The death penalty.

[Rolfe]

Our society has eliminated the chance of wrongful conviction as much as possible and more than anywhere else on earth, ever - Europe definitely included.

I thought when I started to read that, that this was a sarcastic post. I see it's not. Oh dear. (I've just been reading up on some infamous US miscarriages of justice, and if anything it seems even worse than in Britain, and I have to say that's some target to beat.)

Rolfe.

 

[brenn]

I thought when I started to read that, that this was a sarcastic post. I see it's not. Oh dear. (I've just been reading up on some infamous US miscarriages of justice, and if anything it seems even worse than in Britain, and I have to say that's some target to beat.)

Rolfe.

You clearly don't work in the British legal system if you think it has protections for defendants on par with the U.S. Maybe some other northern Europena countries are arguable, but not the UK.

You also aren't much of a skeptic if you can't figure out why you read more stories about wrongful convictions in the U.S. and see that those stories probably say more about how much better defendants rights are protected here (not to mention a failr recent popularity of tho9se issues with the press).

 

[Ryokan]

I want his fellow inmates to do it. Going under the needle is too easy. I mean he burned children alive after they were sexually assaulted.

And they say sharia law would never catch on in the west..

 

[Segnosaur]

Because being executed is the punishment which best fits the heinous nature of his crimes. It really is that simple.

Something of a reduction fallacy don't you think, people have already stated several other possible justifications, and you saying "It really is that simple" does not make it so.

The fact that some people give justifications that may or may not be valid doesn't necessarily mean that Corsair must answer to those justifications.

Put it this way... someone who is against the death penalty for the "simple" reason that its possible to execute the wrong person does not necessarily have to agree with people who claim the death penalty is wrong because its "wrong to take a life" if that's not the reason they have taken their position.

It seems that we have a fundamental disagreement, you seem to be implying that prison in primarily for punishment, I think prison's main function is to protect the rest of society.

Ummm.... why can't prisons serve more than one purpose? Why can't they be used for both "protecting society" and for punishment?

 

[I Ratant]

...
Ummm.... why can't prisons serve more than one purpose? Why can't they be used for both "protecting society" and for punishment?

.
Mostly they do.
While the felon is in there, we're safe.
But too frequently someone who really really needs to be there for the rest of their lives get released, and repeats the crime, or escalates it.
How to identify these hazards?
Preferrably -before- they become a hazard?

 

[Schrodinger's Cat]

Our society has eliminated the chance of wrongful conviction as much as possible and more than anywhere else on earth, ever - Europe definitely included. Nothing is 100%, but we have reduced it to a risk that is acceptable, in my opinion. Given the few, if any, real cases of modern execution of innocents, even the anti's have a hard time supporting this one with evidence. I'd guess that the chance of a random American being executed for a crime he did not commit is on par with being struck by lightning while collecting your powerball prize.


(For those who would like to respond to my last comment in standard JREF fashion, by taking the phrase "struck by lightning while collecting your powerball prize" literally - grow up.)

I guess that's where we disagree. You think that when it comes to the justice system, the rights of the individual, the greatest right in fact, the right to life, is superceded by what you perceive to be "the greater good," so the fact that innocent people are killed by the state is "acceptable." Now obviously people are innocently jailed as well, but the difference is that they have a chance for exoneration and release, while an executed person does not.

I disagree, and find your argument strangely communistic in nature considering how vocally right wing you claim to be.

The other thing with the death penalty that bothers me is the way in which it is implemented. Minorities are executed disproportionately compared to whites. Men are executed far FAR more often than women are. Crimes against white people and women receive the death penalty more often than crimes against minorities and men. Whether or not someone gets the death penalty seems to be much more subjected to social opinions people hold (in which the lives of whites and especially women are valued above the lives of minorities and men) as opposed to actually judging the crime based on the crime itself, without taking race and gender of either the perp or the victim into account.

 

[Vic Vega]

Nothing is 100%, but we have reduced it to a risk that is acceptable, in my opinion.

That's easy for YOU to say. Ask some of these people what they think.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/?gclid=CKiWuPDVlqUCFeYD5Qod2nYx6Q

 

[Rolfe]

You clearly don't work in the British legal system if you think it has protections for defendants on par with the U.S. Maybe some other northern Europena countries are arguable, but not the UK.

