death penalty

What do you think about the death penalty?

gregladen — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 07:40:47 +0000

What do you think about the death penalty?

We just had an execution by lethal injection. Everything went fine. If, by "fine," we mean a guy died as a bunch of people watched emotionlessly.

The execution was carried out so late in the process that only a few minutes passed between the pronouncement of death and and the expiration of the court order to kill.

What if the execution had taken twice as long? With the order expired, would it be stopped during the final minutes? Would someone dial 911, get EMTs in there, try to save the guy's life?

I'm against the death penalty. I think it is time we recognized that this is the 21st century, and that we have this whole civilization thing. But, if we are going to execute someone, this absurd idea that somehow modern medicine can do a better job than the old methods is crazy. Perhaps our reluctance to use tried and true methods like hanging, beheading, and firing squad, all modern methods developed to replace the ancient horrible methods like crushing to death, burning to death, and stoning to death, is an indicator. Our preference to pretend that this is all very scientific and clean may be an indication that not very far below the surface we find the whole thing abhorrent. By pretending it is a medical procedure, painless, controlled, etc., we also pretend it is a civilized act to take the life of a person already imprisoned for life.

I'd rather live in a society where the argument "these people will not feel good about the horrible death of their loved ones until another horrible death has been carried out" is reserved for the anthropology textbooks, in the chapter on vengeance based societies.

By the way, I lived for years in a vengeance based society, a society in which all deaths, including from disease, or even being killed by a wild animal, were considered homicide, and the homicide should always be avenged. There were many deaths during my time there. Never once was a death avenged. The process of adjudication, of finding the party who caused the death (most likely by which craft) was very carefully done. The guilty party was always identified, but strangely, it always seemed to be an individual that lived very far away, that no one quite seemed to know well enough to find, or even bother looking for. So please don't think that a tribal vengeance society is necessarily less civilized than our Western society.

But I digress. What do we do about the Death Penalty in America?

gregladen Fri, 04/21/2017 - 03:40

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The death penalty is pursued for justice, as all sanctions are and it spares innocent lives, in three ways, better than does life without parole.

Vengence vanished from the equation, once due process became the rule.

No one connected to the murder can have any decsion in the verdict or the sentence, both are the sole province of the judge or jury, neither of which have any vengeance component, with both guided only by the facts and the law.

The lethal injection method was adopted, solely, based upon the thought that such would avoid the constant challenges to the other methods of execution.

Obviously, it hasn't worked out that way.

The first three drug protocol was quite painless and peaceful, which was the intent.

Nitrogen gas and/or the firing squad will replace lethal injection.

I disagree wholeheartedly with Mr. Sharp. There is nothing just about barbaric government-sanctioned vengeance, and too many innocent people die even the former were NOT true. The Death Penalty appears to be no deterrent. It should go.

Having said that - if we are going to do it, then it should be televised and portrayed as the brutal act that it is.

And by the way - anyone who has ever sat on a jury KNOWS that vengeance and retribution are both fully present in a jury deliberation. I found this out first-hand having sat on a Murder 1 jury panel a couple of years back. Some of those people were angry at ME because I insisted on using facts and logic and the reasonable doubt standard to make a decision, while others were ready to reach a conclusion instantly, having not considered all the evidence.

Jurors are only humans too, and the level of vengeance-thirst in that room was frightening. Do not fool yourself - humans can be bloodthirsty when they think someone has committed a crime, and the jury process is far from perfect.

The death penalty seems to be an old tool with no modern purpose, if vengence isn't the goal, as we know it doesn't influence murder rates at all,

The hewing to the "guidelines" for pursuing the death penalty are we know that to ensure even the most basic chance that a person who is not guilty is executed the process is far more expensive than simple imprisonment, and that cases in which a white person is killed are far more likely to result in a death penalty than cases in which non-whites are killed. This touches some but not totally on the financial and social status of the accused.

If it isn't a deterrent, and its implementation is horrible, why is it still here? I assume it makes the people who are incapable of understanding (or even thinking about) complex issues happy.

What do we do about it? Continue to argue against it -- probably to no good result for at least the next 4 years, as the know-nothings seem to have a stranglehold on the relevant positions of authority.

Greg asks "What do we do about the Death Penalty in America?"

Nothing (in my opinion).

The death penalty is constitutional.

In order to get rid of the death penalty the constitution needs to be amended.

Alternatively, all 50 states could change their laws so it is not available (I believe 31 states permit the death penalty).

I also believe Congress would have to change its law - because I believe the death penalty is still available for Federal Crimes (interstate stuff and killing Federal officials, etc.).

So if you are against the death penalty you should:

1. Try to get it outlawed in your state.
2. Try to get it outlawed by the Federal government for Federal jurisdiction.
3. Try to amend the constitution.

If you are for the death penalty you should:
1. Oppose attempts to outlaw it in your state.
2. Oppose attempts to outlaw it Federally.
3. Oppose attempts to amend the constitution.

Pretty simple really.

Lets start with a definition (how I define it anyway): Death Penalty. I believe that a penalty is something you learn from and therefore death penalty is not a real process since the person learns nothing; they are simply dead.

What we call the death penalty should only be used when the person is considered so dangerous to society that no chance of them entering society again can be contemplated (escapes from prisons do occur).

I also believe in spare parting a healthy death penalty person to give life to more deserving people.

Remarkable; there is no mention of the obvious facts:

1. Innocent individuals are sentenced and executed.
2. It is way more expensive, if you seek to prevent or reduce 1, than keeping someone in prison for life.
3. With a life sentence, there may be new evidence that exonerates the innocent.

If you think killing one innocent person is OK in order to be able to execute someone (rather than incarcerate for life), you are a menace to society yourself.

zebra #8:

Is this directed at me?

It doesn't matter whether innocent individuals are sentenced and executed to the question of whether the death penalty is constitution.

Innocent individuals are sentenced to 10 years time and we don't argue that therefore we should get rid of prison.

The question is whether we should even have a death penalty or not.

Your 1, 2 and 3 are not relevant to that question.

Rich #7:

Punishment has five recognized purposes: deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, retribution, and restitution.

Your definition is good for the first three, but not on point for retribution and restitution.

Sometimes we punish for retribution - which is what the death penalty is for.

I would also argue that when someone is executed they do learn that some crimes are punished by death (minutes before they die). But it is mostly for the victims, their family and society (with a dash of deterrence thrown in).

RickA "In order to get rid of the death penalty the constitution needs to be amended."

No, the constitution does not call for the death penalty. It does require due process in the case of the death penalty, etc., but it does not require it. We could simply not have the death penalty if we want.

Sort of like how we don't really have the "well regulated militia" specified in the constitution. We are simply allowed to do so, we don't have to do it. Instead, we can just have widespread barely regulated gun ownership and mass carnage.

The death penalty is bad for lots of reasons. But it also has indirect social benefits. It draws attention to problems with the USA criminal justice system, especially unethical prosecutors and poor quality legal defense services. These problems are largely hidden to most citizens, but the death penalty cases publicize them. There is a trade-off between barbaric capital punishment and the possible, uncertain improvement of the criminal justice system as a whole.

RickA,

Why would it be directed at you?

And who is questioning whether the death penalty is constitutional?

Your argument about 10 year sentences is incomprehensible, since I am arguing in favor of prison sentences.

Pretty bizarre even for you.

In this particular instance, it simply happens that the Nirvana Fallacy is not a fallacy: If the finding of guilt is not correct in every case, then the death penalty should be rejected. Simple logic.

RickA

If we are sentencing someone to death as a retribution; then are system of law has failed. Lets say that saying I hate Trump becomes a capital crime, retribution would be a failure of our history of law. You see retribution death penalties used in many third world countries.

Spare parting an executed criminal would be considered a form restitution.

zebra #8:

I meant "constitutional".

Let me expand on my #9.

The death penalty is just a type of punishment. We have several levels of punishment, we take money and/or property, we take liberty and the most severe is we take life. All are constitutional, but the death penalty is optional. Some states have it and some don't and any state can change from having it to not having it and visa versa. Ditto for the Federal government.

It is only if the constitution is amended that the choice goes away.

Whether innocent people are found guilty is not relevant to whether we punish them (by taking their money or property, their liberty or imposing the death sentence).

Our system is not perfect and it doesn't pretend to be. We find people guilty beyond a reasonable doubt - not beyond any doubt. We accept that sometimes we error, and so require ever more amounts of evidence as we move up the scale of punishment.

But I am sure an innocent person has been executed in the United States and I am sure that it could happen again in the future.

That has nothing to do with whether or not the death penalty should be available as a choice for states and the Federal government for certain very heinous crimes (in my opinion).

All that really matters is whether the person was given due process before they are punished. Of course we don't want to make mistakes and we work to improve our justice system all the time. DNA has been a big help in improving our error rate. Today we recognize that eye witness testimony isn't all it cracked up to be. Further improvements are always underway and are desired.

But I am not in favor of eliminating the death penalty personally.

Certain crimes, for which a person is found guilty, after due process, merit the death penalty (in my opinion). I wish we still had it available in Minnesota - but alas, we don't.

Greg #11:

Yes - I agree that all 50 states and the Federal government could choose not to have a death penalty. But if you want to remove the choice of all 50 states and the Federal government to change their mind and make the choice to have the death penalty, you need to amend the constitution.

zebra #13:

I disagree with you. Guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is the standard and that means we don't have to get it right every time. There is no requirement that the justice system be perfect (which is a good thing because that would be impossible).

Rich #14:

Why do you see punishment for retribution as a failure of our justice system? That is a perfectly valid reason to punish someone. You kill my child and I want to see you punished. Sometimes the punishment is prison and sometimes, in certain cases, it is death.

Rick #16: Probably but not necessarily. All it takes is a SCOTUS composed mainly of modern progressives who recognize the process as cruel and unusual. Then a good test case.

Anybody remember that Kevin Spacey movie?

Greg #19:

I disagree. The way I read the constitution and understand "cruel and unusual" would never eliminate the death penalty. Only inflicting death with the intent to cause pain (i.e. cruel) is a reason to ban a particular form of death.

So courts have ruled that drawing and quartering, death by a thousand cuts, the iron maiden, the rack, keelhauling, and so forth are cruel and unusual. What they all have in common is they are intended to kill people in a way which causes a great deal of pain before the person dies.

Trying to kill someone humanly, without the intent of causing pain, can never be cruel and unusual. This is true even if by accident a particular prisoner were to experience pain (not that we can interview them to find out, of course).

To me, the key is whether the intent is to cause pain prior to death.

RickA,

As usual, you ignore what you can't answer.

Nothing you have said is relevant to my #3.

If you give a life sentence to an innocent person, that person has the chance to be exonerated. Not so if he/she is executed.

Due process has nothing to do with it. Nor whether a murderer "deserves" to die.

There is no justification for the State to execute innocent people.

"and it spares innocent lives"

But ends innocent lives when you choose the innocent to kill off.

" if vengence isn’t the goal"

It is. Or a "fear" of being "soft on crime".

"You kill my child and I want to see you punished. "

That has nothing to do with justice. Only revenge.

Guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is the standard and that means we don’t have to get it right every time.

We all know rickA is a complete ass, but his dismissal of the execution of innocent people needs to be stressed. I don't think anything else he's said has been as large an admission of "I'm really a despicable person and I don't care" as this.

zebra #21:

I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

I would argue that there is no justification for the State to imprison an innocent person - but that happens also. That is the nature of "beyond a reasonable doubt". Your beef is not with me, but with the very foundation of the criminal justice system. Good luck with that.

"Nor whether a murderer “deserves” to die."

I was glad to see Peter Jackson kept in Gandalf's line in Moria to Frodo.

Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment.

A lot of moronic merkins need to take that to heart.

Being morons, they fail.

"I guess we will have to agree to disagree."

Fuck off, no. You have to agree or come up with a rational counterpoint, not just keep holding fast to your idiotic ideas in the face of every rationality.

By falling back to this you prove that engagement with you is pointless since you will NEVER EVER move, no matter how wrong you are or how it is proven how little you thought on something.

RichA,

Retribution is defined as:
punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act. "employees asked not to be named, saying they feared retribution"

The key word here vengeance. Vengeance should never be the basis for imprisonment or the death penalty. Any penalty needs to be defined by law not by how vengeful we want to be. Allowing vengeance to become how we treat wrong doers opens the door for vigilante justice or mob justice.

We have been seeing a large surge in vigilante or mob justice in this country recently. Look at the number of police gunned down, people with different skin color or religious belief being harassed and or killed.

synonyms: punishment, penalty, one's just deserts

Retribution is defined as:

"but his dismissal of the execution of innocent people needs to be stressed."

Because it has never been him. Or anyone he cares about (assuming there IS anyone he cares about).

ISIS beheading US citizens or burning alive US pilots is done as vengeance by ISIS.

That makes it right and fine with you, dick?

All those riots from incited muslims about the cartoons were done in vengeance against people who had hurt their feelings and they NEEDED to punish the heretics and idolators.

Therefore it's fine and dandy? They wanted westerners punished, therefore they did, and that's all the justification needed.

At least that's all you've posted to justify the death penalty. Sauce for the goose, and all that.

#21 zebra

There is no justification for the State to execute innocent people.

Absolutely true.

And since miscarriages of justice *will* occur in future, there can be no justification for capital punishment.

Rich #29:

Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

But I think that part of putting someone into prison is related to justice for the victim.

So for rape, we have victim's heard at court, during sentencing.

Ditto for murder, victims get to testify during sentencing.

Part of punishing someone by putting them into prison is for the victim, and not just to teach the criminal a lesson.

The part for the victim is what I call vengeance and what victims call justice.

But that is just my opinion, and you are certainly entitled to yours.

BBD #32:

Do you apply the same rule for imprisonment?

"Everyone is entitled to their opinion."

Bollocks.

"The part for the victim is what I call vengeance and what victims call justice."

Except that isn't their opinion, that's yours. Why do you insist on making other people's opinions for them? You don't think they're entitled to them, only the ones you assign them.

"But that is just my opinion"

Nope, that's your hatred and petty ego.

"Do you apply the same rule for imprisonment?"

Why bother asking?

RickA,

How many people end up not convicted who are actually guilty? I suspect the number may actually be greater than innocent people found guilty (I have no proof of this).

We have the famous case of OJ Simpson. OJ was found criminally innocent but civilly guilty (of course there are two standards of evidence involved). I as I believe most people believe that OJ was criminally guilty but under the law he is not. If we used the retribution concept he would have strung up from the nearest yardarm.

"Because it has never been him. "

Obviously. His opinion comes from his libertarian "view" (a combination of "might makes right" and "I have mine, screw everyone else"). When your worldview never advances past the one a snotty 4-year old boy has (as is the case with rickA) you don't care when innocent people suffer, whether from an accident or actions of your government or profession. Especially when those who suffer aren't the right race -- besides, if they weren't guilty of something they would never have been arrested (goes the thinking of assholes like him).

Rich #38:

In law school they teach us that "It is far better that 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man is wrongfully convicted".

I don't know the numbers, but like you I suspect many more guilty are not convicted than innocent's wrongfully convicted.

The innocence project has been doing great work using DNA to get people wrongfully convicted out of prison and off death row - and that is wonderful.

But the system still does allow for the possibility that an innocent person will be wrongfully convicted - it happens.

You cannot obtain retribution unless a person has been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, with due process. The prison time is retribution (to some), deterrence (to others) and a lesson to the criminal.

So it would be mob justice if we strung people up after they were found not guilty - and that isn't our system. If you or I punish someone it is a crime. But if the state punishes someone, after due process, we call it criminal justice.

dean #25 and #38:

I am happy to be here for your name calling, your judgment and your hate. Please continue to enjoy yourself.

It's nothing new. You've shown yourself to be among the worst people this country has to offer dozens of times over.

It isn't as though you ever try to learn anything, or examine Data before you make a decision, is jt? If you don't like it it has to be wrong. Then you begin telling lies.

dean #43:

I always examine data before I make a decision. That is why I am a luke warmer. I also have never lowered myself to telling lies. I just refuse to accept other peoples opinions unless I agree with them.

RickA

Do you apply the same rule for imprisonment?

You can pardon someone imprisoned as a result of a miscarriage of justice. You can't bring them back to life if they have been executed.

That's the point.

I always examine data before I make a decision. That is why I am a luke warmer.

Lukewarmerism is about denying most of the evidence, so you are spouting crap as usual.

"I always examine data before I make a decision. "

Bullshit. As soon as you say the conclusions the scientists and statisticians draw from data are "opinions" you show yourself to be one of the liars who never intended to consider the data.

The only thing you've considered practicing is habitual dishonesty.

RickA, I know you are an attorney. Are you a criminal defense attorney? If so, by definition, a criminal defense atttorney has to lie (if the evidence shows guilt) to try to get the defendant off.

And stop behaving like a total knob then whining when people get angry with you for behaving like a total knob.

Your endless dishonesty about climate sensitivity is a perfect example. You have been shown that the likelyhood of a lukewarm outcome is very unlikely yet you keep on pretending that it's somehow okay to express this (fuckwitted) 'opinion' on a science blog, over and over again.

It's almost as though you are deliberately trying to annoy people just so you can play the victim when they tell you to piss off.

BBD #45:

Under each situation they have both been wrongly punished. You can never give anybody back 10 years of their life, just as you can never bring someone back to life if they have been executed.

We don't argue to get rid of imprisonment because we may wrongfully imprison someone. We just say we are sorry and give them money (sometimes).

A person put to death has also been punished - but it is not reversible, and I understand that.

That is no reason to eliminate the punishment of death, for certain crimes.

The criminal justice system allows for error - that is why we allow appeals. Eventually, the appeals run out and some are put to death.

I am not advocating putting innocent people to death - I am advocating having the ability to punish certain crimes with death. The fact that we may screw up and kill an innocent person is not relevant to the existence of the death penalty (in my opinion).

But feel free to argue against the death penalty in the 31 states and to Congress. That is your right. But I will argue against getting rid of the death penalty - and that is my right.

Rich #48:

No - I have never practiced criminal law.

I am an intellectual property attorney (patents, trademarks and copyright law).

However, attorneys are not allowed to lie in court. A criminal lawyer will always argue that the State has not met its burden of proof of showing that the defendant committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt - and that is a matter of opinion, for the jury to decide.

BBD #49 says "Your endless dishonesty about climate sensitivity is a perfect example."

