“Citing a high murder rate in Texas makes as little sense as citing Michigan or the District of Columbia - both places with much higher than average murder rate - as examples of how. Comparing the United States with other countries is equally pointless. There are very stable countries like Switzerland or Japan with low murder rates (one has the death penalty, the other not) or point to countries like Brazil with murder rates much worse than the United States.”

“As someone who has tried both capital and non-capital murder cases, as well as defending similar cases, I can say from direct knowledge that the costs of capital punishment are directly related to the amount of due process given the defendant. The costs exist because we want to be very sure to guarantee that the defendant has every protection.

The only way to "save" money is to cut the defense made available to defendants charged with very serious crimes. I have tried murder cases where the death penalty was NOT available and the costs of the defense were similar to those in death penalty cases.

In places where the death penalty is either legally or effectively abolished the next attack comes on life without parole.

In a 2001 debate at the American Bar Association convention I debated the head of the ACLU. http://www.justicetalking.org/viewprogram.asp?progID=196
During that debate it became clear that if and when the death penalty is off the table the next target is life without parole.”

“What Amnesty International is not telling you is that polling done on capital punishment shows that consistently 65 to 85% of Americans support capital punishment in some cases since the mid-1970s. Support peaked in the 1980s, decreased slightly to about 65% in 2000, but remains about 70%. If the question is asked "Is there ANY crime that merits the death penalty" Americans say yes at a rate of 82%.

There is no question that death penalty cases are decreasing.

Because of decreasing rates of violent crime (including murder) due in no small part to tougher penalties, the number of cases appropriate for the death penalty have decreased.

Both juries and prosecutors are becoming more discriminating about the cases in which the death penalty is applied.”

How Many Innocent Victims are Too Many?

There has never been any doubt that capital punishment is a specific deterrent. The killer who dies cannot kill again, but in the last decade a series of academic studies have shown that executions mean less murder, less innocent victims. This is the number rarely bandied about by those who fashion themselves “abolitionists.” They claim the moral high ground and point to a system they claim is fatally flawed. But they do not speak of what happens when society fails to incapacitate the worst of the worst killers. Since the death penalty was reinstated by the United States Supreme Court in 1976 there have been about 600,000 murders in America and just over 1000 killers executed.

The death penalty is used rarely, as it should be and as the criminal justice improves there are fewer death sentences. This is because prosecutors are being more discriminating about the cases they submit to juries for capital punishment, the Supreme Court has narrowed the categories of murders for which the death penalty is even available as a choice for juries.

As progressive law professor Cass Sunstein says is his paper “Is Capital Punishment Morally Required,” how can we exclude capital punishment if we know with certainty that innocent people will be murdered without it?

The Idea that Many People on Death Row are Innocent is Nonsense: One of the most pernicious urban legends perpetrated by those who oppose capital punishment is that innocent people have been executed and that there have a large number of exonerations. Exoneration means innocent and while there is no question the justice system makes mistakes they are extremely rare. Of almost 10,000 people sentenced to death over the last 30 years exactly 4 have been removed from death row because DNA showed it extremely unlikely they committed the crimes of which they were convicted. The Innocence Project points to just over 200 DNA exonerations in all kinds of serious felonies. The question raised by Justice Scalia in his concurrence in the case of Kansas vs. Marsh was out of what universe. Those are 200 DNA exonerations out of tens of millions of rapes and murder cases.  That would mean an error rate of about one ten thousandths of one percent or putting it another way a success rate of around 99.99%. No human endeavor is without risk and every year tens of thousands of people are killed by mistakes by pharmacists and doctors. Yet we don’t stop medicine or surgery, we seek to improve it and reduce the risk.

The Gary Graham case offers fodder to those who contend that the United States has gotten carried away with enthusiasm for capital punishment. But Joshua Marquis, a member of the board of directors of the National District Attorneys Association, said that the adversarial justice system remains a sound forum on which juries and judges can weigh matters like eyewitness testimony and circumstantial evidence and make sound convictions short of scientific certainty.

   ``DNA can be a marvelous forensic tool, but it is not a magic bullet,'' Marquis said. ``We must never forget the other, massively larger part of this risk-benefit analysis _ the thousands of truly innocent victims who die at the hands of criminals that the legal system has failed to hold accountable.”

``In this country we have an incredibly elaborate appellate system that recognizes that police, prosecutors, judges, and juries are not infallible,'' he said. ``Opponents . . . are attempting to reshape the discussion in the form of a new urban myth: that our justice system is growing increasingly reckless in its zeal to execute and, worse yet, that significant numbers of innocents are ending up on death row. This is a myth in search of a crisis that doesn't exist.''

