Unit 1012 awards the Rayner
Goddard Act of Courage Award to Joshua Marquis, Clatsop County district attorney from Oregon for defending
the death penalty.
Joshua Marquis
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SOURCE: http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/10/eliminate_the_death_penalty_an.html
Eliminate the
death penalty, and you'll end up with killers back on the streets (OPINION)
on October 03, 2015 at 2:00 PM, updated October 03, 2015 at 2:01 PM
By Joshua Marquis
The Oregonian editorial board has
changed its mind on the death penalty at
least four times in the last 20 years. Even more frequently than Oregon voters.
In the 20th century, Oregonians have voted five times to either abolish or
restore capital punishment. The last two times, in 1977 and 1984, the vote was
to restore the penalty.
If there is, in fact, a vote, it will
be interesting to see how much of the "abolition" money comes from
billionaires opposing the death penalty (both right and left wing ones). First,
they are trying — and sometimes succeeding — in buying elections in states in
which they do not live. Millions of dollars in political advertising can sell
any number of urban myths as true. More importantly, the families of the
wealthy are usually not the victims of murder. The victims are poor children,
women and people of color.
Second, name a single person sentenced
to death since Oregon reinstituted the death penalty who was later found to be
innocent. That number is zero. Yet, the myth persists that we have executed the
innocent.
Opponents of the death penalty have
made it clear that once that battle is won, their next target will be attacking
life without parole (LWOP) arguing that it violates the Eighth Amendment's
prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. There have already been some
court decisions forbidding LWOP for murder in other states.
To think that taking the rarely sought
death penalty off the table will save buckets of money is naive at best.
People like Ward Weaver pled guilty to
avoid the death penalty. If that possibility had not been there, the trials to
avoid LWOP would be just as long, just as expensive, just as draining for the
victims' survivors.
Anyone who watches murder cases
progress knows that a person who isn't facing the death penalty (he might, for
example have been extradited from Mexico, which will only extradite on
agreement the killer not face death) has just as much incentive to tap the
enormous tax-paid public defense system, which generally offers excellent, if
expensive, representation. In order to get the chance for parole (the next
penalty down from LWOP), the defense will have at least two experienced defense
lawyers, investigators, mitigation specialists, psychologists and jury
consultants. Nobody wants to spend their life in prison. In the criminal
justice system, where there's life, there is always hope for parole.
For anyone who thinks a mass
commutation or changing the Constitution to forbid capital punishment means
former death row murderers will never leave prison: Dream on. Apart from the
fact that in the modern era Oregon's first death row inmate escaped from
prison, other murderers already doing life killed again in prison. Without a
death penalty and the announced elimination of the Intensive Management Unit
(it had been called "the prison within the prison" for particularly
hard cases), there is very little disincentive for someone who has shown a
propensity to kill to change his ways.
Beyond that, eight of the men on death
row committed their murders before LWOP was made law. We really have no idea if
the courts will even uphold LWOP as it has only existed for 25 years in Oregon.
For those men, abolition of Oregon's death penalty means two things will happen
for those inmates: First, since a punishment cannot be imposed ex post facto
under constitutional law, those inmates will get the next harshest sentence
available. Consequently, a parole board hearing will be likely and victims'
families will have to listen to their loved ones' killers plead for freedom.
Second, the minimum sentence before 1990 was 30 years, so a quarter of those on
death row could walk out of prison. If you think that's impossible, ask the
scores of victims of murderers who were slaughtered across America after their
killers were legally released from a so-called "life sentence."
Psychologists tell us that the best
predictor of future behavior is past behavior. This doesn't just apply to
people; it also applies to institutions. Until Measure 11 ensured that
murderers sentenced to life served at least 25 years, the average time served in
Oregon for a "life sentence" for murder was eight years.
•
Joshua Marquis, Clatsop County district attorney
since 1994, has both prosecuted and defended capital murder cases.
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