Tainted Inquisitions Essay, Research Paper

“Tainted Inquisitions”This is a script for a television talk show which addresses problems in the Criminal Justice System. The following does not necessarily represent the beliefs of the authors but is my interpretations of the readings from class.Detroit, MIINTRODUCTION A large television talk show studio- 1999 ADWe see seven men sitting in a half circle. The show begins with a brief montage, as a narrator speaks over. Narrator (Darrin)Hi and welcome to Tainted Inquisitions I am your host Darrin Zehnpfennig. Today we will addressing some of the defects in the United States Criminal Justice System. We have a great show lined up for you tonight folks. My first guest, James A Inciardi author of “Elements of Criminal Justice” here along with, Gary T Marx author of “Undercover”, Robert Johnson author of “Death Work”, Graeme Newman author of “Just and Painful”, also here tonight the Founding Fathers of The United States along with special guest Detective Nordstrom from the Troy, Michigan police department. The first inquisition I would like to address is the question; Is the death penalty wrong? Since the formation of the United States, the government has used the death penalty to execute more than 13,000 people. Public outcries caused the practice to come to a near halt in the late 60’s. Robert Johnson Since the formation of the United States, the government has used the death penalty to execute more than 13,000 people. Public outcries caused the practice to come to a near halt in the late 60’s. With the case of “Furman vs. Georgia” in 1972, the Supreme court ruled that the state s laws for applying the death penalty were arbitrary, making them violations of the Eighth (cruel and unusual punishment) and Fourteenth (equal protection) Amendments. However in 1976, in “Gregg v. Georgia”, the Supreme Court said that as long as it was not arbitrary, capital punishment was not cruel, and was therefore legal. Today, 38 states have the death penalty. The death penalty is still as inappropriate as it was in 1972 because it is discriminatory, cruel, immoral, and does not achieve the goals it was created to achieve. The death penalty is truly discriminatory towards the young, the poor, and the retarded. NewmanWhat does it say about the value of the victims life when the man who tortured, raped and killed is provided with clean clothes, three square meals a day and cable television? The Criminal would receive these things if sentenced to life in prison while; the people who were murdered are ling in a ditch. Copral punishment can be justified on the grounds that society requires offenders to be punished as well as reformed, and that prison does neither properly, as well as costing the taxpayer a fortune. “Nearly 400,000 Americans are doing time behind bars: a prison population larger than that of any other country except South Africa and the Soviet Union. And one that is expected to double by 1990. Is it worth the billions of dollars it costs every year to keep them there?” No, it is not worth it. Sending most criminals to prison is not only a waste of money. It’s also the wrong kind of punishment. Prisons have failed to rehabilitate or to punish those who break the law. An alternative is corporal punishment. makes a powerful, persuasive argument for restricting prison terms to the hard core of repeat offenders and truly violent criminals. For most crimes and criminals, the temporary physical pain of a carefully controlled electric shock could well be a cheaper, more effective, more meaningful punishment. And it is more humane than years spent facing the random terror and violence of prison. Why has reform after reform failed to halt the spread of crime? How can we demand long, mandatory sentences when voters refuse to spend the money to build more and bigger prisons? Does anyone know what to do with those who break the law? The crucial question we must ask is what kind of punishment-rather than how much of it-fits the crime. For most ordinary crimes and criminals prison is simply the wrong kind of punishment. For first time, nonviolent, or minor offenders, prisons usually do nothing. In fact, most of the 400,000 men and women now behind bars don’t belong there at all. Their lives are daily encounters with violence and humiliation. The penalty inmates pay is not punishment, but arbitrary, unjust suffering unrelated to the crimes they have committed. Do not teach the evil of crime, only its inevitability. There is an alternative to the pointless terror of prison. It is inexpensive. It does not destroy families by taking breadwinners away for years. It is fair: everyone receives the same punishment for the same crime. It is undeniably painful, but only for a short time. It leaves no permanent scars. And it teaches a specific lesson about crime. It is corporal punishment. Carefully controlled electric shocks, such a punishment does not mutilate. It is measurable. And once punished, the offender is released. There is also strong evidence for its potential as a deterrent. Prisons should be reserved for the “truly terrible” minority of violent and repeat offenders, who should be given long sentences with no chance of parole. “We do not seek to ‘cure’ the criminal, but rather to have him atone for his crime.” Punishment, not rehabilitation, is the only logical goal of the criminal justice system. And for punishment to work, it must teach a clear, painful lesson about the literal evil of crime. Without pain, he shows, there is no punishment. Without punishment, there can never be justice. Johnson Looking out for the state of the public s satisfaction in the scheme of capital sentencing does not constitute serving justice. Today s system of capital punishment is fought with inequalities and injustices. The commonly offered arguments for the death penalty are filled with holes. “It was a deterrent. It removed killers. It was the ultimate punishment. It is biblical. It satisfied the public s need for retribution. It relieved the anguish of the victim s family. Realistically, imposing the death penalty is expensive and time consuming. Retroactively, it has yet to be proven as a deterrent. Morally, it is a continuation of the cycle of violence and “…degrades all who are involved in its enforcement, as well as its victim.” Perhaps the most frequent argument for capital punishment is that of deterrence. The prevailing thought is that imposition of the death penalty will act to dissuade other criminals from committing violent acts. Numerous studies have been created attempting to prove this belief; however, “all the evidence taken