Death Penalty

[JoeMorgue]

“It's leviOsa, not levioSA!”

 

[Thermal]

Have you mentioned unicorns more than 9 times in your postings? Is that grounds for summary dismissal of all you post?

 

[Foster Zygote]

The case of Cameron Todd Willingham is a sad example of how someone can be executed for a crime he didn't commit.

I watched a Frontline documentary that included interviews with members of his community and jurists in his trial. I was horrified by the witch hunt attitudes I saw. Conservative evangelicals concluded from photos of the scene that Willingham was into Satanism. Why? Because he was into heavy metal and had Iron Maiden posters on his wall. The attitude of angry dismissal of the evidence later presented in his defense struck me as an appalling refusal to be wrong, and a determination to execute someone they'd already declared to be evil.

 

[Suddenly]

The reason I'm against the death penalty isn't so much about the power of the state, chance of killing the innocent, etc. It's the collateral human cost. It is a killing that is not absolutely necessary.

Extinguishing human life is traumatic no matter if it is justified. Having the death penalty puts people in a position where they have a civic duty to be either directly or indirectly a party to a killing. It toxifies public life.

 

[Suddenly]

The case of Cameron Todd Willingham is a sad example of how someone can be executed for a crime he didn't commit.

I watched a Frontline documentary that included interviews with members of his community and jurists in his trial. I was horrified by the witch hunt attitudes I saw. Conservative evangelicals concluded from photos of the scene that Willingham was into Satanism. Why? Because he was into heavy metal and had Iron Maiden posters on his wall. The attitude of angry dismissal of the evidence later presented in his defense struck me as an appalling refusal to be wrong, and a determination to execute someone they'd already declared to be evil.

The arson science in that case might as well have been alchemy. It's kinda amazing how much the common assumptions underlying that turned out to be dead wrong.

The hostility to the pretty obvious conclusion that this execution was unjustified is what I sort of was getting at in my last post. A prosecutor that is willing to kill someone for a crime is probably not going to be capable of ever accepting he may have caused a death by mistake. Neither will anyone else complicit in that case. It would be traumatic to an extreme.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

The Beyler report

The case of Cameron Todd Willingham is a sad example of how someone can be executed for a crime he didn't commit.

I watched a Frontline documentary that included interviews with members of his community and jurists in his trial. I was horrified by the witch hunt attitudes I saw. Conservative evangelicals concluded from photos of the scene that Willingham was into Satanism. Why? Because he was into heavy metal and had Iron Maiden posters on his wall. The attitude of angry dismissal of the evidence later presented in his defense struck me as an appalling refusal to be wrong, and a determination to execute someone they'd already declared to be evil.

I know this case well, but strangely I had never seen this documentary. I am watching it now, and I have learned something new. Thank you.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

flashover and backfire

The attitude of angry dismissal of the evidence later presented in his defense struck me as an appalling refusal to be wrong, and a determination to execute someone they'd already declared to be evil.

Given that a number of nationally recognized fire science investigators have offered their conclusions, there is no doubt in my mind that no evidence of arson exists in this case. Flashover has confounded more than one fire investigation. The angry dismissal that you noted may be an example of the backfire effect, although the existence of this effect or at least one's ability to measure it, has been debated.

 

[catsmate]

It really is this simple. Forget the specific case of Gacy, who was 'obviously guilty' and look at the other 'obviously guilty' executions, where 'obviously guilty' turned out to be horribly wrong.

Like Tafero, DeLuna, Stinney.....
There is good reason to believe that a minimum of 4% of US capital convictions are wrong.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Samuel Gross and coauthors

"According to a study published today [in 2014] in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “[A] conservative estimate of the proportion of erroneous convictions of defendants sentenced to death in the United States from 1973 through 2004 [is] 4.1%.“ That percentage is more than twice as high as the percentage of inmates actually exonerated and freed through court action. During this same period, only 1.6% of those sentenced to death have actually been exonerated and appear on the Death Penalty Information Center’s (DPIC) list of exonerations."Link

 

[Warp12]

Like Tafero, DeLuna, Stinney.....

The first two still seem like very likely candidates for guilt in their cases.

Stinney...yeah, let's go back to 1944 on this one...

As I say, there is no doubt that there have been some unjust executions. Particularly in the distant past. That is why I am an advocate for reform.

I am not an advocate for giving lifelong support to clear-cut murderers, though.

 

[AmyStrange]

The first two still seem like very likely candidates for guilt in their cases.

Stinney...yeah, let's go back to 1944 on this one...

As I say, there is no doubt that there have been some unjust executions. Particularly in the distant past. That is why I am an advocate for reform.

I am not an advocate for giving lifelong support to clear-cut murderers, though.

Why stop there? If we closed all the prisons, we could save a ton of money.

(For the sarcasm deficient, see my [url="http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=13735603#post13735603']post[/url] below)

 

[AmyStrange]

I think you might have something there Warp12.

