Executing the Innocent?

[Sharpe]

Here is a much linked New Yorker article about a Texas man named Willingham executed for arson (the fire killed his 3 very young daughters) in 2004 where the current scientific evidence indicates that there is very little evidence that the fire was arson, as opposed to accidental.

The basic gist is that according to the understanding of arson forensics from 1991, the executed guy was guilty. The forensic evidence at the time was very strong that the fire was intentional arson targeted against the baby girls, and that the Defendant's story was a lie, contradicted by the arson evidence.

But, and this is the big but, there has a been a huge change in the scientific understanding of arson since then: specifically a lot of the old theories about arson fires burning hotter are wrong, and a lot of the old theories about what burn patterns indicate is also wrong. The new theories, based on scientific experiments, focus on the concept of "flashover" - once a fire hits the flashover point, there is little difference between accelerant-based fires and accidental fires (the basic difference is that accelerant-caused fires hit the flashover point faster, but the burn patterns left behind, the "spalling" and cracking of materials is pretty similiar.)

By 1991 standards, this case had 20 indications of arson, 19 of which had no innocent explanation, which made it a damn strong case. By current scientific standards, all 19 of those indications don't hold up, and the one indication left (residue of lighter fluid on the porch area) has an innocent explanation: the family had a Barbecue on the porch, and kept a can of lighter fluid there, which is shown in pictures from shortly before the fire. So by modern standards, there is basically no substantial evidence of arson.

Interestingly, there is another Texan, named Willis, who was convicted of a very similiar crime and has now been exonerated based on the same scientific changes. Willis has been released and paid $430,000 by the state for wrongful incarceration (by Texas standards, thats a buttload). Even more interestingly, Willis was actually a cellmate of Willingham on Death Row. The difference between the two? The scientific evidence on Willis managed to get itself in front of a judge before they executed him. Whereas in the case of the unfortunate Mr. Willingham, the new scientific evidence was produced mere days before his execution and it sadly looks like nobody really took a good look at it.

I am not a rabid anti-death penalty person and I feel no sympathy for the brutal murderers who mostly occupy Death Row. But this case makes a very strong point: human knowledge is fallible. According to the science of 1991, the guy was guilty and thus was executed. We now know that was incorrect, and if he was serving a life sentence we could let him out. But because we killed him, there is no way to correct our mistake.

I hope this case gets a lot of attention. Read the whole article, which is quite good. If you doubt the science, google around abit for "arson science" and "arson forensics" and you will see a lot about the sea change that has happened in the last 15 to 20 years.

I have no dog in this fight: when I read the early part of the article where the science seemed to show conclusively that Willingham was a lying arsonist, I felt his conviction for arson was justified. But when you read the later science stuff, the whole case changes dramatically. We humans are fallible. Too fallible, IMO, for capital punishment to make sense.

[Lizard_King]

I am a rabid anti-death penalty person, and all it took was Beccaria. Unfortunately, I don't see the "cracking" of DNA evidence gaining any traction, which is a shame since it highlights the general concept of criminal investigation as fallible regardless of scientific progress, as in it's always an arms race (as well as the potential for DNA planting). So maybe I'm missing some huge science fact, but it seems like promoting terminal outcomes for fallible investigations is an inherently inhumane stance. And always has been.

But thanks for the arson angle, I'd heard of it but not the details.

[Hans Lauring]

That article is exactly why I'm anti death penalty - I do believe evil exists and whenever people pull out examples or hypotheticals I can agree, that some people probably don't deserve to live.
I just don't believe in the infallibility of the system. And since it's not a deterrent, it's not cheaper and it really only serves the point of revenge, then there's no reason not to stick to punishment, where we can do right, if new evidence shows up.
That of course also entails you guys getting humane prisons - a few years of a US (or Iranian) maximum security prison with rapes et al isn't really undone by an apology and a wad of money.

But then, while I can hypothetically agree to the death penalty in some case, I don't think any crime should be punished by torture or any kind of inhumane treatment (which also rules out most methods of the death penalty as well in my book).

People think the science of evidence gathering is infallible - and shows like CSI isn't helping - but even established science like fingerprinting is often open to interpretation and not always done by Wolfgang Petersen... often it's some bumbling officer with a short course in fingerprinting.

[Lum]

I'm anti-death penalty because I'm cruel. Death is too easy.

[Lh'owon]

This is indeed a strong case for abolishing the death penalty, but you don't really need specifics - there's a long list of people who were on death row and were later found innocent, and no doubt a longer one of people who were executed and then found innocent.

On a philosophical note I feel we should base our societies around our ideals, and it seems fundamentally antithetical to those ideals to support a system where we know innocent people are and will be killed, just for the sake of revenge.

