unfortunately, this isn't likely to change in at least the next few centuries.
 
Missouri Supreme Court rejects stay of execution for Kevin Johnson
Also on Monday, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson announced that he will not grant clemency.
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The court's 5-2 decision means that Johnson, 37, will die by injection at 6 p.m. Tuesday for killing Kirkwood police Sgt. William McEntee in 2005 unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes.
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https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/c...arson/63-9b9d9b39-622b-496b-b9f9-1a0797c3f392


Somehow I doubt the SCOTUS is going to stop this...darn.
 
St. Louis public radio article

Link to a long article about this case. Having now read most of it, I would be fine with life without parole as a sentence. That is pretty much where I was before, but this article provided some additional details.
 
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