After Tsarnaev is in the ground, should America reconsider its capital punishment policy?

[Odesio]

@Askance

[INDENT]Furthermore the state, placing itself as a morally superior authority than the criminal, cannot then stoop to the same vileness as that same criminal did. Killing someone for killing someone abnegates the state’s entire moral stance against killing.

There are many good arguments against the death penalty but this is not one of them. Would you say it’s okay to lock someone away for several years for the crime of kidnapping? If a court fined someone $100 for their drunk & disorderly conduct would you call that theft? Do these actions abnegate (nice word choice by the way) the state’s moral stance against kidnapping and theft? Of course not.

[Kobal2]

@Marley23

I’m reminded of the words of Mr. Jeffrey Lebowski.

“He fixes the cable ?” ? I’m not sure how that applies here…

[John_Mace]

@Marley23

In fact it’s the strangest, most self-contradictory possible way to begin the discussion.

My exact impression upon reading the OP.

I’m against the death penalty. Period. Get rid of it right now. As soon as you start making exceptions, you’re not against the death penalty.

[Shodan]

@Batistuta

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?

Yes to both.

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 do support execution for all murderers. (Also for attempted murder, since incompetence should not be a mitigating factor.)

The discussion was based on the idea that innocent lives are worthy of being protected. Executing murderers will, on balance, spare more innocent lives than not executing them.

The only alternatives I can see to execution is life without parole, or some lesser sentence of imprisonment that includes parole. LWOP means that murderers will continue to pose the threat if they escape, kill inside prison (as did the Birdman of Alcatraz, Christopher Scarvey, etc.), be furloughed as did Willie Horton (although he “only” raped and tortured people with a butcher knife, and did not kill). Life with parole suffers from all of these risks, as well as the risk of them killing after they are released, as they did in the Justice study linked to above. Life with parole is essentially the system we have now, as the vast majority of murderers are not executed. We are, in other words, taking the chance that murderers can be rehabilitated, and as a result, many hundreds of innocents die. (I remember reading a study where 824 people had been killed by repeat murderers during the period studied). We are therefore gambling that the murderers we now release have been rehabilitated, and as a result hundreds of innocent people die.

I guess it boils down to how many innocents one is willing to sacrifice.

The traditional phrase is “it is better to let a hundred guilty men go free, than convict one innocent.” I would phrase it that it is better to execute a hundred guilty men, than let one innocent be murdered.

The purpose of the justice system ought to be justice. It does not seem to be justice for the state to say, in essence, “too bad if you suffer, but we aren’t going to try to do better, even if we know that we can.”

Regards,
Shodan

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Shodan

Christopher Scarvey

Scarver, actually. I only discovered this when trying to look him up.

[tigerwahoo]

@Try2B_Comprehensive

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.’ **

I agree. Unless it can be proven/asserted with statistics that the death penalty *in and of itself *is not being applied in a race-neutral manner, the problem is likely entirely based in the system as a whole, and getting rid of the needle doesn’t address it at all.

The financial burden of the death penalty is real, even in comparison to lifetime incarceration. I’m glad we can agree that the widespread belief that ending someone’s life prematurely via lethal injection is significantly cheaper for the state than incarcerating them for life is lazy and shows a lack of knowledge of how the appeals process works.

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?

It’s not “why do you die if you live in Texas,” it’s why might you die if you commit heinous acts of murder in Texas. The death penalty is a punishment that is reserved for particularly offensive crimes, and by definition those subjected to it have been convicted of terrible felonies - they aren’t free citizens in any sense of the word. Honestly, the question here is more about the state’s right or lack thereof to end the convicted’s life than about the death penalty being an unnecessary punishment in its degree. Personally, I would rather be executed a hundred times over by lethal injection than rot away in prison without parole - that’s more cruel and unpleasant, in my opinion. Reasonable minds can disagree about whether the state has the right to end a life.

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.

The Constitution guarantees you a lot of rights, many of which - most, even - are stripped from you while you are in prison. Unless one is arguing for wholesale abolition of prisons, this argument doesn’t hold water.

What the Constitution does do is protect one from “cruel and unusual” punishments. Is the death penalty cruel and/or unusual? Civilizations throughout human history, and certainly up to/including the time of the Framers, employed the death penalty and employed it often, so I don’t think it’s unusual in any common sense of the word. Is it cruel? This question, from what I can tell, is why most “modern, civilized” states that still perform executions have moved to what are considered quick and painless methods - injecting lethal drugs in combination, primarily. Being electrocuted in a grotesque spectacle, or being drawn and quartered, that’s cruel IMO (and the opinion part is key here, because cruelty is subjective), but lethal injection as performed by the US? About as clean as death can get.

And yes, I’ve seen the arguments that lethal injection is not as painless as advertised.

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.

Correct me if I’m wrong and IANAL or part of law enforcement, but the idea of “deterrence” here refers to making potential offenders less likely to commit various crimes, not that it makes felons less likely to commit additional crimes after being released. Think Scared Straight - the effectiveness of which is certainly arguable.

