Tell me why he shouldn't die, you candy-asses.

[Joan_of_Argghh]

I don’t want my child to die in a World Trade Center attack. I don’t want a pedophile to rape my daughter and slice her throat. There’s a lot of tragic things I don’t want to happen. My son almost died from a misdiagnosis, but I don’t want an end to medical efforts to find cancer and kill it.

And, I don’t want any loved one to be wrongfully accused, and sentenced to die. If that happens, it’s not the fault of the death penalty, though. It’s the fault of smarmy lawyers, shoddy police work, or stupid judges, or whatever. It would be just as tragic as any other untimely death.

How about imprisonment for, let’s say, theft, or rape? Why should we punish innocent people? We imprison the wrong person for 30 years, say, “sorry!” and give them a pittance of cash and sheepishly send them on their way. Their life is ruined. It’s a tragedy, but I don’t hear anyone calling for abolishing imprisonment. No, we clamor for better police work, tort reforms, DNA testing, etc.

Does that seem cold to you? What seems cold to me is to teach our children that innocent life isn’t ultimately precious and worth every effort we can employ to treasure it and protect it. Cold-blooded killers forfeit that protection.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Myxlpltt

There are few things we as a society are on the same understanding of , Murder we all know from a wee age ,you do it , you die. In most states and in most cases. I do not have a problem with this.

Er, no. In a few states and in a few cases.

Although 38 states allow the death penalty, most haven’t executed anyone in the last twenty years. For example, from the DOJ- “In 2002, 71 persons in 13 States were executed – 33 in Texas; 7 in Oklahoma, 6 in Missouri; 4 each in Georgia and Virginia, 3 each in Florida, South Carolina, and Ohio; 2 each in Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina; and 1 each in Louisiana and California.”

It helps if you’re black- in 2000 12% of the US population was black, but of roughly 3,500 people sentenced to death since '76, over 1,500 were black. It also helps if your victim is white; of those executed since reinstatement, 80% have murdered whites, while only 12% of those executed in the same period have had black victims; whites, it should be noted, make up 49% of murder victims, while blacks make up 46%.

@Joan of Argghh!

But I submit that the death penalty isn’t about punishment. It’s about the preciousness of life.

You are quite clearly a moron. Crowing about the “preciousness of life” to defend the snuffing out of one is… well, insane. In any case, what about the nine states in which you can be sentenced to death for crimes other than murder?

[Bricker]

@Shodan

I believe this is the process they are trying with Coleman. As I mentioned, he was convicted, there were years of appeals, then they claimed DNA testing would clear him, it established further evidence of his guilt, and he was executed.

Now they are claiming that more DNA evidence will be proof of his innocence. And as I also said, I believe they are hoping to confuse the difference between “the tests didn’t show he was guilty” with “the tests didn’t work after all these years”.

I don’t recall your answering my earlier question. If Coleman’s evidence were tested again with the more advanced DNA, and the results showed conclusively that he was NOT the source of the genetic material, would you change your view on this issue?

[Joan_of_Argghh]

Why assume I’m a moron, to say that innocent life is so precious that if you take it from someone, you will forfeit yours? What higher price will you put on it?

The high emotion comes not from the rules, but from the misapplication of them. I will stand with anyone who desires that the rules be fairly applied, justly applied to all who find themselves within their scope. I will support anyone who fights against prejudice or legal malpractice. And not just for the death penalty.

But, justice should act justly for the innocent as well as the guilty.

The emotion comes from “but, it’s irreversible!” Well, so is 40 years wrongfully imprisoned. Fourty years of an adult life that can never be regained is a tragic waste. Where is the consistency in these arguments? Abolishing all forms of punishment, finding them distasteful, tragic, and irreversible when misapplied, is the only consistent conclusion I can see from your reasoning.

Because innocent life is so precious, we’d better be damn sure before we sentence someone to death. But, the OP is speaking of a clear example of guilt and asking why Joseph Smith shouldn’t be put to death. I can’t think of a good reason.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

Joan, you obviously don’t give a shit about innocent life or you wouldn’t be willing to shed it.

What’s more unjust, letting a guilty person go free or killing an innocent? Let me remind you, every time you execute an innocent person you are letting a guilty person go free.

Blaming the lawyers is chickenshit. The DP is a human institution and there is no way to ever remove human error from the equation. Special pleading about the “preciousness of life” is not only disingenuous, it’s irrelevant. The question is not whether some people deserve to die, the question is whether the state can be relied upon to figure out who those people are with no chance of error. It cannot. Ever.