You could try reading for comprehension.

I didn't say anything about the relative merits of protection for defendants in Britain vis a vis the USA. And as an aside, there's no such thing as "the British legal system". The degree of protection for defendants in both England and Scotland is diabolical, and it has just this week got a whole lot worse in Scotland.

You also aren't much of a skeptic if you can't figure out why you read more stories about wrongful convictions in the U.S. and see that those stories probably say more about how much better defendants rights are protected here (not to mention a failr recent popularity of tho9se issues with the press).

I also didn't say I read more stories about wrongful convictions in the USA. I said I'd recently been reading about some US cases. And in fact in these cases the obviously wrongfully convicted parties are still in jail - or in at least one case, executed. While at least the British cases I'm aware of have almost all been resolved.

I was making an observation that the circumstances of the wrongful US convictions I'd been reading about seemed even worse than those of the British (well, English) cases I'm aware of. This is a subjective opinion but supported by the length of time the accused have spent in custody.

Rolfe.

 

[Schrodinger's Cat]

While there are good arguments against the death penalty, the argument that the state shouldn't stoop to the level of the murderer is an absolutely ridiculous one. I think that we all agree that citizens shouldn't imprison each other. Yet the penalty for doing that is imprisoning the imprisoner for years maybe decades. Does that mean that the state is stooping to the level of the kidnapper and thus it shouldn't do it?

You know I'd never thought of it like that before, but that is a fair point.

 

[Cainkane1]

My basic feeling is this. He was given a fair trial by a jury of his peers. He was convicted of capital murder under aggravating circumstances so if anyone ever deserved to be executed its these two murderers.

Ok so maybe the right thing to do would be to give him life under maximun security. I'm ok with that because its got to be a horrible fate to just sit there year after year.

However.

If he got shived in prison I would not be unhappy.

 

[Schrodinger's Cat]

The "death penalty" costs very little - even with employee overtime and travel for execution team members, it wouldn't cost as much as a month in prison. This is a myth generated by anti-execution activists.The cost is in anti-death penalty litigation and that is because the government is paying both sides of the tab AND, more importantly, allowing government funds and appointed attorneys for purposes that are not constitutionally required. An inmate sentenced to death is entitled to no more appeals than any other, but for some reason we voluntarily allow government funded attorneys to spend millions of dollars on a standardized list of delaying actions that often go on for 20+ years - apparently every inmate on our death row has (a) been represented by the most incompetent attorney in history (b) just discovered he was mentally retarded and/or mentally ill at the time of the crime (c) just realized that some evidence disposed of in 1980 might have had DNA on it, etc., etc.

Frequently convict the wrong guy? Got a statistic on what you'd call frequent? here, even the few inmates we've released aftert the "innocnece project" took up their case have included some that were "probably" not guilty (far from clearly innocent) and at least one who definitely did it, but his lengthy, post conviction, hand-written confession was not admissible.

Why do you say this is a myth? I've heard that it was more expensive many times, but I knew this was due to litigation, not the actual cost of the execution. Any time I saw anti death penalty literature talking about the cost of execution in detail expressly stated the cost was due to litigation. I have never heard it claimed, ever (and this is a subject I have read a lot about) that the actual EXECUTION cost more money, only that it costs more to execute someone than to keep them in prison due to the cost of litigation.

Can you provide evidence to the contrary? Can you provide any documentation distributed by anti death penalty advocates which lies and states that the cost lies in the actual execution rather than the legal process involved, or rather than just saying in general that it is more costly for the state to have someone executed than to keep them in prison (which is true)?

 

[Corsair 115]

It seems that we have a fundamental disagreement, you seem to be implying that prison in primarily for punishment, I think prison's main function is to protect the rest of society.

And how it does achieve that protection? By giving those guilty of a crime a punishment which takes away their freedom.

 

[I Am The Scum]

Our society has eliminated the chance of wrongful conviction as much as possible and more than anywhere else on earth, ever - Europe definitely included. Nothing is 100%, but we have reduced it to a risk that is acceptable, in my opinion.

