Shifts in Death Penalty Opinion Reflected in Harris Poll

A recent Harris Poll on the death penalty had the following interesting findings:

Currently, 63 percent of Americans believe in the death penalty while three in ten (30%) are opposed to it. Five years ago, almost seven in ten (69%) believed in it while 22 percent were opposed to it.

Just over half (52%) of Americans believe that executing people who commit murder does not have much effect on deterring others from committing murder. Two in five (42%) say that executing people does deter others from committing murder...this is a difference from 1976. Then, almost six in ten (59%) believed executing people deterred others while one-third (34%) believed that it did not have much effect.

There is one issue almost all Americans agree on - 95 percent of U.S. adults say that sometimes innocent people are convicted of murder while only 5 percent believe that this never occurs.

A.G. Mukasey on Executions as Martyrdom

From ABC News:

Attorney General Michael Mukasey suggested Friday that he believes the alleged 9/11 plotters held at Guantanamo Bay should not be executed if convicted.

"I kind of hope they don't get it," Mukasey said after a speech at the London School of Economics. "Because many of them want to be martyrs, and it's kind of like the conversation & between the sadist and the masochist."

"The masochist says hit me and the sadist says no, so I am kind of hoping they don't get it," he said.

Capital Defense Weekly found the reply from the defense:

Army Lt Col Bryan Broyles, a military lawyer assigned to defend Mohammed al-Qahtani, one of the six current death penalty cases at Guantanamo, said the case was already tainted by suspected US abuse of Qahtani. He added that it was improper for Mukasey to comment. “I appreciate him being on my side on the death penalty thing, but I don’t need his help,” Broyles said. The Pentagon declined to comment.

Comments like this from the country's most powerful lawyer certainly bring into question the best way to deal with those who would prefer execution and martyrdom over life without parole; a debate which is not limited simply to the cases of these particular terrorists.

A Shoddy Case Moves Closer to Execution in Georgia

From the NY Times:

In a split decision, the Georgia Supreme Court refused Monday to allow a new trial for a man sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of a Savannah police officer, despite recantations from seven of nine witnesses who originally testified against him.

The dissent, written by Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, called the court “overly rigid” in its considerations of the new evidence in support of a new trial and said it failed to allow “an adequate inquiry into the fundamental question, which is whether or not an innocent person might have been convicted or even, as in this case, might be put to death.”

Also, Capital Defense Weekly weighs in here with additional citation of the court opinions and Amnesty International calls the ruling "Finality Over Fairness":

There was no physical evidence against him and the weapon used in the crime was never found. The case against him consisted entirely of witness testimony which contained inconsistencies even at the time of the trial. Since then, all but two of the state's non-police witnesses from the trial have recanted or contradicted their testimony. Many of these witnesses have stated in sworn affidavits that they were pressured or coerced by police into testifying or signing statements against Troy Davis.