And this attitude has always been one of my biggest problem with people who oppose the death penalty.
The argument always runs that the death penalty is more expensive than life imprisonment, so why not imprison them? But the problem is that if the death penalty is removed then the exact same people who currnetly make the detah penalty so damn expensive will simply move to the next most severe penalty: life imprisonment. Then life imprisonment will become even more expensive than a sentence of 40 years. And when life imprisonment is revoked then a sentence of 40 years will become too expensive to be valid and so forth.
The problem is that there are a lot of “bleeding hearts” who belieev that the criminal is the victim and society is to blame who will fight any and all punishment. As a result removing the death penalty won’t make the justice system any less expensive. All it will mean is that life imprisonment will become more expensive due to the freeing up of resources currenltly devoted to fighting detah penalty cases.
So I’m glad to see someone who is honest enough to admit that this is the case, and that if the death penallty were revmoved then the resources would simply be switched to individuals facing extremely long sentences. IOW removing the death penalty won’t make the justice system cheparer and more efficient, it will just remove one potential for punishment from the victim and the justice system.
Most people who oppose the death penalty do not oppose “any and all punishments”. You’re inventing a position for our side that we don’t actually take, and then arguing against that false position.
Isn’t that some kind of logical fallacy or something?
But I never said that all or even most people who oppose the death penalty oppose any and all punishments. I am saying that many such people oppose and would fight life imprisonment of the detah penalty didn;t rae higer on thei rpriority list. That is a position that your side takes and was one explicitely stated by villa. Hell, I think I even quoted where he said that.
The idea that the death penalty is more expensive than life in prison makes no sense.
We should seriously take a cue from China here. Bullet to the head = a few cents. Hell, they don’t even need to hire a janitor to clean up the brains, they can just have the rookie guards at the prison do it. Another thing that China does right, in my opinion, is executing white collar criminals. But that’s a topic for another thread. (I’m NOT a fan of most of China’s policies but everyone does a few things right.)
How could this possibly cost more than keeping some shmuck in prison, eating food and using water and consuming energy, for 40 years?
And jtgain is right, if they’d executed Mumia right away, they could have gotten it over with and that’d be the end of it. As it stands, he’s been living it up on “death row” hosting a radio show and GIVING COMMENCEMENT SPEECHES AT COLLEGES.
Something is wrong with this picture. Very, very wrong.
Right. If there was no death penalty, Ms. Falkner would have just been able to go on with her life and forget that her husband was brutally murdered, yet his brutal murderer is still alive.
It’s not the death penalty that causes the victim’s friends and family anguish, it’s the actual murder and the lack of justice in allowing the murderer to live.
I’m not saying that they should be exactly alike, I’m saying that one thing that China does right is they execute people quickly instead of having them on “death row” for 40 years. And they shoot them in the head, instead of using the time and money wasting and convoluted methods that we use in America. I’m not saying that anything else about our trial process or legal system or courts should be modeled on a communist, repressive country. But one thing that they do right is that they execute people efficiently.
We do not execute people efficiently in America. It’s a fact. We let them sit on death row for way too long. Like I said, Mumia has been hosting talk shows and giving speeches at colleges, while a police officer has been dead for decades and there’s no bringing him back. It’s bullshit.
The death penalty as it is used now is worthless because it takes too long. In a case like Mumia’s where it’s insanely obvious that he’s guilty of killing a police officer, the sentence should have been carried out within hours of the verdict.
of course she would always live with the knowledge of her husband’s murder. she may not have had to move cross country to get as far away as she could from the constant mumia barrage.
without the death penalty and the legal avenues mumia has used so very, very well; he would not be on tshirts, radio, tv, newspapers, bookshelves, commencement speeches, etc. people who are given life sentences rarely have streets named for them.
I have no problem with long sentences for serious crimes. What my problem is, rather than the one you have invented for me, is that people facing life without the possibility of parole don’t get the same resources for their appeals. I’d like to see the time people spend dealing with procedural faults in death penalty cases spent on ensuring those who are sentenced to long terms (and I believe life without parole is a much greater penalty than execution, though I don’t think people necessarily see that in their sentencing, for example) are actually guilty of the crimes for which they are incarcerated.
So please, don’t try to pigeon hole me into some position you have decided I hold. I dislike execution on many levels, but I particularly dislike how it distorts the justice system. I also intensely dislike the way it saps the humanity out of those who claim to be the defenders of justice.
Not to speak for Blake, but it sounds like you are conceding the first paragraph of his argument. There will be no savings if the death penalty were abolished. The money would be transferred to fighting for people with life w/o parole sentences.
Then an argument could be made (the same one now with the D.P.) that we should save money by not having such a sentence and give everyone the possibility of parole.
Then the high money would be on those sentences, etc.
Have you not heard of the people freed from death row by DNA evidence? Is the execution of these innocent people worth whatever benefit you see from your quick executions?
Actually, a lot of the “constant mumia barrage” has actually come from her.
from the article linked in the OP
<< Faulkner has kept her husband’s memory alive through public appearances, a foundation and a recent book, “Murdered by Mumia: A Life Sentence of Loss, Pain and Injustice.” >>
She doesn’t want to get away from this. She has been chasing publicity for 27 years.
I’m just failing to see the link between “he’s become a martyr” and “we should just shoot them all in the head the next day after their trial”. There’s a whole lot of middle ground you’re excluding there, like maybe denying him access to the media and college campuses.
Mr .Bleeding Heart here. Don’t execute people in my name. I hate that we execute people for any reason. Life in jail is plenty of punishment. A pound of flesh diminishes us all. We all become killers to stop killing. Good idea.
What kills me about this asshole is that people like Ed Begley Jr and Ed Asner jumped on his defense bandwagon- I’m all for people using their celebrity to help someone poor and railroaded, but this fucking guy? As said upthread, his guilt is agiven, but in the .0001% chance he isn’t guilty, he was there, he knows who is and could testify who did it and be out tomorrow. And then the interviews with this prick where he acts like he’s this friggin victim yet he himself doesn’t deny doing it, it’s unfathomable.
And IIRC didn’t executions in the first half of the 20th century in the US get done much much faster?
Not all cases, but in a case where the perpetrator said “I shot the mother fucker, and I hope the mother fucker dies,” and it’s totally obvious that he killed the poor guy, there’s no DNA evidence that’s going to save him. He should have been shot right away.
Life in prison wastes money. Why should a cop killing shitbag be sucking up peoples’ money, eating food and using energy in prison?
You think a lot of criminals would admit guilt in your system? Why would they? It would just result in nobody ever pleading guilty, and then there would virtually never be any cases like you describe above.
<<Evidence of Abu-Jamal’s confession was equally shaky. Although two witnesses testified to hearing him shout, “I shot the motherfucker and I hope the motherfucker dies”, the doctors who treated him insist that his medical condition made such a thing impossible. Neither of the two police officers who claimed to have heard the confession reported it until more than two months after the shooting - after Abu-Jamal had made allegations of being abused by police during his arrest. On the contrary, one noted in his log at the time that “the negro male made no comment” in hospital. >>
Maybe so, but there is also evidence that the “poor guy” was a racist who made an unprovoked assault on Mumia’s brother. That doesn’t justify killing him, but maybe it should reduce the charge to non-capital, at least.
Actually, the Death Penalty costs more.
This is the point where you decide that you don’t care about the cost, and claim to be perfectly happy to pay the extra expense. I’ve had this debate numerous times before and know the script.