The death penalty is ultimately about killing people to feel good, which is why there’s so little concern by its supporters over the execution of innocents or whether or not it lowers the crime rate. So it’s not really important that innocent people might be killed, what’s important is to kill more people, faster.
Well, then they would still be guilty when we executed them so why would he worry. Our 100% record on only executing the “guilty” would remain intact, without all those uncomfortable questions being raised that we made a mistake.
On the other hand I could get behind his idea of Obama adding another 3 justices to the court, particularly if we can choose Scalia, Thomas and Alito to be shuffled off to the death penalty tribunal. 
Yes, whether they were in fact guilty of this crime or not. It is also 100% effective in preventing future redemption.
They are not gaming the legal system, they are fighting for their lives, as any human being would. Wouldn’t you?
That, of course, assumes that the accused is convicted. Or, for that matter, even caught. It failed, for example, to prevent Ted Bundy from killing a whole bunch of women.
And, in the end, if you simply confess, there is a pretty good chance you will escape the executioner – at least, if you are white. The way that capital punishment is so wildly arbitrary that any kind of effect it has is absolutely meaningless.
True. But it also prevented him from killing a whole bunch MORE women.
Well… there’s no guarantee of a plea bargain; if the prosecution thinks their case is a slam-dunk, they’ll likely have no inclination whatsoever to plea bargain.
Personally, I’ve always thought of the death penalty as the ultimate version of the “take the criminals out of circulation” concept, not as a punishment per-se.
How do you figure? He was in prison. He wasn’t going anywhere.
The threat of a death penalty did nothing to deter him, and once captured, life in prison would have prevented the same number of deaths.
And this* is* a valid reason for the DP. There are those who are so depraved or callous that they will kill again. Imprisonment doesnt stop them, they can kill other prisoners (and do bad check writers deserve to die?), guards, or arrange killings from their cell. They can also escape or be wrongfully let out.
Executing the Ted Bundys are the one sure way of preventing them from killing again- which they will certainly do.
Of course, that level of dedicated repeat killer is rare. I would have the DP be very rare, like in CA- certainly not like in Texas where it is promoted to enhance a Governors chance at being elected President.
Nope. He could escape, he could kill a guard or another prisoner, arrange killings thru a confederate, etc. All of these have been done by convicted killers. In fact a couple of killings were done by “Life without parole” prisoners as they had nothing to lose.
It does deter its use though. I don’t smoke pot because it’s illegal and I could get in trouble for it. Lots of people don’t smoke pot because it’s illegal and they could get in trouble for it.
The problem is that making weed illegal is the one thing that turns it into a “gateway drug”. As long as it is illegal, if you really do want to use it, you have to by definition associate with persons of questionable character. Make it legal and that issue fades to insignificance.
Of course, but that doesn’t mean that it being illegal is not in fact a deterrence. Whether it should be or not is a different question.
Does anybody have any data that compares the use of the death penalty in the US vs. the rest of the world? If the DP doesn’t deter criminals in the US, it may have more to do with the way it is carried out here than it does with the DP itself.
People consistently discount the future. Given the nature of the criminal justice system in the US, it’s often times better than a decade between the commission of a crime and the execution. If a potential murder had reason to believe he may be executed within a much shorter period of time, I would imagine it would be more effective.
Of course, the DP has issues as is. Speeding up the process could only exacerbate the situation.
Tell me, what percentage of wrongful executions is an acceptable level of “collateral damage” to ensure your 100% assurance that the Ted Bundys of the world won’t maybe commit additional murders while locked up for life?
I don’t support the death penalty except for treason and similar political crimes, but if I did, this is not an insurmountable objection, and it’s not clear to me that the answer should be ‘zero’. We trade off rival goods all the times when doing cost benefit analyses. Let’s say, to throw out an arbitrary number, 5%?
(I don’t support the death penalty for murder anyway, so I wouldn’t execute most of the people on death row currently in America. Dzokhar Tsarnaev and a couple others maybe excepted).
As a friend of mine likes to say, executing political prisoners is probably one area where the death penalty does have a really good deterrent effect, because political crimes usually aren’t crimes of passion.
Tell me, how many innocents are you willing to sacrifice so that the DP is ended?
A stroke of genius. (It strikes at the root of the problem and almost no one can see it.)
Value judgment there. My tolerance for executing innocent people in the hope of deterrence is much smaller than yours. Say, zero. But I thank you for answering the question in a forthright way. That’s refreshing.