Luis Fortuño, Governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, indicated on Monday that he would reverse a policy, adopted by former Governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá and former Secretary of Justice Roberto Sánchez Ramos, which prohibited local prosecutors from referring potential death penalty cases to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico. This reversal, covered in a number of articles in the local media, will allow the Commonwealth Government to circumvent Puerto Rico’s constitutional death penalty ban by allowing prosecutors to federalize certain crimes investigated by local authorities.
Incredibly, Governor Fortuño admitted to having moral objections to the death penalty but said he would comply with Federal law which prescribes capital punishment for a number of crimes. This morally ambiguous position assumed by the Governor is a relinquishment of his authority and leadership to guide Puerto Rico and its People.
The Governor also seems to misunderstand his legal prerogatives. While the Governor would in fact not have the authority to stop a death penalty prosecution initiated by Federal agencies in Puerto Rico, it is quite another thing to state that Commonwealth authorities will actively refer investigations, to the only ends of getting around our constitutional order. In this regard, the Governor would not be violating Federal law by failing to refer investigations to Federal authorities, given that the Commonwealth has the right and duty to investigate crimes occurring within its jurisdiction. The Governor instead has made a conscious choice to use his discretion as regards this issue in a manner that is inconsistent with the values and political will of the People of Puerto Rico as expressed through the 1952 Commonwealth Constitution and as evidenced by the historical record dating back to the 16th century.
Should the Governor’s action respond to an ideological stance in favor of annexation to the United States and an intention to dismantle all the institutions of the island’s current political status, his moral cop-out would be even more reprehensible and disappointing. That ideology should override morality and the popular will speaks poorly of Fortuño’s leadership and of the strength of his convictions. Subverting our moral and legal order in such a manner is a truly sad display of partisan politics trumping what is right.
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Both the secular and the religious have solid moral support for the death penalty.
The foundation for death penalty support is the same as it is for all sanctions, that it is a just and appropriate sanction for some crimes.
The moral difference between those who oppose or support capital punishment is that one finds it morally wrong, the other morally correct, respectively.
In addition, many of us find that the death penalty is a greater protector of innocent lives.
There are some excellent moral/ethical writings supportive of the death penalty. Here are a few. I hope you have the chance to read them.
(1) John Stuart Mill, speech on the death penalty
http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/web%20publishing/Mill_supports_death_penalty.htm
(2)”The Death Penalty”, by Romano Amerio, a faithful Catholic Vatican insider, scholar, professor at the Academy of Lugano, consultant to the Preparatory Commission of Vatican II, and a peritus (expert theologian) at the Council.
http://www.domid.blogspot.com/2007/05/amerio-on-capital-punishment.html
titled “Amerio on capital punishment “, Chapter XXVI, 187. The death penalty, from the book Iota Unum, May 25, 2007
(3) Immanuel Kant, “The Right of Punishing”, inclusive of the death penalty
http://web.telia.com/~u15509119/ny_sida_9.htm
(4) “Capital Punishment: A Catholic Perspective”,
by Br. Augustine (Emmanuel Valenza)
http://www.sspx.org/against_the_sound_bites/capital_punishment.htm
(5) “Defending Capital Punishment” by William Gairdner
http://www.williamgairdner.com/defending-capital-punishment/
(6) “Capital Punishment: The Case for Justice”, Prof. J. Budziszewski, First Things, August / September 2004 found http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles4/BudziszewskiPunishment.shtml
(7) Just Violence: An Aristotelian Justification of Capital Punishment
http://www.csuchico.edu/pst/JustViolence.htm
(8) “Catholic and other Christian References: Support for the Death Penalty”, at
http://www.homicidesurvivors.com/2006/10/12/catholic-and-other-christian-references-support-for-the-death-penalty.aspx
The Death Penalty Provides More Protection for Innocents
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters, contact info below
Often, the death penalty dialogue gravitates to the subject of innocents at risk of execution. Seldom is a more common problem reviewed. That is, how innocents are more at risk without the death penalty.
To state the blatantly clear, living murderers, in prison, after release or escape, are much more likely to harm and murder, again, than are executed murderers.
Although an obvious truism, it is surprising how often folks overlook the enhanced incapacitation benefits of the death penalty over incarceration.
