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A blog post with every single category marked (I'm doing this for scribefire)

A good reason why I'm opposed to the Death Penalty

From the department of criminal-incompetence:

Prosecutors had linked the weapon to Kulbicki through forensic science. Maryland's top firearms expert said that the gun had been cleaned and that its bullets were consistent in size with the one that killed the victim. The state expert could not match the markings on the bullets to Kulbicki's gun. But an FBI expert took the stand to say that a science that matches bullets by their lead content had linked the fatal bullet to Kulbicki.

The jurors were convinced, and in 1995 Kulbicki was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of his 22-year-old girlfriend. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

For a dozen years, Kulbicki sat in state prison, saddled with the image of the calculating killer portrayed in the 1996 made-for-TV movie "Double Jeopardy."

Then the scientific evidence unraveled.

Earlier this year, the state expert committed suicide, leaving a trail of false credentials, inaccurate testimony and lab notes that conflicted with what he had told jurors. Two years before, the FBI crime lab had discarded the bullet-matching science that it had used to link Kulbicki to the crime.

Now a judge in Baltimore County is weighing whether to overturn Kulbicki's conviction in a legal challenge that could have ripple effects across Maryland. The case symbolizes growing national concerns about just how far forensic experts are willing to go to help prosecutors secure a conviction.

To be honest, there's every chance that the guy who was charged with this crime actually did it. Fortunately he was not executed, but the same could not be said for other instances of incompetence within the law-enforcement community.

In this particular case, the prosecution hinged upon the man's use of a .38 calibre handgun to kill his girlfriend. An expert witness, an engineer and scientist, concluded before the court that the bullet used to kill the woman was fired from the man's handgun. Many years later, the credentials of the expert were found to be false and the "expert" committed suicide as a result. When the forensic evidence of this particular case was then re-examined, it seems that the bullet could not have been fired from the man's handgun.

Bungling police officers, unqualified experts, drunk defence lawyers and corrupt juries bedevil too many criminal cases around the world, especially in the US. No system of justice is perfect, though it is in the interests of everyone that professionalism and objectivity be paramount in any criminal trial.

The main reason I oppose the death penalty is that, too often, convicted murderers have ended up being executed and then posthumously exonerated by evidence of unprofessionalism, incompetence and bias in the trial process. The advantage of throwing a murdered in jail for the rest of his life is that, if he is eventually found to be innocent, then the means exists for recompense.

Having not worked in professional law enforcement, I am not aware of the pressure that policemen, judges, lawyers and experts may have upon them. History shows us, however, that even in a modern society innocent people can end up being jailed because of unprofessional and subjective. The imprisonment of the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four and the death of Jean Charles de Menezes are examples of conduct unbecoming law enforcement officials in the face of public and political pressure.

Mistakes will always be made when people are charged with criminal offenses, and those whose job it is to enforce the law try very hard to ensure that they do the right thing. It is the interests of society to have professional, unimpeachable, transparent and accountable law enforcement. Yet when mistakes are made, there should be a way of ensuring that those who suffer are compensated. This can't occur when the person has been executed.

There are many reasons why the death penalty should not be practised in a modern nation. The fact that innocent people have been executed is one of the most important reasons for its abolishment. Sending murderers to jail for life - without possibility of parole - is a far better solution.

The Death Penalty relies upon a perfect justice system

But, of course, we don't have one do we?

My stance on the death penalty was changed a number of years ago when I read a report in The Economist magazine about the amount of errors in sentencing that many death row inmates seemed to get. I can't remember the exact detail, but I vaguely remember that 5% of people executed in the US had not gone through a "fair trial". Moreover, the evidence showed that in many cases, innocent people had been executed.

5% doesn't sound like much, but if an alternative to the death penalty is available (ie life in prison) then any mistakes made during a trial can result in recompense. Once a person is dead, however, the state can't compensate the innocent dead.

Now, however, it seems as though there is more to these cases than just incompetent judicial procedures. It seems as though in many cases there was a deliberate desire for malicious punishment.

Richard Moran, commenting in The New York Times, says this:

My recently completed study of the 124 exonerations of death row inmates in America from 1973 to 2007 indicated that 80, or about two-thirds, of their so-called wrongful convictions resulted not from good-faith mistakes or errors but from intentional, willful, malicious prosecutions by criminal justice personnel. (There were four cases in which a determination could not be made one way or another.)

Yet too often this behavior is not singled out and identified for what it is. When a prosecutor puts a witness on the stand whom he knows to be lying, or fails to turn over evidence favorable to the defense, or when a police officer manufactures or destroys evidence to further the likelihood of a conviction, then it is deceptive to term these conscious violations of the law — all of which I found in my research — as merely mistakes or errors.

Mistakes are good-faith errors — like taking the wrong exit off the highway, or dialing the wrong telephone number. There is no malice behind them. However, when officers of the court conspire to convict a defendant of first-degree murder and send him to death row, they are doing much more than making an innocent mistake or error. They are breaking the law.

Perhaps this explains why, even when a manifestly innocent man is about to be executed, a prosecutor can be dead set against reopening an old case. Since so many wrongful convictions result from official malicious behavior, prosecutors, policemen, witnesses or even jurors and judges could themselves face jail time for breaking the law in obtaining an unlawful conviction.

But what would motivate law enforcement officials to conspire against a defendant? Remember that a disproportionate number of death row inmates are African-American...

The danger of nationalistic-coloured glasses

When Los Angeles erupted into riots in 1992, it obviously caused a lot of heart-searching in America. Were these riots a symptom of something deeper? Were the riots caused by something inherently deficient with America?

The general answer to these two questions, I think, was "yes" and "no". Yes the riots indicated something that was wrong, but was it something about America itself that was being shown to be deficient? No, of course not!

