The public defender assigned to represent Jones learned that he was oxygen-deprived at birth and had a lithium deficiency — a condition linked to serious psychiatric disorders. Jones’s medical records showed that he was medicated for mood disorders, had attempted suicide and was admitted to a mental hospital.
Despite having access to this information, Jones’s attorney did not further investigate his mental health until after he was convicted.
Jones’s lawyer presented three witnesses during sentencing, including a doctor to testify about his mental health issues. Dr. Jack Potts was only able to conduct a short examination of Jones, however, so his report was less than one page of analysis. Dr. Potts advocated for more testing, but the request was denied.
Like, setting aside the death penalty in general for a second, this is just a flagrant disregard of legal precedent when it comes to legal competency and ineffective assistance of counsel.
“When a capital defendant claims that he was prejudiced at sentencing because counsel failed to present available mitigating evidence, a court must decide whether it is reasonably likely that the additional evidence would have avoided a death sentence,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority.
The George W. Bush appointee said the Arizona Supreme Court has never vacated a death sentence for someone who committed multiple murders or any of the other aggravating circumstances in Jones’ case.
If true, it sounds like those mitigating factors wouldn’t have changed a thing
Consider this: it costs more to keep an inmate on death row and execute them than it does to imprison them for life.
If what you like about the death penalty is the punishment aspect, it’s a greater punishment to hold someone in jail for life.
AND if we discover - as does happen a lot - that person is actually innocent, they can be released and still have some sort of life outside of prison. That’s not a great fate, but I would argue it’s much better than depriving them of their life only to find out later they were innocent.
Isn’t the reason it costs more to keep someone on death row largely due to the appeals they get?
I’d much rather we spend more making sure we aren’t destroying the lives of innocent people than save money by not giving them as many chances to get an unjust sentence overturned. Which isn’t necessarily a pro-death penalty position, as it could also be a call to reform the appeals process for everyone else.
So the argument is, it costs so much to maintain the filter that tries to keep innocent people from being executed, so let’s make it cheaper by removing some of that filter.
It costs more to execute somebody than keep them in prison forever in order to make as sure as we can that a person is guilty before executing them, by allowing more appeals.
Suggesting the solution to that is fewer appeals is directly saying that it is better to kill more innocent people at a lower cost than it is to not kill anyone.
Also, that it’s worth killing innocent people as long as bad people die. Not to prevent them from committing further harm, but just to kill them.
I’m struggling to see the benefit in that cost/benefit analysis. It’s not about protecting people (because it actively kills innocent people), it’s about killing people just to kill bad people.
Edit: I misunderstood what you were saying. But I would also say that while it would be great to improve the system for the initial trial, removing appeals would have the opposite effect and wouldn’t help the initial trial at all. However, if the initial trials are better, everything would still be cheaper regardless of the appeals because there’d be less people falsely imprisoned on death row.
To be clear, I was just pointing out that the savings aren’t coming from eliminating the death penalty, they are coming from reducing the number of appeals, and therefore increasing the likelihood that an innocent person will spend the rest of their life in prison, which is a bad thing. I’m not advocating for or against the death penalty, but I do think that a life sentence should come with just as many safeguards as a death sentence. The fact that you could release someone who was wrongfully convicted only matters if you actually allow those mistakes to be corrected.
We could use improvements at every part of the process. The appeals process however can be particularly awful, and is full of arbitrary restrictions and limitations that have little effect other than making it harder to correct mistakes and injustices. Some of them were put in place for no reason other than because politicians wanted to look tough on crime, and apparently overturning convictions looks bad for the justice system’s track record. But really I was only bringing it up because it’s relevant to the cost argument.
It costs more because those opposed made it so endless appeals were allowed. It’s basically the same thing environmental impact studies can do to development projects.
Is it worth it, knowing that we have 100% executed an innocent man for murdering his three small children in an accidental house fire? Can you imagine the mental agony of not just losing your precious beloved children, but to be convicted and then executed knowing everyone believes you are the worst kind of monster?
Is occasionally killing someone who actually deserves it worth that trade off to you? Because it’s not to me, and I think anyone who says yes is an absolute fucking monster.
That seems to be what Alito couldn’t get past, despite the technical problems and legal questions about counsel.
He’s still entitled to a proper defense. Alito ignored the lower courts wrestling with issues and skipped over the 500+ pages of evidence and discussion of them and did his own ruling. That’s not how justice should work, and the 3 justices called him out on it.
I mean, he killed 3 people with a baseball bat…
I mean,
Like, setting aside the death penalty in general for a second, this is just a flagrant disregard of legal precedent when it comes to legal competency and ineffective assistance of counsel.