You just don't seem to understand "dishonesty". If I believe it to be true it is not dishonest or a lie. Period. It may turn out to be wrong. But it will never be a lie.

So I don't accept your opinion that I have lied or been dishonest. Ditto for dean. You both can tell me I have lied and been dishonest till you are blue in the face, and it will not change the fact that I believe everything I say and therefore cannot lie (by definition).

It is my opinion that ECS will be 1.8C ish or lower. That makes TCR 1.125C ish or lower (using the 60% estimate). That is honestly my belief and until the data change my mind - that is that.

Once we hit 560 ppm, we can actually measure TCR and use it to estimate ECS and that could change my mind, or show me that I was right all along.

But I have not been dishonest about climate sensitivity.

I just refuse to change my mind because you say I should or based on an alleged "consensus" of climate scientists.

"I just refuse to change my mind because you say I should or based on an alleged “consensus” of climate scientists."

So, you never consider the data and the analysis -- meaning your earlier comment was (no surprise here) a lie.

That is no reason to eliminate the punishment of death, for certain crimes.

Of course it is, you fucking idiot (channeling my inner Wow here, but patience with you is simply gone these days).

But I will argue against getting rid of the death penalty – and that is my right.

And the fact that you do so in the certain knowledge that some innocent people will be murdered by the state by mistake indicates that you are essentially quite vile.

That you do so given the evidence that capital punishment has no deterrent effect on criminal behaviour makes your position incomprehensible as well as morally repugnant.

#53

Beat me to it, dean.

RickA I nailed you a few weeks ago for being a dishonest little shit and here you are, claiming (again), dishonestly, that you aren't.

Well, it won't wash here, ever again (as I told you when you got nailed). So stop lying.

"I am happy to be here for your name calling"

Yup, so much of a shitbag that you are PROUD to be one, openly.

“I just refuse to change my mind "

That, in a nutshell, is why you're a retard and it's completely pointless you being here.

Even the dumbest anima changes their mind about a course of action after some unwanted result. Anything higher than amoebas will do it, but you do not have the ability to change your mind.

EVER.

" indicates that you are essentially quite vile. "

Morover takes this vile attitude as something to be PROUD of.

THAT is how much of a shithole that dickhead is.

"Once we hit 560 ppm"

Not necessary. Any schoolkid who is past 15 years of age will have done enough maths to determine that you are wrong now.

But again, no matter what reality throws at you you will never change your mind. No evidence will ever manage that.

Civilised countries don't have the death penalty.

Why should the US pride itself on being uncivilised?

"And stop behaving like a total knob then whining when people get angry with you for behaving like a total knob. "

That is how the deplorable tosspot handles being a deplorable tosspot: by pretending that they're somehow no worse than "everyone else".

Not that even if it were the case that would justify it, just like ISIS are not justified in their acts just because the USA are careless of innocent lives in the Middle East.

And the hypocrisy that the righwingnutjob engages in is to complain about others being "mean" or "name calling" while doing much worse under the "justification" that others are as bad, or worse, is entirely normal for the knuckledragging idiots, because they never look at what they're doing or thinking (since they'd be aghast at both if they looked).

If you are doing it with the "but they're doing it too!" you don't get to complain about others doing it, since you admit freely to doing it yourself.

Some innocent people will also be imprisoned by mistake.
That they might be able to get out of jail after a long imprisonment doesn't mean that you haven't put them in jail as innocent people. Why not refuse all prison sentences?
When Illinois had a series of death penalties for innocent people, the Governor suspended the death penalty, and I think commuted all the death sentences(He was also on his way to jail himself).

"That they might be able to get out of jail after a long imprisonment doesn’t mean that you haven’t put them in jail as innocent people. Why not refuse all prison sentences?"

Try to keep up.
a) Nobody is saying the system is perfect.
b) Nobody is saying that because the system is not perfect all sentencing should cease.
c) If an innocent person is executed there is no way to make things even a little bit right for that person.
d) If an innocent person is imprisoned and then found to have been wrongly imprisoned then he/she can be released and some work towards making things a little bit right can be done.

rickA doesn't care that innocent people can be executed -- since they are likely guilty of something anyway (in his view).

People who have even a shred of decency are bothered by having innocent people executed. That's one of the issues here.

The RWNJ is also prone to hysterics, too.

I can only hope that dick gets SWATted and sees what it looks like when the police make a mistake when they're armed.

And since they've already bragged about their guns, come face to face with what happens when the police break down THEIR door brandishing weapons. Drawing a weapon not such a good idea.

RickA #20.

I disagree.

If a person could be found guilty with 100% certainty and executed very quickly, that would minimize suffering . Putting someone on death row for 20 years is cruel and unusual. Also, the system allows for a person to literally be walked down the hall to the killing room, then not killed, multiple times. That is cruel and unusual by modern standards.

Since the system requires such cumbersome procedures to meet due process, and due process is required by the constitution, and this due process is cruel and unusual ...

Well, you know the rest.

Greg #65:

Interesting argument.

My response is that it is the fault of the criminal for appealing that causes the delay and therefore your "cruel and unusual" status.

If they stop appealing, than they can quickly be put to death (like Timothy McVeigh).

So it is not the state which is being cruel and unusual.

It is a waiver argument.

The criminal has waived their right to argue delay is cruel by causing the delay.

Ditto for the multiple walks down the aisle.

"My response is that it is the fault of the criminal for appealing..."

We have a new most asinine comment right there.

Greg,

I believe there are times when the death penalty is appropriate end. However, the evidence needs to be cut and dried such as no appeal is necessary. The execution then needs to be carried out as quickly as possible.

If the condemned person is healthy, the method of death needs to be in such a manner that useable organs and other parts can be used to save or improve lives.

There are some real moral issues to spare parting condemned people. An example (in extreme) what if running a stop sign became a capital crime. Larry Niven wrote a book where harvesting organs this way was common.

One thing that has not been mentioned is the collateral damage that having a death penalty can have on the people who have to carry out the legal sentence. Some human being has to personally flip a switch, push a button, or give an injection. The corrosive effect of such a job on the mind and emotions can be devastating -- as it is known to have been even for many soldiers forced by the circumstances and requirements of their service to kill during wartime. That, combined with the undoubted tragedy of any execution of an innocent person, provides two good reasons for eliminating the death penalty in my opinion.

Shrub once joked to someone next to them about a woman being executed in front of him.

So the problems aren't necessarily that you're traumatised, but that you lose your humanity.

"dick" and mike have already lost theirs. Or buried it under greed, apathy and selfishness.

"We have a new most asinine comment right there."

It is also another shibboleth of the RWNJ. It existed before the character, but it's eptiomised by Jack Bauer, where you get to see the criminal and KNOW (because you're sitting there while the actor playing the bad guy is being the guilty bad guy doing it, something that only happens in staged fake crimes) that they're the baddie.

"the criminal"? They're innocent. The innocent ones are, and we've already all agreed that it's not foolproof and some innocents DO get strung up by the capital punishment system, so the problem here is that the innocent is not a criminal, they've just been sentenced to death.

And deplorable asshats complain that the innocent keep trying to prove their innocence rather than submit quickly to the final end of death.

It's not merely asinine, it's abhorrent.

Here is a law review article on Greg's delay argument:

https://www.law.upenn.edu/journals/lawreview/articles/volume161/issue3/…

Starting at page 881 is the most relevant section.

Apparently this has come up before and still is argued - but the Supreme Court has not ruled that delay violates the 8th amendment (yet).

I guess we will have to wait and see.

Personally, unless the delay is caused by the state with the intent to cause the prisoner pain (emotional and/or mental included) I wouldn't buy this argument. But the Supeme Court may disagree with me (someday). They have not yet.

Rich #68:

Was the book the Long Arm of Gil Hamilton? The title is going off memory - but I remember that book quite well and think there were organleggers in it (and corpsicles also).

I guess we will have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, there will be occasional miscarriages of justice and the state will occasionally murder innocent people.

All this will continue to fail to deter criminal behaviour currently punishable by execution.

So what is the net result of rooting for the death penalty?

RickA,

No, the book I was thinking of was about haves and have nots on a colony world.

People speak of death penalty as emotional vengeance. I see opposition to the death penalty(if it's not the innocence argument) as letting emotions getting in the way of necessary justice.

What is 'necessary justice'?

The definition must include the fact that endorsing the death penalty means that there will be occasional miscarriages of justice and the state will occasionally murder innocent people.

All this will continue to fail to deter criminal behaviour currently punishable by execution.

So what is the net result of rooting for the death penalty?

Despite my criticism, I think the innocence argument is a strong point. I am arguing against the idea that the death penalty is inhumane, wrong for the government to be killing. I think for some crimes the appropriate punishment is the death penalty. That it deters crime should not be the only standard by which penalties are decided. I think having a larger death penalty that is implemented more would be deterring. For example, if we had like that silly Star Trek The Next Generation episode and gave the death penalty for speeding, I think people would be speeding less.

It's interesting to see the way that 'libertarian' commenters endorse the death penalty.

Can't have it both ways.

That it deters crime should not be the only standard by which penalties are decided.

How convenient of you to think that, since we know the death penalty does not deter crime.

I think having a larger death penalty that is implemented more would be deterring. For example, if we had like that silly Star Trek The Next Generation episode and gave the death penalty for speeding, I think people would be speeding less.

I like Star Trek The Next Generation too. It gave us the face palm, a perfect response to that comment.

MikeN

Please, answer the question:

Endorsing the death penalty means that there will be occasional miscarriages of justice and the state will occasionally murder innocent people.

All this will continue to fail to deter criminal behaviour currently punishable by execution.

So what is the net result of rooting for the death penalty?

BBD #81:

Just out of curiosity, what is your basis for stating that the death penalty has no deterrence effect?

BBD, I don't understand your question which seems to have two unrelated points. Some innocent people will receive the death penalty, not sure what the current number is. Continue to fail to deter criminal behavior. How are these related?
Are you asking effect of rooting for the death penalty or effect of having the death penalty?
I don't think rooting for the death penalty is a good thing, though I engage in it.
Either case I don't see how this is related to failing to deter criminal behavior, which should not be the only goal.
Is it your position that if a penalty does not serve to deter the crime, the penalty should be eliminated?

Rick, there have been many studies that have found no deterrent effect for the death penalty. I am not convinced by them.

Clarify above, I am not convinced by studies that find death penalty does not deter crime. I agree that studies have not found that the death penalty does deter crime. It's an open question I think.

". I am not convinced by them."

Mm I shock there, since those studies were done by scientists and statisticians who knew what they were doing, so they have to be unreliable (in the minds of idiots).

Tyvor Winn #69:

How about a robot which shoots a bullet into the head of the prisoner?

Instant death - no pain - no corrosive effect for any human having to push the button or shoot the gun.

MikeN #84:

Me either.

It sure deters the prisoner.

I have been listening to a podcast called my favourite murder in which there are many examples of people convicted of a murder who got out of prison and committed a second murder (or more).

So lets just start with the deterrent effect on the murderer themselves.

I also agree that if speeding was punished by death that there would be less speeding.

RickA, someone has to control the robot.

Death penalty is definitely deterring, in that the people executed will not commit any further crimes. It is possible this is offset by an increase in other crimes from having the death penalty.

MikeN #89:

We will just have to put a pro-death penalty person in charge of controlling the robot.

I find it interesting that so many here are focussing on punishment and revenge rather than asking what is the best way to reduce the rate of violent crime (especially murder). If incarceration and execution were effective, US streets would be amongst the safest in the world. ISTM that there are three main considerations in committing violent crime; thinking of doing the crime in the first place, having the means to do it and the thought of possible consequences. I can't say that I have studied national differences but I get the impression that in Sweden and various other countries the first is regarded as critical whereas in the US the emphasis is on the last, with unsatisfactory results.

Crime rates correlate with all sorts of things, including wealth disparity and effective wealth disparity. For example, having a crappy health care insurance system.

Also, I think we have a problem in some communities where people are legitimately concerned over calling the cops.

#70: I agree with you. I consider the loss of humanity to be one of the possible, even likely, results of the "corrosive effect on mind and emotions" that I mentioned. It is certainly one of the things that can and does happen to soldiers.

#87: Unless by robot you are thinking of an independent entity like Data in Star Trek TNG, I don't think this removes responsibility from some human being. To me, it is little different from setting an automated trap and then leading someone into that trap. Now there are people -- sociopaths -- that lack empathy and would not feel any remorse or upset for being an executioner but, personally, I shudder at the thought of being such a person's employer via my tax dollars.

While the ethical arguments are for or against the death penalty are interesting...
In practise it is a good measure of the authoritarian and coercive nature of the government in any nation.

A couple of people have used the term "libertarian" in reference to RickA and MikeN. I wish you wouldn't.

I know, this is like my complaining about people validating the right-wing co-opting of "free market", but why make it easy for them?

In the US at least, "libertarian" is a phony term meaning "Republican pretending to have a philosophical basis for promoting Fascism and Feudalism".

Now, as has been pointed out by others, R and M are "arguing" at a child's level-- for them it is sufficient to say "ipse dixit", and redefine terms on the fly, and ignore evidence.

But if you had an intellectually competent and intellectually honest person claiming to be a (real) libertarian, he/she would argue against the death penalty.

The government might be justified in incapacitating, deterring, or attempting to rehabilitate, individuals, because it serves the common good.

But that's it. There's no such thing as "deserved punishment"-- that's something a Nanny State fan would argue, not a libertarian.

Which demonstrates again that what we have with our right-wing fellows on this planet is a manifestation of Authoritarian Personality, wanting there to be a Daddy to punish the "others' who frighten us.

ISIS are muslims. 95%+ of muslims wish we wouldn't say that.

The ideology is what people say they have, and just because two people are libertarian doesn't mean one gets to tell others the other one is no true libertarian.

The differences exist, but the ideological term still applies.

See also WBC and 95%+ of christians.

For those that (mistakenly) believe the death penalty is a deterrent, they ought to use da Google.

"A recent study by Professor Michael Radelet and Traci Lacock of the University of Colorado found that 88% of the nation’s leading criminologists do not believe the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime. The study, Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates? The Views of Leading Criminologists, published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Crimonology, concluded, “There is overwhelming consensus among America’s top criminologists that the empirical research conducted on the deterrence question fails to support the threat or use of the death penalty.” A previous study in 1996 had come to similar conclusions."

I studied the criminal justice system for ayear back in the late 70's and nothing I found then showed any substantive evidence for the death penalty being a deterrent to crime. Most murders are either crimes of passion or connected to drug wars. In neither case is logical thinking involved as to the criminal consequences.

Remember, dick won't change his mind merely because evidence or experts are against him, because if someone says he's wrong, that's merely their opinion, and he's going to have to wait and see if he can repeat the same bullshit again.

That dick hasn't done any investigation only confirming biases means that as long as he refuses to look into it, he can continue to insist that the death penalty is a great thing.

Which will change 100% when he's facing death by numbers.

There's a logical problem with it too. If murder is punishable by death, then the government employee is a murderer. You're gonna run out of government there pretty soon, and the last one will be left in charge of everything.

In a drug war, you're in battle and you either shoot someone or they shoot you (though it doesn't necessarily have to be face-to-face, and don't get prissy about shooting someone in the back, that's entirely how the USA managed to hold their own against the much better trained British army, and even then the USA were losing, because you still need to own towns and cities, so geurilla tactics were not enough, so it was only when the French (yes, those cheese-eating surrender monkeys) who had an army just as well trained as the British joined up that the USA finally started winning decisively. So shooting someone before they shoot you is 100% fine).

I don't think that being killed as a murderer deters someone who believes or knows that they're going to get killed by the opposing gang if they don't kill first. Why would it?

"But if you had an intellectually competent and intellectually honest person claiming to be a (real) libertarian"

They are as real as unicorns.

Dean 100,

Well, yes, but one can try to construct some chain of reasoning based on what they claim as "libertarian fundamental principles".

It ends up as more like Scandinavian Social Democracy than anything, so I have never been able to get any agreement from those who wear the label.

zebra #95:

I call myself a libertarian because I like the idea that anybody can do anything they want as long as it doesn't hurt somebody else. Also, I took a test on the internet to identify which candidate I was most aligned with on the issues, and it came back Rand Paul, who is a libertarian.

I always that that when a person did something to hurt someone else that they were punished, even in the libertarian system. The way we do that is to either fine them (take their money), take away their property (like a fishing boat if they are caught violating fishing rules), lake away their liberty (putting them in prison) or taking their life. We are here talking about the last one - the taking of life.

The constitution says you may not be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law (5th amendment). So punishing by taking life is permitted by the constitution and it is up to each state as to whether they want to use that form of punishment or not. So the death penalty is in the constitution and 31 states and the Federal government permit it - and that is were we are at. That is why I say to get rid of the death penalty in the USA you have to change the constitution (which is very very difficult).

"as long as it doesn’t hurt somebody else"

Define "hurt".

Threats don't hurt, so press gangs fine? Mob shakedowns fine? Death penalty DEFINITELY hurts someone else. Not fine?

Apparently you don't think anything through....

"That is why I say to get rid of the death penalty in the USA you have to change the constitution (which is very very difficult)."

Yet your reasoning is fallacious and your conclusion incorrect.

"So punishing by taking life is permitted by the constitution"

But not required. Therefore the death penalty is not unconstitutional (except it can be argued it is, quite perfectly, it does deprive someone of life), NOT constitutionally mandated.

That you do not care to comprehend what even you say and merely stick with your "opinion" no matter what, even when you are disagreeing with it, is why you're a dumbass.

Also the 5th is not the constitution, it's an amendment to the constitution.

"like a fishing boat if they are caught violating fishing rules"

Really? But who, other than fish, are harmed? It's not YOUR fish, they're merely on land you think you own, when ownership is the deprivation of others of their existence on that land. You can't preclude people from "your land" without infringing on their person. With force, even.

Greed libertarians like yourself latch on to the bits you like to "justify" your greed and anti-humanity stance, but never actually consider what you claim and pursue it to the problems, THEN DISCUSS HOW TO DEAL WITH THAT.

It's all rose tinting "we'll have to wait and see", then blaming some other (most frequently government) for it not working out.

Much like free market fundamentalism, where no matter the result, the economic "theories" are right, it's only failed because someone interfered.