If dangerous people are removed from society and confined, then the interest of the state has been served. Killing those people is too prone to error and serves no compelling interest. Gratifying the sadistic, sanctimonious bloodlust of the public is not a compelling interest.

Let me ask this in a different way. Suppose there are ten serial killers on death row. They are all guilty, unrepentant psychopaths. In the eleventh cell on death row is your son, who is innocent. You have a choice. Kill them all, including your innocent son, or commute all their sentences to life without parole and work towards exonerating your son. Which would you choose?

[Joe_Random]

@Joan of Argghh!

Why assume I’m a moron, to say that innocent life is so precious that if you take it from someone, you will forfeit yours? What higher price will you put on it?

So then, when someone who was sentenced to death and executed is found by later evidence to have been innocent, have the judge, jury, and prosecution forfeited their lives?

Because innocent life is so precious, we’d better be damn sure before we sentence someone to death. But, the OP is speaking of a clear example of guilt and asking why Joseph Smith shouldn’t be put to death. I can’t think of a good reason.

Here’s a good reason. Putting Smith to death would require some sort of process to be used that would determine who is guilty enough to deserve being executed. In the interest of fairness, that same process would have to be used on all cases where capital punishment is an option. Now, since the legal system is subject to error, this process, if applied across the board, will inevitably lead to an innocent person being put to death.

You may be tempted to say that the death of innocents is the price we pay for enacting ultimate justice on those who deserve it. However, I do not believe that the benefits (if any) of capital punishment can possibly outweigh the death of innocents that come along with it.

[Joan_of_Argghh]

@Joe Random

You may be tempted to say that the death of innocents is the price we pay for enacting ultimate justice on those who deserve it. However, I do not believe that the benefits (if any) of capital punishment can possibly outweigh the death of innocents that come along with it.

Well, if that were the whole argument, then yes, I would be tempted. Others aver that the argument is about giving power to the State. If we allow the “State” to become a disembodied entity apart from the “People” whether through apathy or ignorance, then the DP will be only one of many disturbing things to worry about. We ARE the State, so study up before going to your next local election to seat judges, friends. It’s an ignorant dodge to remove oneself from responsibility in the judicial process and to then argue about fearing the “State.” Justice is hard work and carries a corporate responsibility. Could my apathy and willful ignorance be a small part of every miscarriage of justice? Hmmm. Better not have any justice at all, if that is the case, cuz that’s just too close to home.

If justice is about protection, then the DP is useless, and we can all say, “lock ‘em up for life and we’ll be safe.” Yet, I do receive a side-benefit from justice when others are given pause before they deny me my rights to life and liberty. A form of “protection” if you will.

We have agreed at some point, on a level of punishments, retributions, or costs, based on the perceived value of our person or property. To live in a society that places a very high value on innocent human life carries an ultimate benefit for my protection from the “State.” I know that my life carries the heaviest weight of the law’s protection, as well as the greatest cost of the law’s penalty. Life is the benchmark, the Line, the Ultimate Value. To have this value creates a dynamic tension that forces people of good judgment to carefully weigh evidence and mete out punishment accordingly.

But, it’s not perfect. What to do? What is the “acceptable risk” in pursuit of that justice? Most everyone tacitly agrees that some level of innocent suffering is acceptable, else we would demand that judges and juries be convicted for wrongful imprisonment or DPs. But we don’t, do we? Why? Should it follow then, that wrongfully imprisoning a person for life for the crime of murder is an acceptable risk? Apparently so.

I just don’t buy into the usual arguments against the DP because they seem inconsistent, or they seek to shift the blame away from evil people and onto the good intentions of a society’s (i.e., you and me) justice. To equate the actions of a murderous miscreant like Joseph Smith with the imperfect pursuit of justice is laughable. (The end result for both is death, an end we all meet at some point, and hope to meet well.) But to elevate the one or demean the other is to peer into the abyss of anarchy.

[Fear_Itself]

@Joan of Argghh!

What is the “acceptable risk” in pursuit of that justice? Most everyone tacitly agrees that some level of innocent suffering is acceptable, else we would demand that judges and juries be convicted for wrongful imprisonment or DPs. But we don’t, do we? Why? Should it follow then, that wrongfully imprisoning a person for life for the crime of murder is an acceptable risk? Apparently so.

It appears that you do not see the difference between wrongful imprisonment and wrongful execution. Wrongful imprisonment is bad, and I may not be able to restore everything the inmate lost, but at least I can stop punishing him when I realize my mistake. Death is irreversible, unrelenting and forever. It is very easy for me to draw the line between the two; wrongful imprisonment is an acceptable risk; wrongful execution is not.

