Justice Marshall and Death Penalty

It is a sad irony that the Supreme Court’s recent death penalty decisions, specifically its holding that evidence of innocence need not be evaluated during post-trial appeals (“New Curbs Put on Judges’ Power to Halt Executions,” Jan. 26), come at a time when we celebrate the memory of a man who would have found these rulings abhorrent.

Thurgood Marshall understood the way in which the death penalty operates as a cruel and capricious lottery that singles out only the indigent, those whose appointed lawyers often lack the resources to find and introduce sufficient evidence at trial that might spare them. As regards the introduction of such evidence after the completion of a capital trial, Marshall wrote, “ . . . if it is impossible to construct a system capable of accommodating all evidence relevant to a man’s entitlement to be spared death--no matter when the evidence is disclosed--then it is the system, not the life of the man sentenced to death, that should be dispatched.”

The death penalty does not deter crime. It is a product of our fear and our hollow urge for vengeance. Thurgood Marshall understood the awful and irrational power of fear and the futility of vengeance. He spent his life combatting them. The Supreme Court’s recent rulings, supported in full by Marshall’s successor, Clarence Thomas, make a mockery of his memory.

ED REDLICH

West Hollywood