Capital Punishment Clarification

I think, given the way I worded my defense of Conservative Senator yesterday, I need to write a simple clarification.


As much as I wish we could take out serial killers like Bernadro and Homolka, we don't have the death penalty in Canada and we won't get it back. Rightfully so might I add. While it is rare to find a case where we are exactly 100% certain of the guilt of a person, especially in the case of murderers (unless of course there is videotape evidence, several eye witnesses and overwhelming DNA evidence all in combination), there is always the possibility of convicting an innocent person of a capital crime and potentially wrongfully putting them to death.

The one case that comes to mind immediately is that of the West Memphis 3, who, in 1993 were convicted (at the age of 16 no less) of killing three 8 year old boys. They were essentially put behind bars by;

-Spotty police work. They focused solely on their one theory (that it was the three 16 year olds that killed the three 8 year olds in a barbaric satanic cult ritual. They interrogated one of them (who has the IQ of a 10 year old) for over 13 hours until he just started agreeing with anything they said and only used 41 recorded minutes of their interrogation on court. 

-An overheated and biased environment. Everyone involved in the persecution of these boys took one look at the main accused, a goth guy with dark hair and known for listening to heavy metal music, and they could all see him as being a devil worshiping cult member.It was in this kind of prejudiced environment that police willfully chose to focus only on them and not even bother to properly canvass the neighborhood where these kids lived. Had they done so, they would have found witnesses who claimed to have seen one of the 8 year old boys step-fathers with the 3 boys around the time they were believed to have disappeared.

-A judge who willfully disregarded glaring legally questionable actions by the prosecution.Their were suspect "experts" who had mailed in PHD's, there was the 41 minute audio-taped confession of one of them from an illegal 13 hour interogation  that not only didn't have a parent present nor did it have a lawyer or childrens' aid worker there to protect the kids rights.

There was even the fact that after being found guilty, as you can see in the HBO Documentary: Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (the 3rd such documentary on the West Memphis 3) that he seemed to enjoy vividly describing to the main accused (the Goth guy) how he would have 3 needles inserted into his arm which would then inject him with 3 different chemicals (which he named off as well) that lead to his death.

This same judge somehow was allowed to continue to preside over the multiple appeals over the years that kept the 3 of them in jail and one of them on death row for over 18 years.

It wasn't until this a$$clown somehow was elected to the Senate to represent the State of Arkansas (an may I say, what a great state representative this guy is) that their was a glimmer of hope as a new judge was about to grant the WM3 a new trial based on new exculpatory DNA and physical evidence (which points directly at Mr. Baggs, one of the deceased children's step-fathers). Instead, what ended up happening was that the DA in the case offered the 3 men (all in their mid 30's now) the chance to use a new type of Guilty plea (The Alfred guilty plea, first used in South Carolina) to essentially plead guilty in court, maintain their innocence and be allowed to leave prison because of their time served. They were let out of jail back in November.

Basically, given the amount of new evidence in the case, the DA was trying to save the State from the insane amount of money they would have had to pay out to the 3 of them for wrongfully imprisoning them for nearly 18 years. With their "guilty" pleas, the 3 of them cannot file a class action suit against the state unless they are able to somehow prove who the real killer was therefore filing to have their pleas overturned, the case re-opened and on and on.

I just happened to watch this documentary recently so this kind of opened my eyes a bit to why capital punishment is not something that we can really bring back into Canada. There are just too many variables at play when it comes to a capital murder trial in order to 100% guarantee that the verdict of guilty and the sentence of death is justified. There have been way too many cases of innocent people having been executed, particularly troubling is the fact that many of them are happening in a supposedly democratic nation like the US (not counting of course the biggest offenders like China and Saudi Arabia who execute into the thousands each year for various things including having differing political views).

It is for that reason that I have somewhat altered my view of capital punishment. Hopefully this sheds some light on my views.