The problem with this reading of this particular historical event is that it is tainted by people's own view of their nation. Patriotism, nationalism... whatever you want to call it, means that people often do not see what is quite plain to outsiders.

Take the recent Paris riots. The amount of crowing and France-bashing in the American media was incredible. Mind you, that's actually to be expected - Americans have a deep-seated history of racism that is based on institutional slavery - so their racist comments about the French are unsurprising.

What is interesting, however, is that when such major events occur outside of America, there is usually some editorial that probes the deficiencies of the nation which proves why the event occurred and why, either implicitly or explicitly, America is superior.

So with the Paris riots, it was simply a matter of blaming historical socialism. "These European nations have generous welfare support, high taxes and a more regulated economy. The reason why these riots occurred is because this form of economic and social system is inherently deficient." would be a typical response.

So what caused the LA riots, was it because America has a system that promotes a massive disparity between rich and poor because it is based on a capitalist system that rewards the rich and punishes the poor? Some would say "Yes" to this.

Interestingly, some American leftists blamed the Paris riots on the economic changes that France had begun - changes that liberalised their economy to be more capitalist. So while American conservatives were indulging in anti-socialist schadenfreude, American progressives were arguing that the riots were actually due to conservative policies.

So how are we to make sense of all this? Is there any way of making correct assumptions? Can a person still be "objective" and have a well-thought out point of view - an opinion? Of course.

Opinions and points of view need to be informed by facts. And the facts are that the Paris riots, while certainly big news, were nowhere near as bad as some of the riots in America in recent decades. Moreover, France has a much lower crime rate, lower deaths due to gun violence and a much better health system. Are these just opinions? No, they are based on facts. If you do the research you will find it.

You'll probably also find that progressive American states - those who have stricter gun-control laws, higher taxes to pay for better health services and who have also banned the death penalty - are also probably better off (generally) than the conservative American state.

When it comes down to it - many progressive policies actually work. And this does not mean a wholesale communist revolution (as some conservatives fear) but simply a matter of ensuring a balance between the realities of the market on one hand and the needs of society on the other.



From the One Salient Overlord Department

© 2005 Neil McKenzie Cameron, http://one-salient-oversight.blogspot.com/





This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

Nguyen Tuong Van, John Howard, Helen Clark

Nguyen Tuong Van is the Australian who was caught a few years ago trafficking drugs into Singapore. Although he should be punished for his crime, Singapore does itself no favours for punishing drug dealers with execution.

In a way, it is true that Nguyen, as a drug dealer, is responsible for the potential deaths of many through drug addiction. Nevertheless, I do not believe that this crime should result in capital punishment. As an Evangelical, I do believe in justice - but in this day and age there is too much that can go wrong when a person is sentenced to death. If the person is eventually discovered to be innocent, then there is no way to pay recompense to a dead person. No system of justice can be free from corruption.

Singapore, if it is to be regarded as a progressive and strong Asian nation, must put aside the death penalty. If Nguyen has committed a crime (which is probably more than likely), then he should be jailed for a long time for his crime.

John Howard appears to be in a lose-lose situation at the moment. On the one hand, he cannot really do anything short of sending the SAS to rescue Nguyen. On the other hand, he does have a cricket-watching date that just happens to conincide with Nguyen's execution. The Sydney Morning Herald, in particular, seems to frown upon Howard's decision to watch the PM's XI during Nguyen's execution - but then again, what can he do?

Howard and others probably should have got their acts together a few years ago when Nguyen was first arrested. The fact that they are getting all uppity about it now is probably due to public and/or media pressure. Nguyen is the third Australian, after Michelle Leslie and Schapelle Corby, to hit the headlines for drug-dealing or drug usage in an Asian country. Nguyen, however, is unlikely to be given much sympathy because he isn't a young attractive white female. Excuse the cynicism, but it's true.

What was totally unexpected was the sudden work of Helen Clark, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, in taking the matter up with Singaporean authorities. I have often said to people that Helen Clark must be a competent person because there is no way she could have made it politics in personality and image alone. Sexist comment? Maybe, but there is no doubt that Clark is hardly the paragon of good looks.

I will always remember the protests in New Zealand when our John Howard came for a visit just as the invasion of Iraq was about to begin. Most New Zealanders opposed the war and gave Howard heaps when he arrived. Helen Clark also told Howard that her nation would not participate - though in a much more diplomatic way.

For me, that visit was a watershed in my attitude towards New Zealand. The New Zealand people and its leadership stood up to Howard and Australia and openly disagreed with them. New Zealand, always in the shadow of its larger colonial brother, was standing on its own two feet and was confident and sure enough to tell Australia where to go. Helen Clark was the PM at the time and so, in many ways, she represented New Zealand's strength to us in Australia who were taking notice.

The fact is that New Zealand - and particularly Helen Clark - owed Australia no favours whatsoever. Yet Helen Clark has now decided to intervene to try to settle an international incident (the Nguyen execution).

Of course, her actions were hardly altruistic. She would gain some level of political mileage from her actions. Nevertheless, she would have lost nothing had she not acted. In many ways, her actions seem to be consistent with certain values and beliefs that I thought had disappeared altogether: the desire for peace, consensus and mutual respect between nations. Since 9/11 I had thought such things had gone out the window, especially with George Bush in America and the insular attitudes of the Howard government.

In short, it was nice to see good old fashioned Aussie values being exhibited - even though it was a New Zealander that was exhibiting them. Times have changed, especially here in Australia.

From the Department of Wha' Happnin?

© 2005 Neil McKenzie Cameron, http://one-salient-oversight.blogspot.com/




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.