# After Tsarnaev is in the ground, should America reconsider its capital punishment policy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 19, 2014, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052 "2014-03-19T01:52:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Why\_Bother](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e19adc/32.png) [@Doctor\_Why\_Bother](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Why_Bother)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/81 "2014-03-20T07:46:14Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Is not satisfying a thirst for revenge an acceptable goal in itself? Not really. I doubt that, if push came to shove, you’d have the stomach for this yourself. That’s not an insult, by the way. No sane person would. For instance, the principles of true retributive justice dictate that a rapist/murderer shouldn’t just die, he should be raped first. If he tortured his victim, he should be tortured as well. None of this sanitised lethal injection stuff. That’s far too easy. If the killer doesn’t suffer just like the victim, how can you possibly call it revenge? The point I’m trying to make here is that even though you support the DP, you’re already compromising. You’re not _really_ being true to the principles of retributive justice. You’re settling for something that’s easier to stomach. Needless to say, I think that’s a good thing. I wouldn’t want to meet anyone who really believed that “An eye for an eye” was a sound basis for a modern legal system. So, since we’re both compromising, and since we don’t particularly want to see anyone’s revenge fantasies actually come true, it’s worth asking _‘Is our commitment to this principle (retributive justice) more important than our commitment to innocent life?’_. Obviously, if the answer is ‘No’ we should agree to abolish the DP since the DP inevitably gets innocent people killed, but If the answer is ‘Yes’, my question would be: Does the principle of retributive justice (watered down as it is) have any _practical_ value, or is it just symbolic? If the former, what _is_ this practical value, given that we know the DP doesn’t affect crime rates? If the latter, is it fair to say that this symbolic value (whatever it may be) is tarnished by our willingness to turn a blind eye to the odd inevitable wrongful execution? Doesn’t that rather degrade our moral authority to abide by such symbolic values in the first place? > [@Smapti](#): > > Evidence that these “mistakes” have happened would be a good start. Who was the last person executed in the United States who we can definitively point to and say, “This person was innocent”? I freely admit that I do not have a single, solitary example of a U.S. court admitting that they wrongly sentenced a man to death. All that proves, however, is that the U.S. court system isn’t very interested in posthumous pardons. The fact remains that in the last 20 years, 18 men have been freed from Death Row thanks to the actions of the private citizens who comprise The Innocence Project. The courts didn’t do a damn thing for these men except mishandle their cases. Do you believe that the Innocence Project successfully exonerated every wrongfully convicted man on every Death Row in America? Edit: Even if your answer is ‘Yes’, it wouldn’t redeem your case. Given the (IMO) completely non-existent practical utility of the DP over life without parole, you’d have to prove that wrongful executions were _impossible_, not just unlikely. ---
**Author:** ![Askthepizzaguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askthepizzaguy/32/9405_2.png) [@Askthepizzaguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askthepizzaguy)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/82 "2014-03-20T08:07:09Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Other Western democracies have abolished capital punishment. It is too barbaric on the face of it. The State dirties itself when it deals death, even to criminals, and besides, once in a blue moon the wrong person is executed. > > Here in the States, the death penalty appears to have been meted out in a racist fashion. It does not seem to be applied uniformly- Texas seems to execute people all the time, while other states have done away with the death penalty. Should The Law be subject to such variance and seeming subjection to personal passions when life and death itself is at stake? > > I don’t know. People say the death penalty is not an effective deterrent. Then again, some crimes are so depraved and low that no other response seems appropriate. So, assuming he is found guilty and after Tsarnaev is repaying his debt to society by acting as a bag of daisy fertilizer- heck, even immediately after the last round of lethal injections are administered, will it be time to ask, “Is this the right thing to do? Should America abolish the death penalty?” I have three main objections I have to the death penalty. TL;DR, spoilered for easy scroll-pasting. [spoiler]1. Fair, unbiased, and equal application of the law The law is not applied consistently or fairly. One person can commit a cold-blooded murder and walk away with the excuse that they “stood