I am back to my favorite topic – death penalty and its abolition. On a not-too-dated post [1], a regular reader of my blog wrote that he, “admire[s] the tenacity with which you hang on to this theme.”
If he appreciated my tenacity, I wonder about his admiration of what “Professor James Liebman and 12 students” have done and also about the journal Columbia Human Rights Law Review clearing “its entire spring edition … to carry an extraordinary investigation” by the professor and the students [2]. They must have been tenacity personified. This is about the wrongful execution of Mr. Carlos DeLuna while the murderer was Carlos Hernandez. Oh, the names do sound so similar, don’t they? Hernandez and DeLuna – can be so easily mistaken, particularly if you are sufficiently motivated, like being a “hanging jury”, aided and abetted by a xenophobic eyewitness.
The name in the title of this post refers to the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Mister Justice Antonin Scalia. What does he have to eat?
After finishing shouting the name Carlos DeLuna from the roof tops, he has to eat that name. The first part, about shouting, is the fitting example for explaining the idiom, hoist by one’s own petard.
Some background is in order. Scalia claimed that there has not been, “a single case – not one – in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred … the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops.”
First, let us look at his claim. I do not know when he last made it. But, one of the reasons that wrongful execution may have come down in the aggregate in the US is many states have said no to death penalty (Connecticut, the latest). That is, the dreaded opportunity to shout the names of the people put to death by the state wrongfully has come down, thanks not to the fair US Supreme Court judge. Further, some enlightened governors have commuted death penalty to life without parole for dozens of death row inmates on the last day in office; Illinois, the shining example.
Having a namesake, particularly if you are a Latino in Texas – Mr. Kevan Baker, the key witness, says “[he] had trouble telling one Hispanic person apart from another,” twenty years after Carlos DeLuna was murdered – is dangerous in the extreme. The name and the group you ostensibly belong to tighten the noose around your neck. Such a comforting thought! Thank God, I am not living in Karnataka, where Raghuram is a common enough name!
This is not the first instance of such wrongful murder by the state (in the US) that I have come across and this is not the first such post from me. So, in that sense I am tenacious, in my own limited way. But, what I have read about how the case was unraveled by the good people – the professor and his students – imposes a severe negative premium on my self-assessment of how I am spreading the word against death penalty. This only encourages me to do more. Be more tenacious.
I know Justice Antonin Scalia is also tenacity personified; after all he still seems to cling to the notion that death penalty is infallibly applied. He is being tenaciously foolish.
I am sure that is why I saw Mr. Justice Antonin Scalia climb up on the roof the US Supreme Court and shout, “Carlos DeLuna!” Later I saw him (Antonin Scalia) filling up his stomach with the same name. But some good it did to Carlos DeLuna and his stomach!
Raghuram Ekambaram
References
1. http://nonexpert.blogspot.in/2012/04/reluctant-argument-against-death.html
2. The wrong Carlos: how Texas sent an innocent man to his death, Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, May 15, 2012
If he appreciated my tenacity, I wonder about his admiration of what “Professor James Liebman and 12 students” have done and also about the journal Columbia Human Rights Law Review clearing “its entire spring edition … to carry an extraordinary investigation” by the professor and the students [2]. They must have been tenacity personified. This is about the wrongful execution of Mr. Carlos DeLuna while the murderer was Carlos Hernandez. Oh, the names do sound so similar, don’t they? Hernandez and DeLuna – can be so easily mistaken, particularly if you are sufficiently motivated, like being a “hanging jury”, aided and abetted by a xenophobic eyewitness.
The name in the title of this post refers to the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Mister Justice Antonin Scalia. What does he have to eat?
After finishing shouting the name Carlos DeLuna from the roof tops, he has to eat that name. The first part, about shouting, is the fitting example for explaining the idiom, hoist by one’s own petard.
Some background is in order. Scalia claimed that there has not been, “a single case – not one – in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred … the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops.”
