Central Prison (where death row is for the state of NC) is right by NC State's campus. While I was there I was a heavy metal radio host for WKNC, and received a lot of letters from death row inmates.
Very few letters were of the type I was expecting at the time: "Play this Cradle of Filth song for me, or I will file down shards of my broken mirror in order to kill you". Along with very entertaining, if graphic, pieces of artwork.
Most of the letters were cordial, but gruff. Hard criticism of songs each inmate did not like, glorified praise for the songs they did like. Rarely, they would describe why a particular song was important to them and it was not anything alien to my freshman self: lost love, old buddies, family, trying times.
There was one I replied to and carried on a brief written correspondence with: Tilmon Golphin. Make no mistake, there is no excuse for his actions. But what I found fascinating was the attitude he decided to show in his letters; how true his words were I cannot accurately judge. He showed me major regret of brutally murdering officers of the law and provided no excuses, instead showing acceptance of what he had done with his brother.
I later learned that particular case of his and his brother's is one where the US Supreme Court's ruling in Roper v. Simmons divided the sentences of the brothers. Tilmon was 19, and his brother 17, so while both were sentenced to death, the SCOTUS ruling means Tilmon is still on death row while his brother is not.
I never would have thought I would learn so much from being a heavy metal radio show host.
The other day I was driving down the road and thinking about how people are.
It was 33 years coming but here's what hit me: people do what they want, even in the face of devastating consequences.
See that long line outside any burger joint? See the stats on the amount of hard drugs guaranteed to destroy your world we consume? See that person cheating? See that DA wanting a win?
If you want a burger, a high, an orgasm or a conviction, you generally will get it at some price that's ultimately...above market.
How much more prone to excess is someone in the heat of a moment? How unlike the event does its moment by moment reconstruction during a trial appear? The mismatch has always struck me as unjust. As people judging an event whose experience they haven't had and haven't attempted to recreate. Though a jury is a good idea and the best we've got, the process they run through seems ripe for reform.
An eye for an eye has its place. If you walk into a school, start shooting and are captured alive - I think you just forfeited any claim on life or potential rehabilitation.
Any shade of grey zooming out from that seems too hard for any government system to decide well. I hear people say things in passing like "he only got 20 years". 20 years is a huge and devastating amount of time, as is one year. As we've ramped up the time on these sentences and made it an all or nothing proposition. Unfortunately, I don't think 20 years will do it if 1 year hasn't and I don't think death will do it if 20 years hasn't.
Regarding Richard Glossip. I don't know him or his case. I don't know the victim and while they won't return, there's a debt owed that I don't know how to pay. I want Richard Glossip to live. I don't think taking another life will pay the debt of the first. What I want most of all is for someone to tell me how to pay that debt.
"If you walk into a school, start shooting and are captured alive - I think you just forfeited any claim on life or potential rehabilitation."
Unfortunately most of the people who do this are children. They're usually in situations people would rather ignore. They're desperate. They want attention and they get it at some price that's ultimately... above market.
Your point about 20 years vs 1 is really important. Sentences have gotten so long for relatively harmless crimes that benchmarking becomes distorted. If anyone thinks about all the tings they will do in the next 3 years, then compare that to losing 20 years it can help show how long of a sentence that is.
"Though a jury is a good idea and the best we've got, the process they run through seems ripe for reform."
How do you justify the statement that a jury is the best idea that we have? Germany has the concept of Schöffe, and some believe this offers results that stick closer to the law than the jury system:
While any government of mortal human flesh must inevitably have some flaws, the jury system seems especially bad at overcoming popular prejudice. In the USA, "a jury of one's peers" has often meant a mostly white (or all white) jury judging a black person, a circumstance that has given the USA many hundreds of famous miscarriages of justice.
The system that grew out of English Common Law, and which dominates England, Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand, is not the only system known to liberal Western societies. The English system is unique in the authority it gives to juries. Most of the Continental judicial systems either lack juries or have juries whose goal is constrained relative to the English system.
A review of the legal traditions in liberal Western nations reveals a lot of good ideas, many of which are probably superior to the jury system.
> An eye for an eye has its place. If you walk into a school, start shooting and are captured alive - I think you just forfeited any claim on life or potential rehabilitation.
I think that you here implicitly assume that there is overwhelming evidence of who is the author of the crime. For example, all of these: Many survivors testimonies (be careful, they are not so reliable in practice), many videos of the massacre were the face of the attacked is clearly visible, a perfect matching of the ADN in few blood spots, fingerprint in the weapons, gunpowder marks in the hands, he/she is detained in situ while trying to kill more people, ...
An eye for an eye creates bad incentives. If the state is going to kill as punishment for some crime, rationally a criminal should go for broke once that line is crossed. In the worst case, they'll be killed by police. Trapping someone just dissuades them from surrender.
My uncle who's a pastor gave me an interesting perspective on this phrase. Before Solomon it was common practice to escalate a transgression. So a theft begets a retaliatory murder, begets a retaliatory massacre. This adage is not as much about seeking equality in punishment, as much as a brake to limit escalation. "An eye for an eye and no more."
Yeah, I'm kind of undecided. I can imagine the death penalty being appropriate for the really egregious crimes. However, I just don't trust governments to carry it out correctly.
