Legislature(2009 - 2010)CAPITOL 120
04/08/2009 01:00 PM House JUDICIARY
| Audio | Topic |
|---|---|
| Start | |
| HB140 | |
| HB194 | |
| HB138 | |
| HB9 | |
| HJR30 | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
| + | HB 194 | TELECONFERENCED | |
| *+ | HJR 30 | TELECONFERENCED | |
| *+ | HB 138 | TELECONFERENCED | |
| += | HB 140 | TELECONFERENCED | |
| + | TELECONFERENCED | ||
| += | HB 9 | TELECONFERENCED | |
HB 9 - CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 2:43:08 PM CHAIR RAMRAS announced that the next order of business would be HOUSE BILL NO. 9, "An Act relating to murder; authorizing capital punishment, classifying murder in the first degree as a capital felony, and allowing the imposition of the death penalty for certain murders; establishing sentencing procedures for capital felonies; and amending Rules 32, 32.1, and 32.3, Alaska Rules of Criminal Procedure, and Rules 204, 209, 210, and 212, Alaska Rules of Appellate Procedure." [Before the committee was the proposed committee substitute (CS) for HB 9, Version 26- LS0036\E, Luckhaupt, 2/18/09, which had been adopted as the work draft on 2/23/09, and amended on 4/6/09.] CHAIR RAMRAS noted that public testimony on HB 9 was closed. 2:43:56 PM REPRESENTATIVE GRUENBERG mentioned that he'd read a newspaper article indicating that the U.S. Supreme Court has recently ruled that [giving weight to] confessions, even voluntary ones, if they are the product of prolonged interrogation, is unconstitutional. [Chair Ramras turned the gavel over the Vice Chair Dahlstrom.] REPRESENTATIVE GRUENBERG indicated that this ruling appears to be in conflict with the provision of Amendment 3, as amended, that stipulated the death penalty could be sought if there is a videotaped voluntary confession by the defendant to the murder, and characterized this ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court as a significant one. Noting that he would be opposing passage of HB 9, he suggested that the committee consider either removing that potentially conflicting language from the bill or holding the bill over in order to do more research regarding whether that U.S. Supreme Court opinion really would impact the language of Amendment 3, as amended. [Vice Chair Dahlstrom returned the gavel to Chair Ramras.] 2:47:50 PM REPRESENTATIVE LYNN remarked that HB 9 raises life and death issues, not only for murderers but also for potential future victims. He then spoke a bit about religion and some religious beliefs and stories, but acknowledged that from a religious perspective, there don't appear to be any absolutes with regard to the death penalty. Murder victims have no choice and receive no trial; in contrast, murderers make the choice to kill - and such choices have consequences - and they receive a trial. At trial, when defendants are found guilty of murder, the odds are that they actually are guilty. He likened having the death penalty to allowing for abortion, and surmised that from a logical perspective, if one is provided for, then the other should be provided for as well. Being prolife, which he is, he remarked, means protecting citizens from murderers, and many believe that capital punishment provides the best way of providing that protection. On the question of whether capital punishment is a deterrent, he said he doesn't know if that is really the case, but noted that although most statistics indicate that it is not, once a person has been executed, that certainly deters him/her from killing in the future. REPRESENTATIVE LYNN observed that ample evidence provided indicates that many innocent people have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death; odds are, therefore, that if Alaska institutes capital punishment, innocent people will be put to death by the State, in other words, in part, by legislators. He added: "Would any of us here, at this committee table, pull the switch or personally inject the poison, inject that needle? If we can't do that maybe we shouldn't ask somebody else to do it." A person serving a life sentence but later found to be innocent could be released from prison and perhaps compensated to some small degree. However, an innocent person that's been executed can't be resurrected. Some have argued that a life sentence without possibility of parole is worse punishment than execution, but families of murder victims suffer their own life sentence - a lifetime sentence of sorrow. From a practical standpoint, if the State executes several murderers but no deterrence results, at least those dead