In which we stew upon opposition to the death penalty...satisfying?

[december]

Two weeks ago, Stoid started a thread on why people find the death penalty so satisfying. This new thread is to explore the opposite question: Why do some opponents of the death penalty feel so good about their position?

There are arguments for and against the DP; I'm not looking for a rehash. The question is, why do some DP-opponents seem to believe that they are morally superior? Is it a religious position? Is it a case where liberalism has become a sort of religion? Does the issue appear so clear that virtue appears to lie entirely on the anti DP position?

Can anyone enlighten me?

[pldennison]

I can enlighten you, thusly:

"There are arguments for and against the DP; I'm not looking for a rehash. The question is, why do some DP-proponents seem to believe that they are morally superior? Is it a religious position? Is it a case where conservatism has become a sort of religion? Does the issue appear so clear that virtue appears to lie entirely on the pro-DP position?"

Huh. What do you know--the confusion went away.

P.S. Why do you assume that anyone opposed to the death penalty is a liberal?

[pepperlandgirl]

I don't believe I'm morally superior. I'm anti-DP because of various things in my life. Religion plays a part in it, but not a very large part, as I am no longer a religious person. I just feel that nobody has the right, privilage, or responsibility to take the life of another human being. Simple as that. I used to get involved in Death penalty threads, but I didn't get involved in any of the debates through this last rash of them. And I really don't plan on debating right now. But you asked, so I answered.
And I don't want to hear examples either. I've heard them all. Saying, "Well, what if someone raped and murdered your sister/mother/child/friend!? Then would you want them to die?!"
No, I would not. Because I do not believe that anybody has the right, privilage, or responsibility to take another human life.

[xenophon41]

So... which ones do you want to know about? Are you asking about the people who are upset that our current system of justice seems to wrongly convict people of capital crimes at an alarming rate or about the people who believe capital punishment violates human rights? In the first case, I would think those people believe it is immoral to execute someone who may not be guilty of the crime for which they were convicted. In the second case, those people (myself included) believe it is immoral for a state to kill people who are under their control. This includes POW's, traitors and convicted murderers/rapists/etc. (Note that enemy soldiers are not under the control of a state.) (Note also that feeling "morally correct" is not at all the same as feeling "morally superior.")


Couldn't you have asked a tougher question, like "why do the anti-ketchup-on-a-hotdog people think mustard is the better condiment?"

[wring]

Is it so terribly bad to allow people to define their own terms? Here december makes the claim that since I oppose the DP, I *must* therefore be claiming to be on a higher moral plane because of it and in the other dp thread , jack continues to claim that those of us who are against the dp find "murder victims are an embarrassment and/or annoyance to all too many anti-death penalty advocates, who ignore them to focus exclusively on the loss of life of those convicted of murder"

Since there's been no shortage of actual words of death penalty foes around, is it too much to ask that you acutally use them?

[december]

Originally posted by wring
Here december makes the claim that since I oppose the DP, I *must* therefore be claiming to be on a higher moral plane because of it

I carefully wrote that some DP opponents felt that way. I said nothing specifically about wring.

Since there's been no shortage of actual words of death penalty foes around, is it too much to ask that you acutally use them?

Wring, please feel free to describe your personal anti-DP feelings any way you want to. I'm particularly interested in how your anti-DP position affects your feelings about yourself.

P.S. I've not attempted to respond to your point about Jack. Let him fight his own battles!

[alice_in_wonderland]

Humm. I'm opposed to the dealth penalty, because I find it barbaric. I don't think that makes me morally superior to anyone, I just think its nasty. As nasty as a private citizen premeditating a murder and then acting on it. (However, I wouldn't object if Clifford Olsen was accidentally let into general population for about 15 minutes and wound up with a shiv in the back.)

Mind you, I don't kill spiders I find in my house either.

Fortunatly for me, I live in Canada and we don't have the dealth penalty.

Yeah Canada!

Al.