Wow #104:

The constitution also mentions treason, which the 1st Congress (1790) made punishable by death, so the death penalty was implied via the crime of treason (which was always punishable by death). But you are correct - the fifth amendment was made one year after the constitution was ratified. 1788 and then 1789 respectively. Still - the constitution as amended makes it clear that the death penalty is permitted.

RickA

"I always [thought] that when a person did something to hurt someone else that they were punished, ..."

A perfect example of

1. Authoritarian Personality
2. The "Is-Ought Fallacy".

So, you were raised to believe that if you broke the rules, you would be punished, and there was no need for the rules to serve some rational purpose-- if you did X, Daddy would get out the belt and whack you. That's just the way it is!

My question is, why should I pay taxes so that people can be punished? I don't care if people are punished; I only care that I am not harmed, and can live a peaceful and satisfying life.

zebra #107:

So what is your concept of what happens when someone is harmed by someone else?

Prison? Deportation? A lecture? Anything.

Rick A if the death penalty works as a deterrant how do you explain the lower murder rate in the many countries without the death penalty?

"so the death penalty was implied via the crime of treason"

Nope. The law just made a crime punishable by death. It merely did not fall foul of the constitution. It did not make the death penalty a part of the constitutional requirements. Indeed the constitution, more accurately the federalist papers and declaration of independence as the preamble for the constitution make it abundantly clear that the constitution is a limitation on government power, not a mandate for it.

So, no. Again, you are wrong.

"Still"

Still you were wrong, and I was right.

" – the constitution as amended makes it clear that the death penalty is permitted."

But not mandatory. Therefore there is nothing to stop the death penalty being removed. Nothing in the constitution requires that the death penalty be in the list of permissible actions of the courts. Just says that it is not impermissable.

You aren't running the German court legal system, you're running the one based on the UK system. Not germany's. Even though you've got a german anchor-baby in charge.

RickA,

If there is a scientific determination that something works to achieve the goal of preventing harm, then I am all for it.

But that is not the same as "punishment" for the sake of punishment-- which is irrational and emotional.

If you want to punish someone who harms you (perfectly understandable; I have had some violent thoughts about certain people I have encountered in my life) then you should go ahead and do it. If you want to kill someone because they killed your friend or family member, be my guest. But don't ask me to do it for you, or to support the government in doing it.

Incarcerating someone, or fining them, should have a purpose and should be subject to a cost-benefit analysis. That would be a "true" libertarian position if one worked from the basic principles.

The point of death penalty for treason is that calling the death penalty unconstitutional is hard to reconcile with this provision, and the 5th amendment provision that no one can be deprived of life without due process of law. No one is saying that the Constitution mandates the death penalty.

#83 MikeN

BBD, I don’t understand your question which seems to have two unrelated points. Some innocent people will receive the death penalty, not sure what the current number is. Continue to fail to deter criminal behavior. How are these related?
Are you asking effect of rooting for the death penalty or effect of having the death penalty?
I don’t think rooting for the death penalty is a good thing, though I engage in it.

There are no unrelated points.

Rooting for the death penalty means that you are rooting for the right of the state to occasionally, accidentally murder citizens. And you call yourself a libertarian.

There is no evidence that the death penalty deters criminal behaviour currently punishable by execution. So not only are you rooting for a the right of the state to murder citizens by mistake once in a while, the doing of this state murder doesn't have a deterrent effect.

#75 zebra

Oh sure, they are authoritarian scum, not really libertarians.

"calling the death penalty unconstitutional is hard to reconcile with this provision"

Nope,it's only hard for a congenital idiot. Where does it say that treason MUST be punishable by death?

NOWHERE.

Dumbass.

"No one is saying that the Constitution mandates the death penalty."

YOU *are*.

There's nothing, otherwise, to change in the constitution to drop the death penalty you fuckwit.

"Oh sure, they are authoritarian scum, not really libertarians."

They sing some of the passages,and there's no absolute creed (there never is for any ideology, hence the numbers of sects of christianity, for example), and they identify as libertarian, so because there's no authority on who is and who is not allowed to be a libertarian (theoretically, again with christianity, the pope can do it, but if they tried, they'd be ignored), so they're libertarian.

Dumbass libertarian? Greed libertarian? LINO? Sure, any of those, but the problem for anyone holding to an ideology is that they have to accept the revision and selectivity others have for the ideology. A selectivity that most if not every single libertarian takes to the ideology, since every ideology has to meet reality SOMEWHERE, and pragmatism or desire will change the form allowed for the ideology, and society will allow or disallow other expressions.

The difference between fundie and rational is more about how they try to meet reality with their ideology rather than make reality bend to their ideology than with the articles propounded (or just mindlessly chanted).

"calling the death penalty unconstitutional"

Where?

Only fuckwit I see doing that is you, dick. I said it could be argued, as it goes against that whole life thing. You know, the thing that death ends.

But I did specifically and unequivocally say that it WASN'T unconstitutional, but that it could be easily removed without changing the constitution.

'You kill my cild, and I want to see you punished'.

Strange how RickA's logic doesn't apply to the President when he orders military strikes that kill industrial numbers of children in foreign countries. I am sure that there are thousands of grieving parents in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere who would love to see senior politicians and military cronies punished for crimes they have committed. But it will never happen, of course. The death penalty is generally only administered to poor African Americans for crimes committed at home. Wealthy white Americans are the privileged group that are pretty well exempt.

So of course the death penalty is racist, barbaric and absurd.

#99: An aside from the main topic. From what I've read of the history of the American Revolution, I think that you overestimate the importance of guerrilla tactics on the Revolutionary side. It was true in the early part of the war but Washington always aimed at developing a European-type army and was aided in producing one by Baron von Steuben and others. The victories at Saratoga in the north and Cowpens in the south were won without any French or other army aid. The French navy was more important than the army at Yorktown because they kept the British from either retreat or resupply. Holding territory is not a necessary part of a winning strategy. (In fact it was a major mistake by Hitler in Russia in WW2.) Keeping a viable army in the field was what finally wore down the British (and us in Viet Nam, for that matter).

#103: You are of course technically correct but as I understand it, an amendment to a document is thereafter considered a full part of the document not some kind of poor relation. In any case, the Bill of Rights amendments are, I would argue, the most important and relevant because they specifically guarantee certain rights to individuals and curb certain governmental powers. The exact form of the government is much less important than this.

Good to see you again, Jeff H.

Rooting for the death penalty isn't rooting for the right of the state, it is rooting for the state to do it. The right is already established. It is a matter of whether they should. You haven't linked the two points. I'll just take it as two separate arguments. I think the innocent argument is valid, but is also valid against all sorts of punishments.
The lack of a deterrent effect is not established. However, even if it were, it still wouldn't make the death penalty irrelevant, as I think punishment is a separate and more important reason. That a punishment is deterring is not a good reason to implement it, if it is not proportionate to the crime.
Take the case of someone who downloaded movies, and the government tried to impose a fine of hundreds of thousands of dollars for about $100 worth of movies. Now saying the fine is the price of the movie would be ridiculous as it would not provide a deterrence, but imposing high fines as a deterrent seems excessive.

MikeN - "The lack of a deterrent effect is not established."

Huh? The social studies are clear - there is no deterrent effect. It's also clear that do not believe there is a deterrent effect. Where do you come from? I assume you can read English!?

"The victories at Saratoga in the north and Cowpens in the south were won without any French or other army aid."

Those were later in the game, though, and the French had been blockading British ships and harassing supply lines.

And, yes, the generals were beginning to learn that
"rugged indepentents" don't make good soldiers, you need professionals.

The point, however, wasn't so much the woeful performance of amateurs in a field of professionals, but that not fighting fair is lauded or even lionised when "we" do it, but looks different when someone else does it.

Something lost when you run the Jack Bauer scenario in your head. You then presuppose who the bad guys are and who the good ones are and then paint their actions in the "right colour" to confirm the supposition.

" Now saying the fine is the price of the movie would be ridiculous as it would not provide a deterrence"

No, it's ridiculous because nothing was stolen, nothing lost.

zebra #111:

I think putting someone in prison is punishing them. We are trying to teach them a lesson - not to do it again. It also has a deterrence effect (I guess that is up for debate). It certainly deters while the person is in prison.

Prison is punishment and that is part of the reason we take away their liberty - to punish, to teach and to deter.

Imposing prison sentences may lead to more crime, with the high recidivism rate, and being a felon makes it harder to get a job.

RickA - Let me spell this out for you --- T H E R E I S N O D E T E R R E N T E F F E C T

Got that?

Jesus, deniers in one sphere are apparently deniers in many spheres.

#123: Again off the main topic but in the interests of accuracy let me just add the following. The French military alliance with the Americans was signed in Feb. 1778. The two battles of Saratoga in which an entire British army surrendered to the Americans were fought in the Fall of 1777. French troops did not participate in any battles until 1779. They were at Yorktown in 1781 in large numbers and, as I said, the French navy played a pivotal role in the victory. The role of the French in the American revolution was large and it cost the French treasury a fortune which, it has been said, was one factor leading to the French Revolution. That whole era is very interesting historically and politically.

Kevin ONeill, if that was a response to #125, note he was saying a deterrence effect from prison, not death penalty. Are you saying this does not exist either?

MikeN, the deterrence effect from prison is very limited.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/247350.pdf

"with the high recidivism rate"

What high recidivism rate? The UK has fairly low rates. What may, if it is indeed higher, a question being begged like billy-o here, in the USA, it could be because honest work is just not available for an ex-convict in the revenge-porn-land of america.

"MikeN, the deterrence effect from prison is very limited."

People who are going to commit a crime either don't care or don't think they'll be caught.

"fought in the Fall of 1777."

I thought it the other way round. Strange. Fair enough, I only did some American history in class about, oh, 33 years ago. So I could have gotten them the wrong order.

Still, the major point was that if you want to see someone as a good guy (e.g. yourself) you will label the same action as heroic an action someone you don't now or don't like as villainous.

"We are trying to teach them a lesson "

If you had to imprison them, the lesson didn't work. Look at your own problem learning.

RickA is once again invoking the childish foot-stamping argument. "This is what it is because I say so!"

But this is exactly what US phony "libertarians" do, in all the discussions I've had with them.

What prison does effectively is incapacitate the criminal with respect to people outside the prison. In some cases it is an opportunity for rehabilitation, and in others it makes the person more "anti-social". For many, it has no effect at all in terms of re-offense.

US "criminal justice system" is as incoherent, illogical, and ineffective as the US health care system, relative to other nations.

Last year, Georgia executed a 72 year old man for a crime committed 36 years ago, after being incarcerated since that time. This makes sense?

No - waiting 36 years to execute someone doesn't make sense.

He should have been executed about 34 years ago.

It should take no more than 2 years to get all the appeals decided and then the sentence should be carried out (if not overturned on appeal).

That would require a change to the law, though, so that if a death sentence were not carried out within 2 (say) years, it would be commuted to some other sentence.

HOWEVER, that would lead to a lot more cases where it's just pushed through, because the revenge porn attitude of the USA would crucify a politician or state attorney who let a "violent criminal" off.

So it would merely force yet more uncertain executions.

ALL you can say for the death penalty is that they're not going to offend in the future. Then again, someone jailed for life isn't going to offend either, so it's kinda redundant to kill someone.

Thing is, everyone dies.

And for christians, they should let god sort it out. What matters it if someone "goes to hell" 40 years earlier? Compared to infinity, infinity plus 40 is bugger all different.

And murderers being executed doesn't bring back their victim.

So in very many ways the death penalty is worthless. And comes with downsides no other punishment entails. Mostly the innocent.

RickA goes from childish to deranged.

We should rush executions but take our time with less drastic actions.

Uh huh.

And I note the vindictiveness comes through again from Dick where he talks about how he should have been executed, not he should have been removed from death row.

Because when the state decides you're guilty, dick believes them. Unless he thinks the government is communist. Maybe. And if you were on death row, you should be killed. Guilty unless proven innocent.

"Jesus, deniers in one sphere are apparently deniers in many spheres."

Remember, rickA claims to have engineering in his background -- despite his repeated demonstrations of being unable to master simple math.

If that claim is true his sole exposure to any statistics would have been pure cookbook work (You have problem X? Use method A) with no instruction on how to think about results. That's one of the sources of his dismissal of the results of so many studies (the other primary source is the fact that scientific studies show everything he believes is wrong, so he simply denies the studies).

Wow,

It's doublespeak all the way down (not just for R).

-Favor oligarchic monopolies? Claim to be for "free" markets.
-Favor authoritarian government? Claim to be "libertarian" and "government can't be trusted".
-Are you a cowardly weenie who has never been in the military, never fired a gun, and never even been in a fight? Second Amendment!
And so on...

The people who manipulate these people have studied history and psychology and know that this works. Authoritarian Personalities are childish personalities, and they don't have a problem with self-contradiction, and they are not embarrassed when it is pointed out.

Marco, looks like a glaring contradiction in that paper right there in back to back bullet points.

2. Sending an individual convicted of a crime to prison
isn’t a very effective way to deter crime.
3. Police deter crime by increasing the perception that
criminals will be caught and punished.

Mainly what they are saying is point 4, not about the deterrence effect of prison vs no prison, but prison vs more prison.

zebra

-Favor oligarchic monopolies?

No. Point out that peddling localistic fairytales is downright dangerous; yes. If you didn't understand what I said elsewhere, then go back and read it again.

121 MikeN

Rooting for the death penalty isn’t rooting for the right of the state, it is rooting for the state to do it. The right is already established.

Don't indulge in evasive, nit-picking, please. You are ENDORSING the death penalty - the state's legal right to do it and the thing itself. Pretending that this is more than one thing as a rhetorical dodge makes you look even worse than you already do.

Please, answer the question you have been evading clumsily ever since I asked it:

Endorsing the death penalty means that there will be occasional miscarriages of justice and the state will occasionally murder innocent people.

All this will continue to fail to deter criminal behaviour currently punishable by execution.

So what is the net result of endorsing the death penalty?

"3. Police deter crime by increasing the perception that
criminals will be caught and punished. "

Uh, criminals wait until there's nobody around. Policemen are, despite your theories, still people. Simplistic causation is another denier foible. E.g. "If it wasn't AGW before, it can't be AGW now!".

"The right is already established."

And the right can be removed. Just like the right to own slaves were.

132: "the fact that scientific studies show everything he believes is wrong, so he simply denies the studies).
#140 zebra
April 23, 2017

Wow,
#132: "Still, the major point was that if you want to see someone as a good guy (e.g. yourself) you will label the same action as heroic an action someone you don’t now or don’t like as villainous."

I mostly agree with that statement. It's a general human tendency similar to the one that calls for peer review and reproducibility of experimental results in science. My point was purely historical. As many people have noted re wars, there is heroism and cowardice on both sides. Generally this is even recognized by many combatants, if not immediately, then later.

"So what is the net result of endorsing the death penalty?"

The honest answer is that it makes assholes too lazy to think critically feel good.

#132: "Still, the major point was that if you want to see someone as a good guy (e.g. yourself) you will label the same action as heroic an action someone you don’t now or don’t like as villainous."

Wow #145:

Finally, you got something right.

Yes - to remove the right to execute you have to amend the constitution - just like we did to get rid of the right to own slaves (13th amendment).

Otherwise, the States and Federal Government will always have the right to execute - even if they choose not to exercise it (by passing a law - which can be changed by passing another).

Sorry for the double posting above. I was trying to edit my original comment and it kind of got away from me.

dean

“So what is the net result of endorsing the death penalty?”

The honest answer is that it makes assholes too lazy to think critically feel good.

If only that were it. But of course the honest answer I'm seeking from dear MiikeN is that endorsing the death penalty guarantees that innocent people will be murdered by the state from time to time.

And criminal behaviour will not change.

"Yes – to remove the right to execute you have to amend the constitution"

Where the fuck do you read that????

No, you don't have to amend the constitution. At all.

"Otherwise, the States and Federal Government will always have the right to execute"

Nope. Just change the law that allows the death penalty. Supreme court can do it, the president can do it, the senate can do it, all of them or any of them can do it unilaterally. The others get a chance to veto it, but if they don't, then it passes. Just like any procedural change.

You claimed to be a patent lawyer. In three cases now you've shown that you are neither competent to opine on any legal matter that has turned up, and unable or incapable of listening to the words of those who ARE competent, preferring to keep to your asinine claims and assertions without any evidence in support.

There is no need to change the constitution to remove the death penalty.

And nowhere have I said otherwise. Your insanity (or crack smoking habit) is causing you delusions, dumbass.

BBD #151:

The state never actually murders a person when they execute them.

Like a soldier never murders an opposing soldier when one kills another.

These are justified killings, which by definition are not murder.

The state only executes prisoners who have been found guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt. The state actually does not execute innocent people.

What you are referring to is that it is possible that at some later date, somebody will find a person executed was actually innocent. I am not aware of this happening - but it is certainly possible.

However, when the person was executed, it was only after due process, and it was done to a person found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That cannot be murder.

Wow #153:

Your lack of understanding of the USA political system is staggering.

How did the USA get rid of the right to own slaves? yep - they amended the constitution. I was agreeing with you, since you brought up the slave issue..

The Supreme Court cannot do it - because a later Supreme Court can undo it (this has already happened once). The President cannot do it - the President cannot legislate. The Senate cannot do it (if you are referring to a law it has to pass the house and senate and the President has to sign it). Even then the Supreme Court could strike the law down as unconstitutional.

Nope - the only way to get rid of the death penalty for good is to amend the constitution.

The dismissive attitude at 154 perfectly summarizes the reason rickA is known as a despicable person: "so what if the person executed didn't really do the crime - they were there and someone needed to be killed."

"Marco, looks like a glaring contradiction in that paper right there in back to back bullet points."

It isn't. The deterrent is being caught, not the chance of having to go to prison. People don't don't do something because they think about the number of months they may have to spend in prison, they think about the chances of getting caught (and minimizing that). That's also why "more prison" isn't a deterrent either.

"Nope – the only way to get rid of the death penalty for good is to amend the constitution."

Nope. You can make the death penalty illegal.

"they were there and someone needed to be killed.”

And one day he'll be in the wrong place at the wrong time and he'll be killed.

There is no doubt that he'd give up appealing the conviction to death row, though.

"Your lack of understanding of the USA political system is staggering."

Your lack of comprehension of anything to do with the law is staggering, dick.

You are, yet again, 100% absolutely completely utterly wrong.