Also, I think the crimes for which the death penalty may be applied are, interestingly enough, ones where the convicted are least likely to be opposed outright to the idea that a human can justifiably take another human’s life. The guy who steals the proverbial loaf of bread and gets his hand chopped off very much wants to live - that’s why he stole the bread. That doesn’t make him innocent, but it probably makes the death penalty “worse” for him than it would be for a mass murderer. If you’re twisted enough to blow up a school or kill a bunch of random people, don’t you by definition value the human life less than the average person?

Using Tsarnaev as an example would be cheating (although I can see the twisted pleasure in denying suicide bombers, for example, the right to be executed by the state when caught).

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.

Your overall feelings toward the death penalty are quite common, I think. There isn’t anything unworthy about it IMO - the desire for justice and vengeance is only human.

[mascaroni]

@Blake

By which argument we also shouldn’t jail people for life. If the state will certainly be wrong in capital cases, it will also certainly be wrong in non-capital cases…

Take the case of the ‘Birmingham Six’; although they each were confined for 17 odd years (Largely on the basis of some now discredited forensic expert’s testimony), at least they still have their lives and family. The judge in that case (I can’t quote verbatim) said word’s to the effect of: ‘If we still had capital punishment you would have got the death penalty’
Nice to have seen you use the phrase ‘a load of bollocks’ though in your previous post…

Cheers, me old China…

[Shodan]

@Bryan_Ekers

Scarver, actually. I only discovered this when trying to look him up.

The guy who killed Jeffrey Dahmer? My bad.

Regards,
Shodan

[mascaroni]

@Shodan

The guy who killed Jeffrey Dahmer? My bad.

Regards,
Shodan

I first read that as ‘The guy who killed Jeffrey Dahmer? My dad.’

Time to see an optician, I think…

Maybe you could consider an ‘opt in’ system rather like the organ donation cards if you think the benefit of being an executed innocent outweighs the disadvantage of having murderers re-offending.

[Askance]

@Smapti

You assume that “killing” is an inherently immoral act and that any act that results in the death of a human being is wrong. I disagree and assert that it is immoral to allow people to live who have demonstrated themselves unworthy of existing in a civilized society.

I assert that intentional murder is “an inherently immoral act”, not killing - which can be accidental, obviously.

And I again assert that no-one, you included, are qualified to judge that anyone is “unworthy of existing”. There would need to be an unarguable objective set of criteria for such a pronouncement, and I don’t believe such criteria do or can exist. Feel free to start a new thread proposing such criteria, though.

@Eonwe

While I love that quote, and am in theory against the death penalty, I am torn and undecided on capital punishment. I think that being willing to lock people up “for life” is not necessarily more moral than killing them. “Stay in a cell forever” is hardly a humane way to keep another human. Aside from the “got the wrong man” problem, what makes life imprisonment better than killing someone?

For a start, as practised in the US execution still means being kept in prison for decades and then being killed, so it’s the worst of both worlds. This is done precisely in fear of “got the wrong man”, and yet that still doesn’t work - people on death row are found not guilty all the time. Why is fear of “got the wrong man” not enough motivation for abolishing the death penalty? But, as I said, IMO the state should be a more moral actor than the criminal they are punishing.

@Blake

Which means that you also oppose every other possible punishment without exception.

The whole point of punishment is that it should be unpleasant. Yet forcing someone to undergo an unpleasant experience without their consent is, almost by definition, a crime, that warrants punishment.

For example, you must oppose jailing people. After all, kidnapping is the most serious non-corporal crime.

Therefore the state, placing itself as a morally superior authority than the criminal, cannot then stoop to the same vileness as that same criminal did. Kidnapping someone for kidnapping someone abnegates (sic) the state’s entire moral stance against kidnapping.

For exactly the same argument you can not fine people (theft is a crime). You can’t force them to work (enslavement is a crime). You can’t even the details of their crimes to warn others (libel is a crime). You can;t even hug them into submission (sexual assault is a crime).

Based on your ridiculous argument, no criminal can ever be punished for any act.

Which is, of course, a load of bollocks. The state can, does and should undertake the exact same acts that criminals undertake. That is because the state is imbued with a mandate form the people to undertake exactly those acts. Just as a boxing instructor can beat the shit out of someone with their prior consent without negating their moral authority, the state has the prior consent of all citizens to punish them if they violate the social contract.

Can you please explain to use what punishments you think the state can impose n criminals, given that you’ve told us that the state can’t impose any penalty that would be “vile” if undertaken by a criminal?

This is a mis-characterisation of my position and argument.

There is no other crime that the state punishes with the same act that defined the crime (except arguably confinement against the victim’s will, I suppose, but that’s a/ rare and b/ not what we’re talking about here). We don’t steal money from people who steal, we put them in jail. We don’t beat up people who assault, we put them in jail. We don’t defraud bankers who defraud the public, we put them in change of the financial system.