Everything here to make any difference, a person would have to have compassion. You won’t find that in Republican judges.
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If true, it sounds like those mitigating factors wouldn’t have changed a thing
I mean, innocent people get put to death so maybe we shouldn’t even kill the ones we’re sure we did what with being unable to unkill people?
I mean, maybe the state shouldn’t have the power of life and death over its citizens.
I mean, it would seem to me that we should strive to be better than the people we convict.
I mean, shouldn’t the U.S. be like every other Western country and not do this shit?
The American justice system is about punishment, not rehabilitation. If it were, we wouldn’t have the death penalty.
I’m going to take the L on this one but nah, I’m pro death penalty. I think there are absolutely times when it is a net good.
Still doesn’t outweigh accidentally executing an innocent prisoner who is later found innocent but too late.
Consider this: it costs more to keep an inmate on death row and execute them than it does to imprison them for life.
If what you like about the death penalty is the punishment aspect, it’s a greater punishment to hold someone in jail for life.
AND if we discover - as does happen a lot - that person is actually innocent, they can be released and still have some sort of life outside of prison. That’s not a great fate, but I would argue it’s much better than depriving them of their life only to find out later they were innocent.
The death penalty just doesn’t make much sense.
Isn’t the reason it costs more to keep someone on death row largely due to the appeals they get?
I’d much rather we spend more making sure we aren’t destroying the lives of innocent people than save money by not giving them as many chances to get an unjust sentence overturned. Which isn’t necessarily a pro-death penalty position, as it could also be a call to reform the appeals process for everyone else.
So the argument is, it costs so much to maintain the filter that tries to keep innocent people from being executed, so let’s make it cheaper by removing some of that filter.
It costs more to execute somebody than keep them in prison forever in order to make as sure as we can that a person is guilty before executing them, by allowing more appeals.
Suggesting the solution to that is fewer appeals is directly saying that it is better to kill more innocent people at a lower cost than it is to not kill anyone.
Also, that it’s worth killing innocent people as long as bad people die. Not to prevent them from committing further harm, but just to kill them.
I’m struggling to see the benefit in that cost/benefit analysis. It’s not about protecting people (because it actively kills innocent people), it’s about killing people just to kill bad people.
Edit: I misunderstood what you were saying. But I would also say that while it would be great to improve the system for the initial trial, removing appeals would have the opposite effect and wouldn’t help the initial trial at all. However, if the initial trials are better, everything would still be cheaper regardless of the appeals because there’d be less people falsely imprisoned on death row.
To be clear, I was just pointing out that the savings aren’t coming from eliminating the death penalty, they are coming from reducing the number of appeals, and therefore increasing the likelihood that an innocent person will spend the rest of their life in prison, which is a bad thing. I’m not advocating for or against the death penalty, but I do think that a life sentence should come with just as many safeguards as a death sentence. The fact that you could release someone who was wrongfully convicted only matters if you actually allow those mistakes to be corrected.
We could use improvements at every part of the process. The appeals process however can be particularly awful, and is full of arbitrary restrictions and limitations that have little effect other than making it harder to correct mistakes and injustices. Some of them were put in place for no reason other than because politicians wanted to look tough on crime, and apparently overturning convictions looks bad for the justice system’s track record. But really I was only bringing it up because it’s relevant to the cost argument.
It costs more because those opposed made it so endless appeals were allowed. It’s basically the same thing environmental impact studies can do to development projects.
Is it worth it, knowing that we have 100% executed an innocent man for murdering his three small children in an accidental house fire? Can you imagine the mental agony of not just losing your precious beloved children, but to be convicted and then executed knowing everyone believes you are the worst kind of monster?
Is occasionally killing someone who actually deserves it worth that trade off to you? Because it’s not to me, and I think anyone who says yes is an absolute fucking monster.
How do you insure that it is only those “net good” times and not any other times?
And why is executing citizens a net good but we keep terrorists alive at Gitmo?
Oh? You can demonstrably prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that society is better without a single, specific convict?
I bet I could do it much easier, verbose, and convincing about lawyers. Should we kill all them next?
I won’t deny that there are some people whose deaths are a net positive. I just don’t trust the government to pick them out.
That seems to be what Alito couldn’t get past, despite the technical problems and legal questions about counsel.
He’s still entitled to a proper defense. Alito ignored the lower courts wrestling with issues and skipped over the 500+ pages of evidence and discussion of them and did his own ruling. That’s not how justice should work, and the 3 justices called him out on it.