I hope this is the right board to post this in…I am doing a persuasive essay against the death penalty, and I need as much information as possible. Any heart wrenching stories, statistics, or general opinions and arguements would be greatly appreciated.
Also, if anyone knows the name of the man that Bill Clinton witnessed the execution of in order to convince people that he is not soft on crime, PLEASE let me know (I beleive the man was executed in Arkansas, around 1992).
We don’t do homework in this forum.
There are, however, dozens of search engines that will be a big help to you.
I know that money probably shouldn’t matter in dealing with life or death… but I did read that it capital punishment is way more expensive than keeping a prisoner in jail for life. I guess with all the court costs and everything.
There have been several threads touching on the death penalty. Start with the search engine feature here.
And while it’s true that we don’t do homework here, it’s Mother’s Day, and I didn’t see any of my kids (three are in Seattle and the other I see every day), so excuse this deviation from usual Board protocol as my chance to be a Mom to someone today.
I want you in bed, lights out, by 10, ya hear?!
It’s fatal
What’s really scary about reading those death row websites and seeing the condemned and reading about what they did, is realizing that these are only the ones who got caught.
Try going to the A&E site. The ‘Investigative Reports’ series had plenty of cases that would help you illustrate a point like
a) the guy who was convicted of murder even though he was in prison in another state at the time and
b) the 3 guys tried and convicted (several times, appeals courts kept reversing the convictions) and on death row while another man confessed to the killing.
Remember the movie “Dead Man Walking”? I recently heard an interview with the real-life nun behind that story, and what she had to say really reinforced my already sympathetic views on the subject.
Amongst her comments was the observation that truly keeping a prisoner confined for life costs almost ten times less than the whole process necessary to execute him. Another was that captial punishment sends a really negative message to young of our society: “Here’s someone who we don’t know how to control, so we’ll kill him because he killed somebody else”.
My most convincing argument is the example of the serial killer in the former Soviet Union who bumped off 50 or more people before he was caught. IIRC, three men went to the firing squad for his crimes, prior to actually catching the true offender. It’s a bit hard to say sorry we were wrong…
OK, I know we don’t do homework for others here but the fellow’s name was Ricky Ray Rector, and IIRC the case correctly, he was also severely mentally retarded.
If you want statistics, a good place to start might be the Campaign to End the Death Penalty’s website here.
Rilchiam, just because someone’s been accused and convicted of a crime doesn’t mean s/he actually did it. There’s a case in Maryland, in the courts on appeals as we speak, where a man was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death solely on circumstantial evidence. Absolutely blows my mind.
I hate to post to these threads that have a whiff of “great debate” about them, but I must make one comment regarding Olentzero’s post.
“just because someone’s been accused and convicted of a crime doesn’t mean s/he actually did it” - certainly true.
“a man was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death solely on circumstantial evidence” - why do you find this so incredible? “Circumstantial” does not mean unsubstantiated or without validity. If I go to bed at night and wake up in the morning to find everything soaked, big puddles in my driveway, and a tree limb fallen on my porch, that is circumstantial evidence that there was rain or a storm overnight. I can justifiably infer this even though I was not awake to witness the rain with my own eyes, since the alternatives (selective cloud seeding, hoards of neighbor kids with gigantic water ballons) are sufficiently unlikely as to be disregarded. If I see someone entering a room, then there is the sound of a shot, then the person exits the room, and there is now a (third) person shot dead in that room, it is circumstantial evidence to conclude that the person I saw entering was in some way involved in the death, even though I did not actually see him commit the crime itself. (The alternative of the dead person committing suicide by gun and the exiting person, completely uninvolved, picking up the gun and taking it with him is sufficiently improbable as to be disregarded, even though I cannot testify by firsthand knowledge that isn’t what happened.) Whether or not circumstantial evidence is adequate to convict a person of a given crime (and it often is not) is an entirely individual case-by-case matter. Most major trials I have read about in detail involved a mix of what would be thought of as objectively measurable scientific evidence and cirumstantial evidence, but I have read of a few in which the bulk of the evidence was circumstantial.
Consider the following hypothetical: A murder victim is found tied with cord and thrown into the woods. An area store is able to identify the cord used to bind the victim as one of their products, and produces a reciept for that cord sold to a certain customer on the day of the murder. The cord from that batch matches that found on the wrists of the murder victim. Tire tracks are also found at the murder scene that match that same customer’s vehicle, and in that vehicle is an empty bag from the store that sold the cord. This is all circumstantial evidence tying that individual to the crime, even though I don’t have an eyewitness or DNA evidence (and no matter what the movies and tv make people think, many if not most crimes do not have such perfect cut-and-dried evidence, or have far too little of it to merit a conviction independent of the supporting circumstantial evidence). I’m oversimplifying, obviously (by itself the above would certainly not be proof beyone reasonable doubt), but my point is only that “circumstantial” evidence is not inherently suspect. Can it be wrong? Sure, and labs can read DNA or other scientific evidence wrong too. We’re an imperfect species, but we gots to work with what we gots.
Since I loathe debate, I will post no more in this thread, having added the only .02 I have to add.
From cygnus:
This is my point - it’s not that circumstantial evidence was used in the conviction at all, but that only circumstantial evidence was used. There’s not one shred of ‘objectively measurable scientific evidence’ tying this man to the crime. He shouldn’t be on death row. The fact that he is speaks volumes about the real priorities of the justice system in the United States.
When I read your subject line, I thought you were gonna actually meet Good 'Ol Sparky soon.
Here’s one place at which you can start.