their ground”. Another person can get 20 years. Another person can get life with parole, another can get life without parole, another can get the death penalty. And the disparity is largely due to the attitude of the people executing the laws. Judges, juries, prosecutors seeking a certain sentence, governors who decide to pardon or not to pardon, and so on. So basically, on a whim, a more heinous murderer will live and a less heinous murderer will die. And then you have to factor in that attempted and successful murder is precisely as lethal and unwanted as any other kind of attempted and successful murder, but because of quibbling over motive and the severity of the cold-bloodedness involved, some get more punishment than others, but it is entirely subjective. Some can understand how finding one’s spouse cheating could lead to murdering, some cannot understand it, and think this kind of crime is worse than shooting someone during a robbery, for example. It all boils down to the opinion of a random person who was neither the victim of the crime nor a participant thereof. And that person may love the death penalty and want to apply it to everyone, hate the death penalty and want it applied never, or uses the death penalty only against people he or she dislikes, such as wanting the death penalty more for illegal immigrants or for racial minorities, or wanting men executed more than women. Personal biases and no universal standard that is nation-wide and applied consistently means that the law is never applied equally to everyone. 1. Deterrent Burning people at the stake is a deterrent, but we don’t do it because we’re not bloodthirsty, mindless, vengeful savages. And even when people were burned at the stake, crime still existed. The person committing a murder is far, far more interested in the moment, the reason to want to kill, and doesn’t care what the consequences are, because consequences don’t happen if you don’t get caught, and these people believe they won’t get caught. So they are not deterred by the thought of punishment because they are too caught up in the moment to care, or believe they are invincible and the police will never catch them. You could publicly draw and quarter people live on national television and broadcast the bloodcurdling cries over every radio station, and force people to watch gruesome executions during their formative years to scare them into never committing crimes. And the result will be a population which is desensitized to the brutal and gruesome act of violently killing someone. You’ll get people who don’t even flinch when people brutally murder one another. What you’ll have is North Korea, where everyone loves the state even though the state kidnaps, tortures, and executes people publicly. This becomes the “new normal” and people will therefore think that murdering anyone with a different opinion from them is perfectly okay, and also, that other people’s lives are not precious things that we should care about. Far from a deterrent, state executions normalize the violent act of forcibly taking someone’s life, and treat it as something that only good people should do to bad people. As I’ve observed at length, in everyone’s mind, they are the good guy surrounded by bad guys. When “they” are reduced to “bad guys who need to die” and “we” are the only good guys, then the result is a population who believes murder is completely justifiable and okay, because just about every single person is a bad guy according to someone else. Actual good guys don’t brutally murder anyone. But when we teach people that this \*is \*what the good guys do, and that justice and balance are restored to the world when we murder each other, and in order to be a good guy, we need to be murdering some bad guys on a regular basis, then all you get is a society that believes people need to be rounded up and killed on a regular basis. And soon, crimes lesser than murder need to be given the same harsh penalty- death penalties for sex crimes. Death penalties for armed robberies. Death penalties for vehicular manslaughter. Death penalties for speaking out against the “greatest country in the world”. This is not a deterrent. It normalizes the act of murder and gives the state permission to do so. And therefore, random people with legal authority will decide, on a whim, to potentially end your life one day. Based almost entirely upon whether or not they “like” people like you, or whether they like the act of capital punishment itself. That’s a fair reason for your life to end violently, someone wants to apply capital punishment to people with your skin color or gender, or they simply don’t think you have a trustworthy face. These are all completely valid reasons for you to die, according to someone random, who might be given the responsibility of deciding your fate. Sounds fair? I can’t say I agree. 