They don’t need to plant drugs on random people. There are enough idiots that try and buy weed or pills in Bali. The dealer takes the money and delivers the stuff, reports it to his local friendly corrupt cop, cop searches the guy or his room and does a shakedown for between $2000-$5000 to make the problem go away. You’re far more likely to be injured in a traffic accident than to have drugs planted on you randomly. Bali is genuinely a pretty safe place as long as you do not get involved in drugs and don’t attempt to ride a motor scooter unless you are actually an experienced rider.
In the way that the person is still alive. Now, the quality of the life in prison, obviously, is not of the same caliber as that outside prison; however, the person is still alive and can even have some hope of exoneration or other release.
No. You’re denying them their freedom. They still are alive and are not being denied life.
I’d have to say that capital punishment doesn’t seem to be such a good deterrent, wht with the murders and other crimes still occurring in jurisdictions with capital punishment.
You say this from the comfort of not being falsely accused of a crime and not being locked up in prison. Do you truly believe that if you were to be incarcerated for a considerable time, you would rather be executed instead?
As for snide comments about “Third World shit holes,” those of us who have actually been to Indonesia, particularly Bali, know what a wonderful place it is overall. Regardless of how one feels about the death penalty, coremelt is correct that the Indonesian police are not in the habit of planting dope on innocent foreigners, and there is no doubt in my mind the people concerned are guilty as found. Regardless of how one feels about the death penalty, don’t smuggle drugs into Indonesia or do them while there. It’s not like they had no warning – there are graphic signs at each port of entry as well as all over the country about what will befall you if you do.
Bali and Lombok (island next door) are both amazing places and well worth a visit. Kuta beach is an overdeveloped mess over-run by drunken Australian yobs on one week package tours. The rest of the island has beautiful and uncrowded areas, Ubud in the highlands and uncrowded beaches on the north and west coasts.
Well, a prisoner can still get in some good reading.
Unless he breaks his glasses …but he can still read the large print books.
Unless his eyes fall out …but it’s a good thing he learned braille.
Until his hands fall off- AAAAAHHHHH!!!
"Iran is getting ready to execute some sodomites by hanging again.
Why is the West getting angry about this? The people to be executed presumably knew what to expect before engaging in homosexual acts in Iran. Why should we care enough to protest?"
Drug dealing/smuggling does not warrant execution. The Indonesians haven’t figured that out yet. They are wrong, and we should help them see their mistake. Simple as that.
I’m against the death penalty, but if it has to happen, a bullet in the head or heart is IMHO more “humane” than some of the botched executions by lethal injection that have happened in recent years in the US.
I also think it to be a particularly Cruel and Unusual punishment to sentence an 18 year old to death and 25 years later execute the middle aged man.
Back when I was living in Indonesia and running back and forth to Singapore and other places, they would hand out immigration cards on the plane for us to fill in and submit when we landed. Every one of them had, in big red letters, a warning: TRAFFICKING IN DRUGS IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH.
They knew what they were doing and they knew the risks. Fuck 'em - good riddance.
Cite for someone in the US getting the death penalty just for smuggling and/or selling drugs? Because I’m pretty sure that’s not a thing that’s ever happened.
Maybe, Kennedy v. Louisiana wouldn’t directly apply–it specifically ruled that crimes in which the victims are another person cannot be punished by death if the victim themselves was not killed in the crime. Since the large scale drug trafficking statute in U.S. Code isn’t a law dealing with crime against a person in theory it’s still valid. But I think the court’s ruling in that case is predictive of how it would likely rule if the Federal government ever pursued the death penalty against a large scale drug trafficker.
But you are technically correct on this–as some would say, that’s the best kind of correct.
I think with Indonesia my chief concern is it appears the judicial system there is so corrupt. In fact my problem with the last round of drug executions of foreigners there was that it appeared the judge involved in at least some of those cases was open for bribes, and it was more a failure to pay the bribe that landed them on death row. That’s a serious problem and one the international community should condemn.
As for the death penalty itself, I do not actually view it as immoral for the state to execute–states need to be able to govern and defend their populace and I think sometimes executions are part of that. However in practice I think the death penalty is not necessary in most countries, and in countries that have proven unable to avoid a far too-high false-conviction rate (and America is one of those, because it has always resisted serious reforms along those lines that some other Western countries have pursued in the last 20-30 years) I think we should seriously question it for all but the rarest and most serious crimes in which guilt is known “beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
I think Japan does a decent job with the death penalty, only applying it in very bad circumstances and with lots of layers of protective review. The biggest problem with the American system is grave faults in the original case don’t matter if you don’t meet certain strict procedural guidelines for retrial.
I’d be fine seeing capital punishment ended in the United States for most offenses and in most circumstances.
That being said we do need to respect other country’s laws. Indonesia has a sovereign right to punish crimes as it sees fit, and I question our role in trying to pressure other country’s on those matters. That being said, we should question and interfere when our nationals have been subjected to corrupt judicial processes. In this most recent round of executions I do not know the particulars, but I know in the last one that got a lot of attention there were serious questions about the fairness of the trials, and that’s where a government should intervene on behalf of its nationals.
It’s also relevant to the thread that large scale drug trafficking is considered a crime against the state in the US. And that view was upheld as recently as 2008 by the SC case you mention.
As you’ve pointed out, it’s punishable by death in theory, but it’s not in practise. Even if it was, that would just mean America was wrong too. I’m from the UK and we don’t have the death penalty for anything here so I’ve got a pretty good view from my high horse
I’ve been to Bali and hated it - really, really hated it - more than anywhere else I have ever been in the world. If I hadn’t been there with a group of other people I would have been heading back to the airport and getting on the first flight off the island as soon as I could.
As for the death penalty situation in Indonesia: It’s well known in this part of the world that smuggling drugs into Indonesia carries the death penalty. Personally, I’m generally opposed to the dealth penalty - and am opposed to it for drug crimes - but my issue with the way it’s being done in Indonesia at the moment is that there seems to be no willingness to compromise in some of the cases, particularly the ones where the alleged offence isn’t at the upper end of the “knowingly dealing drugs in a country notorious for taking a dim view of that” scale.
Martini Enfield, how much of Bali did you see? coremelt is correct about Kuta, it’s the Khao San Road (the backpacker’s hangout in Bangkok) of Indonesia. But there are may wonderful spots on the island. The wife and I love Ubud – it’s the sort of place you can laze away a week or a lifetime, and marvelous food. Dolphin watching off of Lovina in the North is good too.
I’ve been to Kuta, Ubud, part of the highlands and for a scenic drive around part of the island - I made a point of going elsewhere because whenever someone says “I hated Bali”, there’s always people making the same point as you (ie, “you’re doing it wrong”).
So yeah, I went outside Kuta and I still absolutely hated Bali, and couldn’t wait to leave.
