Why I am against the death penalty.

The BBQ Pit
1

Let me give you an illustrative piece as to why I am both a staunch Republican and against the death penalty.

It starts upon the fateful day of September 11th, 2001. A day of great national tragedy. Of amazing pain and suffering. Of terrible loss, both of innocence and sense of security.

I had my own personal tragedy that day: a speeding ticket. Which compares to the rest of the day’s horror like a paper cut compares to an unanesthetized appendectomy, so it’s not like I’m really comparing except for the sake of humor.

I expected to beat that ticket, or at least have the fine reduced- go to court, explain how I was distracted by listening to new reports of what was going on, beg for mercy, the standard stuff that gets most judges to drop the fine a level.

But as time grew closer to my court date, I realized that I really just didn’t have the time or the energy to spend half of a day sitting in District Court waiting for my name to be called so that I could save $20. So I bit the bullet and paid the fine- in full amount, doubled due to lateness- by sending a check off to the Court along with a copy of the ticket, as instructed to by the ticket.
Fast forward now, to this weekend.

My weekend up to Saturday night had been, to boil it down to a single word, shitty. I had gone up to my cousin’s wedding; she lives in the middle of Pennsylvania, so I had spent five hours driving up there Friday night and was on the tail end of driving five hours down Saturday evening. My girlfriend was with me, sick as a dog with laryngitis. Which of course made the trip that much more fun, as the only person I could then carry on a conversation with was myself, and I find myself an incredible bore. I would occasionally attempt to force a conversation with my gf, which invariably led to her croaking out an explanation of how much pain she was in, which did little to put me in a happy, guilt-free mood. The wedding had been okay, but given the ten hour round-trip it could have involved dancing poodles, strippers, and Bruce Springsteen playing live and I still would feel it wasn’t really worth it.

So. I’m driving through a somewhat rural part of Maryland when a police car ends up behind me. This leads to ten minutes of being very stressed out because no one can drive with a police car right behind them without being worried about whether or not one is actually driving well and not about to get a ticket. Just about the point where I’m starting to feel complacent, bam, on go the flashing lights. What follows is about twenty seconds of “Aaaah! Gotta fucking pull over! No, wait, shit, no real side of the road here, gotta get back on the road, find a place to pull over, fuck, please tell me he doesn’t think I’m trying to ignore him, shitshitshit!” I don’t normally freak out that bad, but again, I’ve had little sleep, I’ve been driving for nearly three hours straight (the GF had thankfully been able to pull a small stretch so I could take a nap), and I’m this close to being home where I can curl up under the covers and just sleep.

So. Officer comes up, driver’s liscense and registration are passed over. Turns out my left brake light is out, so he needs to write me up a repair order for that. That’s understandable. Annoying to have happen then and there, but understandable, and if I get it fixed in a week, no points or fine. So he wanders back to his cruiser to write the citation.

Then I see another cruiser pull up behind him, lights also flashing. Something inside of me tells me that this isn’t good. My gf states that it’s nothing big- it’s a rural area, and the cops don’t have much to do except sit around and talk near the latest guy they’ve pulled over. The officer steps out of his patrol car and walks up to my door. Thankfully, this will all be over soon and I’ll be able to get home and

“Sir, please get out of the car.”

Let’s go back to that check I sent off to the District Court. Upon careful inspection later, I noticed that the case # written on the back- what it was actually applied to- was mistyped. It ended in a 1, while the citation I had been trying to pay off ended in a 7. Apparently, I paid off someone else’s ticket. And as far as the District Court and the MVA were concerned, I was a scofflaw, thumbing my nose at authority by not bothering to pay my speeding tickets and then skipping out on court dates. Do you know what Maryland does to people who don’t pay fines and skip out on court dates? It suspends their driver’s license. Do you know what happens to people who get caught driving on suspended licenses?

They end up handcuffed, having their vehicle searched, and spending a bit of time in the back of a patrol car. Luckily, either because I was as polite/obviously confused/really scared and confused as I could be, the arresting officer took pity on me and did not decide to incarcerate me overnight. Rather, he let me go home so long as my extremely-freaked-out-girlfriend would drive the car.
So. A very large fuck you to the typist at the District Court who- despite the check and the citation and the notation on the envelope being very clear that the ticket ended in a “7”- typed a “1”. I hope someone does the same to you, and so you end up standing handcuffed on the side of the road while your very ill girlfriend is crying hysterically and confusedly. And I hope you also have panic attacks all through the next day as you worry about ending up in jail because a check got lost in the mail, and more panic attacks as you try to figure out how to arrange your life in the public-transit-unfriendly Maryland suburbs without having access to a car.