I encourage everybody to read up on the horrors of how the death penalty functions in practice. Especially in combination with the plea-bargain system, that effectively robs > 95% of suspects from their constitutional right to a fair trial.
Finally -- and I know this is only a minor point in comparison -- it's worth noting that pg doesn't have anything to gain by writing this, and people who stick their neck out by writing about political issues inevitably get shouted at. Soon enough publishing anything stops being worth the aggravation. So credit goes to pg for standing up and speaking out, when it's all too easy to be silent.
> I encourage everybody to read up on the horrors of how the death penalty functions in practice. Especially in combination with the plea-bargain system, that effectively robs > 95% of suspects from their constitutional right to a fair trial.
What do you mean by "in combination with," here? If you mean that the death penalty is used to convince people to plead guilty, I'm with you. But if you're saying that a large number of people who are sentenced to death were pressured into pleading guilty, then I am skeptical, since it is unclear what the defendant is receiving in exchange for the plea. (Usually it is a lighter sentence...)
Not the same case but Kayla Gissendaner is set to be executed tomorrow. http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/27/us/georgia-sets-execution/inde...
Unless the Georgia parole board changes its mind. She is guilty of having her husband killed. Guilt is not at doubt. The justice of her punishment is.
Her children suffered from her crime but they are pleading to keep her alive. She is the only parent they have. Killing their only remaining parent is victimizing them again. Their pleas here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8pgceAhqJo
If not, it seems like a pretty remarkable procedure to arrive at such a strong conclusion, with no other information besides a brief summary by advocates for the defense. Has pg ever served on a jury? If so, would he make his mind up this way?
Your questions (and link) are good, but I think you might be misinterpreting Paul's logic. He hasn't concluded that Glossip is definitely innocent (although he thinks he probably is), rather he's concluded that in the absence of physical evidence and with the majority of testimony being provided by a witness who has a clear motive to implicate someone else, that there must be "reasonable doubt".
He may be wrong, and in particular "reasonable doubt" may not have the legal definition that he thinks it does (legal terms rarely match common sense). But his argument is not "Glossip is innocent", but "there is no way we have sufficient evidence to kill this man without risking that we are killing someone who might be innocent".
Have you served on a jury, by the way? I served as the foreman on one relatively minor criminal case, and it did more to shake my faith in the rule-of-law than any other (minimal) encounters I've had with the legal system. In the end, we reached a unanimous "not guilty" in the case.
This was a difficult decision for all of us to reach, since the only way this could be the "correct" decision was if both police officers who testified were lying about significant details both in their report and on the stand. And yet this is the conclusion we eventually all agreed upon as being the most likely explanation for the way the pieces failed to fit together.
The defendant may well have done other illegal things, and possibly the world would be a better place if he was behind bars, but as a jury we decided that there was sufficient reason to doubt that he was guilty as charged. And yet there was no particular guarantee that this case would turn out as it did. On a different day, with a different jury, a different judge, or different lawyers, (but the same defendant, witnesses, and evidence) a guilty verdict seems likely.
As a limited participant in the legal system (but a "logical" computer programmer) my assessment would be that if we have the death penalty, the American jury system is practically guaranteed to occasionally sentence innocent people to death. I'd guess that this is the part that bothers Paul as well, I'd guess that he probably does have experience that leads him to believe this, and I'd guess that his opinion on the matter is not likely to be changed by a counterpoint that makes Glossip's guilt seem somewhat more likely.
The linked reference mentions that the Oklahoma appeals court wrote that finding the same amount of money in the possession of both men was part of their decision to not reverse. Why would anyone say there was no evidence other than the other guy's testimony? And that is just a cursory reading of the details of the case.
Many who have looked closely at this case think Glossip is innocent. I think so. I encourage you to learn more about it and form your own conclusions. But one thing is certain: there is a reasonable doubt.
I just read the article you linked to from start to finish. From that article alone "on the opposite side of the case" I draw the same conclusion: there's reasonable doubt.
Further, I think your paragraph that starts "If not" is an awful lot of followup to your presumed answer to your unanswered question. Couldn't you even have prepended a perfunctory "If so, great" to it?
It's increasingly seems that the powers of prosecutors are deployed in arbitrary and unjust ways: either overreaching (as in the case of Aaron Swartz or Xiaoxing Xi) or non-prosecution of police brutality or corporate crime (just changing now that the statute of limitations run out on those responsible for the 2008 financial crisis)
It's not clear what can be done about it, other than occasionally writing a check to the ACLU to help limit the damage. Any ideas?
Prosecutors have almost absolute immunity. A prosecutor can intentionally cheat the system, get a conviction, put a person in jail, and if caught, there is no lawsuit that can be filed against them and it's almost impossible to get them disbarred.
There are incentives to cheat; as long as there are no ramifications for it, it will continue.
I honestly think the only thing that could ever change it is if some vigilante with nothing to lose started bringing the same flavor of extreme justice to the doorsteps of the people passing it out - fear of potential ramifications will very quickly change behavior.
Keep in mind that you're survey of examples is likely biased by what makes a good story... and journalists have become very good at figuring out which cases will make a good story.
It's a problem that there is enough material to keep the stories coming, but let's not conclude that the stories we read about represent the bulk of the justice system's operations.
