Re: CA death penalty

From: Eliyahu Rooff (lrooff_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 12/01/04 

Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 09:32:32 -0800

"Becky Young" <blupencl@aol.combadstuff> wrote in message
news:20041201113618.07572.00001572@mb-m01.aol.com...
| >There's no such thing in the US as a sentence "at hard labor."
(Although
| >the Mariposa County Jail seems to push the limits in that
respect.)
|
| That's how the sentences are read in Arkansas - "X years at hard
labor."
|
There's no provision in the Arkansas Code for "hard labor" as part
of the sentence, including in Sections 5-4-401 and 5-4-104. Section
12-41-307 does provide " (a) All persons sentenced to confinement
in the house of correction shall be compelled to labor on the farm
or lands on which the house of correction shall be situated in such
manner as is provided for in subsection (c) of this section and for
the term of their imprisonment.", but the "hard labor" idea of
breaking rocks and other useless make-work projects are a thing of
the past.

This statute dates from Acts 1868, No. 27, §§ 9, 13, p. 84, and was
severely restricted by Federal Court rulings in cases such as Holt
v. Sarver, 309 F. Supp. 804 (Finding that the Arkansas prison system
was "a dark and evil world completely alien to the free world" and
declaring the entire state prison system unconstitutional.), Jackson
v. Bishop, 268 F. Supp. 804 (ED Ark. 1967) and Finney v. Arkansas
DOC 410 F.2d 194, banning the use of leather strops to beat
prisoners and the use of telephone magnetos as torture devices,
among other things, as well as the widespread practice of using
armed convicts as "guards". As a result, the state department of
corrections was placed under Federal supervision. The US Supreme
Court eventually ruled on at least one of the Arkansas cases,
upholding the lower court's findings. See,
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=437&invol=678 ,
including the first few footnotes, for a detailed reading of how
Arkansas ran its prisons.

I also find it fascinating that many of the folks in the US who
profess horror or dismay at the treatment of enemy prisoners at
Gitmo and in Iraq don't raise an eyebrow when our own citizens are
treated far more harshly and cruelly in our own jails and prisons,
many of whose crimes involved little more than possessing or using
substances that the legislature has decided are illegal.

Eliyahu

 

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