On another oft-repeated note, we should as a society show ourselves to be better than those who commit atrocities, and killing people as revenge or "punishment" is morally questionable at best.

[Sarkus]

I still favor the death penalty, but long ago realized that is applied too often to cases where it should not be, such as the example here. In my mind it should be limited to those cases where there is a) no doubt of guilt (i.e. witnesses survived who saw the crime happen) and b) the person committed a vile premeditated act that was intended to make the victim(s) suffer. So for example, Richard Speck should have been executed rather then spending his life in prison (though that case does perhaps illustrate the value of Lum's view).

[StGabe]

I'm a huge opponent of the death penalty. Not only is it regularly misapplied to people who are later found to be innocent but among those who are guilty many have several mental illness, histories of sexual abuse, etc. These people have been fucked over enough by life as is and as long as we can keep them off the streets I see no rational reason to kill them (though I can empathize with a lot of emotional reasons to do so).

The latter part of that argument is admittedly more subjective and I don't usually bother to defend it because I think the first part suffices as a very strong argument. Until we have a near perfect justice system there's simply no way we can justify the death penalty. The American Bar Association and a number of other legal groups agree.

[Tim Partlett]

I still favor the death penalty, but long ago realized that is applied too often to cases where it should not be, such as the example here. In my mind it should be limited to those cases where there is a) no doubt of guilt (i.e. witnesses survived who saw the crime happen) and b) the person committed a vile premeditated act that was intended to make the victim(s) suffer. So for example, Richard Speck should have been executed rather then spending his life in prison (though that case does perhaps illustrate the value of Lum's view).

But nothing in justice is objectively true. It's a judgement and judgements can sometimes be wrong, even when they seem iron clad. Witnesses can lie, conspiracies can happen, confessions of guilt can even be false.

[Hans Lauring]

We should only execute the innocent to act as a detterent.
That'll learn 'em!

[Nezz]

No punishment can be undone, not even the lightest. If a judge deprives a man of the use of some of his money for a time, this time having passed, the judge cannot give it back to him afterwards. There is therefore no substantial difference between capital punishment and other forms.

[Tim Partlett]

You are joking, right? That's like saying there's no difference between shoplifting and murder.

[Mrenda]

No punishment can be undone, not even the lightest. If a judge deprives a man of the use of some of his money for a time, this time having passed, the judge cannot give it back to him afterwards. There is therefore no substantial difference between capital punishment and other forms.

So you wouldn't mind being unjustly killed over being unjustly fined?

[Nezz]

So you wouldn't mind being unjustly killed over being unjustly fined?

Surely I would mind a larger fine more than a lesser fine. Who would not? And surely the body is the greatest good that can be taken from a man; but that is all it is.

[GloriousMess]

There is no justification for executing anyone under any circumstances, and this is a perfect example as to why. Ending someone's life because they did something that warrants that sort of punishment doesn't solve anything, and in many ways the surviving victims or relatives of the victims (if any) may end up worse off. Letting someone rot in prison is a better alternative, and if life actually meant life with no chance of parole or early release, then perhaps people would be less inclined to make other people's lives hell.

[Qmanol]

No punishment can be undone, not even the lightest. If a judge deprives a man of the use of some of his money for a time, this time having passed, the judge cannot give it back to him afterwards. There is therefore no substantial difference between capital punishment and other forms.

Nonsense. You even state it in your claim - an undeserved fine or sentence may be cut short, mitigated, but the taking of a life is wholly irrevocable. Just because an unjustly applied punishment cannot be completely restored to the victim, this does not make it akin to the death penalty.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

Surely I would mind a larger fine more than a lesser fine. Who would not? And surely the body is the greatest good that can be taken from a man; but that is all it is.

You're an idiot.

My stance is pretty much the same as others here - I'm not inherently morally opposed to the idea that some people do not deserve to live, but I don't think our justice system is qualified to make that call.

[Blackadar]

Surely I would mind a larger fine more than a lesser fine. Who would not? And surely the body is the greatest good that can be taken from a man; but that is all it is.

It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have

[Robert Sharp]

But nothing in justice is objectively true. It's a judgement and judgements can sometimes be wrong, even when they seem iron clad. Witnesses can lie, conspiracies can happen, confessions of guilt can even be false.

Really? You don't think there are ANY cases where it's perfectly clear? A camera catches and confirms what witnesses say. There is a confession. All other evidence points to this as a fact. Now the punishment deserved is a judgment, but whether a crime has been committed can be proven in at least some cases.

I think the question of whether the death penalty is right or wrong should be fought on ideological grounds. Noting that some people are innocent clouds the issue. I'm not saying it shouldn't be mentioned as a reason to only use the death penalty in extreme cases. It should. It needs to be perfectly well known. But even in such cases, many people (including some in this thread, most likely) would still be against the death penalty. If that's true, then you oppose it for reasons other than fallibility. Let's talk about those reasons.

