Scalia on Capital Punishment

[LifelongHawk]

When the court declined to review an unrelated death row case out of Texas in 1994, Justice Harry A. Blackmun issued a dissenting opinion arguing that capital punishment is cruel and unusual, and therefore unconstitutional.

Scalia answered back with an opinion of his own:

"For example, the case of an 11-year-old girl raped by four men and then killed by stuffing her panties down her throat," Scalia wrote in Callins v. Collins. "How enviable a quiet death by lethal injunction compared with that!"

He was referring to Henry Lee McCollum, who at the time had already been on death row for 12 years.

Rest of the story? McCollum didn't do it, was exonerated by DNA evidence and pardoned by the Governor in the fall of 2014......20 years after Scalia highlighted the wonderfulness of killing him off and 30 years after his incarceration.

In Scalia's defense, if everybody would have listened to him in '94 he likely would never have been exonerated and the feeling of the wonderfulness of killing him could have lasted forever.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/dna-evidence-clears-inmate-death-row

 

[hawkifann]

I'm anti-death penalty because I don't think the state should have the right to take a life, because I think life in prison has been proven cheaper than capital punishment and because of cases like the McCollum case (though they are rare). That said, though, I completely understand the line of logic Scalia used and a lot of people buy into that. That he used McCollum, who was ultimately exonerated, is interesting, but he could have plugged in any number of others who did heinous things and were proven guilty without a shadow of a doubt. Again, I disagree with Scalia's take, but even though I'm diametrically opposed to his view on this topic, I can't really criticize him over it.

 

[theIowaHawk]

When the court declined to review an unrelated death row case out of Texas in 1994, Justice Harry A. Blackmun issued a dissenting opinion arguing that capital punishment is cruel and unusual, and therefore unconstitutional.

Scalia answered back with an opinion of his own:

"For example, the case of an 11-year-old girl raped by four men and then killed by stuffing her panties down her throat," Scalia wrote in Callins v. Collins. "How enviable a quiet death by lethal injunction compared with that!"

He was referring to Henry Lee McCollum, who at the time had already been on death row for 12 years.

Rest of the story? McCollum didn't do it, was exonerated by DNA evidence and pardoned by the Governor in the fall of 2014......20 years after Scalia highlighted the wonderfulness of killing him off and 30 years after his incarceration.

In Scalia's defense, if everybody would have listened to him in '94 he likely would never have been exonerated and the feeling of the wonderfulness of killing him could have lasted forever.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/dna-evidence-clears-inmate-death-row

A great, (should be) non-partisan point that I hope he thought long, hard about.

There is only one flip-side to this argument, and that is the "system works" idea, that he was in fact convicted, therefore he did do it ... and that the system proved him innocent later, showing that it works.

 

[Hoosierhawkeye]

I don't think it's fair that Scalia get beat up because he didn't at the time know this guy was innocent. I'm guessing few people did. However this case does show why the death penalty is a bad idea IMO.

A great, (should be) non-partisan point that I hope he thought long, hard about.

There is only one flip-side to this argument, and that is the "system works" idea, that he was in fact convicted, therefore he did do it ... and that the system proved him innocent later, showing that it works.

To be fair I really don't think one could take a guy who was imprisoned for a long time for murder and then later found to be innocent and eventually freed as an example of the system working.

At best you could say the system eventually corrected it's mistake as best it can.

But the system working means that innocent people arn't damaged by the system and have nothing to fear from it. And you can't say that was the case here.

 

[theIowaHawk]

I don't think it's fair that Scalia get beat up because he didn't at the time know this guy was innocent. I'm guessing few people did. However this case does show why the death penalty is a bad idea IMO.



To be fair I really don't think one could take a guy who was imprisoned for a long time for murder and then later found to be innocent and eventually freed as an example of the system working.

At best you could say the system eventually corrected it's mistake as best it can.

But the system working means that innocent people arn't damaged by the system and have nothing to fear from it. And you can't say that was the case here.

It isn't about beating up on Scalia. It is about beating down the idea of capital punishment. His point was that the very specific victim in that very specific case didn't get the benefit of a nice death. Sure, valid point. But he was using that logic to punish the guy who (didn't) committed the crime. Obviously that logical correlation fails when it wasn't the right guy.

Take this made-up conversation for example:

Guy 1: "I am against the death penalty because it is an inherently unjust system that often gets the wrong guy and there is no going back after killing them."

Guy 2: "He didn't give that precious, innocent little girl an easy death, therefore killing him this way is too good for him, I support the death penalty."

Those two things aren't arguments against each other in any way. Guy 1 is arguing against the death penalty for reasons other than revenge/deterrence. Guy 2 is all but arguing only for revenge, but I'll grant him deterrence as well.

But the point, here, is that Guy 2 loses credibility when the guy he is discussing is not, in fact, the guy who did it.

It isn't beating up on Scalia, it is beating up on that very idea, which ignores the possibility/likelihood the person didn't do it. It is an essential part of the problem: knowing they did it (until you are wrong).