1. He who commits such a heinous crime, \*surely \*you must agree he needs to die. In fact, some murderers want to be executed. Why not make them and their victims happy? Guy shoots up a school full of kids. Surely this murder is far more heinous than someone who just shoots someone else during an armed robbery. Well, I don’t know, if I’m the guy who got shot during the armed robbery, I consider the act of my being murdered to be the maximum level of heinous. The fact that a higher number of people died in another crime, or that they were kids, doesn’t erase the fact that my own murder is a horrendous injustice which is far, far more unjust than anything else that could possibly happen to me. It is quite literally the maximum amount of injustice you could do to me. Comparing the heinousness of my murder to the murder of others means that you consider my life to be less worthy of savage vengeance than others. It diminishes my life and the weight of the crime which took it. My murderer gets life in prison, but someone else’s murderer gets the death penalty. How about you reverse it. Suppose I don’t want anyone executed in my name, and that has been my life-long position. I feel that rehabilitation is possible, or I feel that the horror of living one’s life inside of a barred cell without any real hope of escape is a more fitting punishment, one that can actually be experienced for all the years that have been stolen from me. Or perhaps I think that imprisonment is actually cheaper for the state than the appeals and the lengthy and costly process of state-sponsored murder (which I also do NOT want to be less lengthy or cheaper, particularly given the rate at which convicted men are later exonerated) and I think it is actually better for society as a whole to deal with this murderer not by taking his life away, but by keeping it away from others in free society. And that society is a better society than one which murders its own people by a vote by a jury in a non-impartial system. Now, to have someone executed, explicitly against my wishes, in order to avenge my death (who says I believe in revenge?) on my behalf, insults my memory and commits a second crime which does not in any way erase the first one. Not everyone agrees. Some absolutely demand the retaliatory murder of someone who is obviously a danger to society. And I can understand why. The mentality is, why would you want to keep someone like that alive, when innocent people die all the time due to lack of food, medicine, and a place to live away from the harsh elements? My thoughts are simply that the poorest and most vulnerable among us should have access to the very basic standards we give our convicted criminals. In fact, we should guarantee even better to all law-abiding people. Others disagree, stating we can’t afford it. Yet we spend trillions of dollars on wars with a net result of basically nothing different except the fact that some people died, or worse results than that. My thoughts are that our system is not unbiased, not fair, and not equal. My thoughts are that I don’t want my life to one day, should I be unfairly accused and wrongfully convicted, as happens more often than we care to admit, be decided by a group of people who don’t know me, don’t care about me, and may hate me based on the idea that I might have committed a crime, even though I did not, or based on how I look, or their preconceptions about people like me. My thoughts are that we could brutally execute in public fashion every single person who committed every single crime under the law, and it will not stop crime, nor better our society in the slightest, but will in fact cheapen all life, especially the lives of the law-abiding, and make state-murder absolutely routine. No one will even care about the executions anymore, and we will only be a slightly freer North Korea. If there’s one measure of a society that isn’t doing well, it is the number of incarcerated and executed persons. We are not doing well because our numbers in both categories are enormous, **and it hasn’t made crime go away or even significantly decrease.** I’m afraid that we all have “bad people” who are evil, who in our minds, absolutely need to be murdered. I’m afraid that this impulse to destroy everyone and everything we hate is not an impulse that makes us good people, nor does it even protect us from those who wish us harm. The harm still comes, and then, we become the very evil we seek to destroy.[/Spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/83 "2014-03-20T09:27:19Z")
> [@Doctor\_Why\_Bother](#): > > Edit: Even if your answer is ‘Yes’, it wouldn’t redeem your case. Given the (IMO) completely non-existent practical utility of the DP over life without parole, you’d have to prove that wrongful executions were _impossible_, not just unlikely. I don’t feel that I have any such burden. I hear people insisting “Innocent people are being executed!” over and over again without any evidence other than conjecture and statistics. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/84 "2014-03-20T09:35:57Z")