But because I’m not really very vindictive, I also hope you have people willing to help you out as much as people were willing to help me out- parents willing to drive me places, bosses willing to let me come in a bit late, police officers willing to give me the benefit of the doubt, extremely apologetic and helpful District court officials willing to rush paperwork to get my license back into shape and willing to write up letters explaining how the whole thing wasn’t my fault.

So, in the end, the only downside was having a hell of a lot of stress on Sunday.

But mistakes like these happen all of the time. Errors of judgement, simple typos leading to misfiled paperwork and misapplied monies. Government employees are only human, and sometimes all too human.

And we’re willing to give them the power of life and death? Or control over vast amounts of money because we believe they know better than us in how to spend it?

Doesn’t make sense to me.

2

But by that standard of reasoning, we should stop incarcerating everyone. You were innocent, right? Maybe EVERYONE is innocent. Maybe it’s all just paperwork that was misfiled and not, you know, a file stuck in Pepe’. Maybe the gun didn’t go off six times at point blank range. Could have just been a clerical error, yes?
Maybe the whole system is out of order.

I’m willing to admit that there are innocents in jail. Perhaps there are even innocents on death row. This is tragic. But the solution isn’t to scrap the program, it’s to find the flaws and fix them.

3

Incarceration can be corrected.

You cannot bring someone back after you execute them.

4

Here’s the reimbursement check for your husband, Mrs. Buttle. Please be sure to keep the pink receipt.

5

Enderw24 I don’t think that was what he was saying at all.

Bummer about the license thing, sounds like the police were sorta fair. Handcuffs and a search sounds like a bit of a stretch to me. I wonder if you could bring a claim against the court officials for negligence?

6

So you were briefly detained on a bureaucratic snafu that was quickly corrected, and you’re comparing this to a murder investigation that costs hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars and a trial before a jury of twelve citizens in exactly what way that doesn’t make you look like you’re projecting IMAX onto a portable TV?

minty green, esq.
Currently working very seriously to get somebody off death row, so don’t give me any shit about being a bloodthirsty, vengeance-seeking troglodyte, m’kay?

7

Geez, minty, lighten up, m’kay?

8

Oh shit!

The order from the governor said “exonerate him”? I thought it said “execute him”!

My bad.

Regards,
Shodan
“Kill them all - God will know His own.” - Pope Innocent II

9

Uh, no, Pope Innocent the Third (not Second) did not say that. According to various sources, it was either Arnaud-Armaury, the Abbot of Citeaux, or “one of the chiefs of the besiegers, a Amal Ulric” during the Albigensian Crusade who said that: “Neca ecos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet.”

Oh, and I’m anti death penalty for the reasons given above.

10

No, JonScribe, I’m not gonna lighten up. The comparison between a traffic stop and an execution is silly at best. I’m working my ass off on my case precisely because the government’s threatened action is so dire, and I’m actually kind of offended that anybody would even remotely compare being handcuffed for a few minutes with being strapped to a gurney and killed.

11

You make some good points, JC, but surely you must admit there are cases where a person is clearly, totally, unambiguously guilty. Where a person commits a murder in front of dozens of reliable and disinterested witnesses, and freely admits they did so.

Take Columbine, for instance. It was pretty clear and unambigous who killed who. Could those two subhumans possibly be innocent, mere victims of a clerical error?

These “100% certainty” cases are not common, mind you. But they do exist. And in that case, is the death penalty acceptable to you?

12

A punisment cannot be based on how sure we are that the crime has been committed. There can only be two possible cases.[ul][li]The state proves that the defendent committed the crime, and the convicted is punished.The state does not prove beyond a reasonable that the accused committed a crime, and the accused goes totally free.[/ul][/li]Criminals should not be punished for being stupid, they should be punished for comitting crimes. Why should the Columbine killers be executed (assuming they had been captured alive), while a wily serial killer who kills as many, but does so in such a clever manner that the state is barely able to convict, get a lighter sentence?

Yes, brashness should be taken into account when deciding a sentence, as should cold-hearted plotting, but the punisment should not be based on how sure the state is that the accused did it! How would we convince criminals to confess if this were so?

