Child rapists can't be executed, Supreme Court rules

ohio county wrote:Louisiana was one of six states that allowed the death penalty for rape. You may be correct in that the law was not on the books when Mr. Kennedy (how ironic!) savagely raped his step-daughter although I saw nothing in the opinion about exp post facto.

I'm not saying the belief that life is sacred is good in every case.

Stephanie wrote:
What value the life of another human being holds is not for us to decide. Do you have any idea how many times innocent people have been executed in this country?

Stephanie wrote:Sam,

What value the life of another human being holds is not for us to decide. Do you have any idea how many times innocent people have been executed in this country?

Nothing is fool proof. Witnesses make mistakes. People make false confessions due to police brutality or mental illness. Even DNA isn't fool-proof. If one innocent person is executed that is 1 far too many.

What is really gained by executing a person? If John Doe murders me and the state of WV executes him for the crime, I'm still dead. My kids don't have their mother, I'm still dead. I'm never coming back. What has been gained?

John Doe very likely has some family. Do his parents deserve having to live through his execution? How about his children? I can't think of too many things as bad as having the government decide your child isn't fit to live.

I have witnessed both sides of this. I have a friend who's brother was murdered by a man who is the brother of a high school classmate of mine. It's been almost 30 years and the murderer's parents have died and so hasn't one of his brothers. His daughter still lives......she was a little girl when her father shot and killed a 21 y/o who had his whole life ahead of him.

No matter what the state does, that young man is never coming back. My friend wants vengance to this day.....she wants him to die. I fail to see what good it will do. Better to leave him locked in a cage like the animal that he is.

One of my favorite lines ever is from Stephen King's Pet Cemetary. "Sometimes dead is better". I know I would much rather be dead than spend the rest of my life in prison. I don't think a life sentence without possibility of parole is a slap on the wrist. It's what the person you described deserves......in general population.

A 21-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the brutal double murder of French students Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, Scotland Yard said.

The friends, both 23, were bound, gagged and stabbed to death in a bedsit in New Cross, south London on Sunday night.

The Metropolitan Police said the man was arrested and is in custody at a police station in south-east London.

The bodies of Bonomo, from Velaux, near Marseille, and Ferez, from Prouzel, were found after firefighters attended a blaze at their ground-floor flat.

A pathologist documented 243 separate injuries to the badly-burned bodies, with Bonomo suffering 80 wounds after he died.

Police last night said the men might have died for the sake of two handheld games consoles.

Detectives said two Sony PSP consoles were stolen from Bonomo's rented flat in Sterling Gardens.

Officers are also hunting a black Packard Bell laptop taken in a burglary six days earlier, while Bonomo was in the shower.

Ferez, who lived in South Norwood, had traveled to spend the evening at his friend's flat, where they were playing computer games.

Det Chief Insp Mick Duthie, leading the investigation, said: "The more we find out about them (the victims) the more we find they were good, honest, hardworking young men; very intelligent, never caused anybody any problems, they were well liked and come from respectable families.

"This is just a tragedy."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,376662,00.html

Aaron wrote:If it is a known fact that innocent people have been executed then there shouldn't be a problem producing a name or a case.

One of the reasons we have not had a definitive example of the execution of an innocent person is that official investigations cease once the death penalty has been carried out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/14/opinion/14herbert.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

ziggy wrote:

Aaron wrote:If it is a known fact that innocent people have been executed then there shouldn't be a problem producing a name or a case.

There is a problem because of a catch 22:

One of the reasons we have not had a definitive example of the execution of an innocent person is that official investigations cease once the death penalty has been carried out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/14/opinion/14herbert.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

And District Attorneys / Presecuting Attorneys are loath to re-open a case once a defendents has been convicted- even more so once a defendent has been executed- no matter how convincingly new evidence might show that a mistake of judicial process has taken place.

Stephanie wrote:Aaron,

Nobody knows the answer to that question. We do know, for a fact, innocent people have been executed in this country. The only way to guarantee that never happens again is to do away with the death penalty.

Posted: Sun 6 Jul 2008 - 1:46 by Stephaniehttp://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?61+Law+&+Contemp.+Probs.+105+(Autumn+1998)#H1N3

In May 1990, Jesse Tafero was executed in Florida. His case gained notoriety because the electric chair malfunctioned and his head caught on fire before he died. Two years later, Jesse's co-defendant, Sonia Jacobs, who had been convicted and sentenced to death on exactly the same evidence that sent Tafero to his death, was released after a U.S. Court of Appeals concluded that her conviction was based on prosecutorial suppression of exculpatory evidence and perjury by a prosecution witness (who was the real killer).
Jacobs now lives in Los Angeles, and in early 1996, a television movie of her case was aired. But Tafero is dead. Had he been alive, the evidence that led to Jacobs's release would have led to his release, too.