[wring]

ok, december So you say "some" I guess I am tired of folks attributing motives to their opponents. And, frankly, when you're talking about a 'group' such as DP foes, DP advocates, etc, I suspect that people's motivations are as varied as the length of their hair. (you'll note I didn't participate in the thread you mentioned)
In the meantime, my position, as has been posted elsewhere is:
The US system of DP is quite flawed. here's some of why/how

I am generally opposed to it tho' since as long as human beings conduct and are in control of the DP, there is potential for errors, which means an innocent may be executed. I find that an intolerable 'margin of error' for a civilized society. The link details one such case where the guy was within hours of the execution, his sentence was commuted (IOW, the governor still thought he was guilty, but allowed him at the last minute, to live). DNA evidence later showed he was innocent. Death penalty is final, there is no possible remedy if such an error is discovered later.

Society has a right to protect itself from those who would do it harm, that's why we have prisons. The right of self defense, in the case of an individual generally is only allowed at the point when the threat is real and immenant. Life w/o parole on a secure facility would provide the security desired, w/o the possability of the state committing the heinous act of killing an innocent person.

I understand that others may disagree. They have that right. I don't claim to be 'more moral' than others. If I say that I have ethical objections to the DP that does not include a statement that if you disagree, you, therefore have no ethics. People of a civilized society can have different opinions on such matters, without the attending attribution 'I'm better than you'.

[wring]

sorry. I'm not sure what you mean by "I'm particularly interested in how your anti-DP position affects your feelings about yourself. " ???

[december]

Originally posted by wring
sorry. I'm not sure what you mean by "I'm particularly interested in how your anti-DP position affects your feelings about yourself. " ???

I think you've answered my question, wring. You said, "I don't claim to be 'more moral' than others." It seems to me that some DP opponents DO feel more moral, and the thread was designed to explore that feeling. E.g., xenophon41 seems to be saying the the issue is so open-and-shut, that there is at least a feeling of moral correctness, if not moral superiority.

[pepperlandgirl]

I would just like add that when I didn't add the possibility of error in my reasoning, because I feel that all human life is equal, whether the person is innocent or guilty of a crime. Now, what that person does with his/her life is obviously not equal, and guilty parties should be punished. I just think life is too precious to be ripped away from anybody for any reason.

[xenophon41]

Originally posted by december:
E.g., xenophon41 seems to be saying the the issue is so open-and-shut, that there is at least a feeling of moral correctness, if not moral superiority.

Anytime a deliberate death is involved, it's a moral issue. What I'm saying is that opponents of the DP, in general, have moral reasons for their opposition to it. That means they think the correct moral position for a state would be to conduct no executions.

Speaking specifically about my own feelings, I understand that many people believe that one of the duties of a state is that of exacting retribution; I don't agree with those people, but if they put their faith in the authority of men, I suppose they can justify that belief according to their own moral principles. However, if they are pro-DP purely for the sake of public safety, I don't believe they can morally justify the death penalty when there are ways of assuring public safety that don't involve killing.

[wring]

rather than resurecting the older longer d/p thread, this one will do. Many pro death penalty folks talk about 'if the person escapes and kills again' sort of thing, vs. the death penalty foes who are concerned about those cases where an innocent person is on death row.

and, in all those threads, arguing back and forth, one little detail slipped under the radar:

If we have the innocent person in prison - the guilty one isn't.

as in:

mentally retarded man freed after DNA proves he's innocent despite his 'confessions' after serving 22 years of '7 life sentences' (admittedly not on death row, but the principal is the same)

while the guilty man went identified but unquestioned, and went on to kill again and again.

again, while the first man wasn't sentenced to the DP (surprised me since he was indigent, in Florida, accused of several murders, but I digress), however, the point is, in all of those cases where an innocent man was freed from death row, the guilty was most likely out roaming around killing.

I suggest that we expend a great deal of energy on the front side of convictions to insure not only that we can 'get a guilty finding' but that the person is in fact guilty. and not shrug off these dozens of folks who were on death row with a 'well, the system worked' No, it didn't. They served many years facing death for crimes they did not commit, while the guilty was still free. let's show some concern for those folks who died as a result of the wrong person being wronglfully convicted.