murderers won't murder again, but if murderers are not executed and then kill again, then the State will, in effect, have enabled the murder of more innocent people. REPRESENTATIVE LYNN offered an example of one murderer who'd killed a 14-year-old girl, and then, after he was released from prison, murdered a mother of three children; because this murderer was not executed for the murder of the girl, another person was murdered. Can a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole take the place of capital punishment and provide for the desired level of public safety? Sure it can. But can the judicial system be depended upon to protect people via appropriate sentencing? "I have my doubts on that," he remarked, surmising that if the judicial system did a better job of protecting the public's safety, then perhaps there would be less demand for the death penalty. Furthermore, he queried, if a judge sets a violent criminal with multiple prior offenses loose on society, and that criminal commits additional heinous crimes, should that judge then be removed from the bench, suffer liability, or be put in jail himself/herself as an enabler? REPRESENTATIVE LYNN, on the issue of whether the death penalty would be disproportionately applied to minorities, opined that it is probably more accurate to instead say that the death penalty would be disproportionately applied to poor folks, who, regardless of their race, won't have the money to hire a "legal dream team." Being a member of a minority, or being poor, or living in a horrific environment is problematic, but it's no excuse for committing crimes. "Unfortunately, we do live in an imperfect world, where prejudice too often translates [into] ... gross unfairness, ... and bigots still exist, ... [but] that's reality " he added. With regard to the issue of cost and the question of whether a life sentence without the possibility of parole is more expensive than the death penalty, he said he doesn't care about which is more expensive because he believes that cost shouldn't be the determining factor for whether or not to establish capital punishment - life shouldn't have a price tag. REPRESENTATIVE LYNN also questioned how much sense it makes to impose a death penalty but then not carry it out for 10-20 years [due to numerous appeals]; to be any kind of a deterrent, the punishment should come shortly after the sentence. He relayed that when he ran for U.S. Congress in 1972 in California, he supported capital punishment and stated so in his campaign literature; however, even then, he believed that any capital punishment law should be applied fairly and be limited to only the most egregious and most heinous of crimes, and that's still his position today. He said that his sympathy for victims and their families is boundless. Although imprisonment without the possibility of parole sounds good, in today's tolerant judicial system, how many judges can be trusted to put murders in prison and then truly throw away the key? Probably not enough, he surmised. REPRESENTATIVE LYNN recalled prior testimony indicating that it is quite difficult to empanel a jury for a major trial in Bush Alaska due to the limited number of residents and close family relationships in such areas. He also offered his understanding that any jury members empanelled for a capital punishment case must be "death penalty qualified." Such a requirement would narrow the pool of prospective jurors in rural Alaska even further. Moreover, if such a jury ever were empanelled, would that really be a jury of one's peers, since all jurors would have to be in favor of the death penalty? He questioned whether to truly be a jury of one's peers, jurors empanelled for a death penalty case should instead be made up of people with differing views on the subject - just like in everyday life - and whether this issue could raise constitutional concerns. REPRESENTATIVE LYNN noted that the bill prohibits the execution of the mentally retarded and defines mental retardation as an intelligence quotient of 70 or below. In other words, when it comes time to receive a sentence, if the defendant has an intelligence quotient of 71, then he/she will be executed, but not if he/she has an intelligence quotient 70. This raises the question of who would be picking the intelligence quotient test, from the many that are out there, that would be used to determine mental retardation for purposes of possibly instituting the death penalty. Would an intelligence quotient of 70 on one test also be an intelligence quotient of 70 on