So I just read whatever I could find on Richard Glossip and the case against him. On it's face it seems very likely that he is guilty.
It appears that someone had been stealing money and cooking the books at the hotels Glossip managed, and about the time his boss became aware of the theft, the boss was murdered. He admits to knowing that the boss was murdered and Glossip admits attempting to cover up the murder, his plan being to dissolve the body in acid. Glossip, as manager of the hotel the body was hidden in, reassigned cleaning staff specifically to prevent them from discovering the body. The person who is known to have performed the killing, an employee of Glossip's, says he was paid to do the killing by Glossip. Glossip also split money from the wallet carried by the man that was killed with the killer.
Glossip has had a trial and a retrial, and was convicted in both of them.
So maybe the death penalty is good, maybe it is bad. Clearly there is a serious debate there, and I am not attempting to defend the death penalty here. There is almost no chance that Glossip is innocent, and it seems clear, to me at least, that the state demonstrated he is guilty to the required standard.
In all of the mistrials and cases where innocent people have been killed, someone has thought the party was guilty. The thing that makes the death penalty barbaric is that people have misplaced confidence in their opinions.
"[the victim's] brother Kenneth, who took over operation of the motel after the murder, testified in 2004 that the motel’s financial shortages were “really insignificant amounts of money” and would not have worried Barry. The Oklahoma City motel, he said, was a “very profitable operation.” "
> Glossip, as manager of the hotel the body was hidden in, reassigned cleaning staff specifically to prevent them from discovering the body
"Sneed would [later] testify that he was the one who told the maid to ignore Room 102."
> The person who is known to have performed the killing, an employee of Glossip's, says he was paid to do the killing by Glossip.
The murderer was threatened with the death penalty unless he fingered Glossip. He says he would recant his testimony in a heartbeat if he could be assured he wouldn't be executed himself.
> Glossip has had a trial and a retrial, and was convicted in both of them.
Said one juror, "“If the defense would have presented the case that they are presenting now in the original trial,” the juror said, “I would have not given a guilty verdict.”"
"He admits to knowing that the boss was murdered and Glossip admits attempting to cover up the murder, his plan being to dissolve the body in acid. Glossip, as manager of the hotel the body was hidden in, reassigned cleaning staff specifically to prevent them from discovering the body."
A couple of weeks ago when Glossip was all the rage, the various sources arguing that he should be spared somehow neglected to mention any of this. They did mention though that the actual killer is the the one who fingered Glossip, which made me sympathize with the man's possible innocence. I must say, I'm far less sympathetic now.
I live in a country with a terrible human rights record. Yet, since 1991, it never had a death penalty applied. [1] You might get sentenced to a death penalty (on extreme cases), but it's not applied. The law still legalise it but there is some pressure to remove it currently.
I find the news that 1) a death penalty is about to take place in the U.S, 2) hastily and 3) with little evidence really shocking, disturbing and unacceptable in a country which is supposed to be at the front of defending human rights.
The US is most certainly not at the forefront of defending human rights if by that you mean actual action to stop abuses rather than mere lip service. Our prison system is an atrocious human rights disaster. Our justice system is effectively non-existent and almost 100% based on forced plea bargains (this case being an unusual exception that actually went to trial). Guantanamo Bay. Abu Ghraib. And that's just in the last decade. If you look at reality, you'll see that the US is full of human rights abuses, almost all preventable. And as far as the prison system, well it's by far the worst in the world.
If Richard Glossip wasn't sentenced to death, he would likely have languished in prison as long as he lived. That would also be a horrible injustice.
People see more motivated by orders of magnitude to get death penalty cases right relative to life incarceration cases.
Counterintuitively, justice may be better served by abolishing life imprisonment and mandating the death penalty for cases where periods of imprisonment would exceed 20 years or so.
If the innocence rate for executions is 4%, then surely the innocence rate for long term incarceration must be much higher.
> Counterintuitively, justice may be better served by abolishing life imprisonment and mandating the death penalty for cases where periods of imprisonment would exceed 20 years or so.
I've seen several people already share this sentiment and it really confuses me. Because
1) It's made by people who have never, and come from a background where they most likely never would, have to seriously make such a choice. (If I'm wrong let me know).
2) I would venture if you really were faced with such a choice it would not be the automatic "kill me if I get more then 20 years" one that you flippantly imply you would make. I have a feeling when faced with the actual prospects of death vs imprisonment of 20 years or more, rather then on some hypothetical situation in an internet forum, you might decide differently.
3) Even if it was the case you were to decide death over long term imprisonment, what would give you, or the justice system, the right to decide that for anyone else facing that situation? I have a feeling most people would still choose life, even if faced with perpetual imprisonment, over death.
And finally lets just assume Richard Glossip was unjustly found guilty of this crime, I know nothing about this case so lets just assume. The problem isn't specifically with the sentence but the fact that he is in fact not guilty, but was deemed guilty by his peers. By killing him you eliminate any possibility of recourse, he already paid the ultimate price. At least with life imprisonment there is still a chance for having some just conclusion, even if it's late and inadequate to the penalty he suffered.
> If Richard Glossip wasn't sentenced to death, he would likely have languished in prison as long as he lived.