[Jackmannii]

Originally posted by wring
I suggest that we expend a great deal of energy on the front side of convictions to insure not only that we can 'get a guilty finding' but that the person is in fact guilty. and not shrug off these dozens of folks who were on death row with a 'well, the system worked' No, it didn't. They served many years facing death for crimes they did not commit, while the guilty was still free. let's show some concern for those folks who died as a result of the wrong person being wronglfully convicted.

Great stuff. Now for the clincher - listing "dozens" of cases where innocent people fried while the guilty parties were off killing other victims. I'll just look through all your DP postings for this information.

.....um.........

Well, there's the case you cite here, except.....um.....it wasn't a death penalty case and, uh......well.....it's all the same, kind of. Isn't it?

Not.








Good try, though.

And I applaud your idea of "expend(ing) a great deal of energy on the front side of convictions", in lieu of what so many anti-DPers do - expending all their energy to get convictions overturned by any means possible.

[wring]

and you can't understand that when those dozens of folks were released from death row 'cause they were innocent, that means that the real killers were out all those years? not a day or two until they're recaptured, not even the long number of days those 7 from Texas (not on death row, of course, but, you pointed 'em out), but for years? Years where no one is looking for them 'cause 'they got the guy'

you cannot extrapolate that those who've been released as innocent = equal number of those running around free to kill again and again without all the fan fare of national searches for convicted killer? You can't see that those years of killers not searched for are far more dangerous and likely to have killed again than those very few who've escaped from heavily secure facilities and have gone on to kill?

pointless.

[Sterra]

I think the whole problem with the idea of killing people to prevent them from escaping is the fact that the people who get the death penalty are in jail. If escaping was really a problem then people on death row would escape. Therefore killing them does not stop them from escaping, putting them in death row security does.

[Duck Duck Goose]

Well, if I can get a word in edgewise here, maybe I'll attempt to answer December's question, which if you'll recall, was:

Why do some opponents of the death penalty feel so good about their position?

The answer is:

In our society, killing people is bad.
Therefore, being opposed to killing people is good.
Therefore, people who are opposed to killing other people can feel really good about their position, because they are opposed to something that Society says is bad.

The friction comes when some people don't agree that the State executing convicted criminals counts as "killing people".

[Boris B]

My reasons for opposing the death penalty aren't the same as a lot of other anti-death penalty folks.

I don't believe that the life of a murderer is worth as much as the life of an ordinary person. Given the choice between saving one law-abiding citizen or two death row inmates from a raging fire, I'd pick the former.

I don't believe that the death penalty is necessarily cruel and unusual punishment. I simply can't conceive of a lethal injection as being more cruel than being locked in a prison for fifty years with a bunch of violent criminals. (I do support prison reform, I don't think it's okay to allow criminals to brutalize one another, even if the guy getting brutalized has theoretically been proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, but that's a different story.)

I oppose the death penalty because it constitutes the institutionalization of irrational and self-perpetuating rage.
The argument that the death penalty saves money (throwing the switch on the electric chair is cheaper than fifty years' rent on a jail cell) is bogus - money is not the issue and interminable death penalty appeals are not cheap.
The argument that the death penalty deters criminals is too convoluted to really address - death penalty advocates say the death penalty would deter crime, if it were applied swiftly and surely. Should we eliminate the right of appeal just so we can say we gave the death penalty a try?
No. These reasons are smoke screens. The real reason most DP-advocates think the way they do is that they simply don't understand the difference between anger and public policy. Would I be mad if some political football murdered my family? Sure. I'd probably want to kill him. I've also wanted to punch motorists who don't use their turn signals. Should we make that into a law too?

So I suppose I am a little bit smug about my anti-death penalty stance. I am proud of my ability to think like an adult where so many of my fellow citizens think like children, or perhaps indignant adolescents. If we outlaw prostitution because hookers are nasty, ban drugs because people act spooky when they use them, spend tons of energy trying to put people to death for an ever-increasing list of crimes, while ignoring the most common and pervasive forms of violence, we are liable to become the crime capital of the free industrial world.

Doh!