> [@Askthepizzaguy](#): > > [spoiler]1. Fair, unbiased, and equal application of the law > > The law is not applied consistently or fairly. One person can commit a cold-blooded murder and walk away with the excuse that they “stood their ground”. Another person can get 20 years. Another person can get life with parole, another can get life without parole, another can get the death penalty. > > And the disparity is largely due to the attitude of the people executing the laws. Judges, juries, prosecutors seeking a certain sentence, governors who decide to pardon or not to pardon, and so on. So basically, on a whim, a more heinous murderer will live and a less heinous murderer will die. That’s an inextricable element of the fact that we don’t have a single unitary justice system that governs the whole land. Are you saying you’d be OK with the death penalty if we did away with federalism? > [@](#): > > Burning people at the stake is a deterrent, but we don’t do it because we’re not bloodthirsty, mindless, vengeful savages. I don’t consider burning people at the stake to be savage. > [@](#): > > You could publicly draw and quarter people live on national television and broadcast the bloodcurdling cries over every radio station, and force people to watch gruesome executions during their formative years to scare them into never committing crimes. And the result will be a population which is desensitized to the brutal and gruesome act of violently killing someone. You’ll get people who don’t even flinch when people brutally murder one another. > > What you’ll have is North Korea, where everyone loves the state even though the state kidnaps, tortures, and executes people publicly. …and this would be a bad thing because…? > [@](#): > > This becomes the “new normal” and people will therefore think that murdering anyone with a different opinion from them is perfectly okay, and also, that other people’s lives are not precious things that we should care about. Cite for this being how people behave in North Korea? > [@](#): > > Actual good guys don’t brutally murder anyone. Harry S Truman incinerated 50,000 civilians in an atomic blast. Was he not an “actual good guy”? > [@](#): > > But when we teach people that this \*is \*what the good guys do, and that justice and balance are restored to the world when we murder each other, and in order to be a good guy, we need to be murdering some bad guys on a regular basis, then all you get is a society that believes people need to be rounded up and killed on a regular basis. And soon, crimes lesser than murder need to be given the same harsh penalty- death penalties for sex crimes. Death penalties for armed robberies. Death penalties for vehicular manslaughter. Death penalties for speaking out against the “greatest country in the world”. I don’t see what the problem is with this. > [@](#): > > This is not a deterrent. It normalizes the act of murder and gives the state permission to do so. 1. As defined above, if the state does it, it’s not murder. 2. The state doesn’t need to be _given_ permission to kill. The state has that permission as an inherent quality of its being. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be the state. > [@](#): > > How about you reverse it. Suppose I don’t want anyone executed in my name, and that has been my life-long position. In this hypothetical scenario where you are dead, your “life-long” position is no longer relevant. ---
**Author:** ![Batistuta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/58956e/32.png) [@Batistuta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Batistuta)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/85 "2014-03-20T10:14:37Z")
> [@Askthepizzaguy](#): > > And soon, crimes lesser than murder need to be given the same harsh penalty- death penalties for sex crimes. Death penalties for armed robberies. Death penalties for vehicular manslaughter. Death penalties for speaking out against the “greatest country in the world”. > [@Smapti](#): > > I don’t see what the problem is with this. Please tell me you’re not serious. Please ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/86 "2014-03-20T10:21:32Z")
> [@Batistuta](#): > > Please tell me you’re not serious. Please Well, I don’t believe "speaking out against the “greatest country in the world” should be a capital offense. But I’m perfectly OK with the rest. ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Why\_Bother](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e19adc/32.png) [@Doctor\_Why\_Bother](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Why_Bother)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/87 "2014-03-20T10:31:12Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > I don’t feel that I have any such burden. I hear people insisting “Innocent people are being executed!” over and over again without any evidence other than conjecture and statistics. You can prove plenty of things with statistics. Epidemiologists were using statistics to prove smoking causes lung cancer long before they had actual laboratory proof. But to focus on posthumous pardons and the like is to slightly miss the point. My argument, in a nutshell, is this: The DP does _absolutely nothing_ that life imprisonment can’t do, except satisfy a desire for revenge which, frankly, it only does in a half-assed way anyway. Furthermore, we don’t really have much moral authority to get all high-minded about vengeance given that, eventually, we will end up killing someone innocent by mistake and we’ve decided that that’s just an acceptable loss. Your rebuttal seems to be that since