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I have just finished watching a TV documentary about Indiana State Penitentiary.

This is not a thread about the death penalty as such, although it does touch on it.

My query about the American system is why after convicting and sentencing a guilty person to suffer the ultimate sanction, the death penalty, why it takes so many years to act on that sentence?

The last interview was with a man seven years after receiving the death sentence who had raped and stabbed to death a mother and her four year old daughter, by his own admission.

Why the delay ?

Because the prisoner has the right of appeal, & to exhaust this can take a decade or more.

eta--the prisoner can reject all appeals, but I believe in the beginning at least one appeal is virtually mandatory & done in prisoner's name if prisoner resists.

Bruv, what was this particular inmate's appeal status?

Then there are the cases where someone was sentenced to death on eye witness testimony that was later recanted and it came out that the prosecutor decided not to spend the money to do DNA testing at the time. Unfortunately, it seems that sometimes this info comes out shortly after someone is executed.

The short answer is that appeals are as much a political process as a function of the justice system.

Bruv;1417776 wrote: I have just finished watching a TV documentary about Indiana State Penitentiary.

This is not a thread about the death penalty as such, although it does touch on it.

My query about the American system is why after convicting and sentencing a guilty person to suffer the ultimate sanction, the death penalty, why it takes so many years to act on that sentence?

The last interview was with a man seven years after receiving the death sentence who had raped and stabbed to death a mother and her four year old daughter, by his own admission.

Why the delay ?


Great question, wish there were a simple answer.

All the states which have capital punishment on the books are different in how they process such cases. From a casual point of view I see it as a combination of a judicial system gone awry, political indifference/hostility.

California is a great example of where the people have voted for capital punishment, and the will has been successfully frustrated, going back to

Proposition 17 of 1972 was a measure enacted by California voters to reintroduce the death penalty in that state. The California Supreme Court had ruled on February 17, 1972, that capital punishment was contrary to the state constitution. Proposition 17 amended the Constitution of California in order to overturn that decision. It was submitted to a referendum by means of the initiative process, and approved by voters on November 7.


California Proposition 17 (1972)

Then there was Rose Bird.

Bird was the first and remains the only Chief Justice to be removed from that office by a majority of the state's voters. California justices are selected by the Governor but must be regularly reconfirmed by the electorate; prior to Bird, no California appellate judge had ever failed such a vote.[3]

She was removed in the November 4, 1986 election by a margin of 67 to 33 percent after a high-profile campaign that cited her categorical opposition to the death penalty.[4] She reviewed a total of 64 capital cases appealed to the court. In each instance she issued a decision overturning the death penalty that had been imposed at trial. She was joined in her decision to overturn by at least three other members of the court in 61 of those cases.[5] This led Bird's critics to claim that she was substituting her own opinions and ideas for the laws and precedents upon which judicial decisions are supposed to be made. In addition, the Bird court struck down California's "use a gun, go to jail" law that made a prison term mandatory for any crime in which the use of a gun was involved.


That was an example of the injustice system.

But what happened since you may ask?

The answer to that has more to do with politics. Must be to allow 724 inmates to sit, just getting old. Costing taxpayers so much many would just give them life without parole to save a bundle of money.

tude dog;1417786 wrote: Great question, wish there were a simple answer.

All the states which have capital punishment on the books are different in how they process such cases. From a casual point of view I see it as a combination of a judicial system gone awry, political indifference/hostility.

California is a great example of where the people have voted for capital punishment, and the will has been successfully frustrated, going back to



California Proposition 17 (1972)



That was an example of the injustice system.

But what happened since you may ask?

The answer to that has more to do with politics. Must be to allow 724 inmates to sit, just getting old. Costing taxpayers so much many would just give them life without parole to save a bundle of money.Bird is not the reason there were no executions in California after 1972.

From your source:

Despite Proposition 17 no executions were carried out in California until 1992. This was due to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the same year in Furman v. Georgia (which temporarily suspended capital punishment in the United States) and to extensive litigation that occurred thereafter.


