Law professor Charles T. Black once speculated on what he would expect in legal defense if he had killed someone in self-defense. I would want to find out as much as I could about his prior record of arrests for violent crimes, of psychiatric confinement, and so on. I would want to have located and interviewed all possible witnesses to his demeanor and words just prior to our private meeting. But it is all completely out of the reach of the poor. The poor man, unless some public interest organization happens to see an important issue in his case, can no more afford a really adequate defense than he could afford a year's cruise around the world on a luxury liner.
Capital punishment is a primitive idea, rooted in revenge.
It does not deter crime. Appallingly, innocent persons wrongly convicted of murder, have been hung or electrocuted or shot by the state, their innocence discovered or established after their execution, or even known at the time. The most famous man to be put to death by the state of Utah, excepting Gary Gilmore, was Joe Hill, the legendary organizer for the Wobblies, whose arrest took place during an especially bitter labor strike, and who was taken in on a trumpedup charge of murder. Following his trial, a charade, he was executed, and left behind the wish that his body be cremated and his ashes spread throughout the country, save for Utah. Yet despite the role of race, poverty and caprice, defenders of state-killings accuse opponents of sentimentality.