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Death Penalty

Suddenly said:
It isn't an argument. It looks like you saw one word ("frivolous") and went off into the either and ignored the rest of the thread where your rather obvious point is exhaustively discussed.
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Oh puleeease! If you have a point state it in more than a soundbite, don't claim I didn't read your posts because I did.
 
I think most poignant thing I’ve gleaned from this very good discussion is that if you are wrongly accused of a crime you are better off being sentenced to death than life in prison.

That is a chilling indictment of our system.
 
Dr. Keith said:
I think most poignant thing I’ve gleaned from this very good discussion is that if you are wrongly accused of a crime you are better off being sentenced to death than life in prison.

That is a chilling indictment of our system.
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Yeah - Suddenly has made a strongly pragmatic case for having the death sentence within the current USA justice systems.
 
Several states are considering bringing back the firing squad, given the objections to current methods of execution.

Personally, I'm opposed to the death penalty, but it seems to me that if you're going to do it, it should be as quick and humane as possible. Hanging, when done properly, seems to fit that, though the objection from the US point of view seems to be that it echoes lynching, and that might not look good given the disproportionate number of Black men on death row; not sure why a gas chamber using nitrogen isn't being proposed since it is painless and doesn't use any special drugs.
 
zooterkin said:
Several states are considering bringing back the firing squad, given the objections to current methods of execution.

Personally, I'm opposed to the death penalty, but it seems to me that if you're going to do it, it should be as quick and humane as possible. Hanging, when done properly, seems to fit that, though the objection from the US point of view seems to be that it echoes lynching, and that might not look good given the disproportionate number of Black men on death row; not sure why a gas chamber using nitrogen isn't being proposed since it is painless and doesn't use any special drugs.
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I would not trust the average prison guard to be competent enough with firearms to not make a horrible mess of this. Trying to hit someone in the heart at 15 yards or closer with a rifle might not seem like much of a challenge, but I'm sure your average CO will find a way to muck it up.

Quick execution is a solved problem. Mechanical removal of the head (or total destruction by crushing as suggested here) works great and I doubt that this is any more traumatic than watching some guy slowly die as his lungs fill with blood after 3 moron guards miss their mark.
 
zooterkin said:
Several states are considering bringing back the firing squad, given the objections to current methods of execution.

Personally, I'm opposed to the death penalty, but it seems to me that if you're going to do it, it should be as quick and humane as possible. Hanging, when done properly, seems to fit that, though the objection from the US point of view seems to be that it echoes lynching, and that might not look good given the disproportionate number of Black men on death row; not sure why a gas chamber using nitrogen isn't being proposed since it is painless and doesn't use any special drugs.
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I'll second that. Add some heavy sedation beforehand, ideally.

Why we're obsessed with ritualistic methods escapes me.
 
zooterkin said:
Several states are considering bringing back the firing squad, given the objections to current methods of execution.

Personally, I'm opposed to the death penalty, but it seems to me that if you're going to do it, it should be as quick and humane as possible. Hanging, when done properly, seems to fit that, though the objection from the US point of view seems to be that it echoes lynching, and that might not look good given the disproportionate number of Black men on death row; not sure why a gas chamber using nitrogen isn't being proposed since it is painless and doesn't use any special drugs.
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Inert gas asphyxiation. Legal in, IIRR, three US states.
If course first ensure those to be killed are actually guilty....
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
I would not trust the average prison guard to be competent enough with firearms to not make a horrible mess of this. Trying to hit someone in the heart at 15 yards or closer with a rifle might not seem like much of a challenge, but I'm sure your average CO will find a way to muck it up.

Quick execution is a solved problem. Mechanical removal of the head (or total destruction by crushing as suggested here) works great and I doubt that this is any more traumatic than watching some guy slowly die as his lungs fill with blood after 3 moron guards miss their mark.
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The Thais used to favour a mounted machine gun...
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
I would not trust the average prison guard to be competent enough with firearms to not make a horrible mess of this. Trying to hit someone in the heart at 15 yards or closer with a rifle might not seem like much of a challenge, but I'm sure your average CO will find a way to muck it up.

