"If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed," [Sandra Day O'Connor] said Monday. She also decried the gap in legal defense available to those with money and those without. In Texas last year, she said, those who were represented by appointed defense attorneys were 28 percent more likely to be convicted than were those who had retained their own attorneys; if convicted, they also were 44 percent more likely to be sentenced to death "Perhaps it's time to look at minimum standards for appointed counsel in death cases and adequate compensation for appointed counsel when they are used," she said to applause.
So the question is, are Sandra Day O'Connor's concerns shared by any of the more conservative members of the court? I mean, when Scalia can say, angrily but in all seriousness, that factual innocence is no reason to void a death sentence which was correctly arrived at by operation of law and a jury trial, it doesn't suggest that the conservative justices are actually concerned with "justice" per se, now does it? (To be as fair to the man as I care to be, he thought that the governor of Texas should have commuted the sentence or outright pardoned the man based on the evidence long before it reached the Court.)
Replies: 2 comments
The question is a lie. Scalia did not say that 'factual innocence is no reason to void a death sentence', as a reading of the very source you cite shows. I cannot fathom why such a lie was created, except as slander.
Posted by Shane @ 12/03/2002 12:31 PM CST
The question is a lie. Scalia did not say that 'factual innocence is no reason to void a death sentence', as a reading of the very source you cite shows. I cannot fathom why such a lie was created, except as slander.
Posted by Shane @ 12/03/2002 12:33 PM CST
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