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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 5/8/14

The Death Penalty's Grotesque Reality

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MK: You should get yourself this very, very new study. It just came out. ... It says as many as 300 people who were sentenced to death in the United States over a three-decade period were likely innocent, according to a study published in a leading scientific journal. And that journal is Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Quite a reputable journal. And they did a very reputable study ... and one of the more disturbing, not just disturbing, that we've got these people on death row that we've found them to be innocent and we've gotten them off. But that the longer a person stays on death row, the more likely the error is to be found. Which means that those processes that are quick, like that which these governors have suggested for California almost certainly will result in more wrongful executions.

DB: Now, I'm trying to find the phrase that the White House used [about the Oklahoma execution], but it was so mild it ... Things ...

MK: Fall short...

DB: It fell short of fairness ... or something like that. So do you think that this could be a prompt? Is this a possibility? Does this open up the door for a big battle to hold these folks accountable, about what happened here, and to prevent it by making this kind of torture illegal? Is there any hope here?

MK: Well, here's what I want to say about that. First, the President's comments refer to that his authority exists only over federal law. He has no authority over the laws of Oklahoma, or California, or Georgia. So that he speaks on the subject is welcome but he has no real power to influence what goes on in Oklahoma other than the power of the bully pulpit. I want to say the bloody pulpit, and that is probably more accurate.

However, I am hopeful, and I've been hopeful in the past, so I wouldn't bet the farm on it, but I'm hopeful that this barbarity, this torture that no one can deny occurred, will at least make judges in those states, which have made this information secret, recognize that there is an issue here. There is an issue about public knowledge and accessibility to government process. And if you close that process, if you say, the public has no right to know what the public has authorized you have moved into a very different kind of government. We call it tyranny.

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Dennis J Bernstein is the host and executive producer of Flashpoints, a daily news magazine broadcast on Pacifica Radio. He is an award-winning investigative reporter, essayist and poet. His articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Nation, and (more...)
 

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