Amen

[hnumpah]

Legal System Is Perverted
by Charley Reese


America's court system has been broken, abused and perverted by lawyers, judges and legislators.

You would think that at least the lawyers and judges, who use the system to make a comfortable living, would have an interest in preserving it. Instead, they are the main abusers of it.

These thoughts are prompted by the execution of Mark Dean Schwab, a 39-year-old psychopathic monster who kidnapped, raped and murdered an 11-year-old boy. The problem is that it took 16 years after his conviction to execute this piece of human dung thanks to laws, lawyers and judges. It's not justice. Neither is lethal injection. How in God's name did we become so squeamish that we have to provide a peaceful, painless death to vile and vicious criminals?

Schwab wasn't so kind to his victim, Junny Rios-Martinez, a little boy who would have made any parent proud. I'm very proud of this boy's father, who attended the execution. The boy's father said he had vowed that his would be the last face Schwab would ever see.

Schwab was released from prison early in 1991 after serving half a sentence for raping another boy at knifepoint. Within a month, he was stalking little Junny. At the time of his trial, he boasted that he would gladly go to the electric chair if he could have a famous child actor sit on his lap. When the end finally came, he wasn't boasting about anything.

"Finally" is the key word. It shouldn't take years and even decades to execute a criminal. Two years from the day of sentencing should be the final day of the perp's life. Virtually all of the appeals in capital cases are frivolous, filed by opponents of the death penalty who simply are trying to wreck the system.

Let's get our thoughts in order concerning the death sentence. Everybody dies. Everybody is condemned to death from the day of his or her birth. Thus, executing a criminal isn't doing anything to him that won't happen anyway. Good and decent people get death sentences every day from their doctors, and there are no appeals or stays.

When the Founding Fathers wrote the Bill of Rights and prohibited cruel and unusual punishment, it was an era when people were burned alive, torn apart, drawn and quartered or slowly killed by any number of torture devices. Certainly, they did not consider hanging or shooting to be cruel and inhuman punishment.

We should be neither hesitant nor squeamish about executing people who take the lives of innocent people, especially children. God knows, if we don't have enough juice to protect and, failing that, avenge the death of children, then we are a poor excuse for a society.

We could provide university education to 10 children for the cost of keeping one of these dysfunctional human slimeballs alive for his natural life. I'd support a return to public hanging in the county where the crime was committed. Let the public come and see justice done. I'd even favor hiring a Saudi with a good, sharp sword to take the man's head off. If beheading was good enough for English royalty, it should be good enough for American animals with two legs.

As for convicting the wrong person, that's a problem with a community's police and prosecutors and sometimes incompetent defense lawyers. Clean house. Fix that problem. Don't use it as an excuse to stop the death penalty. Lawyers, who claim to be professionals, do a lousy job of policing their own ranks. Incompetent lawyers often end up as judges with nice vacations and pensions they don't deserve.

One day, the American people may get fed up enough to vow to never elect a single lawyer to a legislative post. Then we might get some clear laws that protect the people rather than provide a lucrative living for lawyers and judges.



July 5, 2008
via LewRockwell.com

[Michael Tee]

11 years is obviously ridiculous.  Who wants a faster system?  More judges, more courtrooms, more prosecuting attorneys, more DNA analysis facilities, including highly trained personnel, more, more and more?  IMHO the only way this would be feasible is with massive infusion of funds, either levied by new taxes or diverted from the ruling class's favourite sport, war waged by teams of working-class goons against relatively powerless Third World countries.  Or, just abolish the time-honoured legal safeguards of presumption of innocence, proof beyond reasonable doubt, Fifth Amendment, prohibition of torture.  We could probably get the job done and execute all of these creeps and a few unfortunates caught up in the system through no fault of their own as well.

I live the right wing cries for judicial vengeance.  Just ask them how much they're willing to pay for it.

[sirs]

What are you smoking THIS morning Tee?  Why the hell would there need to be some "massive infusion of funds"?      If one streamlines the process, & shortens this ridiculous level of appealing process to a more reasonable #, the cost would be substantially LESS to the tax payers

oy

Sort of along the same lines of claiming how a styrofoam cup of coffee can sponateously boil, despite the physics of energy transfer to the contrary

[fatman]

I'm leery of capital punishment in general, it seems like DNA is coming out too much now that exonerates guys that have been in prison for 10 or 20 years, it makes me wonder how many were executed who didn't commit the crime.

If I had more faith in the system, I could support it.  But the way the system is now, count me out.

[sirs]

And yet to date, not 1 instance of a proven innocent person put to death for their crime.  Only assumption that there had to have been because.........DNA I guess.  Which again translates into the ability to streamline the process by mandating DNA testing in all capital murder crimes.  If DNA is present, the appeals should take no more that 2years.  If no DNA, they shouldn't take more than 5-7

[fatman]

And yet to date, not 1 instance of a proven innocent person put to death for their crime.

Yet.  Who is more likely to push for a DNA test (which is many times blocked by the Court once a conviction is secured), an executed criminal or a live one?

Which again translates into the ability to streamline the process by mandating DNA testing in all capital murder crimes.  If DNA is present, the appeals should take no more that 2years.  If no DNA, they shouldn't take more than 5-7

I don't like capital punishment, but this would be a workable compromise.  But I can already hear the howls emanating from prosecutors on how their hands are being tied.  I don't think that you'll ever see that idea in action.