Your abhorrence for states rights, too, when it comes to your pet TV viewing (kill 'em and grill 'em at the local death row inmate camp! Big brother for the sick and twisted) is also fatuous, but since we know how deplorable and inhuman you are, dick, we do not find this staggering at all.

"What you are referring to is that it is possible that at some later date, somebody will find a person executed was actually innocent. I am not aware of this happening – but it is certainly possible."

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executed-possibly-innocent
Make sure to scroll down and read all cases.

RickA

The state never actually murders a person when they execute them.

Like a soldier never murders an opposing soldier when one kills another.

These are justified killings, which by definition are not murder.

The state only executes prisoners who have been found guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt. The state actually does not execute innocent people.

If the person was innocent, then it was judicial murder.

Plenty of reasonable doubt about convictions that led to execution.

Just because you are / pretend to be unaware of the facts to bolster your repugnant stance doesn't mean that the facts don't exist. But evidence denial is your standard MO, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to see you doing it again.

BAU.

Marco, we crossed, sorry.

What is especially troubling about this discussion is that RickA is or at least claims to be a lawyer. Now, I have discussed capital punishment with lawyers before and they *all* had deep reservations about the ability of the courts to determine guilt reliably and consistently. These arose from their professional experience of the judicial system.

So why does RickA not share these misgivings about how safe a conviction can be? Is his experience of the workings of the law fundamentally different from that of other lawyers? Or does he not really care about the odd judicial murder because, what was the phrase, oh yes, the ends justify the means?

But what are these ends? The evidence suggests that capital punishment is not an efficacious deterrent. So why do it at all? Zebra and others have discussed the inappropriate nature of judicially-applied vengeance upthread, so what possible purpose does capital punishment actually serve?

The only sure thing about it is that periodically, it means that the state will murder innocent citizens.

And it SHOULD be, since dick has tiresomely fallen back on "Well, everyone's entitled to their opinion", that dick also would posit here that there was only the opinion he was guilty, which several had the opinion otherwise.

Additionally, since he's already called into question the ability of a judge to reason correctly on another case (mann v steyn et al), he SHOULD be disquieted by a judge also determining that the death penalty is valid.

But dick said he was a patent attorney, so that's possibly like the vetenarian of the doctor world, but, as with his claims of attending prestigious university and an engineer, I doubt his claims are anything near reality there too.

And they don't even need to make the death penalty illegal. Say they drop the charge of treason from the list of crimes in the USA.

Nothing in the constitution to require the death penalty.

"beyond a reasonable doubt."

So not 100% absolutely certain. Just, what, 95% certain? Pretty poor since you've used a certainty of less than 10% as your go-to claim before and posited is just as valid a claim. So from YOUR point of view, if you're 10% sure, tops, that someone is guilty, you're going to declare them guilty, job done, get the beers in.

The death penalty should be used sparingly and — given that cruel and unusual punishment is unconstitutional — the method should be nitrogen asphyxiation.

The death penalty should be used for heinous crimes where neither meaningful justice nor meaningful punishment is even possible.

The death penalty should be used only when guilt is certain — and, yes, there are cases.

Charles Ng or the Carr brothers, for instance.

The death penalty should be used only when the issue is not punishment or justice or vengeance or deterence but, rather, waste management — flushing the toilet.

We don't flush the toilet to punish or exact justice on feces. It's a matter of publical health. It's regrettable and lamentable and sad, but the reality is — whatever the causes — among our fellow H.sapiens, there are pieces of walking, talking shit that should simply be flushed.

Charles Ng and the Carr brothers, for instance.

*FLUSH*

BBD, I don't see how those two things are linked. However, I have already said that the death penalty means that some innocent people will be killed, the answer you said you were looking for. Why you choose to link that with deterrence I don't understand. The other result is that some people who were guilty were also killed for their crimes. I think that portion is a good thing.

BBD, I don’t see how those two things are linked. [...] Why you choose to link that with deterrence I don’t understand.

Those two things were (quoting you):

BBD, I don’t understand your question which seems to have two unrelated points. Some innocent people will receive the death penalty, not sure what the current number is. Continue to fail to deter criminal behavior. How are these related?

Are you asking effect of rooting for the death penalty or effect of having the death penalty?
I don’t think rooting for the death penalty is a good thing, though I engage in it.

You don't see the problem with rooting for a system which occasionally murders innocent citizens for no discernible social benefit?

Why not?

"The death penalty should be used only when guilt is certain — and, yes, there are cases."

Being so few there's no value in keeping them for the one-in-a-million chance it's valid. If there's no meaningful punishment or whatever, then the death penalty isn't meaningful either.

And there are some who merely aren't capable of comprehending what they're being asked to do. They admit to guilt because they don't know what is happening, and they could either be mistakenly fingered or deliberately falsely accused.

The problem with the death penalty is that there's nothing worth doing it for.

What, after all, do you lose if there's no death penalty any more?

"I have already said that the death penalty means that some innocent people will be killed"

Which therefore means what?

You appear merely to have admitted that this fact is true, but ignored it as being in any way relevant when you claimed that the state doesn't murder.

It does murder if the guilty is actually innocent.

However, it's STILL murder by the meaning of the word, even if they are guilty. It's just been justified and termed an acceptable murder, because it's the state doing it under the law of the land.

Note: Saddam obeyed the law of the land. What did we do to him?

Oh, that's right, killed him.

BBD, as I said earlier, you are the one equating 'does not deter' with 'no social benefit.' The punishment of those who are guilty I think is a social benefit separate from deterrence.

"Better ten men go free than an innocent be jailed."

The author could have chosen twenty, but did not do so, so his range is somewhere from 6 to 19, 5% to 14% error rate. This was for jail, so perhaps he wanted something higher for a death penalty. Would he have said 'Better 100 men go free than an innocent be hanged.'?

"The punishment of those who are guilty I think is a social benefit separate from deterrence."

Ah, so the social benefit is that there's no social benefit. You hven't given one, so that is the only conclusion we can make here.

"The author could have chosen twenty, but did not do so,"

He at least gave a figure.

But it is also a quite famous quote, so you're a moronic unlettered dumbass, "mike".

"so his range is somewhere from 6 to 19, 5% to 14% error rate"

Wrong.

It's less than 10%. All the way down to 0. Nothing was said about it being OK to kill one innocent if otherwise 11 guilty would go free.

You can't do maths.

And doubly wrong because this is about incarceration, not the death penalty, moron. You can't read either.

Wow,

MikeN is providing a nice example of...

Begging. The. Question. Fallacy.

"It's a social benefit because it's a social benefit."

sigh

Maybe that's why he thought I was using the begging the question fallacy claim earlier when I was not calling the claim fallacious, therefore not invoking the name of a fallacy. He knows so much about it because he's it's prime exponent.

MikeN

BBD, as I said earlier, you are the one equating ‘does not deter’ with ‘no social benefit.’ The punishment of those who are guilty I think is a social benefit separate from deterrence.

How?

I'm surprised that, so far, no one has brought up the fact that the death penalty is mostly used in dictatorships of one sort or another -- China, Iran, North Korea, and Yemen come to mind.

As far as imprisonment is concerned, there are countries which have much less recidivism than the U. S. but, as in education, health care, etc., we never seem willing and/or able to adopt any method or process used in other countries. It's American exceptionalism, ya' know. We're so different that we can't do anything like any other country does. So we stay different -- and get poorer results from our differences.

Google "Norwegian penal system" sometime for a different take on imprisonment, and be sure to read some articles describing why something like that wouldn't work here. Mull it over and see what you think.

Tyvor #183:

India and Japan also have the death penalty (I believe). But the list of countries with the death penalty does lean heavily towards dictatorships - that is true.

If the USA wants to get rid of the death penalty it can be done.

As I said above - we can tacitly eliminate it by merely changing the laws of all 50 states and the Federal government to eliminate it as a sentence. However, all of those laws can be changed back in the future to allow a death sentence. To take away the option of a death penalty the constitution has to be amended. Nothing else will work in the USA.

In the USA prisons, like healthcare, is a private money-making industry that there is abhorrence for government involvement (in the abstract, they love the actual government programs, but it's strangely not understood like that..), therefore the businesses don't WANT better results from reduced recidivism: each inmate is a revenue stream, and they don't want to cut off their customers!

This makes it difficult for the USA to fix either of those things. However much individuals realise it, the country wide feeling (which has the same problem as mob mentality, Brits are different from the popular position, really quite thuggish, overall) will not allow the system to change.

Making it worse, the country can somewhat express. Changing it to try to make it better is Not Allowed (tm) by the USian zeitgeist.

Dick:"India and Japan also have the death penalty (I believe)"

In response to Tryvor: "mostly used in dictatorships"

Kinda lacking in the reading there, dick.

"As I said above – we can tacitly eliminate it by merely changing the laws of all 50 states "

Where?

Because you've insisted all along every time that it has to be done by changing the constitution. So where did you change your mind and include other ways of doing it?

" To take away the option of a death penalty the constitution has to be amended."

Yeah, remember prohibition?

Dumbass.

Wow #188,

And the US "lawyer" is schooled by a freakin' Brit.

I weep for how low my country has fallen. We need to recover our greatness! Oh wait...

Wow is correct. The constitution could possibly be amended again in the future to undo an earlier amendment.

We could bring slavery back (but I don't think that is going happen).

I would assume that once the death penalty was made unconstitutional, there wouldn't be a huge groundswell to bring it back. People do like to drink!

But yes - anything can be undone.

So there is no way to get rid of the death penalty for good (in the USA).

Yes, I'm correct, that the constitution doesn't have to be changed to remove the death penalty. You were wrong that it had to be a change to the constitution.

"But yes – anything can be undone."

So your complaint that it wouldn't be undone by any other means was yet more unfounded bullshit, since you now, when you've been shown up, admit that everything has that problem.

"So there is no way to get rid of the death penalty for good (in the USA)."

No way to get rid of it anywhere permanently.

But who the fuck is demanding eternal and irreversible change, dumbfuck?

Just get rid of the death penalty. Job done.

wow #191:

Yes - but how do you propose exactly to "get rid of the death penalty"?

A Federal law would violate States rights - so that won't work.

A Federal law can only cease Federal executions.

So you need 31 different states to pass a law banning the death penalty.

Or - you can amend the constitution and take care of it until somebody gets the constitution amended to permit it again.

The Supreme Court could find the death penalty unconstitutional - but only until another Supreme Court undoes their ruling.

It is not as easy to get rid of the death penalty as you make it sound.

"States rights"

Of course, since states have powers, not rights....

"Yes – but how do you propose exactly to “get rid of the death penalty”?"

FFS, will you listen to this guy? You certainly won't listen to me, no matter how many times I say something:

“As I said above – we can tacitly eliminate it by merely changing the laws of all 50 states ”

see #184.

Fucking moron.

(and I note you never said where you'd said it "above")

"A Federal law can only cease Federal executions."

Wrong.

A federal law can make it a federal offence to commit murder even for the state.

A federal law can make it illegal to hold on to someone in death row.

A federal law can make passing the death penalty a crime.

The federal law can be changed removing the death penalty, and therefore there would be no criminal offence that would carry the death penalty. Sure, some states may refuse to obey, but they'd have no chance because it would be appealed to the supreme court and the verdict struck down. And what state only offence, as opposed to a federal crime (copyright infringement being one example of a federal crime that is not a state crime, and I'm pretty sure that murder is a federal offence, not a state law offence) carries currently the death penalty?

So if the federal law is changed, not banning the death penalty, just removing it by changing the law, what death penalty remains????

"The Supreme Court could find the death penalty unconstitutional"

They don't have to, though.

Wow #195:

No. This is totally wrong. I am afraid you need to go back to school to study up on the USA system. A Federal law making the death penalty illegal would be unconstitutional and an infringement of the states police power. A Federal law can only make the death penalty unavailable for Federal crimes (interstate or crimes against Federal officials).

Wow #196:

That is why I said "could".

RickA, Supreme Court struck down all existing death penalty regimes in 1973, Furman v Georgia, brought back 3 years later.

BBD, I consider it a benefit to society to have a killer or rapist be put to death.

MikeN #199:

Yes - I am aware of this. See my #155.

My point was that unless the constitution is amended, any ruling by the Supreme Court that the death penalty is unconstitutional could later be reversed, as already happened once before.

"That is why I said “could”."

But since it is not currently the case, it can only be "could". Moreover, your clam it HAD to be a constitutional amendment precluded "could" as possible. And lastly, if it could, then it can. So it can be removed.

You say words but you don't know what they mean.

"My point was that unless the constitution is amended,"

Which can be yet again changed. Therefor your point is meaningless.

Rather like your arguments elsewhere.

"any ruling by the Supreme Court that the death penalty is unconstitutional"

It doesn't have to, moron. Just say it's off the books. Job done. Only you demand it must be made unconstitutional before being removed.

Which is, frankly, a load of scrawny old bollocks.

"No. This is totally wrong"

No, you're talking shit again, you need to stop pretending to be in any way knoweldgable on any subject (we've seen so far) and start accepting you're a credulous moron who merely leaps to conclusions based on whim and no knowledge then remains there because there's no knowledge you accept unless it concurs with your preconceived assertion.

This will not be fixed by education since you're ineducable by desire and ability.

"BBD, I consider it a benefit to society to have a killer or rapist be put to death."

a) Why?

b) Is it a benefit to kill an innocent person? After all the guilty is still free and therefore able to do it again. They know they got away with it, so deterrence is negated entirely. Others know that it was wrong and also no longer respect the law at all.

"mike", would you accept the false execution of yourself knowing that it would be whatever benefit you "see" to the death penalty killing murderers, such as the one you've been proven in a court of law to be (wrong though they were), to society?

There is no constitutional basis against the death penalty per se. the Furman decision halted it for procedural reasons - not because the court ruled the death penalty per se unconstitutional. Once those procedural problems were resolved capital punishment was resumed. I.e., to remove it nationally would require a constitutional amendment.

The bigger problem is that cultural mores change. We know that juries make mistakes. That eyewitness testimony is flawed. That innocent people end up in prison. Innocent people end up on death row. That capital punishment has no deterrent effect. Racism, socio-econmics, and gender all show bias in jury decisions.

Given these procedural and ethical problems being in favor of the death penalty while at the same time not providing for unbiased trials to minimize wrongful convictions is hypocritical at best.

And on that note how many people in favor of the death penalty are working to also provide a fairer adjudication process? Usually they're on the *opposite* side and don't want to spend money making sure we avoid wrongful convictions.

Kevin #206:

There is no such thing as an unbiased trial.

Or an unbiased judge, prosecutor, public defender, witness or juror.

The entire system is made up of people, each and every one of which is imperfect and has unconscious biases and probably conscious biases.

The system provides a balance between the rights of the accused and justice for the victim(s). There are people on both sides trying to make the system better, and the system is better than it was 50 years ago and even better than it was 100 years ago. I am sure it will improve in the future.

It is not a perfect system and there was never a promise of a perfect system. We spend a huge amount of money (via taxes) to avoid wrongful convictions. We provide police and various checks on the police, most cases settle or plea out before trial, and we provide counsel to those who cannot afford it and we pay for judges and jurors and laboratories to test evidence and so forth. Then we provide for multiple rounds of appeals (for death penalty cases). We have eliminated the death penalty for people below a certain age, for people below a certain intelligence, and for the insane.

I don't want to execute an innocent person - but I sure don't want to eliminate the death penalty for heinous crimes. There is a balance and our system does a pretty good job. Yes - I am sure some innocent people have been executed - but I am equally sure that some guilty people have escaped justice and killed again. Both are travesties of justice, and we should strive to lessen both.

"There is no constitutional basis against the death penalty per se"

There's no constitutional basis against making the death penalty illegal in the USA.

Care to show me where it bans banning the death penalty?

"and justice for the victim(s)."

In murder, the victim is dead.

If you're a christian, then that's a GOOD thing, you should be HAPPY for that, and whoever did it, for whatever reason, will be justly (eternally, so not all that just) punished.

"Both are travesties of justice, and we should strive to lessen both."

How many innocent victims were killed by murderers in prisons? None?

So why must the murderer be killed?

That lessens the injustice against the innocent, and still retains the justice against the villains.

The death penalty adds NOTHING except snuff porn for the masses, and revenge fantasy fulfillment for the animals in the human race.

From Death Penalty Information Center:

A recent poll by researcher Craig Haney, a Professor of Psychology at the University of California - Santa Cruz, has found that a "strong majority" of Florida respondents prefer life without parole to the death penalty for people convicted of murder, even as many harbor continuing misconceptions about capital punishment that would predispose them to support the death penalty.

In Haney's survey of more than 500 jury-eligible respondents who were asked to choose between Florida's statutorily available sentencing options, 57% chose life without parole, while 43% chose the death penalty, as the appropriate punishment for a person convicted of murder.

The preference for life held true, Haney said, across racial groups, genders, educational levels, and religious affiliation. The Florida results are consistent with recent polls in other death penalty states, such as Kentucky and Oklahoma.

Dr. Haney found that Floridians held two common misconceptions about the death penalty that affected their views on the issue: 68.9% mistakenly believed that the death penalty was cheaper than life without parole, and 40.2% mistakenly believed that people sentenced to life without parole would be released from prison.

Haney said "support for the death penalty plummeted" to 29% if the life sentencing option was combined with a requirement that these prisoners be required to pay restitution to victims' families. In addition, when Floridians were given the option of diverting the $1 million per case currently spent on the death penalty to investigate unsolved rapes and murders, only one quarter still supported capital punishment.

Dr. Haney's research also found that a majority of Floridians oppose the death penalty for defendants with serious mental illness, do not believe the death penalty is a deterrent, and agree that most religious opinion opposes capital punishment.

Haney said asking people simply if they support the death penalty is inadequate because "[t]hat question offers a limited and often flawed snapshot of voter attitudes, capturing only abstract support or opposition, but failing to expose strong preferences and deeper pragmatic thinking."

Just sayin'

Science is about facts.

MikeN

BBD, I consider it a benefit to society to have a killer or rapist be put to death.

Why? How does killing them benefit society? You need to *explain* this.

Before doing so, read zebra's quote from the DPIC carefully.

zebra #211:

In many states, if the prospective juror is not willing to impose the death penalty, if the facts support it, they can be excluded from the jury. So I think it is very possible that the 57% might be stricken from the jury (if they were selected for jury duty in the first place) - if they were chosen to sit on a death penalty case in the first instance.

