From what I remember of an old article, all death penalty cases must be heard by the supreme court and that’s a $1,000,000.[sup]00[/sup] price tag, right there.
I see nothing immoral about making sure that vicious scum are removed from society. We cannot afford to build an endless chain of prisons. Let’s make room for other offenders like, rapists and child molesters by executing the most heinous criminals.
I am also obliged to wonder if that $660,000.[sup]00[/sup] figure includes things like the enormous overtime pay many prison guards receive due to hiring freezes. There is also an aspect of overcrowded prisons that force district attorneys to plea bargain just so that criminals do some sort of hard time.
This results in lesser periods of incarceration, which flushes out insufficiently rehabilitated criminals into society where their repeat offenses cause even more suffering and financial loss. There are so many hidden factors that incur expenses well beyond that $660,000.[sup]00[/sup] figure where I cannot justify any opposition to the death penalty. The Ted Bundys, John Wayne Gaceys and Green River Killers of this world need to be shuffled off of this mortal coil forcibly if that’s what it takes.
Society must be unfettered by those who cannot be bothered with cohesive behavior. I’m bloody sick of providing college education for lifers while our youth struggle to find jobs. The prison population should have to perform manual labor in order to compensate the victims of their crimes and it should involve a lot of sweat and exertion.
In the only blind study that I’m aware of, DNA testing labs had a false positive rate of about one out of one-hundred. So of all the possible people who could have committed the crime, one percent can be expected to test positive. So how many people in the greater San Diego area who could have gotten to that girl? Let’s be conservative and say 500,000 possible men. Then our man has about a one in five-thousand chance of being guilty based on the evidence presented.
The criminalist, of course, is a dishonest piece of shit by committing the Prosecutor’s Fallacy when she should know better. First off, she’s the one who should be taken out back and shot.
If you want to get technical, you’d have to come up with the conditional probability [Prob. Guilty|random match & sex offender], but that’s still going to be a far cry from the odds shit-eating puke-bag criminologist is giving. Even then you’d have to consider that a previous rapist/murderer going back into the rape-only mode for several crimes seems unlikely (?). Is it very likely that a serial rapist would start his career with a rape/murder and then ratchet the violence down to commit only rapes?
Regardless of whether the guy did it, what the news story gives us is A Situation Worth Investigating that is being paraded around in the press as Rock-Solid Evidence Of Guilt by the prosecutor and the criminalist when they should know better.
For more on this issue, please refer to Gerd Gigerenzer’s “Calculated Risks” available through Amazon or your local book store.
Are you talking to me, here? If so, yes, I know. We have different opinions on the death penalty. But, I’ve found that “life imprisonment” where he is is much worse than ours, so if I couldn’t have the death penalty, I would prefer his country’s version of life to ours.
Whenever I see documentaries or movies about the Death Penalty, what strikes me the most is that these killers usually have friends and family that care about them. They aren’t completely evil most of the time.
I don’t think the value of your life should be measured by the worst thing you have done.
To clarify: if someone’s declared criminally insane over here (say, the sort of guys Texas ends up putting on the chair), they can get life imprisonment with governmental disposal, which means they get locked up in a very restrictive psychiatric prison for the rest of their lives, with very few visitation rights. Our penal system is geared towards rehabilitation, but when it is proven beyond a doubt that you can NOT be rehabilitated, chances are you won’t see the outside of a prison, ever again. This country tends to have a reputation for being lax in its punishment, but it’s not entirely deserved.
This is kind of a drive-by - as I was about to say exactly what Blalron said!
Apart from all the other arguments against capital punishment, it is more of a punishment for the family and friends of the convicted killer. Look at it this way - once the execution is done it’s all over for the criminal. Those close to him not only live with the knowledge of what he has done (or worse - convicted of but perhaps not done) but also have lost a son, brother, husband or father (assuming a male).
To be honest too - I wonder whether the victim’s family ever really feel truly satisfied about the death sentence. It doesn’t bring back their loved ones and, I can only guess, perhaps actually adds the guilt of having been instrumental in somebody else’s death.
The additional punishment meted out in the form of the death penalty is not worth the many times we would murder an innocent victim via incorrect prosecution. Period.
Absolutely. It’s bad enough holding people in prison for years on unsafe sentences let alone taking their lives for it and, as I say, therefore multiplying the distress of all those involved.
At least here in the UK capital punishment is no more. I do find it hard to believe that some sophisticated countries still herald its use…
To my understanding, the true point of the death penalty isn’t just to avenge the death of a person, but to help keep society safe from the possibility of repeat offenses by a harmful person.
If he had spent the past 17 years as a fruit vendor and family man, and kept his nose clean and been an upright citizen for all this time, then I would feel the death penalty would be way off for a punishment. But the story says he "has committed several sexual assaults… ", so obviously, this wasn’t just a one time occurrance (with the exception of the actual murder aspect of this particular case). This man is obviously a danger to society. The fact this particular case happened so long ago does put a bit of a confusing spin on whether or not the death penalty for this particular case is still relevant, but he obviously isn’t hurting that he did it, because he wouldn’t have become a repeat offender.
Plus, there are many cases of people being executed decades after the crime they were convicted of, so maybe it’s not too late. I do believe some people do deserve the death penalty…this one, I’m not quite sure of, but I do believe he needs to be put away for the rest of his life if nothing else.
js_africanus do you have a web cite for that DNA blind study? I would very much like to have a look at that. I have a lot of doubts about how uniformally distributed DNA test results are, and question the assumption that uf you match DNA test, then you are that person.
Maybe if everyone was DNA tested we’d know for sure how many people ‘match’ each other.
Back to OP the person if guilty needs to be taken out of society (even based on their other convictions, excluding this murder) until they are no longer a threat to others. Bit I don’t see how killing him (even if we can know without possibility of error that he is guilty) can help. There seems to be no economic advantage in death penalty. From a persons spiritual point of view, I think even the most heinous murderers should be given any and all opportunity to make peace within their own religious beliefs.
Just out of curiosity, is there any religious doctrine out there that doesn’t at some point preach the importance of corporal punishment? I mean, even the Old Testiment gives descriptions of events where it’s okay to kill under God’s law. Just because religion tends to be more on the side of the “Live and Let Live” vibe, doesn’t mean they don’t believe in the death penalty. Many religions (if not all) started off in small communities/tribes, and a big part of keeping those going is protecting them, thus, any member of the tribe that threatened its existence would be removed threw religious law.
