although I haven't been involved with the Jewish religion since I was a kid
I can remember even back in the sixties they were actively addressing issues
such as this and it didn't receive much support.
Chuck
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Monday, February 29, 2016 7:06 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Jewish leaders take a stand against the death
penalty
I'm impressed. I didn't know anyone in the Jewish religion was doing this.
Aside from this group, the Pope, and the Quakers, I wonder if any other
religious bodies have taken such a stand.
Miriam
________________________________
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Charles Krugman
(Redacted sender "ckrugman" for DMARC)
Sent: Monday, February 29, 2016 1:29 AM
To: Blind Democracy
Subject: [blind-democracy] Jewish leaders take a stand against the death
penalty
Jewish leaders take a stand
against The Death Penalty
by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz
In a petition initiated by Uri L’Tzedek, the Orthodox social justice
movement, Jewish leaders across Jewish denominations expressed opposition to
the use of the death penalty in America. As Jews, as citizens of a nation
dedicated to liberty and justice, we believe that governments must protect
the dignity and rights of every human being. The use of the death penalty,
in America, fails to live up to this basic requirement.
Opposition to the overuse of capital punishment is embedded deep in the
Jewish religious psyche. The rabbis taught that a court that puts others to
death too often is deeply problematic. How often? Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah
says, "Every seventy years." Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva said: "If we were
in a court, no person would ever be executed," (Makkot 7a). While not
categorically opposed to capital punishment, the rabbis saw the death
penalty as so extreme a measure that they all but removed it from their
system of justice. In contrast, our American system today lacks the highest
safeguards to protect the lives of the innocent and uses capital punishment
all too readily.
We do not naïvely believe that everyone on death row is completely innocent
of any crime. Yet, too often, the wrong person is convicted for crimes they
did not commit.
We all agree that a responsible government must have a strong, punitive
justice system that maintains order and security. More harmful to our
justice system than not catching the guilty, however, is punishing the
innocent. Unfortunately, this happens too often. Owing to their
socio-economic situation or lack of access to legal resources, wrongly
convicted people often have no real opportunity to respond to an
overwhelming legal system that makes the proof of innocence difficult. The
consequences of this system are not only fundamentally unjust but also
produce racially disparate outcomes. Additionally, it is the tax payers who
are required to pay exorbitant amounts to maintain death rows.
It is time to see the death penalty for what it is: not as justice gone
awry, but a symptom of injustice as status quo. "You must rescue those taken
off to death!"(Proverbs 24:11)!
There are six primary reasons for wrongful convictions:
1. Eyewitness misidentification: Some of the reasons for why eyewitnesses
identify the wrong person are not fixable, such as the fact that people are
much worse at cross-racial identification, but there are many things that
police can do when conducting line-ups that would decrease false
identifications.
2. False confessions: A recent example of this is the case of the Central
Park Five, in which four of the five then-teenagers confessed to raping and
killing a woman in Central Park years ago, and recently were proved innocent
through DNA testing.
3. Ineffective lawyering: Defense lawyers mess up, either because they
just are not good lawyers or because they are so overburdened that it is
impossible to do a thorough job on each case.
4. Police and prosecutorial misconduct: Examples of this include crime
labs claiming that they had test results when no tests were actually
performed, and prosecutors not providing exculpatory evidence.
Unfortunately, punishment is rare.
5. Junk science: This applies both to methods that are not really science
when empirically tested, and to legitimate science performed poorly.
6. Unreliable testimony: Witnesses, usually in jail, come forward claiming
to have heard the suspect confess in order to get favorable treatment on
their own cases.
How many prisoners are truly innocent? Experts have offered varying
percentages in the last decades: Samuel R. Gross and Barbara O’Brien
estimated “at least 2.3 percent”; Jon B. Gould and Richard A. Leo put it at
3 to 5 percent; James S. Liebman and his team placed their estimate at 7
percent; and the newest estimate, by John Roman and his team, places its
estimate at 5 percent, except for sexual assault, for which the wrongful
conviction rate may be as high as 15 percent.
Jewish law strongly upholds the principle that the innocent should be spared
undue punishment. When God reveals to Abraham his plan to destroy Sodom and
Gomorrah (Genesis 18:17-33), Abraham challenges God: “Will you also destroy
the righteous with the wicked?” When God offers to spare the cities if there
are fifty righteous people, Abraham solicits a response for the value of
innocent life; eventually, God decides that if there are even ten righteous
people, God will spare the cities. Abraham doesn’t press further but one
might presume that a city can’t be destroyed if even one were innocent.
Thus, from the time of Abraham, it was important that punishment should be
reserved for the guilty, and against all odds to the contrary, the innocent
should be spared.
Today, there are those who are dedicated to ensuring that the innocent do
not languish in jail. The National Registry of Exonerations, a joint project
of the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful
Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, has now recorded 1,040
exonerations in less than a year of investigating data since 1989. The
Registry highlights the need to scrutinize convictions—especially in the
states with the most exonerations, such as Illinois and Texas—to ensure that
they were honestly obtained and that the defendants had sufficient and
competent defense.
Additionally, the Innocence Project, founded by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J.
Neufeld of Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 1992,
is a group that utilizes DNA testing and other state of the art technology
to establish the innocence of falsely-imprisoned inmates. The staff of
lawyers and Cardozo clinic students, and allies in many states, has thus far
exonerated 301 prisoners, who had served an average of nearly 14 years (and
18 of whom had been on death row), using DNA evidence. There are more than
fifty Innocence Projects in the United States, under the umbrella of the
Innocence Network. They need our support.
One case illustrates the great value of the Innocence Project for American
society. In 1974, James Bain was convicted of raping a 9-year old boy in
Florida. The primary evidence at the time revolved around the blood type of
the semen on the victim’s underwear. The jury believed the prosecution’s
claim that Bain’s blood type (AB) was the same as that found on the scene,
when in actuality the blood sample was blood group B. Once DNA evidence
became available, Bain tried five times to get the Circuit Court to examine
his case, but was rejected. Finally, after the Innocence Project became
involved, DNA evidence was reexamined, confirming that Bain was not the
rapist. James Bain was exonerated and released in December 2009, after
serving thirty-five years for a crime he did not commit.
While we need a justice system, but we also need a system of justice. We
punish those who transgress the law, but ensure that the rights of the
innocent are protected, that if a prisoner is found to be innocent, then
that prisoner should be set free and given fair compensation. Former
district attorney, Governor of California, and Supreme Court Chief Justice
Earl Warren was well aware of the often coercive methods by which law
enforcement obtained confessions and convictions, and how scrutiny needed to
be applied to ensure that only the guilty were convicted and incarcerated.
As he said: “Life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods
used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals
themselves.”
This is nothing short of the championing of justice over inequity, and as a
community, we must support their work. Jewish community leaders should call
for an end to this cruel practice, but also for the beginning of a new
paradigm of fair, equitable, and restorative justice.
Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz is the President & Dean of the Valley Beit
Midrash, the Founder & President of Uri L’Tzedek, the Founder and CEO of The
Shamayim V’Aretz Institute and the author of nine books on Jewish ethics.
Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America.
http://www.jewishjournal.com/socialjusticerav/item/jewish_leaders_take_a_sta
nd_against_the_death_penalty
