[Osx-nutters] Jeb Bush on the Death Penalty in Florida - Google Video

[Roger Howard]

On Tue, January 9, 2007 7:32 am, Chuck Bennett wrote:
>
> On Jan 8, 2007, at 4:57 PM, Kevin Callahan wrote:
>
>> video here:
>> <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4291694866835252763&q=bush
>> +death&hl=en>
>>
>> related story:
>> <unknown.gif>
>>
>>
>> JAMES CARROLL
>> The lynching of Iraq
>> By James Carroll  |  January 8, 2007
>>
>> THE HANGING of Saddam Hussein Dec. 30 offered a view into the
>> grotesque reality of what America has sponsored in Iraq, and what
>> Americans saw should inform their response to President Bush's
>> escalation of the war.
>>
>> The deposed tyrant was mercilessly taunted. As he stood on the
>> threshold of the afterlife and was told to go to hell, the world
>> witnessed a chilling elevation of the ancient curse, making an
>> absolute villain an object of pity.
>>
>> And then, in chanting the name of Moqtada al-Sadr, whose family had
>> been a particular target of Hussein's his executioners made clear
>> that the execution was an act of tribal revenge, not of national
>> restoration, much less justice. It was a lynching. This Shi'ite
>> brutality is guaranteed to spawn Sunni savagery. Iraq itself is hell.
>>
>> Officials of the United States, from military commanders in Baghdad
>> to members of the Bush administration in Washington, sought to
>> distance themselves from the bedlam, but they are essential to what
>> happened at the last moments of Saddam's life. Decorum would have
>> been the main note of his death if Americans had managed it, but
>> the execution would have been no less an act of false justice.
>>
>> The harsh fact is that the Shi'ite dominated government of Nouri al-
>> Maliki, in its contemptible treatment of a man about to die, laid
>> bare the dark truth of Bush's war. This is what revenge looks like,
>> and revenge (not weapons of mass destruction, not democracy) drove
>> the initial US attack on Saddam Hussein every bit as much as it
>> snuffed out his life at the end. The hooded executioners took their
>> cue from George W. Bush.
>>
>> And why should they not have? Let's remember who this man is. As
>> governor of Texas, he presided over the executions of 152 people,
>> including the first woman put to death in Texas in a century. Her
>> name was Karla Faye Tucker. Bush's response to the world-wide plea
>> raised in her behalf was an astounding display of cruelty, a
>> mocking imitation of the woman begging not to be killed.
>>
>> Bush rejected appeals for clemency in every death penalty case that
>> came before him. The Texas death chamber, with its lethal injection
>> gurney, is a place of decorum. And savagery. That executions
>> defined the main public distinction that Bush brought to the US
>> presidency sums up the national disgrace, while suggesting also how
>> little surprise there should be that America is presided over now
>> by an executioner-in-chief.
>
>
> Completely  disingenuous..  In Texas, the Governor has very limited
> power over executions.

First, I do think the linking of the execution of Saddam to Bush's
performance as Governor is disingenuous. Even if we had an anti-death
penalty President I doubt, all other things being equal, it would have
turned out any differently. While the conduct at the execution was
disgraceful by US standards, it was hardly surprising to me; frankly it
was to be expected, and had nothing to do with Bush mocking Karla Faye
Tucker.

However, you seem to be taking issue with Carroll's assertions about
Bush's   performance as Governor, with respect to executions. I don't
think this article shows ignorance to Texas law - he states simply that
Bush didn't grant clemency in a single case that came before him. That's
fact, and an interesting one, which is supported by Bush's on-the-record
remarks that he believes every single execution was carried out on people
rightly convicted and deserving death. Given the even limited possibility
of a wrongful conviction, and the records in many other states supporting
the notion that it may be anything but limited, and given other components
of Texas' legal system including the lack of a public defender's office,
that's a pretty bold position, and it makes his record of not granting
even a single 30 day reprieve relevant.

I didn't see this article as suggesting Bush should have unilaterally
acted to commute death sentences in violation of state law, and am not
sure where you get that conclusion.

And Bush's reaction to the pleas for Karla Faye's life was reasonably seen
as offensive. Executions, if they must take place, should be taken
extremely seriously, and with an enormous amount of gravity. THey
shouldn't be media circuses, and all efforts to ensure the fairness of the
verdict should be taken, yet politicians like Bush have repeatedly
criticized the appeals processes and undermined attempts at allowing
modern reexaminations of evidence using techniques that weren't available
at trial.

On the one hand - ignoring my personal feelings about the death penalty -
I think that technical appeals can be abused, and what should matter in
all cases is the justness of the verdict, not procedural technicalities
(whether they are pro or against the defendent). But even there are gray
areas where procedural errors may be barely distinguishable from clear
breaches of the defendents rights.

On the other hand, the distaste over technical appeals has caused many to
also try to shut the door on appeals which are designed to address new
evidence or new analysis of existing evidence. I can appreciate the desire
not to hold new trials on minor technical basis, but I can't understand
the resistance to allowing all defendents to have critical physical
evidence undergo DNA testing where it would definitively connect or
disconnect that evidence from the defendent.

