I think what Spiny Norman was getting at is that by your logic there’s nothing wrong with murder. Why should murder be illegal, when everyone is going to die anyway?
I’ve had this argument with you before, and trodden on eggshells in order to do so without giving offence. I’m simply not going to address your appeals to emotion, since they are not something on which a legal system should be based. However, it continues to utterly baffle me that you can on the one hand bemoan the failures of the system that you believe led to the assaults your family experienced, and with the other support the efficacy of the DP, which you believe is the necessary solution. The sentences I quoted above are utterly self-contradictory - do you not see this?
Well, there is a lot of that going around, isn’t there?
The thread title calls Cantu an innocant man, when he was far from an innocent. Cantu was a car thief, gang member and was seriously involved with drugs. No choir boy, he.
The best that can be said about him is that he wasn’t guilty of this particular crime.
Now, I certainly don’t think the man should have been killed for a crime he didn’t commit. But it is disingenuous to call him innocent. Sadly, this is the sort of dishonest rhetoric we get from anti-death penalty activists all of the time.
Fuck off. He was innocent of the crime for which he was executed, which it is fucking obvious is what was meant. And you accuse others of being disingenuous? It is to laugh.
Does that mean the Texas has the death penalty for car theft, gang membership and drug dealing/use? Do you need to be a choir boy to avoid miscarriages of justice there?
Oh well, then by your logic, we should just turn our prisons into gas chambers, and kill ALL the criminals, no matter the charge of which they were convicted, 'cause, fuck it, they ain’t innocent now, are they? Hell, they’ll probably kill someone eventually. Even if, you know, they actually don’t.
You know god-damn good and well the sentiment of this thread is he was innocent of the crime for which he was put to death. Sadly, this is the sort of dishonest rhetoric we get from you all of the time.
Holy fuck, Moto pissed me off so bad with his bullshit, I forgot to even post the thoughts I had originally wanted to state before I read his shit-headed blather.
For the record, count me in as one Texan who is completely anti-death penalty for the very reasons posited previously. It is an imperfect system, it is applied unfairly, and especially applied towards poor people/minorities, and I would never want an innocent man’s blood on my hands, be it through the courts, or in cold blood.
For the record, I have no particular moral compunctions against applying the death penalty for people who absolutely, positively, without a single doubt, killed people in a heinous manner.
I just think the vast majority of capital punishment cases you don’t have the absolute concrete evidence I would need to be ok with sentencing someone to death. A case like John Wayne Gacy, or Jeffrey Dahmer? I’d have zero problem with someone of that ilk getting the death penalty, though I would admit I would personally have a hard time serving on any capital punishment case as a jurist.
Sadly, as much as I have read in the past about Texas Capital Justice cases, I suspect this is far from the first time we’ve put an innocent man (as in innocent of the capital crime of which he was accused, convicted, and put to death for, Mr. Moto, you disingenous asshole) to death for a crime he did not commit. It just happens to be the first case which has been publically brought to attention.
This isn’t the first story I’ve read where a poor minority was sentenced to death by what amounted to circumstantial evidence or a sole witness of unproven or questionable reliability. Nor, do I suspect, living in Texas, will it be the last. That’s just reprehensible, in my opinion, and it (the DP) should be done away with entirely.
And Texas isn’t the only state which has had questionable cases.
Sorry to dissent, but even though Cantu apparently didn’t commit the murder that he was executed for; I find it difficult to shed a tear for someone who shot a cop.
It is true that most DP cases are probably very solid. Let’s look at the anti-DP argument (well, MY anti-DP argument, anyway) from a slightly different angle.
The question is not “Does the victim deserve justice?”
The question is not “Does the murderer deserve death?”
The question is “Should the government have an institutionalized system for prosecuting and punishing people with death?”
I don’t trust the government enough to give them that authority. You had your own experience with a DA and Judge not doing their jobs right, what makes you think that other cases will be tried appropriately? Where these guys were lenient, someone else will be over-zealous and convict the wrong person.
Rather than throwing their efforts towards going after the death penalty, I’d rather tighten up our long term incarceration system so that these dangerous men stay safely locked away.
A problem that is horrific, but that has nothing to do with the death penalty.
Other situations that are horrific, but that have nothing to do with the death penalty. If a crazy man is threatening your family, and you reasonably fear for their lives, and you shoot the crazy man because it’s the only way you can think of to save your family, I’ll support you in that.
None. Gosh, I guess I’ve really been slacking. I’ll get on that right away.
I have, however, had several relatives die of cancer, and those deaths are every bit as relevant to a death-penalty discussion as the horrors that you describe above. The atrocities you describe weren’t due to a lack of the death penalty, nor were they due to corruption within the DP system.
No you’ve not: this is not a situation where there are dues, there’s no special club you join, and the imperfect system you describe is not relevant to the discussion at hand (unless you’re claiming that if your state had had the death penalty at the time of the murderer’s trial, your daughter would have been avenged).
The question, remember, is this: would you be willing to sacrifice another child to the imperfect system? If your other child were falsely convicted of murder and sentenced to death, would you support her execution in order to keep the system running?