First, let us look at his claim. I do not know when he last made it. But, one of the reasons that wrongful execution may have come down in the aggregate in the US is many states have said no to death penalty (Connecticut, the latest). That is, the dreaded opportunity to shout the names of the people put to death by the state wrongfully has come down, thanks not to the fair US Supreme Court judge. Further, some enlightened governors have commuted death penalty to life without parole for dozens of death row inmates on the last day in office; Illinois, the shining example.
Having a namesake, particularly if you are a Latino in Texas – Mr. Kevan Baker, the key witness, says “[he] had trouble telling one Hispanic person apart from another,” twenty years after Carlos DeLuna was murdered – is dangerous in the extreme. The name and the group you ostensibly belong to tighten the noose around your neck. Such a comforting thought! Thank God, I am not living in Karnataka, where Raghuram is a common enough name!
This is not the first instance of such wrongful murder by the state (in the US) that I have come across and this is not the first such post from me. So, in that sense I am tenacious, in my own limited way. But, what I have read about how the case was unraveled by the good people – the professor and his students – imposes a severe negative premium on my self-assessment of how I am spreading the word against death penalty. This only encourages me to do more. Be more tenacious.
I know Justice Antonin Scalia is also tenacity personified; after all he still seems to cling to the notion that death penalty is infallibly applied. He is being tenaciously foolish.
I am sure that is why I saw Mr. Justice Antonin Scalia climb up on the roof the US Supreme Court and shout, “Carlos DeLuna!” Later I saw him (Antonin Scalia) filling up his stomach with the same name. But some good it did to Carlos DeLuna and his stomach!
Raghuram Ekambaram
References
1. http://nonexpert.blogspot.in/2012/04/reluctant-argument-against-death.html
2. The wrong Carlos: how Texas sent an innocent man to his death, Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, May 15, 2012
6 comments:
Bartahiyar, the tamilian poet, said,"if a single individual does not have food to eat let; us destroy the the whole world"
in the same spirit-
"even if one person is wrongfully murdered let us scrap the whole system"
I admired Bharatiyar,his commitment and tenacity..
what is true of Bharathi is true of Raghuram..
roof top shouting is just not enough...
DS sir, I just could not let go the opportunity to bring to the notice of the few people who read me the unmitigated disaster the death penalty is.
I hate myself for not doing more than put my ideas down.
RE
I sure admire your tenacity and the courage of conviction, Raghu. :). You are an evolved intellectual individual Raghu, and so do not believe in the State having a 'right to kill'. Fair enough.
These days perforce I keep almost 12 hour office time with frequent Saturday/Sunday being casualty too, which explains my prolonged absence from your page and blogging in general...on death penalty, I have been officially dealing closely with hapless victims of horrible perverts who do not spare children or have an iota of human like emotions, compassion or a sense of remorse in their human shaped bodies.I would want to execute many of them myself, damn the consequences, if only my upbringing and values did not stand in the way.
Aditi, I do not know whether you remember a caveat I have attached to my position on death penalty. I had said that only when I am confronted with a situation that stimulates a thirst for revenge in me and I am able to smother it with my convictions, I can truly stand up and say that I am dead set against death penalty. I can only hope I don't ever face that situation and I can continue to convince myself that I am. I also hope that even when I am so confronted, my convictions will bear the brunt of the attack and spare me. But, I cannot be sure.
By the way, I read your "flown the coop" kind of post. You mentioned in one of your comments that mothers take this quite stoically, even if not at that very moment, but later. That made me recall my mother, when I was all of 17 years old and left home. Thanks.
RE
Raghu, I agree with aditi some of the criminals require to be executed in the city centre and stay hung there from a lampost
Balu, I do not disagree with you. But ... and this is a big one, you cannot get the society to draw a definitive line. I can indeed throw a challenge to all the readers of my post - decide amongst yourselves which crimes should be are punishable by death and I do not want some vague classifications like "terrorism", "child abuse" which get skewed by who defines an act as a terrorist act or an act of child abuse.
RE
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