we don’t have any recorded instances of people being wrongfully executed, there is no evidence that it will ever happen. However, this is flawed because over a long enough timeline such mistakes _can’t not_ happen. It’s like a coin toss, in a sense. Getting ‘Heads’ 10,000 times in a row is just a matter of flipping. This is true even if you’re using a coin that’s rigged to land tails 99.9% of the time. Over a long enough timeline, all possibilities are played out. What can happen will happen. The Innocence Project has demonstrated, not once, not twice, but _eighteen times_ that the oversight provided by the courts isn’t always sufficient. Therefore, we can only come to one of two conclusions: 1). Between them, the courts and The Innocence Project have successfully acquitted every single wrongfully convicted Death Row inmate with 100% accuracy. They have an absolutely perfect track record _and they always will from now until the end of time._ 2). Someone, somewhere, has been killed by mistake. I think it’s fairly self-evident that (2) is the more likely option. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/88 "2014-03-20T10:39:12Z")
> [@Doctor\_Why\_Bother](#): > > I think it’s fairly self-evident that (2) is the more likely option. So find me a person who we can say with certainty was wrongly executed. You can say that it might have happened. You can say that it probably happened. You can say you’re almost certain it happened. But you cannot, apparently, say that it _has_ happened. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/89 "2014-03-20T11:41:14Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > So find me a person who we can say with certainty was wrongly executed. > > You can say that it might have happened. You can say that it probably happened. You can say you’re almost certain it happened. > > But you cannot, apparently, say that it _has_ happened. Are you kidding ? It’s as simple as a trip to[the local Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution). > [@](#): > > [Cameron Todd Willingham](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham) was executed February, 2004, for murdering his three young children by arson at the family home in Corsicana, Texas. Nationally known fire investigator Gerald Hurst reviewed the case documents, including the trial transcriptions and an hour-long videotape of the aftermath of the fire scene and said in December 2004 that “There’s nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire. It was just a fire.”[[12]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution#cite_note-chicagotribune-12) In 2010, the [Innocence Project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocence_Project) filed a lawsuit against the State of Texas, seeking a judgment of “official oppression”.[[13]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution#cite_note-13) > [@](#): > > [Johnny Garrett](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Garrett) of Texas was executed February, 1992, for allegedly raping and murdering a nun. In March, 2004, cold-case DNA testing identified Leoncio Rueda as the rapist and murderer of another elderly victim killed four months prior.[[15]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution#cite_note-FBI-15) Immediately following the nun’s murder, prosecutors and police were certain the two cases were committed by the same assailant.[[16]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution#cite_note-16) In both cases, black curly head hairs were found on the victims, linked to Rueda. Previously unidentified fingerprints in the nun’s room were matched to Rueda. The flawed case is explored in a 2008 documentary entitled _The Last Word_. > [@](#): > > In the case of Joseph Roger O’Dell III, executed in Virginia in 1997 for a rape and murder, a prosecuting attorney argued in court in 1998 that if posthumous DNA results exonerated O’Dell, “it would be shouted from the rooftops that … Virginia executed an innocent man.” The state prevailed, and the evidence was destroyed.[[14]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution#cite_note-14) _Nice_, Virginia. ETA : > [@](#): > > [Jesse Tafero](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Tafero) was convicted of murder and executed via electric chair May, 1990, in the state of Florida for the murders of two Florida Highway Patrol officers. The conviction of a co-defendant was overturned in 1992 after a recreation of the crime scene indicated a third person had committed the murders[URL=“[Wrongful execution - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution#cite_note-cwc-tafero-17)”] But that one’s my favourite - because it wasn’t DNA or some other arcane forensic technique that proved the prosecution was bollocks, just _running their scenario_ live. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/90 "2014-03-20T11:55:23Z")
