In various threads that I’m too lazy to link to, some pro-death penalty dopers have argued that no one who has ever been executed has been later proved innocent. I didn’t know of any cases and, frankly, thought the argument was pretty silly to begin with (since there wouldn’t be many followup investigations). But I’ve seen the argument and now I want to discuss it.
This doesn’t change my stance, it enhances my stance against the death penalty.
A good friend of mine who is a lawyer said, “I know the system and how it works. I can guarantee you that about 20% of the people that are on death row are innocent.”
Now this is anecdotal but I can’t argue with it. The death penalty is final. It solves nothing. It’s more expensive to execute a prisoner than to sustain them until their natural death. By far, most convicts are guilty of the crime for which they were accused but that doesn’t give the state the right to be wrong. If time has the possibility of vindicating someone they should at least be allowed that time.
When Timothy McVeigh was executed I thought that this was the worst thing that could happen in really solving the case. All it did was permanently shut up the guy that could have provided some information on what really happened that day. Yea, the retribution may feel good but it was not good in the total scheme of things.
The death penalty is “feel good” thing, it’s not justice.
The death penalty has always been and will always be plagued with the death of innocents (well innocent of what they are being executed of anyways). The only civilized basis for executions when you know some of them will be innocent deaths is that there is deterrence that prevents a LOT more innocent deaths.
If you know for a FACT that you are going to kill innocent people, then you better know for a FACT that you are going to deter the murder of innocent people.
When you know for a FACT that the people who have been wrongfully executed are disproportionately black or poor or more likely black AND poor, then I think you better be REALLY fucking sure that you are going to save a WHOLE FUCKLOAD of innocent lives because you are institutionalizing a pretty grave injustice in the name of justice.
That depends on the legal system in any given country.
IMHO it is a ‘Cruel and unusual punishment’ to sentence a teenage kid to death and then execute the same middle aged man twenty five or so years later.
Probably the most famous British case of an innocent man being executed was that of Timothy Evans, who was found guilty of murder partly due to the evidence of John Christie, who was later hanged for several other murders.
Watching Fourteen Days In May over twenty years ago cemented my opposition to the death penalty.
But it has not been proven that the death penalty IS a deterant, now is it?
I have always believed in the maxim, “Better to let ten guilty men go free, than to execute one innocent man.” For those who say well, that’s the price we pay, there will always be innocents, blah blah blah – I ask you: Would YOU be willing to be that person?
Not for me, I was already against it, and a lot of the reason WAS the fear of killing the wrong person. You can turn a prisoner loose. You can reverse a prison sentence. You can NOT “un-kill” someone.
My stance has always been that the US does the death penalty stupid. If an appeal catches anyone on Death row that was wrongly convicted, you obviously didn’t do a good enough job the first time around and need to fix the system.
Being found guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt” by twelve random morons just doesn’t cut it.
Yeah that was kinda my point. You can make an argument that the death penalty MIGHT be a deterrent but when you KNOW that innocents are being executed, I don’t think arguments are enough.
Not an issue, I’m not poor or black, its very unlikely to be me.
Were I pro death penalty, I would find your questions much more compelling if you used examples of actual innocence after the death penalty was re-found to be constitutional in 1976. A vast majority of pro death penalty people I’ve talked with have all accepted the fact that, before then, there were undoubtedly cases of people being wrongfully executed. Just sayin’.
It’s unlikely that it would act as a deterrent in modern day. For a punishment, or the threat of punishment to work it has to be applied consistently and in a fairly timely manner. Which cases get marked to try for a death penalty verdict is relatively capricious, and nothing about the system is timely.
If you made the penalty for all cases of murder, execution, you might see a result but I doubt that even Texas would be able to successfully make that policy. But offering up a lamb to the blood-seeking populace once a year is just a feel-good measure and isn’t going to produce a noticeable effect.
No, not really. I would have been terribly shocked if there never had been an innocent person executed, particularly before the Jim Crow laws were gotten rid of. If you can find some evidence of someone being wrongly executed since the advent of DNA evidence, maybe then you might sway me some.
I don’t find any of those compelling to my position on the death penalty, considering they are 65 to 125 years old stories. I may not agree with the current way the death penalty is handled in the US, but I agree with it as a general principle.