But I'm cynical today, what else is new?

[_JS]

Everybody dies. Everybody is condemned to death from the day of his or her birth. Thus, executing a criminal isn't doing anything to him that won't happen anyway.

That has to be the weakest argument I've ever heard for capital punishment.

Hell, we could use that argument for anything. We're all going to die so let's just start having a bloody fuckin' rampage! It makes about as much sense.

[_JS]

And yet to date, not 1 instance of a proven innocent person put to death for their crime.

I'm game for this one Sirs. But this time I want to see how much you really believe what you just typed.

If I can find one instance of a wrongful execution in American history will you give $1000 to a charity of my choice (and obviously send me the receipt as proof)?

And no "I really meant XYZ..." bullshit either. I've got the quote right up there.

[Michael Tee]

<<Everybody dies. Everybody is condemned to death from the day of his or her birth. Thus, executing a criminal isn't doing anything to him that won't happen anyway.>>

_JS:  <<That has to be the weakest argument I've ever heard for capital punishment.>>

It's actually an exoneration of the killer too.  If everybody dies sooner or later, what did he do to his victim that wouldn't have happened to her sooner or later anyway?  Who knows how much misery and woe he spared her from?

[_JS]

<<Everybody dies. Everybody is condemned to death from the day of his or her birth. Thus, executing a criminal isn't doing anything to him that won't happen anyway.>>

_JS:  <<That has to be the weakest argument I've ever heard for capital punishment.>>

It's actually an exoneration of the killer too.  If everybody dies sooner or later, what did he do to his victim that wouldn't have happened to her sooner or later anyway?  Who knows how much misery and woe he spared her from?

Very true Mike.

It gets very complicated, very quickly. For example, what do you do with someone who is mentally retarded? Are they responsible for their crimes? Or in the case of the University of Texas tower shooter - someone who has a brain tumor? In his case they only discovered it after he was dead and they performed an autopsy, but the science is better today.

It simply isn't that black and white. Some people are scum, but quick paths to execution may not be the best solution.

[Plane]

Strange that improvement in forensic science have made us loose confidence in our process.

When we were less sure we executed more and were less upset with the potential for false accusation.

[Michael Tee]

<<Why the hell would there need to be some "massive infusion of funds"?   Huh  >>

Because plea bargaining would no longer be the preferred method of disposition of capital charges.  As a general rule of thumb, 10% of criminal charges go to trial and 90% are plea bargained into a resolution without trial.  See:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/31672/plea_bargaining_in_the_criminal_justice.html?cat=17

Different surveys would probably give different results, but the fact is that the overwhelming majority of criminal charges in any comon-law jurisdiction will be resolved through plea bargains.

Once the prosecution decides to execute all murderers, there are no plea bargains in capital cases.  All such cases would have to go to trial.  Capital murder cases are by far the most expensive to try, and take by far the most time, involving expert witnesses, usually in duelling pairs (prosecution and defence,)  from a wide variety of disciplines:  ballistics, toxicology, various medical, psychological,police procedural, graphological, engineering, computer engineering, etc.  Courtrooms, judges, juries, prosecutors, legal assistants, investigators, librarians, court reporters, clerks and bailiffs are tied up for months.  Now suddenly every case that could have been plea-bargained down from a death penalty is headed for trial and you are asking, "Why the hell would there have to be some 'massive infusion of funds?""  What are you, nuts?

<<If one streamlines the process, . . . >>

Oh, yeah, I forgot.  That's my mistake right there.  We need to "streamline the process."  What an EXCELLENT idea.  Streamline murder trials.  Nobody's ever tried to streamline the trial process before.  That's because until sirs thought of it, it never occurred to anyone that the trial process could or should be streamlined.  But sure, that's a real gem of an idea.  First let's streamline the trial process.  Maybe our resident legal genius here could tell us all how HE is going to "streamline the process."  This will be very interesting. 


<< . . . & shortens this ridiculous level of appealing process to a more reasonable #, the cost would be substantially LESS to the tax payers>>

For sure, we could shorten this "ridiculous level of appealing process."  How?  If a wrongful conviction is going to result in a fatal and irreversible penalty, what part of the appeal process do you want to cancel out?  Appeals based on newly discovered evidence?  I mean, considering the stakes, just what part of the "ridiculous" appeal process do you want to "shorten?"   As a matter of fact, when you consider how many more capital trials there are going to have to be if prosecutors seek death penalties for all or even most murders, you can bet that the wave of appeals generated by all those otherwise avoidable trials are not only going to swamp all existing appeal courts, but they are going to probably quintuple or sextuple the average waiting time for the appeals to be heard and decided.

[Michael Tee]

<<It simply isn't that black and white. Some people are scum, but quick paths to execution may not be the best solution.>>

_JS, the best quote on capital punishment that I've ever seen is from the Talmud, and I've quoted it here before: "A court which passes a sentence of death more than once in 70 years is a court of murderers."

Why 70 years?  It's the Biblical measure of a human lifespan ("threescore years and ten.")

They're not saying that capital punishment is never justified, only that it's so rare it should be reserved for one case in an entire lifetime.  In all other cases, you will find, if you look hard enough, mitigating circumstances, reasonable doubt, killers who never had a chance, victims who deserved what they got . . .

I don't take it literally, not even the "once in a lifetime" bit, but more of an exhortation - - in every single case, seek out the mitigating factors with relentless zeal, look under every rock as if your own life depended on it.