D.A BOB BERLIN’S TESTIMONY [ARTICLE ON THE DEATH PENALTY OF THE WEEK ~ SUNDAY 28 OCTOBER 2012 TO SATURDAY 3 NOVEMBER 2012]

NOTICE: The following article is written by the author itself and not by me, I am not trying to violate their copyright. I will give some information on them.

PAGE TITLE: http://westernsprings.suntimes.com

ARTICLE TITLE: Capital punishment a matter of justice

DATE: Monday 16 January 2012

AUTHOR: Robert B. Berlin

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Robert Berlin is a career prosecutor, Robert B. Berlin was appointed State's Attorney of DuPage County on December 14, 2010 to complete the unexpired term of Joseph Birkett. At the time of his appointment, State's Attorney Berlin was serving as the Chief of the Criminal Bureau of the DuPage County State's Attorney's Office. In that capacity, he supervised all of the Assistant State's Attorneys charged with the criminal prosecution function in DuPage County. He had previously served as the Deputy Chief of Criminal Bureau's Juvenile and Felony Trial Divisions. Prior to joining the DuPage County State's Attorney's Office in 2004, Mr. Berlin completed nearly four years as the First Assistant State's Attorney in Kane County, serving in an administrative and supervisory capacity over all office staff and reporting directly to the elected State's Attorney.   From 1987-2001, Mr. Berlin was an Assistant State's Attorney in Cook County where he tried 68 felony jury trials, including 40 first degree murder cases, and hundreds of felony bench trials, including more than 50 homicide cases. During his time in Cook County, Mr. Berlin's assignments included the criminal appeals, misdemeanor, felony review, child exploitation, preliminary hearings and felony trial divisions. He also served as the deputy supervisor of criminal appeals. Mr. Berlin received the Association of Government Attorneys in Capital Litigation Board of Directors' Trial Award in August 2003 and the Outstanding Prosecutor Award in Kane County in 2004.  He is a member of the Capital Litigation Trial Bar Screening Committee for the 16th Judicial Circuit and a member of DuPage County's Felony Investigative Assistance Team. He is a frequent lecturer on a variety of criminal justice issues for the Illinois State Appellate Prosecutor and the Illinois Prosecutor's Bar Association.  In 1999, he presented to the American Prosecutors Research Institute Seminar on Hate Crimes. Mr. Berlin was raised in the northern suburbs of Chicago and is a graduate of Dickinson College and Washington University College of Law.  Mr. Berlin resides in Clarendon Hills where he serves as an elected Republican Precinct Committeeman.  He and his wife have two daughters whom he coaches in softball.

URL: http://westernsprings.suntimes.com/opinions/letters/9398732-474/capital-punishment-a-matter-of-justice.html

Bob Berlin

Last Modified: Jan 16, 2012 08:28AM

Capital punishment a matter of justice

I find myself compelled to respond to the Dec. 1 editorial opposing reinsating the death penalty.

On March 9, Gov. Quinn abolished the death penalty in Illinois and commuted the death sentences of 15 defendants who had committed some of the worst imaginable crimes despite the fact that the governor’s Capital Punishment Reform Study Committee concluded adopted reforms were working. The victims’ families were completely ignored.

The 2003 death penalty reforms, including mandatory videotaping of custodial interrogations, depositions of witnesses and the use of DNA, resulted in Illinois having the fairest death penalty system in the country. In fact, none of the inmates whose sentences were commuted by Quinn ever made any claims of actual innocence.

The death penalty does indeed deter murders. The recent murder of Jitka Vesel in Oak Brook on April 13, where the defendant researched the status of the death penalty in Illinois prior to killing the victim, is evidence of the deterrent effect.

Without the death penalty, more cases are going to trial, resulting in even greater costs to the taxpayers. I have yet to see one study that measures the cost to a victim’s family and an entire community when a horrific crime like the murder of Kelli O’Laughlin does not result in the appropriate penalty.

The truth of the matter is certain crimes are so evil and horrific that they tear at the very fabric of society, and those who favor capital punishment for such crimes are not proponents of the death penalty but proponents of justice.

Robert B. Berlin

DuPage County State’s Attorney

Copyright © 2012 — Sun-Times Media, LLC

ARTICLE ON THE DEATH PENALTY OF THE WEEK [SUNDAY 12 AUGUST 2012 TO SATURDAY 18 AUGUST 2012]

NOTICE: The following article is written by the author itself and not by me, I am not trying to violate their copyright. I will give some information on them.

PAGE TITLE: The Concord Monitor

ARTICLE TITLE: Support for death penalty is strong

AUTHOR: James M. Reams

AUTHOR INFORMATION: James M. Reams became the county attorney in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, in 1998. He heads an office of 19 attorneys who prosecute felonies and who serve as counsel in three district courts in Rockingham County. He has oversight responsibility for the police departments in 37 towns. Reams describes his jurisdiction as “wealthy and rural, but moving toward suburban.” With a population of approximately 300,000, it is one of the fastest growing counties in the nation.

