Ethics

Feigned Empathy and the Death Penalty

By Ed Brayton

During his confirmation hearings, Clarence Thomas said that the one thing he could bring to the court that no one else could, by virtue of having been raised as a poor black man in the South, was empathy for criminal defendants:

And I believe, Senator, that I can make a contribution, that I can bring something different to the Court, that I can walk in the shoes of the people who are affected by what the Court does. You know, on my current court I have occasion to look out the window that faces C Street, and there are converted buses that bring in the criminal defendants to our criminal justice system, bus load after bus load. And you look out and you say to yourself, and I say to myself almost every day, "But for the grace of God there go I."

So you feel that you have the same fate, or could have, as those individuals. So I can walk in their shoes and I could bring something different to the Court. And I think it is a tremendous responsibility and it's a humbling responsibility and it's one that if confirmed, I will carry out to the best of may abilities.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on August 19, 2009 (boomark / email).