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Death Penalty and DNA There are many points of view regarding death penalty in American society. However, the question concerning its necessity and appropriateness has never never been put so sharply before 90 s. In 1999 and 2000 debates were brought into public and politics. Being Texas Governor George W. Bush said politics didnt drive his decision to grant a stay of execution to death row inmate Ricky McGinn, who will get a chance to prove his innocence with a DNA test. People like to read all kinds of motives into these things, and I understand that.
These death-penalty cases stir emotions, Bush tells Newsweek in the current issue. But all I ever ask are two questions: is there doubt about guilt based on the evidence, and did the defendant have full access? In this case, there was doubt. (Newsweek, 2000, p. 23) Bush also says that the involvement of well-known DNA expert Barry Scheck, who brought an appeal to the trial court in Texas, did not affect his decision. With all due respect to Mr. Scheck, he had nothing to do with my decision, he says. However, the latest Newsweek Poll shows 59 percent of Americans believe Bush's decision was mainly because of political considerations and 41 percent of Bush's supporters believe he did it for political reasons, the poll shows (Newsweek, 2000, p. 47).
After Newsweek shone a light on the then obscure case in the May 29 issue (A Life or Death Gamble), Scheck and a Texas death penalty specialist filed a brief with the trial court, reports Senior Editor Jonathan Alter in the June 12 cover story Rethinking the Death Penalty, (Newsweek, 2000, p. 73) When the local judge surprised observers by recommending that the testing be done, it caught Bush's attention. The hard-line higher state court and board of pardons both said no to the DNA tests - with no public explanation. This time, though, the eyes of the nation were on Texas, and Bush stepped in, Alter reports. Whether McGinn is guilty or innocent, this case has helped establish that all inmates eligible for DNA should get it, Scheck tells Newsweek.
It's just common sense and decency. (Newsweek, 2000, 15) In the May 29 article, Newsweek brought to light how McGinn - who was convicted of the 1993 rape and bludgeon murder of his 12 -year-old stepdaughter - was scheduled to be executed without the benefit of the latest DNA tests which could irrefutably prove his guilt or point to another assailant. He had received poor legal counsel and there had been no request for the DNA test to be done on a pubic hair found inside the victim - and a possible semen stain - until this spring. In Illinois, Gov. George Ryan imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in January after 13 wrongly convicted men were released from Illinois death row.
He also appointed a commission to see whether the legal process for handling capital cases in Illinois can be fixed (McCafferty, 143). Unless he gets a guarantee that the system can be made perfect, Ryan told Newsweek, There probably wont be any more deaths, at least while hes governor. I believe there are cases where the death penalty is appropriate, Ryan said, but weve got to make sure we have the right person. Every governor who holds this power has the same fear I do. Despite the common trend in American society against capital punishment, the attitudes vary very much.
For instance Lawrence C. Marshall, a law professor at Northwestern University and Director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, wrote that the death penalty should be abolished and the worst offenders should be sentenced to life in prison without parole. We could forbid executions in cases decided on the testimony of one witness, an uncorroborated confession or a jailhouse snitch. We could insist that judges find an absolute certainty of guilt - not just guilt beyond a reasonable doubt - before levying death penalties. And we could ensure that every defendant has a qualified lawyer who has adequate resources to investigate the case (Pastore, 191 - 92). On the contrary Marc Klaas, founder and president of the Klaas Kids Foundation, a childrens safety advocacy organization, and father of 12 -year-old Polly Klaas who was kidnapped and murdered in 1993, said that he is going to be at the execution of his daughters killer, Richard Allen Davis, to watch him go down.
Id like my eyes to be the last thing he sees, just as his eyes were the last thing my child saw. He writes that he doesnt want a life sentence without parole because we sentence individuals to life without parole and then parole them... Polly's killer should never have been on the street. He had been sentenced to more than 200 years.
He also derided the Hollywood actors, the dilettantes, the society folks who might be protesting at Davis execution. They will turn him into a victim. Why do we coddle these guys? He never showed my child the consideration that has been shown him. The protesters who will be at her killers execution wont remember Polly Klaas (Time, 1995, p. 62). Whether McGinn is guilty or innocent, this case has helped establish that all inmates eligible for DNA testing should get it, says Barry Scheck, the noted DNA legal expert and coauthor of "Actual Innocence.