As for St. Gabe's point about people being emotionally damaged, etc. I don't think it matters. If someone has become inhuman and is brutally dangerous, what difference does it make why? I mean it's a good thing to know to try to avoid future cases, but it doesn't make the person less dangerous. In fact, it makes them more dangerous. Such people are broken, and some evidence suggests the damage is unfixable.

[Hans Lauring]

Such people are broken, and some evidence suggests the damage is unfixable.

Sure, let's kill people based on 'some evidence'.

You cannot base a legal system around extremely rare to nonexistent cases of people commiting a henious crime in broad daylight in front of 100s of witnesses and rolling cameras - we talk about beyond resonable doubt and try and mount overwhelming evidence... but sometimes that evidence is a house of cards. Bad science, bad interpretation of facts, people misremembering, people lying, people so certain of a persons guilt, that they're willing to bend a few rules etc.

Sure you could claim a hypothetical where beyond reasonable doubt becomes no doubt at all. But that's not the real world - the real world is full of gray areas and when we kill people, we can't go back, when somewhere in the system somebody screws up.

[Skipper]

I am moderately against the death penalty. Reasons like this confirm that decision in my mind. Watching shows about maximum security inmates that work out, eat 3 square meals a day, read, watch TV, and even get to use email, all while sometimes plotting gang related hits on other prison inmates .... that's where my decision sometimes wavers.

I'm smart enough to know that I can't think of anything better though, so I really don't see how to fix the system. But because the dealth penalty is not a good deterrent, and because our legal system is as hosed (if not more so) than the prison system, I'm against taking the life of another even when we think they have committed horrible crimes.

In this particular case, yes it sucks, but you have to go with what you know at the time. It sounds like they prosecuted the case to the laws and forensics as we knew them to be. The fact that he missed an opportunity for freedom ... this is not a failure of the death penalty per se, it's a failure of the system (mostly administrative and legal) to overturn a conviction.

[Blackadar]

It really boils down to this:

Is someone willing to indirectly risk (and probably take) an innocent life to put Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy to death?

Or can you live with Dahmer and Bundy spending the rest of their days in prison so that someone else doesn't get unjustly executed?

[extarbags]

Really? You don't think there are ANY cases where it's perfectly clear? A camera catches and confirms what witnesses say. There is a confession. All other evidence points to this as a fact.

Security cameras are usually unclear and always easily faked, eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and confessions, even when not coerced, are quite often not grounds for a conviction for various other reasons.

Sorry, there's no such thing as the legal system being a hundred percent sure someone is guilty of a crime, and there's no way to have a death penalty on the books without sometimes executing innocent people. If you're trying to make the case in favor of the death penalty, you have to not only establish the benefits of it (none of which are demonstrable as far as I know), but you also have to explain why those benefits outweigh the execution of innocent people. There's no way around it in the real world.

[Skipper]

It really boils down to this:

Is someone willing to indirectly risk (and probably take) an innocent life to put Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy to death?

Or can you live with Dahmer and Bundy spending the rest of their days in prison so that someone else doesn't get unjustly executed?

It's funny that you would pick those two because one was given life imprisonment but killed by a fellow inmate, and the other was sentenced to death.

I realize I would never feel strongly enough about evidence and the effects of my decision to choose your first option. However I would many times wish there were something more than just the second option. I just don't feel the death penalty is that "extra" option I'm looking for. The bad part is that I don't know what is.

[Brian Seiler]

I tend not to take a side on the death penalty because, frankly, I don't think anything about the system is right. In my ideal world, if you murdered a man, you would become the property of his inheritors to do with as they please, but that's not likely to ever happen. The uncertainty of the justice system has always existed, however, and the election to pursue capital punishment despite the system's shortcomings is not a new thing. The argument that any threat to innocent life should make the death penalty unacceptable wasn't new when Rand was making it back in the 50s and it's not new now. It's not like this is something nobody ever envisioned happening. A government that chooses to implement capital punishment is electing to take the calculated risk that a person could be falsely convicted and executed and always has been. The fact that there's a narrative associated with it now doesn't change the argument.

Compare the risk of being executed on faulty charges to your risk of dying in an automobile accident and you'll put things in a little bit better perspective. If the value of presenting the deterrent threat of death to criminals and exacting vengeance for people who are emotionally invested in a given crime does not outweigh the thousandths of a percent risk that something could go horribly wrong for any given individual, then by all means make that argument, but ultimately it's going to come down to a relatively subjective value judgment. I honestly believe it makes little sense to categorically rule out putting any individual to death - after all, there will always be at least a few crazies out there who cannot exist without presenting a significant threat to the rest of the society in which they live. I'm absolutely certain that the punishment gets waved around and applied far more often than would perhaps be merited, but I'm also certain that there will at some point in the future be a case where killing an evil dude achieves the greatest good for the greatest number of people out of all the possible actions you could take. I'm sure there's an excluded middle here between "don't kill anybody" and "saute the innocent with butter and chives."

