CA executes old blind cripple

The BBQ Pit
101

I’m anti-death penalty but I often enough find myself playing devil’s advocate in situations like this just because I tend to find the arguments employed by my fellow anti-DP advocates to be very poor. Personally my favorite argument against the death penalty is the fact that it’s in violation of the basic morality that serves as the framework for the very laws we execute people for violating.

The argument that “this person was no threat to society” is a poor one. It implies that the criminal justice system exists purely to keep threats to society at bay, this is not true. The criminal justice system has other extremely important goals. One of them is settling matters equitably. Before the establishment of formalized criminal justice systems if someone killed a friend of mine, I’d get together 6-7 friends of mine (or more) we’d march down to his house and kill him. It was mob justice.

As civilization advanced mob justice was recognized as poor, there was no guarantee that the person the mob punished was guilty, and there was no restraint of the power of the mob. Furthermore, there was no guarantee that the mob was going to punish someone in a manner fitting his crime.

The government usurped this process for the public good. Now, if you are accused of a crime the government puts you through a fact-finding process, it must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that you committed the crime before you can be punished for it. During this fact-finding “trial” process you have constitutional rights that cannot be violated, you are entitled certain rights that help to give you a very good chance of proving your innocence if you are indeed innocent.

To move it back to my point, part of the criminal justice system is indeed all about protecting society at large. Part of it (a huge part of it) however, is about providing the vacuous concept of “justice.” The people are seen as being entitled to justice. When I kill, rape, maim, steal, et cetera I’ve both committed a crime against another person and against society at large. I’ve “wronged” society. Just like in a civil case, if I wrong someone, I have to pay for it. I have to pay some monetary fee. In a criminal case, the wrong I committed is often seen as being great enough that a simple monetary compensation will not provide an equitable result to either society or the victims of the crime I committed. In some cases, society has seen fit to implement executions to right the most ultimate of wrongs. Personally I disagree with that, but again I’m playing DA here.

Let’s use an example. Imagine that Tom & Jerry, instead of being cat and mouse, were two human beings. Tom had a deep hatred for Jerry, they were arch-enemies. One day, after many years of trying, Tom successfully killed Jerry. Tom is sent to prison for 20 years to life. Under your “protecting society” concept Tom shouldn’t serve a day in prison. He killed Jerry because Jerry was his arch-nemesis, you only have ONE arch-nemesis. Tom could reasonably and logically explain that he killed Jerry because Jerry was his arch-nemesis, that he doesn’t have any other arch-nemesis and thus there’s not reasonable risk that he’ll ever murder someone again.

To accept Tom’s argument would be to say that society, and Jerry, don’t deserve anything in return for the grave wrong that Tom committed against them. And that, goes against the very foundations of the criminal justice system.

102

We can deal with your inappropriate behavior over here Frank, but to stay on the subject at hand, would you care to tell me exactly what it is about my posts in this thread that meet your definition of “bitter, bilious, vile, and vicious”? :dubious:

103

Jeeaz, you go to the dentist and the thread explodes!

First, I want to address the threat to society thing. Yes, he arranged the deaths of two people while he was in jail. But how many after he was convicted of those? The system ain’t perfect. (Which is one of the reasons I’m opposed to CP.) Still, they kept him locked up for a couple of decades and he didn’t escape. He was on ice, and there was no reason to kill him.

Unless, per the quote above, the purpose is revenge. The State should not be in the business of revenge. Remember that prisons are also called penetintiaries. The idea was that criminals could be rehabilitated. Now this clown was beyond redemption. You won’t find me supporting him. But he didn’t need to be killed. We don’t need to execute people. I, and many others feel that it’s wrong. It can be abused, and has been by other countries. There is too much room for error in the system.

104

[QUOTE=Pjen]
Except that it would have been neither necessary nor possible in any other Western Civilized nation (except Japan). Other choices could be made-

[QUOTE]

Such as? :confused: :dubious: Maybe “not possible”, but would you just let him keep killing?

He was killing innocents from prison, while sentenced to Life. This IS a “Poster boy” case for why “life without parole” doesn’t always work. Such cases are few & far between, I’ll admit. There in GB you can feel superious as with your comparitively much smaller population you won’t have hardly any- in fact neither does the USA.

