Most law students don't attend law school to learn all of the considerable trial and appellate skills needed to put someone to death. Those you learn in practice. If you try real hard and really want to, that is. It seems like a waste of skin, to me.
Yet a convicted serial killer on Death Row in Connecticut named Ross has a lawyer who is intent on helping him die, but not doing a very good job of it.
According to the transcript of a conference call with a federal judge, the judge is doing so much better a job of saving the client that the other lawyers on the call, such as the man's able public defenders and his dad's attorney, stand back after the intro, keep their mouths shut, and listen to the judge excoriate the lawyer trying to kill his client.
The client, who is deranged, apparently, lives in isolation on death row, picked on even by other prisoners for his crimes and cowardice. He failed to commit suicide previously. The prisoner has given up, and the question is why. Has he been brainwashed into wanting to die by the onerous conditions in which he lives?
There is an expert who thinks so.
The lawyer seems willing to take his client's word that he wants to die, and has been passing along the message that the client wants to die and the lawyer sees nothing wrong with it.
U.S. District Judge Chatigny isn't buying it. He says that when he litigated, he investigated first, and this lawyer has done no investigating before opening his mouth publicly and telling courts and the public that it's okay to kill his client.
The judge tells the lawyer he's way out on a limb, to go talk to the client, and the expert, and to have the expert talk to the client, and to have a court reporter present when the attorney talks to the client, because if this client dies as a result of the lawyer's representation, the judge will have the lawyer's ticket, his license to practice law, in an instant. The judge told him he was doing a terrible job as a lawyer.
The lawyer, a Mr. Paulding, it appears, may be taking the judge's words to heart.
This is not a position you ever want to get yourself into.
Let some other idiot accede to a death row prisoner's wish to die.
After this record was released, do not expect to read of an execution as long as this lawyer is in the case, at least not for a good long while and a lot better record.
Another blogger, a very bright young man with military experience, finds it ludicrous that a judge would 'make up' an issue where shortly before there seemed to be none.
No lawyer, meaning judge, in his right mind wants to be the last one to kill someone, except for a few hard-core types who may be inured.
Judge Chatigny didn't make up an issue. He recognized an issue. There's a big difference. The former is make-believe. The latter is "Good-eye."
And decent heart.
Exactly what you want in a judge.
Interesting that it's a federal judge.
Doesn't have to run for election
It's amazing what power couple with self-interest does to state court judges.
I knew a Bay Area judge who, years ago, felt obliged to impose a death sentence recommended by the jury. After doing so, he adjourned court, went back to chambers, and poured himself a stiff drink. He was tough, but he needed to calm his nerves. He'd just killed a human being and he knew it. It went against a lot that he believed in about the value of human life, even though he had no sympathy for crimes of the person he sentenced, nor, I think, the person.
If you think such feelings don't deserve much respect, try this on for size. In order to make a killer out of a civilian, the U.S. Marines and the other armed services have to take young men and women, generally age 17-19 or so, shave the men's heads, eliminate as much trace of civilian life as possible, put them in new uniforms, teach them to obey commands almost without question, and then teach them to kill the enemy. The command they're allowed to question is a command to commit an illegal act, such as killing people outside the rules of war. Even in war we insist on the moral accountability of our troops, fighting honorably in our name. We don't want to be dishonored by committing war crimes. The value of human life means a great deal to us, even the enemy's. Yesterday's enemy is today's trading partner.
To train soldiers to kill effectively, the enemy has to be devalued and dehumanized. Japanese became Japs. Germans were Krauts. Koreans became Gooks. Vietnamese were Slopes. Muslims today are Haj, or Mooj, or some other made up word taken from Arabic. We'll do anything to depersonalize the enemy so the act of killing him doesn't eat our souls.
When the soldier returns to civilian life, they have to watch him. The Army is now requiring a two-page debriefing questionaire to be filled out by returning combat veterans six-months post-return, in addition to the immediate debriefing. Why? Because the combat and the killing leave their marks on what before the war were innocent American kids brought up on baseball, basketball, football, and the Saturday morning cartoons. We don't raise kids to be killers in this country. Just the reverse. That's why the military has to re-train them. And then keep an eye on them while they try to get their heads straight after return to the civilian world.
You wouldn't want to appear before a judge who felt good about killing another human, even if there was considerable agreement that the punishment was well-merited.
The death penalty isn't about the criminal.
It's about us.
I know, tell this to the family of the victims.
