Capital Punishment- Cruel and Unusual or a good way to get rid of our convicts?

Great Debates
1

A current controversial issue is whether or not the death penalty should be allowed. Is it “cruel and unusual punishment,” thus making it unconstitutional? Or is it just a convenient way to ensure that we get rid of terrible criminals?

Reasons to Execute:
A. Deterrence
1. If certain crimes can be punished by death, fewer people would be willing to risk their lives and commit the crime.
2. There is no second chance, no chance of parole. Death is much more permanent than a life sentence.
B. Hard to kill a wrongly convicted criminal
1. Many people feel that if the death sentence is used, then there would be innocent people who were wrongly convicted killed and, if proved innocent, they could not be released. Reasons why this would happen so rarely:
a. " Capital punishment may be imposed only for a crime for which the death penalty is prescribed by law at the time of its commission.
b. Persons below eighteen years of a age, pregnant women , new mothers or persons who have become insane shall not be sentenced to death.
c. Capital punishment may be imposed only when guilt is determined by clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts.
d. Capital punishment may be carried out only after a final judgment rendered by a competent court allowing all possible safeguards to the defendant, including adequate legal assistance.
e. Anyone sentenced to death shall receive the right to appeal to a court of higher jurisdiction.
f. Anyone sentenced to death shall have the right to seek pardon or commutation of sentenced.
g. Capital punishment shall not be carried out pending any appeal, recourse procedure or proceeding relating to pardon or commutation of the sentenced.
h. Also capital punishment shall be carried out so as to inflict the minimum possible suffering."
2. Many of the cases are appealed, and it is many years after the sentencing that the convict is actually executed. Any information that would be discovered has most likely been found by then.
3. Capital punishment may be imposed only when guilt is determined by clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the fact (Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch 5-25-84).
C. Incapacitation
1. By killing the person, they cannot then commit the crime again.
D. Lex Talionis (a life for a life)
1. With the assistance of a Latin dictionary, I managed to roughly translate this to mean "contract of retaliation.
2. This “eye for an eye” concept goes way back to the ancient civilizations. For example, Hammurabi’s code.
3. only way for the victim’s family to have definite closure.
4. if prisoners are in jail, they get all sorts of luxuries, including cable.
E. More humane than life imprisonment
1. quick and instantaneous instead of a life in jail.
2. prisoner doesn’t have to suffer and rot in jail for the rest of his life.
F. More economical than life sentence
1. cost of housing, feeding, and appeals
2. we are supporting these people for life
3. amount of money to support one prisoner for a year: $22,000
4. cost to support one prisoner for twenty years: $1,520,000
G. Maximum public safety
1. no parole- people can’t get out and kill again.
2. In 1992, one out of 11 prisoners in death row had a prior homicide conviction. If we had killed these people the first time, they wouldn’t have survived to strike again.
H. Should be enforced in a more timely fashion
1. The average time to remain on death row after convicted is 9 years, 6 months. We are supporting these people the whole time. (See notes on economics)

Reasons not to execute:
A. Chance for convicted to “pay-back” society
B. Cruel and unusual punishment (violation of the 8th amendment)
1. Any taking of human life is cruel and inhumane
2. can be torturous: For example, electrocution. It can cause terrible burns and take more than one try.
3. “capital punishment is a euphemism for legally killing people and no one, not
even the State, has the authority to play God.”
C. Doesn’t deter crime
1. Countries which abolished the death penalty have had no increase in their crime rates.
2. Many people who murder don’t stop to think about the consequences.
D. Less expensive than execution
E. Moral argument
F. Violates human dignity/rights
G. Possibility of innocent death
1. If found innocent, the executed cannot be freed. They are already dead and gone.
2. 1987 Stanford University survey: at least 23 Americans have been wrongly executed in the 20th century
Sorry that was so long- just wanted to show you some of the reasoning. So what do you think of the death penalty? :eek:

2

I’m against. Your point G of the against argument overrides all others. You can’t compensate a corpse.

Capital punishment is crap as a deterrent (your points above) and nothing more than revenge.