Polls are interesting - but in this case I am not sure they matter much.

Any judge asking such a question of a juror can be told to take a glass of get lost. They have no right to do so, and there's no evidence for the death penalty, it's only evidence that there is enough evidence for a guilty verdict, and the case has to be for the death penalty, upon which the burden of proof is massively raised, and there has to be unanimity. There's no "evidence supporting the death penalty" in the court case, only the charge that is punishable by the death penalty.

And the juror can vote no and override the others, since it has to be unanimous.

And the judge isn't asking whether he should award a sentence of death, the judge only asks if the defendant is guilty or not of a charge that carries such a penalty. The judge DOES NOT have to give the death penalty. They can decide not to award that on a guilty verdict. The jurors are not asked if the punishment is death, and the judge therefore doesn't even have to ignore them, their opinion on the sentence is not asked, not given and not allowed.

Hello, a RickA, a Friend of mine was reading and suggested that I write...I am a Texas Death row inmate, so maybe you'd like hearing from me? My name is Charles D. Raby, and you can learn more about me, including how to reach me, at: http://www.savecharlesdraby.com/ A state never actually murders anyone, just like a soldier never murders an opposing solider. That may be true in some cases, but here in Texas when a death certificate is issued for a man or woman that has been executed, the death warrant says “Cause of death Homicide”. Yes, it is a legally justified killing. But it is still a killing.
As for your thought that the state does not actually execute innocent people, I beg to differ on that. Take a look at Todd Willingham, or Carlos Deluna. There have been over 100 men and women released from Death Row throughout the states. Smarter people than I have said, that if you do the math, that’s one in every hundred. All of them have been released from Death Row in recent times, due to new DNA testing.
But think of all the ones before that, or the ones executed for faulty witness identification, which seems to be the leading factor. They could never prove their innocence as they do now, because DNA didn’t exist as it does now. But back then? Texas has executed close to 500 people since the reinstatement of capital punishment. Compare that to the number of all those who have been released from Death Row in recent times…do you really think somewhere down the line they didn’t kill an innocent person?
Todd Willingham was convicted on outdated fire expert’s testimony. The expert was one of those ‘good ol' boys' who just flat out refused to change his way of thinking and doing things, even when confronted with the science of understanding fires. He refused to read anything, he is the expert, and because of his outdated 'expert' opinion, Todd Willingham was judicially murdered. ‘Murdered’ being the key word.
I would like you to take a look as my website RiokA. I would really like your thoughts on what you see there. If you say you’re an attorney, then yea, I’d like your thoughts.

Bruce ]ensen…man you hit the nail right on head, and I bet you aren’t even an attorney! Innocent people have died. You always hear about people who support the DP, saying if you have to kill one innocent to get a hundred guilty, it is worth it. A small price to pay. But I never hear anyone ask them, would they want to be that falsely accused, innocent person? Would they feel the same, if it was their loved one? A son, brother, uncle, friend, whoever they truly know is innocent? Would they still say it’s ok to kill one innocent to get the 100 guilty? I don’t think they would. People are all for killing someone they don’t know, but their outlook changes in the blink of an eye once their loved one is fixing to be taken down.
They will never televise an execution, but they should teach about it, and other laws, in the schools. You said you sat on a jury in a first degree murder case. Man I imagine that was something. I would like you and everyone else to take a look at my case and see what you think.

Zebra, you said it! Many miss the obvious facts; innocent people are sentenced to death and executed. And you spoke of the almighty dollar as a factor as well. I cannot speak on other states, but here in Texas, there have been a lot of guys who have been winning a ‘do over’ for a new punishment hearing/trial. And a lot of them have been given Life as a deal, even before it gets that far.
But just think on this…the state of Texas has spent MILLIONS of dollars of tax payer money senteneing that individual to death. First they tell the jury that nothing short of executing these people, will do. Then they waste all those millions trying to kill them in their appeals, but once they win a new punishment trial, all of the sudden they are worthy of a Life sentence. What changed? Nothing! They are still the same person that killed someone, but now they’re worthy of Life. I am not saying this to throw salt on them, I am glad they got Life. But what changed? Other than the millions and millions of dollars wasted on trial and appeals? Think of all the money they would have saved, money that could have gone to teachers; some of the lowest paid people in the state. Or students, roads, etc, not to mention the pain and suffering of both families. Why not just give them Life from the start?

Dudley Sharp… I have to agree with you, I think Nitrogen gas will replace injection. Which is why I do my deep breathing exercises every day, I plan to lie there a long ass time!
But man, Texas law clearly states they do ‘death by intravenous drugs with the significant amount to cause the death of the prisoner’. So there will be long legal battles, because juries in Texas are under the impression, as you stated, that it’s quite painless and peaceful. Would a jury had sentenced us to death knowing we would be shot? Gassed? Electrocuted? It would only take ONE juror to have a problem with the thought of them shooting us, and the legal battles will start the moment they switch methods.
In other states that have already switched, they had 2-3 different methods on the books, which is why they aren’t challenged. But here in Texas, there is just one method; injection. So that will be more millions in dollars for legal battles, that could be better spent elsewhere. I would like you and everyone else to take a look at my case and see what you think. Find me at http://www.savecharlesdraby.com/

All the people released from death row were not innocent. Many were because of legal technicalities, like illegal searches.

All the people released from death row were possibly innocent, they were certainly not guilty enough for death, "mike".

If the jury is infallible and therefore "guilty" means they really ARE guilty, then their release is also infallible because that's why they released them.

Legal technicalities get people convicted. You cannot avoid it unless you're claiming to be omniscient which requires omnipresence.

And that's all ignoring the fact that the government can lie. See any banana republic, including the USA.

At the end of his rope: The execution of William Williams

gregladen — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:00:14 +0000

At the end of his rope: The execution of William Williams

Minnesota has three things you may have heard about: Cold weather, “Minnesota Nice,” and a vigorous training program in Passive Aggressive Behavior (PAB). Unless you know about things, you probably didn’t know any of that.¹

The part about the cold weather is neither here nor there with Global Warming causing it to go away. The latter two are interrelated and complex, and can only be understood through a great deal of analysis. And, since we don’t have time to put everyone in the state into Freudian therapy, I’ll just give an example.

This week we celebrate Darwin’s Birthday, and Abe Lincoln’s birthday, both on the 12th as well as Valentine’s Day on the 14th.

Lincoln has a dubious but important Minnesota Connection that links to the practice of execution by Hanging, which I will also not go into here (that is a very sad and disturbing story) but it reminds us that this week, on the 13th, is the anniversary of execution by the rope of William Williams for the murder of his lover, Johnny Keller, and Johnny’s mother. It is one of the most interesting stories you’ll read this week; the details are provided in this item at MinnPost.

Here’s the short version of the tie-in between all these disparate historical factoids and statewide personality traits. A law had been passed in Minnesota to make legal executions happen in secret and in the dead of night with no press (though a reporter had snuck into William’s execution) because Minnesotans were very into watching and getting giddy about them, and that was also a time when illegal executions (lynchings) were very common in the state. I suppose the crowds were getting out of hand. Yet, still, Minnesotans were against executions and wanted the death penalty to stop, to the extent that after the William Williams fiasco (the rope was too short so instead of getting his neck snapped he had to be strangled to death, and that took time) two governors in a row were able to commit to commuting all death sentences to life in prison without hanging themselves politically. And eventually, the legislature passed a law that the governor signed to make the practice illegal. Because Minnesotans, who were busy lynching each other on a regular basis, felt it was wrong.

Minnesota Nice is a thing, people.

¹In case you needed an example of the latter, which you probably did,¹ that was one.

Note: there is even a peer reiviewed article on this.

gregladen Tue, 02/12/2013 - 08:00

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Note: If you go to the MinnPost link you may get a malware warning. The editors of MinnPost assure me that there is no malware, that the malware flaggy thing has been cleared, and that the certitude of the site merely needs to propagate down the intertubes for a while.

Looks interesting (as I skim while students complete an exam). But I can't reconcile, with skimming, your comment "the rope was too short..." with this from the paper's abstract:

How Too Much Rope......

and
Because the county sheriff miscalculated the length of the rope, the hanging was botched, with Williams hitting the floor when the trap door was opened.

I think you meant to type "the rope was too long..." ?

Let's beat the Chinese at their own game: Civilization.

gregladen — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 08:59:22 +0000

Let's beat the Chinese at their own game: Civilization.

How can a nation call itself civilized if it executes its own citizens?

The story goes like this. A famous scientist whom you've likely never heard of was in China for several years excavating a famous archaeological site that you certainly have heard of. During that time, he felt the need, as we all do now and then, to hold in his hand a defleshed human skull. It would be nice to have available the skull of a modern human, in order to compare it with the skulls of not-so-modern humans he was busily digging up.

So he inquired.

He asked local officials and notables who might be able to help him with such a thing. Perhaps a physician or a teacher would know where there was a skull he could borrow. Eventually, word got beyond the small village he was working in, and in the fullness of time, someone who was able to help heard of his request. It was the regional sheriff.

So one day, the scientist was called away from the excavation site because the sheriff had just arrived. He took the path down to the where the village road crossed by his house, and there was the sheriff standing across the yard by an ox-drawn cart.

"Are you the bone doctor?"

"Yes."

"The one digging the old caves?"

"Yes."

"You wanted bones? I've got them for you." He motioned towards the cart with his chin.

And the scientist walked over to the Sheriff and the cart, thinking ... there must be a lot of bones in there to require such a cart. As he got close enough, there was a bit of a smell, then as he got even closer, there was a bit of a sight. Inside the simple wooden cart were the bodies of a half dozen or so dead men.

"Prisoners. Executed. You may have them."

The scientist was horrified, mortified, and totally WTFified. He was hoping that some doctor or teacher would have a teaching skull that he might borrow. He had no idea that he would be presented by local authorities with a veritable pile of actual recently dead people. Having anything to do with this would be against all ethics, and the fact that he considered the ethics is a positive statement about anthropology, because this was decades before IRB review of research.

From experience, he knew that there was no easy way to refuse this assistance without making people feel very badly, and damaging his network of contacts that had, inadvertently but quite effectively yet ghoulishly, served him in this case. But he simply could not accept these bodies. It was out of the question.

Then, gazing into the cart of carnage, he noticed something that would easily get him out of this, with no one losing face.

"There are no heads," he said, staring down at the decapitated corpses, hoping desperately that there was not a bag of heads somewhere around that he had not yet spied.

"No heads. The prisoners were executed. The heads cut off."

"Well, then, I don't have much use for them. I need the heads."

Then, suddenly realizing the potential implications of what he had just said, he added, "And they have to be processed ... cleaned and prepared ... just right, or they are of use. Only an expert can do that."

He repeated that statement a few times using different terms, for "process" and "cleaned" and "professional" and so on, to avoid any confusion. In the end, he was confident that he had made it clear. Unless the bones consisted of skulls, and the skulls professionally prepared for use in an anatomy or medical school class or something similar, he had no use for them.

The sheriff shrugged, not really caring one way or anther because he was, after all, only a few kilometers off of his route to the graveyard where the bodies would be dumped, said his good bye's and left.

And the scientist, confident that he would not be served up any more dead prisoners, returned to his excavation.

A month or so passed, and there was no more talk of skulls and bones for comparative uses. The scientist resigned himself to the fact that he would have to wait until he returned to the capitol, where he would have access to a medical school, to make his one-on-one comparisons between a modern human and this newly discovered "ape-man." Which was all well and good. It was a crazy idea anyway.

Then, the sheriff arrived again, and the scientist was called from his work to greet him. On the way he asked his assistant, "Did he bring dead bodies again?"

"No, he did not," was the reply, which relieved him. So when he saw the sheriff he greeted him warmly, and offered tea.

"Thank you, but no. I have no time. Perhaps another day," said the sheriff, from his place standing on the front porch of the scientist's dwelling. "But I have something for you."

And the sheriff pointed with his chin over his shoulder across the yard, where the old carnage cart was parked, two oxen dozing at the yoke and a half dozen men sitting in the back, anxiously observing the doctor and the sheriff, and bound with thick ropes.

"Prisoners," the sheriff said.

"Prisoners?" the scientist said, comprehension utterly evading him.

"You process them the way you like. I'll come by tomorrow to pick up the oxen and the cart."

And with that the sheriff strode off to carry out other important business.

That was China, where most people seem to live, and it turns out, where most of the people who are executed these days are executed. There is an effort to change that. NPR has the story. The number executed in china is

... believed to be nearly as much as all other countries combined. The human-rights group Amnesty International says China executed more than 1,700 people in 2008.

Legal experts are watching the case of a man in southern China who was sentenced to death three times -- and then spared execution three times -- to see whether recent legal reforms will save his life.

In 1983, Beijing wanted to punish criminals faster, so it gave provincial courts the final say over executions. It took back that prerogative three years ago.

It should be noted, and it is rather annoying that the NPR article does not (nor does Amnesty International rhetoric, apparently), that the rate of execution in China is lower than other countries. Iran and Singapore execute more people per capita. China, unlike the United States, does not execute people under the age of 18 at the time of the offense.

Prisoners are injected with poison or shot. The event is not supposed to be public but it seemingly is at least on some occassions. Details, statistics, etc. are a state secret, although the family of the executed individual is notified after the execution is completed. If the execution is carried out by shooting the prisoner, this is done with a single rifle bullet to the head. The family is generally charged for the bullet. High officials and notables are executed with lethal injection, which is considered to be easier for the prisoner. (source)

Here is a moving and disturbing description of an execution in Zhengzhou in 1990.

A long as we are on the topic, I'd like to point out some scholarship on the issue of capital punishment.

A law review article by James Liebman (2007) asks the question: Does "...the claim of irreparably fallible death penalty decisionmaking applies to the Supreme Court itself"? Liebman argues that "

...the best evidence that human institutions cannot cope with the enormity of capital decisions is the Court's own stance on the penalty. For forty years, the Court has recognized the need to set complex constitutional standards to govern frontline death penalty decisionmaking and yet has refused to apply those standards to review the resulting decisions and patterns of decisions, instead shunting off that responsibility to the very actors the Court claims the constitutional need to regulate.

Liebman's article is quite interesting and differs from the usual discussions of the death penalty as a deterrence. This, looking at the fallibility of the system, does seem to be the new trend, and I suppose that is good. But I prefer another argument. If your child is sent home from daycare because he bites another kid, do you bite him? No, I didn't think so. Now, why is that?

Let's beat the Chinese in the race to civilization. Put an end to this practice in the United States now.

Liebman, James S. (2007). Slow dancing with death: The supreme court nd capital punishment, 1963-2006 Columbia Law Review, 107 (1), 1-130

gregladen Wed, 06/23/2010 - 04:59

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Greg, is your opposition to the death penalty absolute? Would you have executed Adolph Hitler (Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, the guy that sold the adulterated baby formula in China to make more money, take your pick)?
If so, what's your idea of just punishment in those cases?

I want them all tortured and killed. But my idea of "just punishment" is human and flawed, and not relevant to the question.

"If your child is sent home from daycare because he bites another kid, do you bite him?"

Greg, sometimes, that's what people do. My first kindergarten teacher once bit me on the hand as a deterrent for biting other kids. (It actually worked, because I was so stunned by the enormity that an adult would do that. Also, I was four, so the lady was a lot bigger than me and I felt a bit like a mouse in front of a cat.)

Events in Ohio and Texas show innocent people have been sentenced and executed. Power will be abused. Yet there are extreme cases where it's justified IMHO. Those cases shouldn't take 20yrs., like the recent Utah execution. There are plenty of examples of serial killers, domestic and international. Some people just don't deserve to live. As usual, moderates like me get flack from both sides.

Irene, you were abused.

My main objection to Capital Punishment is that it is irrevocable. When I lived in Dallas, Randall Dale Adams was freed following the release of the documentary "Thin Blue Line," which showed his innocene and led to a retrial. Joyce Brown had been convicted of murder but was then exonerated by real evidence (as opposed to eyewitness testimony.) There ain't no takebacks in state-sponsored killing.

"How can a nation call itself civilized if it executes its own citizens?"

This statement bothers me. It implies that it is more acceptable to execute citizens of other nations. A form of narrow nationalism that is definitely not civilized.

I am one-hundred percent against the death penalty. My reasons, unlike some others I've discussed it with, have nothing to do with any compunction about taking the life of another human being.

Persons such as John Wayne Gacy do not, in my opinion, deserve a long and peaceful life (after their crimes have been discovered and admitted to).

My primary reason for being against the death penalty is my lack of trust in our so-called criminal justice system. Innocent people sometimes go to prison. Innocent people sometimes are coerced into confessing to a crime they did not commit.

District attorneys are sometimes rather caught up in achieving a conviction by any means, no matter the actual guilt or innocence of the accused. Courts don't determine truth or facts. They determine who presents the better argument.

A signed confession of guilt is not always the ultimate truth either. Let's not forget that questioning by the police is not required to be pleasant. You can be kept awake and questioned for many, many hours. The police officers are allowed to lie to you in order to get you to say what they want you to say. How many of you think you could get past even their rather mild interrogation techniques without breaking down and confessing to being the man on the grassy knoll who actually shot JFK, as well as the true kidnapper of kidnapping of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr.?

Our system isn't foolproof. I won't trust my own or anyone else's life to a system that relies on extremely fallible human memory and decision-making to determine guilt or innocence.

Of course civilized countries execute their citizens. Why just look at Utah & Texas.

Thomas there is no possible reading of that statement that implies what you say it implies.

Greg, I think it's very relevant to the question, as shown in some of the later comments. People are claiming to be against the death penalty because it's not fairly applied, can hit innocents, doesn't deter etc. I completely agree on those points.
But I want the option to have crimes against humanities, where there's usually not a question of guilt, punished by death. Hitler was supposedly in declining health when he committed suicide, but give him another 10 years in jail if he would have been captured. That comes out to about 6 sec of jail time per holocaust victim, 2 sec if you add all the other victims of WW II.
Some crimes have only one appropriate punishment.

So, don't keep us in suspense... what did the scientist do with the prisoners?

Mu, I believe there are a number of reasons to have a death penalty and a number of reasons to not have a death penalty. Among the reasons to not have one, I would not include that it is not just. It can be just by a certain line of reasoning. But justice does not equate to being civilized ... though there is a rough correspondence.