Not necessarily. If Sneed, the guy who actually committed the murder, had not faced the death penalty then would he still have tried to claim that Glossip put him up to it?
This is essentially removing the right of appeal for certain classes of cases, and combined with mandatory minimums would bring us back to the age of hanging judges.
Of the 49 European countries, only 1 (Belarus) still has the death penalty and executes people.
Last time a civilian executed in Mexico: 1937, Canada: 1962, UK: 1977, Russia: 1999
In 2014, only these countries executed more people per million than the US: Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Somalia, Yemen,
Sudan, Palestine, China, Singapore, Belarus, Taiwan, Afghanistan and Egypt And North Korea N/A.
Internationally seen as against the universal human rights:
1948: The United Nations adopted without dissent the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The Declaration proclaims the right of every individual to protection from deprivation of life. It states that no one shall be subjected to cruel or degrading punishment. The death penalty violates both of these fundamental rights.
2005: The UNCHR approved Human Rights Resolution 2005/59 on the question of the death penalty, which called for all states that still maintain the death penalty to abolish the death penalty completely and, in the meantime, to establish a moratorium on executions.
2007: The UN General Assembly (UNGA) approved Resolution 62/149 which called for all states that still maintain the death penalty to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty.
I highly recommend anyone interested in this to read the article Criminal Law 2.0 by Alex Kozinski (a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals). He presents twelve fundamental tenants of the criminal justice system that are flawed and suggests some ways to fix them. (E.g., "Eyewitnesses are highly reliable" and "Long sentences deter crime.") If you haven't read anything by Kozinski, you should. It's very readable. Especially the conclusion.
In general, human testimony is one of the weakest forms of evidence we have. People, even when they don't have incentive to lie, have horrible memories! It should barely be admissible, let alone for first degree murder, especially in cases like this where the witness is being bribed for his testimony.
Means: he knew the person who committed the physical attack and had influence over this person
Motive: the victim was accusing him of embezzling $6000
Opportunity: plenty
Proof defendant actually acted on the motive: he attempted to hide the body from discovery, helped hide the victims car, contributed to a conspiracy to cut the body up and dissolve it in acid, split the money from the victim's wallet with the other man involved, and made sure that cleaning staff that he managed were reassigned so that they would not find the body. None of this is in dispute!
One thing to consider is that this case (and the 4%) figure refer to those who've been sentenced to death, where the standards for prosecution and sentencing are the absolute highest. It would only be natural to suspect that this figure is even greater the less the sentence/crime.
Until we carefully scrutinize the incentives facing the judicial system as a whole (and see how unbalanced it is), this is bound to be the norm.
"Might Sneed have lied to save his own skin? Reasonable doubt? Nothing is more likely."
And nothing more need be said. I don't understand how it seems impossible to force into people's heads the two notions that the burden of guilt lay with the prosecution and that guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt.
One of the most distasteful aspects of this case has been the way the Daily Oklahoman, the local newspaper, has been demanding the man's death every day, in effect reprinting the Attorney General's press releases as news and editorial columns. I point to "AG's office calls witnesses in Glossip innocence claim 'inherently suspect'" and "Glossip attorneys cross line with criticism of DA". The Daily Oklahoman is a journalistic embarrassment on every topic but in the case of Glossip it has really shone an unintentional light on bloodlust in the state.
So maybe 4% of people who get the death penalty are innocent. And some other portion probably don't deserve the death penalty according to the criteria we've established. So we get rid of it, and then what? They all get life without parole? How much better is that? And what about all the innocent people who are receiving that punishment right now? Or who are losing 5 or 10 years of their life? Getting justice right is tremendously important. The death penalty is something people can line up around without truly engaging with the justice system at all. It feels like a huge distraction to me.
We use the phrase "paying your debt to society" but no one pays any debts. They only incur debts. Debts to their family who they can't support. Debts to a society that ends up weaker than it started. The cruelty of this system isn't best exemplified in the death penalty.
The crazy thing is that although salient, of all the ways the US government kills innocent people, the death penalty probably has one of the lowest total body counts.
At least in comparison with wars of aggression, foreign coups, the war on drugs, subsidizing cars, subsidizing fossil fuels, subsidizing tobacco, weak pharma regulation, promoting antibiotics in food, cop shootings, fast food subsidies (via corn), not implementing cap & trade to combat climate change, privatized health insurance, trade embargoes, promoting harmful nutrition guidelines, lack of food safety standards/inspection, lack of any required safety testing for new chemicals, etc.
Appalled that people are killed legally based only on a criminal's word. Also appalled that we still have the death penalty in some countries, these are pretty much all backwards countries with the outliers of US and Japan; it's a litmus test for humans rights imho.
Vice released a special last night about mass incarceration related to non-violent drug crimes. It included President Obama visiting a federal prison and interviews with Former Atty. Gen. Eric Holder.
I don't always agree with the content / viewpoints that Vice puts out, but this was one of the most well made and powerful documentaries I've seen in a while. I'd like to think that President Obama's reactions were genuine and that things might slowly start to change in the US.
PG, thanks for writing about this and bringing both this case and the death penalty to readers' attention.