I mean, there are between 6,000 to 8,000 murder cases that go unsolved every year anyway (roughly 40 to 50% of all murders go unsolved in the US):

https://projectcoldcase.org/cold-case-homicide-stats

Since 2000, if you include the execution of the innocent, we have roughly more than 130,000 murderers out there anyway, so what's the point of having anyone in prison?

Plus, the reason many of those executions take years is because of all those reforms that are already in place. If we do more reforms, it might even double that time and cost.

Just think how much money we could save in prison and court cost if we just gave everybody guns, disbanded all Law Enforcement, and made every single day "Purge" day, just like in the movies:

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls022338172/

Yup, I think you've got a great idea going through that wonderful head of yours Warp12.

</sarcasm>

 

[Dave Rogers]

As I say, there is no doubt that there have been some unjust executions. Particularly in the distant past. That is why I am an advocate for reform.

Other than abolishing large parts of the mechanisms currently in place to prevent unjust executions, for what specific reforms do you advocate, and what actions have you taken tin pursuit of bringing about those reforms?

Dave

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Corpus Christi case

The Innocence Project has a 2021 article on Carlos deLuna. "It [the documentary The Phantom] follows a re-investigation into Mr. DeLuna’s claim about Mr. Hernandez by Columbia law professor Jim Liebman and his team, who later documented their comprehensive findings in a book titled The Wrong Carlos, an article in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, and online."

The Guardian has an article on the Carlos de Luna case. "What they discovered stunned even Liebman, who, as an expert in America's use of capital punishment, was well versed in its flaws. 'It was a house of cards. We found that everything that could go wrong did go wrong,' he says." The article also indicated that this was an incompetent investigation. "Then there was the crime-scene investigation. Detectives failed to carry out or bungled basic forensic procedures that might have revealed information about the killer. No blood samples were collected and tested for the culprit's blood type. Fingerprinting was so badly handled that no useable fingerprints were taken. None of the items found on the floor of the Shamrock – a cigarette stub, chewing gum, a button, comb and beer cans – were forensically examined for saliva or blood."

 

[Bob001]

.....
As I say, there is no doubt that there have been some unjust executions. Particularly in the distant past. That is why I am an advocate for reform.

I am not an advocate for giving lifelong support to clear-cut murderers, though.

You are unwilling to grasp that upon conviction, every murderer's case is "clear-cut," no matter whether witnesses were mistaken or lying, whether police intimidated witnesses or suspects or outright lied, whether evidence was mishandled or concealed or just not collected, whether prosecutors lied, and worse. What "reforms" would prevent all this? You have also refused to explain how the community and society benefit from killing people unnecessarily.

Think about this:

For every nine people executed, one person on death row has been exonerated.

https://eji.org/issues/death-penalty/

Plenty of information here.
https://documents.deathpenaltyinfo.org/pdf/FactSheet.pdf

 

[Chris_Halkides]

How do your reforms address the problem?

As I say, there is no doubt that there have been some unjust executions. Particularly in the distant past. That is why I am an advocate for reform.

Which executions do you think were unjust, and what reforms do you think would lower the odds of unjust executions like them in the future?

 

[sackett]

The simplest reform is to abolish the death penalty. Here in Michigan it was abolished in 1847, and it's been unconstitutional since 1962. Nobody seems to mind.

Well, nobody with a normal mind. There are always a few DP groupies around. I think they regard it as a kind of human sacrifice, pleasing to the gods and beneficial for the crops.

Not that they could articulate their yearning as precisely as the above, but some people can only be understood from their emotions. Or better, their pheromones.

 

[catsmate]

It kinda is.

Most countries do not have the death penalty

For those countries that have the death penalty, it's not the default for all crimes

In the states in the United States that have the death penalty, it's not even the default punishment for the crimes to which the death penalty can be applied.

The default appears to be that murderers should live - application of the death penalty is the very rare exception.

Look, I understand that it's difficult and time consuming to construct an argument and even more difficult to come up with one that stands up to scrutiny. It's far easier simply to reverse the burden on proof (as you have tried to do in the quoted post) or rely on catch phrases (as you have elsewhere in this thread).

Of the 195 recognised nations: 55% have abolished capital punishment in all cases (with a further 3.5% retaining it for exceptional circumstances, and 13.5% being functionality abolitionist.
The USA is in a small minority, along with China, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Sudans, and Yemen. It's in the even smaller minority, ~6%, who execute minors.

 

[Blue Mountain]

Of the 195 recognised nations: 55% have abolished capital punishment in all cases (with a further 3.5% retaining it for exceptional circumstances, and 13.5% being functionality abolitionist.
The USA is in a small minority, along with China, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Sudans, and Yemen. It's in the even smaller minority, ~6%, who execute minors.

Japan also has capital punishment, and has executed 21 people in since 2018.

 

[Thor 2]

Japan also has capital punishment, and has executed 21 people in since 2018.

Interesting that they still do it by hanging and haven't gone thru the electric chair, gassing, and lethal injection route. One has to wonder why, given they are such a technologically developed country.