> Almost all of the power lies with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles
>
> Clemency
>
> When the entire appeals process has been exhausted, the Governor of
> the State of Texas still may have a limited power to grant clemency
> to the prisoner. In capital cases, the Governor has the
> constitutional authority to grant an offender one 30-day reprieve of
> a scheduled execution without a recommendation from the Texas Board
> of Pardons and Paroles. Upon recommendation from the Board, the
> Governor may grant one or more reprieves in a capital case for any
> period of time that does not exceed the period recommended by the
> Board members. If the prisoner submits a timely request for a
> reprieve of execution, the Board must determine, by majority vote,
> whether to recommend to the Governor that a reprieve be granted.
> Similarly, if a death row inmate files a timely petition to the Board
> from for a commutation of sentence to a lesser punishment, such as
> life imprisonment, the Board will vote on whether to recommend the
> commutation to the Governor
>
> <http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/vlibrary/outlines/deathpen.html>
>
> So, unless the appeals board recommends it, the governor can only
> grant a single 30 day reprieve.
>
> Otherwise he simply has NO say in the matter.  Period.

And how does that conflict with what the article wrote?

>> Capital punishment is to individuals what aggressive war is to
>> nations. The 20th century, for all its brutality (or because of
>> it), marked the watershed era when world opinion shifted against
>> both. Once, princes exercised life-and-death power over subjects
>> with unchallenged authority. Once, the only check on a state's
>> freedom to attack another state was its power to do so.
>>
>> These two absolutes of realpolitik have changed. From the Kellogg-
>> Briand Pact of 1928 to principles laid down at the Nuremberg
>> tribunals to the United Nations itself, wars of aggression stand
>> condemned. The force of state violence is to be exercised only in
>> self-defense or in defense of a victim people, in circumstances
>> defined by international agreement.
>
>
> So torture chambers and gassing his own people didn't qualify under
> the "Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928" as "in defense of a victim people"
>
> WTF?

I think what he's getting at is the immediacy of the violence.
International opinions (I won't use law here) definitely agrees that state
violence is acceptable as an immediate reaction; for instance, stopping
genocides, defending one's land, etc. However, it's a big leap to assume
that an execution long after the fact is part of that concensus. What he's
saying is executing Saddam does nothing to defend the victims here; it is
punitive, not intervention. There's a big distinction there, that at least
has to be acknowledged in discussing the death penalty as a mechanism for
punishment. It's not, at least without a stretch, "defense" except by way
of the notion of deterrence (which, personally, I do not buy - Saddam knew
the moment he got into that business that he could end up dragged through
the street after a coup, for instance, let alone tried by a successor
government's court). I simply don't buy deterrence as an effective
justification for death penalty.

Vengeance? Yeah, I get that.

>> Similarly, nation after nation has abolished the death penalty,
>> understanding the absurdity of defending human life by destroying
>> human life. If killing can ever be justified, individually or
>> communally, it is only as an absolute last resort. In sum, an
>> international moral consensus has taken shape against unnecessary
>> violence, whether targeting a criminal or a rogue state.
>
> Oh I get it.  It's just another anti-death penalty rant.    Saddam
> was just low hanging fruit[1] for the argument.

Personally I'm not shedding any tears for Saddam whatsoever; however, I do
think that executing him was a politically risky strategy that will haunt
us for years, and it was a politically convenient strategy for avoiding
trials damaging to his many previous allies (not only the US).

And what part of the article lead you to think it was anything but an
anti-death penalty article? Seriously, why the feigned suprise??

>> With his lies at the beginning of this war, and his fantasy now
>> that an honorable outcome remains possible, the president is a
>> taunting killer, caught in the act. He lacks nothing but the black
>> hood. Stop this man.

I'm personally not sure i understand this paragraph; the vast majority of
the violence has nothing to do with state executions - if we were seeing
daily executions of Baathists in town squares I might see the connection.

Yes, he lied, and is at least publicly delusional about the progress and
prognosis for the war. But it's not the black hood he's wearing.

> All and all, standard Bush Derangement Syndrome ranting.
>
> Then again, he felt this way about Clinton intervening against the
> Serbs.
>
> "Clinton's War: The American People, Once Again, Must Find Ways To
> Say, Stop The War!"
>
> <http://www.commondreams.org/kosovo/views/carroll2.htm>
>
> I'll grant the pacifist  idiot consistency, but a but a lot more
> people would be dead if we listened to him back then.

Please don't use pacifist as a derogatory term. As a principle it's a
noble one; but many pacifists acknowledge there are cases of pragmatic
necessity. I expect most pacifists fall into that camp; the problem is
defining this war in Iraq as necessary.

I'm a pacifist, but I'm all in favor of defending potential victims of
genocide, and defending ourselves and our allies against an aggressor. I
can even acknowledge there could be cases of preemptive war that would be
reasonable, but this isn't preemptive - that suggests he was gearing up to
attack us, but rather "preventative". See the Cheney Doctrine.

> *spit*  Fuck James Carroll.  If he didn't think we/NATO should have
> involved ourselves there then he is both and idiot and a coward.

Personally I know too little about Kosovo to get into details, but I had
no issue with Clinton intervening there.