Quick execution is a solved problem. Mechanical removal of the head (or total destruction by crushing as suggested here) works great and I doubt that this is any more traumatic than watching some guy slowly die as his lungs fill with blood after 3 moron guards miss their mark.
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Somewhat more traumatic for those who have to clear up afterwards than dealing with someone who has apparently just gone to sleep.
 
catsmate said:
The Thais used to favour a mounted machine gun...
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Practically speaking, there's really no reason why a firing squad shouldn't be using a gun that is mounted to a heavy, sturdy tripod.

Firing squads of riflemen as a method of execution is pretty stupid. I suppose it's convenient in the military context because it uses readily available equipment, but there's no reason other than weird nostalgia for modern executions to involve firearms. Most of these executions are decades in the making, there's plenty of time to arrange for more fool-proof methods.
 
JoeMorgue said:
If you can't handle the icky you shouldn't be killing people.
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Might be a valid argument if the person passing the sentence were the one who carried it out.

As I've already said, I oppose the death penalty; one of the reasons for that is that it does require somebody to push the button, pull the trigger, or whatever, and that is likely to have an effect on them. I don't think it's unreasonable to minimise that effect if the State insists on using use the death penalty.
 
As far as rifles, why does it have to be x or y or z numbers of yards away? Why not get one single guy with a gun, or maybe two or three if you want to make sure, and get them to keep their guns an inch away from the guy's head, and pull the trigger? No one can mess that up, if you take care to test the guns beforehand. Of course, laundry bills maybe, but still?


(Okay, while typing that I couldn't help picturing the guy with the black cloth on his head doing an acrobatic kung fu kick or something, like in the movies, and ending up grabbing the guns and killing everyone there. Maybe that's why the x or y or z yards?)



eta: Not advocating capital punishment. I'm against killing folks against their wishes, even if they're criminals, totally. Just wondering about the so-many-yards-away thing.
 
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zooterkin said:
Might be a valid argument if the person passing the sentence were the one who carried it out.
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Meh. Presidents shouldn't be fighting on the front lines. CEOs shouldn't be personally handling all the sales calls. Coaches shouldn't be on the field running the ball or swinging the bat.

Judges should not also be executioners.

That said, I think a lottery system for being the person who throws the switch could make sense in a democracy. At the end of the day, in a democracy, it's the citizens who impose the sentences. If the community really likes executing so much, then I don't see why the community members should not take turns being the executioner. Maybe they'll learn something valuable about how they really feel.

On the other hand, not everybody in a democracy votes for the policies that get implemented. It would be perverse to force someone who opposes to the death penalty to apply it simply because a majority of their neighbors are for it.
 
zooterkin said:
Might be a valid argument if the person passing the sentence were the one who carried it out.

As I've already said, I oppose the death penalty; one of the reasons for that is that it does require somebody to push the button, pull the trigger, or whatever, and that is likely to have an effect on them. I don't think it's unreasonable to minimise that effect if the State insists on using use the death penalty.
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Sadly if you open it up I doubt we'd actually have trouble finding enough psychopaths out there who would jump at the chance to pull the proverbial switch.

The debate as to whether it is better to have dispassionate and detached executioners or involved in the process executioners is a legit and interesting one, but at the end of the day it's a side topic. We shouldn't be killing people in this context.
 
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theprestige said:
Meh. Presidents shouldn't be fighting on the front lines. CEOs shouldn't be personally handling all the sales calls. Coaches shouldn't be on the field running the ball or swinging the bat.

Judges should not also be executioners.

That said, I think a lottery system for being the person who throws the switch could make sense in a democracy. At the end of the day, in a democracy, it's the citizens who impose the sentences. If the community really likes executing so much, then I don't see why the community members should not take turns being the executioner. Maybe they'll learn something valuable about how they really feel.

On the other hand, not everybody in a democracy votes for the policies that get implemented. It would be perverse to force someone who opposes to the death penalty to apply it simply because a majority of their neighbors are for it.
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Could you have something akin to jury nullification where the executioner has the power to not pull the trigger?

After a few people take that option would it take some of the steam out of the pro death penalty movement? Or would it just rile them up?
 