another test? Furthermore, which type of intelligence would be being tested? His concerns about this issue, he remarked, have not yet been answered to his satisfaction, and opined that this issue needs to be addressed before the State starts putting people to death. These aspects of the bill and the complex questions surrounding them are another illustration of the practical difficulty of writing fair capital punishment legislation. REPRESENTATIVE LYNN concluded by saying that although he worries about the effectiveness of lifelong imprisonment compared to capital punishment, he is not convinced that any legislature in the world is capable of creating capital punishment legislation that has the level of fairness that should be demanded of it before it's used, and by saying that he would be voting "No" on HB 9. 3:01:18 PM REPRESENTATIVE GRUENBERG provided members with a copy of the aforementioned newspaper article regarding the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that even a voluntary confession may not be used in federal court if the defendant was held in questioning for more than six hours before he/she made the confession, citing the fact that there have been a number of people who've confessed to a crime but were later proven to be innocent by DNA evidence and had simply confessed because of undue police pressure. This highlights three points: one, that scientific evidence can change; two, that legal standards can change; and three, that they can be changed via a single vote on the U.S. Supreme Court. The issue, here, is finality: when all is said and done, a death sentence [that has been carried out] is final - there is no reconsideration, there is no appeal, and it cannot be undone to correct a mistake. He said he would strongly support legislation that established lifetime sentences without possibility of parole, because then if something changes, justice in an individual case could still be provided for. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling, with its limitation of six hours, sets a bright line demarcation for ease of administration, but in the case of HB 9, such a ruling and the difference of a mere 15 minutes of police questioning could mean the difference between taking someone's life or not. 3:05:06 PM REPRESENTATIVE COGHILL noted that the issue of confidence in the people who operate the judicial system has been raised, and indicated his belief that the bill's standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt will address that issue. Noting that there are several advocacy groups standing up for the rights of those on death row, he questioned who would be standing up for the rights of the innocent people who were murdered, particularly given the extensive judicial process already in place for those accused of murder compared to the lack of any such process afforded to murder victims or their families. He said he thinks instituting the death penalty, regardless of the costs involved, is the way to rectify the apparent lack of recognition afforded murder victims and their families. In conclusion, Representative Coghill added: I think if we move forward with this bill, what we do is we make our system stand up and take note of its failures, number one, because if we're failing people who are sentenced to death, then we're certainly failing people who are sentenced to life in prison - ... and they never even get a second look, nobody goes out and takes a look at ... [their cases]. So I think it's good for the justice system to have to bear the responsibility, and therefore I'm voting for the bill. CHAIR RAMRAS agreed, adding that he is satisfied with having had Amendment 3, as amended, adopted, and with moving the bill forward. 3:10:10 PM REPRESENTATIVE HOLMES relayed that for a variety of reasons, she would be voting against HB 9. One reason pertains to the cost of the bill; the fiscal notes, which she surmised are probably conservative, total about $85 million in the first five years, and that's before the State would even come close to actually executing someone under the bill. Moreover, because the fiscal notes only estimate costs over the next five years, they don't include a lot of the implementation costs because they wouldn't occur within the first five years. For that same money, there are a lot of other things the legislature could be doing. New Jersey, in recent years, repealed its death penalty laws, but only after spending about $.25 billion and never actually executing anybody, and New Mexico has also recently repealed its