ANNAPOLIS, Md. - NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said Tuesday that Maryland needs to abolish capital punishment to help lead the way in ending it in other states, and he believes the September execution of Troy Davis in Georgia last year has sparked greater interest in ending the death penalty.
"People in this country care about fairness," Jealous said at a news conference in Annapolis with other civil rights leaders and state lawmakers opposed to capital punishment. "They're outraged about what happened to Troy Davis. They want to see our country join the rest of the western world and abolish the death penalty. In order to get there, Maryland has to do it."
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12 comments:
"People in this country care about fairness". What planet is Benjamin Jealous from?
WHy isn't the NAACP outraged about the genocide of blacks through abortion? Each year almost half a MIILION black babies are aborted in this country. Where is the outrage about that NAACP?
2:16 you half a Million Fatherless babies that's how they roll.
2:16, don't let the hype fool yah. There are a ton of black people who ask the same question and more including:
"Why isn't the NAACP outraged about....
#1 black on black violence v. 1.0 (shootings)
#2 black on black violence v. 2.0 (flash mobs and public brawls)
#3 teen pregnancies
#4 drug abuse
#5 highschool drop out rates.
I think many of us working to address these issues are tired of seeing our supposed "black leaders" harp on about bs instead of attacking the real issues.
#3
Benjamin Jealous is an idiot. And if O'Malley wants to get rid of the death penalty cause he is a bleeding heart liberal, an Obama clone. He should put on the ballot and let Marylanders vote on it. I am all for the death penalty. Talk about fairness. How fair was it to the murdered victims, that were innocent and guilty of nothing. They were killed in cold blood. The murderers on death row should die and stop wasting taxpayer money keeping them alive. I know I worked in a stste prison in housing units with murderers, rapist, amd child molesters. The truth is you haven't seen one dead man do any of these crimes. So with the death penalty you have no repeat offenders. Think on that a while you bleeding heart liberals.
I'm FOR the death penalty no matter which social organization is against it. SA's don't even try anymore because of the EXCUSE that MD won't do anything and cost. Bull, these animals need to be held accountable.
I know I worked in a stste prison in housing units with murderers, rapist, amd child molesters.
Hell, some of you guys are just as bad, if not worse, than those you babysit. Unless you have a master's in criminal justice and years practicing it, keep your biased and wrong opinion to yourself.
Not everyone convicted is guilty, as we have repeatedly been shown.
If members of law enforcement and the judicial system were held accountable for their actions, and not have blanket immunity, there would be more confidence in the system.
To anon 8:06 You can't get the death penalty in Maryland unless
1) They have DNA evidence or
2) you were video taped commiting murder or
3) You have the murderers confession.
So if you take that into consideration, everyone that gets the death penalty is guilty as hell. So quit your crying you bleeding heart liberal A**hole. And let's kill those murdering MF'ers.
9:05 PM
Maryland is no different than any other state. The 'system' is made up of humans and humans make mistakes. I don't have all the answers to anything but I can do research and find out facts instead of using emotional feelings and opinions.
This was just a short search and it quite long. I had to stop it because it took up a lot of space and most won't read very long comments.
I value human life too much to simply trust government, police, courts, humans, to do the right thing. As you yourself has shown, you are more concerned about killing someone than finding all the facts. And that is only one thing wrong with the 'system'. There are many more.
Kirk Bloodsworth Maryland. Convicted 1984. Exonerated 1993; first prisoner to be exonerated by DNA evidence. Serving life in prison when exonerated, as earlier death sentence was overturned.
On the other hand, the study found that the leading causes of wrongful convictions for murder were false confessions and perjury by co- defendants, informants, police officers or forensic scientists.
A separate study considering 125 cases involving false confessions was published in the North Carolina Law Review last month and found that such confessions were most common among groups vulnerable to suggestion and intimidation.
"There are three groups of people most likely to confess," said Steven A. Drizin, a law professor at Northwestern, who conducted the study with Richard A. Leo, a professor of criminology at the University of California, Irvine. "They are the mentally retarded, the mentally ill and juveniles."
Professor Drizin, too, said that false confessions were most common in murder cases.
"Those are the cases where there is the greatest pressure to obtain confessions," he said, "and confessions are often the only way to solve those crimes."
Professor Drizin said that videotaping of police interrogations would cut down on false confessions.
The authors of the Michigan study offered dueling rationales for the murder exonerations, and both reasons, they said, were disturbing.
And the rest of it:
There may be more murder exonerations, they said, because the cases attract more attention, especially when a death sentence is imposed. Death row inmates represent a quarter of 1 percent of the prison population but 22 percent of the exonerated.
Police officers coaxed
Anthony Gray to
confess to a 1991 rape
and murder. Gray, who
has limited cognitive
abilities, pled guilty
and was convicted;
Approximately 18 percent of those convicted are later found to be innocent.
As of February 2004, 113 inmates had been found innocent and released from death row. More than half of these have been released in the last 10 years. That means one person has been exonerated for every eight people executed.
A study by Columbia University professor James Liebman examined thousands of capital sentences that had been reviewed by courts in 34 states from 1973 to 1995. ""An astonishing 82 percent of death row inmates did not deserve to receive the death penalty,"" he said in his conclusion. ""One in twenty death row inmates is later found not guilty.""
When police chiefs were asked to rank the factors that, in their judgment, reduce the rate of violent crime, they mentioned curbing drug use and putting more officers on the street, longer sentences and gun control. They ranked the death penalty as least effective. Politicians who preach the desirability of executions as a method of crime control deceive the public and mask their own failure to identify and confront the true causes of crime.
Between 2000-2009, the murder rate in states with capital punishment was 35-46% higher than states without the death penalty.
Every year, thousands of criminals are convicted on the basis of confessions obtained from police interrogations. Experts say law enforcement interrogation techniques are so effective that they can break down the most hardened criminal — and even people who are innocent of the crime they are being accused of. Experts believe there have been hundreds of cases where innocent men succumbed to interrogation and confessed to crimes they did not commit.
"You take someone who is vulnerable, like a grieving family member or someone who isn't used to being confronted by police," says Rich Fallin, a former Maryland police officer who specialized in interrogations, "If interrogated long enough, they'll probably confess."
Assuming Police Tell the Truth
everyone that gets the death penalty is guilty as hell.
Recent history has proven otherwise.
Working in a prison does not make anyone an expert on criminality. Most of the guards have same level of education as those that they 'guard'.
Some of which have to use their fingers to do a head count.
Most of the inmates are in there for breaking some law and are sent there AS punishment, not FOR punishment.
Some are in there for other reasons. It is these 'other' reasons that I am concerned with.
If you don't believe there are people in prison that were wrongfully convicted, you are less educated than I suspected.
more guiltys go free than innocents are executed(very few)
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