[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 29 (Tuesday, February 14, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E343]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


          CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: WHAT PROSECUTORS WON'T TELL YOU

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                          HON. JOHN J. LaFALCE

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 14, 1995
  Mr. LaFALCE. Mr. Speaker, I respectfully submit for inclusion in the 
Congressional Record an article from the February 7, 1995, issue of the 
New York Times, entitled ``What Prosecutors Won't Tell You.'' This 
article was written by Robert M. Morgenthau, the district attorney of 
Manhattan. As the House of Representatives is considering fundamental 
changes to death penalty procedures, the habeas corpus process, and the 
criminal justice system, I commend to my colleagues Mr. Morgenthau's 
insightful analysis of the grave societal costs imposed by our capital 
punishment system.
                [From the New York Times, Feb. 7, 1995]

                    What Prosecutors Won't Tell You

                       (By Robert M. Morgenthau)

       People concerned about the escalating fear of violence, as 
     I am, may believe that capital punishment is a good way to 
     combat that trend. Take it from someone who has spent a 
     career in Federal and state law enforcement, enacting the 
     death penalty in New York State would be a grave mistake.
       Prosecutors must reveal the dirty little secret they too 
     often share only among themselves: The death penalty actually 
     hinders the fight against crime.
       Promoted by members of both political parties in response 
     to an angry populace, capital punishment is a mirage that 
     distracts society from more fruitful, less facile answers. It 
     exacts a terrible price in dollars, lives and human decency. 
     Rather than tamping down the flames of violence, it fuels 
     them while draining millions of dollars from more promising 
     efforts to restore safety to our lives.
       Even proponents have been forced to concede that more than 
     a century's experience has not produced credible evidence 
     that executions deter crime. That's why many district 
     attorneys throughout New York State and America oppose it--
     privately. Fear of political repercussions keeps them from 
     saying so publicly.
       To deter crime, punishment must be prompt and certain. 
     Resources should be focused on that goal and on recidivists 
     and career criminals, who commit a disproportionate share of 
     all crime, including murder.
       Last year, 6,100 criminals were sentenced to state prison 
     in Manhattan, and 9,000 more were sent to city jail. That is 
     the constructive way to be tough on crime. In 1975, when I 
     became District Attorney, there were 648 homicides in 
     Manhattan; in 1994, there were 330. The number has been cut 
     virtually in half without executions--proof to me that they 
     are not needed to continue that trend.
       Executions waste scarce law-enforcement financial and 
     personnel resources. An authoritative study by Duke 
     University in 1993 found that for each person executed in 
     North Carolina, the state paid over $2 million more than it 
     would have cost to imprison him for life, in part because of 
     court proceedings.
       In New York, the cost would be higher. A 1989 study by the 
     Department of Correctional Services estimated that the death 
     penalty would cost the state $118 million a year. More crime 
     would be prevented if a fraction of that money were spent on 
     an array of solutions from prisons to drug treatment 
     programs.
       If you have the death penalty, you will execute innocent 
     people. No one disagrees that such horrors occur--the only 
     argument concerns how often. A 1987 study in the Stanford Law 
     Review identified 350 cases in this century in which innocent 
     people
      were wrongly convicted of crimes for which they could have 
     received the death penalty; of that number, perhaps as 
     many as 23 were executed. New York led the list with 
     eight.
       This year, an appalling miscarriage of justice occurred 
     when Texas executed Jesse DeWayne Jacobs. He was sentenced to 
     death for a murder he originally confessed to--but later 
     claimed had been committed by his sister. In the subsequent 
     trial of his sister, the prosecutor unequivocally disavowed 
     the confession he had used to convict Mr. Jacobs. He argued 
     that Mr. Jacobs had told the truth when he said that his 
     sister had pulled the trigger and that he had not anticipated 
     any murder. Mr. Jacobs was executed anyway.
       Some crimes are so depraved that execution might seem just. 
     But even in the impossible even that a statute could be 
     written and applied so wisely that it would reach only those 
     cases, the price would still be too high.
       It has long been argued, with statistical support, that by 
     their brutalizing the dehumanizing effect on society, 
     executions cause more murders than they prevent. ``After 
     every instance in which the law violates the sanctity of 
     human life, that life is held less sacred by the community 
     among whom the outrage is perpetrated.'' Those words written 
     in 1846 by Robert Rantoul Jr., a Massachusetts legislator, 
     are no less true today.
       Murders like those at the Brookline, Mass., abortion 
     clinics late last year are monstrous even if a killer 
     believes his cause is just. Yet when the state kills, it 
     sends the opposite message: the death penalty endorses 
     violent solutions, and violence begets violence.
       The only honest justification for the death penalty is 
     vengeance, but the Lord says, ``Vengeance is mine.'' It is 
     wrong for secular governments to try to usurp that role. 
     That's why New York should reject the death penalty.


     

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