together makes it hard to be confident that capital punishment deters more than long prison terms do. People are increasingly realizing that the more we resort to killing as a legitimate response to our frustration and anger with violence, the more violent our society becomes. We could execute all three thousand people on death row, and most people would not feel any safer tomorrow. In addition, with the growing humanitarianism of modern society, the number of inmates actually put to death is substantially lower than 50 years ago. This decline creates a situation in which the death penalty ceases to be a deterrent when the populace begins to think that one can get away with a crime and go unpunished. Also, the less that the death sentence is used, the more it becomes unusual, thus coming in conflict with the eighth amendment. This is essentially a paradox, in which the less the death penalty is used, the less society can legally use it. The end result is a punishment that ceases to deter any crime at all. The key part of the death penalty is that it involves death — something which is rather permanent for humans, due to the concept of mortality. This creates a major problem when ” there continue to be many instances of innocent people being sentenced to death.”(Tabak 38) In our legal system, there exist numerous ways in which justice might be poorly served for a recipient of the death sentence. Foremost is in the handling of his own defense counsel. In the event that a defendant is without counsel, a lawyer will be provided. “Attorney s appointed to represent indigent capital defendants frequently lack the qualities necessary to provide a competent defense and sometimes have exhibited such poor character that they have subsequently been disbarred.”(Tabak 37). With payment caps or court determined sums of, for example, $5 an hour, there is not much incentive for a lawyer to spend a great deal of time representing a capital defendant. When you compare this to the prosecution, ” aided by the police, other law enforcement agencies, crime labs, state mental hospitals, various other scientific resources, prosecutors experienced in successfully handling capital cases, compulsory process, and grand juries “(Tabak 37), the defense that the court appointed counsel can offer is puny. If, in fact, a defendant has a valid case to offer, what chance has he to offer it and have it properly recognized. Furthermore, why should he be punished for a misjustice that was created by the court itself when it appointed the incapable lawyer. Even if a defendant has proper legal counsel, there is still the matter of impartiality of judges. “The Supreme Court has steadily reduced the availability of habeas corpus review of capital convictions, placing its confidence in the notion that state judges, who take the same oath of office as federal judges to uphold the Constitution, can be trusted to enforce it.”(Bright 768) This makes for the biased trying of a defendant s appeals, ” given the overwhelming pressure on elected state judges to heed, and perhaps even lead to, the popular cries for the death of criminal defendants.”(Bright 769) Thirty two of the states that impose the death penalty also employ the popular election of judges, and several of these even have judges run with party affiliations. This creates a deeply political justice system — the words alone are a paradox. Can society simply brush off mistaken execution as an incidental cost in the greater scheme of putting a criminal to death? “Revenge is an unworthy motive for our society to pursue.”(Whittier 1) In our society, there is a great expectation placed on the family of a victim to pursue vengeance to the highest degree — the death penalty. Pat Bane, executive director of the Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation (MVFR), stated, “One parent told me that people made her feel like she was betraying her son because she did not want to kill the person who murdered him.”(Frame 50) This creates a dilemma of morality. If anything, by forcing families to seek the death penalty, their own consciences will be burdened by the death of the killer. Furthermore, “[k]illing him will not bring back your son[s].”(Grisham 402). At some point, man must stop the violence. Seeking temporary gratification is not a logical basis for whether the death penalty should be imposed. Granted, revenge is easily confused with retribution, and most would agree that the punishment should fit the crime, but can society really justify murdering someone else simply on the basis that they deserved it? Government has the right and duty to protect the greater good against people who jeopardize the welfare of society, but a killer can be sentenced to life without chance of parole, and society will be just as safe as if he had been executed. A vast misconception concerning the death penalty is that it saves society the costs of keeping inmates imprisoned for long periods. In the act of preserving due process of justice, the court appeals involved with the death penalty becomes a long, drawn-out and very expensive process. “The average time between sentencing and execution for the 31 prisoners put on death row in 1992 was 114 months, or nine and a half years.”(Stewart 50) “Criminal justice process expenses, trial court costs, appellate and post-conviction costs, and prison costs perhaps including years served on death row awaiting execution… all told, the extra costs per death penalty imposed in over a quarter million dollars, and per execution exceeds $2 million.” (Cavanagh 4) When you compare this to the average costs for a twenty year prison term for first degree murder (roughly $330 thousand), the cost of putting someone away for life is a deal. Is it really worth the hassle and money to kill a criminal, when we can put them away for life for less money with a great deal more ease? In earlier times–where capital punishment was common, the value of life was less, and societies were more barbaric–capital punishment was probably quite acceptable. However, in today s society, which is becoming ever more increasingly humanitarian, and individual rights and due process of justice are held in high accord, the death penalty is becoming an unrealistic form of punishment. Also, with the ever present possibility of mistaken execution, there will remain the question of innocence of those put to death. Finally, man is not a divine being. He does not have the right to inflict mortal punishment in the name of society s welfare, when there are suitable substitutes that require fewer resources. I ask society, “…why don t we stop the killing?”