[gluteus_maximus]

Speaking of the wrongfully imprisoned…

from CNN:
Kevin Cooper, who was convicted in the 1983 hacking deaths of four people and is to be executed at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday at San Quentin Prison, has won support from death penalty opponents including Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, religious leaders and Hollywood actors.

(bolding mine)

Yeah, I know, ‘Hollywood actors’… but hey, Governor Ahh-nold is/was/not was a Hollywood ‘actor’, and he’s not going to issue a stay of execution… thus rendering duffer’s generalization moot.

[js_africanus]

@duffer

Before you answer, imagine you were Carlie’s parents.

Are you saying that something completely irrelevant should affect a question of fact, i.e. his guilt, or are you suggesting that the crime would have been less of a transgression if the girl had been orphaned?

[Hamlet]

@Sofa King

Shodan, I can give you a contrapositive cite which suggests that perhaps as many as twenty-five people have been wrongfully executed:

http://capitaldefenseweekly.com/25casesdraft.html

But that’s not why I’m posting here.

I do not have the time to go through each and every one of the cases laid out in your “cite”. However, in just a few minutes, I found a plethora of errors in one of the cases. They list Roy Stewart as a “[c]ase where a person has been executed despite a high likelihood of innocence.” This made me laugh to no end, because in one of his own (I think his 3rd post conviction petition) Stewart argued that his lawyers were incompetent because they had spent too much time arguing his innocence.

Here’s some quotes from the court opinion, which can be found at Stewart v. State, 481 So.2d 1210 Fla.

Before the trial court Stewart claimed that his two appointed counsel had spent too much time preparing for the guilt phase of his trial and too little time preparing for the penalty proceeding. Moreover, Stewart alleged that, because of the evidence the state had against him, counsel erred in believing that the jury could be convinced that Stewart did not murder the victim and should have defended him differently.

and

It is difficult to fault an attorney for zealously trying to convince a jury of his client’s innocence. Here, however, due to the strength and amount of the evidence against Stewart, it appears that his counsel made an ill-advised choice of his theory of defense.

In addition, here’s what was in Stewart’s last petition. Oddly enough, it doesn’t even come close to statements made in your citation:

The court held an evidentiary hearing on the amended motion and received testimony from the following, among other, witnesses: 1) Robert Godwin, a former assistant state attorney who sat second chair in Stewart’s case and who is currently with the public defender’s office, testified that because of more familiarity with Stewart’s background through his new job he wrote a letter to the clemency board in 1983 saying that he thought Stewart should not be executed and, also, that he did not think Stewart was innocent; 2) Lance Stelzer, the former assistant state attorney who prosecuted Stewart, testified that in 1986 Godwin asked him to write a letter recommending that Stewart not be executed, but that he would seek the death penalty again if he were prosecuting the case today; 3) Robin Greene, the former assistant public defender who handled postconviction proceedings on Stewart’s first two death warrants, testified that she was ineffective for not using Godwin’s 1983 letter; 4) Calvin Fox testified that he was concerned about Stewart being executed, not about his guilt;

and

After the evidentiary hearing, the Court held that the ineffective assistance of counsel claim was procedurally barred and that the claim of innocence had no factual support.

These can be found at Stewart v. State , 632 So.2d 59 Fla.,1993.

I’m not going to spend an inordinate amount of time on each of these claims of innocence. If someone truly wishes to debate whether an innocent person has been put to death, I’d like some unbiased sources and some time to research. But from what I found in the Stewart case, I don’t put much credence in your cite.

[Joan_of_Argghh]

@Fear Itself

It appears that you do not see the difference between wrongful imprisonment and wrongful execution. Wrongful imprisonment is bad, and I may not be able to restore everything the inmate lost, but at least I can stop punishing him when I realize my mistake. Death is irreversible, unrelenting and forever. It is very easy for me to draw the line between the two; wrongful imprisonment is an acceptable risk; wrongful execution is not.

And if you never realize your mistake? If an innocent dies in custody, from whatever causes, is that somehow more acceptable than if we sentence him? The State has still assumed power over your life…and it will be very sorry to find out that it let you rot in prison for 50 years before you died. It’s a damn shame either way, isn’t it?

