Well, crucifixion might be going a bit far, but I’m completely OK with public hangings or beheadings. Maybe if the relatives of the victim are willing to pony up the cash to pay for the more extravagant execution of their choice.
So where do you place the limits? Is there a punishment just too cruel, too gruesome, that should not be allowed under any circumstances? Because I can see a slippery slope situation developing here…
I can’t personally imagine one.
And it is even more likely that a murderer will kill someone in prison, escape and kill someone, or be paroled and kill someone. This is not merely a possibility - it has happened already, repeatedly. Something like 1.2% of those convicted of murder kill againwithin five years of their release.
Are you okay with the killing of innocents in pursuit of abolishing the death penalty? The number of innocents who die when we don’t impose the death penalty greatly exceeds even the theoretical number of wrongfully executed.
Regards,
Shodan
This is a joke, right? Nobody gets proven innocent (not that such a concept exists in the law) after death because dead people don’t get new trials.
Good point, but doesn’t that imply that 98.8% of those convicted of murder do not kill again within five years of their release? Wouldn’t applying the death penalty to everyone who is convicted of murder cause the deaths of thousands of potentially re-habilitable individuals?
I guess you don’t support killing every person who is convicted of murder (?), but then where do you draw the line? Which murderers do you kill and which do you spare? Is there any way to tell how likely a murderer is to achieve re-habilitation in the long-term?
I am mystified why Tsarnaev comes into the discussion at all. Is the OP saying “OK, we’ll let you have this scumbag, but no more”?
What happens the next time someone commits an equivalent or worse crime?
You do get the distinction between intentionally killing those you know to be innocent, on the one hand, and accepting the risk that some innocent people will be killed, as an unintended side effect of executing the guilty, right? That makes all the difference in the world.
If not, here’s a primer:
For the OP: I don’t in principle have a moral problem with the death penalty for very serious crimes, but I’m concerned by 1) the risk of killing innocent people, 2) the fact that the New Testament, while clearly sanctioning the death penalty in principle, also provides a strong witness against it (specifically, in John chapter 8).
I can see arguments both ways, but right now I think the best compromise between the requirements of justice and mercy would be to stop using the death penalty for ‘common’ crimes like rape and murder, but keep it on the books for treason, terrorism, and other crimes against the public order. Which would of course cover folks like the terrorist, Tsarnaev.
A number of countries (particularly in Latin America) do, I believe, reserve the death penalty for ‘treason and similar crimes’.
In fact it’s the strangest, most self-contradictory possible way to begin the discussion.
Actually, trace DNA evidence has exculpated a number of dead people since it’s become a thing (or at the very least cast significant doubt on their culpability).
That’s a pleonasm. Were you not against capital punishment in all cases, you would in fact be for capital punishment.
I composed this off the top of my head- I will have to get back to you with evidence. My impression/recollection is that a black person is more likely to receive the death penalty than a white person, for the same crime. In the same way a white person is more likely to get away with ‘stand your ground’ killing, or black people are more likely to go to prison, be stopped and frisked or pulled over on the highway. All of which points to ‘the judicial system as a whole’, yes, but death seems like a special case where we really ought to not allow caprice and what is, really, American post-apartheid conditions to creep in. The country has a responsibility that it isn’t facing up to, and that’s why places like Detroit and Chicago generate so many black criminals: neglect.
Until some real evidence comes along, we could suspend the racism point and replace it with ‘the death penalty is a huge financial burden on the public.’
It is one thing when we’re talking about something like the legalization of pot. But why should the death penalty be applied unevenly? Why do you die if you live in Texas but not New York? That doesn’t make any sense, so how is it justice?
The Constitution guarantees the right to life, so it seems the policy on this matter should not be idiosyncratic. This one ought to be a top-down decision… I guess. I’m not a lawyer, but specific Constitutional requirements as I understand it ought to be applied evenly.
Past that, this point relies on the death penalty being a deterrent, and that isn’t the whole show.
Once dead, you’re deterred from everything. I bet losing a hand puts an end to most stealing from that individual as well.
Tsarnaev is kind of the piece of sand in the oyster here. We’re all invested in his fate, and his crime occurred under the current law. I’d like to see him fry.
But generally, I am drawn to the notion of using the law to tie our hands against the death penalty. Cognitive dissonance ensues.