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: “The U.S. in Bad Company.”

Only a handful of countries still execute more prisoners each year than the U.S., including countries such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.  Is this the company that we want to keep?

JOSHUA MARQUIS, District Attorney, Media Commentator: “America is NOT a Rogue State.”

Many democracies maintain capital punishment, not the least being India and Japan. The death penalty was abolished in Europe and Euro-centric countries because the European Union made abolition an absolute prerequisite to membership.

Polls of most western European counties show the people of those nations agree with most Americans that the death penalty is appropriate in the worst murders. 

Even some of the states that abolished capital punishment still reserve it as a possibility for war crimes or crimes against humanity, such as the execution of Nazi war criminals during the Nuremberg Trials in the late 1940s.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: “The Death Penalty Makes Too Many Mistakes.”

We know that many innocent people have been sent to death row - over 125 have now been released from death row in the U.S. due to evidence of their wrongful convictions. The death penalty is also riddled with racial and economic bias and geographical arbitrariness.   

JOSHUA MARQUIS, District Attorney, Media Commentator: “Innocence on Death Row Rarer than Rabies.”

In discussing capital punishment, words matter. But the idea that death row is "riddled" with innocents is ridiculous.

There is not a single case in the modern era of capital punishment (since 1976) where a person executed has turned out to be factually innocent. There have been 5 people freed from death row because of DNA evidence and 9 more who had ALREADY had their death sentence removed who were later cleared by DNA. Of the approximately 10,000 sentenced to death in the U.S. since 1976 perhaps 30 of them were actually innocent. 

The larger question is how many innocent people will die because we fail to incarerate or execute killers. Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School - a well known "progressive" - makes the case best in "Is Capital Punishment Morally Required, A Life for Life Trade-off."

Sunstein refers to a series of studies (http://www.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DPDeterrence.htm ) that show that failure to condemn killers results in an unacceptable number of new victims.

Parting Thoughts A Just Punishment (Oregon State Bar Bulletin — MAY 2002) - One need not practice criminal law to recognize that even in a crime as bad as murder, these are particularly horrific and are denominated as aggravated murder under Oregon law.

Parting Thoughts A Just Punishment (Oregon State Bar Bulletin — MAY 2002) - Far from signaling ambivalence, these lengthy delays and retrials bear witness to the extreme care given to the most extreme penalty. The death penalty is seldom sought by Oregon prosecutors and even more rarely imposed by juries. It is properly reserved for the worst of the worst. Oregonians understand that there exist some crimes so unspeakable, some men so evil, that a just punishment is the forfeiture of the killer's own life.

The Myth Of Innocence published in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology - March 31, 2005 Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, Illinois – Discouraged over polls that have consistently shown public support for capital punishment between sixty-five and eighty-five percent over the last quarter century,140 proponents of the death penalty have decided to tap into an understandable horror that people who are truly innocent of the murder of which they stand convicted are on death row. They are turning into doe eyed innocents the few murderers who have slipped through one of the countless cracks in the law afforded to capital defendants. They want us to believe that any one of us could be snatched at any time from our daily freedoms and sentenced to die because of a false and coerced confession, police corruption, faulty eyewitness identification, botched forensics, prosecutorial misconduct, and shoddy and ill-paid defense counsel.

The Myth Of Innocence published in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology - March 31, 2005 Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, Illinois - The number of death sentences is, in fact, decreasing. Criminal sentences for crimes other than murder have become tougher, terms of imprisonment more certain, and perhaps more significantly, the rate of murder is down overall. Prosecutors and juries are properly and appropriately becoming even more discriminating about determining who should die for their crimes. It is a journey not taken lightly.

Likewise, casting the accused as true innocents caught up by a corrupt and uncaring system only discredits a movement that has legitimate moral arguments. Nothing excuses making the victims nameless and faceless, making martyrs out of murderers, and turning killers into victims.

The Myth Of Innocence published in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology - March 31, 2005 Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, Illinois - Some may wonder why it should matter if the number of people who were genuinely exonerated is 30 or 150. Many will claim that even one innocent person put to death is an intolerable number, but those who make that argument are demanding an impossibility-a perfect system. Such errors are episodic, not epidemic, and merit the most rigorous review, precisely as occurs in 21st century capital jurisprudence.