Did Jacobs's vindication and release cause any Florida official to admit the error in convicting Tafero, much less to apologize on behalf of the state, or even to express second thoughts about Tafero's execution? No. To be sure, a few newspaper articles pointed out the error, but no politician, prosecutor, judge, or ex-juror involved in the case has so far made any public comment on Tafero's fate in light of Jacobs's vindication. Tafero's mother, living impoverished in Pennsylvania, does not have the resources to mount a campaign to clear her son's name. His attorneys have long since moved on to other cases.

So, given that we cannot point to admission of erroneous executions by government officials involved in the cases we have studied, on what grounds can we confidently infer that innocent defendants have been executed? Apart [*pg 116] from rare cases like Tafero-Jacobs (where one codefendant is executed before the other codefendant is exonerated), there are at least three kinds of evidence that we believe ought to convince any reasonable person that innocent defendants have been executed: close calls, calculation of the odds, and the role of "Lady Luck."

A. Close Calls


Between 1972 and the end of 1996, sixty-eight death row inmates in the nation were released because of doubts about their guilt. These releases do not prove that the system works, as some defenders of the death penalty would argue. Representative Bill McCollum, for example, one of our executioners' best friends in Congress, was "encouraged" by the findings, claiming that the sixty-eight errors in twenty-five years "shows that the system is working quite well." Contrary to such political spin, however, our research indicates that if "the system worked," the defendants would be dead. In virtually all of these cases, the defendants were released only after an expensive and exhausting uphill struggle, unsupported by public funds or public officials, and almost always fiercely resisted by the prosecution and ignored by those with the power to commute a death sentence.
Some of these prisoners, now free, came within a few days of being executed. Randall Adams, sentenced to death in Texas in 1977 and exonerated in 1989, came to within one week of his execution Andrew Mitchell, sentenced to death in Texas in 1981, came within five days of death by lethal injection before being vindicated in 1993. Two half-brothers in Florida, William Jent and Ernest Miller, came within sixteen hours of being executed before they were released from prison in 1988. More such cases have been cited elsewhere.
Today, there are more than three thousand prisoners on America's death rows. As things stand, it would be preposterous to believe that all the innocent death row defendants have been identified and exonerated. If the history of the last twenty years is any guide to the future, an average of three death row inmates per year will continue to be vindicated and released. How many [*pg 117] equally innocent death row inmates will be unsuccessful in obtaining relief is impossible to know, but the number most certainly is not zero.
B. Calculation of the Odds


Assume we execute two death row inmates, each of whom we believe is guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt" on the evidence. Let belief in guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt" mean that we are ninety percent confident of guilt, and that our belief in both these cases is correct. Nevertheless we are not (and rarely could be) 100% certain, and so, on these assumptions, we are implicitly accepting a ten percent error rate even when we are ninety percent confident. However, because the odds of error are multiplicative, the probability that any two death row prisoners chosen at random are guilty is not ninety percent (0.9), but only eighty-one percent (0.9 x 0.9). Thus, the probability that all 3,000 death row inmates today are guilty, even if we are ninety percent confident of guilt in each case, is minuscule.
To put this another way, if we executed 100 inmates and we were ninety-five percent certain of guilt in each case, we would be implicitly accepting a five percent error rate; in being willing to execute all 100, we are in effect willing to execute five out of the hundred who might be innocent (even though, of course, we do not know which five are innocent, or whether more or any are). If our perceptions on the odds of error are accurate reflections of the real occurrences of error, the number of innocent persons legally executed is quite high -- and much higher than our admittedly selective and incomplete research into identifiable cases suggests.
C. The Role of "Lady Luck"


In the heat of their attack on our claim that some two dozen of the several hundred cases we studied involved the execution of the innocent, the Justice Department simply ignored the vast majority of cases where we claim an innocent person was convicted of a capital offense but was not executed. In effect, their silence tacitly concedes that our judgment is correct in more than ninety percent of all the cases and wrong in fewer than ten percent. Why these critics think that small percent matters they have yet to explain. What they conveniently overlook are scores of cases in which they do not -- and could not reasonably -- dispute our claims, namely, that innocent persons have been convicted and sentenced to death, and that innocent prisoners who were not executed would have been, or might have been, executed except for extraordinary good fortune.
Consider some of the ways good fortune smiled on the innocent death row prisoner. Some of the cases we cite involve a defendant whose release was owing to the timely discovery of a hitherto unknown eyewitness (for example, [*pg 118] the case of Jerry Banks. What if that witness had not stepped forward? In other cases we cite, the true culprit confessed in time to save the innocent prisoner (for example, the case of James Foster. What if the true culprit had kept silent about his involvement? In still other cases, vindication depended on a dedicated journalist who took up the cause and established that the convicted defendant is really innocent (for example, the case of Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee. What if no journalist had developed a timely interest in the case? In 1993, Kirk Bloodsworth was freed from death row in Maryland when technology not widely available at the time of his trial (DNA testing) proved his innocence. What if this technology had not been developed for another decade, or semen on the body of the victim had not been preserved, or the victim had not been raped as well as murdered? Under any of these conditions, Bloodsworth would not have been exonerated.
In one way or another, virtually every case in which death row inmates are able to prove their innocence is a story of exceptional luck. Only when we realize how lucky the exonerated death row defendants have been can we realize how easy it is for fatal mistakes to go undetected. The more such cases are discovered the greater the likelihood there are other cases so far undetected -- and that some of these cases involve the execution of the innocent. Just because boats filled with illegal drugs are regularly intercepted by the police near our shores, it does not follow that all boats carrying such drugs have been intercepted.