Richard Glossip's case is similar in many ways to Troy Davis[1]. You may recognize that name--in 2011, when he was executed, he was the world's most famous death row inmate. Like Glossip, Troy Davis had no physical evidence against him. His conviction (of murdering a police officer) was based primarily on 9 eyewitness testimonies. SEVEN of those eyewitnesses recanted or altered their testimonies, many citing police coercion or intimidation. Ten new witnesses came forward saying one of the two non-recanting witnesses, Sylvester Coles, confessed to the murder.
A few days before he was executed, ONE MILLION people signed a petition to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. Despite this, and the many doubts in his case, Troy Davis was executed on September 21, 2011.
I was close friends with Troy--I first visited him on death row in 2008 (when I was 15), and spent the next three years visiting him, corresponding with him, and talking to him on the phone. Troy was so well-known because his case epitomized everything that is wrong with the American justice system and the death penalty--racial bias (he was a black man accused of killing a white cop in 1980s Georgia), an overzealous DA with a history of prosecutorial misconduct, police coercion and witness tampering, the execution of innocents (over a dozen death row inmates have been exonerated since he was executed in 2011...how many innocents were executed in that time?) and a justice system so rigid and brittle that it would not even commute his sentence to life imprisonment, despite even a federal judge admitting Troy had shown at least a "minimal" level of doubt in his case.
In 2012, I raised 11k on Kickstarter to write a book on my relationship with Troy Davis called Remain Free[2]. It talks about many of the ugly aspects of his life on death row and of the legal corruption in his case that he (and I) couldn't publicly talk about while he was still alive. Since the book is built on hundreds of recorded conversations, in person visits, and letters with Troy, you really get a sense of who he was as a person and the kind of toll two decades on death row takes on him and his family.
If you'd like a copy, you can order it on Amazon[3] or through http://remainfree.com. All profits go to the Innocence Project [4], a non-profit that works to free wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing. Alternatively, email me (gautamnarula[at]gmail.com) a screenshot of a $10 donation to the Innocence Project, and I'll send you the e-book for free. Donate $20 to the Innocence Project, and I'll send you a physical copy for just the cost of shipping ($3 in the US).
[+] [-] cjslep|10 years ago|reply
Very few letters were of the type I was expecting at the time: "Play this Cradle of Filth song for me, or I will file down shards of my broken mirror in order to kill you". Along with very entertaining, if graphic, pieces of artwork.
Most of the letters were cordial, but gruff. Hard criticism of songs each inmate did not like, glorified praise for the songs they did like. Rarely, they would describe why a particular song was important to them and it was not anything alien to my freshman self: lost love, old buddies, family, trying times.
There was one I replied to and carried on a brief written correspondence with: Tilmon Golphin. Make no mistake, there is no excuse for his actions. But what I found fascinating was the attitude he decided to show in his letters; how true his words were I cannot accurately judge. He showed me major regret of brutally murdering officers of the law and provided no excuses, instead showing acceptance of what he had done with his brother.
I later learned that particular case of his and his brother's is one where the US Supreme Court's ruling in Roper v. Simmons divided the sentences of the brothers. Tilmon was 19, and his brother 17, so while both were sentenced to death, the SCOTUS ruling means Tilmon is still on death row while his brother is not.
I never would have thought I would learn so much from being a heavy metal radio show host.
[+] [-] chch|10 years ago|reply
I hadn't heard of Golphin before, so I was curious to read more, and it seems that he's no longer on death row, as of December 2012: http://www.rrdailyherald.com/access/nc-judge-commutes-deaths...
[+] [-] johnnyg|10 years ago|reply
The other day I was driving down the road and thinking about how people are.
It was 33 years coming but here's what hit me: people do what they want, even in the face of devastating consequences.
See that long line outside any burger joint? See the stats on the amount of hard drugs guaranteed to destroy your world we consume? See that person cheating? See that DA wanting a win?
If you want a burger, a high, an orgasm or a conviction, you generally will get it at some price that's ultimately...above market.
How much more prone to excess is someone in the heat of a moment? How unlike the event does its moment by moment reconstruction during a trial appear? The mismatch has always struck me as unjust. As people judging an event whose experience they haven't had and haven't attempted to recreate. Though a jury is a good idea and the best we've got, the process they run through seems ripe for reform.
An eye for an eye has its place. If you walk into a school, start shooting and are captured alive - I think you just forfeited any claim on life or potential rehabilitation.
Any shade of grey zooming out from that seems too hard for any government system to decide well. I hear people say things in passing like "he only got 20 years". 20 years is a huge and devastating amount of time, as is one year. As we've ramped up the time on these sentences and made it an all or nothing proposition. Unfortunately, I don't think 20 years will do it if 1 year hasn't and I don't think death will do it if 20 years hasn't.
Regarding Richard Glossip. I don't know him or his case. I don't know the victim and while they won't return, there's a debt owed that I don't know how to pay. I want Richard Glossip to live. I don't think taking another life will pay the debt of the first. What I want most of all is for someone to tell me how to pay that debt.
[+] [-] verbin217|10 years ago|reply
Unfortunately most of the people who do this are children. They're usually in situations people would rather ignore. They're desperate. They want attention and they get it at some price that's ultimately... above market.
[+] [-] wtvanhest|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lisa_henderson|10 years ago|reply
"Though a jury is a good idea and the best we've got, the process they run through seems ripe for reform."
