For nave followers the notion that capital punishment is unfair is an uncritically accepted faith based on logical fallacies unwarranted assumptions and insupportable assertions. For knowing leaders the demand for fairness is a cynical ploy intended to abolish the penalty rather than make it fair.
CONTINUED FROM Part VIII NOTE: It is the readers choice whether to consult or disregard the many links below. The main goal here is to be easily understood while providing proof for those who might think that what follows is fiction. This is written to enable easy reading without looking at the links. Where possible links are provided directly to specific locations within linked items. Otherwise if available specific page or part numbers within linked items are provided in parentheses next to links. Nearly all items are freely accessible.____________________________________________________________
The Court thus assumes the role of a finely tuned calibrator of depravity…." Justice Byron White
(h) The Judicially Created Mitigating Benefits of Repeat Violent Crime One-upping U.S. Supreme Court justices judicial murderer advocates on New York States highest court have gone beyond banning punishment for new criminal violence by those already serving life sentences. At least they are kept in prison when caught. In New York clearly guilty murderers who committed prior violent crimes have been allowed to go scot-free because they committed prior violent crimes! Cant believe it? Well an aptly entitled movie Outrage provides a rare and amazingly accurate media portrayal of the absurd lengths to which some judges go to free brutal murderers. Those who dont trust any media should consult the dissent of three judges (236 239):Further details and protests concerning New Yorks embarrassing" incomprehensible" and unjust" protection for career criminals can be found here and here. When career criminals have greater protection against conviction than first time offenders this again may strike many as utterly irrational. (i) The White Collar Fairness Exception Sentencing has been made irrational in two senses. First when a certain point is reached a progressively worsening criminal record magically about-faces from aggravating to mitigating making the worst offenders ineligible" for further punishment no matter what additional atrocities they commit. Second the lack of any criminal record makes a law-abiding individual eligible" for far harsher punishment than if he had the most violent and depraved possible criminal record. And in New York a criminal record may render a murderer ineligible" not only for punishment but even for conviction. In sum when punishment is determined by an obsession with criminals rather than a focus upon their crimes sentencing becomes unrelated to the severity of crimes. In his classic address 74 years ago on the role and duties of prosecutors then-Attorney Generaland later Justice Robert H. Jackson made the following trenchant observation:A defendant who commits a crime while out on bail should not be immune from questioning by police with respect to his latest criminal acts. Such a rule … benefits the repeat offender….The police … did not know defendant had counsel on … earlier charges and defendant never indicated in any manner that he desired the aid of an attorney … The majority … carries the right to counsel to unheard of extremes. It is the common criminal not the one-time offender who nearly always … has at least one serious charge pending so that the attorney in the picture can provide him with virtual immunity from questioning in subsequent investigations. … The majority has …provided what is in effect a dispensation for the persistent offender.
These words ring far truer today than in 1940: Harvey Silverglate contends that legislators have created so many non-violent crimes that everyone commits Three Felonies a Day. Others object that almost everything has been criminalized and dishonest rogue prosecutors can now place everyone under arrest. Now more than ever peaceful people considered by themselves and others to be decent hard-working and law-abiding are being ensnared prosecuted persecuted and sentenced to jail as criminals. They are being financially destroyed with their lives and families ruined. They are being punished for doing what the most violent and depraved can do with impunity (and can do far worse). For example defrauding the government is a serious crime that should not be excused. But should this result in a 14 to 41-year prison sentence for a man with no prior criminal record which at age 52 could be a life sentence when high court justices ordered that Ehrlich Coker not be punished at all for rape? Was that fair"? As shown in Part VIII murder cases last decades. Sometimes they do not end until a convicted and sentenced murderer dies of natural causes. By stunning contrast at warp speed Ronald J. Strong a sick 50-year-old non-violent man was prosecuted and sentenced to jail for having an attack of uncontrollable diarrhea in a federal courthouse. As of August 2014 a skilled gainfully employed young single mother of two with no criminal record faced a 42-month prison sentence for mistakenly believing a permit issued for a gun lawfully purchased for self-defense in one state would be valid in neighboring state. The Supreme Court will soon decide the fate of John L. Yates a commercial fisherman sentenced to jail for the dastardly deed of allegedly destroying three fish. Still worse former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik himself having spent nearly four years in jail for a white collar crime says he served with another commercial fisherman who was not only jailed for catching too many fish but also had his profitable business destroyed along with the livelihood of his family and a loss of tax revenue to the government (11:10). It is not the purpose here to delve into courthouse diarrhea attacks gun permits and fishing. Instead the point is this. The disproportionately" harsh punishment for the crimes in the cases cited cannot remotely compare to rape and murder unpenalized rape and murder! There is no end to examples of prosecution and persecution of hard-working and always law-abiding individuals without criminal records often for what many people if not most would not even believe to be crimes. (For more see here here and here.) However those with the most barbaric records precisely because they are the worst barbarians have been given the right" to commit further barbarity free from fear of any punishment. Outside the Wonderland of Fairness Phonies one needs no precise measuring instrument to understand that this is morally wrong and supremely unfair. All this punctuates the vast values chasm referred to in Part I One side focuses upon violent crimes; the other is fixated on protecting violent criminals and ruining the lives of decent non-violent (166) individuals. For the Phonies it is unfair to punish the usually poor violent while not going after non-violent cushy white-collar offenders who allegedly are not much less damaging (486) than those who are violent. (The Supreme Court has allowed Yates to pursue his case in forma pauperis. So much for cases against the non-violent being confined to the cushy!) While protecting the violent the Phonies have created a new class" of non-violent criminals." There probably never has been a time in history when there has been such open warfare against these people with lives families finances and businesses ruined. For the Phonies fairness is not a matter of guilt or innocence; it is a matter of protecting those guilty of violence. And the more depraved the violence the more they rant about fairness." For them it is those who have been most law-abiding and hard-working who deserve most to be prosecuted and punished. CONTINUED IN Part X __________________________ Lester Jackson Ph.D. a former college political science teacher views mainstream media truth suppression as essential to harmful judicial activism. His recent articles are collected here. _______________________________________ Copyright ©: 2014 Lester Jackson Ph.D.The most dangerous power of the prosecutor is that he will pick people … rather than…cases …. A prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation … on the part of almost anyone. In such a case it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it it is a question of picking the man … to pin some offense on him.