In the UK, the lack of the death penalty kept the framed IRA bombers (the Birmingham Six) alive until acquitted on appeal. The judge at the original trial admitted that he would have hung them had the death penalty still been in force.

3

In theory, I’d raher not. However, I keep seeing all sorts of really mean and nasty people whom I’d rather see dead, so I suppose its hypocritical of me to oppose the DP while wanting to see the agonized corpses of really bad men.

4

Go alien: You said that point G overrides all. For those of you who don’t feel like finding point G, it says that innocent life may be lost. However, the chances of that are really slim. Appeals, which can last an average of 9.5 years, pretty much prevent innocent life from being lost.

5

The death penalty can be cruel if done in certain ways. However most modern methods are relatively quick and painless.
The death penalty is certainly not unusual since it has existed in almost all of socieities throughout history and was practiced at the time of the writing of the constitution.
For those romanists who are interested in this topic here is a link to an article on the subject of the morality of the death penalty by a famous catholic.

6

I’m for it. Some people question what right we have as a society to take away another’s god-given life. Well as an atheist that holds no water with me. Since I think that the only rules that exist (other than the physical laws of nature) are those we make ourselves to protect out society, it seems hypocritical not to dole out the ultimate punishment for the ultimate crimes. If we rationalize that we do not have the collective “right” to use capital punishment, how is it possible that we have the “right” to imprison someone and take away their freedom? It seems as if some people want to draw an aribtrary line and say that life is sacred, but freedom is not. I don’t buy it. Nothing is sacred. But the laws we use to define and protect our society come as close as anything could be to sacred status and the minute we stop doling out punishment apporpriate to fit the crime is the moment we don’t “repair the broken window” and all bets come off and society goes to hell.

Follow this link: http://ethics.acusd.edu/Mill.html

It leads to a speech by the 19th century LIBERAL philosopher John Stuart Mill and it fairly well articulates my own stance on capital punishment.

I would take it all even further though. If I believe that all rights are not inherent as endowed by a creator but are solely legislated through law, it is a logical extension to believe that once a person commits certain crimes they can forfeit ALL rights and receive whatever punishment society through law deems appropriate. For example, say someone is convicted of a heinous crime like rape or assault with intent to maim. I believe such a criminal had forfeited rights to society and that said society could then use such a person as they best saw fit to pay their debt. Medical experimentation is the most vivid example of what may fit as an apporpriate punishment. Let the criminal do some good to the majority of law-abiding society by serving as a vessel for drug-testing. Better to do this to a supposed rational and moral creature like a human being who has voluntarily forfeited their rights through an act of crime than a poor dumb animal that has no ability to act morally in any case.

7

Minica, you say “the chances of that [an innocent being executed] are really slim” and that the appeals process “pretty much prevents innocent life from being lost.” By these words you show that you realize that the chance, small though it may be, that an innocent will be executed exists. To me if we are going to take someone’s life, an act which cannot be revoked, I demand perfection in the screening process and because that is impossible we should not impose the death sentence on anyone. It dose not matter if only one out of every hundred million executions is in error that one erroneous execution is one too many. To me point G still stands.

8

May I borrow your rose-tinted glasses for a while?
Let’s look at Illinois for a second.
http://www.illinoismoratorium.org/wrong.htmlIllinois has imposed the death penalty on 286 people since 1977.

99 of those sentences were reversed, and 13 people on death row have been determined to be actually innocent of the crime for which they were convicted since 1987. http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=1089744

On its face, when 34.6% of death penalty convictions were proven to have been improperly imposed, and 4.5% of condemned prisoners were proven to be actually innocent, you have a problem.

But the problem is much worse than that. On appeal, the burden of proof shifts from the prosecutor to the prisoner, and there is a strong presumption that the original verdict was correct.

Further, procedural rules can prevent determination of whether the death penalty was properly imposed. Here’s a blurb from a typical case.

Herring v. State of Florida, 501 So.2d 1279, 1279-80 (Fla. 1987). Because the condemned prisoner’s attorney screwed up on the first appeal, none of these issues would be considered by the Court.