But it’s still acceptable (apparently) to let the State have power over life at some point. Young men go to war and assume power over another’s life or lose theirs. We accept that, with far fewer facts than most murder trials. Police officers shoot and kill the wrong man, but we find that an acceptable risk also, because the IDEAL is our goal, and we keep issuing guns to the cops. The ideal of security, or justice, or protection, all in the defense of innocent lives is our goal. The best we can do is the best we can do. And we must always strive to do better.

Meanwhile, the IDEAL of equal justice, that if you take an innocent life, you forfeit yours, still stands in the breach between depravity and decency. That we, at times, ineptly apply that ideal doesn’t make it a wrong ideal. The ages-old problem with ideals is that less-than-ideal humans keep striving for them. But being less-than-ideal doesn’t keep us from the table of civilization’s quest for justice.

We can argue all day about whether the DP is a deterrent, about whether it is misapplied, about whether the life of an evil scumbag is the same treasure as an innocent life. There will be few facts that will dissuade any one on either side of the emotional element.

But I’m arguing for the inner sense of “justice.” To do murder, i.e. a MALEVOLENT taking of life, should require an equal payment, meted out judiciously, without hysteria, without malicious revenge. A simple payment of accounts seems fair. Our civilization is built on it

[Starving_Artist]

Joan,

One thing I’ve learned about these kinds of debates is that you can’t poke holes in the logic of people who are using their arguments to justify positions they are already in favor of. This is why the pro and con factions go round and round. I’m convinced that by far most people just start out with whatever position they are psychologically in favor of and then start to cast about for reasons to support it. Shoot one down and they’ll come up with another. Shoot that one down and they’ll come up with another, etc., etc. This is why all the debate and arguments on threads like this go nowhere.

Fortunately, after more than 35 or 40 years of living under a congress and judiciary disposed to the other side, we are now living under a congress, Supreme Court and President who believe as we do on this matter.

It all just boils down to whose side holds sway.

[tiny_ham]

Actually, it’s more simple than that. It all boils down to whether you believe killing someone is wrong.

If someone kills someone, I believe they have done wrong, sinned, committed evil, etc.

So how in the name of Mike does killing someone ELSE bolster my orginal position?

And by the way, I’m still not buying the fact that every single person put to death under the DP was guilty. First of all, I live in chicago and after seeing about 10 people released in the last four years because of newly discovered DNA evidence, I’m not about to believe that everyone sent to the chair was without a doubt, 100% guilty.

And even if theywere! If they stood up and said, “I CHOPPED UP MY FAMILY INTO A MILLION PIECES”, I don’t think it would be right to kill them as punishment.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Starving Artist

Joan,

One thing I’ve learned about these kinds of debates is that you can’t poke holes in the logic of people who are using their arguments to justify positions they are already in favor of. This is why the pro and con factions go round and round. I’m convinced that by far most people just start out with whatever position they are psychologically in favor of and then start to cast about for reasons to support it. Shoot one down and they’ll come up with another. Shoot that one down and they’ll come up with another, etc., etc. This is why all the debate and arguments on threads like this go nowhere.

Fortunately, after more than 35 or 40 years of living under a congress and judiciary disposed to the other side, we are now living under a congress, Supreme Court and President who believe as we do on this matter.

It all just boils down to whose side holds sway.

God, you’re full of shit. You’re the one who came to this board with an unsupported thesis and then stubbornly refused to respond to any kind of a logical debate. Now you’re doing it in this thread. Notice how your post has no substance? Notice how you haven’t actually addressed anything on point? You’re still a fucking moron.

BTW, what is your cite that we ever had an anti-DP judiciary? What is your cite that we even had a majority congress that was anti-DP?

Fuck, most politicians are pro-DP. They have to be. The public is bloodthirsty. Even Clinton was pro-DP.

[Fear_Itself]

@Joan of Argghh!

And if you never realize your mistake? If an innocent dies in custody, from whatever causes, is that somehow more acceptable than if we sentence him?

I have read this statement 7 times, and cannot make sense from it. Are you saying that because there is a chance that someone might be wrongfully confined and die in prison, we might as well kill them anyway? That is a truly perverse sense of justice. One can only hope this view comes out if you are ever examined for jury duty so that society can be protected from you.

Meanwhile, the IDEAL of equal justice, that if you take an innocent life, you forfeit yours, still stands in the breach between depravity and decency.

This is not an ideal of justice. It trades brutality for brutality, and accomplishes nothing but the satisfaction of blood lust. That it has occurred in the past is no justification to pursue it into the future. We as humans should strive to make justice more than retribution. Jesus knew this was the true ideal when he rejected the concept of “an eye for an eye” almost 2000 years ago.

A simple payment of accounts seems fair.