I answered your question; it’s only fair for you to answer mine.
Daniel
I was a choir girl and I wasn’t completely innocent at 17. I shoplifted candy once. I skipped class twice in high school. I made out in the back seat of a car.
I don’t think anyone is completely innocent.
Mr. Cantu was apparently no choir boy, and apparently did lots worse than skipping class. But he may never have killed anyone. We punish people for the crimes they commit, not for the ones they might commit. He may have intended to kill that cop when he shot him, but he didn’t. Therefore, he didn’t murder a cop and can’t be punished for murder. Am I crying tears over this particular death? No. But I do have concerns over the system.
You misunderstand or are purposely misrepresenting most people’s position, I think. I personally am against it not because “all DP cases are iffy”, but because at least some are. Even if it’s just a tiny percentage, that’s enough for me.
It’s not like I’m saying these people should go free. It’s simply the difference between life imprisonment and death. As had been already said I think, many consider life imprisonment a worse penalty, so you cannot even argue that death is necessarily a harsher punishment.
So what’s the downside to not executing people and simply imprisoning them for life? The upside is no chance of the state executing more innocent people, which I think is a pretty good thing. What will we lose if we stop executions that worth the state killing a few innocent people occasionally? Again, it’s not like the criminals who would have been executed are going to go free.
I did say he shouldn’t have been killed, didn’t I? So this is a strawman, and it is you who are employing dishonest rhetoric.
All I am saying is that by building up obvious criminals to be innocent victims, death penalty opponents risk a tremendous credibility problem. The sad case of Steven Avery is instructive here - he was a poster boy for the “innocence project”. He was freed by DNA testing from a conviction of a rape he did not commit. However, that same technology linked him to a woman he likely raped and then crushed inside of her car at the family salvage yard. He has been charged, and the Wisconsin Innocence Project is desperately trying to distance themselves from him.
In other words, people are not infallible and make serious errors in judgement based on the information available, their own prejudices, their own (or other’s) stupidity, technicalities in the law, and simple, blind, circumstance.
Given that all of that is inherent in the justice system, and that the real possibility exists that the innocent are convicted and the guilty let go, how can anyone err on the side of supporting the death penalty?
We’re all sinners. None of us are innocent. The point is that he was innocent of the crime for which he was executed, and in that specific sense–the sense in which everyone else is discussing the issue–he was an innocent victim.
I’m still trying to figure out the relevance of the other crimes he committed: why do you keep bringing them up? I mean, I can imagine some reasons you’d be bringing them up, but none of htem speak well to your character, so I’d rather not speculate.
Daniel
Progress is made one mind at a time. 
Thanks, guys.
I still wish somebody could assure me that there was a concerted effort being made to fix the system. All I hear about, though, is states’ cutting the budget for PD’s even further, including eliminating federal funding for them entirely, by an administration led by a grown man who could mock a woman he was sending to the needle.
IIRC, the dear, departed december didn’t even bother with Shodan’s qualifiers when asserting his certainty that this simply could not happen.
Dude, I’m sorry that you have had to go through such misery. Must suck something bad.
But so? What would the DP have solved that life imprisonment would not? A refenge fantasy? A sense of closure? How many people should we systematically kill before we can say your feelings are unhurt?
No sweat. I hope the Cantu case becomes a rallying cry for all sides to fix a system in which such a breakdown could occur.
For those of you with a little time on your hands, Google up Hank Skinner. Here is another guy on Texas’ death row. The evidence that put him there, as well as the recollections of witnesses, is in doubt. They are having an evidentiary hearing now as part of his appeal process.
This case was open and shut at the time, now there is some uncertainty. I think a lot of the internet versions are embellished, but here is a guy who seemingly has at least a hint of doubt surrounding his guilt.
I have no moral problems with killing killers and rapists, but I’m anti-death penalty for the administrative reasons others have already pointed out. The death penalty can result in mistakes. This is unlikely and very rare, but still that it ever happens is enough reason to be opposed to the practice. Also is the cost. It costs more for the appeals for a death penalty case than to keep a prisoner for life. That takes a lot of the benefit away right there.
Despite my agreement with the anti-death penalty people on the substance of this issue, I’d like to say that I’m disappointed with the tactics that are used.
The article from the OP was deliberately misleading in claiming that Cantu was “innocent” and not mentioning that he shot a cop.
KidCharlemagne’s title of the thread “Executed man found innocent” is not true, since I’ve read nothing in the cites so far that indicates he’s been found innocent of anything. A witness recanted, and a DA expressed regret. That’s hardly proof of anything, let alone a finding of innocent.
Everyone piling on Shodan and others who are pro-death penalty is just uncalled for. Thier point of view might not be popular on the liberal SDMB, but it’s popular elsewhere. It’s an entirely reasonable position to be in favor of the DP, and not one deserving of mocking.
Really? I’m surprised. It was a major issue in the 2000 campaign, and the first thing I’ve ever heard about Bush.
Google on “bush texas death penalty” and you’ll get a bunch of hits, although very few of them unbiased. Start with this one.