Scarily, the same rule applies to questions of whether the condemned prisoner was actually innocent or not.

So, 34.6% of Illinois’ death penalty inmates have been able to prove the death penalty was improperly imposed, and 4.5% have been able to prove they were actually innocent.

How many of the remainder are actually innocent or had the wrong sentence imposed, but are unable to prove it? The answer is literally unknowable.

But those are the practical arguments. Let’s talk philosophy. How do you define “really slim”? How many, or what percentage of, innocent people being executed do you find acceptable. 'Cause “real slim” means that some innocent people will be convicted. Are those people “acceptable losses”? (As an aside, your use of the term “getting rid of” is pretty vile. No one I know of, on either side of the debate, looks upon the death penalty as a matter of convenience.)

There is an old exhortation that sums up the philosophy of the American justice system, “rather a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent man convicted.” I would hope that this exhortation would apply more strictly to the death penalty, not less so.

I grew up opposing the death penalty, then changed my mind and supported it. Now I’m against it again, not on moral grounds, but because the innocent have been and will be executed. And that is unacceptable.

Sua

9

John Stuart Mill, whose philosophy I greatly admire and very often adhere to, was not a LIBERAL in the modern American sense of the word. Liberalism, in the 19th Century sense of the term (often called “classic liberalism”) called for the expansion to the greatest extent possible an individual’s freedom to act, and for minimal government interference. The closest thing we have in modern American political discourse - though it’s not all that close - is the neo-conservative movement.

IOW, Mr. Mill, were he alive and living in America, would be a Republican. :smiley:

Sua

10

Another capital punishment thread? Have we done this topic to death yet?

(Waits for laughter and applause to die down)

Nope, no problem exists (with the death penalty).

If there were no DP, these people would have spent several years in prison while their convictions were appealed. Then their convictions would have been overturned (except for the ones who had their sentences changed from death to prison). Instead, they spent several years in prison while their convictions were appealed. Then their convictions were overturned. So they did not suffer any more under a death sentence than otherwise.

This disregards psychological suffering, but you would have to separate out the consciousness of injured innocence that applies in both cases, and show that the prospect of serving a long sentence and then dying in prison is much worse that serving a medium sentence on death row and then dying in prison.

Perhaps there is some problem with the legal system in that they were wrongly convicted, but that was addressed on appeal. So it would have been with or without a death penalty.

You have to show that someone was actually executed before you can argue that someone suffered because of the death penalty.

And none of this “we don’t know how many innocents have died”. We do know. Every single person who has been executed in the US since the Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty in the 70s has had his (or her) guilt estabished beyond a reasonable doubt, and those convictions have held up under decades of determined assault by the most fertile legal imaginations in captivity.

The number of people wrongfully executed in the US since the DP came back is zero. Don’t go dragging back cases from the 1920s; we didn’t have DNA testing back then and they would have died in prison anyway. There have been major improvements in forensic science over the last forty years. With each passing day, we become more and more sure that those who die richly deserve their fate.

The chances of executing the wrong guy will never be zero, I grant you that. But if we execute those who obviously are using up perfectly good oxygen to no purpose, we will have prevented a couple of craploads of other crimes including murder.

Need I drag out my list of murderers who did not get executed, and went on to take innocent lives? It is not a short one. And certainly the list of their victims exceeds 23.

Regards,
Shodan

11

as far as it being “cruel and unusual punishment”, well I think that someone who has stabbed and tortured people in various hideous ways for upwards of 3 days before killing them is getting off VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY easy by getting killed by lethal injection where th only pain that is felt is when the ivs are put into place.

Cruel & unusual my ass.

12

I am strongly against the death penalty. IMHO, there is no reason whatsoever for the government to be involved in taking the life of its own citizens. Also, just 1 innocent person executed is too many.

13

Omniscience must be a heavy, burden, Shodan :smiley: You are the only person I know who knows the unproveable. The whole basis of your assertion is that the people executed must be guilty because both the trial court and the appellate courts said so.