No knowledgeable and honest party questions that the death penalty has the most extensive due process protections in US criminal law.
Therefore, actual innocents are more likely to be sentenced to life imprisonment and more likely to die in prison serving under that sentence, that it is that an actual innocent will be executed.
That is. logically, conclusive.
16 recent studies, inclusive of their defenses, find for death penalty deterrence.
A surprise? No.
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life.
Some believe that all studies with contrary findings negate those 16 studies. They don’t. Studies which don’t find for deterrence don’t say no one is deterred, but that they couldn’t measure those deterred.
What prospect of a negative outcome doesn’t deter some? There isn’t one . . . although committed anti death penalty folk may say the death penalty is the only one.
However, the premier anti death penalty scholar accepts it as a given that the death penalty is a deterrent, but does not believe it to be a greater deterrent than a life sentence. Yet, the evidence is compelling and un refuted that death is feared more than life.
Some death penalty opponents argue against death penalty deterrence, stating that it’s a harsher penalty to be locked up without any possibility of getting out.
Reality paints a very different picture.
What percentage of capital murderers seek a plea bargain to a death sentence? Zero or close to it. They prefer long term imprisonment.
What percentage of convicted capital murderers argue for execution in the penalty phase of their capital trial? Zero or close to it. They prefer long term imprisonment.
What percentage of death row inmates waive their appeals and speed up the execution process? Nearly zero. They prefer long term imprisonment.
This is not, even remotely, in dispute.
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life.
Furthermore, history tells us that lifers have many ways to get out: Pardon, commutation, escape, clerical error, change in the law, etc.
In choosing to end the death penalty, or in choosing not implement it, some have chosen to spare murderers at the cost of sacrificing more innocent lives.
Furthermore, possibly we have sentenced 25 actually innocent people to death since 1973, or 0.3% of those so sentenced. Those have all been released upon post conviction review. The anti death penalty claims, that the numbers are significantly higher, are a fraud, easily discoverable by fact checking.
The innocents deception of death penalty opponents has been getting exposure for many years. Even the behemoth of anti death penalty newspapers, The New York Times, has recognized that deception.
To be sure, 30 or 40 categorically innocent people have been released from death row . . . (1) This when death penalty opponents were claiming the release of 119 “innocents” from death row. Death penalty opponents never required actual innocence in order for cases to be added to their “exonerated” or “innocents” list. They simply invented their own definitions for exonerated and innocent and deceptively shoe horned large numbers of inmates into those definitions – something easily discovered with fact checking.
There is no proof of an innocent executed in the US, at least since 1900.
If we accept that the best predictor of future performance is past performance, we can, reasonably, conclude that the DNA cases will be excluded prior to trial, and that for the next 8000 death sentences, that we will experience a 99.8% accuracy rate in actual guilt convictions. This improved accuracy rate does not include the many additional safeguards that have been added to the system, over and above DNA testing.
Of all the government programs in the world, that put innocents at risk, is there one with a safer record and with greater protections than the US death penalty?
Unlikely.
Full report -All Innocence Issues: The Death Penalty, upon request.
Full report – The Death Penalty as a Deterrent, upon request
(1) The Death of Innocents: A Reasonable Doubt,
New York Times Book Review, p 29, 1/23/05, Adam Liptak,
national legal correspondent for The NY Times
copyright 2007-2009, Dudley Sharp
Permission for distribution of this document, in whole or in part, is approved with proper attribution.
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters
e-mail sharpjfa@aol.com 713-622-5491,
Houston, Texas
Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS, VOA and many other TV and radio networks, on such programs as Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O’Reilly Factor, etc., has been quoted in newspapers throughout the world and is a published author.
A former opponent of capital punishment, he has written and granted interviews about, testified on and debated the subject of the death penalty, extensively and internationally.
Pro death penalty sites
http://homicidesurvivors.com/categories/Dudley%20Sharp%20-%20Justice%20Matters.aspx
http://www.dpinfo.comwww.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DPinformation.htm
http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/links/dplinks.htm
http://www.coastda.com/archives.html
http://www.lexingtonprosecutor.com/death_penalty_debate.htm
http://www.prodeathpenalty.com
http://yesdeathpenalty.googlepages.com/home2 (Sweden) http://www.wesleylowe.com/cp.html