As an aside: It's good to see citing Wikipedia is now acceptable.

Ahso!;1417798 wrote: Bird is not the reason there were no executions in California after 1972.

From your source:


Once again, it would be helpful if you actually read my post where I wrote:

That was an example of the injustice system.

But what happened since you may ask?

The answer to that has more to do with politics. Must be to allow 724 inmates to sit, just getting old. Costing taxpayers so much many would just give them life without parole to save a bundle of money.


Ahso!;1417798 wrote: As an aside: It's good to see citing Wikipedia is now acceptable.


Never knew it wasn't acceptable.

tude dog wrote: But what happened since you may ask?

The answer to that has more to do with politics. Must be to allow 724 inmates to sit, just getting old. Costing taxpayers so much many would just give them life without parole to save a bundle of money. You said this after writing about Bird like it was a chronological order. Perhaps rereading your post is something you should do?

I fail to see why a supreme court decision is being labeled as political.

Ahso!;1417802 wrote: You said this after writing about Bird like it was a chronological order. Perhaps rereading your post is something you should do?

I fail to see why a supreme court decision is being labeled as political.


My post was plenty clear.

tude dog;1417804 wrote: My post was plenty clear.No it wasn't but we'll move on.

So you'd agree that a referendum that passes by a majority of the people should always be honored?

http://www.forumgarden.com/forums/curre ... ost1417809

Ahso!;1417810 wrote: No it wasn't but we'll move on.

http://www.forumgarden.com/forums/curre ... ost1417809


This is fun, once again I'll hold your hand as I explain that which you either missed, or decided to ignore.

1. Prop 17 reinstated Capital Punishment (1972)

2. Chief Justice Rose Bird and others are voted out of office for abusing their position to obstruct the will of the voters in regards to Capital Punishment. (1986)

3. But what happened since you may ask? (After 1986)




Is your reading comprehension that incompetent, lazy or just being obtuse?

So you'd agree that a referendum that passes by a majority of the people should always be honored?


Hardly a California voter initiative is passed without a court challenge. So there are checks on the system. If you want to argue against the will of the people, go for it.

Ahso!;1417802 wrote: You said this after writing about Bird like it was a chronological order. Perhaps rereading your post is something you should do?

I fail to see why a supreme court decision is being labeled as political.


Thank you, just caught on.

Furman v. Georgia

Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972) was a United States Supreme Court decision that ruled on the requirement for a degree of consistency in the application of the death penalty. The case led to a de facto moratorium on capital punishment throughout the United States, which came to an end when Gregg v. Georgia was decided in 1976.


Silly me to overlook that.

It ended ten years before Bird got the boot.

As far politics and the Supreme Court goes, it's not a question of "if", but rather how much. Non the less, that is another subject.

Bruv;1417776 wrote: I have just finished watching a TV documentary about Indiana State Penitentiary.

This is not a thread about the death penalty as such, although it does touch on it.

My query about the American system is why after convicting and sentencing a guilty person to suffer the ultimate sanction, the death penalty, why it takes so many years to act on that sentence?

The last interview was with a man seven years after receiving the death sentence who had raped and stabbed to death a mother and her four year old daughter, by his own admission.

Why the delay ?
The system is designed to reexamine a case so long as there is a chance of finding something that would cast doubt on the conviction. Even with the delays - years of poring over evidence, scouring every detail to find something we might have missed before - sometimes we find out that the system fails and we kill an innocent person.

AnneBoleyn;1417784 wrote: Bruv, what was this particular inmate's appeal status?
I don't know, but there was talk about 16 ? different steps not including clemency.

There was somebody that was on step 7, not too sure if it was this guy.