Alright, so that’s a grand total of _one_ person, per your examples, who _might_ have been wrongly executed since DNA testing became available to the criminal justice system in the last twenty years, out of 1,171 executions in the same time frame. I’m willing to accept a 0.085% failure rate. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/91 "2014-03-20T11:58:41Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > But that one’s my favourite - because it wasn’t DNA or some other arcane forensic technique that proved the prosecution was bollocks, just _running their scenario_ live. Then perhaps his lawyer should have been executed for failing to acquit such an obviously innocent man. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/92 "2014-03-20T12:00:34Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > And if you think Tsarnaev should be executed, but Joe Q. Liquor-store Robber shouldn’t be, then there are a number of things you can do. The simplest would be to reserve the death penalty for treason, terrorism and related crimes. I would disagree with that approach. Treason and terrorism should not be capital crimes as such because they are as much political concepts as crimes against people. There are too many people - politicians included - who throw these ideas around too readily for that to be a good thing. It’s a lot harder for someone to argue that a whistleblower murdered a hundred people than to spout some bullshit about how uncovering government corruption is treason. ---
**Author:** ![Batistuta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/58956e/32.png) [@Batistuta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Batistuta)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/93 "2014-03-20T12:04:10Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Alright, so that’s a grand total of _one_ person, per your examples, who _might_ have been wrongly executed since DNA testing became available to the criminal justice system in the last twenty years, out of 1,171 executions in the same time frame. > > I’m willing to accept a 0.085% failure rate. I’m not willing to accept that the state kill a single innocent person for no reason. It disturbs me that some are so happy to give away other people’s lives. Also, it’s not a 0.085% failure rate because the vast majority of doubtful executions never get investigated. Once the culprit is killed, no one is interested in investigating a miscarriage of justice. It’s fair to say that the cases provided by Kobal2 are indicative of something larger. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/94 "2014-03-20T12:07:59Z")
> [@Batistuta](#): > > I’m not willing to accept that the state kill a single innocent person for no reason. I’m not willing to accept the idea of being so terrified by the idea of _possibly_ taking a single innocent life, that thousands of guilty people are allowed to live as a result. > [@](#): > > Also, it’s not a 0.085% failure rate because the vast majority of doubtful executions never get investigated. Once the culprit is killed, no one is interested in investigating a miscarriage of justice. It’s fair to say that the cases provided by Kobal2 are indicative of something larger. Something larger which has _already been resolved_ by the emergence of DNA testing. The overwhelming majority of “death row prisoner goes free” stories being bandied about are people who were convicted before DNA testing became available. Now that DNA testing _is_ available, it’s safe to say that people will not be wrongly convicted in cases where DNA would exonerate them. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/95 "2014-03-20T12:42:32Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Alright, so that’s a grand total of _one_ person, per your examples, who _might_ have been wrongly executed since DNA testing became available to the criminal justice system in the last twenty years, out of 1,171 executions in the same time frame. > > I’m willing to accept a 0.085% failure rate. The examples I picked are not the only ones there are, just the more recent and striking on a far\_from\_exhaustive Wikipedia page. > [@](#): > > Then perhaps his lawyer should have been executed for failing to acquit such an obviously innocent man. Blame the victim, much ? > [@](#): > > Something larger which has _already been resolved_ by the emergence of DNA testing. DNA testing is not a silver bullet. It takes time, it’s expensive, it’s not always used, in plenty of cases it’s not conclusive, and in plenty other it simply cannot be used (e.g. the arson case cited - you don’t get trace DNA in a blaze, you see). Furthermore, as knowledge of DNA evidence and forensics increase in the population, so too do criminals take steps to prevent it being used against them or even deliberately use it to pin their crimes on somebody else. > [@](#): > > The overwhelming majority of “death row prisoner goes free” stories being bandied about are people who were convicted before DNA testing became available. Did you forget the 3 examples I brought forward already ? They’re like three posts up, man ! And only one of them hinges on DNA evidence (and even then, only tangentially). > [@](#): > > Now that DNA testing _is_ available, it’s safe to say that people will not be wrongly convicted in cases where DNA would exonerate them. Again, three separate cites on the most superficial website there is, three cases tried to the chair long past the point DNA forensics became a thing (circa 1988 [apparently](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_evidence)). ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/96 "2014-03-20T13:08:23Z")
