Capital Punishment: Another Nail In Coffin?

Yet another high-profile death sentence is in the news; the SCOTUS threw out the overturning of a death sentence against Kenneth Richie, but also...:

...directed an appeals court to reconsider whether Kenneth Richey was wrongly convicted of the blaze in Ohio that killed a toddler nearly 20 years ago. The case has gotten international attention.

The high court, in a six-page ruling, said the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrongly ruled in Richey's favor. The lower court had found that Richey received incompetent legal help and that there was no proof he intended to kill the girl.

The Strib piece doesn't go into what must have been intricate legal technicalities (the subject of most such proceedings) involved in reversing the lower court decision but directing it to examine the actual correctness of the conviction itself.

Which, if you're as ambivalent about the death penalty as I am, is at the very least a troubling case - enough to draw attention from the Pope John Paul II, Tony Blair and the UK Parliament (Richie is a UK/US dual citizen):

Richey's lawyer, Kenneth Parsigian, said that investigators first said that the fire was caused by a faulty fan, and allowed the apartment manager to gut the building, with carpet and other potential evidence being hauled to the county landfill.

The appeals court had found that Richey's lawyers at trial hired an unqualified forensic expert to investigate the fire and did not adequately challenge the state's handling of the investigation.

Every time I do this subject, someone or another - always a well-intentioned, usually (but not always) conservative person who would under any other circumstance recoil at the thought of life-or-death government power - will say, essentially, that you gotta break eggs to make an omelet; the occasional (not too frequent!) innocent victim is acceptable, pour l'encourager les autres. Sorry, all; appeals to the French Revolution for social policy are, I should think, fatally misguided.

Posted by Mitch at November 28, 2005 07:32 AM | TrackBack