Jessie Joseph Tafero (born October 12, 1946 — died May 4, 1990), was a convicted rapist, drug dealer and murderer executed via electric chair in the state of Florida for the murders of Florida Highway Patrol officer Phillip Black and Donald Irwin, a visiting Canadian constable and friend of Black.

The crime, trial, and execution
On the morning of February 20, 1976, Black and Irwin approached a car parked at a rest stop for a routine check. Tafero, his partner Sonia "Sunny" Jacobs, her two children (ages 9 years and 10 months), and Walter Rhodes were found asleep inside. Tafero had previously been in prison and was on probation. Jacobs had previous convictions for prostitution and drug charges. Black saw a gun lying on the floor inside the car. He woke the occupants and had first Rhodes then Tafero come out of the car. According to Rhodes, Tafero then shot both Black and Irwin with the gun, which was illegally registered to Jacobs, and led the others into the police car and fled the scene. They later disposed of the police car and kidnapped a man and stole his car. All three were arrested after being caught in a roadblock. When they were arrested, the gun was found in Tafero's waistband.

Prior to his conviction for murder, Tafero had been convicted of rape, robbery, burglary and drug charges while Jacobs had been convicted of prostitution and selling amphetamine. Rhodes was on parole for assault with intent to commit robbery. Tafero and Jacobs were also wanted for drug and weapons charges in South Carolina. The prosecution would argue that Tafero and Jacobs had more motive to avoid arrest.

At their trial, Rhodes testified that Tafero and Jacobs were solely responsible for the murders. Tafero and Jacobs were convicted of capital murder and were sentenced to death while Rhodes was sentenced to 3 life sentences. He was released in 1994 following parole for good behavior. The children were placed in the care of Sunny Jacobs' parents until their deaths in a 1982 plane crash. The children were then separated and placed in the care of other relatives and close family friends.

Tafero and Jacobs continued their relationship through letters while serving time in the prison. Because there was no death row for women in Florida, Jacobs was put into solitary confinement for the first five years of her imprisonment, let out only once or twice a week for exercise. She learned yoga to pass the time, and after being moved to the general prison population, began teaching yoga to other prisoners.

Because the jury had recommended a life sentence for Jacobs, the court commuted Jacobs' sentence to life in prison, but not Tafero's.

Jessie Tafero was to be killed by electrocution. However, the machine, dubbed "Old Sparky", malfunctioned, causing six-inch flames to shoot out of Tafero's head. A member of the execution team had used a synthetic sponge rather than a sea sponge, which is necessary to provide greater conductivity and a quick death. In all, three jolts of electricity were required to render Tafero dead, a process that took 6.5 minutes.

The Jesse Tafero case became the cause célèbre among death penalty opponents, who cited the brutal circumstances of his execution as reasons it should be abolished.

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals found reason to overturn the conviction of Sonia "Sunny" Jacobs. She was released after accepting a plea bargain in which she pled nolo contendere (technically an Alford plea of "guilty", but without admitting factual guilt) to all of the charges against her. After her release, Jacobs was reunited with her children and became an outspoken opponent of the death penalty. She moved to Ireland, where she now lives with her new partner Peter Pringle (also a Death Row exoneree) and continues to teach yoga, offering it also to prison inmates in her new country.[1] She wrote the 2007 book, "Stolen Time", about the events that changed her life, as well as a forthcoming book about yoga, "If you can breathe, you can do it". Jacobs also campaigns for human rights, working with Amnesty International and other organizations. Tafero and Jacobs' story, and the stories of five other exonerees, was told in a highly fictionalized play called "The Exonerated" performed in London at The Riverside Studios. She was portrayed in a TV movie version by actress Susan Sarandon, as well as a documentary film created by her childhood friend Micki Dickoff.


[edit] Problems with Rhodes's testimony
Prior to his release, Rhodes had admitted several times that he had lied about his involvement in the shooting. In Sonia "Sunny" Jacobs's version of events, she and Tafero had accepted a lift from Rhodes a casual acquaintance (who was in breach of his parole, although she claims this was not known to the couple)while they were on the run authorities in South Carolina. Rhodes then carried out the shooting. He was the only person on which traces of gunpowder were found. He changed his story repeatedly over the years (Cite, St Petersburg Times). Sunny "Sonia" Jacobs has always maintained that she and Tafero were completely innocent of the crime, and that her plea was in response to advice from her lawyer. (Cite. Guardian Monday February 20, 2006).