As a follow up to my diary on
Kansas v. Marsh and comments that followed, I thought that I should post the truly disturbing concurrence by Justice Scalia. As a background, see [
Alito, the gift that just keeps on giving - WTF]
Scalia's opinion is below the fold.
In responding to Justice Stevens dissent, Justice Scalia decides that it is time he told exactly how he feels about the death penalty and its application to innocent people. At the same time he misstates the facts about how many innocent people are executed and the polls support for the death penalty.
Justice Scalia first makes this statement:
It should be noted at the outset that the dissent does not discuss a single case--not one--in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops by the abolition lobby.
I guess he missed this article.
[Texas man executed on disproved forensics]
Scalia goes on to say one of the most disturbing statements I think I have read from him and even those that support the death penalty find disturbing.
Like other human institutions, courts and juries are not perfect. One cannot have a system of criminal punishment without accepting the possibility that someone will be punished mistakenly. That is a truism, not a revelation. But with regard to the punishment of death in the current American system, that possibility has been reduced to an insignificant minimum. This explains why those ideologically driven to ferret out and proclaim a mistaken modern execution have not a single verifiable case to point to, whereas it is easy as pie to identify plainly guilty murderers who have been set free. The American people have determined that the good to be derived from capital punishment--in deterrence, and perhaps most of
all in the meting out of condign justice for horrible crimes--outweighs the risk of error. It is no proper part ofthe business of this Court, or of its Justices, to second-guess that judgment, much less to impugn it before the world, and less still to frustrate it by imposing judicially invented obstacles to its execution. (emphasis added)
So Scalia believes that to have the death penalty we must accept the killing of innocent people. He supports this by saying it is an insignificant number. Even so, even if he is right, one is too many for me. Furthermore, the more procedural hurdles Justice Scalia and his brethren put up the more likely our society will kill innocent people.
And this man is allegedly one of the gate-keepers of our Consitution and our civil liberties. It is a sad day indeed.