046 The Erickson Report for January 20 to February 2, Page 2: The Death Penalty and Criminal Justice

046 The Erickson Report for January 20 to February 2, Page 2: The Death Penalty and Criminal Justice

Okay, I'm going to put this in here.

On December 9, Bigler Stouffer II, 79, was executed for murder at the State Penitentiary in McAlester, OK. He had been convicted of the 1985 shooting death of one Linda Reaves, an incident that also left her boyfriend, Doug Ivens, seriously injured.

He originally was convicted in 1986 and sentenced to death but the verdict was oveturned on the grounds he had been provided an inadequate defense. He was re-convicted in 2003, meaning he spent the last 35 years of his life on death row.

Without going into details of competing assertions, I'll note that to the very end, to the moment he entered the death chamber, Stouffer maintained his innocence. As recently as a hearing before the Pardon and Parole Board in November, he insisted that Ivens was shot as the two men fought over a gun at Ivens' home, and that Reaves was already dead when he arrived.

That board recommended that Stouffer's sentence be commuted to life without parole, but Gov. Kevin Stitt rejected the idea, not surprising since attorneys for the state opposed clemency, saying that Stouffer's "heinous actions, his lies and manipulations, and his complete lack of sorrow and remorse for the hurt he caused should dictate one conclusion - the jury's death sentence must be carried out."

That last part is why I bring this up. A gaping hole at the center of our supposed criminal justice system reveals it to be in reality a prosecution procedure system, one where truth is not pursued, it is created, something most markedly obvious in death penalty cases, where the notion of "finality" takes on a lethal meaning.

If you are convicted at trial, that becomes not our best societal judgement of the reality of the events involved, it becomes revealed truth, holy writ, and this "finding of fact," whether by judge or jury, can't be challenged on appeal except under special limited circumstances; only the legal technicalities in reaching it can be. Not only must the courts accept your guilt as utter truth, so must you to the point where absolute proof of your innocence of the crime may not save you unless that proof could not have been presented at trial - not was not, could not.

In fact, just last month the state of Arizona told the Supreme Court in oral arguments related to the case Shinn v. Ramirez that “innocence isn’t enough here" to allow two men to challenge their convictions in federal court - and they were in fact preaching to the choir, because SCOTUS has in the past said essentially the same thing.

As so we have Bigler Stouffer, who frankly may or may not have been guilty, I don't know, but who in either event encountered the fact, as so many others have, that continuing to insist on your innocence after conviction will be used as a weapon against you in seeking any sort of mercy or understanding or justice.

Because the system will admit "we did it wrong," but will - pardon the expression - fight to the death to avoid saying "We got it wrong."

The death penalty should disappear.