‘Fourteen days In May’ was a BBC documentary about the last two weeks in the life of Edward Earl Johnson, who was executed based largely on a confession that was obtained allegedly at gunpoint in the back of a police car in Mississippi. IIRC, the BBC had been looking to make a documentary about the last days of a condemned prisoners life and, after gaining permission, this was the case they covered - it was not a cause celebre before the film, they just happened upon it…
a subsequent BBC programme by the (admittedly Lefty/Liberal) British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who had represented him on his final appeals, provided further doubt about his guilt.
When I saw the news footage of Blacks in the U.S. celebrating the acquittal of O. J. Simpson I thought of him.
Although at least Edward Earl Johnson didn’t have to suffer the ignominy of being thrown out of his Golf Club.
Death Row in Illinois was emptied in 2001, and a moratorium placed on executions, by order of the governor (Blagoevich, I think) based on research by the Medill Innocence Project that conclusively proved there were inmates innocent of the charges that had put them there.
While it would be tremendous if some person or group were able to muster the resources and time to investigate the guilt or innocence of an executed prisoner, we already have what I consider sufficient evidence that the death penalty catches the innocent in its nets. They don’t need to be executed to prove anything; just the fact that they’re on Death Row in the first place is a damning indictment.
1945, and no one thinks she didn’t kill him. “with the Parole Board, granting her a full and unconditional pardon, suggesting a verdict of manslaughter, which would have carried a 15 year sentence, would have been more appropriate.”
1913. Nor does that 100 year later pardon mean they were innocent. Pardons do not = innocent.
Come up with one in the last 20 years or so. In 1887, things were a lot different.
Now here’s one: http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_15695090?nclick_check=1
*SAN FRANCISCO—A parolee who savagely stabbed a teenage girl and a 60-year-old man who tried to help her is heading to prison for 26 years to life.
A San Francisco Superior Court judge sentenced Scott Thomas on Thursday for the attacks on Loren Schaller and Kermit Kubitz at a Twin Peaks bakery in May 2007.
The stabbing happened one day after Thomas was paroled from San Quentin State Prison. Officials later found that he was improperly released without supervision.
*
True, he never quite killed anyone, just almost- 4 times. He should never have been released in the first place, but was= “improperly”. No one had any doubt of his guilt.
You can find more cases of murderers killing again after escaping, being improperly released, ordering a killing from prison or killing someone while in prison. In all those case, being executed would have prevented further innocents from being killed.
Now, I agree some states like Texas seem to be rather itchy on the trigger finger, as they say. Some of the convictions there seem to be somewhat doubtful.
But once we have a confirmed sociopathic killer, one whose lawyer even admits his guilt, one who brags about the killings- and who will kill again, given any opportunity- do we not owe it to his future victim to prevent him from killing again in the only way possible? What would you propose to stop him from killing again? “Life without parole” simply does not do that.
I don’t like the Death Penalty, but we need to protect the innocents more than a killer.
Yeah, that guy was innocent. Even after evidence shown that this man did not do this, the state balked and would not
They did an epsisode of Law and Order SVU last season on that case.
If I was a juror in a murder trial, I must, must have concrete proof that someone committed a crime. DNA, blood, fingerprints, a video of the person doing the deed. Circumstantial evidence doesn’t cut it. The West Memphis Three is a good example. There was no direct evidence, no circumstantial evidence, not shit except the confession of one, a mentally retarded school drop out. One of the men is on Death Row for this crime.
Some criminals deserve the death penalty. For example, men who abduct women, rape them and murders them. Or someone who murders someone in the commission of a felony. What some people do to other people is downright scary to say the least.
The problem with the death penalty, (and this is why I want to abolish it) is that it costs too much money and is not fair. There are people who have been on death row for multiples of years, tying up state and federal courts with appeals, lawsuits, etc. It is also a form of state supported suicide because the inmate can drop his appeals, in essence, kill themselves by government execution.
I think Life without Parole is a suitable punishment. My state of Tennessee has the death penalty, but most killers get life with parole after 51 years. Yes 51. As in, your parole officer isn’t born yet. Prison is an awful environment of tedium, boredom, violence, noise, awful food, the smell of feces and urine. Personally, I would rather be executed.