But if one of the primary engines in the debate over capital punishment is that wrongful capital convictions are rampant, then the devil is very much in the details. To call a man with blood on his hands innocent stains not only the truth, but calls into question the actual innocence of the fewer number who are truly exonerated.

The Myth Of Innocence published in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology - March 31, 2005 Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, Illinois - In a subject as emotionally charged as the death penalty these claims must be made precisely-by all sides. Intellectual honesty is a critical ingredient to a meaningful discussion of this important subject. Death penalty opponents risk losing their credibility when they are reckless with the truth.

American justice is a work in progress, and those of us charged with administering it are well aware that it needs constant improvement. But nothing is gained by deluding the public into believing that the police and prosecutors are trying to send innocent people to prison. Any experienced defense lawyer will concede that he would starve if he accepted only "innocent" clients. Americans should be far more worried about the wrongfully freed than the wrongfully convicted. - The Innocent and the Shammed January 26, 2006

He's a murderer. He should die. December 4, 2005 Los Angeles Times - According to a Gallup poll in May, nearly 75% of Americans support capital punishment for murderers. There are some murderers so heinous and so evil that removing them is the measure of the severity of their violation of the social contract. Williams qualifies.

Thursday 9 June 2011 - Clatsop County Attorney Josh Marquis, a death penalty proponent who has prosecuted two capital cases, said capital punishment is an important tool for prosecutors. The threat of a death sentence helps prosecutors secure plea bargains for life without parole, he said, and Oregon hasn't had a history of imposing the death penalty on innocent people.

"It is rarely asked for, it is rarely used and it is rarely imposed," Marquis said.

Sunday 9 October 2011 - Efforts aimed at persuading Oregonians to dump the death penalty are doomed to fail, according to proponents of capital punishment.

As they tell it, nothing has changed since 2002, when death penalty opponents shut down a proposed ballot measure to abolish capital punishment after polling showed it would not pass.

"Polls show that between 65 and 85 percent of Oregonians support capital punishment," said Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis, a death penalty proponent and author on the topic.

A quiet majority favoring the death penalty lacks the "fevered" intensity of those who want to abolish it, Marquis said.

"The zealousness on one side is not matched by the zealousness on the other," he said. "I know there are some crazy people that show up at the pen when there's an execution and wave signs saying 'roast in hell' and 'burn baby burn,' stuff like that. But most people who are pro death penalty are somewhat ambivalent about it because it's very serious business."

Kitzhaber allowed the executions of Wright and Moore to occur in 1996 and 1997 during his previous administration.

Marquis thinks Kitzhaber should take the same non-intervention stance with Haugen.

"When Mr. Wright and Mr. Moore came up, his position was, 'Look, this is the law, and I'm not going to interfere in it, absent of a tremendous injustice'," he said. "Well, the only injustice that the opponents can point to (in Haugen's case) is, they don't like the death penalty."

"I don't think Oregon voters voted for it because they thought it would save them money," said Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis, a proponent of the death penalty.

He says the money argument doesn't really wash when criminals convicted to life in prison don't fight any less than those facing execution.

"They still have expensive $300,000 trials, and they still appeal," Marquis said. In fact, they will appeal forever just like the people on death row." [Wednesday 23 November 2011]

The unique intersection of democracy and justice that is the death penalty must be respected. [Column: Governor should uphold law By JOSH MARQUIS for the Daily Astorian | Posted: Thursday, December 8, 2011 10:30 am]

Some claim life without parole is an adequate substitute. What they fail to note are the people, both inside and outside prison, who die at the hands of convicted murderers. Nor do they seem to comprehend that the only reason many terrible murders are resolved with a plea to a "true life sentence" is the specter of a possible death sentence. [For select few, death is just 11 December 2005]

Opponents claim the death penalty is arbitrary. So is homicide. Thus, each case must be examined individually, first by a prosecutor, then by a jury in two phases, then by more than a decade (on average) of appeals. [For select few, death is just 11 December 2005]

We all agree: 10 guilty men should go free to prevent one innocent from being wrongly convicted. But how about 10,000 guilty, or 100,000, going free? How many victims become too many? What do we say to the victims of killers like Kenneth McDuff, Robert Massie or Carl Cletus Bowles, all murderers doing life who got out and killed again? [For select few, death is just 11 December 2005]

Maybe someday we can start having an honest debate in this country over the morality of capital punishment rather than constantly refuting the chimera of the wrongfully convicted. [Guilty Again! Sunday 15 January 2006]

Even according to Barry Scheck's Innocence Project there have only been 174 DNA exonerations for ALL crimes, more than 90% of which were not murder, let alone death penalty cases. In fact, the number of inmates taken off death row specifically because DNA cleared them is....FIVE. An additional nine inmates who were once on death row were eventually fully exonerated by DNA evidence. Some might say, 14 or 140, it doesn't make a difference. That makes as much sense as being told you have a 1% mortality risk from a surgical procedure versus a 10% risk. [How many innocent victims is “a few”? Tuesday 14 March 2006]

Do you support the death penalty? Why or why not?

