# The Arkansas Executions, or More Evidence that Prison for Murderers Doesn't Work **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 17, 2017, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648 "2017-04-17T18:14:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 17
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648/321 "2020-01-28T22:10:24Z")
> [@Isosleepy](#): > > Exactly this: executing an innocent makes _me_ a murderer. This is unacceptable, even if it serves to avoid other killings (which is still by no means in evidence). > And, Shodan, you are positing an artificial binary: killing convicted murderers vs imprisoning them and then letting them go to kill again. There are of course other options, like life w/o parole. Except: life w/o parole has issue, like a prisoner escaping and killing agin, ordering a hit from prison, killing a guard or another prisoner, or getting accidentally released and killing again. All of these things have occurred. No, we just have to limit the DP for repeat or especially heinous offenders. Not just some guy who kills his wife 'cause she’s cheating on him. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648/322 "2020-01-28T22:17:11Z")
Not to distract from arguing that death penalty defenders want to execute anyone even accused (but not convicted) of murder, but the following might be of interest. > **[Convicted killers plead guilty in brutal attack on prison guard](https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/crime--law/convicted-killers-plead-guilty-brutal-attack-prison-guard/zQvTWGvrknoOqozjnt6yzK/)** > > The guard was stabbed dozens of times with a metal shank at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility by two inmates in prison for aggravated murders. Note that one of those found guilty in the attack had been convicted of _three_ aggravated murders, including the killing of a fellow inmate at Lebanon Correctional as well as the murder of a fellow inmate on a transport bus. You can’t throw such people in solitary confinement for life - it would (should?) be considered inhumane. And what of people sentenced to lengthy prison terms for murder in lieu of execution, who wind up dying prematurely from disorders contracted in or exacerbated by imprisonment, including liver cancer secondary to hepatitis B or AIDS? Is it ethical to sentence anyone to prison, seeing that innocents could contract a fatal disease, die from lack of top-line medical care or be murdered by fellow inmates or even guards? ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648/323 "2020-01-28T22:48:23Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > And what of people sentenced to lengthy prison terms for murder in lieu of execution, who wind up dying prematurely from disorders contracted in or exacerbated by imprisonment, including liver cancer secondary to hepatitis B or AIDS? Is it ethical to sentence anyone to prison, seeing that innocents could contract a fatal disease, die from lack of top-line medical care or be murdered by fellow inmates or even guards? They could also wind up dying prematurely from disorders contracted out on the street; neither Hep C nor AIDS is unique to prisons. They could be struck by a drunk driver, contract coronavirus, or fall into a sinkhole, or for that matter be murdered by the guy who got away with it when shoddy police work left somebody else to take the fall. However, in none of those cases are we, as individuals or as a society, directly causing the death. All we can do is apply our best efforts to protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty. Our best, however, is most emphatically NOT “kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out.” ---
**Author:** ![Isosleepy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/isosleepy/32/479_2.png) [@Isosleepy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isosleepy)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648/324 "2020-01-28T23:43:07Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > If I as a citizen am responsible for wrongful deaths consequent to the DP, then I am equally responsible for deaths consequent to not having the DP I am not responsible for the kids drowning in swimming pools because the government didn’t order to fill them in. But if the government were to order the US Marshals to throw all little kiddies in the pool to see who makes it, then we are all responsible. If you cannot see the difference, there is no point in further debate. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2020, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648/325 "2020-01-30T06:30:02Z")
> **[Murderer's sexual needs prioritized over sex worker safety - Cult MTL](https://cultmtl.com/2020/01/murderers-sexual-needs-took-precedence-over-sex-worker-safety/?fbclid=IwAR0DQ-Z8k5dq3ou8o1XkkYOa6nkAMhY71C69FgWyQFgXJL0T6xxEo26unng)** > > A Quebec City sex worker is dead because a federal parole board allowed a femicidal maniac to pay for sex as a “risk management strategy.” \*Last week, Marylène Lévesque, a 22-year-old sex worker employed by a Quebec City massage parlour, was murdered by 51-year-old Eustachio Gallese. Lévesque agreed to meet with the man at a hotel in the city’s Ste-Foy district, but never made it home. Gallese later surrendered to local police and told them to retrieve her body from his hotel room. The death of a young woman is horrific enough. But the details that would soon surface would make many of us question the inner failings of our justice system and a world that continues to treat sex workers as dispensable. In 2006, Gallese was sentenced to life in prison for the brutal death of his girlfriend, with no possibility of parole for 15 years. Thirty-two-year-old Chantale Deschenes had been savagely beaten to death with a hammer and repeatedly stabbed. Gallese then took the time to scribble vile insults about her on the bedroom wall before turning himself in to police. This wasn’t a one-time offence. He already had a history of conjugal violence with a previous partner in 1997. Even though the Parole Board initially found that he posed “a high risk of violence,” they later inexplicably changed that to a “moderate risk” and nine years later Gallese won conditional release to a halfway house. He had been out on day parole since March of 2019. While out, he was apparently allowed to see sex workers “in order to address [his] sexual needs.”\* ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2020, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648/326 "2020-01-30T16:40:32Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > [Murderer's sexual needs prioritized over sex worker safety - Cult MTL](https://cultmtl.com/2020/01/murderers-sexual-needs-took-precedence-over-sex-worker-safety/?fbclid=IwAR0DQ-Z8k5dq3ou8o1XkkYOa6nkAMhY71C69FgWyQFgXJL0T6xxEo26unng) > \*Last week, Marylène Lévesque, a 22-year-old sex worker employed by a Quebec City massage parlour, was murdered by 51-year-old Eustachio Gallese. Is Marylène Lévesque’s life more or less valuable than those of the 167 death row residents who have been exonerated? ---
**Author:** ![Isosleepy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/isosleepy/32/479_2.png) [@Isosleepy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isosleepy)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2020, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648/327 "2020-01-30T17:09:05Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > Is Marylène Lévesque’s life more or less valuable than those of the 167 death row residents who have been exonerated? It’s not lives saved math. For one, instead of killing the inmate, we are in fact capable of locking them up forever. We have done so successfully with many. But furthermore the killing by the state of an innocent is a different thing from one citizen killing another. And in my opinion infinitely worse. But under no circumstance could I give a multiplier. It’s just something we shouldn’t do. Trying to do math with murder victims plays into Shodan’s narrative, which serves no purpose whatever. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2020, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648/328 "2020-01-30T18:15:36Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > Is Marylène Lévesque’s life more or less valuable than those of the 167 death row residents who have been exonerated? **who have been exonerated** That shows the system works. Sorry, we have maybe two examples of recent cases where a innocent man was executed. I dont have the time, but i am sure I could dredge up dozens of convicted killers who killed again, in one way or the others. Now, again-\* I am against the DP except in extreme cases. \*Those who will clearly kill again and who are clearly guilty- just like CA does. I hate the way Texas does it. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2020, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648/329 "2020-01-30T18:17:47Z")
> [@Isosleepy](#): > > It’s not lives saved math. For one, instead of killing the inmate, we are in fact capable of locking them up forever. … Unfortunately, we are **not** \*capable of locking them up forever. \* Prisoners escape, they are accidentally released, the kill a guard or fellow prisoner or the order a killing from inside. If we _were_ actually capable of locking them up forever, then there’d be no need for the DP. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2020, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648/330 "2020-01-30T18:47:12Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > **who have been exonerated** > > That shows the system works. > > Sorry, we have maybe two examples of recent cases where a innocent man was executed. > > I dont have the time, but i am sure I could dredge up dozens of convicted killers who killed again, in one way or the others. > > Now, again-\* I am against the DP except in extreme cases. \*Those who will clearly kill again and who are clearly guilty- just like CA does. I hate the way Texas does it. Exoneration, however, requires that they still be alive to be exonerated, and absolutely preventing them from killing again requires they be dead. Those are mutually exclusive goals. As you point out to **Isosleepy** , the system doesn’t always “work” to keep people locked up forever; somebody somewhere misjudged Eustachio Gallese and he got out to kill again, while Kenneth Williams escaped just weeks after conviction and killed multiple innocent people. The only sure way to prevent escapes and accidental releases and killing guards or fellow prisoners would be to impose the death penalty very quickly after conviction. If you do that, however, then the system has no time to “work” to exonerate the innocent (NOBODY gets the death penalty in the US unless a judge and/or jury is convinced that they are clearly guilty, but sometimes they’re wrong), and it becomes more likely that a lot more than two innocent people are executed. This is the essential contradiction here: you cannot have both a perfect system of preventing all murderers from killing innocent people again AND a perfect system of preventing the state from executing innocents. The options are: 1. do the best job you can on both, while acknowledging that there might be some failures (including both Marylène Lévesque and Cameron Willingham as failures); 2. choose active and quick enforcement of the death penalty, with the knowledge that means that every single one of the 167 exonerated under the current system and probably a large number of other innocents would have been executed; or 3. abolish the death penalty in the name of protecting the wrongly-convicted, with the knowledge that sometimes the correctly-convicted will kill again. Right now most states are doing some variation of #1; California comes a little closer to #3, while Texas is closer to #2, but neither is an exact implementation, and instead is a variant of #1 with different emphases. **Shodan** , however, (and many other DP supporters) want to have #4, absolute perfection on both counts, and that isn’t an option in the real world. In this world of imperfection, every option involves trade-offs, and it all comes down to which lives you are willing to trade off to protect others. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2020, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648/331 "2020-01-30T19:31:10Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > Exoneration, however, requires that they still be alive to be exonerated, and absolutely preventing them from killing again requires they be dead. Those are mutually exclusive goals. > … > 3. abolish the death penalty in the name of protecting the wrongly-convicted, with the knowledge that sometimes the correctly-convicted will kill again. > > Right now most states are doing some variation of #1; California comes a little closer to #3, while Texas is closer to #2, but neither is an exact implementation, and instead is a variant of #1 with different emphases. … Well, altho you can rarely exonerate a executed person (altho some Governors have pardoned dead people), investigators do continue after the fact. CA I think has the best compromise. Only the worst of the worst are sent to death row. TX does the worst job. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2020, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648/332 "2020-01-30T22:05:17Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Well, altho you can rarely exonerate a executed person (altho some Governors have pardoned dead people), investigators do continue after the fact. You can NEVER exonerate an executed person. You might be able to exonerate their name, or pay compensation to their survivors, but they’re still dead. And, unfortunately, in most cases investigations do NOT continue after the fact; most states put up substantial barriers even to the attempt (cf. Tennessee, above). The exceptions are highly publicized, but most folks paying the bills figure that dead is going to stay dead, so there’s no point in paying good money on a moot subject. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2020, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648/333 "2020-02-03T22:24:03Z")
> [@Isosleepy](#): > > Exactly this: executing an innocent makes _me_ a murderer. This is unacceptable, even if it serves to avoid other killings (which is still by no means in evidence). > And, Shodan, you are positing an artificial binary: killing convicted murderers vs imprisoning them and then letting them go to kill again. There are of course other options, like life w/o parole. Then why do you favor imprisonment knowing that _you_ are imprisoning innocent people, subjecting them to rape, alienation from their children, etc.? And this “maybe they can be found innocent down the road” argument is facile. It is so extraordinarily rare as to be blip in the stats. That’s why it is a news story when it happens. ---
**Author:** ![Isosleepy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/isosleepy/32/479_2.png) [@Isosleepy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isosleepy)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648/334 "2020-02-04T17:06:31Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > Then why do you favor imprisonment knowing that _you_ are imprisoning innocent people, subjecting them to rape, alienation from their children, etc.? > > And this “maybe they can be found innocent down the road” argument is facile. It is so extraordinarily rare as to be blip in the stats. That’s why it is a news story when it happens. I certainly believe our system is imperfect. But imprisoning a person unjustly as a consequence of having any justice system at all, is a whole different animal from killing prisoners because they might escape. There is at present no workable alternative for imprisoning at least some people. There is an alternative for killing them. And being responsible for unjust imprisonments is easier to carry than unjust killing, because the latter is final, and by far a worse transgression. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648/335 "2021-03-10T21:33:32Z")
Bumped. > **[Former governor, attorneys general: Ohio death penalty broken, costly and...](https://www.dispatch.com/story/opinion/2021/03/09/repeal-ohio-death-penalty-bob-taft-lee-fisher-jim-petro/4628742001/)** > > Former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft and attorney generals Lee Fisher and Jim Petro say the state should retire the death penalty they helped create. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648/336 "2021-03-10T21:38:50Z")
> **[Posthumous Pardons](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence/posthumous-pardons)** > > The "Martinsville 7" Receive Posthumous Pardons 70 Years After Their Executions in Virginia. Following years of advocacy from family members and other advocates, the case gained renewed attention on the seventieth anniversary of the executions, as... [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-arkansas-executions-or-more-evidence-that-prison-for-murderers-doesnt-work/784648.md?page=16)