Accountable;1417835 wrote: The system is designed to reexamine a case so long as there is a chance of finding something that would cast doubt on the conviction. Even with the delays - years of poring over evidence, scouring every detail to find something we might have missed before - sometimes we find out that the system fails and we kill an innocent person.
I know a TV program and the Justice system cannot be seen as one and the same, but several interviewee's clearly stated they were guilty and were remorseful of sometimes multiple murders.

I can understand an appeal system to double check justice, but some of these guys were 25 years into appeals, if I got it correctly.

Yeh, some convicts will say they don't deserve the death penalty, only a lesser sentence, especially if they are now reformed. It wasn't many years back an organization went to bat for a death row inmate because of a book he wrote (I'm foggy on the details), saying that he was an art treasure to be nurtured or something like that. Personally, I'd like to see the whole justice/penal/rehab system scrapped and replaced, but such things don't happen.

I would expect most people sentenced to death could come up with lots of reasons for them especially not suffering such a fate.

How long can due process take ?

I find the lengths of time between sentence and commission of the sentence to be more inhumane than the original sentence.

Bruv;1417873 wrote: I would expect most people sentenced to death could come up with lots of reasons for them especially not suffering such a fate.

How long can due process take ?

I find the lengths of time between sentence and commission of the sentence to be more inhumane than the original sentence.


Each level of appeal is dependent on how crowded the court calendar is. The original trial was probably held at a city or county level. The prisoner can then appeal to an appeals court in that juristiction, then to a state appeals court, then to a federal court, and then to the supreme court. At each level of appeal, the first question is whether there was new or unexplored evidence. The next question was whether the accused was properly defended according to legal standards. The next question is whether the court handled things properly (instructions to the jury, procedures, witness qualification, etc.) and whether the jury handled things correctly. At any stage in the process, a court can send the matter back down to the original juristiction for hearings or a new trial.

As you can imagine, the number of cases awaiting hearings/trials at the appeals and federal level is huge. This is not helped by the fact that judges to these courts are appointed in a politically charged process. Currently, there are many judical openings that are on hold for political reasons.

Apparently the appeal process takes on average 14 years, that is not justice.

Wandrin;1417886 wrote: Each level of appeal is dependent on how crowded the court calendar is. The original trial was probably held at a city or county level. The prisoner can then appeal to an appeals court in that juristiction, then to a state appeals court, then to a federal court, and then to the supreme court. At each level of appeal, the first question is whether there was new or unexplored evidence. The next question was whether the accused was properly defended according to legal standards. The next question is whether the court handled things properly (instructions to the jury, procedures, witness qualification, etc.) and whether the jury handled things correctly. At any stage in the process, a court can send the matter back down to the original juristiction for hearings or a new trial.

As you can imagine, the number of cases awaiting hearings/trials at the appeals and federal level is huge. This is not helped by the fact that judges to these courts are appointed in a politically charged process. Currently, there are many judical openings that are on hold for political reasons.


No really. Seems Texas, as slow as it is much better than California with over 700 waiting for the needle.

State to state, politics and a broken injustice system.

Bruv;1417891 wrote: Apparently the appeal process takes on average 14 years, that is not justice.

Accountable;1417835 wrote: The system is designed to reexamine a case so long as there is a chance of finding something that would cast doubt on the conviction. Even with the delays - years of poring over evidence, scouring every detail to find something we might have missed before - sometimes we find out that the system fails and we kill an innocent person.


Are you suggesting that it's designed to put as much money as possible into the pockets of the lawyers?

Bryn Mawr;1418077 wrote: Are you suggesting that it's designed to put as much money as possible into the pockets of the lawyers?


I can't speak for Accountable, but gee wizz.

tude dog;1418080 wrote: I can't speak for Accountable, but gee wizz.


Two peoples separated by a common language

Bryn Mawr;1418077 wrote: Are you suggesting that it's designed to put as much money as possible into the pockets of the lawyers?
No more than an F-1 race car is designed to wear out tires.

Accountable;1418104 wrote: No more than an F-1 race car is designed to wear out tires.


So not very much then - just a side effect of having lawyers design the system.