I am completely 100% irrevocably opposed to all executions. The stated fundamental premises of execution are all fatally and irredeemably flawed.

Killing someone does not mitigate what ever âcrimeâ the prisoner has committed. It does not provide compensation to the victims, it does not lessen the severity of the crime, it does not deter future crimes, it does not âbalanceâ the evil of the crime.

The only purpose of executions is to de-humanize individuals, and to de-humanize them so much that they are no longer sufficiently human that they have a right to not be killed.

In some places, that dehumanization process is trivial, and the âleaderâ can do it at a whim. That is what Stalin did, what Hitler did, what Mao did, what Pol Pot did.

It is also what Governor of Texas Rick Perry did when he allowed the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham to go forward.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham

Rick Perry has covered up the investigation by replacing experts with political hacks.

The fundamental motivation behind executions is to instill fear in the population, to induce Stockholm Syndrome, and to increase the political power of political âleadersâ by dehumanizing some fraction of the population, the fraction that is least like the political âleadersâ. That dehumanization to the point of execution compels the rest of the population to try and be a good follower of the political âleaderâ, so that they won't be dehumanized to the point of execution either.

In the story linked to above, the prosecutor said (in the penalty phase of the trial) that âWillingham's tattoo of a skull and serpent fit the profile of a sociopath.â (see wikipedia on it). It is classic âotheringâ, he is different from me, I don't understand him, therefore he is evil and should be killed.

In this particular case, he was offered life in prison in return for a guilty plea which he refused because he said he was innocent. If the state is willing to give him life in prison, what is gained by killing him? The only thing that is gained is the political power of the âleadersâ who work the process to have him killed.

It is the process of dehumanizing individuals so much that they can be killed is what is so damaging to society and to civilization. It is not about saving the life of the prisoner, it is about saving the humanity of the civilization. A civilization cannot be humane if it dehumanized any individuals to the point where they can be killed.

To answer Greg's question, no, a country is not civilized if it executes individuals. It puts inordinate power, the power of life-and-death in political âleadersâ, and like all power, it corrupts. It corrupts absolutely. The âleadersâ act to protect their own power, as Rick Perry has done, as the fire investigators have done, as the prosecution has done, not to find out the truth, or what is factually correct, but what preserves the power of the âleadersâ, which is more important to the âleadersâ than is an innocent man's life.

@ Andrew: Oh, I know that.

While some level of justice is necessary, it is all too easy to put too much emphasis on justice as opposed to other concerns in a society. Especially because there is no absolute standard of justice - what is "just" changes with society and time. Most americans think that to satisfy their sense of justice particularly heinous criminals should be executed - but not tortured. In many other societies torturing and killing these (and other) criminals was thought to be necessary for justice to be maintained. In still other societies, life in prison is deemed to be sufficient.

And I think Thomas was just pointing out that a blanket statement like that very obviously leads either to pacifism or hypocrisy. Which may well be where you want it to lead to, or it may not be.

Coriolis, why does it lead to hypocrisy? Thomas's mistake is in thinking that Greg, by saying that a particular behavior is uncivilized, is endorsing any and all other behaviors as civilized. That's ridiculous on its face.

Coriolis, Liz was right about Thomas's statement regarding what I said. That was not a blanket statement about anything. It was an explicit statement with a focus and an internal logic, that has a crystal clear meaning. One may disagree or agree with it, but Thomas's "implication" is strange.

Hey, I'm out of crackers. In a few minutes, I'm on my way to the grocery store to get some.

Would you assume that I'm not also stopping at the drug store because I didn't mention it?

How the policies of a nation affect the way that nation or its agents treat other people is not only an important issue that is not being discussed in this thread (so far), but it is also something I've discussed at length on this blog and am very concerned a bout. Were I to assume that Thomas is a regular reader of this blog, I'd be rather offended that he thought I'd take such a laizzes faire attitude about that topic. In fact, he clearly isn't and simply made a misinterpretation.

My statement that I don't want to live in a nation with a death penalty does not mean that I want some other people somewhere else to do bad stuff to other people.

If your child is sent home from daycare because he bites another kid, do you bite him? No, I didn't think so. Now, why is that?

The reason you don't bite him is probably because the other kid already did it. It is automatic, instinctive human nature to respond in kind. It is also the basis of morality.

The reason we kill people who kill people is not because killing people is inherently wrong; it is because the basis of morality is reciprocity. You get what you give. If you smack people on the back of the head, you'll get smacked on the back of the head. If you kill people, you'll get killed.

The notion that "killing is bad" is a derived moral, not a primary one. As a technologically sophisticated society you can make a strong argument that that derived moral should be followed. But as a fundamental moral argument, the death penalty is sound.

The reason you don't bite your kid is because it was wrong when he bit someone else and it is wrong to bite him.

The reason you don't kill a person if you're the state is that ou are busy telling people to not kill each other because it is wrong. Interesting that you don't think one human killing another is not inherently wrong. Why is that?

There are are other reasons to not have the death penalty as well, of course.

What does the death penalty actually do, other than end life? In the UK, they haven't had the death penalty for over forty years. Is the UK lacking a strong deterrant to commit crime? Based on crime statistics as compared to the USA, it would seem that no, it isn't. Canada hasn't executed anyone since 1962 and abolished capital punishment in, I think, 1976. Does Canada have an astronomically high crime rate that has resulted from not having the government kill people? No.

Is it ever morally right to kill someone who isn't an imminent threat to others and who can safely be put in prison?

No.

And that's the discussion as far as I see it.

The reason you don't kill a person if you're the state is that ou are busy telling people to not kill each other because it is wrong.

I am all about you having a right to believe what you will, but I personally think that is a crock. There are very reasonable arguments as to why execution would be useful to the state - I mean besides the flawed notion that it is at all effective as a deterrent, which it is not. For one, it would save the state the costs associated with keeping a person in prison for life. For another, it might well be more humane than locking someone in a cage for the rest of their life - a period that could well be quite a long time if the offender is particularly young.

The reason that the state should not execute it's citizens (or any others) is because of the risk of executing someone who is innocent, first and foremost. Even if there is pretty fucking strong evidence, it means making a decision as to what exactly counts as evidence that is strong enough. Then there is this presumption that killing murderers helps bring closure to the families of the victims, something that seems to be not so much the case. Or more to the point, it brings some closure, but not nearly as healthy a closure as just knowing the bastard will never get out of prison.

Interesting that you don't think one human killing another is not inherently wrong. Why is that?

Because it bloody well isn't. I can think of a great many scenarios in which I would be willing to take a human life and not believe that it was a bad thing to do. Never having taken a human life (thankfully), I cannot speak for how it would make me feel after - though I am pretty certain that regardless of the reason, I would feel like shit about it. But that is not the same thing as thinking it was a bad thing.

Perfect example. The motherfuckers who decided to shoot out of a moving vehicle, right in front of me, while turning a corner - with no regard for who all besides their intended targets might get hurt. Indeed the only person hurt, was a women walking to pick up her daughter from childcare. If I had the means and the response, I would not consider it a bad thing at all, to shoot the fucking morons dead. I am hopeful that after I would feel bad about ending a human life, but to be perfectly honest, I am not as sure about that as I would like to be.

If you smack people on the back of the head, you'll get smacked on the back of the head. If you kill people, you'll get killed.

I'm picturing a never-ending line of executioners, each one removing the head of the one in front of him because he killed the one in front of him.

Let me ask you this Al. Is it moral to spend upwards of sixty thousand dollars a year to provide guarded room and board, healthcare and all other needs for each person who commits what could be considered a capital crime - for the rest of their lives, when we have a lack of healthcare, mental healthcare and many other needs, for citizens who do not commit those kind of crimes?

Is it moral to keep someone locked in a cage for the rest of their life? What if they are being sexually or physically abused? (for clarity, I would personally rather be dead - whether there were abuse or not)

Note that I am not arguing for the death penalty, as I am dead solid against it. I just don't think it is nearly as cut and dry as all that. It is quite simple to mark this out in black and white, but as with anything else, it isn't that simple.

DuWayne, it's more expensive to execute someone, with the completely inadequate safeguards we have in place, than it simply is to lock them away for life.

@11

"Hitler was supposedly in declining health when he committed suicide, but give him another 10 years in jail if he would have been captured. That comes out to about 6 sec of jail time per holocaust victim, 2 sec if you add all the other victims of WW II."

I have to admit that I am against death penalty because I simply do not get the point, and your posting demonstrates exactly the ... twisted bogus thinking I do not get. I just picked your post because it is so archetypical, so no pun intended.

If I exaggerate your argument, why is the death penalty enough? Shouldn't he be tortured before being killed, so he can literally feel every dead Jew like a nail being driven through his flesh, and has some more time to think about his errors? Shouldn't he be cut off his genitalia first like some of the more old-fashioned executions included AFAIR? If not, then what exactly is the point of executing him in first place (instead of sending him to jail)?

Anyone rising from the grave? Nope.

Anyone feeling better? Maybe.

Anything different 20 years later? Probably not.

Now let us turn your argument around. If Hitler had killed "just", say, 1 million Jews, that would make already something like half a minute per victim. Anyone feeling better? If not, let us go down in numbers a bit and say he went on a personal amok trip and butchered 10 Jews, then survived 50 years in jail. That is already an astonishing 5 years per victim. Does this make the equation any better, or should he still go to the gallows?

And is it possible that the whole "he only gets xxx [timeunit] per victim, that is not enough, let's kill him" argument is simply ... weak? Why not just punish him (and jail is enough for this) and get over it?

Stephanie -

I am not making an argument for it and am assuming that the status quo doesn't apply. I am also not all that certain that those safeguards you are talking about actually apply across the board - it sure seems pretty quick and easy to execute folks in Texas and Florida. But in any case, I am not arguing for the status quo and am actually against the death penalty. I was making a hypothetical argument in support of it.

I am pretty sure that China, for example, doesn't "waste" nearly the resources we do. I am more certain that Iran doesn't.

The Death Penalty Information Center has some data regarding the cost of incarceration for life versus the cost of capital punishment at their Costs of the Death Penalty page.

âA recent study published by a Duke University economist revealed North Carolina could save $11 million annually if it dropped the death penalty."—P. Cook, "Potential Savings from Abolition of the Death Penalty in North Carolina," American Law and Economics Review, advance access, December 11, 2009

I know, DuWayne, but when there is a cost to getting it right, that cost is part of the moral equation.

I see a justification in killing a citizen as removal of a threat from society. Killing that citizen that committed a capital crime removes them from the possibility of ever harming someone ever again. It doesn't seem, in of itself, like such an unjustifiable or uncivilized thing to do. There should be no vengeance in it. It is not about punishing the person that committed the crime, or rectifying what they have already done. It is just the dispassionate removal of a threat to others.

The problem for me, like many others, lies in the practice. It can result in killing innocent lives, which is completely unacceptable. It is also more costly than prisons in our criminal justice system, and our prisons do a fairly good job at removing such threats from society...

So far, I'm not seeing any arguments that the death penalty get you anything.

The fact that one can in fact execute the wrong person, can't get the EU to extradite murderers to the US, one steps off the moral high ground which is both an ethical/moral issue and a pragmatic political issue, and so on should be enough. And the cost. End it.

I think a lot of people are missing the point because you have not read the instructions. Go read the description of the execution in Cina. Then come back and tell me yo want to be art of that system.

And please, don't tell me that the way we mighty-ass white westerners do it is somehow superior to what is depicted in that description.

If your child is sent home from daycare because he bites another kid, do you bite him? No, I didn't think so. Now, why is that?

Yes, that's the best way. Bring yourself to the level of a misbehaving child.</sarcasm>

Where is the deterrent? If I get caught biting, then I get bit. That hurts... avoid pain. The answer is to not get caught. How about a little discussion about why it was wrong to bite in the first place?

Where does it end? When your spouse gets home from work later that day, does he/she then bite you on the thumb for doing such a thing to your child? Does one of his or her parents then do the same to them because of that?

So far, I'm not seeing any arguments that the death penalty get you anything.

It could be argued that one execution helped restore confidence in China's infant formula industry.

Err...Out of curiosity Greg, who was that last response at 31 intended for? Because aside from Mu and Yahzi, I am not seeing anyone arguing in support of execution - and I am not sure that Yahzi is arguing for it at all, while Mu seems to be arguing for it in specific circumstances.

I am definitely not seeing anyone making the argument that Westerners do execution better.

And I don't need to read the description, thank you. I am well aware of how executions have gone in various places - including the U.S. (Ethel Rosenburg comes to mind - though there are many others more recent). I am tired with reading about atrocities that I can do nothing about. It makes me sick to my stomach and sometimes has me puking blood. It has had an extremely detrimental effect on my health and I don't feel compelled to do so, for the sake of an argument. If I am unaware of the information someone wants me to check out, I just don't argue.

I do not see anything morally wrong with the state executing people, in an of itself. I am not going to see anything wrong with that. In spite of that, I am dead set against the death penalty and if I could make it stop today, I would. I am just not apposed to it, for one of the reasons you are. I am almost certain that the only difference between our reasons for being against the death penalty is that one thing.

I accept that may be an important one to you and I am sorry if that makes me unpalatable. But I feel what I feel about it and that is unlikely to change - just as I significantly doubt you are suddenly going to decide that I am right. It may well be that you even value human life more than I do, though I sincerely doubt it. I just truly and honestly don't see a problem with the idea of taking the life of people who are guilty of particular crimes. My problem is with the practical issues surrounding such executions - really, the only one it takes (not to say that I am ignoring all the other reasons) is the whole murdering of an innocent convict.

And to be entirely clear about this, I do have respect for your position on this. This is definitely one of those issues that I have absolute respect for a position that I firmly disagree with. Mind I do not respect the position that finds the possibility of executing the innocent, an acceptable risk. But I understand and accept a moral frame that just cannot accept such violence. Much the same way that I understand and accept a moral frame that is absolutely pacifist.

It is not who I am or what I believe, but it is definitely closer than that of people who talk easily, in terms of acceptable collateral casualties.

DuWayne,

Yes, it is moral to keep a man locked up for the rest of his life despite others not having basic necessities, despite him having committed what would otherwise be a capital crime. If other people in the community don't have basic necessities, then we should deal with that, but not by killing prisoners for convenience or to show that we care about people who don't have everything. As for the idea that prisons are bad enough and that you'd prefer death, I'm not sure you'd prefer the idea of your fellow citizens sitting down and calmly deciding that you should die, and then set a specific date.

In fact, the most uncivilised thing I can think of (well, maybe not, but pretty close) is killing people because it might cost you less money if they died.

I'd say that it is as cut and dried as that. Is it right for the government to have the authority to kill its citizens when they present no imminent danger to others? No. Should we kill people if we have other options, even if they cost slightly more money (and especially if, as in real life, they don't)? No.

This is another one of those "debates" where America leaves me baffled. The death penalty is flat out wrong and it does nothing for anybody. There are plenty of nations that have abolished it and seen no harm result. Since it involves killing other humans, you'd think that would be the end of the discussion. But for some reason, in order to show to some people that it's wrong, you've got to show that innocent people are being executed as well as guilty people.

Al -

The bottom line, is that I don't think that some humans are worth spending what we have to, to keep them locked up. There are very few exceptions to my rule that if someone has committed a crime dire enough that they must spend the rest of their life in prison, then they have earned an end to their life. And from my perspective, that is not just because they are a burden. I think that life in a fucking cage is at least as immoral as execution. If they cannot be allowed to be a part of society any longer, then the humane thing to do would be to execute them.

The problem is that it just isn't that simple.

"As for the idea that prisons are bad enough and that you'd prefer death, I'm not sure you'd prefer the idea of your fellow citizens sitting down and calmly deciding that you should die, and then set a specific date."

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd much, much rather be executed than spend any time at all in a max security prison -- the likelihood of being brutalized, raped, and/or killed by the other prisoners, followed by the inability to ever again hold a career even after release (damn background checks!) is equivalent to torture, followed by what amounts to a death sentence anyway. I'd infinitely rather have some people set a date and just do the job, rather than needlessly prolong the agony. Then again, I'm in favor of physician-assisted suicide, for much the same reasons.

Quality of life is more important, to me, than sheer quantity, so the argument of prolonged life hold no appeal for me. Likewise, I have a hard time accepting the argument that "execution is barbaric," when the alternative is even more barbaric.

As for how awful China is, the U.S. has by far the largest prison population per capita of any country in the world -- China included (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.1225373…). China needs to get their human rights act together, true, but that doesn't let us off the hook. The fact that the "land of the free" is in fact the least free nation on earth (in terms of incarceration) is hardly something allowing us to point fingers.

We're not talking about animals here. We're talking about humans. You can actually ask a human what the humane thing to do to them would be. And I think that while there must be prisoners who wish for death (since there are, of course, suicides/attempted suicides in prison), if you did a general survey of the prison population asking whether they'd like to die I expect the majority of answers would come back in the negative, don't you? Deciding for them is certainly not humane.

What kind of crimes are dire enough? And on what do you base that? Visceral emotional reaction - paedophilia combined with murder; true psychopathy and serial killing, etc? Or the possibility that the criminal might kill hundreds of people - terrorism, for instance - and therefore killing them might prevent such an act from ever taking place? Or both the emotional and "rational" responses?

Serial killers are in prison in the UK, France, Germany, Canada &c, just as Charles Manson is in the USA. In prison, they present no threat to society, and that should be the main aim, surely? Presenting no more threat to people and costing less than the appeals and imprisonment for an average death row prisoner... seems like a no-brainer. Has any harm resulted from Manson being imprisoned that could have been evaded by killing him? No.

I think we should also come back to the idea that this is the government and, in a democratic society, therefore also the electorate, killing somebody. (Some people have noted the paradox; if a person is executed for murder in a democratic society then the electorate is responsible for a killing, and could thus also be considered apt for execution. But then, that's something of a sophist's argument.)

By the way, I have no problem with physician-assisted suicide or suicide generally, unless it's simply due to mental illness. If you were in an American maximum security prison for a life sentence without parole and wanted to kill yourself, I say go for it. I don't you'd be aided in your quest by the government, but that's beside the point.

I think you can probably work out that perhaps suicide is slightly different from execution, however. And if you can't, then perhaps this discussion is not worth having.

I also feel that Sam N's point was glossed over rather too quickly. If we judge "civilization" based on the protection of innocents and general preservation of life, capital punishment could be quite civilized, if the rates of false conviction could be brought down a bit.