Well, the 100 people released from death row since 1977 emphatically demonstrates that the trial courts are not error-free. The trial courts found those 100 people guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt,” but it turns out they weren’t guilty at all, “reasonably” or otherwise.
As for the appellate courts, of course they err. The Supreme Court would have no decisions to reverse if appellate courts didn’t err. (And please don’t try to say that the Supreme Court is infalliable.)

Great. But what if there is no DNA evidence, either because the killer didn’t leave any behind, or because the medical examiner (erring, as humans do) missed it? What if, after trial, the DNA evidence was lost, and cannot be re-tested by the more advanced techniques?
And how, on appeal, does one beat eyewitness testimony if there is no countervailing DNA or alibi evidence?

http://www.apa.org/monitor/jan00/pi4.html

Eyewitness testimony is often flat-out wrong, up to 50% of the time, but unless you have evidence that refuted the eyewitness testimony, you will likely be convicted, and the appellate courts will have no basis to overturn the conviction.

Add to that - how many people on death row don’t get represented on appeal by Barry Schenck or Alan Dershowitz?

And what does this demonstrate? That, to avoid letting some murderers beat the rap, it’s OK to execute some innocent people? Expediency doesn’t seem like a good basis for a system of justice.

Hey, I’m all for executing these scum. The problem is, which are scum, and which aren’t?

Sua

14

I dunno, the fact that their innocence was eventually revealed just indicates to me that the system works. If a hundred people were released from Death Row, does that mean that there were 200 more innocents that weren’t? I don’t know. Neither do you.

I think that’s what Monica was getting at when she mentioned that the average period of appeals almost lasts a decade.

15

Cruel punishments are constitutional. Unusual punishments are constitutional. Cruel AND unusual punishments are not constitutional. The death penalty, while arguably cruel, is certainly not unusual, and is therefore constitutional.

16

Damn! There goes my dream of one day seeing California execute their prisoners by forcing them to watch Carrot Top’s routine.

17

Of course I don’t know. But I can opine.
And I opine that no human endeavour is infallible.
I opine that, if 100 innocent people have been proven to be innocent after getting the death penalty - primarily because of new evidence or re-evaluation of old evidence with new techniques - the odds are extremely strong that there is a 101st innocent person, where no new evidence was uncovered, or the old evidence was lost or destroyed somewhere along the way.
I opine that in the cases where there is no DNA evidence, and the condemned prisoner was convicted on the basis of eyewitness testimony, when studies have determined that up to 50% of eyewitness identifications are erroneous, there is very likely there is a 102nd or 103rd innocent condemned prisoner who isn’t going to win his appeals.

Fundamentally, I opine that in a situation where:

the better course of action by far is the one that does not incur the risk of executing an innocent person.

I mean, really. When the answer to this question is, by definition, unknowable, how can we justify taking that risk?
What do you believe the acceptable “collateral damage” is? One innocent man executed? Ten? One hundred?

Sua

18

How in hell do you know this?

19

I think life in prison is actually more “cruel and unusual” than death! here’s why:
-you are kept in a noisey, often dangerous environment for up to 76 years (yes, geriatric convicts exist!)
-you are subject to assault and battery from violent, often vicious fellow inmates
-rape and torture are frequent in prison
-you can contract hepatitis (from tatoos), VD, aids, and a host of unpleasant diseases
-the boredom factor is high
-the food generally stinks
I’m not sure I’d want to spend a lot of time in prison…maybee the needle followed by the dirt nap is a better way to go!

20

And I recognize and respect your opinion.

Well, we can look at it from a strictly utilitarian point of view, which would say that, if the death penalty resulted in a certain amount (I don’t know what that amount would be) of deterrence, then it would be worth the potential cost of those wrongfully convicted.

'Course, a humanitarian point of view would reject this ideal outright.

Dunno. It’s certainly not along the lines of “If only ONE innocent person is convicted…”

Here’s a question… how many of the 100-odd people taken off of Death Row are actually found completely, 100% innocent, and how many are simply let off to a lighter sentence on a technicality? And, no, I’m not asking to be snarky. I’m asking because I don’t know.