[Boris B]

I didn't mean to imply that all pro-death penalty people think like children, although re-reading what I wrote I think that I implied just that. People have very diverse reasons for favoring DP (just as their opponents have diverse reasons). Still, I admit that I can be pretty smug.

[Rmat]

Originally posted by Boris B
interminable death penalty appeals are not cheap.

Doh! [/b]

That is quite correct. Capital litigation is exorbitant. And, sadly, it is exorbitant for all the wrong reasons. Let me be clear here: capital trials, appeals, and collateral attacks (e.g., state and federal postconviction proceedings) should never be "cheap," but neither do they need to be interminable. To be sure, capital cases are serious matters that require careful attention and scrutiny. If the cost and delay were primarily attributable to legitimate efforts to uncover instances of wrongful conviction, I think there would be precious little complaining from the so-called "pro-death penalty" forces. But the reality of the situation is quite different.

Persons convicted of capital offenses, like the attorneys appointed at considerable state expense to represent them, are committed to generating delay as an end in itself. The courts, often staffed (especially at the federal level) to no small extent by intellectual elitists who share, or are at least enormously receptive to, that objective. These same judges are often complicit in the orchestrated sabotage of the death penalty's operation throughout substantial areas of the nation. Ironically, it is this state of affairs that, in my view, perhaps supplies the best argument FOR abolishing the death penalty.

Judges have far more raw power than most of the citizenry realizes. There is, for example, no provision of state law that a lone federal district court judge cannot -- literally, with the stroke of a pen -- effectively nullify. The death penalty is a favorite target of this elitist faction. Unless we are prepared to radically re-alter the structure of our government, there is little we can do to combat this widespread abuse of judicial authority. By failing to abolish the the death penalty we provide tyrannical judges with a continuing source of temptation to undermine the considered policy judgments of the People themselves. By following this course and affording arrogant judges repeated opportunities to work their mischief, we unwittingly provoke systematic erosion of the rule of law and destruction of our social fabric. Indeed, we invite an attack on the very foundation of our democracy.

In sum, there are currently too many institutional obstacles to the effective enforcement of the death penalty. Legislative reform of the system has proved largely proved futile because the very judges who are determined to obstruct the death penalty are the ones entrusted to construe and implement those reforms; not surprisingly, these same judges will (and have already) sabotaged those reforms in precisely the same manner that they have sabotaged the death penalty itself.

Whether we like it or not -- and whether we fully know it or not -- we have put ourselves at the mercy of the judiciary. And when it comes to the death penalty in particular, majority rule and representative democracy too often count for almost nothing. The elitists applaud this result. But I -- no great fan of the death penalty, but a huge fan of democracy -- find it profoundly disturbing.

[Jackmannii]

Originally posted by wring
and you can't understand that when those dozens of folks were released from death row 'cause they were innocent, that means that the real killers were out all those years? not a day or two until they're recaptured, not even the long number of days those 7 from Texas (not on death row, of course, but, you pointed 'em out), but for years? Years where no one is looking for them 'cause 'they got the guy'

This is all wonderful, wring, but you're not haranguing against the death penalty here - you're going on about wrongful convictions (true, many of these cases involved legal technicalities rather than actual innocence). By your logic, we should never jail anyone for murder, since there's a chance they didn't do it and the "real killer" might be roaming around free.

It's amazing that when I cite actual cases of released/escaped/pardoned murderers killing again, they're derided with cries of "anecdotal", "cheap shot" and the like. But anti-DPers apparently see nothing wrong with citing "anecdotal" cases that don't even relate to the death penalty. Irony, anyone?

[wring]

Jack still ignores the issue, no big surprise. He trots out a couple of examples of folks escaping from prison (usually not from maximum security), that they did bad things while out (newsflash bad people do bad things), and that's his evidence that the very bad folks who are caught should be executed vs. life in prison since some people (who weren't in maximum security at the time) escaped.

Note, these hypothetical folks (the people who might be killed if those on death row escaped - of course, so far, there's been one very brief escape from a death row, zero deaths during the escape time), are apparently much more worthwhile of consideration than those who may have been executed for crimes they did not commit (even Sandra Day O'Connor acknowledges what he refuses to, that statistically, it's very likely that we have indeed executed innocents).