How is state-sponsored murder a “payment of accounts”? Will it restore the life of the victim? If not, then your notion of the account being settled falls apart.

Our civilization is built on it

Our civilisation was built on slavery, and we abandoned that too.

[Shodan]

@Ludovic

When someone brings up Willie Horton as an example of a murderer who escaped from a life sentence in a supermax with no possibility of release, it makes me wonder who hasn’t heard of whom.

I am not clear on what you are saying.

Are you claiming that Horton wasn’t a murderer, that he wasn’t sentenced to life in prison with no parole, that he never escaped, that he couldn’t possibly have been furloughed from supermax, or that he would have been able to commit the crimes that he did even if he had been executed?

I’ll give you a hint - each of the above is demonstrably wrong.

@Bricker

I don’t recall your answering my earlier question. If Coleman’s evidence were tested again with the more advanced DNA, and the results showed conclusively that he was NOT the source of the genetic material, would you change your view on this issue?

I would change my view on his guilt, certainly. Whether or not one wrongful execution would be enough to change my view on the DP in general, I am not sure.

Hamlet, who is doing all my research for me (thanks!), linked to a cite of 824 wrongful deaths brought about by not applying the death penalty. Are those 824 wrongful deaths enough to change the minds of those who oppose the DP?

We are going to have a system wherein the innocent die, no matter whether we have the death penalty or not. Either we will have the DP, in which case there may be a case eventually wherein the appeals process does not reveal actual guilt. This does not seem to have occurred yet (again, thanks to Hamlet for responding to Sofa King’s cite). Or else, we will eliminate the DP, and get a much larger number of innocent deaths from those who should be dead, but escape, as Ted Bundy did, are paroled even when we said we wouldn’t (as with Ed Wein, who was sentenced to die, had his sentence changed to life without parole by Pat Brown, had his sentence changed again to life, was paroled, and kidnapped, raped and murdered a woman).

The system cannot be made perfect. But this is true for a system without the death penalty, and the risk of innocent deaths seems to be greater from not executing than from executing.

As I said in an earlier post, we already have a large number of wrongful executions to go before we equal or exceed the 824 wrongful deaths that already have occurred.

Regards,
Shodan

[Joan_of_Argghh]

@jarbabyj

And even if theywere! If they stood up and said, “I CHOPPED UP MY FAMILY INTO A MILLION PIECES”, I don’t think it would be right to kill them as punishment.

Pre-zactly! You have every right to believe that way, and I support you in your consistency! Thankfully, a bunch of other folks differ with you on this, and would never dream of expanding the definition of killing as widely as you have. (It would be important to know just how widely you believe that the taking of any life is wrong, but that is for another discussion.)

Your take on the DP is philosophical, and important, but is not based in the current philosophical system we have. Others believe that there is a distinction to be made, based on knowable acts, that renders one life forfeit for another. Indeed, a murderer makes this distinction on his own, with no input from society. The “State” (all of us) as we have it, makes this distinction in a corporate understanding of penalty due for acts committed.

You want to end the DP? You gotta work against the philosophy. That’s why all the cites and legal precedents, and miscarriages of justice arguments, prejudices and acceptable risks, etc., won’t work.

[Bricker]

Hamlet:

I think there’s a comment to be made here. Do you find it at all disturbing that an appellant can have his Strickland claims procedurally barred, and then his substantive claims dismissed because they weren’t fully developed in the record? Not saying that what happened here, but it does happen, and it strikes me as an absurd Catch-22.

• Rick

[Bricker]

@Shodan

I would change my view on his guilt, certainly. Whether or not one wrongful execution would be enough to change my view on the DP in general, I am not sure.

How many are needed, Shodan?

As I said in an earlier post, we already have a large number of wrongful executions to go before we equal or exceed the 824 wrongful deaths that already have occurred.

I suggest that this is misplaced. We cannot equate the numbers of deaths caused by escaped, imprisoned, or released murderers to the number of deaths caused by the state in executing an innocent man… because the murders caused by those felons are not the result of a public policy of death. By this logic, attempted murderers should also be put to death – after all, they TRIED to be murderers; only some external event prevented them from being actual murderers. And while we’re at it, how about those convicted of serious assaults, especially, with weapons? It was only a matter of luck that their victims did not die, yes?

No. No, that’s the wrong way to look at it. If we execute an innocent, we - society - is the active agent in causing death. It is absolutely invalid to compare the 824 deaths Hamlet mentioned as if to suggest that we need to reach 825 innocents executed before the death penalty becomes untenable.

• Rick