NY Times Uses “Big Lie” in Fight Against Death Penalty

Originally published on November 24, 2002 in Toogood Reports by Nicholas Stix In order to know what to expect from any "news story" or editorial in the New York Times on the death penalty, all you have to know is that the Sulzberger family, which owns the newspaper, and its editors, are unalterably opposed to capital punishment. The article will then follow the computer scientists' rule of GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. 'The death penalty is unjust, and must be abolished, or failing that, rendered practically inoperable.' Between the opening and the conclusion, the reader should expect to be abused via the withholding of essential details, and violations of logic. And so it is with the newspaper's Wednesday editorial, "Justice for Death Row," which calls on lame duck, Republican Illinois Governor George Ryan to commute to life the sentences of all of Illinois' ... death row inmates. The ellipsis is because the newspaper does not tell the reader how many inmates' sentences would be commuted, if the Timesmen had their way. What the Times does tell us, is that 13 men who were on death row, including one who was two days away from a date with the death chamber, have been exonerated, and that Illinois has executed 12 prisoners since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1977. "That's more than the 12 people who were actually executed. The co-chairman of a blue-ribbon commission appointed to study the system noted that it was unlikely that any doctor 'could get it wrong over 50 percent of the time and still stay in business.'" Those 13 exonerated men have names, and lives that are of value, independent of their function as political pawns for the New York Times and the anti-death penalty crowd. So, raise a glass out of respect to Joseph Burrows, Perry Cobb, Rolando Cruz, Gary Gauger, Alejandro Hernandez, Verneal Jimerson, Ronald Jones, Carl E. Lawson, Steve Manning, Anthony Porter, Darby Tillis, Steve Smith and Dennis Williams. The bad news is, that the Times – along with the unnamed co-chairman – fibbed. The Times misrepresented capital punishment in Illinois as a situation in which a defendant in a capital case has a 52 percent chance (13 out of 25) of being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to die. The good news is, the true percentage of exonerated death row prisoners in Illinois is 7.5 percent. Public Information Officer Brian Fairchild of the Illinois Corrections Department told Toogood Reports, that 159 prisoners are currently on death row. Adding the 13 exonerated prisoners, that makes for 172 death sentences. In other words, Illinois gets it right not 48% of the time, as the Times portrays things, but 92.5% (159 out of 172) of the time. That is, to be sure, an imperfect record, but worlds apart from the Times' fiction. And the Times has not reported a single instance of a man being unjustly executed in the State of Illinois. The Times' editorial board's dishonesty in reporting the Illinois death row numbers was but a prelude to its violation of logic, in calling on Gov. Ryan to commute the sentences of all prisoners on death row to life sentences.

"But last month's hearings, which received wide attention across the state, appear to have slowed the momentum. The testimony, much of it from families of murder victims, was often heart-wrenching. But as effective as they were as a reminder of the pain that crime causes, the hearings did not refute the fact that Illinois's use of the death penalty is tragically flawed. Governor Ryan, who has made fairness in administering the death penalty a hallmark of his governorship, will end his tenure on a high note if he takes one last stand for justice and issues a blanket commutation."

When other people's pain coincides with the Times' house politics, the Times' editors are less patronizing. Murder isn't just about "the pain that crime causes" (read: 'We feel your pain'), but is the ultimate injustice that one person can commit. The death penalty is about justice. The Times speaks of Gov. Ryan's maintaining of "fairness in administering the death penalty," but this is yet more double-talk. In English, "fairness in administering the death penalty" means ensuring that the accused gets a fair trial with competent counsel, and in the case of a conviction, the chance to appeal his sentence, and the opportunity, should new, exculpatory evidence or procedural errors be discovered after conviction, for his execution to be postponed while his case is reviewed. Conversely, on West 43rd Street, there is no such thing as "fairness in administering the death penalty"; "fairness" lies in the abolition or crippling of the death penalty. Note too that for socialists, "fairness in administering the death penalty," is often a code for the illogical belief that, 'disproportionate numbers of blacks are condemned to death; thus the death penalty is unjust.' Human beings – whether as individuals or groups – do not act proportionately. The salient fact is not that disproportionate numbers of blacks are condemned to death, but rather that disproportionate numbers of blacks commit murder. What socialists are saying, ultimately, is that if enough blacks commit murder, then black murderers should get bonus points. By calling for the commutation of all death sentences in Illinois, the Times editorial board blurs the distinction between those who were rightfully convicted, and those who were not, and ignores the facts in Illinois. The Times editorial board simply opposes the death penalty everywhere, the facts be damned. And here we must return to the editorial's misrepresentation of capital prosecutions in Illinois. For if the reader can be conned into believing that state prosecutors get death penalty cases wrong more often than they get them right, the proposal that capital punishment be shelved starts looking pretty reasonable. The death penalty is serious business. When 13 men in one state alone are unjustly sentenced to die, even if that state's track record is over 92% correct, attention must be paid to death penalty critics – or at least, the honest ones. And the public deserves to hear serious arguments for and against the ultimate penalty. However, when zealots are willing to lie in order to end capital punishment, it just goes to show that they have not been paying attention.