It's just common sense and decency (Newsweek, 1999, p. 86). Even as Bush made the decent decision, the McGinn case illustrated why capital punishment in Texas is in the cross hairs this political season. For starters, Mcginn's lawyer, like lawyers in too many capital cases, was no Clarence Darrow. Twice reprimanded by the state bar in unrelated cases (and handling five other capital appeals simultaneously), he didnt even begin focusing on the DNA tests that could save his client until this spring.
Because Texas provides only 2, 500 dollars for investigators and expert witnesses in death-penalty appeals (enough for one days work, if that), it took an unpaid investigator from out of state, Tina Church, to get the ball rolling (The New Republic, 1999, p. 34 - 35). But what about the hundreds of other capital cases that unfold far from the glare of a presidential campaign? As science sprints ahead of the law, assembly-line executions are making even supporters of the death penalty increasingly uneasy. Mcginn's execution was going to be the 132 d on Bush's watch.
Is that pace too fast? We now know that prosecutorial mistakes are not as rare as once assumed; competent counsel not as common. Since the Supreme Court allowed reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, 87 death-row inmates have been freed from prison. With little money available to dig up new evidence and appeals courts usually unwilling to review claims of innocence (they are more likely to entertain possible procedural trial-court errors), it's impossible to know just how many other prisoners are living the ultimate nightmare. So for the first time in a generation, the death penalty is in the dock - on the defensive at home and especially abroad for being too arbitrary and too prone to error.
The recent news has prompted even many conservative hard-liners to rethink their position. There seems to be growing awareness that the death penalty is just another government program that doesnt work very well, says Stephen Bright of the Southern Center for Human Rights (Bowers, 101 - 102). When Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, a pro-death penalty Republican, imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in January after 13 wrongly convicted men were released from Illinois death row, it looked like a one-day event (McCafferty, 152). Instead, the decision has resonated as one of the most important national stories of the year. The big question it raises, still unanswered: how can the 37 other states that allow the death penalty be so sure that their systems do not resemble the one in Illinois?
In that sense, the latest debate on the death penalty seems to be turning less on moral questions than on practical ones. While Roman Catholicism and other faiths have become increasingly outspoken in their opposition to capital punishment (even Pat Robertson is now against it), the new wave of doubts seems more hardheaded than softhearted; more about justice than faith (Flanders, 15 - 16). The death penalty in America is far from dead. All it takes to know that is a glimpse of a grieving family, yearning for closure and worried about maximum sentences that aren't so long. According to the new Newsweek Poll, 73 percent still support capital punishment in at least some cases, down only slightly in five years. Heinous crimes still provoke calls for the strongest penalties.
Its understandable, for instance, how the families victimized by the shootings at a New York Wendy's that left five dead would want the death penalty. And the realists are right: the vast majority of those on death row are guilty. However, is a vast majority good enough when the issue is life or death? After years when politicians bragged about streamlining the process to speed up executions, the momentum is now moving the opposite way. The homicide rate is down 30 percent nationally in five years, draining some of the intensity from the pro-death-penalty argument.
And fairness is increasingly important to the public (Bed, 19 - 20). Although only two states - Illinois and New York - currently give inmates the right to have their DNA tested, 95 percent of Americans want that right guaranteed (Newsweek, 2001, p. 42). Close to 90 percent even support the idea of federal guarantees of DNA testing (contained in the bipartisan Leahy-Smith Innocence Protection bill), though Bush and Gore, newly conscious of the issue, both prefer state remedies. The explanation for the public mood may be that cases of injustice keep coming, and not just on recent episodes of the "The Practice, " that (with Scheck as a script adviser) uncannily anticipated the McGinn case.
In the last week alone Bush pardoned A. B. Butler after he served 17 years in prison for a sexual assault he didn't commit, and Virginia Gov. James Gilmore ordered new testing that will likely free Earl Washington, also after 17 years behind bars.
All told, more than 70 inmates have been exonerated by DNA evidence since 1982, including eight...
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Research essay sample on Death Penalty Capital Punishment
