New
York Post - 5/15/01
Rod
Dreher urged conservatives to rethink the death penalty
-May
15, 2001 -- FBI Director Louis Freeh did what Pope John Paul II
has not been able to do: turn this law-and-order Catholic
conservative against the death penalty. Timothy McVeigh's guilt is
unquestionable, as is the gravity of his crime. If ever there were
a case where it was important for the government to play by the
rules, it was this one. And still, they fumbled. To be sure, the
3,000 pages of documents the FBI failed to turn over to McVeigh's
lawyers will not exonerate him. McVeigh did it. He admits he did
it. He deserves to die. That's not the same as saying the state
should put killers to death. After the McVeigh debacle, who can
trust our government to administer capital punishment? We know all
about McVeigh's saga. But what of the anonymous cases where the
defendant's guilt is less obvious, and law enforcement feels less
of an obligation to do things by the book? Consider the shocking
scandal unfolding in Oklahoma City, of all places, involving the
work of police chemist Joyce Gilchrest. Over 14 years, the state
won hundreds of felony convictions based in part on her expert
testimony. But she has long been criticized for sloppy work. Last
week, a judge released a convicted rapist who had been behind bars
for 15 years after an independent lab analysis contradicted her
findings. At least that poor sod has his life. Eleven men have
been executed for convictions won partly on the basis of
Gilchrest's testimony. Twelve others sit on death row. The state
is investigating. We have long known that racism, corruption,
poverty, incompetence and plain old human fallibility make it
possible, even likely, that an innocent man will die at the hands
of the state. That fact has given many death-penalty supporters
doubts. So why is McVeigh a tipping point? I can't say for sure,
but there's something about the psychology of this case that
magnifies the FBI's relatively insignificant error. If they screw
up even with McVeigh . . . That sets a hairline crack in the
foundation of our justice system, one that collapses the
rock-solid faith in it one must have if one is to support
state-sanctioned killing. In the end, McVeigh will probably be
executed, and justice will have been done. On that day, I won't
feel any compassion for the guy, but I will feel terrible for
those unknown innocents yet to be executed so we could be free to
whack Tim McVeigh. Think of men like Anthony Faison and Charles
Shepard, who were freed from prison yesterday after someone else
confessed to a 1987 murder that sent them up the river - and a key
state witness admitted to lying on the stand. Had they been
convicted in a death-penalty state, which New York was not at the
time, they might be dead today. In modern-day America, with new
prisons and tougher sentencing, we can put our Timothy McVeighs
safely away until they die a natural death, or new evidence
exonerates them. I can live with knowing McVeigh and his ilk are
suffering in prison instead of in the grave, where they belong. I
can no longer live with the fear that, in our determination to
inflict retributive justice on these murderers, we risk killing
innocents. We conservatives cannot afford to let our justified
outrage at unrepentant killers like McVeigh make us morally
indifferent to the deadly and irrevocable peril in which society
places the truly guiltless on trial for their lives. At some point
in this death-penalty debate, the sanctity of innocent life
demands that men and women of conservative conscience have to say:
Enough. e-mail: [email protected]
|