So your argument that innocent people are executed is a case where an innocent person wasn’t executed?
There’s more than one way to “wrongly execute” someone.
Many, many times someone has been convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. After appeal, the charge is reduced to a lesser crime, maybe 2nd degree murder, or even manslaughter. Had the execution been carried out, it would be a great injustice, and an irreversible error.
I think it virtually certain that there have been a number of wrongful executions of this type.
How about George Stinney? Even in the extremely unlikely event that he had been guilty, he was fourteen-years-old. They had to stack books on the chair because he was too small to reach all of the electrodes, and he wasn’t even allowed to see his parents before the trial.
How is THAT justified? His conviction has since been vacated by civilized individuals, but it can’t erase what happened.
No, it doesn’t, and you’ll note that I qualified that an innocent person hasn’t been executed in the last 75 years because of that specific case.
I think we can all agree that the justice system of California in 2019 is more thorough than that of the Jim Crow South, and it would be silly to argue that a lynching that happened in the 40’s means that unrepentant child killers should get a free pass today.
Well thanks for bursting my bubble. I like to think my fellow Californians are a more enlightened group & the passage of prop 8 was a weird fluke, but now I’ll have to rework my theory.
Are you saying that there are cases where someone has been sentenced to death & the execution was carried out WITHOUT an appeal? The lengthy appeals process is why inmates die of old age on death row. I’ve never heard of a capital case that wasn’t appealed.
No, he didnt. He never signed a confession. The jailhouse informant was known to be unreliable.
In any case, other experts said there was no sign of arson.
The need for an arbitrary cut-off doesn’t suggest a problem? And who’s calling for free passes? Name names.
It’s not an arbitrary point. It’s a completely different historical era, in a society that was wildly different from our own. George Stinney would never have been executed today for a number of reasons - we don’t allow the death penalty for guilty pleas, we don’t execute juveniles, we recognize inadequate counsel as grounds for a retrial, we don’t allow all-white juries and witness intimidation, etc.
Are you now arguing that if there has ever been a wrongful execution in human history, we have to treat the death penalty as unacceptable ever ever again? “Sorry, new historical research says that Rothgar Hadrigsen did in fact pay the full weregild for his part in the slaying of Aethelraed Half-Beard. We can’t let that mistake happen again.”
Anyone who says an unrepentant child killer shouldn’t be executed is giving them a free pass. You know who you are.
I’d say it’s retribution if the person getting killed is the one who committed the act. Otherwise, it’s simply catharsis (blood lust, if you will).
Well, I know exactly who I am and I’m certainly not “giving them a free pass”. What you seem to be refusing to understand is that capital punishment is wrong. Also it does not happen to be on the judge’s menu for sentencing, so your wishing it on the offender is simply your own blood lust and desire to have an extrajudicial punishment inflicted on someone.
By the way a “free pass” would be no punishment whatsoever. The man was tried, convicted, and sentenced.
Capital punishment is not wrong. To the contrary, not having capital punishment is often wrong. Is it just or fair that under the much-ballyhooed Scandinavian justice system, that in 2033 Anders Breivik will be a free man after murdering 77 innocent people in an attempt to incite a race war, and will have nothing to stop him from picking up right where he left off?
I do not desire “extrajudicial punishment” for anyone. I desire that “the judge’s menu” include all necessary options necessary to punish the guilty as appropriate.
To a sentence extremely disproportionate to the nature of his crime. His victim gets to cease existing forever and ever, and he gets to live out the rest of his life without ever having to worry about having his needs provided for. And that is wrong.
The informant’s testimony is irrelevant to the fact that his behavior during and in the days following the crimeshows proof of his guilt;
The evidence stands for itself - Willingham intended to kill one or both of his younger daughters so he could collect on an insurance settlement and because the strains of fatherhood were wearing on him. He deliberately blocked exits to make escape difficult. The fire burned faster than he expected it to, but made no attempt to rescue anyone until the fire department showed up, at which time he put on an act of being distraught - an act he failed to keep up later on when the authorities weren’t around.
Aside from the flammable cologne that Willingham admitted to pouring in the hallway where the fire started;
This is the “best” case anti-CP people have to offer - a blatantly guilty triple murderer who beat his wife and loved his children less than his dartboard. It’s pretty evident at this point that any claims of concern for innocent people or morality are just excuses concocted by those who have a visceral emotional reaction to the idea of capital punishment and need a better excuse for why it should be done away with than “It grosses me out”.
I don’t know how you got that from my post.
I’m saying that people have *probably *been executed for murder when they should have been convicted of a lesser crime such as manslaughter.
You guys are arguing with** Smapti **that the state might be wrong, about an issue where even sensible people argue that it mostly never is? 
For the record, I’m perfectly fine with the death penalty. Except for the part where I don’t trust that our judicial systems will reliably sentence to death only guilty people.
That, and there’s a pattern in the US of it being applied disproportionately to defendants of color.
Anyway, our killing someone, even if we say “they deserved it”, makes us killers too.
And I’ve said many times - if a person of color would get the death penalty for a given crime, then a white person in similar circumstances should get the death penalty too. I don’t believe in giving white people special breaks.
There’s no shame in being a “killer” if the person being killed has already forfeited their right to live.
“Forfeited their right to live” is *not *an objective fact, but merely a restatement of our own decision based on our own values. Those include reserving to ourselves the “right” to premeditated murder of another human being. And that makes us no better than him, no matter how we rationalize it.
“Could you pull that switch yourself, Sir,
with a sure and steady hand?
And then could you still tell yourself, Sir,
that you’re better than I am?”
-Steve Earle “Billy Austin”
I don’t see how that follows. By that logic, we’re “no better than” a kidnapper if we lock up a kidnapper — because, well, he locked someone in a little cell, and then we did that to him, see? And we’re “no better than” a crook we’re fining, if all he did was take some guy’s money and we responded by taking his.
I hope you wouldn’t reason that way in those cases; I hope you’d grant that we are better than the thief we fine, or the kidnapper we imprison. (If I’m wrong on that, then, please, set me right; but if I am already right, then why flatly state that we’d be “no better than” the murderer we execute?)
The reasons, or rationalizations if you prefer, for imprisoning someone are multiple - punishment, rehabilitation, penitence, preparation for a life as a Productive Citizen, and protection of the public from a dangerous person, and probably some others too. There is *no *valid reason or even rationalization I know of for execution other than vengeance. Even “finality and closure” don’t apply for the wrongly convicted. It’s even *more *expensive than life imprisonment, in fact.