The Uneven Scales of Capital Justice
In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional. The Court found that because the capital-punishment laws gave sentencers virtually unbridled discretion in deciding whether or not to impose a death sentence, “The death sentence [was] disproportionately carried out on the poor, the Negro, and the members of unpopular groups.” In 1976, the…
The Unique Brutality of Texas
Gathering dust in Texas Governor Rick Perry’s inbox is a clemency petition from Joe Lee Guy, a death-row inmate. The petition declares that “the integrity of Guy’s capital trial was severely compromised.” Considering how horrendously the wheels of Texas justice turned for Guy, the petition’s claim seems, if anything, understated. In 1994, Guy was sentenced…
Going It Alone
As you have read in the preceding pages, a large majority of countries in the world have abolished the death penalty. In order to join the European Union, for example, countries have to become parties to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and specifically to Protocol 6, which explicitly…
Death’s Dwindling Dominion
As we enter the 21st century, Americans have never been more divided over the proper role of the death penalty. Some of us (still a minority) would like to see it entirely abolished — and we have achieved this goal in a dozen states, beginning with Michigan in 1847 and most recently in Vermont in…
Courtroom Contortions
One cost this country pays for the death penalty is that its courts are constantly compelled to corrupt the law in order to uphold death sentences. That corruption soils the character of the United States as a nation dedicated to equal justice under law. This is not the only price we pay for being one…
The Lost Continent
A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa By Howard W. French • Knopf • 280 pages • $25.00 The appointments of Colin Powell as secretary of state and Condoleezza Rice as the president’s national-security adviser raised hopes in some quarters that the United States would begin to take more serious interest…
121 Days Old
If you’d asked Nick Yarris how old he was, on May 17, 2004 — his 43rd birthday — he’d have told you, “121 days.” For the rest of his life, Yarris will have his regular birthday and the day he was born again: January 16, 2004, the day he walked out of the Pennsylvania State…
Ballot Insecurity
Six months ago, the question on the lips of most critics of the occupation of Iraq was one that the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani had posed: Why not hold elections by June 30? At the time, the U.S.–led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) claimed that it was just not possible. The United Nations agreed. And so…
Right on the Low Road
The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead By David Callahan • Harcourt • 353 pages • $26.00 Few decisions caused George Washington more agony than whether or not to accept some canal-company shares that the Virginia General Assembly offered him in 1784. The gift was perfectly legal,…
Media: It Was a Very Bad Year
There was a time when readers of The New York Times never knew what they were missing. You had to run down to Hotaling’s, the out-of-town newsstand in Times Square, to check The Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times, or wait a few days for the Manchester Guardian. Or you subscribed to I.F. Stone’s…
God and Man in the GOP
The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America By John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge • Penguin • 464 pages • $25.95 The recent history of American politics can be told as the story of two alliances — one made and unmade by the Democrats, one made and kept by the Republicans. The…
Taking Juveniles Off Death Row
Despite a judiciary increasingly dominated by conservative appointees, the federal courts have shown a heartening willingness to rein in the death penalty. In recent years, they have limited who is eligible and have placed other restrictions on states’ arbitrary conduct. Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a vote of 6 to 3, halted…
Look Who’s Feuding
Abu Ghraib. L’Affaire Chalabi. George Tenet’s resignation. More conservative defections from the war enterprise. A circular firing squad of feuds — between John McCain and Denny Hastert, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay. These have been, to state the obvious, a rough couple of months for the Republicans. Talk of the administration’s “wheels coming off” abounds.…
Shutting Down Death Row
Change in the criminal-justice system is a rare thing. Change in death-penalty policy is even more rare. Yet Illinois undertook a comprehensive reassessment of its death-penalty system recently, passing reforms that will have far-reaching impacts on how murder trials are handled in the state — and that could serve as a model for reform in…
Prospects
Earth to Kerry …
Building a Better UN
If one had asked the leaders of the United Nations to choose a test case through which they could demonstrate the organization’s efficacy before the world, they would hardly have chosen Iraq. With a volatile security situation, too few peacekeeping troops, and a recent political history that has bitterly divided the members of the UN…
Waging the Media Battle
Intro Eric Alterman “Whatever your first issue of concern,” media scholar Robert McChesney writes, “media had better be your second, because without change in the media, progress in your primary area is far less likely.” Media concentration has reached unprecedented proportions in America. Where we once had a vigorous “press” that defined and defended…
Eastern Bloc Party
If you want to understand this year’s expansion of the European Union and NATO, go to Berlin. Fifteen years ago, the Berlin Wall, approximately 96 miles of concrete and soldiers, was the symbol of the Cold War. When I visited this spring, my taxi driver had to tell me to “imagine” where the wall had…
The Man in the Iron Mosque
If the American jailers of Sheikh Mahdi al-Sumeidayih hoped to take the fire out of one of Iraq’s most radical Sunni clerics, they might have been glad to hear the hesitant, almost beseeching tone in his voice less than a week after his release. “I told them that I do not support violence, that we…