How do you justify the statement that a jury is the best idea that we have? Germany has the concept of Schöffe, and some believe this offers results that stick closer to the law than the jury system:
http://www.britannica.com/topic/Schoffe
While any government of mortal human flesh must inevitably have some flaws, the jury system seems especially bad at overcoming popular prejudice. In the USA, "a jury of one's peers" has often meant a mostly white (or all white) jury judging a black person, a circumstance that has given the USA many hundreds of famous miscarriages of justice.
The system that grew out of English Common Law, and which dominates England, Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand, is not the only system known to liberal Western societies. The English system is unique in the authority it gives to juries. Most of the Continental judicial systems either lack juries or have juries whose goal is constrained relative to the English system.
A review of the legal traditions in liberal Western nations reveals a lot of good ideas, many of which are probably superior to the jury system.
[+] [-] peteretep|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gus_massa|10 years ago|reply
I think that you here implicitly assume that there is overwhelming evidence of who is the author of the crime. For example, all of these: Many survivors testimonies (be careful, they are not so reliable in practice), many videos of the massacre were the face of the attacked is clearly visible, a perfect matching of the ADN in few blood spots, fingerprint in the weapons, gunpowder marks in the hands, he/she is detained in situ while trying to kill more people, ...
Does this case has overwhelming evidence?
[+] [-] bhickey|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] selfsimilar|10 years ago|reply
My uncle who's a pastor gave me an interesting perspective on this phrase. Before Solomon it was common practice to escalate a transgression. So a theft begets a retaliatory murder, begets a retaliatory massacre. This adage is not as much about seeking equality in punishment, as much as a brake to limit escalation. "An eye for an eye and no more."
[+] [-] gadders|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gizmo|10 years ago|reply
Finally -- and I know this is only a minor point in comparison -- it's worth noting that pg doesn't have anything to gain by writing this, and people who stick their neck out by writing about political issues inevitably get shouted at. Soon enough publishing anything stops being worth the aggravation. So credit goes to pg for standing up and speaking out, when it's all too easy to be silent.
[+] [-] pdabbadabba|10 years ago|reply
What do you mean by "in combination with," here? If you mean that the death penalty is used to convince people to plead guilty, I'm with you. But if you're saying that a large number of people who are sentenced to death were pressured into pleading guilty, then I am skeptical, since it is unclear what the defendant is receiving in exchange for the plea. (Usually it is a lighter sentence...)
[+] [-] bruceb|10 years ago|reply
Her children suffered from her crime but they are pleading to keep her alive. She is the only parent they have. Killing their only remaining parent is victimizing them again. Their pleas here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8pgceAhqJo
Georgia parole board contact info: http://pap.georgia.gov/contact-us
[+] [-] emgoldstein|10 years ago|reply
https://www.readfrontier.com/investigation/two-truths-and-a-...
If not, it seems like a pretty remarkable procedure to arrive at such a strong conclusion, with no other information besides a brief summary by advocates for the defense. Has pg ever served on a jury? If so, would he make his mind up this way?
[+] [-] nkurz|10 years ago|reply
He may be wrong, and in particular "reasonable doubt" may not have the legal definition that he thinks it does (legal terms rarely match common sense). But his argument is not "Glossip is innocent", but "there is no way we have sufficient evidence to kill this man without risking that we are killing someone who might be innocent".
Have you served on a jury, by the way? I served as the foreman on one relatively minor criminal case, and it did more to shake my faith in the rule-of-law than any other (minimal) encounters I've had with the legal system. In the end, we reached a unanimous "not guilty" in the case.
This was a difficult decision for all of us to reach, since the only way this could be the "correct" decision was if both police officers who testified were lying about significant details both in their report and on the stand. And yet this is the conclusion we eventually all agreed upon as being the most likely explanation for the way the pieces failed to fit together.
The defendant may well have done other illegal things, and possibly the world would be a better place if he was behind bars, but as a jury we decided that there was sufficient reason to doubt that he was guilty as charged. And yet there was no particular guarantee that this case would turn out as it did. On a different day, with a different jury, a different judge, or different lawyers, (but the same defendant, witnesses, and evidence) a guilty verdict seems likely.
As a limited participant in the legal system (but a "logical" computer programmer) my assessment would be that if we have the death penalty, the American jury system is practically guaranteed to occasionally sentence innocent people to death. I'd guess that this is the part that bothers Paul as well, I'd guess that he probably does have experience that leads him to believe this, and I'd guess that his opinion on the matter is not likely to be changed by a counterpoint that makes Glossip's guilt seem somewhat more likely.
[+] [-] tacon|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brlewis|10 years ago|reply
Many who have looked closely at this case think Glossip is innocent. I think so. I encourage you to learn more about it and form your own conclusions. But one thing is certain: there is a reasonable doubt.
I just read the article you linked to from start to finish. From that article alone "on the opposite side of the case" I draw the same conclusion: there's reasonable doubt.
Further, I think your paragraph that starts "If not" is an awful lot of followup to your presumed answer to your unanswered question. Couldn't you even have prepended a perfunctory "If so, great" to it?
