Just watching the new ep of prison break (the day the main char’s brother is scheduled to get the electric chair)…got to wondering, in the super unlikely event that a death row inmate managed to kill someone during his last few days, is that pretty much a sure fire way for him to guarantee some extra time alive?
But how would that work?
What prosecutor would waste taxpayers money on charging and prosecuting someone who is scheduled to be executed in a few days?
The prosecutor would just delay filing charges, or file them but delay scheduling a trial until after the person had been executed.
Relatives of the victim might argue for prosecution. If murderer has any $$, the victim’s relatives will have an easier time with a civil suit if there is a conviction for the murder charge. Interesting OP.
It might be more effective to witness a murder than to commit one. That might give the state a more compelling reason not to drag you off to Old Sparky to ride the lightning. On the other hand, your opportunities for witnessing a murder that anybody cares enough to prosecute are, from the vantage point offered from your cell window, pretty slim.
That’s what I’m thinking I remember a case (have no idea if I heard it on the news or if it was a TV show, but for some reason I think it was real) where someone got sentanced to, say, 114 years with no chance of getting out early. The family of/the victim wanted to start a civil suit but they were convinced not to. Why bother spending all the lawyer fees on someone who’s going to die in prison anyways. They’re not going to collect any money and who cares if the person winds up in prison an extra few years. I’m sure they still wanted to do it for pricipal, but financially it was pointless.
Fish: Thats a brilliant idea.
But there is no way they would get a conviction in the few days before the scheduled execution.
And it’s highly unlikely that the scheduled execution would be delayed.
It’s a local prosecutor who would be pursuing the murder case, but the execution is controlled by the State Prison Director, the date is set by Courts (no doubt several layers of Courts & appeals by this time), and clemency is in the hands of the State Governor. All those State officials can’t be overridden by a local prosecutor.
And the local prosecutor isn’t going to try very hard to pursue this case:
- his budget is limited; why spend it trying someone already under a death warrant?
- spending taxpayer money to make it easier for some relatives to win money – that’s called political corruption.
- relatives of the first victim would be arguing just as hard against delaying the execution.
- if a local prosecutor did anything to delay the execution of a convicted murdered, he would likely face political consequences of being called ‘soft on crime’.
Many condemned prisoners have outstanding crimes they were never prosecuted for. Often times, a serial killer might have murdered dozens of people but only been convicted of one or two murders (the ones that had the best evidence of his guilt). So if a condemned criminal committed some new crime it would almost certainly just be added to the list of other crimes he committed but was not convicted of and the exectuion would go ahead on schedule.
Yep, at least according to Mind Hunter by John Douglas. Douglas was in the ISU, the FBIs serial killer unit. He went and spoke with a bunch of serial killers right before they were executed to try and find out if they had more victims. Some of the killers tried to have the execution stalled by promising to point out more graves or identify more people that they had killed. IIRC it never worked, though I could be wrong.
Slee
I’d like to point out that it would be extremely difficult for a condemned inmate to kill someone only hours or days before his execution. Generally, the condemned are kept in special segregated cells and security is ultra-tight. Sure, it’s not* impossible* but it is highly improbable.
In my state, the condemned are kept in specially hardened cells and the items he is allowed to have in there are carefully screened to prevent him from having anything that could be used as a weapon. (They’re not so much concerned that he may murder someone as they are that he may try to commit suicide.)
He is not permitted to be with other inmates. The only people he could potentially harm are the staff, and they don’t usually let rookies on execution duty.
An attemptes suicide would be a better way to delay an execution, because one of the ironies of the death penalty is that they won’t execute someone who is at death’s door. They would wait until he has recovered, and then execute.
Maybe I’m just stupid, but I can’t figure out why in the world you’d want to keep a death row felon from killing himself. Wouldn’t a successful suicide save a bunch of taxpayer money on the execution itself, not to mention any remaining appeals which might be winding themselves down?
Seems like the Russian army trick of leaving a loaded revolver on the desk of a disgraced officer to let him know it’s time to “do the honorable thing” has a lot of merit to it.
Not that you’d want to hand a convicted murderer a revolver, mind you, but maybe a thoughtfully well tied hemp noose fastened to a specially installed eyebolt in the ceiling would be a lovely parting gift for the soon to be departed…
If I’d been so stupid as to get myself into that predicament I’d certainly appreciate being given the chance to choose my time and method rather than being dragged to it like a puppy having his nose rubbed in the puddle, but then I’ve been told I’m pretty weird.
I don’t think we in America want to encourage a wave of ‘suicides’ among condemned prisoners. Just because that would make it all too easy to conceal other deaths.
It was fairly common for Cold-War era Soviet political prisoners to ‘commit suicide’ while being held in jail. And apartheid-era South African black leaders. Heck, when the CIA-sponsored coup in South America was successful, the elected President Salvadore Allende committed suicide by shooting himself in the back with a machine gun.
I think we just don’t want to get into something like that.
Besides, if a prisoner commits suicide, the guards who were supposed to be watching him generally get into trouble.
A prisoner is a ward of the state, meaning that the state is responsible for his health and well-being up until the very moment when he’s executed. The prison which failed in that duty can be sued, and the staff members who failed to prevent it can be fired and personally sued (if it is a result of negligence.) Staff are trained to watch carefully for signs of suicidal behavior and to report anyone displaying it to mental health, and the inmate is then put under suicide watch.
It’s not only suicide which the prisons strive to prevent. They would intervene if an inmate had a heart attack on the way to the death chamber. They would have to revive him, call an ambulance hospitalize the inmate until he was well enough to be released. Then they would execute him.
Think of it this way: it is the duty of the staff of a prison to see to it that the court’s sentence is followed. They’re law enforcement personel. That includes keeping the condemned alive to fulfil their sentence, be it life or death.
Remember, too, that suicide is* illegal *in most states. If you allow an inmate to kill themselves, you’re allowing a crime to happen, in other words.