Would your opinion be different if the death penalty was made mandatory for all the religious people in america?
I’ve seen little evidence that the death penalty is disproportionately applied to minorities.
In 2004 39 whites were executed, 16 blacks, 3 hispanics, and 1 asian.
So that makes blacks about 27% of executions in 2004, which is a greater percentage than the percentage of the total population that blacks represent (which is around 13%.)
However, there’s little reason to assume death penalty ethnic stats or even prison stats in general should just be mirrors of society at large. There are various reason that certain ethnic/cultural groups would be more prone to commit crime than others.
Wrong wording on my part.
I’m having trouble reconciling: 1) the claim that Williams renounced his gang loyalties and life with 2) the purported threats of gang rioting in response to his execution.
If he really had turned away from the gang and wrote kids’ books about staying away from gangs, why would they riot over his execution?
OK. All snarky comments aside, can someone tell me what specific benefits to society the death penalty offers?
Not too familiar with how the man got elected, are you? California has, IMHO, a very bad method of recall elections.
He’ll never, ever hurt another human being or even commit any crime ever again. That is something that life w/o parole cannot guarantee.
But if you get the wrong guy, you can never, ever correct the mistake. And it stains all of our hands with his blood, guilty or not. Just once I’d like to see the US look to the rest of the world for leadership on issues for which it is quite backward on. You’d think that the company that the US currently keeps in maintaining the death penalty would tell it something.
That’s true.
However, life without parole in a super-maximum security (ie United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, CO) setting CAN effectively guarantee it. There has never been an inmate-caused injury or death from such a supermax facility.
So – if we could guarantee that instead of the death penalty, convicts would be housed in supermax confinement, would you support that change?
I’m surprised Bricker didn’t address this.
“Beyond Reasonable Doubt” is not the same as “incontrovertible.” Juries are instructed specifically on that point.
And we have lots of evidence that people have been put on death row that were innocent - incontrovertible evidence.
Hey, Bricker, while you’re in here, would you be willing to give a short lesson on why “circumstantial evidence” does not equal “dubious crap”? There’ve been at least two posts mentioning circumstantial evidence in terms suggesting it’s less reliable than eyewitness testimony. I have a grasp of why that’s fallacious but you’d do a much better job of explaining it.
And you know what? I fully support the death penalty for people who lie or falsify evidence in a case which results in someone wrongly being sentenced to death (even if the innocent person isn’t executed). Additionally, I support the death penalty for anyone in political office who is convicted of abusing their power.
That is neither logistically nor economically feasible.
The problem is with life w/o parole. Without parole, there is little incentive of a person, who has committed a heinous crime, to reform or even to behave. S/he is in the “what worse can they do to me” stage. Given the lack of public resources to address the crimes of anyone not on death row, someone serving life w/o parole is on death row, with the date of death TBD. Death row inmates, on the other hand, constantly have all the facts of their cases reviewed. If one is indeed innocent, one is better off on Death Row; the odds are greater that evidence to prove one’s innocence will be found and brought to light (and, yes, I remember the thread discussing the case where that failed to happen).
Martin Hyde, your 2004 statistics are misleading. Try this Race of Death Row Inmates Executed Since 1976
This does not take into account economic factors. Who gets placed on Death Row for what crime is hopelessly skewed. Until every defendant in a Death Penalty case gets the same representation that a Ted Turner or Donald Trump would receive, it will never be applied fairly.
Just to reiterate: I am not morally against the state deciding the kill a person. I am against how it is currently accomplished, and I don’t know if it can be fixed to do it correctly.
Circumstantial evidence simply refers to evidence which doesn’t directly address any element of the crime, but allows a reasonable observer to INFER that the accused committed that element of the crime.
The classic illustration: a witness testifies that he hears the defendent’s voice yell, “I’ll kill you, you bastard!” and then two shots ring out. Coming around the corner, he sees a body on the ground with two bullet holes in the chest, and the defendent standing over the body with a gun, the barrel smoking.
That’s all circumstantial evidence.
It permits a listener to make some reasonable inferences about what just happened, but it’s not direct evidence of guilt.
Of course, it’s pretty damn strong evidence.
Of course, we could also use the term “circumstantial evidence” to refer to a witness who merely testified that the accused had a long-standing feud with the deceased. While that, too, might permit some inference, it’s not particularly strong, standing on its own, and might well be characterized as “dubious crap.”
The lesson is: circumstantial evidence may be dubious crap, or it may be rock-solid. The mere fact that it’s circumstantial has nothing to do with its reliability or probative value.
I’m not sure I understand.
Not economically feasible – meaning that enough supermax prison space does not exist?
Then what does not logistically feasible mean?
Terminator jokes aside, I find it very depressing to live in a state where Arnold Schwarzenegger has the power of life and death in his hands.
Christopher Walken, now…
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/5937
Well, this guy has a good argument. Neither the Captain nor I particularly agree with the DP, but I can’t argue that Tookie is deserving of any merit. INdeed, he most certainly does deserve to die, and I shed no tears for him. I view his “penitence” as suspect, and I see overwhelming evidence for his guilt. Moreover, he simply refuses to admit his guilt. If he had done that, I would not have opposed a sentence commutation. I amd perfectly willing to believe men can change. But I don’t think Tookie did.
Did he not review the court transcripts? Did he not rely on the advice given him by legal experts? Or did he just wake up and say, “Let’s kill someone today?”
Did you not notice that the perpetrator was tried in front of a jury? Did you not notice that there was a judge there who made a legal decision as to sentencing?
Or does none of this matter because the governor once had a different job?
My posting above is in response to Verminary.
Logistically, we cannot convert all of our death penalty and life w/o parole inmates to supermax inmates (the definition of supermax does depend upon whom you ask). Nor could we really afford to create enough supermax cells to house them all. You could, and I imagine we do, start them in maximum security prisons, and then segregate the problems. I’m not that big of a fan of being reactive with the consequences so high (doesn’t mean I have a better plan, though).
Just an FYI (you probably already know this, Bricker, but others might not): Florence ADX is a Federal penitentiary. Williams, I believe, was a state prisoner.