FTR: I’m also against the death penalty, for practical reasons, as stated in the OP, as well as moral reasons.

Hope things work out for you, John.

13

Dylan Klebold was 17 years old so I guess you’re keeping pretty weird company on this one , Anthracite.

http://www.hrw.org/children/justice.htm#death penalty
“Only six countries in the world—Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Yemen—were known to have executed juvenile offenders (people convicted of acts committed before the age of eighteen) in the 1990s, in violation of international legal standards. The United States has executed nine juvenile offenders in this decade, more than the reported total for any other nation in the world.”

It doesn’t appear to be acceptable to any western country, except the US.

14

Hey, you know what? I don’t give a shit that Klebold was “just” 17. He was old enough to premeditate, plan, acquire weapons for, and carry out a gruesome slaughter. The difference between 17 and 18 is academic in this case, as is any artificial barrier. Seventeen and 364 days, he’s a “child”, but 18 and it’s all cool now? :rolleyes:

He transcended his “childhood” long ago, and trying to appeal on the spurious claim that the US is executing little children is pathetic.

Your country has an age of consent of 16, and a drinking age of 18. So naturally I should make it personal and accuse you of keeping “weird company” ( :rolleyes: )in that your arbitrary age limit is different than over here. Or would that make me an asshole too?

Obviously there must be some lower barrier. Klebold shows that 18 isn’t it.

Or was your post yet another in a long line of examples of you being subtly preachy about how wicked and evil and bad and terrible America is? In which case, I shall treat it like your “The NHS is so much better than the American health care system” posts, and just Ignore it.

15

I think London_Calling raises a valid point, Anthracite. But only if he’s claiming that it’s wrong to execute people who were minors when they committed their crime, not if he’s opposed to the death penalty in general. If, in fact, he opposes the death penalty in general, then it’s pretty chickenshit debating tactics to isolate the instance of a 17-year-old murderer and compare his contemplated execution with craphole third world countries where nothing resembling due process and a legitimate judicial system exist.

You wouldn’t ever do anything like that, would you L_C?

16

Speaking only for myself, the point of the OP seemed to be that a “bureaucratic snafu” can cause a great deal of confusion and difficulty when the both the complexity of the case and the stakes involved are comparatively minor.

The suggestion being that the opportunities for errors, amount of bureaucracy, dire consequences of mistakes, etc. increase with the greater complexity of a capital murder case.

IOW, I don’t think his intent was to draw a direct comparison between a speeding ticket and a capital murder case, but rather to use the former to amplify the latter.

My somewhat-incoherent $0.02.

17

No minty, we’re specifically addressing under 18’s (when the offence is committed).

Anthracite - I’m not the biggest fan of this particular president, nor of the general current political trend to try to re-shape public perspectives but that’s beside the point.
FWIW, I didn’t use terms such as “just”, “child”, “childhood” or “little children” . They’re emotionally based and distract from the important point, as are “spurious” and “pathetic”.

I don’t know what else to add other than to re-state the point; As above, in executing juvenile offenders, the US is in company with only Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

If you think that’s reasonable, so be it. But you don’t speak for the government of the US, nor the people of the US – of whom I would hazard the majority would also disagree with you. In fact, the US (federal) government doesn’t agree with you:

“The execution of individuals for crimes committed before age eighteen is *specifically prohibited *by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which has been ratified by the United States and more than 125 countries”

18

The technical term for this syndrome is “ticketrauma.”

Or, had a volunteer firemen pulled behind you, “pseudo-ticketrauma.”

Carry on.

19

Isn’t the OP really just advocating reform of the justice system?

Assuming arguendo that we could eliminate all the human error in the criminal courts, the OP doesn’t ultimatelty address the rightness or wrongness of the death penalty.

20

What doesn’t make sense to you, Corrado? That people are human and commit errors? That those errors can have adverse effects on others? Well, that’s not just in government, clerk’s offices, and courtrooms, but everywhere there is a human being. Millions of dollars are wasted and people die because of faulty O-rings, errors in product safety, and mishandling vehicles. I would whole-heartedly agree that the criminal justice system should be held to the highest possible standard, and it generally is. That’s why there are years and years and years of highly-scrutinized appeals on death penalty cases, and it works to keep those errors to a minimum.

Are you advocating a sliding scale of justice based on the punishment? For traffic offenses, proof by clear and convincing evidence, for Murder, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and for death penalty, proof beyond any possible doubt?