> [@](#): > > Cameron Todd Willingham was executed February, 2004, for murdering his three young children by arson at the family home in Corsicana, Texas. Nationally known fire investigator Gerald Hurst reviewed the case documents, including the trial transcriptions and an hour-long videotape of the aftermath of the fire scene and said in December 2004 that “There’s nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire. It was just a fire.”[12] In 2010, the Innocence Project filed a lawsuit against the State of Texas, seeking a judgment of “official oppression”.[13] You claimed DNA, not that one expert disagreed with the verdict. > [@](#): > > Johnny Garrett of Texas was executed February, 1992, for allegedly raping and murdering a nun. In March, 2004, cold-case DNA testing identified Leoncio Rueda as the rapist and murderer of another elderly victim killed four months prior.[15] Immediately following the nun’s murder, prosecutors and police were certain the two cases were committed by the same assailant.[16] In both cases, black curly head hairs were found on the victims, linked to Rueda. Previously unidentified fingerprints in the nun’s room were matched to Rueda. The flawed case is explored in a 2008 documentary entitled The Last Word. If Garrett was innocent, how did his fingerprints get on the knife under the nun’s bed, and his pubic hair in her bed? And again, you claimed DNA evidence cleared him. It doesn’t - his fingerprints were on the bed, and he confessed to a jailhouse informant and to the police. > [@](#): > > In the case of Joseph Roger O’Dell III, executed in Virginia in 1997 for a rape and murder, a prosecuting attorney argued in court in 1998 that if posthumous DNA results exonerated O’Dell, “it would be shouted from the rooftops that … Virginia executed an innocent man.” The state prevailed, and the evidence was destroyed.[14] Again, you claimed that DNA evidence cleared an executed person, not that it would if it had ever been done, which it wasn’t. Your cite also mentions Roger Coleman as someone who would be cleared if DNA testing were done. It was, and he wasn’t. > [@](#): > > Nice, Virginia. > [@](#): > > The victim’s blood type was found on the seat of O’Dell’s car. Tire tread marks that were unique to O’Dell’s vehicle were found at the scene where the body was dumped, seminal fluids and pubic hairs found in and on the victim’s body matched that of O’Dell. > > O’Dell had a criminal record with 17 felony convictions stretching back to 1958. [Cite.](http://murderpedia.org/male.O/o1/odell-joseph.htm) Again I will ask you to please provide what you claimed existed. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/97 "2014-03-20T13:21:10Z")
> [@Doctor\_Why\_Bother](#): > > Simply sentence those offenders who would otherwise have gotten the DP to life without the possibility of parole. Unless they then kill a guard, or another inmate. I have already mentioned a couple of instances where that happened. > [@](#): > > As for escapes? Just put them in maximum security. I think I’m right in saying that no-one has ever escaped from a Federal Supermax, so just stick them in there. I [wouldn’t be so sure](http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/breakout/episodes/escape-from-supermax/), at least about supermax in general. Since there is only one federal supermax, it would need to be expanded. You are aware that most murders are not federal crimes, are you not? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/98 "2014-03-20T14:01:50Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Alright, so that’s a grand total of _one_ person, per your examples, who _might_ have been wrongly executed since DNA testing became available to the criminal justice system in the last twenty years, out of 1,171 executions in the same time frame. > > I’m willing to accept a 0.085% failure rate. I can only assume you are trying to make some sort of rhetorical point by saying stupid things. As has already been pointed out: > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Nobody gets proven innocent (not that such a concept exists in the law) after death because dead people don’t get new trials. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/99 "2014-03-20T14:03:30Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Unless they then kill a guard, or another inmate. I have already mentioned a couple of instances where that happened. How is that a justification for the death penalty? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052/100 "2014-03-20T15:11:14Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Agreed. I oppose the death penalty, but calling it “murder” is just factually incorrect. Meat isn’t technically murder either. I think we’re sophisticated enough to understand that these are opinions about the morality of the acts and not legal judgments. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/after-tsarnaev-is-in-the-ground-should-america-reconsider-its-capital-punishment-policy/684052.md?page=6)