Constitutionality of Capital Punishment Challenged in Texas

mykevermin

mykevermin

CAGiversary!
Feedback
34 (97%)
In TEXAS?!?!? I'm as surprised as you are.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6899748.html

A Houston judge who declared the death penalty unconstitutional Thursday clarified his ruling in an impromptu hearing Friday, saying he ruled the procedures surrounding the process in Texas are illegal.

During Friday's hearing, prosecutors filed motions asking state District Judge Kevin Fine to reconsider his ruling and also to proceed with April's death penalty trial of John Edward Green Jr. Fine maintained at the hearing that he believes innocent people have been executed.

Fine's clarification came in the wake of a firestorm of criticism from District Attorney Pat Lykos, the Texas Attorney General's Office and Gov. Rick Perry protesting that Fine ignored well-settled law.

Fine is expected to rule on the motions next week. He did not return calls for comment Friday.

When asked direct questions Thursday about his ruling, Fine said he was declaring the death penalty unconstitutional because he believes innocent people have been executed.
Dissecting the ruling

Friday, Fine clarified that he declared the procedures Texas has in place to carry out the death penalty unconstitutional, a legal parsing even to the prosecutors trying the case.

“As a practical matter, if you strike down that statute, you're not necessarily striking down ‘the death penalty' but you're striking down the way we try death penalty cases,” said Bill Exley, an assistant Harris County district attorney. “So the effect is that you can't have a death penalty because you can't get there.”

Exley and Assistant District Attorney Kari Allen are pursuing the death penalty for Green in the robbery and fatal shooting of Huong Thien Nguyen, 34, on June 16, 2008.
‘Beginning of the end'

Police said she and her sister, My Huong Nguyen, had returned to their home in the 6700 block of Bellaire Gardens about 1:20 a.m. when Green approached them, demanded money and shot them.

Green's lawyers, Bob Loper and Casey Keirnan, heralded the decision as the “beginning of the end of the death penalty.”

“We don't necessarily think we're the ones who will make this happen. But it certainly is a chink in their armor. This is going to raise everyone's consciousness,” Loper said. “It appears as though it's going to go up on appeal. It certainly has people talking.”

If Fine's ruling were to be upheld, it effectively would take away the option of the death penalty in Green's case.

Most legal commentators said the ruling wouldn't stand up at the appellate level.

A past president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyer's Association summed up the mechanics of the ruling.

“He did not rule that the death penalty is unconstitutional,” said Mark Bennett, a criminal defense lawyer. “He ruled that a procedure that allows the execution of innocent people is unconstitutional.”
‘First impression'

In court, Fine said there were no guiding cases on this particular point.

“There is no precedent to guide me in resolving this particular issue,” Fine said. “As far as I know it is an issue of first impression.”

The Harris County district attorney disagreed.

“These are stock pleadings. The same pleadings are filed in virtually every capital murder case. There is nothing new, nothing novel about it,” Lykos said Friday. “Respectfully, there are no legitimate legal issues in the motions filed by the defense.”

Perry's office as well as Attorney General Greg Abbott's office issued news releases late Thursday decrying the ruling as judicial activism.

[email protected]
Click to expand...
 
I'm not too familiar with the process in Texas, but it's totally broken in California...

...it's better for prisoners to be sentenced to death row as they have more privileges than other prisoners and have a very low chance of actually getting executed (we execute less than 1 inmate per year).

*plus, it's comes at a huge monetary cost (capital punishment cases and their appeals are very expensive).

*I still think that death row inmates should be put to work in hard labor, with their wages being used to pay restitution to the families of the victims and to help defray the costs of housing them.


And most of all, thank you Rose Bird and Jerry Brown (can't believe this geriatric hippy is running for governor again).
 
What do you think of Fine's claim that it is unconstitutional because we've executed innocent people?

legally, he's arguing that the burden of proof standard should be higher in capital punishment cases. He is not saying that the act itself is unconstitutional, but that it is not held to a rigorous standard during trial that they should be.

also, i'm curious what you mean by "broken" - there are several aspects
1) the timeliness of execution
2) the cost
3) the techniques used
4) the impact on crime rates
5) the time waste on our court system
...and probably a few others I could think of.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top