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MonitorTalk > Live
Event
Transcript of our January 16,
Q&A with Laurent Belsie
After Illinois: capital
punishment and prison reform at a crossroads.
 Bill - Southern Illinois: Executive Clemency - A passe tradition? These 11th hour pardons have become very suspect vis-a-vis Bill Clinton and Gov. Ryan. This power seems to be more steeped in tradition than correcting some grevious injustice. After all if it is such a good idea why wait until the last minute - why not correct the wrong months ago? I can think of one President who granted pardons and also received a pardon - Bill Clinton. Maybe Richard Nixon also? Your opinion on this issue please? Laurent Belsie: That's a bulls-eye kind of question. You can take the politician out of politics. But you can't take the politics out of the politician until the day AFTER he or she leaves office. H. Clark Wright, Gilbert, AZ: In my opinion, the only positive impact the death penalty can have on reducing capital crimes is if the sentences are carried out as soon as an appeal is denied, and that appeal should, by law, be decided within sixty days. "The law's delay" is responsible for the death penalty to amount to no more than cruel revenge. Do you agree or disagree? Laurent Belsie: Provactive question but I have to disagree. When the state decides to take a life, it should jump through every hoop to make sure it has the right person. Here in Illinois, mistakes were still made. And the delays actually helped restore justice to people wrongly convicted. Bob Fiske, Portland, Maine : I heard a statistic a few years ago that claimed that states with the Death Penalty were more likely to have a higher murder-rate than States without it. This was used to challenge the pretext of Death Penalty as a Deterrent. Is this statistic factual, or reveal any known trends in that direction? Laurent Belsie: Some evidence suggests that's true. But there's also some evidence criminals think twice before pulling the trigger in a death-penalty state. To me, it's a little bit like the chicken and the egg. Did states have a death penalty and then crime went up? Or did crime go up and then some states enacted a death penalty? I'm not sure anyone has answered the question conclusively. Joan/Baltimore: I see that a juvenile court judge in Fairfax, VA ruled that John Lee Malvo may be tried in adult court where he faces the death penalty if convicted. Can you explain the thinking on this decision? Laurent Belsie: I haven't seen the court arguments, so I can't comment directly on that case. But in general, the thinking goes that some crimes are so heinous that near-adults shouldn't be able to escape punishment simply on account of their age. Steven, Newton Centre: While the death penalty is a highly emotive ethical debate, it also has financial implications for states and the public-private corrections system. Is economics much of a factor in the current debate, and if so, who is arguing what? Laurent Belsie: It is very much a part of the debate but the squabbles are more budgetary than ideological. For example, Kentucky released nearly 600 inmates last month because it could no longer afford to incarcerate them. Oregon voters face an even bigger crunch. Later this month, they'll vote on whether to raise the state income tax. If they don't, the state may have to close five of its 12 prisons and release some 3,300 criminals. Even if the tax-increase is voted down, the legislature and governor will likely find other places to cut funds. But the lesson is clear: running prisons costs money. And toughening sentencing requirements -- as Oregon has done -- costs more money. Diana/ California: In your article on Monday in the Monitor you quoted Hugo Bedau that we are going to be forced "to talk about the facts of the death peanalty". What are these facts that we should know? Laurent Belsie: The facts about the death-penalty are pretty straight-forward. It's largely a symbolic action, reserved for a very few murders. Support for the death penalty comes and goes depending on the level of crime.It's also a hugely expensive process. I think I saw somewhere the cases - with all the appeals involved - can easily run to $1.5 million or more. The most troubling fact of all is that sometimes innocent people have been sentenced to death as we found in Illinois. What's needed now is to find out how -- and if -- we can fix the system. And that fact, I'm afraid, is not known conclusively. Charlie/Atlanta: Do you conisder the private prison movement to be a success? How are they doing now that they've been around long enough to have a track record? Laurent Belsie: Success can be measured in many different ways. Let me just mention one, to explain how tricky it is. Some for-profit prisons do manage to turn -- guess what! -- a profit. That means their inmates do enough work so taxpayers don't have to support them. But that's not so good news for hardworing private business owners who are trying to compete against this cheap labor. We're going to have to figure out how to balance those competing interests. Jake/Washington, DC: Can you explain the key differences between a federal prison and a state prison? Is it the type and seriousness of the crime that is the factor? Or just the jurisdiction where the crime is committed? Laurent Belsie: Both. The types of crime often determine