Say you have 100 convicted murderers, 10 of whom are falsely convicted (although the rate has never been shown to be anywhere near that high). Say of the 90 actual murders, each would commit an average of 1.5 more murders if paroled (many of them no more, but others repeat offenses until caught again). If you execute them all, you kill 10 innocent people and 90 murders (100 people total). If not, you kill 135 innocent people and 0 murderers (135 people total).

I don't know what the recivitism rate actually is, vs. the false conviction rate. But it would seem fairly simple to work out the math and see how it ends up.

Overall, I think it's a lousy option. It would be better if prisons could actually rehabilitate criminals. But there is no evidence that they do, and volumes of evidence to the contrary, and no one knows how to even start fixing that. Of the options available to us, capital punishment, although barbaric by utopian standards, might not necessairly be worth dismissing out of hand.

Admittedly, the kind of analysis I presented breaks down if life without parole is enforceable. Add in the fact that a sentence is normally mitigated to make parole possible, and the escape rates, and again we can run the math -- it would lower the net benefit of execution dramatically. Enough to make it a clear winner? I don't know yet.

Al -

Deciding for them is certainly not humane.

Bullshit. There are a lot of people out there who would like to die, who do not because of as innate sense of self-preservation. Suicide isn't easy, neither is agreeing to be killed. Do some research into suicide and death with dignity, then get back to me with this one.

What kind of crimes are dire enough?

Crimes that make the criminal such a threat, that they cannot ever be allowed in society again.

And on what do you base that?

On what sort of danger they present to society.

Visceral emotional reaction...

Go reread my comments here. Do I really strike you as the sort of guy to make that sort of judgment, based on emotion?

Presenting no more threat to people and costing less than the appeals and imprisonment for an average death row prisoner... seems like a no-brainer.

And if, instead of arguing with the DuWayne in your head, you were actually arguing with what I have written, you would note that I have many reasons for being against the death penalty. There is just one reason for being against it that I do not agree with.

Were it magically possible for us to know absolutely someone was guilty and to execute them painlessly, without all the resources being expended, I would be all for humanely removing them from society. Seems like a no-brainer.

I think we should also come back to the idea that this is the government and, in a democratic society, therefore also the electorate, killing somebody.

Ok, lets do that.

Assuming my magical scenario were true, I would have no problem putting it to a vote and accepting the results. Unfortunately it is not true, yet we still put it to a vote and the results are unacceptable.

But then, that's something of a sophist's argument.

Not something of, entirely so and a ridiculous one. That argument assumes that we are all defining murder as the same thing - that all killing is the same. I sincerely doubt that you and me would agree on what defines murder. I could be mistaken here, but I am almost certain that you have a far more black and white view of what constitutes murder, than I do.

To whit, no matter how repugnant I think it is, I do not believe that an executioner is committing murder. I think it is entirely reasonable to say that is some circumstances, the prosecutor - the judge - the cops, all have the potential to turn an execution into a murder. But in those cases, whatever of them is guilty of malfeasance is the murderer, not the guy payed to pull the switch.

Death is just as complicated as life. There is no black and white.

"I think you can probably work out that perhaps suicide is slightly different from execution, however."

@Al, I advanced a consideration that execution is not necessarily automatically "more barbaric" than a prison sentence, depending on the criteria one uses. You then advanced an option of choice, with which I agree. Wasn't that easy? But then you turn around and start tossing out ad hominem attacks, which don't strengthen your case in any way, and which have no clear reason other than I didn't agree with you a priori, as it were. Why is that?

I would also like to note that I am all about preventing rape and other violence that is allowed in prison. Doesn't change my view a bit. But there are a lot of things that absolutely disgust me and anger me about prisons and municipal jails.

Kirth -

If you execute them all, you kill 10 innocent people and 90 murders (100 people total). If not, you kill 135 innocent people and 0 murderers (135 people total).

Lets assume that your math is entirely accurate - I still can't accept that. It is one thing to execute someone who is guilty, it is quite another to be willing to execute the innocent. That is something I cannot tolerate and is why I can't tolerate the death penalty.

You appear to take my black-and-white stance on the death penalty as evidence of a generalised black-and-white worldview. Not so. But in this instance, I simply do not believe anyone has the right to end somebody else's life, only the occasional necessity to do so.

Your judgment vis-a-vis what would constitute such a crime as would necessitate the death penalty is vague. Would Charles Manson be such a criminal? He certainly committed the crimes he is in prison for. There is no doubt that he started a cult and was responsible for a number of killings for no real reason. He's a dangerously psychopathic human. Should he have been killed or not?

There are a lot of people out there who would like to die, who do not because of as innate sense of self-preservation.

So, there are people who want to die, but because they don't want to die, they don't say that they want to die? You've lost me a little here. How do you differentiate between them anyway? "He says he doesn't want to die, but he's going into a maximum security prison. I'd rather die than be in there, and therefore so would he. The humane thing to do would be to strap him to a table and poison him to death."

DuWayne, you of all people should read the description. It is a rich, detailed description of great anthropological interest! I would love your response to it.

if the rates of false conviction could be brought down a bit.

A bit? You mean to zero, right?

The story indicated no substance to the facts of what's really going on within China. To say the true I felt very disturbing from the reading. When you have an article about Crime and Punishment of the China laws, you should at best pointing out in real life facts and not to make the story more interesting to read for the viewers by adding some make-up theatrical scenes to it.

Any links to back up your story?

Basically the story was no different than yelling at all the Chinese and at the government of China,

"I hate you all commie Chinese."

The authors and the reporters should found quilty of a Hat Crime if you ask me.

Plato, which story would you like documentation for, the one of Davidson Black working in China, or the one of the execution?

Your judgment vis-a-vis what would constitute such a crime as would necessitate the death penalty is vague.

Not particularly. I am not being more explicit, because there is some room discussion there. I think the criteria of life imprisonment is a rather reasonable metric, under the circumstances.

Should he have been killed or not?

What part of "I am against the death penalty" don't you understand? Was the crime he was convicted of a capital crime in my opinion? Yes. Should he have been executed? No.

So, there are people who want to die, but because they don't want to die, they don't say that they want to die? You've lost me a little here.

Don't blame me for your inability to grasp nuance. I suggested that you look into it. If you are interested, do so - if not, I really don't care. I am not going to spend the time it would take, trying to educate you in the psychology of suicide. I have read several books, even more papers and discussed it with instructors. I am not going to try to impart all that in blog comments.

Would execution mean killing criminals who truly wanted to live? Absolutely. It would also kill many who would not. In either case, it is more humane than life in a cage.

Plato -

No one is screaming at the Chinese people, though the government is certainly a target. I personally find the government of China reprehensible. I do not however, hate the Chinese, by any stretch of the imagination.

If you would like to get after people who actually feel that way, there is a target rich environment - an all too target rich environment.

@DuWayne,

"That is something I cannot tolerate and is why I can't tolerate the death penalty."

I can understand that, and accept it even if I don't 100% agree in this instance. Any sort of comparative analysis of course fails in the face of a bottom line like, "No matter what the cost, there are some things so repugnant that we just won't do them. Ever." And I can definitely see why, from any number of standpoints, one might take such a stance. Indeed, I believe a number of people used just such an argument with Sam Harris, vis-a-vis his controversial stance on torture.

In either case, it is more humane than life in a cage.

Talking of the inability to comprehend nuance, the idea that the word "humane" would encompass killing people who really don't want to die is stretching it a little. I don't doubt you know a lot about the psychology of suicide. What I am saying is that, unless you have some kind of magic mind-reading device, the best way to find out what would be most humane for a person is to ask them. If they really want to die, then I say, give them the option of suicide. Allow them to choose whether to take their own life or not. But don't take it for them on the assumption that they want to but are inhibited by the desire to live.

With the Charlie Manson example I was employing an example to assess your criteria. I understand that you are against the death penalty; you simply said that in some cases, executions would be acceptable, and you provided the idea that some crimes are so awful as to warrant execution, assuming we could know for certain that the person did the crime. Since we know for sure - as sure as we can be - that Manson really was a conspirator and murderer, and since his crimes were rather dire, by the system you proposed earlier on it would be reasonable to assume that he would be one of the cases to warrant the capital punishment. N'est pas?

If Manson's crimes were not that dire, then whose would be? Which crimes would be the ones you believe - theoretically if not in reality - would warrant death?

Didn't have time to read all comments cause I'm on a quick lunch break. I just can't get past the hypocrisy of the death penalty. Killing is wrong, totally wrong, the most incredibly wrong thing you can do. So we're going to kill you. Doesn't make sense to me.

And as others have raised, killing is irrevocable and all justice systems we currently have are imperfect. Until we find an infallible system or a way to raise the dead then state-sponsored killing isn't an option.

The death penalty is simply a modern form of human sacrifice.

Dunc, exactly right. Human sacrifice to consolidate and strengthen the power of those who control the process by which people are killed.

That is exactly what the over zealous prosecutor is doing, "gaming" the system to kill someone so as to increase his/her power.

That is exactly what Rick Perry did.

Innocent, guilty it doesn't matter, killing someone by execution shows how tough you are. Just like threatening to use Second Amendment remedies to get political power.

The death penalty is not a modern form of human sacrifice.

The average "tribal" culture with human sacrifice is rare, and probably exists as an entity for a few centuries in time. Human sacrifice is not a widespread activity.

The death penalty in one form is a Western tradition that is ancient, going back easily thousands of years. The Chinsese version may or may not share roots, but if it does, it goes back thousands of years as well. If they share a common origin, then the death penalty must be 10 thousand years old or so. (roughly) There are no human sacrifice tradition with that age that I know of.

Capital execution of selected prisoners ... what we are calling the death penalty ... may well predate any human sacrifice tradition we know of, for all we know. It is not a modern anything.

The statement "the death penalty is a modern form of human sacrifice" objectifies and primitivises unspecified cultures and ironically privileges "western" belief systems.

Plato, I guess you are not going to get back to me. You have read my post in a way that brings an interpretation you came to the table with and desired to see.

Read the title. What does "at their own game" mean?

Read the description of the execution. It is written by a Chinese observer in china.

Note as has been noted that for both "western" (mainly US) and China, we are talking about the government and not the people.

That would be the government that bans this blog. I assume.

Greg, I accept that characterizing modern executions as modern human sacrifice does trivialize non-western practices.

However, I don't accept that executions for criminal behavior are different in any meaningful way than what is called "human sacrifice".

I would appreciate if you could tell me what definitions you are using for what constitutes "human sacrifice". When servents were killed and interred with their masters, was that "human sacrifice"?

Is what Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot did "human sacrifice"? Or because a state had "laws" saying it was legal to kill people, then it was legal?

However, I don't accept that executions for criminal behavior are different in any meaningful way than what is called "human sacrifice".

I absolutely agree with that. I guess I would repharse "Executions are a modern form of human sacrifice" to "Executions are just another form of human sacrifice"

I forget to mention above that I have also shaken hands with Chris Ochoa. Corey Tennison, a friend of mine, was a member of The Innocence Project team that secured an innocent man's exoneration before it was too late.

Oh, ok, it seemed like you were trying to differentiate between human sacrifice and excecution as somehow being different because you said that capital punishment has been around for essentially forever but human sacrifice was rare.

"Killing is wrong, totally wrong, the most incredibly wrong thing you can do."

I suppose that's where we differ. My yardstick for what's "right" is to reduce the net amount of aggregate suffering; from the statement quoted, yours seems to be to maintain the total number of human lives. (Unless I'm misunderstanding? If so, apologies, and please correct me.)

If we apply the standard in each case to other example, we may get different results on all kinds of issues. For example, is birth control permissible? My critereon not only says "yes," but that in some cases it's highly recommended. Does yours say "no"? If not, why not?

I am interested in differing standards of what constitutes "moral" and where they lead, especially when they're phrased so emphatically.

Ulf, the reason why I consider a death penalty "enough" and don't demand torture is probably part of the "civilization" concept Greg is referring to. Society can make one ultimate call, determining that a person has lost the right to life. To my understanding, there is little "extra deterrent" to be gained from making the execution as gruesome and public as possible, and torture without execution as form of punishment was never really a western thing (probably because the condemned was expected to suffer eternal torture in the afterlife anyway).
My non-support for everyday death penalty is not based on moral considerations but on the fact that I can't see how you can apply it fairly, evenly and safely, with the emphasis on safely. Even if we can get it right 99.99% of the time, with 16,000 murders each year we would still put one innocent to death each year. Not that having the innocent rotting in jail for life does make much of a difference, but at least you haven't missed the chance to get it right forever.

China is a civilization that exists among modern nation states. In many ways the same tradition of autocratic rule has been transferred from its fairly recent imperial past to its current rule by the CCP (though the current rule is far less autocratic than the first and second generations of communist rule... Hu Jintao does not have the control that Mao did, nor even Deng).

Public executions have a long history that stretches back pretty far (though the definition of what is public has some wiggle room). There are surges in the numbers at certain points (especially during politically unstable times), though the methods were fairly similar since the fall of the Qing and the reformations of the last decade. The bullet fee is a distinctly maoist era ritual, which was employed as a psychological reinforcement to keep people (the close relatives) from actively voicing their opinions. The story from Wu Hongda mentions this from the 1983 executions, and so it may have still been done at that time.

The story from Davidson Black's experiences was from the civil war era, and so executions were very common in that time, as it was easy to frame almost anything as being part of some kind of a political act. And depending on who was controlling the area at the time, you might be executed for not giving respect to the KMT one week or the CCP the next week.

It is often couched that criticism of something that happens via official government policy is not a criticism of "the people" rather that it is a criticism of "the government". I think this is valid to a certain extent, but it begs the question of what portion of the population supports the policy. The writings of individuals (such as Wu Hongda, and many other chinese expats and a few current citizens) may give evidence that the support would not be universal, but it is certainly not uncommon for your every day average person in China to be very ok with executions. This is likely a highly variable matter and people from one province will likely have very different feelings from another province. However, if you call the Chinese predilection for executions barbaric, then it is not simply a denunciation of the current rulers, it is indeed an indictment of the culture itself.

On another note, I was able to access science blogs from several cities in China in May, so at the moment it does not seem to be blocked.

@62

Although I am not really answering to your post, let me clarify my thoughts from the last post, and add a couple of additional points. And no offense intended again despite some rough words.

First, I find the argument that almost everyone here uses, "I am against death penalty as long as it affects innocents" plain weak. For your information: if there was no death penalty, these innocents would rot away in prison (actually more of them; as I understand the legal system, death row inmates have more useful publicity and possibilities to appeal (?) ). Especially for those posters that consider being locked up in prison worse than killing the prisoner outright, anything but a clear "yes" to death penalty seems a strange position.

Now, my main point is that death penalty has simply no virtues to it. Since I dislike chopping other people's heads off, I therefore tend to favor ordinary imprisonment

The idea that several people put forward was that "some crimes a so bad, the criminal should die"? Why exactly? The two arguments I immediately find against it are that

(a) why stop at killing someone, you can have much more pleasure torturing him? (and you did not really answer this except with considering this as "unwestern")

(b) why kill him at all? Someone mentioned reciprocity. This runs into an obvious problem as soon as someone kills _two_ (or more) people.

Why not just consider that some crimes are so bad that _no_ punishment can cancel them? Then instead of striving for "capital" punishment a major one could certainly be enough?

The other point is that sending someone to jail is actually a pretty harsh punishment, especially if he stays there for the next 20, 30, ... years. The advantage is that you can give a pretty good reason for sending someone to prison: the chance of becoming better (would be nice, at least), a second chance (for the not-totally -evil guys), having punishment (you need _some_ punishment anyway, otherwise people are not happy; this includes me), and protecting the outside world (prison and killing is not really that different here).

Again, some commentators (not you AFAIR) have a strange stance in that they acknowledge this and suggest to kill the prisoners as the more "humane" treatment, this is pretty hilarious, come to think of it. Anyway, then I do not really understand: if prison is worse than killing someone, why is killing someone the ultimate punishment that should be reserved for the really bad guys?

One incorrectly placed argument in my previous post:

You can argue for prison in general because it provides punishment and neutralizes bad people.

The advantage of prison over death penalty is that you can evaluate someone later (if he became a better person). Also if someone has become harmless (e.g., by turning 70) and everyone important agrees, you can release him. I simply lack the zeal of condemning someone for eternity, but this might not be the case for every commentators here.

"Anyway, then I do not really understand: if prison is worse than killing someone, why is killing someone the ultimate punishment that should be reserved for the really bad guys?"

The question implies a satisfaction with the current prison system, which is far from accurate in my case at least. An optimum solution would involve reconfiguring prisons from hellholes to actual rehabilitation facilities -- and then allowing the successfully rehabilitated prisoners to rejoin society (without a permanent stigma that prevents them from finding any employment other than further criminal enterprise). Alas, we currently seem to have no idea at all how to go about actually rehabilitating anyone, so the optimum solution remains philosophical, rather than possible, at this time.

Then again, I'm not one of the "punishment fits the crime" people; rather, I try to be a pragmatist. My motives for executing Hitler would be the same as for executing anyone else: strictly to eliminate any possibly further threat from that person, in as absolute and as humane a manner as is currently practicible.

For your information: if there was no death penalty, these innocents would rot away in prison (actually more of them; as I understand the legal system, death row inmates have more useful publicity and possibilities to appeal

That's not really the point. I think it is generally thought of this way: The ultimate punishment for which there is no appeal demands absolute certainty of guilt. We can demonstrate that over the course of time a non trivial number of individuals are killed by the state who were innocent. That point is not invalidated by the fact, which is also true, that there are innocent people in prison.

At a larger level, we come back to the point made above regarding human sacrifice: Most people in the US, for instance, will get very involved in a wide range of issues, and won't stand for certain things happening, and will get very well organized and well funded over certain issues (like the right to bear arms, for instance) but don't give a flying fuck about the fact that there are people doing time who should not be, and now and then executed when they should not be.

That is because there is a presumption that there is a certain kind of person who is criminal-like even if they are not really criminals. (And here we more than touch on issues of race and class.) Human sacrifice is not about the individual who is sacrificed, usually, but about larger social and cultural categories.

Al -

Look, if you are going to try to argue with me, then fucking read what I wrote. I am against the death penalty, even in cases where we have a pretty damned good idea that the fucker was guilty, because such cases are exceedingly rare. Accepting it as valid in those cases, requires that we set some criteria for reasonable certainty of guilt - something that I do not believe would be safe.

