Yes. The Prosecutor made a illegal and unethical deal with the main witness, a jailhouse snitch, who then lied and said Willingham confessed when in actuality Willingham said nothing of the sort.
So far as anyone has been able to show, no innocent person has been unjustly executed in recent decades.
You contradict yourself.
It denies them the privilege of living out their life in prison.
Would anything short of a judge overturning a judgment and declaring an executed person “not guilty” convince you? For that matter, would such an action convince you?
Please explain my contradiction. A life for a life is not justice.
My humanity is worth more than killing someone in the name of justice. Society gains not a whit more by having the convicted live out their lives in prison vs killing them. In fact, society gains by not having to live with the risk innocent blood on our hands.
If the death penalty is the be all and end all of deterring crimes and meting out justice, how do all the other countries, of which the USA is part of a minuscule minority, manage to keep a civilized society?
We do so many people find the need to justify hitting kids as required for discipline, police violence as a given, the right to use guns as necessary to protect oneself from any threat, and killing as punishment. Why do we think our society has to be so violent in order to be civilized?
Deleted because true, but against GD rules. But still true.
Bumping in hopes we might get an answer.
In the meantime,
Maybe Smapti want to take a whack at it?
That’s not a privilege.
Yes. It would.
How is it not? If anything, the injustice is that scum like Timothy McVeigh murdered 168 people, but only died for it once.
What has society lost from the absence of Timothy McVeigh? What would society gain if he were still drawing breath on the taxpayer’s dime?
They do not.
The threat of violence is what keeps people civilized.
I’ve already explained that. I’m done repeating myself
France, England, Canada… These aren’t civilized societies?
Lord, my parents endured the worst atrocities imaginable during the Holocaust and retained more humanity than you seem to espouse. I just don’t think they’re is any point in further engagement.
Karla Homolka is a free woman and not a corpse, so yes, Canada is not civilized.
Thomas Hamilton, if he had not killed himself, would be alive today, so yes, the UK is not civilized.
Those are ugly statements.
The death penalty is irrevocable, that is true. Although from what I have read, the mental damage inflicted by a long prison sentence is also often irrevocable. Former inmates are often less able to handle society after prison time than before. But admittedly, there is a chance to recuperate.
The redemption angle would be an argument if dealing with a healthy prison system, one for which redemption was the goal and which provides prisoners with an environment in which becoming a better person was likely. The American prison is not an example of this. Take the maximum security prisons used for gangmembers for instance. New inmates are often forced to kill another inmate of an opposing gang, or at least give it a good try. You go in as a violent criminal that hasn’t yet crossed the line, and if you ever leave you do so as a heavily traumatized murderer.
Frankly death sounds like the more ethical choice with such a system, since it is better for both the world and the criminal.
My point is that, if you wish a fairer system, stopping capital punishment shouldn’t be a priority. First change the basis of the US based prison system from punishment to redemption based, give them an environment in which redemption is more than just a literal chance in hell. Then you can worry about keeping them alive. Now you just prolong their misery and destroy even more of their humanity and mental state… it doesn’t make sense to me.
Now the prison systems in certain European countries, for instance, are different. Cells are clean and contain furniture, yes they look like hotel rooms but they do the job. There is a much higher re-integration rate of former inmates than in the US, virtually never rape or violence, let alone rioting. I can see the point of not killing them in such a country, in America I don’t see it. In the US saving people is clearly not the goal after all.
These are ridiculous statements. Your views on what makes a society civilized are irrational.
Why do Karla Homolka and Thomas Hamilton deserve to be alive?
Why is the only other alternative is that they be corpses? How many corpses would Canada have to produce to reach “civilized” status for you?
And who gets to decide who lives and who is deserving of death?