death penalty laws. [Chair Ramras turned the gavel over the Vice Chair Dahlstrom.] REPRESENTATIVE HOLMES said she is also opposed to HB 9 because according to information from other states, it's pretty clear that innocent people will be executed despite any procedural safeguards that might be put in place - as long as its humans running the system, there are going to be errors, some due to problems with contaminated biological samples, and some due to problems with false confessions. Testimony has indicated that racial elements were at play back when Alaska had the death penalty, and so she is worried that the death penalty will again be disproportionately applied to minorities. She said she is also concerned about the requirement that jurors be "death penalty certified," concurring that defendants would be disenfranchised because such a jury would not really be a jury of one's peers. REPRESENTATIVE HOLMES said she is also worried about the moral issues raised, and that the bill won't actually be applied only to the most heinous of crimes because what constitutes heinous would be hard to categorize in law. She said she has concern that the bill is unconstitutional for a variety of reasons, among them that it [doesn't specifically prohibit] the execution of a minor, and, with the adoption of Amendment 2, now contains a reciprocal discovery provision. Another concern she said she has is that the ongoing appeal process for death penalty cases will simply run the families of victims through the wringer over and over again when appeals come up. REPRESENTATIVE HOLMES concluded by saying that in the end, she is deeply troubled by the potential for a system that is run by humans in all of its phases to result in human errors with regard to only executing those who are actually guilty, and so she will therefore be voting "No" on the bill, and urges other members to do the same. [Vice Chair Dahlstrom returned the gavel to Chair Ramras.] 3:15:38 PM REPRESENTATIVE GATTO offered his understanding that the cost of incarceration can at times be even higher than the cost of an execution, and indicated a belief that because other states have the death penalty, that Alaska's legislation will be found constitutional. He said he wants certain people to know that the penalty for heinous murders will be the harshest of punishments - execution - surmising that it is the fear of possibly being executed that will deter crime. He expressed favor with having a death penalty process that takes a long time, because that will give plenty of opportunity for [an innocent] person to be exonerated before he/she is executed. 3:17:55 PM REPRESENTATIVE DAHLSTROM said she has some reservations about HB 9, acknowledging that the potential for human error is one of the biggest risks that all legislation faces. She said she believes, however, that there are some acts so heinous that the person committing them is more of an animal than a human being, and so she will therefore be voting "Yes" on HB 9. 3:19:04 PM REPRESENTATIVE DAHLSTROM moved to report the proposed committee substitute (CS) for HB 9, Version 26-LS0036\E, Luckhaupt, 2/18/09, as amended, out of committee with individual recommendations and the accompanying fiscal notes. REPRESENTATIVES HOLMES and GRUENBERG objected. 3:19:20 PM A roll call vote was taken. Representatives Gatto, Dahlstrom, Coghill, and Ramras voted in favor of reporting the proposed CS for HB 9, Version 26-LS0036\E, Luckhaupt, 2/18/09, as amended, from committee. Representatives Lynn, Gruenberg, and Holmes voted against it. Therefore, CSHB 9(JUD) was reported from the House Judiciary Standing Committee by a vote of 4-3.
| Document Name | Date/Time | Subjects |
|---|---|---|
| 01 HB138 Sponsor Statement.pdf |
HJUD 4/8/2009 1:00:00 PM |
HB 138 |
| 01 HB194 Sponsor Statement.pdf |
HJUD 4/8/2009 1:00:00 PM |
HB 194 |
| HB140 Amendment A.1.pdf |
HJUD 4/8/2009 1:00:00 PM |
HB 140 |
| 02 HB138 CS version P.pdf |
HJUD 4/8/2009 1:00:00 PM |
HB 138 |
| 03 HB138 version S.pdf |
HJUD 4/8/2009 1:00:00 PM |
HB 138 |
| 04 HB138 DOC FN.pdf |
HJUD 4/8/2009 1:00:00 PM |
HB 138 |
| 05 HB138 LAW-CRIM-FN.pdf |
HJUD 4/8/2009 1:00:00 PM |
HB 138 |
| 06 HB138 Lettrs of SupportOpposition.pdf |
HJUD 4/8/2009 1:00:00 PM |
HB 138 |
| 02 HB194 Bill version P.pdf |
HJUD 4/8/2009 1:00:00 PM |
HB 194 |
| 03 HB194 DOT FN.pdf |
HJUD 4/8/2009 1:00:00 PM |
HB 194 |
| 04 HB194 Backup.pdf |
HJUD 4/8/2009 1:00:00 PM |
HB 194 |
| 05 HB194 Amendment P.3.pdf |
HJUD 4/8/2009 1:00:00 PM |
HB 194 |
| HJR 30 version R.pdf |
HJUD 4/8/2009 1:00:00 PM |