As far as the rationale behind death being more humane than life in prison, I cannot explain this adequately in blog comments. It is complicated. It is more complicated than even a few pages could explain. I could write a long paper, or even a book trying to explain it and it would still not change your mind about the morality of executing certain types of criminals.

Given that I am dead nuts against the death penalty, for about every reason except the underlying morality of it, I am not going to spend that amount of time and effort making an argument for it.

Ulf -

I acknowledge that life in prison, is less humane than death. Going to prison, knowing you are going to get out at some point, can be more humane than death. It is the understanding that one will never leave the cage that is inhumane. To make sure I have been clear, I feel this way, even assuming that prisons actually move away from the intolerable barbarism that is the dominant paradigm in the U.S.

And because your comment implies some confusion on this point (apologies if it was unintended), I would just like to clarify for the bajillionth time, that I am dead against the death penalty. The morality of executing criminals for certain crimes just isn't one of the reasons I oppose it.

People who are sentenced to life without possibility of parole, are sentences that because there is no way they can be trusted in society again. Someone who has, for example, chosen to kill thirty people at random, is an unacceptable risk to society. It doesn't matter how much this person might appear to have become a "better person." Given the nature of the crimes that put him (or her) in prison, that is a risk that simply cannot be taken. It is entirely possible for a sociopath to pretend they are - this is why it is generally a shock when such people are caught. They often spend their entire life pretending.*

As for age rendering them harmless...Sorry, but I don't accept that. For one thing, my dad is 76 and would be perfectly capable of (physically) of murder. Unless someone is on the verge of death, they are still a risk. The process of trying to determine whether or not they are an acceptable risk or not, is quite frankly more expense than I am willing to provide. Don't get me wrong - I believe in humane palliative care for even the very worse criminals. But I do not accept that this means that any expense should be taken to release them, so they can die outside that cage.

Re; the whole human sacrifice discussion...

I really don't see it. Unless you are going to define any and all taking of human life as human sacrifice, this makes no sense.

* I do want to be clear that the vast majority of sociopaths never commit crimes, never hurt other creatures for their pleasure. Studies have indicated that there are far more sociopaths out there than was ever assumed and that the vast majority of sociopaths are only different than anyone else, in that they do not experience guilt.

At a larger level, we come back to the point made above regarding human sacrifice: Most people in the US, for instance, will get very involved in a wide range of issues, and won't stand for certain things happening, and will get very well organized and well funded over certain issues (like the right to bear arms, for instance) but don't give a flying fuck about the fact that there are people doing time who should not be, and now and then executed when they should not be.

I for one am looking forward to future posts on our American justice system.

I do not know if anyone is reading this, but to clear up some thoughts:

@66

If I think about this a bit more, one of the reasons I associate the Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pot from the start with mere bloody revenge instead of pragmatism might be that you simply do not need to execute them. Their organized mass killings need more than a racist/cynical/plain insane leader, they require a whole organization, and as soon as this breaks down (prerequisite for a trial), there is little reason to believe that they will continue killing. For a more actual example, I cannot imagine a scenario where Radovan Karadzic would keep on murdering, which does not involve the breakdown of the current world order.

@67

The argument seemed so good it had to have a catch. I admit that it requires too much cynical thinking.

@68

I understand that you are against the death penalty. And though it may have seemed otherwise, I do not try to assign you a different position, I merely challenge some of your arguments.

Regarding age rendering people harmless: This argument originates from me replacing "dangerous murder" by "murder" without telling you. So I withdraw it, it is not valid, and you are right.

Regarding capital punishment vs. life long sentence, I side with Al, though. We probably agree that there can exist some people that have shown themselves such a danger to their environment that a simple "body count" suggests they should be removed forever.

However, if we still respect their (now limited) rights as human beings, then the definition what the more humane treatment is should be left ... almost defined by their wishes. This is not meant to be an emotional argument, and it might need some refinement, but deciding a matter of such importance for other people feels plain wrong.

Silence = Death

gregladen — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:25:21 +0000

Silence = Death

I have been to Uganda a number times, but only illegally or by accident, in which case I was in the remote bush, or in transit, stopping at Entebbe Airport, so I can't say that I know much, directly, about the culture there. However, I have spent months in Kenya and years in Zaire/Congo, and a little time in Tanzania and Rwanda, so I've kinda got Uganda surrounded. I can tell you that the political culture and government of Zaire/Congo, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda are very, very different from one another. At the same time, all of these countries have certain commonalities that are relevant to the present discussion, and I'd bet money that these extend to some degree into Uganda. They are:

1) The Missionary Influence is important. Tanzania is far less missionized than the other countries in recent decades, and Rwanda is a bid different, but there is a pervasive religious factor that is Christian, and subsumes the thinking of a goodly part of the population. It is not the case that everyone in the region is a fundamentalist Christian. Many people in East Africa and adjoining regions are Muslim (a Majority if Kenyans, I believe), and many are relatively indifferent to religion. But it is a factor.

2) Many of the human-rights related issues that we see from a Western perspective as being important are more developed in East Africa than a lot of westerners might expect. Women have been in positions of power in the government for years, and there are open movements to fight violence against women and other patriarchal features of human societies. Although there is just as much "inter tribal" (= inter ethnic) crapola in East Africa as there is in Europe or the US, there is also a much better and more advanced understanding of racial issues. In short, there is a progressive attitude regarding human rights. Well, some human rights.

3) In some subcultures in the regions, homosexuality is normal and integrated into day to day life, or ignored. It is not a big deal.

4) At the same time, where the Christian missionized influence is strong, homosexuality is considered to be one of the great wrongs against god. Homosexuality is seen as an abomination, and "abomination" isn't just some quaint word out of the Bible.

Uganda in particular is run by a government that is nearly explicitly Christian and fundamentalist, and there are many ties between the Ugandan government and the church. Many of the internal civil conflicts that have occurred over the last decades or that are going on now are explicitly religious. So, while it is very very disturbing, it is not particularly surprising, to see something like this:

A Ugandan MP has proposed creating an offence of "aggravated homosexuality" to be punishable by death.

Ruling party MP David Bahati wants the death penalty for those having gay sex with disabled people, under-18s or when the accused is HIV-positive

The story is here.

Homosexuality is already against the law in Uganda, but the proposed changes would be a significant increase in severity of punishment. This may seem like crazy talk in this modern world, and you might figure that laws making homosexual activities punishable by death would never be added to a modern country's legal system. But people watching the situation closely believe that this bill has a good chance of being passed.

The bill would not only make certain gay acts punishable by death, which would be in accord with Abrahamic religious teaching, but it widens the definition of homosexual acts, and increases punishment for promoting human rights for gay people.

If this bill is passed, Uganda risks trouble with the international community, as the country is a signatory to various international agreements that, in theory, protect the human rights of GLBTA people.

If you are a member of a church and the missionaries come and show you slides about the great work they do in Uganda, please be advised that this is part of that work. So if you give them support, including money, encouragement, or even support in the form of not shouting them down, than this is also part of your work.

gregladen Thu, 10/15/2009 - 07:25

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This story has been developing for a while. It looks like Exodus International will soon have blood on their hands for their involvement.

There has been particularly good coverage over at Box Turtle Bulletin.

TRiG.

To paraphrase Babbage, 'I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a proposal.'

That kind of unthinking, unjustified (unjustifiable) hatred is just... incomprehensible.

I am the "abomination" referred to. I lived in Cameroon for two years (Peace Corps). Was told that homosexuality was illegal and punishable by death (not sure if literally true). Never heard of any enforcement. Their politicians use it for the same purpose that ours use the issue: to extract votes from the credulous and the scapegoaters, who seeth with shame and hate. The missionaries I knew there, creepy as they were (they had a "white man's burden" attitude), certainly would not have condoned this barbaric law, but they should take responsibility for the idea and denounce it.
Funny thing is, people that denounce homosexuality so vehemently, tend not to see it. They look for something obvious and hideous, like a bad drag queen. Also, my (Cameroonian) male colleagues wanted to be seen walking down mainstreet holding my hand (!).

So it's god's will to visit Africa with a bible and bugger all the little kids, but homosexuality is eeeevil. I've seen the same sort of thing in Asia; in some cultures the homosexuals are just another part of the community, but those muslims and christians barge in and barbarize the people telling lies about god and about teh gayz.

California Releases Revised Lethal Injection Protocol, Physicians Still Complicit

scientificactivist — Fri, 18 May 2007 16:11:08 +0000

California Releases Revised Lethal Injection Protocol, Physicians Still Complicit

On Tuesday, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger released a revised lethal injection protocol in hopes of reversing a moratorium on capital punishment in the state put in place by a February 2006 federal court ruling. From the LA Times:

On Tuesday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, Andrea L. Hoch, and James Tilton, director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said the new protocol addressed all the issues U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel raised in finding that the state's previous procedures violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment....

Fogel ruled in December that the state's application of its death penalty law was broken, but said it could be fixed. He urged the governor to propose remedial action. California and three dozen other states use a three-drug cocktail. Opponents argue that officials often fail to properly sedate inmates with a barbiturate against the searing pain of the final heart-stopping chemical. The inmate's reaction to the pain is masked by the intermediate drug, a paralytic, they say.

A national study published in the Public Library of Science journal PloS Medicine in April found that two of the three drugs used in lethal injection are not administered properly to reliably ensure a humane death.

State officials said Tuesday that they had considered switching to a single-chemical protocol. But they instead proposed to "substantially revise" the three-drug protocol.

The new plan appears to address the superficial concerns detailed in Fogel's ruling, but it doesn't get at the underlying problems that are intrinsic to capital punishment. A practice so outdated and vengeful as the death penalty arguably has no place in a modern democracy. In May of last year, I discussed a Nature editorial (subscription required) that laid out the role that physicians should play in ending this practice. Already, the AMA prohibits physicians from participating directly in executions, as it is seen as a violation of the Hippocratic Oath. Nature took this a step further, calling for physicians to abstain from any participation in developing California's new lethal injection guidelines:

Earlier this year, a California court told state authorities that they must persuade an anaesthetist to oversee an execution, come up with a new protocol for lethal injections--or face a hearing on whether the punishment is inhumane. The last option now looks likely.

If suitably qualified individuals refuse to help prepare a new protocol, the state will face the prospect of continuing to use amateurs to kill people with arbitrary and outmoded technology.

Scientists often abjure political activity, and could in this case argue that they are merely providing a basis from which policy-makers can make decisions. But this decision must be taken by the physicians and scientists themselves. All that is required is a refusal to participate. Men and women of science and medicine should stand shoulder to shoulder on this. Don't advise, don't prescribe, don't inject. Let the death penalty die a natural death.

Unfortunately, though, when perusing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's (CDCR) report on its new protocol, I found this:

The CDCR also obtained the services of a nationally renowned anesthesiology. The consultant reviewed several proposed revisions to the Lethal Injection Protocol and provided comments to the CDCR.

(Emphasis added.)

Due to the typo in the document (and the strange lack of any additional documentation or reference to this shady figure), it was unclear to me what was meant by "a nationally renowned anesthesiology." To clear this up, I gave the CDCR a call, and I talked to Deputy Press Secretary Bill Sessa (who was very helpful). He informed me that the person in question was in fact an anesthesiologist (i.e. a physician) and that the lack of documentation here was for privacy concerns. When asked whether it had been difficult to procure physician participation in formulating the policy, he told me that he would not be able to comment on that.

This is a major disappointment to find out that a physician gave expert consultation to assist in developing California's new lethal injection protocol. Although it may seem natural to expect physicians to offer relevant advice when the potential for so much pain and suffering exists in this procedure. However, this only enables the state to perpetuate its death penalty practices. If all physicians were to fully abstain from any consultation regarding capital punishment, the practice would lose the last remaining shreds of credibility that it still desperately clings to, bringing about its timely and justified end.

scientificactivist Fri, 05/18/2007 - 12:11

Tags

death penalty

medicine

FWIW, I know a few veterinarians with considerable knowledge and practical experience on the subject who would be willing to propose something.

In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if there were an existing written protocol for primate euthanasia that you could use verbatim.

If it were me, as long as you start with 200 mg (20 cc) of propofol, and finish within 5 minutes, I don't much care.

That's an interesting point, actually, since The Lancet wrote in 2005 that "The absence of training and monitoring, and the remote administration of drugs, coupled with eyewitness reports of muscle responses during execution, suggest that the current practice of lethal injection for execution fails to meet veterinary standards."

Following Angel Diaz's botched execution in Florida, the state issued a report similar to California's and managed to enlist the help of no less than three doctors. A statement at the on of the report outlines how sqeamich they were about the whole thing, but some doce (for reasons beyond my comprehension) feel compelled...I believe you can check out the Florida report (with names of docs) at deathpenaltyinfo.org, or find a link to it from there...

Funny how you don't see the pro-life contingent railing on about the death penalty.

...it is important to note that in reference to medical ethics, the admonishment to do no harm is as applicable to registered nurses, to licensed vocational nurses, to nursing assistants, to pharmacists,to physcal therapists et cetera as it is to physicians....there are no double and/or separate ethical standards....no one who is in any capacity characterizable as a medical professional should in any capacity participate in state sponsored homcide....in peace....(562)864-8957....

Nature Versus Nurturing the Death Penalty

scientificactivist — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 16:14:31 +0000

Nature Versus Nurturing the Death Penalty

Shelley of Retrospectacle asks fellow ScienceBloggers:

"Are you for or against the death penalty, or (if its conditional), in what cases? Furthermore, do you believe that societies that sanction war are hypocritical for opposing the death penalty?"

I'm against the death penalty, and I would agree that if a society uses war as a tool of foreign policy, it would be hypocritical to oppose the death penalty. Fortunately (or, rather, unfortunately) for the US, that doesn't seem to be an issue. In addition to the usual arguments against the death penalty (not a deterrent, risk of executing the innocent, inconsistent application, etc. ) here's another reason to question it. From the archives:

(9 May 2006) In a strongly-worded editorial and an accompanying news special report (subscription required), last Thursday's Nature magazine challenged the humaneness of lethal injections and advocated for continued abstention by the medical community to put an end to the death penalty once and for all.

The special report lays out the issue:

Do no harm. Nearly all US MDs and PhDs recite this three-word oath instinctively when asked why they object to helping with executions. "It violates our ethical oath and erodes public trust," says Priscilla Ray, head of ethics at the American Medical Association (AMA), which prohibits members from participating in executions. Even helping to design a more humane protocol would disregard the AMA code, Ray says. "Formulating a way to kill somebody would violate the spirit of the policy."

As a result of that stance, lethal injections--the dominant method of execution in the United States--are generally carried out by technicians without scientific or medical training, and the protocol does not seem to have been reviewed in 30 years. Typically, prisoners are injected with three drugs in sequence meant to knock out, paralyze and then kill. But many experts are concerned that because of that lack of training, the first drug does not always knock the condemned out properly, leaving him or her paralyzed but excruciatingly conscious as the lungs stop moving, and burning potassium chloride races towards the heart.

The death penalty has quite a bit going against it, from charges of unequal application to different demographics to the sometimes realized nightmare of killing an innocent person. The challenges at hand, though, focus on the suitability of what was supposed to be a more humane alternative to the electric chair: the lethal injection.

One of the most damning indictments of lethal injections as a means of capital punishment came from a 2005 article in The Lancet, which found that 43% of inmates undergoing lethal injection may be conscious when the fatal and excruciatingly painful dose of potassium chloride is delivered, due to insufficient doses of the anesthetic sodium thiopental. The results of the study were considered controversial, though, because they relied solely on postmortem examinations. Regardless, they deserve consideration.

Since I'm writing this from Oxford University, currently at the center of a large animal rights movement, I found the following passage of the Lancet article particularly interesting:

With little public dialogue about protocols for killing human beings, it is pertinent to consider recommendations from animal euthanasia protocols. The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) panel on euthanasia specifically prohibits the use of pentobarbital with a neuromuscular blocking agent to kill animals, and 19 states, including Texas, have expressly or implicitly prohibited the use of neuromuscular blocking agents in animal euthanasia because of the risk of unrecognised consciousness. Furthermore, AVMA specifies that "it is of utmost importance that personnel performing this technique are trained and knowledgeable in anaesthetic techniques, and are competent in assessing anaesthetic depth appropriate for administration of potassium chloride intravenously. Administration of potassium chloride intravenously requires animals to be in a surgical plane of anesthesia characterized by loss of consciousness, loss of reflex muscle response, and loss of response to noxious stimuli". The absence of training and monitoring, and the remote administration of drugs, coupled with eyewitness reports of muscle responses during execution, suggest that the current practice of lethal injection for execution fails to meet veterinary standards.

(emphasis added)

This is either a dubious victory for the animal rights movement or, more likely, a stunning moral failure on the part of our legal system. The authors of the study draw what seems like the only reasonable conclusion given these circumstances:

Our data suggest that anaesthesia methods in lethal injection in the USA are flawed. Failures in protocol design, implementation, monitoring and review might have led to the unnecessary suffering of at least some of those executed. Because participation of doctors in protocol design or execution is ethically prohibited, adequate anaesthesia cannot be certain. Therefore, to prevent unnecessary cruelty and suffering, cessation and public review of lethal injections is warranted.

In a call for direct medical activism, Thursday's Nature editorial also calls for physicians to play an active role, through their own inaction, in ending the practice of lethal injection and hopefully dealing the final deathblow to the death penalty in general:

Earlier this year, a California court told state authorities that they must persuade an anaesthetist to oversee an execution, come up with a new protocol for lethal injections--or face a hearing on whether the punishment is inhumane. The last option now looks likely.

If suitably qualified individuals refuse to help prepare a new protocol, the state will face the prospect of continuing to use amateurs to kill people with arbitrary and outmoded technology.

Scientists often abjure political activity, and could in this case argue that they are merely providing a basis from which policy-makers can make decisions. But this decision must be taken by the physicians and scientists themselves. All that is required is a refusal to participate. Men and women of science and medicine should stand shoulder to shoulder on this. Don't advise, don't prescribe, don't inject. Let the death penalty die a natural death.

Update: Shelley has the full roundup of all of the answers at Retrospectacle.

scientificactivist Thu, 08/24/2006 - 12:14

Tags

death penalty

medicine