I am morally against the DP. But I can’t say much about this execution. If you want to find some questionable executions, try Texas, not California. TX executes many times what CA does, and for reasons which are more dubious- IMHO.

105

When did they re-locate Japan?

106

Are you trying to point out the “No True Scotsman” fallacy to a Scotsman? :slight_smile: Well, I can assure you that no true Scotsman recognizes the “No True Scotsman” fallacy!

107

Well, the USA does have 25 times the population of Singapore. So that pretty much evens that out.

The USA only has less than 3 times the population of Japan, so there actually is a quantitative difference there. I would guess that the homogeneity of Japanese society is a big factor in its low level of crime, but that’s hardly my field of expertise.

(CIA world factbook: Japan population = 127,417,244, Singapore population = 4,425,720, USA population =295,734,134)

108

They only executed him?

He shoulda been water-boarded Gitmo style, then burned at the stake!

That’ll deter the muthafucka next time!!!

109

Ice Floe dude, Ice Floe.

110

You seem to be missing my point. My point is that there is more to the criminal just system than simply “protecting society” or “containing threats.” If I kill someone, and it is a situation in which it’s obvious I’d never kill another person, do you think I should be found guilty, but my sentence should be NO TIME? For example if someone raped my daughter and I killed that person, I guess I should do no time? I only killed him because he raped my daughter, rationally, I’m not a threat to the public at large.

Do I not owe society any time because of the crime I committed against society? For taking the law into my own hands?

Punishment in the criminal justice system comes in many forms. If you think the death penalty can only be done out of revenge, then I’m guessing you feel the same way about life in prison?

Do you hold the position that punishment can only be for two valid reasons, and everything else is revenge (the valid reasons being rehabilitation and societal protection)?

You seem to differentiate one type of punishment as being “purely revenge” while ignoring the fact that under your theory all forms of punishment can be seen as “purely revenge” in any case where the person is unlikely to commit any more crimes. I see punishment as a sliding scale, the most extreme on that scale is death, the least extreme is probably monetary fines or perhaps official “warnings.”

I feel society shouldn’t cross certain parts of the scale, we shouldn’t start torturing people and we shouldn’t be killing people. But nonetheless execution is still just anothe form of punishment for criminal acts, and just because it is brutal and extremely complete and final doesn’t mean it’s any more “revenge” than any other form of punishment.

Obviously if you feel that imprisonment for any reason other than rehab/societal protection = revenge then I can talk til I’m blue in the face but you won’t get my point.

111

Well, I can think of three people who couldn’t.

Regards,
Shodan

112

And those who died because we can’t afford enough cops due to the expense of the DP?

113

Did not RTFT.

However, my knee jerk response is as follows:

I don’t believe in the death penalty. However, it is the law of the land. We, as a society, have decided that some crimes are so heinous that the criminal deserves killin’.

As I understand it, whether or not one deserves killin’ revolves around the the details of the crime committed. If what you did what horrendous enough, you’re going to the chair. If there’s some degree of mitigating circumstance, perhaps you’ll get off with life w/o.

If that’s the system, what does the demographics of the criminal have to do with anything? If we’re going to execute people for committing particularly unpopular crimes, why should the accused age, health status or mental state matter?

Too put it another way: If you do something bad enough to rate the death penalty, why should you get off the hook just because you’re old and sick?

What other legal penalties should one be able to avoid on these grounds? Should you be able to avoid traffic tickets or tax penalties because you are old?

Again, I do not agree with the death penalty. But if it is to be applied, it should be done objectively based upon the crime committed.

114

Two letters on this subject from today’s Guardian:

We do care about the death penalty

There were at least 300 people at the prison gates as Clarence Ray Allen was executed at St Quentin jail. Many of your readers may have assumed that the people of California didn’t care (Death penalty in US: Blind and frail killer, 75, to get lethal injection, January 13). There had been weeks of organising across the state to get Governor Schwarzenegger to grant a reprieve to this 76-year-old man who was blind, deaf and confined to a wheel chair. And though the crowd to provide “witness” to the execution was smaller than on previous occasions, this may be connected to the fact that a bill is pending in the California legislature for a moratorium on executions.

