Richard Glossip

Richard Glossip is likely to be executed even though for almost a decade, Oklahoma was prepared to promise Glossip that he would not be executed if he confessed to the crime. Glossip is being executed because he exercised his constitutional right to a jury trial.

Moving past the one post with open comments and its never ending marriage ruling discussion where certain people repeat the same things over and over without doing a good job of responding to criticisms, this one covers a point I have not seen in the coverage so far of the death penalty opinion.  It is far from surprising really that there turns out to be some doubt of his guilt (see, e.g., Breyer's dissent) and that other factors that got no traction in past appeals could be cited. 

There is overlap -- a discussion on the DOI included a reference to the jury rights and how they are almost barred in effect by the pressure to plea bargain.  The person makes something of a point though exaggerates with the term "eliminates." This does underline the breadth of the practice. There is nothing unique to this case that plea bargaining opens up a major negotiating tool for the state and prosecutorial discretion will always be present even if we force each case to go to trial by jury. "Death is different" but this would hold as well for long prison sentences. 

The post, I hope, doesn't suggest some sort of naivety that it is not common practice that defendants and other parties are not lied to by the police and others in the process of questioning.  Some pure honesty rule here is hard to imagine though some might wish to do so. Again, it amounts to a line drawing exercise. The death penalty is so serious that such common practice is unseemly, especially when there might be some reasonable doubt as to guilt.  Such is the bottom line:

In sum, Richard Glossip is likely to be executed because capital punishment enhances prosecutorial power to secure unreliable and arbitrary death sentences.

Yes.  But, so would various other things. An episode of The Closer last night involved Brenda using a mother's love of her daughter as a means to pressure a woman to testify against her husband and accept a plea bargain instead of threat of the death penalty (put aside nearly no one is executed in California; the plea significantly decreased her prison time).  This doesn't change the ultimate validity of the author's argument really. The death penalty adds special force to it.  Still, it shows it goes beyond that too.