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Why Murder Victims’ Families Should Witness Executions?

The conflicting views of victims, American culture, and the question of a just and principled death penalty. Why Murder Victims’ Families Should Witness Executions?. Emotional Closure Symbolic Representation. Does Witnessing Executions Provide Closure?. Psychology of Closure is Problematic

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Why Murder Victims’ Families Should Witness Executions?

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  1. The conflicting views of victims, American culture, and the question of a just and principled death penalty

  2. Why Murder Victims’ Families Should Witness Executions? Emotional Closure Symbolic Representation

  3. Does Witnessing Executions Provide Closure? Psychology of Closure is Problematic Family may NEVER have closure False Hope The public spectacle of the execution may not be the appropriate place.

  4. Viewing Executions May be Detrimental to the Family Disappointment and feelings of increased rage "He died an extremely lot easier than my daughter did.....He got a spiritual advisor, the choice of a last meal. I wish I'd had a last chance to be with my daughter," commented the mother of victim stated after witnessing Robert Lee Willie's electrocution. The father later commented to Willie's spiritual advisor, "Know what they should've done with Willie?.....They should've strapped him in that chair, counted to ten, then at the count of nine taken him out of the chair and let him sit in his cell for a day or two and then strapped him in the chair again."

  5. Can the death penalty be made just and principled?Study Questions • What are some of the key findings of Liebman, Fagan, and West’s study of error rates in capital cases between 1973-1995? • Broken System I & II • Incredibly HIGH error rates • Quality of Counsel • The more often and directly state trial judges are subject to popular election, and the more partisan those elections are, the higher the state's rate of serious capital error.

  6. According to leading capital defense attorney Stephen Bright, why does there remain a pervasive inadequacy of counsel for poor capital defendants? • Profoundly Inadequate Funding • Lack of a functioning adversary system • Lack of Indigent Defense Programs • Woeful Compensation for Attorneys • Elected State Judges • Tolerating Low Standards of Legal Representation

  7. According to Stephen Bright, why has the system failed to keep the promise of Gideon v. Wainwright?

  8. The Sixth Amendment “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”

  9. Gideon’s Muted Trumpet • Guaranteeing the Right to an Attorney • The Failure to Realize Gideon v. Wainwright • No right to meaningful counsel at any phase of the criminal legal process • No constitutional obligation that the government must pay

  10. Lack of Reform:Congress’s Actions • In 1996, Congress cut funding for the nations 20 death penalty resource centers, eliminating major resources for indigent defendants. • Now, only about a dozen of the 38 states with the death penalty have state-organized public defender programs that handle capital cases. • Only 8 states have specialized death penalty units that serve all or part of the state.

  11. Why politics matters? • Focus on “tough on crime” over equal justice • $97.5 Billion spent annually on criminal justice • Half of these funds go to police & prosecutors • Only 1.3% of annual federal funds and only 2% of combined federal and state funds go to Indigent Defense.

  12. David Dow: Executed on a Technicality • “We do not need the Vickers cases—or any other case I have discussed in this book—to teach us that there is murder and evil in our midst; that we sadly already know. We do need the Vickers case, and cases like it, to remind us that these inmates are in fact human, and to illuminate a tragic phenomenon that we remain loath to concede: In death penalty cases, we have abandoned our principles. We have replaced our lofty ideals with crass expedience. The tragedy of contemporary death penalty litigation is not simply that innocent victims were murdered; the further tragedy is that we use those murders as excuses to violate our constitutional values. We defile ourselves and innocent victims by using the victims as pretexts. By willfully ignoring that death row inmates are human beings, we say that the “animals” deserve to die; and since it is only an animal after all, the ends justify the means. Death penalty law is not law at all. It is the rule of the mob (Dow 2005: 176-177). “

  13. Key Focal Points of the Book • Ineffective Assistance of Counsel • AEDPA • Death is Different • Tragedy v. Wrong • Retribution is not mob rule

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