URL: http://www.concordmonitor.com/article/232581/support-for-death-penalty-is-strong

DATE: Thursday 6 January 2011

James M. Reams

As a member of the majority of the Commission to Study the Death Penalty in New Hampshire, I would like to rebut the information provided by Barbara Keshen in her Dec. 31 Monitor column, "On death penalty, state bucks the trend." 

The anti-death penalty coalition asserts time and time again that public support for the death penalty in America and the world is declining. In fact, there is no indication that public support is waning. When faced with an actual execution, the public has overwhelmingly supported the application of the death penalty. The proof? Public opinion polls following the execution of Timothy McVeigh for blowing up more than 160 men, women and children in a terrorist act in Oklahoma showed an over 80 percent approval rating for the execution. Further proof? If Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 was to be executed, the approval ratings for that execution would be at least as high as the McVeigh figures.

As noted in the American Law Institute's "Report of the Council to the Membership of the American Law Institute on the Matter of the Death Penalty," dated April 15, 2009, "Popular political support for the death penalty appears to remain relatively high, with opinion polls reporting stable majorities (about 70 percent)."

And in a recent report published by the Council for European Studies at Columbia University, Andrew Moravcsik writes that 65 to 70 percent of Britons, a majority of Austrians, around 50 percent of Italians and 49 percent of Swedes favor its reinstatement. The death penalty retains popular approval in Europe when polling is done, as it does in Japan, India and other non-western democracies.

Complicated math

The anti-death penalty lobby also asserts that the death penalty is too expensive to administer. The figures presented to the commission by the Judicial Council, the attorney general's office and the courts were valid attempts to comply with commission requests but were hampered by complications that undermined an accurate understanding of the costs of the recent capital murder trials and the expected costs of substituting life-without-parole sentences for the death penalty in cases of capital murder. 

For example, the attorney general's office is challenged when providing figures about the costs of litigating the two recent death penalty cases. In the Brooks case, the defendant was a retired multi-millionaire with virtually unlimited resources to pour into his defense. It was also complicated by the fact that multiple trips had to be made to Las Vegas, the defendant's home, to interview, depose and prepare witness for both the guilt phase and the penalty phase of the trial.

In State v. Addison, the attorney general's office assisted the Hillsborough County attorney in the preparation and trial of the underlying armed robberies cases, which became factors in the death penalty case. In a bid to be entirely transparent and complete, the attorney general included all costs associated with Addison case. Thus, the Addison figures overstate the actual costs of the death penalty trial.

The costs of incarceration for life in prison are equally challenged because of the limited information available. The Department of Corrections indicated the average length of incarceration of an inmate serving a life without parole sentence is 16.4 years. If the costs of incarceration of inmates are averaged across the system, the cost comes to approximately $33,100 per year. The costs associated with housing inmates in the Secured Housing Unit, where Michael Addison is housed, are higher because of the nature of confinement and the increased security in that unit.

Skewed formula

Additionally, when talking about costs, the Department of Corrections uses an average cost of housing an inmate in New Hampshire prisons, which takes the total costs of the system and divides those costs by the number of inmates. This method skews the actual costs of life sentences downward. Clearly, it is more expensive to house an inmate sentenced to life without parole than an inmate serving three to six years, the average sentence in the state prison.

It is axiomatic that the prisoners who are serving life without parole have much higher total costs, such as medical costs associated with geriatric care, medical care for chronic health issues and end-of-life care. It is well documented that most Americans spend most of their lifetime health-care dollars during their end-of-life phase. There is no reason to doubt that the lifetime costs of average life-without-parole sentences will be higher than average costs of persons serving shorter sentences.

Since there is little data about the real cost of a life-without-parole sentence, the commission reached only general conclusions based upon general facts about end-of-life issues. Faced with lower that actual incarceration costs and higher than average prosecution costs, the commission settled for the proposition that while the cost of death penalty prosecutions is higher, no realistic precise figures could be ascertained.

(Jim Reams is the Rockingham County attorney.)

Commission member and Rockingham County Attorney Jim Reams told the Concord Monitor that a reason to retain the death penalty is the limitation of the law.

He described New Hampshire's statutes as "much more protective" than those in other death penalty states.

Reams also said he believes the death penalty has a deterrent effect, referring to a story the commission heard from Peter Heed, the Cheshire County attorney. According to Reams, Heed told the commission that when he was a criminal defense lawyer, a client said he didn't kill a police officer because he knew he could face the death penalty.

"There's a police officer probably alive today who doesn't even know he was saved by the fact that we had a death penalty," Reams said.

MY RESPONSE TO PROFESSOR MICHAEL L. RADELET

Monday 23 July 2012 - The current hard-line district attorney for Arapahoe County is likely to seek capital charges for accused mass murderer James Holmes — but she will be out of office in five months and Colorado has not executed a single prisoner in nearly 35 years, experts note.

“If they do go for death it will cost tens of millions of dollars at a time when Colorado is shutting down elementary schools,” said University of Colorado Institute of Behavioral Science professor Michael L. Radelet, a leading authority on capital punishment. “If the death penalty were a deterrent, this guy would not have done (what he allegedly did) in the top death-penalty jurisdiction in the state.”

