Trial By Fire

This excellent piece by the New Yorker about the innocent man executed by our government because of a flawed justice system is worth the read. It's long but engaging and extremely detailed. It shows why there are holes in the system, why the system in many ways encourages and creates mistakes -- especially its reliance upon expert-sounding testimonies. A few years ago, we learned that the FBI for 30 years had been relying upon faulty science that helped send thousands of men and women to jail. This story points out the same thing has been occurring for decades in arson investigations. And it also touches more on Justice Scalia's philosophy.

The story was written before Scalia's latest ``actually innocent'' comment but does remind of us something he said a few years ago. In 2006, according to the story, ``Scalia declared that, in the modern judicial system, there has not been `a single case — not one — in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops.”

It's not a stretch to say most thinking people understand that the death penalty is NOT the one area of the flawed criminal justice system that has never made a mistake -- yet Scalia, a sitting Supreme Court justice, believes precisely that. (That's another reason why I believe I read his recent dissent correctly and am right to be disturbed by it.) 

What's also disturbing, as the story points out, is the joke of an appeals process we have. A fire expert -- a real one -- finally looked at this case, completely dismantled the prosecution's case, handed his findings to the parole board -- and they voted to uphold the man's status on death row without even looking at all that new evidence, based on up-to-date understanding of fire investigations. Board members said it was not their job to re-try the case, just to make sure there were no major errors. That attitude pervades the justice system and is embodied, I believe, at the very top by Justices Scalia and Thomas. And to think, the only way to really make the death penalty a crime deterrent, according to researchers, is to speed up the process between conviction and the death chamber -- which would only increase the number of mistakes already being made, which means even more innocent men and women -- the ones we are now only discovering and the ones we'll never know -- will be executed by our government. I'm not OK with that, and I'm not OK with the elevation of the system above the individual. That's absolutely backwards. Until we change that philosophy and seriously think about implementing radical reforms, maybe even ones that go beyond those suggested by the Innocence Project, this will only get worse, and families will continue to be destroyed unnecessarily, and cycles of violence we have the power to stop won't.

The story was written before Scalia's latest ``actually innocent'' comment but does remind of us something he said a few years ago. In 2006, according to the story, ``Scalia declared that, in the modern judicial system, there has not been `a single case — not one — in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops.”

It's not a stretch to say most thinking people understand that the death penalty is NOT the one area of the flawed criminal justice system that has never made a mistake -- yet Scalia, a sitting Supreme Court justice, believes precisely that. (That's another reason why I believe I read his recent dissent correctly and am right to be disturbed by it.) 

What's also disturbing, as the story points out, is the joke of an appeals process we have. A fire expert -- a real one -- finally looked at this case, completely dismantled the prosecution's case, handed his findings to the parole board -- and they voted to uphold the man's status on death row without even looking at all that new evidence, based on up-to-date understanding of fire investigations. Board members said it was not their job to re-try the case, just to make sure there were no major errors. That attitude pervades the justice system and is embodied, I believe, at the very top by Justices Scalia and Thomas. And to think, the only way to really make the death penalty a crime deterrent, according to researchers, is to speed up the process between conviction and the death chamber -- which would only increase the number of mistakes already being made, which means even more innocent men and women -- the ones we are now only discovering and the ones we'll never know -- will be executed by our government. I'm not OK with that, and I'm not OK with the elevation of the system above the individual. That's absolutely backwards. Until we change that philosophy and seriously think about implementing radical reforms, maybe even ones that go beyond those suggested by the Innocence Project, this will only get worse, and families will continue to be destroyed unnecessarily, and cycles of violence we have the power to stop won't.