Before the rule of law, the family sought revenge in a blood feud. Somewhere along the line of our development as civilized humans, someone thought to remove the power of revenge from the family of the victims. I'm sure they didn't want to hear it. But they were required to stand still for it. And so we made a leap in the dark toward a brighter future. See Aeschylus's trilogy, the Oresteia, particularly the Eumenides.
I've included a Wikipedia summary on the post-continuation, below. Unremitting revenge is removed from the family and crime is dealt with by the community, in the form of ...are you ready for this? A jury, complete with spokesmen on behalf of the accused and the community. Attorneys, in other words. Invented by the Greeks.
Not only that, but the defense attorney was a god. Apollo.
Isn't that terrific?
More 'foreign' law to chew on (see the post on the EU).
Looks like the execution is off for awhile.
Andrew Cohen, attorney and commentator for CBS, has this column on this business of helping your client die, with comments from three attorneys he's consulted.
Meanwhile, according to this news report, five top Republican representatives want to start a Congressional investigation of U.S. District Judge Chatigny for his role in criticizing attorney Paulding for his role in trying to kill his own client.
I guess these Congress-people haven't heard about the independence of the federal judiciary.
You know what they say about those independent federal judges: They only to to God. And then only to correct him.
Bugger off, Congress. Leave the judges alone. It's a cheap political shot to go after a federal judge for the way s/he rules. That was tried during the Samuel Chase (not to be confused with the post-Civil War justice, Salmon P. Chase) impeachment, when the effort was made to knock a Supreme Court justice off the bench for being a lousy, biased, trial judge, which he certainly was. But the effort failed.
Samuel Chase's problem was that as a dyed-in-the-wool Federalist, during the John Adams (Federalist) administration, he presided over trials under the Sedition Act, 1798.
He assisted prosecutors to convict people who spoke out against Adams, his administration, its policies regarding France, etc.
Chase was a terribly biased judge, instructing juries to convict, in essence. And people were convicted and jailed for speaking out. When the political opportunity came to turn the tables, they did. An evil man was spared.
But much more importantly, the Court as an independent institution was spared. The revenge-seeker's loss was the Nation's gain, and Chase's, the unworthy beneficiary.
Samuel Chase, although dismissed as a rabid partisan, was also a brilliant appellate jurist who otherwise knew what he was doing. He authored Calder v. Bull, the leading case on ex post facto, relied on in the recent Stogner v. California (2003) decision, which held unconstitutional a law that purported to revive a dead criminal cause of action, time-barred by the expiration of the statute of limitations..
It wasn't that Chase didn't need kicking, it was that the country didn't need kicking, and that's what you're doing when you go after a judge who hasn't committed a crime, but merely ruled in a way you don't happen to agree with. You're killing the independence of the courts by uncloaking the judges from their insulation from the hot and cold political winds that constantly blow around them. Sure you'll get a few decisions you don't like but by and large they're honest decisions, meaning based on the judge's honest, in-good-faith, legal judgment. If you think the judge is reflecting political partisanship, well, hey, that's tough. Elect a president who'll nominate someone you like. Otherwise you're outta luck. This is what the fight is about over Supreme Court vacancies whenever a seat opens.
If you want judges to act as weather-vanes, keep coming after them, they way these five want to do to Judge Chatigny. What do they want to do? Make a federal judge answerable to Congress?
That's not in the instruction book for the game. It's a foul. It's illegitimate.
Tell 'em to screw off, Judge Chatigny.
Better yet, ignore the bastards.
There'll be plenty of voices speaking up for the judge if he remains silent.
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For more on the death penalty, including Bob Bloom's and President Bush's takes, and the European Union's (they've outlawed it) see the post here on the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. You can search this site using the built in Google, upper left margin, using terms from the preceding sentence.
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New York Law School professor Robert Blecker (criminal law and constitutional history) has a slightly different take on the death penalty and the role of Judge Robert Chatigny in the Michael Ross case, stressing the murders of eight young women and the rape of six by the sexual sadist, in this op-ed piece published in the Hartford-Courant.
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Martha Elliott was with Michael Ross the day he was supposed to die. She explains, here, how prosecutors and jurors disregarded his mental illness, sexual sadism, that cause him to murder eight young women and rape six. Mental illness, which is ordinarily, in theory, supposed to mitigate blameworthiness, here increased it. That's why the federal judge stated that Ross shouldn't have been convicted in the first place, which puts him at variance with various juries, state judges, commentators such as Mr. Blecker, supra, and members of the public who believe justice has not been served without a hanging.
Ms. Elliott argues that the death penalty is applied so capriciously in practice that the exercise is so harmful to all concerned, especially the families of the victims, that its further retention is irrational.
But wait, shouldn't that make it unconstitutional...?