            If you sentence James Holmes to life imprisonment it will also be expensive and we have to pay for his medical bills if he becomes an elderly man. Many death penalty proponents say the study claiming the costs of the death penalty outweigh implementing life without parole is prepared by anti-death penalty activists. Some others even say that even assuming the death penalty is costly or too long to carry out, it would be better to reduce costs and appeals, rather than abolish the death penalty for all crimes. 

http://soldierexecutionerprolifer2008.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/is-death-penalty-expensive-no-it-isnt.html

            Immanuel Kant, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Alex Kozinski, Chalerm Ubumrung and many others do not fully care whether the death penalty deters or not, they care about justice and protection. Some crimes cannot be deterred by any punishment, why don’t we abolish incarcerations too as they do not seem to serve as a deterrent either. Saint Thomas Aquinas was quoted in his Summa Theologica: "If a man is a danger to the community, threatening it with disintegration by some wrongdoing of his, then his execution for the healing and preservation of the common good is to be commended.  Only the public authority, not private persons, may licitly execute malefactors by public judgment. Men shall be sentenced to death for crimes of irreparable harm or which are particularly perverted."

            The death penalty does not seem to act as a deterrent in Colorado as it has not been used in 35 years, I wished the cops should have shot him dead on the spot and it can save us all the mess here. Rather than speak about your opposition to the death penalty, speed up the execution of James Holmes, he is guilty beyond any doubt!

IS THE DEATH PENALTY EXPENSIVE? NO IT ISN'T!

U.S. states that repeal death penalty laws do not see a significant savings in trial costs. In states where the death penalty is the maximum punishment, a larger number of defendants are willing to plead guilty and receive a life sentence. The greater cost of trials where the prosecution does seek the death penalty is offset, at least in part, by the savings from avoiding trial altogether in cases where the defendant pleads guilty. You can find out more here:

Study: Death penalty doesn't cost states

Published: Feb. 25, 2009 at 9:05 PM

SACRAMENTO, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- U.S. states that repeal death penalty laws do not see a significant savings in trial costs, a Criminal Justice Legal Foundation study says.

The group said that in states where the death penalty is the maximum punishment, a larger number of defendants are willing to plead guilty and receive a life sentence.

"The greater cost of trials where the prosecution does seek the death penalty is offset, at least in part, by the savings from avoiding trial altogether in cases where the defendant pleads guilty," the group based in Sacramento said in a statement. "Although this effect is well known to people working in the field, there appears to be no prior study to determine the actual size of this effect."

The study -- "The Death Penalty and Plea Bargaining of Life Sentences" -- examined data gathered by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics from 33 large urban counties. The study examined how many of the murder cases were resolved by guilty plea, how many went to trial and how many resulted in a sentence of at least 20 years.

In states with the death penalty, the average county obtained sentences of 20 years or more in more than 50 percent of cases where the defendant was convicted of murder or voluntary manslaughter.

In states without the death penalty, sentences of 20 years or more were obtained in just more than 40 percent of such cases, but only 5 percent of those were guilty pleas, or just more than a quarter of the number in the death penalty states, the group said.

© 2009 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/02/25/Study-Death-penalty-doesnt-cost-states/UPI-10121235613932/print/#ixzz1La8uzv00

Report wants life without parole abolished

Updated 7/22/2009 11:19 PM

By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — A record 140,610 inmates in state and federal prisons are serving life sentences and nearly one-third of those have no possibility of parole, according to a criminal justice research group that supports alternatives to incarceration.

The Sentencing Project, whose reports are regularly cited in academic and government reviews examining criminal justice policy, concluded that the number of inmates sentenced to life without parole has more than tripled to 41,095 since 1992. The report, citing in part the rising cost of incarceration, urges that life without parole be abolished.

The recommendation was met with strong opposition from some law enforcement officials who said life sentences, including life without parole, help drive down violent crime.

Joseph Cassilly, past president of the National District Attorneys Association, acknowledged that long prison terms are a "huge drain on resources."

He said life sentences are appropriate for violent offenders and even some repeat drug dealers.

"Sometimes there is no way of getting through to these (criminals,)" said Cassilly, who did not dispute the report's statistical findings.

In the project's review, titled "No Exit," researchers also found "overwhelming" racial and ethnic disparities for those serving life terms: 66% are non-white and 77% of juveniles sentenced to life in prison are non-white.

"Life sentences imposed on juveniles represent a fundamental and unwise shift from the long-standing tradition that juveniles are less culpable than adults ... and are capable of change," said Ashley Nellis, a co-author of the report.

Among other findings:

• In Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Nevada, and New York at least one in 6 prisoners is serving a life sentence.

• California, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania each have more than 3,000 people serving life without parole.

• Pennsylvania leads the nation with 345 juveniles serving life without parole.

• The costs of housing an aging prison population also are rising. States should expect to pay $1 million for each prisoner who spends at least 40 years incarcerated, the report concluded.

Todd Clear, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the cost of maintaining a permanent prison population is daunting. The total price tag to keep today's "lifers" incarcerated for the rest of their lives could cost the nation tens of billions of dollars, he said.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-07-22-lifers_N.htm#