In no way does refusing to murder people who murder, on the grounds that we’d be as bad as they are, mean we can’t jail them for that or any other offense. I did not say nor imply that punishment should not be unpleasant - did I?

Murder is the most serious crime there is, and murdering right back is sheer atavistic vengeance, not justice. We’re trying to rise above eye-for-an-eye tribal notions of justice, not sink back to them. I’d hope, anyway. That’s just the kind of thinking that produces the messes in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan - cycles of revenge on revenge on revenge stretching back forever it seems.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@Askance

There is no other crime that the state punishes with the same act that defined the crime (except arguably confinement against the victim’s will, I suppose, but that’s a/ rare and b/ not what we’re talking about here). We don’t steal money from people who steal, we put them in jail.

Or fine them.

[clairobscur]

@Smapti

Which is why we have an appeals process in capital punishment cases that lasts upwards of 15-20 years - to eliminate almost any doubt whatsoever that the person being executed is guilty. When was the last time someone was executed in this country who was subsequently proven to have been completely innocent?
.

What kind of efforts are spent on such cases? Is there even an existing procedure to review a case after an execution if new evidences are found? Is there any NGO spending any money, time or effort on these cases?

I think your answer is disingeneous. The number of people sentenced to death and eventually freed after a new technique (DNA analysis) was discovered proves to my satisfaction that many innocent have been executed. Or do you believe that by random happenstance wrongful convictions only ever happened just before DNA could be used as an evidence (so that they could be wrongly convicted pre-DNA and rehabilitated post-DNA)? That such wrongful convictions again by random happenstance also only happened when DNA analysis could prove whether someone was guilty or not? That by random happenstance, all wrongful convictions were also investigated by lawyers working pro bono in time to vacate the sentence before the execution?

Stating that the absence of a proven case is sufficient to assume that no wrongful execution ever took place is already laughable IMO. Maintaining this opinion when we know for a fact that a significant number of people sentenced to death have been freed after new investigations were made possible can’t possibly be an honest belief.

[sisu]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

I oppose capital punishment in most cases not because I have a moral problem with it but because 1) there’s a chance an innocent person will be put to death, 2) it costs more than a life sentence, and 3) its applied disproportionately to certain racial groups. However, I think, it is more than justified in cases where the guilt of the criminal is utterly heinous and beyond doubt such as Tsarnaev where it should be applied quickly after conviction.

1. For me that is a big issue
2. Well that is debatable considering we see 20 year long appeal processes
3. Criminal justice seems to be racially biased not just the death penalty

I can’t condone state sanctioned murder.

[Bryan_Ekers]

Heck, just for laughs, make it a numbers thing. Each state only gets one death-penalty case per five million population, rounded upward. Hence most states get one, New York and Florida get four, Texas gets six, California gets eight. Given such a strict limit, the designating authority (either the governor or state attorney general) has to choose cases where the crime is especially grievous and the evidence especially strong, because if the case is overturned for any reason or the jury doesn’t decide for the death penalty (or acquits, for that matter), that slot is wasted.

[Smapti]

@clairobscur

What kind of efforts are spent on such cases? Is there even an existing procedure to review a case after an execution if new evidences are found? Is there any NGO spending any money, time or effort on these cases?

I think your answer is disingeneous. The number of people sentenced to death and eventually freed after a new technique (DNA analysis) was discovered proves to my satisfaction that many innocent have been executed.

The number of people sentenced to death and eventually freed after a new technique (DNA analysis) was discovered proves to my satisfaction that there’s an exponentially lower chance of innocent people being sentenced to death in the future. Why abolish capital punishment now because of a problem that was solved 20 years ago?

[Smapti]

@sisu

I can’t condone state sanctioned murder.

Murder, by definition, is the malicious and unlawful killing of a human being. The death penalty is legal; therefore it’s not murder.

[Smapti]

@Doctor_Why_Bother

Apart from satisfying a thirst for revenge, what purpose does the DP serve that isn’t served by life without parole?

Is not satisfying a thirst for revenge an acceptable goal in and of itself?

Unless they’re innocent, which is my entire point. How many mistakes are okay?

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”?

[/QUOTE]

[Hector_St_Clare]

[quote=“Smapti, post:77, topic:684052”]

Is not satisfying a thirst for revenge an acceptable goal in and of itself?QUOTE]

This.

[Hector_St_Clare]

To the OP: if you really want to see Tsarnaev dead, maybe that’s a reason to reconsider absolute opposition to the death penalty.

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.

[John_Mace]

@Smapti

Murder, by definition, is the malicious and unlawful killing of a human being. The death penalty is legal; therefore it’s not murder.

Agreed. I oppose the death penalty, but calling it “murder” is just factually incorrect. We’re talking about the legal system, so distorting a legal term of art is not a valid argument.