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Opinion
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Tuesday, October 17, 2000
For comments, contact Ben Voosen Embry or Emily Hughey at 864-4924 or e-mail opinion@kansan.com
Perspective
Courts' flaws call for ban on death penalty
The rising number of death row inmates who are being freed after being found illegally convicted and innocent has finally begun to put executioners in the unemployment line.
In February, citing his state's "shameful record of convicting innocent people and putting them on death row," Gov. George Ryan, an Illinois Republican who had always supported capital punishment, issued an order invoking the first state moratorium on executions. Illinois courts have found grounds to exonerate 13 death row inmates, more than the 12 they have executed since 1976.
A state commission in Illinois will review a record of injustice that has belatedly freed death row inmates for crimes they did not commit. Ryan called that a record "close to the ultimate nightmare, the state's taking of innocent life."
Movements for a capital punishment moratorium are afoot in 12 of the 38 states that apply the death penalty.
In January, the Louisiana Bar Association passed a resolution calling for a moratorium there "to ensure that no person is put to death without having their legal claims properly presented to the courts."
The risk of executing the innocent — an unacceptable risk when life in
Ben Voosen
Embry
opinion editor
opinion@ananaan.com
prison is the alternative — is only one force behind a slowly gathering movement to end the death penalty or at least to impose an execution moratorium until there is better citizen understanding that it is a brutal form of retribution, if not mindless vengeance, as currently applied.
The Supreme Court has agreed to rule soon on an effort to end executions in Florida's antique electric chair. It has required repeated high-voltage shocks to kill, sometimes shooting blue and orange flames from behind face masks and covering the smoldering victims with hemorrhaged blood. According to death penalty abolitionists, the continued use of Florida's flawed electric chair imposes such bloody disfigurement and torment that it amounts to "cruel and unusual punishment," prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.
Beyond inflicting death by high-voltage electricity, the full scope of other states' options ranges from electrocution to asphyxiation in a gas chamber to lethal injection, a hangman's noose or a firing squad's bullets. Since 1976, Delaware has hanged one convict, and Utah has executed two by firing squad. To make matters worse, in the 38 death-penalty states, 26 apply it to the mentally retarded and 23 to juvenile offenders.
The belated recognition that many Americans have been wrongfully sentenced to death has moved Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to propose swearing reforms designed both to make trials fairer and to compensate the innocent victims of injustice.
The Innocence Protection Act would require states receiving federal grants to improve the DNA testing used in criminal investigations and prosecutions, to provide competent and well-paid defense counsel for defendants who cannot afford their own lawyers and to require that all juries in death penalty cases be informed that an alternative to execution is life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
But it remains to be seen what, if anything, will become of the Leahy bill. Until then, state governments should mandate a moratorium on all executions, for the taking of one life is one too many. As an editorial in the *Washington Post* put it, the states "should not have the authority to act as a killer has acted and to take a life for a life taken."
Given the inherent vagaries of the judicial system, it seems self-evident that the death penalty is an unjust and paradoxical practice. As statistics show, capital punishment does nothing to reduce violent crime, and it costs more money than lifetime prison sentences. The recent police scandals in Texas and California, in which more than 90 convictions have been overturned because of massive police corruption, are part and parcel of the need to mandate a federal moratorium on the death penalty.
In the meantime, death penalty advocates mete out an ironic form of justice in which we condemn murder by donning the executioner's mask and becoming murders ourselves.
Voecken Emby in a Kansas City, Mo., graduate student in Journalism.
"I SEE IT DIDN'T TAKE LONG FOR THE CAMPAIGNS TO WISE UP."
Chan Lowe / TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES
By the Numbers
2 Number of hidden video cameras discovered in the men's showers at Yosemite campground last July Source: Yosemite National Park
campground last July
Source: Yosemite National Park
$2,000
"Fine too 'nfinity' that
Mississippi has proposed levy-
ing on fully clothed men "in a
discernibly turgid state"
100
Source: Mississippi Senate
Pergentage by which the estimated number of genes on the human genome has
increased since 1995
Source: Professor David Relman,
Stanford University
Minimum number of new bacteria species discovered to exist in the human mouth
48 in 100,000
last year Source: National Resources Defense Council
Chances that a drug offense by a black U.S. juvenile with no prior jail time will result in imprisonment Source: National Council on Crime and Delinquency
Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
Perspective
Guitar amp restrictions muffle students' music
Department of Student Housing Handbook: amplifiers. Page 32 of the hand-book decrees, "Residents may not play amplified instruments in their rooms." At best, this rule is pointless and laugable. (And it really sucks if you play rock guitar.)
B between "Alcohol" and "Assault & Battery" resides a new addition to the growing list of taboos in the growing list of Student Housing
Upon initial examination of the statute, I wondered why the geniuses at student housing contrived their new law on the basis of amplification. I couldn't figure out why they banned electric guitars and keyboards when they could have banned bagpipes and accordions. Alternatively, why didn't they ban woodwinds? The statute could have been crafted to read, "Students may not play reed instruments in their rooms." Instead, clarinetists and oboists play on, while guitarists and keyboardists suffer new persecution.