I took an oath to uphold the laws of the State of Washington, which includes due consideration of the death penalty option in the appropriate aggravated first degree murder case. There are extreme cases when a jury should have this option.

Thursday 1 September 2011 - Satterberg currently is prosecuting two death penalty cases, one involving the murders of six members of a family and the other a murder of a Seattle police officer. Neither case has gone to trial, yet the cost of defending them has hit $4.3 million and keeps going up. Because all three defendants are indigent, that cost is born by taxpayers. Budget shortfalls have forced Satterberg to cut his department by 51 employees including 36 deputy prosecutors.

Nationwide, death penalty sentences have dropped 60 percent since 2000 from 224 to 112 last year. Experts say there are several factors including more skeptical juries, better defense teams and fewer death sentences being sought by district attorneys.

Satterberg blames what he calls the death penalty "industry." 

“They want to drive up the cost,” Satterberg says, “They want to delay the cases forever, only to turn around and use those arguments why we should get rid of the death penalty.” 

"It was pretty obvious he committed the crime," said Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed, who prosecuted the case and also witnessed the punishment. "He went on a killing spree. He's an evil person." [Referring to the execution of Frank Garcia on Thursday 27 October 2011] 

Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed, who prosecuted the case, attended the execution in Huntsville, Texas, according to a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Earlier in the week, she called the murders "a huge tragedy."

"If there was ever a poster child for the death penalty, this is the case," Reed told Reuters. "Hector Garza, a fine officer; Jessica Garcia, a woman who is trying to leave an abusive situation, and this huge tragedy happens to all of them." [Referring to the execution of Frank Garcia on Thursday 27 October 2011] 

Referring to the upcoming execution of Oba Chandler  on Friday 11 November 2011 - It will be the first time Bartlett, the chief assistant state attorney for Pinellas and Pasco counties, has watched a man die at the hands of the state.

"I really have no compunction or reservations in seeing this guy executed," Bartlett says. "If Florida is going to have a death penalty, this individual is the poster child for having it.”

Bartlett said this is a part of the criminal justice system he's never experienced. He has a professional curiosity to see how it's done — and to see this particular sentence carried out.

"I don't take any pleasure in seeing someone take their last breath," Bartlett said. "But this particular individual, I don't have any reservations about. He has shown throughout this entire process that he has no remorse for the family. He hasn't provided any additional information about how this happened. It's been complete and total denial."

Wednesday 4 January 2012 - The announcement of Waterhouse's death warrant was welcome news for Bruce Bartlett, Pinellas-Pasco chief assistant state attorney. Bartlett helped secure a second death sentence for Waterhouse after the Florida Supreme Court tossed his original death sentence.

"He definitely ranks among some of the most notorious murderers that we had in Pinellas County during that time," Bartlett said. "I'm glad to see the governor moving forward with this."

The states’ attorneys say the move would rob them of an important bargaining chip — the threat of death to get guilty pleas from suspects who opt for life in prison.

Take that off the table, they say, and there’ll be more trials because defendants facing only the prospect of life behind bars would be less inclined to deal.

“When we go to battle in the most serious, heinous cases, we have to have every weapon available to us,” said Thomas Gibbons, the state’s attorney in southwestern Illinois’ Madison County. “Let’s say you’re playing cards and you lose your ace — you’re one step behind.”

On seeking the death penalty for the murderers of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom

“These weren't just murders," prosecutor Leland Price said. "These crimes cry out for the maximum penalty. Give us justice."

"I can still see the picture of that little girl in the field," said Catherine Babbitt, chief of the Bexar County district attorney's family justice division, who helped prosecute the case. "Murder is horrible anytime. Not only did we have a murder of a child, but a murder and a rape of a child. It was particularly horrific." [Referring to the execution of Guadalupe Esparza on 16 November 2011]

Tuesday 8 March 2011: In the words of Kane, when asked by state Rep. Gary A. Holder-Winfield, D-New Haven, what he considered the value of the death penalty, "There are crimes … which are so horrendous that the public has the right to have us as prosecutors seek the highest penalty that the law permits.