Clarence Wayne Dixon execution

Yvette Borja wrote, "In 2008, a jury convicted Dixon for the 1978 killing of 21-year-old college student Deana Bowdoin. At the time, Dixon was already incarcerated for a prior assault conviction; DNA testing linked him to Bowdoin’s murder three decades earlier. Although Dixon’s history of mental illness was well-known to the state, the judge in his death penalty case, astoundingly, allowed him to fire his court-appointed public defender and represent himself at trial. According to Dixon’s current lawyers, he did so because he believed that the DNA evidence admitted against him could not be used in court, because the police officers who arrested him were not real police officers."

"In the Arizona lower court case, the judge presiding determined that while it was evident that Dixon suffered from schizophrenia, in his legal opinion, the accused was rational enough to understand the proceedings of the court case and thus understood why he was being sentenced to death." Independent

This case is at least as representative of DP cases as John Wayne Gacy.
 
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Chris_Halkides said:
Yvette Borja wrote, "In 2008, a jury convicted Dixon for the 1978 killing of 21-year-old college student Deana Bowdoin. At the time, Dixon was already incarcerated for a prior assault conviction; DNA testing linked him to Bowdoin’s murder three decades earlier. Although Dixon’s history of mental illness was well-known to the state, the judge in his death penalty case, astoundingly, allowed him to fire his court-appointed public defender and represent himself at trial. According to Dixon’s current lawyers, he did so because he believed that the DNA evidence admitted against him could not be used in court, because the police officers who arrested him were not real police officers."

"In the Arizona lower court case, the judge presiding determined that while it was evident that Dixon suffered from schizophrenia, in his legal opinion, the accused was rational enough to understand the proceedings of the court case and thus understood why he was being sentenced to death." Independent

This case is at least as representative of DP cases as John Wayne Gacy.
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And??
 
mental illness and the death penalty

Warp12 said:
And??
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Did you read the links that I provided? Here is one more: "In 1977, Dixon was charged with assault after hitting a stranger on the head with a metal pipe. He was adjudicated incompetent to stand trial and was committed for treatment in a state hospital. At his January 1978 trial, then-Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sandra Day O’Connor, later a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, found Dixon not guilty by reason of insanity. Judge O’Connor directed Maricopa County prosecutors to make arrangements for Dixon’s continued custody until civil commitment proceedings, which were scheduled to start within ten days, could begin. Instead, Dixon was released. Two days later, he killed Bowdoin."

There were multiple failures in the judicial system including allowing a mentally ill person to represent himself. I am not a lawyer, but I wonder whether Mr. Dixon was even competent to stand trial.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
Did you read the links that I provided? Here is one more: "In 1977, Dixon was charged with assault after hitting a stranger on the head with a metal pipe. He was adjudicated incompetent to stand trial and was committed for treatment in a state hospital. At his January 1978 trial, then-Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sandra Day O’Connor, later a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, found Dixon not guilty by reason of insanity. Judge O’Connor directed Maricopa County prosecutors to make arrangements for Dixon’s continued custody until civil commitment proceedings, which were scheduled to start within ten days, could begin. Instead, Dixon was released. Two days later, he killed Bowdoin."
There were multiple failures in the judicial system including allowing a mentally ill person to represent himself. I am not a lawyer, but I wonder whether Mr. Dixon was even competent to stand trial.
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Bowdoin's murder went unsolved for over twenty years and became a cold case. In 2001, a cold case detective checked the DNA profile against a national database. He learned that the profile matched Clarence Dixon, a man who was already in prison and was serving a life sentence in an Arizona state prison for a 1986 sexual-assault conviction.
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I'm glad they killed him. It was better for everyone.
 
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incompetent to stand trial

Chris_Halkides said:
Did you read the links that I provided? Here is one more: "In 1977, Dixon was charged with assault after hitting a stranger on the head with a metal pipe. He was adjudicated incompetent to stand trial and was committed for treatment in a state hospital. At his January 1978 trial, then-Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sandra Day O’Connor, later a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, found Dixon not guilty by reason of insanity. Judge O’Connor directed Maricopa County prosecutors to make arrangements for Dixon’s continued custody until civil commitment proceedings, which were scheduled to start within ten days, could begin. Instead, Dixon was released. Two days later, he killed Bowdoin."
There were multiple failures in the judicial system including allowing a mentally ill person to represent himself. I am not a lawyer, but I wonder whether Mr. Dixon was even competent to stand trial.
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He should have been in custody at the time that he killed Ms. Bowdoin. The Maricopa County prosecutor's office failed in its responsibility.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
He should have been in custody at the time that he killed Ms. Bowdoin. The Maricopa County prosecutor's office failed in its responsibility.
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He failed as a human being. The responsibility for the murder and other crimes he committed falls directly on him. Nothing anyone else did excuses his actions.