Patrick Bollig
guest columnist
opinion@kansan.com
An acoustic drum set is not an "amplified instrument." Perhaps I will retrieve mine when I return home to wash laundry. Even though it's not an "amplified instrument," the folks at student housing would probably not allow me to play drums in my dorm room because the volume levels would disturb my fellow residents. Effectually, what sudent housing means is, "Residents may not play loud instruments in their rooms." However, because of the vague definition of "loud," the adjective "amplified" was arbitrarily substituted, resulting in a nonsensical and unfair law.
Under the new statute, a polka band could (theoretically) rehearse their set in a residence hall room, as long as they didn't plug in. However, I am directly forbidden to jam along with Metallica's "Master of Puppets" on my practice guitar amp. Any policy that explicitly prohibits my practice session and ostensibly allows the polka rehearsal is seriously flawed.
This leads to a ridiculously obvious conclusion: The no amp rule is unnecessary. Most students would agree that excessive noise is annoying, whether it comes from a guitar amp, a stereo or a woman's pharynx at 3 in the morning. Therefore, student housing simply ought to outlaw unreasonable noise, not amplified instruments. To this end, page 33 of the handbook outlines the noise statute: "Noise should be kept at a level that does not infringe on fellow residents' rights." Notice that this rule alone is sufficient to prevent loud rock guitarists from annoying everyone. The caveat is that reasonably quiet amplified musicians should be able to practice their art in the privacy of their own rooms.
Bollig is a Silver Lake sophomore in music.
Todd E. Sullivan, assistant professor of music at Indiana State University, wrote in 1998 that "the electric guitar provides a modern high-voltage equivalent to the violin." It is a versatile instrument, which is frequently played very loudly (and often poorly), yet nonetheless has the capacity to elicit passionate music. Neither the electric guitar nor its amplifier is the culprit of loud, disruptive noise. It is true that amplifiers can potentially disturb neighbors, but so can stereos and all sorts of other devices. Similarly, razor blades can facilitate smoking a line of cocaine, yet no one suggests their abolition. To encourage musicality and creativity in residence halls, student housing ought to reconsider its policy concerning amplified instruments.
Editorial
Network fee increase needs input
The University should consult students before upgrading its network.
As internet use on campus has doubled in the past year, now is the time to upgrade the campus network, and the University of Kansas appears to be taking the right path toward this goal.
Improvements are needed to reinforce the current, aging system. Several options have been proposed, from a simple upgrade of the existing system to the installation of an integrated telecommunications system.
Whichever solution is selected, it is likely it will hit students in their pocketbooks. The new fee likely would be incorporated into student housing payments, no matter whether students chose to use the network. Although this may seem unfair to some students, the university must fully adjust to the demands of the Information Age, which requires everyone to contribute.
The University can make the upgrade a more pleasant experience for students in several ways. The University seems to have rejected the idea of an integrated system that would raise rates from the current $90 to $447 per year — a good step because that is simply too much to ask a student without a computer to pay.
One option further in the future would combine phone, cable and Internet access into the same line. The line would feed directly into a computer and thus require any student simply wishing to make a phone call to have a computer. This is absurd. For now, though, the University's contract with Sunflower Cablevision prevents that option.
A more modest upgrade, raising rates from $90 to $120 per year, is probably the best solution. This option would still allow for multiple Ethernet connections in the same residence hall room, a feature desired by many students forced to switch off with their roommates. It would carry a one-time $37 fee for students living in halls that received the upgrade.
Network and Telecommunications Services should poll students to measure support for the proposed upgrades. If students are going to pay the price for the network upgrade, then they should have input in the final decision.
Andy Miner for the editorial board
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For all the motorists who don't pay attention to cyclists, bicycles don't block traffic. They are traffic.
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A word of advice to any UDK writer who hopes to have a future in journalism: The attack of a U.S. battle- ship is far more important than a haunted frat house.
Why do overbearing bigots have to shove their ideas into everyone's faces?
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Heterosexuality is a learned behavior, suppressed by sexist peer-pressure.
Did anyone listen to the guys on JUHK on Friday night? They were insane. We should have them on next week.
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For a society that condemns homosexuality, how is it we can watch football, where men wear tights and slap each other's butts for a job well done? However, we can't tolerate two men holding hands? It's just a little weird to me.
图
Vote Nader; he's down with the herb.
图
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If you think the KU Parking Department is bad, when I went to Columbia, they ticketed, towed and lost my car.
Let's see some hoorays for the football team.
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Women only have to fake orgasms when man fake foreplay.
If anyone thinks the U.S. is overpopulated, they need to drive on the turnpike between Lawrence and Wichita. It will blow their mind.
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图
Did the Lady Jayhawks on Friday look sexy or what?
The writings on the sidewalk last week really depicted what the gay community really is.
Roy Williams sure knows how to shake his thing.
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