[+] [-] ternaryoperator|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] msabalau|10 years ago|reply
It's not clear what can be done about it, other than occasionally writing a check to the ACLU to help limit the damage. Any ideas?
[+] [-] tbrooks|10 years ago|reply
There are incentives to cheat; as long as there are no ramifications for it, it will continue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqChMa4GV3w
[+] [-] mistermann|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbsmith|10 years ago|reply
It's a problem that there is enough material to keep the stories coming, but let's not conclude that the stories we read about represent the bulk of the justice system's operations.
[+] [-] x0x0|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justin_vanw|10 years ago|reply
It appears that someone had been stealing money and cooking the books at the hotels Glossip managed, and about the time his boss became aware of the theft, the boss was murdered. He admits to knowing that the boss was murdered and Glossip admits attempting to cover up the murder, his plan being to dissolve the body in acid. Glossip, as manager of the hotel the body was hidden in, reassigned cleaning staff specifically to prevent them from discovering the body. The person who is known to have performed the killing, an employee of Glossip's, says he was paid to do the killing by Glossip. Glossip also split money from the wallet carried by the man that was killed with the killer.
Glossip has had a trial and a retrial, and was convicted in both of them.
So maybe the death penalty is good, maybe it is bad. Clearly there is a serious debate there, and I am not attempting to defend the death penalty here. There is almost no chance that Glossip is innocent, and it seems clear, to me at least, that the state demonstrated he is guilty to the required standard.
[+] [-] afandian|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knodi123|10 years ago|reply
From https://theintercept.com/2015/07/09/oklahoma-prepares-resume... ,
"[the victim's] brother Kenneth, who took over operation of the motel after the murder, testified in 2004 that the motel’s financial shortages were “really insignificant amounts of money” and would not have worried Barry. The Oklahoma City motel, he said, was a “very profitable operation.” "
> Glossip, as manager of the hotel the body was hidden in, reassigned cleaning staff specifically to prevent them from discovering the body
"Sneed would [later] testify that he was the one who told the maid to ignore Room 102."
> The person who is known to have performed the killing, an employee of Glossip's, says he was paid to do the killing by Glossip.
From http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudenc...
The murderer was threatened with the death penalty unless he fingered Glossip. He says he would recant his testimony in a heartbeat if he could be assured he wouldn't be executed himself.
> Glossip has had a trial and a retrial, and was convicted in both of them.
Said one juror, "“If the defense would have presented the case that they are presenting now in the original trial,” the juror said, “I would have not given a guilty verdict.”"
[+] [-] mariodiana|10 years ago|reply
A couple of weeks ago when Glossip was all the rage, the various sources arguing that he should be spared somehow neglected to mention any of this. They did mention though that the actual killer is the the one who fingered Glossip, which made me sympathize with the man's possible innocence. I must say, I'm far less sympathetic now.
[+] [-] csomar|10 years ago|reply
I find the news that 1) a death penalty is about to take place in the U.S, 2) hastily and 3) with little evidence really shocking, disturbing and unacceptable in a country which is supposed to be at the front of defending human rights.
1: http://www.deathpenaltyworldwide.org/country-search-post.cfm...
[+] [-] joesmo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsotha|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] falsestprophet|10 years ago|reply
People see more motivated by orders of magnitude to get death penalty cases right relative to life incarceration cases.
Counterintuitively, justice may be better served by abolishing life imprisonment and mandating the death penalty for cases where periods of imprisonment would exceed 20 years or so.
If the innocence rate for executions is 4%, then surely the innocence rate for long term incarceration must be much higher.
[+] [-] efuquen|10 years ago|reply
I've seen several people already share this sentiment and it really confuses me. Because
1) It's made by people who have never, and come from a background where they most likely never would, have to seriously make such a choice. (If I'm wrong let me know).
2) I would venture if you really were faced with such a choice it would not be the automatic "kill me if I get more then 20 years" one that you flippantly imply you would make. I have a feeling when faced with the actual prospects of death vs imprisonment of 20 years or more, rather then on some hypothetical situation in an internet forum, you might decide differently.
3) Even if it was the case you were to decide death over long term imprisonment, what would give you, or the justice system, the right to decide that for anyone else facing that situation? I have a feeling most people would still choose life, even if faced with perpetual imprisonment, over death.
And finally lets just assume Richard Glossip was unjustly found guilty of this crime, I know nothing about this case so lets just assume. The problem isn't specifically with the sentence but the fact that he is in fact not guilty, but was deemed guilty by his peers. By killing him you eliminate any possibility of recourse, he already paid the ultimate price. At least with life imprisonment there is still a chance for having some just conclusion, even if it's late and inadequate to the penalty he suffered.
[+] [-] bratsche|10 years ago|reply
Not necessarily. If Sneed, the guy who actually committed the murder, had not faced the death penalty then would he still have tried to claim that Glossip put him up to it?
[+] [-] rhizome|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kjs3|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acqq|10 years ago|reply
Of the 49 European countries, only 1 (Belarus) still has the death penalty and executes people.
