[Nettime-bold] Tyranny of Law

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

Society run by law that does not know limits is like a perfect man 
without a soul. Are the laws made for the people, or are the people 
made for the laws?  Is protecting the law more important to us, the 
people, the ones who establish laws to rule over ourselves, or is it 
protecting the human life, the life one of us?

Prosecutors See Limits to Doubt in Capital Cases

By ADAM LIPTAK


[Unable to display image]udge Laura Denvir Stith seemed not to 
believe what she was hearing. 

A prosecutor was trying to block a death row inmate from having 
his  conviction reopened on the basis of new evidence, and Judge 
Stith, of the Missouri Supreme Court, was getting exasperated. 
"Are you suggesting," she asked the prosecutor, that "even if we 
find Mr. Amrine is actually innocent, he should be executed?"

Frank A. Jung, an assistant state attorney general, replied, "That's 
correct, your honor."

That exchange was, legal experts say, unusual only for its 
frankness.

After a trial and appeal, many prosecutors say, new evidence of 
claimed innocence should generally not be considered by the 
courts.

While death row inmates have always peppered the courts with 
legal filings, the recent wave of death row exonerations, based on 
DNA and other evidence, has inspired more defense lawyers and 
academics to seek to reopen death penalty cases in a sustained 
and vigorous way.

Courts are beginning to express concern that they may be parties 
to the occasional miscarriage of justice. Gov. George Ryan's 
commutations of the death sentences of all 164 prisoners on death 
row in Illinois focused public attention on the issues of wrongful 
convictions and flaws in the capital justice system. 

Jeremiah W. Nixon, Missouri's attorney general, said Mr. Jung's 
response to Judge Stith was a legally correct answer to an 
inflammatory hypothetical question. The point Mr. Jung was trying 
to make, he said, is that there must come a time when cases can 
be closed.

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