ARKANSAS' EXECUTIVE CLEMENCY CARROT - A 25 YEAR NIGHTMARE - Part II - Government - http://maxpages.com/darkevilworld/The_Clemency_Carrot_Part

BY WAY OF EXAMPLE:

To further set the tone and spirit of this article, although I truly don't wish to talk about my own offense, I must do so to later make a significant point, and simply because it serves as an almost ideal example of all that I will talk about.

In brief, I was sentenced to life without parole for robbing a taco place while "armed" with a water pistol. My four accomplices each received 5-year suspended sentences for reduced charges of robbery and theft. There was no overt threat or violence involved in my case. There was no measurable or lasting injury to anyone. I went to the cash register, opened it, took $264 and left. However, under Arkansas law even "representing by word or conduct" that one is armed with a deadly weapon (such as hiding a hand in one's pocket) technically constitutes "aggravated" robbery, punishable by life imprisonment without parole. And, the maximum possible sentence of life imprisonment and a $15,000 fine is what I was given, simply because my jury had no inkling what kind of sentence a life sentence is in Arkansas really is.

In technical terms, this sentence exceeds even the sentence possible at law for multiple-victim capital murder in Arkansas, except where a death sentence is imposed, because the fine alone could formerly satisfy the conviction entirely, while capital felons cannot be subject to fines.

Within a year of my conviction and the incomprehensible sentence I had received, it became obvious to me that most jurors, and most Arkansans in general, simply have no idea what the execution terms of the sentences they are imposing in jury trials really are. Juries were condemning people by the hundreds to die in prisons without having had any intention at all of punishing so severely. This was happening all around the state, mainly because of a logical and reasonable, but gravely erroneous belief that was based in largest part on a lie; that non-capital life sentences in Arkansas were subject to parole in seven years.

The public came to believe that lie after saturation reporting by the local media on infamous and sensational criminal cases such as Charles Manson, Sirhan-Sirhan and countless others of this type all of whom were coming up for parole all around the country. These cases were reported from California, New York and virtually everywhere else in the world; everywhere except in Arkansas. In fact, however, ALL life sentences in Arkansas have always been without possibility of parole, except for a brief nine month period in 1969.

Because I felt deeply that even a conservative Fort Smith jury would not sentence someone to die in prison for a toy gun robbery that amounted to little more than a theft of $264, I was finally able to contact several of my own jurors eight years later. Some of them, not to my surprise, were absolutely shocked to learn that they had sentenced me to life in prison without parole, and stated that they had no intention whatsoever of condemning me to die in prison for the offense for which I was tried. They had believed, like most of the Arkansas public believes to this day, that only CAPITAL MURDER life sentences were "without parole", and that logically, all non-capital life sentences were therefore "with parole." Because I had been in trouble before, as a teenager, and because I was the oldest of those who were involved in the current offense, my jury felt I should be somewhat more harshly punished; meaning they thought I should have to serve at least six or seven years with good behavior before being able to make parole. As they said, the "two or three years" I would have to serve on a 30, 40 or 50 year term just didn't seem to them to be "truth in sentencing", all factors considered. They had just wanted to do what was right, fair and their civic duty.

Over the now 18 years of my confinement, I have also contacted many dozens of other jurors in other prisoners' trials, and without exception they could not believe and were anguished over the unwitting injustice they had perpetrated only because they had believed a subtle but insidious lie about how the sentences were historically executed in Arkansas. After all, if a juror thinks that life imprisonment for a crime like multiple murder, serial rape or attempting to kill a president could be paroled in as little as seven years, then 50 years meant serving four or five years before being paroled and 30 years meant serving three or four years before parole, right? Wrong. This tragically wrong conclusion is only the product of logical and sound reasoning, but that doesn't make any less grievous the inherent injustices perpetrated all around Arkansas in courts of law. It is impossible to emphasize enough the staggering volumes of excessive and perverse sentences that Arkansas jurors have unwittingly exacted in all classes of offenses across the board for the past three decades, simply because they have always believed that a life sentence was subject to parole in seven years.

To give a recent example of how tragic the public's misconception about life terms being subject to parole in seven years can be:

Soon after our latest Death Row prisoner was executed, the sensationalism-starved media decided that just reporting about the execution wasn't exciting enough, since hardly anyone even paid it any attention, as the novelty of reinstating executions in Arkansas after a long sabbatical had already worn off. So, off they went with their satellite trucks and heavy-duty microphones to interview the widow of a man who had been killed in the case in which current Governor, Mike Huckabee was considering a commutation of his sentence because a juror in that trial had expressed serious misgivings about the defendant's guilt.

In response to the reporter's question about how she felt about her husband's killer not being executed in a dual affair with the other condemned man, as originally scheduled, the widow, full of grief, and very sincerely and heart-wrenchingly said, "I wish they had gone ahead and executed him, because if he is given only life in prison, he will be out in six or seven years. That's how they do it down there, you know."

Sadly, if the widow was told the truth, that no one in the ADC, much less a murderer had ever gotten out of a life sentence in anything even close to that time, she would not have believed it simply because the twisted media and a few politicians have so cemented this lie in the public mind. It simply would not register as truth. Worse, it is impossible to comment upon the depth of the tragedy of the fact that a grieving widow wanted her husband's killer to be executed not because she believed taking his life was a just sentence, but because she believed the lie that if this sentence was commuted to a life term he would soon be paroled. She believed, therefore that his execution would be a better "truth in sentencing" and justice than a life term would be.

What is even more unfathomable about this incomprehensible state of affairs in Arkansas is that under the law a jury that imposed the sentence in any case could not even be told what the true execution term of a sentence they imposed would be.