[Kael]

Everyone gets mad when a guilty man walks free (OJ Simpson). But thats our real protection against finding innocent men guilty, that the bar isn't set in the middle but far on the "prove it" side of the scale.

That doesn't mean its never wrong. It means that we try our best to be right. But we are wrong on a small percentage of the cases.

What I dont like is that these articles are so biased. They are typically written by an anti-death penalty advocate who tries to paint the victim as a wonderful everyman. That these men are "innocent". That isn't the case. They may be innocent of this charge, but if they are convicted by a jury of their peers there is usually a host of other crimes they have commited.

Im not saying they deserve to be killed for a crime they didn't commit. I just want equity in the reporting. The system failed, absolutely. But the other side isn't blameless either. Williams was an alcoholic wife beater (beating her even when she was pregnant). This was not you or I. This was not an innocent man grabbed out of his happy life. This was a deplorable human being.

If he would have been a good husband and father, if he wouldn't have had a long arrest record, then he wouldnt have been found guilty of this crime. The system failed, but so did Williams.

[extarbags]

after all, there will always be at least a few crazies out there who cannot exist without presenting a significant threat to the rest of the society in which they live.

Actually, it's interesting that you bring this up. I heard a story on NPR the other day about some people--I forget where, sorry--who were seeing some good results with an alternative to this. Basically, they've been building a series of large, extremely secure buildings, staffing them with guards and installing surveillance equipment, and throwing convicted criminals in there. It's still in the testing stages, but apparently the early results have been pretty encouraging; turns out, it may be possible for people like that to stay alive without being a danger to society after all. Just goes to show the value of thinking outside the box, I guess.

[Blackadar]

It's funny that you would pick those two because one was given life imprisonment but killed by a fellow inmate, and the other was sentenced to death.

I realize I would never feel strongly enough about evidence and the effects of my decision to choose your first option. However I would many times wish there were something more than just the second option. I just don't feel the death penalty is that "extra" option I'm looking for. The bad part is that I don't know what is.

Actually, I purposely picked those two because they are both dead. That's the reason I avoided Charles Manson.

I know what the 3rd option is...it's putting criminals in cryogenics like in Demolition Man! :)

[Brian Seiler]

Actually, it's interesting that you bring this up. I heard a story on NPR the other day about some people--I forget where, sorry--who were seeing some good results with an alternative to this. Basically, they've been building a series of large, extremely secure buildings, staffing them with guards and installing surveillance equipment, and throwing convicted criminals in there. It's still in the testing stages, but apparently the early results have been pretty encouraging; turns out, it may be possible for people like that to stay alive without being a danger to society after all. Just goes to show the value of thinking outside the box, I guess.

Well, except for how those individuals still have to be afforded the right to speak to people, can still direct actions by any fanatical followers they might happen to have outside of the facility, and have to be fed, clothed, and given medical care on the public dime. Think about it this way - if we put somebody awful and charismatic, like Jim Jones or Adolph Hitler or somebody, in a prison, do you think that he wouldn't still do his damnedest to lead his followers? I'm not saying these people are common, but they do exist, and absolutely ruling out simply removing them from society for all time is just as irrational as a lot of the alternatives. Death penalty critics want the death penalty to be employed less often, and on that point I agree with them. They would also like for it to be utterly written out of law, and on that end I don't necessarily agree. While it may not exist for you, there is certainly value for other people in putting to death some very particular folks who have wronged them deeply, and while I'm not sure that I share that view with them, I at least understand that they hold it and that it's not ridiculous on its face. Like I said, I deeply suspect that there exists an essential middle ground that advocates on both sides are excluding.

[Skipper]

Actually, I purposely picked those two because they are both dead. That's the reason I avoided Charles Manson.

I know what the 3rd option is...it's putting criminals in cryogenics like in Demolition Man! :)

I was thinking more of the Running Man option. Because really ... I'd buy that for a dollar. :)

[Mrenda]

but I'm also certain that there will at some point in the future be a case where killing an evil dude achieves the greatest good for the greatest number of people out of all the possible actions you could take.

When it comes to someone already imprisoned I see no case where "killing an evil dude" achieves any good beyond revenge, if you even want to consider that good. Unless I take ridiculous numbers to try and confuse the situation like you did and theorise a case where "an evil dude" was destined to escape the prison and go on a further killing spree. But in those cases, yeah, thank god for executions.