He earned his death sentence.
 
theprestige said:
Meh. Presidents shouldn't be fighting on the front lines. CEOs shouldn't be personally handling all the sales calls. Coaches shouldn't be on the field running the ball or swinging the bat.

Judges should not also be executioners.

That said, I think a lottery system for being the person who throws the switch could make sense in a democracy. At the end of the day, in a democracy, it's the citizens who impose the sentences. If the community really likes executing so much, then I don't see why the community members should not take turns being the executioner. Maybe they'll learn something valuable about how they really feel.

On the other hand, not everybody in a democracy votes for the policies that get implemented. It would be perverse to force someone who opposes to the death penalty to apply it simply because a majority of their neighbors are for it.
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Then make the jury do it. None of them would be opposed to the DP otherwise they would not have voted unanimously for it.

You could rig up a room with 12 switches to throw, and the live switch is chosen randomly and not known to the jury, so they will not know if their switch was the live one.
 
Irony is quite a few medicla experts think the Guillotine might have the most painless method of execution but the gore involved gave it a bad name.
 
zooterkin said:
Might be a valid argument if the person passing the sentence were the one who carried it out.

As I've already said, I oppose the death penalty; one of the reasons for that is that it does require somebody to push the button, pull the trigger, or whatever, and that is likely to have an effect on them. I don't think it's unreasonable to minimise that effect if the State insists on using use the death penalty.
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Somehow I doubt any of these states are going to have any trouble finding volunteers for this duty within the ranks of their correctional officers. Prison guards are scumbags, the inbox for applications will be running over.
 
Supreme Court further restricts appeals

"The opinion leaves innocent people in the nightmarish position of having no court to go to for justice," said Christina Swarns, executive director of the Innocence Project. She pointed to one of the cases before the court as illustrative. The defendant, Barry Jones, was sentenced to death for the brutal sexual assault and killing of a 4-year-old girl. But his court-appointed trial court lawyer did not investigate the facts of the case. Arizona law does not allow the first post-conviction appeal to raise the question of ineffective assistance of counsel, and on the second appeal, the appellate lawyer did not raise the question either. Only when federal public defenders were brought into the case for a federal court hearing, did they examine the medical evidence, and consult experts who later testified that the injuries inflicted on the child occurred not when the prosecution claimed, but at a time when Jones was nowhere near the child and could not have inflicted them. The federal judge hearing the case found that both the defense lawyer at trial, and the appellate lawyer in state court had provided ineffective assistance of counsel. A unanimous panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals agreed, meaning that if the decision had held, the state would have had to retry Jones or release him...For defendant, Jones, who contends he is innocent, and for Ramirez, their only recourse now to avoid execution is an appeal to the governor of Arizona for clemency. They have run the course of their appeals and come up short." NPR

The passage of AEDPA in 1996 was bad enough, but this makes the situation even worse. I would not have believed that my opinion of Clarence Thomas as a jurist could get any lower, but I was wrong.
 
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Barry Jones and the claim of actual innocence

"Had Jones’s lawyers been up to the task, there was plenty they could have done to defend their client. They could have pointed out that the lead detective, who examined Rachel at the hospital, didn’t bother to investigate how or when the child sustained her fatal injury — or consider a single other suspect aside from Jones. They could have called a medical expert to show that there was no real evidence that the child had been raped. Most crucially, Jones’s lawyers could have called a pathologist to challenge the state’s theory of the crime, which rested on a narrow timeframe during which Jones had supposedly assaulted Rachel the day before her death. Medical experts now say that Rachel’s abdominal injury could not have become fatal so quickly. One doctor said she was unaware of any reported cases in which such an injury could have resulted in death in under 48 hours." The Intercept

This is a detailed and widely ranging article that also covers the issue that this ruling in effect overturns an earlier Supreme Court decision, namely the 2012 Martinez case. There is also the Trevino precedent which is overturned.