Please consider that seriously: the jury was asked to make a fair penalty judgement suited to the crime and the offender, but by law could not be told in court how the imposed sentence would actually be executed. They could not even be told whether or not a sentence was subject to parole. However, if jurors could not be told even at trial how much good time a felon could earn, or when the earliest time he could come up for parole would be, how on earth then could it ever impose a "knowing and intended" punishment in any case? And on what basis did the jurors make the penalty judgements that they in fact did make? The answer is self-evident; fair-minded jurors who only wanted to realize a better truth had nothing to rely upon at trial except common sense, logic and fair reasoning which was itself based almost exclusively on information about Arkansas' system of crime and punishment as painted in panoramic and deceitful view by - you guessed it - a sensation-crazed media and a few politicians who wanted to get elected or re-elected.

Let's face it, the common people from whom jurors are drawn, are not educated in or experienced with the criminal justice system. They have other and better things to do with their lives than study criminal law. Those persons who do have careers in criminal justice and related fields, such as judges, lawyers, police officers, etc. are excused from jury duty in Arkansas. So, again, from where does a typical Arkansas juror get the information, or the perspective absolutely necessary to impose a fair sentence? From the evening news or morning papers, that's where. Does the reader truly believe that the evening news is a good, moral, accurate, and righteous source for information upon which jurors should make penalty judgements, or upon which decisions about human life and productivity should be based? I think not.

This overwhelming potential for jurors not to have known the true consequences of the penalty they imposed in a given case is one of the first elements that makes Arkansas' criminal justice system inherently unjust. In Arkansas, there simply is an overwhelming likelihood that the sentence imposed in a given case was the product of juror's lack of information and misinformation through systematic media sensationalism and political propaganda. Believe me, the media and the political leadership has mastered how to present an endless stream of half-truths and shape public opinion by those means.

The President of the United States is the prime example. The President who also just happened to be Governor of Arkansas across most of the period of time this article spans.

Over the years, I have also read many trial records where even the judge sitting on the bench, or the prosecutor trying the case actually, sincerely believed and told the defendant and his family, on the record, that he or she would parole in six or seven years with good behavior. I realize that some people find it difficult to accept that even judges or prosecutors, jurors and yes, even lawmakers themselves may often have little or no idea what they are doing in dispensing punishment or implementing laws. This is especially true in Arkansas.

But you see, the truth of it lies in a very simple fact; judges, prosecutors and lawmakers are all elected officials. Before they are elected, many of them are just everyday people, as jurors are, who form everyday opinions and beliefs based on information gained in everyday ways and from everyday sources - again the evening news and the morning paper; the media. Like most other Arkansans, they can logically think and fairly reason, and draw conclusions. They have a fair sense for justice. However, they simply have no true experience with nor insight into the evolution of Arkansas' laws and its criminal "justice" system over long periods of time. Yet, by the sheer logistics of the fact that gaining "experience" does take time, when they do eventually learn the truth about an injustice it has already been perpetrated many times over, and it has simply come too late. SB 112 is the latest example. It will not be the last.

No doubt, many lawmakers will think that SB 112 is a great thing. On its face, in a vacuum, it probably appears to be. But, you see, that's just the problem, and another reason Arkansas' criminal justice system is inherently unjust. Newly-elected and inexperienced lawmakers who themselves believed the pervasive sentencing lie before they came to public office, will see the bills they pass today only at their face value - only in a vacuum. They have little or no idea what that new law will do when it's injected into the body of statutes already in existence. So, most of these lawmakers will vote for SB 112 and will tragically not know what kinds of injustices it will repeatedly perpetrate when it is applied to a criminal justice system about which the average person, including themselves, believes little more than a putrid lie.

MILESTONES OF ARKANSAS' TWENTY-FIVE YEAR SENTENCING INJUSTICES AND EXECUTIVE CLEMENCY NIGHTMARE

In Arkansas, prior to 1969, the incidence of excessive punishments for offenses of any kind was a relatively rare occurrence. Only occasionally was an offender punished in a way that an average person, and even the law itself, considered to be far disproportionate to the offense. However, the rarity of excessive punishment at this point in history was not so much due to the fact that jurors had a better sense for what was fair and just (after all, they used to hang human beings for stealing horses or cows), but the law itself prevented truly outrageous penalties in most situations, simply because the maximum punishments that could be meted out to an offender under the sentencing code were much lower, more realistic and just. Most property crimes in Arkansas, for example, carried up to five to ten years imprisonment, and robbery carried a maximum of 21 years. Murder and rape were subject to life imprisonment without parole, or death.

By 1969, several scores of Arkansas defendants had been sentenced to life imprisonment terms, but "lifers" constituted less than 3% of the entire inmate population of Arkansas. Also, because Arkansas' prison system was relatively small, as prison systems go, the economic and other pressures of maintaining a massive criminal justice system were not as great as they had been in larger states, such as California, Texas and New York. In these other places, "crime" became a problem much sooner than in places like Arkansas, largely due to the radical difference in exploding populations and growth of the "inner cities." So, at a time when Arkansans often thought that these other states were being, or getting "soft on crime and criminals", they were actually just dealing with demographic and economic factors that Arkansas will inevitably face in the same way.

You can bet that California, Texas, New York and all the rest were the first who "got tough on crime and criminals" and that both the public demand for "truth in sentencing" and the "lock them up and throw away the keys" philosophy first occurred there, as well. Media propaganda, political platform building, all the things that currently plague Arkansas, led to insane punishments in these other states long before it became popular in Arkansas. First California then in New York and Texas and then all around the country the unrealistic "reactionary" criminal laws collapsed under their own weight, one by one.

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LINDA TANT MILLER

WASHINGTON

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Page Updated Thu Jan 24, 2008 6:54am EST