And here I speak about yet another group of innocents: those who are murdered because the wrong person sat on death row (demonstrating the concept by showing a case where the police ignored the real killer, and convicted an innocent). So, those hypotheticals who might be killed if a d/p eligible person escaped from death row or similar secure settings, are much more worthy of consideration than the actual people who are killed because the state had the wrong person on death row (both the certain death of the wrongfully executed and those additional hypotheticals who may be vicitimized by the real killer who's still on the loose). So, in jackland, one set of hypothetical innocent deaths must be avoided, even tho' it means accepting a certain number of actual innocent deaths, and an additional unknown number of hypothetical innocent deaths as well.

Note, too, for the record, that in the linked case, the defendant confessed. Often that's one of the things that death penalty advocates point to 'but the guy said he did it!'

We like to think that we'd never, ever, falsely confess to a crime, and therefore no one else would, either. Of course, it still happens (in this case, in the case of Henry Lee Lucas, too for another example). We would hope that folks keep that in mind when hearing of 'confessions'.

(and jack you're statement of 'by [your] logic' was wrong, but that's no surprise. My statement is that when you have convicted the wrong person -(and since we've released some 80+ prisoners from death row, seems likely that we've done it quite a bit more often than folks escape from maximum security prisons), you've allowed the 'real' killer to remain free to kill again. Says nothing remotely close to your rewording. Your suppostion includes that those 80 some folks who shouldn't have been on death row are expendable since 'somebody might' escape from such a secure setting and during their (most likely brief) time out kill again. Of course, since in the cases where the wrong person was convicted, the real killer is still on the loose and no one's looking for them (as compared to the escaped convict), those victims are also acceptable, since to question the validity of the death penalty process isn't allowed.)

[beagledave]

My opposition to the death penalty comes from my belief system about the sanctity of life..more so than a concern about the ineptness of our criminal justice system. In discussions that I have with friends about the dp, I don't hesitate to trot out the typical stats (cost of executions vs cost of imprisonment), and concerns about executing innocence people.

And I take heart when people who might normally disagree with me on other social issues (George Will, for example) have a change of heart on the dp because of their distrust of governmental ability. But, when all is said and done..even IF there was a way to insure that all executions were of criminally guilty individuals, I would still oppose the death penalty. My position is often referred to as a Consistent Ethic or Seamless Garment

I think that this position IS a morally superior position (otherwise, why would I hold it? ). I don't think holding this position makes me a morally superior person.

[Jackmannii]

Originally posted by wring
Jack still ignores the issue, no big surprise. He trots out a couple of examples of folks escaping from prison...

Nope, I've cited numerous examples of repeat killings by murderers including but not limited to escapes, something that should not distract you from the overall issue.

(newsflash bad people do bad things)...

How true. Limiting the potential for "bad things" is what many, if not most supporters of the death penalty option are concerned with.

Sandra Day O'Connor...acknowledges what he refuses to, that statistically, it's very likely that we have indeed executed innocents.

O'Connor, in my a.m. newspaper, is quoted as saying that "the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed." It's a jump from that to "very likely that we have indeed executed innocents." But hey, if the cause is righteous, why not bend a quote to your purpose.
It's also interesting to see people (not necessarily you, wring) who until a day ago would have spat on Sandra O'Connor now worshiping her as a prophet. Causes make strange bedfellows.

And here I speak about yet another group of innocents: those who are murdered because the wrong person sat on death row (demonstrating the concept by showing a case where the police ignored the real killer, and convicted an innocent).

Um, wring, you've already acknowledged that the case of the "mentally retarded man" you cited was not a death penalty case. Speak to the issue at hand.

...one set of hypothetical innocent deaths must be avoided, even tho' it means accepting a certain number of actual innocent deaths...

You've brilliantly summed up your own anti-death penalty thesis. Once again, we're knee-deep in irony.
Your latest argument here is just an extension of earlier ones - based on supposition, what-ifs and maybes. Real life doesn't move you, so what hope do I have?