Is a state killing an innocent man murder?

Judge Posner, before he retired, was one of the 2 or 3 top legal minds in the country. He would have been perfect on the Supreme Court, but he was a Republican, and Republicans stopped caring about quality a long time ago...

"Or, as Posner said to me, "what kind of person would say that it is okay to put to death an innocent person? What kind of country would allow that to happen?" Posner also noted the irony of Scalia's and Thomas's "pro-life" positions on abortion and their pro-death positions on the state executing an innocent person.

Well, last week the Roberts/Trump Court voted six-three in Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez to allow Arizona to put to death two men who alleged ineffective assistance of counsel at both the trial and post-conviction stages of their journeys through the state court system. Mike explained this somewhat complicated case fully here. Suffice it to say that the six conservative justices felt that narrowly reading (or maybe misreading) a federal habeas statute to prevent a new hearing in this precise situation was more important than avoiding a situation where the state puts to death an actually innocent person. Yes, you read that right.



Justice Thomas wrote that "we now hold that, under §2254(e)(2), a federal habeas court may not conduct an evidentiary hearing or otherwise consider evidence beyond the state-court record based on ineffective assistance of state postconviction counsel." In other words, even if a capital defendant claims ineffective assistance of trial counsel, and is barred from raising that claim on direct appeal (which is the case in many states because appellate and trial counsel are often the same), and then also claims ineffective assistance of counsel during his state habeas proceedings, he is still barred from claiming actual innocence based on new information in his federal habeas petition (no matter how much the evidence shows actual innocence).

This result is Posner's nightmare come to fruition. Justice Sotomayor spared no words in dissent: "This decision is perverse. It is illogical: It makes no sense...." She went on to explain how the majority's convoluted logic and mistreatment of both federal law and precedent effectively extinguishes many valid sixth amendment ineffective assistance of counsel claims. And, of course, worst of all, it is quite probable that the states will put innocent people to death.

As Justice Blackmun once wrote, "nothing could be more contrary to contemporary standards of decency...or more shocking to the conscience...than to execute a person who is actually innocent."
http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2022/06/the-court-of-death.html#more

 

The silence is an eloquent confession..

 

Or the result of a title asking a really silly question.

 

The Supreme Court made the rules based on federal law, and unfortunately when you have judges that follow law and make a ruling following the law this is what you get. Judges as much as you would cannot make law or change law. If only one party wax in control of both houses of congress and the presidency laws like this could get changed. The question is do you blame someone for doing what they are supposed to do are do you blame the people not doing anything when they could?

 

Tut, tut, we must keep procedural standards!

/sarcasm

 

There is no perfect system but the one we have is close. Some innocent people are bound to get convicted but the mass majority are proven guilty and justly handled.

Stop complaining.

 

There is a 1769 doctrine that says, “the law holds that it is better that 10 guilty persons escape, than that 1 innocent suffer.”

Sotomayor was correct, this decision is perverse, illogical, and upends centuries of jurisprudence.

 

Condensing down a supreme court decision into a single paragraph very seldom does the question justice. Life is not that simple. I cannot judge this case on its merits simply because I do not have the expertise and the knowledge of this specific case.

Some people simply don't deserve to live. However, I am opposed to the death penalty for one reason. It is too easy to be wrong and it is irreversible.

I take the same position on abortion. In spite of numerous attempts to determine when that fetus becomes a living person, there is no absolute answer. And for that reason, I am also opposed to abortion.

 

I oppose the state having the authority to kill anyone who isn't an immediate threat to another, ie- murder them. Even violent, deranged psychopaths are not an immediate threat to anyone once they're in custody or imprisonned.

However, I also dont believe that We The People are obligated to perpetually support those who can never safely be returned to society. And while our current system leaves much to be desired in the area of attempted rehabilitation, some humans are simply not rehabilitatable.

Thus there exists a quandry- what to do with them? I dont have a good answer. Ideally they could be put somewhere where they could exist without endangering or emburdenning society. Im not opposed to something like an inescapable deserted island being an option. That poses ethical issues as well, but less IMO than murdering people via democratic consent (aka the state).

 

Not Australia again - please!

 

The current popular destination for undesireablzs is Rwanda.
The British government has arranged with the African country that migrants who arrive illegally into the UK can be deported to Rwanda. They can claim asylum or whatever else from there but cannot return to the UK.
The less said about the legality of this the better.

 

What do you think is silly about that question?

 

Actually not the case here. They went against precedent and established law. I looks like yet another case of the conservative majority choosing the ruling they want first and then trying to justify it.

 

That's kind of funny, because Rwanda, while it probably is thought of as a ghastly genocidal hell-pit is actually not too bad as an African destination. I mean, in the sense that "deported to Africa" is meant to sound horrible and off-putting as this Tory government is probably intending. It is relatively organised, if brutal with regards to upholding the law. @StillBlue might have something to add here or correct me if I'm out of line.

Yes, and also the less said about the ethics of "the hidden deal" to make this happen the better too, no doubt.

 

I think the death penalty should only be reserved for notorious criminals who criminal acts are extremely visible, photographed, video'd, to a degree that is hideous and beyond, for whom the evidence is irrefutable, uncontestable undeniable, incontrovertible, etc., who, also, even though incarcerated, are still dangerous due to their connections, being a person of means, etc. For example, Noriega, Hitler and rape of children and mass murder or torture, would have to be in the crimes listed. But, where there is the slightest doubt about a person's crimes, they should be incarcerated for life, not executed.

 

Yeah, I don't have a problem with it. Seems like everything the Right touches these days kills somebody..

 

[QUOTE="(original)late, post: 1073506001, member: 69214"
Seems like everything the Right touches these days kills somebody.
.[/QUOTE]

…….. Because those are righties in Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis, Memphis, LA, Newark, Camden, New Orleans and Nashville who are committing all the drive bys and gang killings.

 

yes, it's murder

 

murdering innocent people is ok cause we get it right most of the time?

 

Because the answer is obvious.

 

What a good idea.

 

It's punitive state sanctioned 'murder', in a way, justifiable homicide.

 

Justifiable homicide even when the deceased was innocent?

 

It sounds OK until you read under the bumph the govt puts out.
People disappear in Rwanda. Gays are not tolerated. The migrants dont know the language and will be severely discriminated against.
The trouble is that the UK govt doesn't want immigration and so doesn't offer safe legal routes to take.
And no, the UK doesn't take the most migrants. The UK is about in the middle of the recipient nations. Luxembourg, Sweden, Netherlands and Switzerland all have the same issues.

 

How much do you know about this case?

The whole point of the appeal to the Supreme Court was that it is argued that David Ramariz had a severe intellectual deficiency by two experts and possibly dereliction or incompetent trial counsel at the time of his initial trial. This was 1990. Mary Gorterez and her daughter, Candie Gorterez, 15, were stabbed to death in their apartment where David Rameriz was in too. This occurred in 1989. His trial was in 1990. And he had been on appeals every since. Take a look at his case history here. Innocent, maybe not. And the law in question is whether or not he had the capability to determine right or wrong when the actions were committed. That is what the Supreme Court decision here, not his "innocence." Rameriz received the death sentence for aggravated circumstances which include prior convictions for violence, heinous or cruel violence in the past, and multiple homicides.

https://az.fd.org/sites/az/files/sc-updates/2021-09/Case Background on David Ramirez.pdf