Darrin I am sure the two of you could debate over this question for ever but I think we better move on. I would like to address the issue of new technological sevalience practices and weather they violate our due process rights. Marx- The advent of sophisticated electronic communications equipment has made our communications a matter of unprecedented simplicity. At the same time, though, users of the new telecommunications devices are vulnerable to abuse of various kinds. The use of surveillance equipment to monitor electronic communications is becoming widely accepted as a means of dealing with computer crimes, such as “spamming.” But the new surveillance methods also have the potential to intrude upon personal privacy if misused. My recent project; “Windows into the Soul,” analyzes the social, cultural, ethical, and policy aspects of the new technologies that have been developed for collecting personal information. Because such data collection is inexpensive and can be done without the individual’s consent and knowledge, it raises profound questions for a democratic society. “In starting the book, I viewed undercover tactics as an unnecessary evil. But in the course of the research, I concluded, however reluctantly, that they are a necessary evil,” I discovered a morass of moral, social and legal ambiguities involved in the use of undercover operations that raise questions, not only about the effectiveness of specific law enforcement operations, but about the country standards of privacy and trust. “Secret police behavior and surveillance go to the heart of the kind of society we are or might become.” “By studying the changes in covert tactics, a window on something much broader can be gained. “The most obvious change is the tremendous growth of covert and undercover operations by local and federal law enforcement agencies during the last decade: in 1977, for example, the FBI appropriated $1 million for 53 undercover operations. Seven years later, the bureau alone spent more than $12 million for nearly 400 such operations. A major impetus for the increase in undercover operations, is the growth of white-collar crime and the need for law enforcement agencies to become more aggressive in anticipating, rather than just reacting to, crime. “Undercover work grows easily out of an emphasis on planning, prevention and productivity. It offers a means of actively pursuing crime through direct involvement and police initiative. It fits with the notion of the modern police officer prevailing via intelligence, skill and finesse, rather than brute force and coercion.” But in analyzing hundreds of undercover operations, ranging from the infamous ABSCAM sting operations of the late 1970s to Operation Falcon, an undercover maneuver run the US Fish and Wildlife Service in the mid-1980s, I found that some of the operations raised — but did not answer — some fundamental questions. “the higher the level of supervision, the poorer the quality of information, and the greater the time required for decisions.” the more extensive the controls, the greater the likelihood of leaks that can compromise an operation… and destroy an informer. The more deeply an informant is involved in crime, the more useful he is. But that may make him more difficult to control. “I think the alarmists who say 1984 is already here are overstating the situation.” “At the same time, I can’t accept the cheerleaders who say that any tactic that reduces crime is acceptable. “The central reality is more complex than extremists at either end will allow.” His work is an effort to unravel that complexity. The Most pressing is the debate over such issues as the relationship between the individual and the state, or the viability of our 19th-century notion of privacy and the realities of 20th-century life, should be decided by the public and not by a small group of policy makers inside the law enforcement community. Americans have already submitted to a loss of privacy and an increase in surveillance with barely a discussion of how and why it has taken place. In a chapter on “The New Surveillance,” I note that government agencies may now monitor the most personal habits of individuals through massive computer data bases. “People under 25, assume that metal detectors and closed-circuit video cameras have always been standard equipment in airports.” A range of space-age devices, from computer-enhanced satellite photography to”starlight scope” light amplifiers, computerized telephone registers, and sensors are activated by sound, heat or motion has laid the groundwork, for a “maximum-security society”. The increase in undercover operations as not juste another device in the ongoing battle between cops and robbers, but as a significant strand of the new surveillance. “In a democratic society, cover police tactics, along with may of the other surveillance techniques, offer us a queasy ethical and moral paradox,” “The choice between anarchy and repression is not a happy one, wherever the balance is struck.” In some cases, the use of undercover operations is the “least bad” alternative available. “Used with great care, they may be a necessary evil. The challenge is to prevent them from becoming an intolerable one.”