Well this is awfully misleading, isn't it? I would agree that there is no practical method of completely eliminating wrongful convictions.

However, isn't there a method of completely eliminating wrongful executions? I can think of one. It's simple, practical, and requires literally no work whatsoever.

Don't execute people.

 

[jharyn]

Well this is awfully misleading, isn't it? I would agree that there is no practical method of completely eliminating wrongful convictions.

However, isn't there a method of completely eliminating wrongful executions? I can think of one. It's simple, practical, and requires literally no work whatsoever.

Don't execute people.

Ask the parents of a dead child. I hope that the legislators stop listening to the bleeding heart garbage so as to make the criminals more comfortable. I love the line "lethal injection is inhumane!" that these idiots came up with.

Ever seen a murdered child's body at the scene of the crime?
Ever seen a women who had been brutally raped, tortured and murdered?

Only to find out that the person(s) who are responsible have done this before and were released?


Anyone?


Anyone at all?


They deserve sympathy why?

The number of wrongly convicted people in the USA compared to those rightfully convicted are not enough to even bother thinking about. Yes it happens. But not near enough to justify using the numbers in an argument.

Look up the Sharon Tate crime scene photos and tell me why anyone involved in that brutal murder deserves to live. Because that is what this debate is all about.

 

[I Am The Scum]

In the absence of any intellectual argument in the above post, I am inclined to believe it contains nothing but emotional rhetoric.

Jharyn, these are people's lives we're talking about. You can do better.

 

[Cainkane1]

Ask the parents of a dead child. I hope that the legislators stop listening to the bleeding heart garbage so as to make the criminals more comfortable. I love the line "lethal injection is inhumane!" that these idiots came up with.

Ever seen a murdered child's body at the scene of the crime?
Ever seen a women who had been brutally raped, tortured and murdered?

Only to find out that the person(s) who are responsible have done this before and were released?


Anyone?


Anyone at all?


They deserve sympathy why?

The number of wrongly convicted people in the USA compared to those rightfully convicted are not enough to even bother thinking about. Yes it happens. But not near enough to justify using the numbers in an argument.

Look up the Sharon Tate crime scene photos and tell me why anyone involved in that brutal murder deserves to live. Because that is what this debate is all about.

I agree with you.

 

[jharyn]

In the absence of any intellectual argument in the above post, I am inclined to believe it contains nothing but emotional rhetoric.

Jharyn, these are people's lives we're talking about. You can do better.

Yes. Sharon Tate and her unborn child's life.

It is an emotional issue. However, I feel no sympathy for the convicted. They are not worth a second thought.

Have you ever met one? Ever been to death row and spoken to someone there? Have you ever witnessed a complete lack of remorse for the multiple murders that put them there?

I'm talking emotional rhetoric? Where would you say your side of the argument comes from?

 

[Two Toed Sloth]

I'm talking emotional rhetoric? Where would you say your side of the argument comes from?

It comes from being of the opinion that an eye for an eye is wasteful, base and above all pointless.

If you have more that emotional rhetoric please present it.

 

[Halfcentaur]

Yes. Sharon Tate and her unborn child's life.

It is an emotional issue. However, I feel no sympathy for the convicted. They are not worth a second thought.

Have you ever met one? Ever been to death row and spoken to someone there? Have you ever witnessed a complete lack of remorse for the multiple murders that put them there?

I'm talking emotional rhetoric? Where would you say your side of the argument comes from?

Being against the death penalty is not really about feeling sympathetic or emotional for these poor little murderers. It's about rising above this pathetic primitive emotional cage our primate minds are trapped inside and ending emotional decisions that are not founded in logic but arise from irrational passion. People want to lash out and hurt those who hurt them because it's what creatures do when they are unable to resist primitive urges. Just like the criminals we are punishing were unable to resist.

 

[Cainkane1]

It comes from being of the opinion that an eye for an eye is wasteful, base and above all pointless.

If you have more that emotional rhetoric please present it.

Maybe I can help him. Murders happen in prison all the time even in maximum security lockups. Why not eliminate that threat to the staff and inmates serving sentences for lesser crimes?