Jones misses the point on unfair death penalty

Scott is a fourth-year political science student.

By Sarah Scott

In response to Andrew Jones’ submission, “Death
penalty functions to preserve just society,” (Daily
Bruin, Viewpoint, Feb.8) I have a few things to say. First, is this
guy kidding? What does he think the United States is? A
totalitarian regime or a democracy? Jones states, “It cannot
be denied that in many states, capital punishment is completely
broken or barely functioning.” Why would he support a system
that he himself acknowledges to be faulty?

The death penalty is not a joke. Every time a mistake is made or
evidence overlooked, someone dies. It appears however that this is
not a big deal to Jones. Neither is false imprisonment. Jones even
says that “the innocent may rot unjustly for many years
““ but at least no one was executed.” I will take the
liberty to assume here that Jones himself has never spent time in
prison under faulty accusations and suggest that he consider the
implications of many of the statements made in his submission.

The article does concede a small amount of praise to the
moratorium imposed in Illinois after hard evidence revealed
innocent persons were on death row in that state. Yet Jones
doesn’t include Illinois in the big picture. What makes him
think that a flawed system in Illinois is not likely to be in place
in Texas as well? The article jumps from recognition of a flawed
system in Illinois to blind allegiance of the judicial practices in
the courts in Texas. How can we be sure until further investigation
that there are not innocent people right now sitting on death row
in Texas is conducted? Does that not matter to Jones?

The submission does argue that persons in Texas, on average,
receive a fair amount of time for appeals. The article neglects to
mention, however, that 10 years of poor legal representation will
most likely not change the standing of the accused.

Erin Katz, in her submission opposing the death penalty
(“Capital
punishment is racist, biased vs. poor peoples“,
Viewpoint, Feb. 8), offers several explicit details and statistics
regarding the race and class bias existing in the legal system and
exposes the truth that poor legal representation can mean death for
an underprivileged minority.

And last but not least, what is Jones talking about when he says
that “most capital cases involve a defendant who is far from
rational enough to weigh the costs and benefits of his
actions?” I will hope that this is not intended to imply that
we are to execute the mentally insane or mentally handicapped. If
we as a society are aware of persons in need of help, it is not our
responsibility to exterminate them; rather, it is our
responsibility to rehabilitate and help them.

Prison walls do a wonderful thing: they imprison criminals. The
death penalty does not improve our social conditions and it is
administered in a system that is corrupt and in great need of
revision. To ignore that truth is to turn a blind eye to the
injustices occurring everyday in our country.

Our fight today should not be against the criminals already
behind prison walls, but against the system that unjustly
administers death to citizens of this country.