Being the recipient of a three strikes life sentence, a penalty just below death, I see capital punishment as yet another example of what's wrong with our justice system.
The debate has now shifted to whether Scott Peterson should die for his crimes. On its face, killing your pregnant wife is about as bad as it gets.
But ours is a flawed system.
In a capital crime, at best, if such can be said, a guilty killer voluntarily confessed without being coerced, tricked or tortured, removing any doubt about guilt. At worst, an innocent person is executed.
The phenomenon of actual innocence – a problem plaguing the American criminal justice system, and especially the death penalty – is generally caused by overzealous prosecutors and police, jailhouse informants who should never be trusted, and overly suggestive identification procedures conducted by bias law enforcement.
Since 1976, 111 people have been found factually innocent and liberated from the gallows after being found guilty – just like Scott Peterson. Those are the cases we know of.
I have a personal stake in this debate.
As a pro se litigant who's been fighting his three strikes life sentence for over a half a decade, I have more than a passing interest in capital crimes. One of San Quentin's most notorious death row prisoners, Richard Allen Davis, committed the 1993 murder of Polly Klaas that brought three strikes into being.
The unmistakable guilt of Davis made it possible for myself and thousands of others to receive life sentences for nonviolent crimes. Would I like to see him die? Sure I would. But as a jailhouse lawyer and inside activist, the current model of justice is too imperfect even for a dog like him.
There is no way to guarantee the innocent will not be killed alongside the guilty. Vengeance has no place in the justice system.
Arguably, hanging horse thieves, cattle rustlers and outlaws in the mid-19th Century helped civilize a young nation. That is, if anyone can venture to say the angry mob in front of the courthouse on the day the jury convicted Peterson was representative of civilized society.
Justice is not only flawed, but automatic appeals afforded all inmates sentenced to death to take decades. With 640 inmates condemned to die in California, only 10 have been executed since 1976. Rather than even consider abolishing capital punishment, the most recent debate is "where" to build a larger death row.
Still, the case against Peterson is entirely circumstantial. Even the bible says you need two eyewitnesses in order to justify execution. If the justice system could guarantee a 99 percent rate of absolute certainty – a standard of excellence, in my opinion, impossible to achieve – that still means six or seven death row inmates in San Quentin are innocent.
Moreover, it costs roughly $2 million to try a capital case in California, six times higher than a noncapital trial. Do the math, it simply doesn’t add up.
It's time for this country to abandon it's infatuation with death. The proper punishment for murder is life, not lethal injection.
If Peterson truly killed Laci and Conner, then does he deserve to die? Not if the innocent are also executed under this same flawed system of justice. If you hate Peterson so much, let him rot in prison for the rest of his life.
Take it from someone who knows, life is worse than death. Abolish the death penalty, it's an abomination.
--a California prisoner, December 2004
MIM responds: We stand with this prisoner in opposition to the imperialist death penalty. The Amerikan system is far to flawed to be deciding who deserves prison much less who deserves death. But we also are clear that revolutionaries can not afford to be pacifists. When the proletariat takes power, the imperialist criminal injustice system will be abolished. But there will be murdering imperialists who will face the penalty of death for their crimes, a blood debt that the people will demand.