which court system handles it (so crimes that involve more than one state often go to federal court). A crime on federal property also rates federal charges. But there's inevitably some shopping around by prosectors. In the Washington-area sniper case, the feds deliberately kept out of the case to allow Virginia to prosecute. Kathy P./Denver : Texas and Virginia are the two states that have more executions than any other states. Do you see any liklihood either of these states will do what Illinois did? Laurent Belsie: No. Even Maryland's moves to reevaluate the death penalty look iffy because of the sniper attacks. Felipe/Florida: When the Immigration and Naturalization Service locks someone up is that in state prisons? Local jails? Special Federal prisons? Laurent Belsie: The federal government clearly administers their cases. Specifically where they're housed, I don't know. The feds have sure found a new use for Guantanomo Bay. Virginia/New York City: Aren't you avoiding a key issue here - race? Why is it black men make up a disproportionate number of those convicted of capital crimes who are put to death? Laurent Belsie: Glad you asked! Yes, the studies are pretty clear that race plays an important role. But there are a few twists. According to an exhaustive Maryland study, the race of the victims matters more than the race of the defendants. (So if you kill a white person you're more likely to get the death penalty than if you kill an African-American.) That means black victims are the most discriminated against. Another twist from the Maryland study: judges' and juries' sentences look pretty neutral from a racial perspective. But prosecutors' initial decisions to seek the death penatly are tilted against blacks. And that initial "stacking of the deck" never gets rebalanced. Gioia Giarlandi / St. Augustine FL: Have any prison reforms made in the past 10 years proven to have made a positive difference to the conditions of the incarcerated and to society at large? Laurent Belsie: One of the most interesting things to me is how prison reform has fallen off America's political agenda. There are plenty of investigations into prison conditions and reform in places like Britain and even Russia. Given Americans' recent experiences with mass murder, we're not talking a lot about reforming prisoners. Peter/Chicago: What do you think of the idea that District Attorneys be prohibited from running for any other electoral office for at least five years after they resign as DAs. This way it institutionally protects against politically ambitious individuals from garnering public recognition from getting a "conviction" in a high profile case that can be parlayed for votes on election day. This way we can have more faith DAs and prosecutors are soley pursuing justice. Laurent Belsie: Two words: Rudy Giulani. As a federal prosecutor, he made a name for himself by going after, among others, the Teamsters. A majority of New Yorkers would not have wanted to implement such a delay before electing him mayor. Rather than eliminate politics from the system, we could possibly channel it a little better. For example, the Maryland study I mentioned above and other studies suggest that geographical bias plays at least as important a role as race. Some jurisdictions - like Baltimore County - are far more likely to go for death-penalty convictions than, say, Baltimore City. One way to correct that fundamental unfairness would be for the state to impose stricter guidelines on when county prosecutors go for death-penalty convictions. Moderator: Time for two more questions. John/Albany, NY: Aren't those lawyers opposed to capital punishment, who file all sorts of legal delays, engaged in a form of cruel and unusual punishment because it prolongs, for years, the plight of the inmate on death row? Laurent Belsie: That's an intriguing question but I think the recent evidence from Illinois suggests that, at least in some cases, that's not true. Just ask any of the Illinois death-row inmates released after 12, 14 years or more because DNA or other evidence proved them innocent. It wasn't cruel and unusual for them that the wheels of death-penalty justice turned so slowly. It was a life-saver. Joel/Manhattan: I don't necessarily agree with capital punishment, but I've heard it said that the only people who actually do agree 100% are those who murder others mercilessly. My question is why are so many people so unwilling to put capital punishment in place (as though the criminals were just sunday school boys who went amiss somewhere?) Laurent Belsie: I think you've hit the heart of the problem. So few Americans come in contact with the criminal justice system that they're not really informed about how bad things are. And that works both ways. We don't realize how criminal some of these people's acts really are. On the other hand, we don't realize how flawed the criminal justice system can be in convicting innocent people. Prosecutors and judges and defense attorneys do know -- and it's high time we let them take a new look at these important questions. Thanks to all of you for your great questions! Moderator: Laurent, and thank you so much for being here with us on MonitorTalk. Both the questions and your answers have given us much to think about. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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