"There are also several other potential suspects. Gray’s mother Angela, for starters, was eventually convicted of child abuse and sentenced to eight years in prison. There’s evidence that Gray’s brother sexually preyed on young girls. And, on top of all of that, Gray reportedly said shortly before her death that a boy had hit her in the stomach with a metal bar.

"Simply put, no sensible jury confronted with all of this evidence would have concluded that Jones was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." Vox
 
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forfeiture forgiven

Noam Biale wrote, "Finally, one procedural quirk is worth mentioning in a case all about whether death row defendants are “at fault” for the failures of their constitutionally ineffective lawyers. In Ramirez’s case, Arizona did not object to the evidentiary hearing in the district court and did not raise AEDPA’s bar on developing new evidence until the case reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Ordinarily, an argument not raised in the district court is forfeited. But here, in a footnote, Thomas stated that the Supreme Court has “discretion to forgive any forfeiture” and because deciding the issue would reduce the likelihood of future litigation, “we choose to forgive the State’s forfeiture before the District Court.”"
Wow, just wow.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
Noam Biale wrote, "Finally, one procedural quirk is worth mentioning in a case all about whether death row defendants are “at fault” for the failures of their constitutionally ineffective lawyers. In Ramirez’s case, Arizona did not object to the evidentiary hearing in the district court and did not raise AEDPA’s bar on developing new evidence until the case reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Ordinarily, an argument not raised in the district court is forfeited. But here, in a footnote, Thomas stated that the Supreme Court has “discretion to forgive any forfeiture” and because deciding the issue would reduce the likelihood of future litigation, “we choose to forgive the State’s forfeiture before the District Court.”"
Wow, just wow.
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It is a little on the nose. Usually I have to cite more than one case to illustrate how the Court hypocritically employs discretion in a way that favors conservative interests. It is nice for them to do it all in one opinion.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
"The opinion leaves innocent people in the nightmarish position of having no court to go to for justice," said Christina Swarns, executive director of the Innocence Project. She pointed to one of the cases before the court as illustrative. The defendant, Barry Jones, was sentenced to death for the brutal sexual assault and killing of a 4-year-old girl. But his court-appointed trial court lawyer did not investigate the facts of the case. Arizona law does not allow the first post-conviction appeal to raise the question of ineffective assistance of counsel, and on the second appeal, the appellate lawyer did not raise the question either. Only when federal public defenders were brought into the case for a federal court hearing, did they examine the medical evidence, and consult experts who later testified that the injuries inflicted on the child occurred not when the prosecution claimed, but at a time when Jones was nowhere near the child and could not have inflicted them. The federal judge hearing the case found that both the defense lawyer at trial, and the appellate lawyer in state court had provided ineffective assistance of counsel. A unanimous panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals agreed, meaning that if the decision had held, the state would have had to retry Jones or release him...For defendant, Jones, who contends he is innocent, and for Ramirez, their only recourse now to avoid execution is an appeal to the governor of Arizona for clemency. They have run the course of their appeals and come up short." NPR

The passage of AEDPA in 1996 was bad enough, but this makes the situation even worse. I would not have believed that my opinion of Clarence Thomas as a jurist could get any lower, but I was wrong.
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Thomas has a history of deranged concurrences and dissents in criminal cases. We are back to Scalia's conjecture that actual innocence is not a bar to a lawful execution. They won't up and say that but rather tie the process up in so much formalism that we get there anyway.

The AEDPA is a monument to the moral depravity of the Clinton era Democratic Party. It is impossible to overstate the effect this had both in the federal system and how it set the tone for many states to also slam the courthouse doors shut.

I've always been grateful that my state has historically been rather generous in allocating resources and access to habeas corpus cases. For a bunch of reasons I fear that will be coming to an end.
 
AEDPA's indirect effect?

Suddenly said:
The AEDPA is a monument to the moral depravity of the Clinton era Democratic Party. It is impossible to overstate the effect this had both in the federal system and how it set the tone for many states to also slam the courthouse doors shut.

I've always been grateful that my state has historically been rather generous in allocating resources and access to habeas corpus cases. For a bunch of reasons I fear that will be coming to an end.
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How did AEDPA affect the states?
 
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