Opinion is moving across the nation, but especially in California. This is not some major moral change, but rather a recognition that innocent people are being executed. Also, it is being increasingly recognised that anybody who can afford to pay an attorney will avoid the death sentence and receive life imprisonment without parole. Californians are beginning to understand that we are executing poor people and people of colour. They see that our executions are discriminatory. Millions of Californians believe that the death penalty is barbaric. We continue to jail and execute poor people without looking at the underlying causes. The death penalty is used as simple revenge. We are working to bring this state and this nation in line with other nations where this cruel and damaging practice has been banned for decades.
Rev Dr Alan Jones

South Hayward United Methodist church, California, USA
• On Monday in San Quentin prison, Clarence Ray Allen suffered “legal homicide”, being put to death by the state. He became the oldest person executed in California. Sixty years ago an illiterate black and tearful George Junius Stinney Jr, aged 14 years and 7 months, was strapped into the electric chair in a southern state to become the youngest person to be legally killed in the US during the 20th century. So diminutive was he that the straps required adjustment. On death row in Arizona now is LeRoy Nash, aged 90, and the authorities there appear to be hoping that he dies from natural causes, as it would be embarrassing to strap a nonagenarian on to the gurney and administer a cold-blooded lethal injection.

While the US supreme court has now decreed that the execution of individuals who are mentally ill must stop, and that juvenile offenders can no longer be put to death, loopholes exist. In Tennessee, Greg Thompson — diagnosed as bipolar and schizophrenic — has responded so well to a court-imposed regime of powerful anti-psychotic medications that the state now wants to kill him. The US is the only industrialised western nation that retains capital punishment. Is this an indicator of a “civilised” society?
Brian Crowther

It seems I’m not alone.

115

Sometimes justice is too slow. Excusing a death penalty just because someone is sick is pretty ridiculous. He’s no more innocent now than when he committed the crimes.

I’m not pro-death penalty by any stretch, but this is a very weak argument.

116

I am against the death penalty on practical (i.e. the “are we 100% sure of guilt?” argument,) grounds but I have absolutely no moral compunction about it. And I sure as hell am not convinced by the “Everybody else thinks you’re tools for executing murderers! Shame!” argument.

I have yet to hear a convincing moral anti-DP argument. Why, exactly, is it so wrong to demand that a murderer pay for his crimes in the same coin he stole from others? Ask me, Hammurabi had a hell of a good point.

117

The only thing we can be 100% sure of is that Pjen is a self-righteous slug.

I am a fairly recent convert to the anti-death penalty crowd. My conversion took place in thread right here in the pit. (Pjen, if you had been there, I probably would’ve held out a lot longer.) My belief is the same as yours. Some people deserve the ultimate punishment. (Hell, some of 'em beg for it.) But our justice system is too fallable and too often a tool for political chicanery . We simply cannot be that certain 100% of the time. And the idea of an innocent person being executed is too repulsive.

The fact that he was old and in poor health is irrelevant. This guy deserved what he got. But we shouldn’t be dishing it out.

118

No, we haven’t. Who and what you are is more important than what you do. A poor gay black man who tortures a rich white woman to death would be a prime canididate. A rich white woman who tortures a poor gay black man to death would never get the DP, even if she was videotaped doing it.

119

I don’t think that’s true. No class of people is immune to the death penalty although certain classes most definitely get it applied to them far more often than others, and certain types of victims will also insure the death penalty for their attacker more than others.

So your point isn’t entirely off-base, just the never part of it.

120

(Post #78)

(Post # 98)
Which does not excuse the United States as a country from blame for the actions of its Government which could do otherwise. It so happens that SCOTUS find that killing prisoners is not cruel and unusual. Legislative and judicial authorities in almost every other Western nation have found it so. Any state could (some 10-15 I believe have) outlawed the killing of prisoners. The Federal Government could outlaw the killing of prisoners in Federal cases.

The fact that 12 citizens of California decided to direct the State to kill this prisoner does not excuse the USA (whole or parts) from condemnation of its morally dated acts in continuing to kill prisoners.