NEW VOICES: Federal Judge Calls the Death Penalty Arbitrary, Biased and Fundamentally Flawed

Judge Boyce F. Martin, Jr. (pic­tured) of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6^th Circuit called the death penal­ty ​“arbi­trary, biased, and so fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed at its very core that it is beyond repair.” Judge Martin dis­sent­ed in the case of Getsy v. Mitchell and said it made no sense that Jason Getsy received a death sen­tence for his role in a mur­der-for-hire con­spir­a­cy, while the oth­er two trig­ger­men and the mas­ter­mind of the crime, all escaped a death sen­tence. He wrote:

In Jason Getsy’s case, sad­ly, we need not con­sid­er hypo­thet­i­cals, such as the bet­ter-paid
lawyer who would like­ly have done a bet­ter job, or the bru­tal mur­der which, for what­ev­er rea­sons, could not be cou­pled with any of a state’s statu­to­ry aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stances. For in Getsy’s case the hypo­thet­i­cal is made real. The nine­teen-year-old Getsy was sen­tenced to death for being one of the trig­ger men in a mur­der-for-hire con­spir­a­cy. His two com­pa­tri­ots, Richard McNulty and Ben Hudach, did not receive the death penal­ty because both were offered and accept­ed plea bar­gains. Thus there is some log­ic, per­haps, to why McNulty and Hudach received less­er sen­tences. But there is no log­ic to why John Santine, the mas­ter­mind of the con­spir­a­cy, who paid Getsy, McNulty, and Hudach to do his dirty work, and who took great steps to make sure they com­plet­ed the job, also did not receive a death sen­tence.
…
Jason Getsy and John Santine are not hypo­thet­i­cal play­ers in a crim­i­nal law final exam.
They are real peo­ple who com­mit­ted real crimes, indeed, the same crimes. That Getsy will be put to death while Santine will be spared, and that the law (at least accord­ing to the major­i­ty) actu­al­ly sanc­tions this result, makes it vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble for me to answer in the affir­ma­tive what Justice Blackmun viewed as the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion in Callins v. Collins— name­ly, does our sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ​“accu­rate­ly and con­sis­tent­ly deter­mine” which defen­dants ​“deserve” to die and which do not?
(Getsy v. Mitchell, No. 03 – 3200, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6^th Cir. (July 25, 2007) (Martin, J., dis­sent­ing)). See New Voices and Arbitrariness.