My wish to see Tsarnaev dead feels like an unworthy impulse. It is the opposite of compassion, and ethical constraints are most important when you have the biggest excuses for being unethical.
Oddly enough, the Constitution does not guarantee the right to life. It guarantees that it can only be taken away subject to due process of law.
Actually, I’m under the impression that the race aspect comes in more on the side of the victim than on the side of the perpetrator. If you happen to kill a white person, you’re much more likely to be sentenced to death than if your victim is black.
“Almost any doubt” still leaves enough room for error that, over time, the execution of an innocent is statistically inevitable.
Also, The Innocence Project (TIP) has successfully overturned the convictions of 18 Death Row inmates in the last 20 years. Since it’s tremendously unlikely that TIP has successfully liberated all the innocent people on Death Row, it follows that less fortunate innocents have been executed in the past.
In other words, Truman was caught between a rock and a hard place. Kill X amount of innocents, or guarantee the deaths of a great many more. What calamity would befall America if you decided to abolish the DP? We already know that DP doesn’t have an appreciable effect on crime rates. Apart from satisfying a thirst for revenge, what purpose does the DP serve that isn’t served by life without parole? I mean, Truman’s choice had a massive, clear benefit. What benefit does the DP serve which justifies the guaranteed execution of innocents?
Unless they’re innocent, which is my entire point. How many mistakes are okay?
Agreed, but we’ve got to have some way of punishing criminals. At least in cases where someone is wrongly sentenced to life without parole, we have a greater chance to rectify our mistake. We may not always take advantage of that chance, and I’ve no doubt that there are people who have died in prison having spent their entire adult lives behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit. But we need to strike a balance between (a) providing justice to victims and their families, (b) protecting society from violent offenders, and (c) minimising mistakes as much as possible. The DP covers (a) and (b), but not (c), as The Innocence Project has shown. Life imprisonment covers (b), and it covers (c) better than the DP does if only because the wrongly convicted have more time to appeal, but it comes at the cost of (a) in the opinions of some people. We can rectify that to a large extent by simply ensuring that life sentences are enforced, that parole is not given, and that the time served is hard time.
Wrongful convictions are regrettable but inevitable. Given that, it’s incumbent on us to ensure that we do everything in our power to ensure that people have every opportunity to overturn their convictions. Is it perfect? No. Will innocent people still die of old age in prison for crimes they didn’t commit? Of course. But given that we need prison, life without parole gives us a better chance of fixing our mistakes than the DP.
Also, of course, there is the point that if someone is wrongfully executed, the real murderer will have almost certainly escaped justice forever. If, on the other hand, that person was sentenced to life without parole but then released some ten or twenty years later, the case would be reopened. That’s got to be a bonus.
Those are flaws in the system but you don’t need the DP to fix them. Simply sentence those offenders who would otherwise have gotten the DP to life without the possibility of parole. 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 absolutely do get the distinction in principle. In practise, it doesn’t apply to the death penalty. Ask yourself, why do we tolerate collateral damage in war? Well, it’s because we can’t achieve the greater good of victory any other way. What ‘greater good’ is achieved by application of the death penalty? It clearly isn’t a reduction in crime rates, as my cite above shows. So why do we do it? What good do we achieve that both outweighs the inevitable wrongful executions of innocents and which can’t possibly be brought about any other way? Answer that question and I might well change my mind.
I am mildly anti-death penalty. I don’t think it’s wrong to execute some people but I’m most worried about errors that lead to innocent people being executed, the damage to the psyches of prison administrators who work on death row, and of course the monetary costs.
There is no “The Law” in the United States. We have a Federal form of government with some powers reserved to the states, others to the Feds, and still other powers that they share concurrently. So we have Federal laws and we have fifty different state laws. The majority of murders are violations of state law and are therefore tried in state courts. So Texas is free to apply the death penalty to certain crimes while other states are free to do the opposite. This is a feature of our Federal form of government rather than a bug.
Retributive justice.
Maybe you don’t think that’s a goal worth pursuing, and that’s fair, but then maybe I don’t think that ‘bringing capitalist democracy to the people of Vietnam’ was particularly a goal worth pursuing, which makes the several million dead Vietnamese a moral outrage as well.
I’m reminded of the words of Mr. Jeffrey Lebowski.
Could you cite a few of the cases of people who were actually executed, who have since been cleared by DNA evidence?
Regards,
Shodan