Last time a civilian executed in Mexico: 1937, Canada: 1962, UK: 1977, Russia: 1999
In 2014, only these countries executed more people per million than the US: Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, Palestine, China, Singapore, Belarus, Taiwan, Afghanistan and Egypt And North Korea N/A.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_country
Internationally seen as against the universal human rights:
1948: The United Nations adopted without dissent the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The Declaration proclaims the right of every individual to protection from deprivation of life. It states that no one shall be subjected to cruel or degrading punishment. The death penalty violates both of these fundamental rights.
2005: The UNCHR approved Human Rights Resolution 2005/59 on the question of the death penalty, which called for all states that still maintain the death penalty to abolish the death penalty completely and, in the meantime, to establish a moratorium on executions.
2007: The UN General Assembly (UNGA) approved Resolution 62/149 which called for all states that still maintain the death penalty to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/death-penalty/inte...
2015, the current year: 20 persons executed in the US
At least 278 persons executed in the US just since the last UNGA Resolution.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/execution-list-2015
[+] [-] splat|10 years ago|reply
http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/2015/06/Kozinski_Prefa...
[+] [-] rottencupcakes|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justin_vanw|10 years ago|reply
In this case:
Means: he knew the person who committed the physical attack and had influence over this person
Motive: the victim was accusing him of embezzling $6000
Opportunity: plenty
Proof defendant actually acted on the motive: he attempted to hide the body from discovery, helped hide the victims car, contributed to a conspiracy to cut the body up and dissolve it in acid, split the money from the victim's wallet with the other man involved, and made sure that cleaning staff that he managed were reassigned so that they would not find the body. None of this is in dispute!
This is by itself enough to convict him.
[+] [-] ChicagoBoy11|10 years ago|reply
Until we carefully scrutinize the incentives facing the judicial system as a whole (and see how unbalanced it is), this is bound to be the norm.
[+] [-] DubiousPusher|10 years ago|reply
And nothing more need be said. I don't understand how it seems impossible to force into people's heads the two notions that the burden of guilt lay with the prosecution and that guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt.
[+] [-] thrownaway2424|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianbicking|10 years ago|reply
We use the phrase "paying your debt to society" but no one pays any debts. They only incur debts. Debts to their family who they can't support. Debts to a society that ends up weaker than it started. The cruelty of this system isn't best exemplified in the death penalty.
[+] [-] Alex3917|10 years ago|reply
At least in comparison with wars of aggression, foreign coups, the war on drugs, subsidizing cars, subsidizing fossil fuels, subsidizing tobacco, weak pharma regulation, promoting antibiotics in food, cop shootings, fast food subsidies (via corn), not implementing cap & trade to combat climate change, privatized health insurance, trade embargoes, promoting harmful nutrition guidelines, lack of food safety standards/inspection, lack of any required safety testing for new chemicals, etc.
[+] [-] lazyant|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrdrozdov|10 years ago|reply
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjWSW94-P3Y
Article: https://news.vice.com/article/president-obama-heads-to-priso...
[+] [-] voltagex_|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gautamnarula|10 years ago|reply
Richard Glossip's case is similar in many ways to Troy Davis[1]. You may recognize that name--in 2011, when he was executed, he was the world's most famous death row inmate. Like Glossip, Troy Davis had no physical evidence against him. His conviction (of murdering a police officer) was based primarily on 9 eyewitness testimonies. SEVEN of those eyewitnesses recanted or altered their testimonies, many citing police coercion or intimidation. Ten new witnesses came forward saying one of the two non-recanting witnesses, Sylvester Coles, confessed to the murder.
A few days before he was executed, ONE MILLION people signed a petition to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. Despite this, and the many doubts in his case, Troy Davis was executed on September 21, 2011.
I was close friends with Troy--I first visited him on death row in 2008 (when I was 15), and spent the next three years visiting him, corresponding with him, and talking to him on the phone. Troy was so well-known because his case epitomized everything that is wrong with the American justice system and the death penalty--racial bias (he was a black man accused of killing a white cop in 1980s Georgia), an overzealous DA with a history of prosecutorial misconduct, police coercion and witness tampering, the execution of innocents (over a dozen death row inmates have been exonerated since he was executed in 2011...how many innocents were executed in that time?) and a justice system so rigid and brittle that it would not even commute his sentence to life imprisonment, despite even a federal judge admitting Troy had shown at least a "minimal" level of doubt in his case.
Troy's last words, recorded minutes before he was executed, are haunting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98dlGv0k2MM
In 2012, I raised 11k on Kickstarter to write a book on my relationship with Troy Davis called Remain Free[2]. It talks about many of the ugly aspects of his life on death row and of the legal corruption in his case that he (and I) couldn't publicly talk about while he was still alive. Since the book is built on hundreds of recorded conversations, in person visits, and letters with Troy, you really get a sense of who he was as a person and the kind of toll two decades on death row takes on him and his family.
If you'd like a copy, you can order it on Amazon[3] or through http://remainfree.com. All profits go to the Innocence Project [4], a non-profit that works to free wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing. Alternatively, email me (gautamnarula[at]gmail.com) a screenshot of a $10 donation to the Innocence Project, and I'll send you the e-book for free. Donate $20 to the Innocence Project, and I'll send you a physical copy for just the cost of shipping ($3 in the US).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Davis
[2] http://remainfree.com
[3] http://www.amazon.com/Remain-Free-Memoir-Gautam-Narula/dp/09...
[4] http://innocenceproject.org