I think if you are convicted of murder, you should be executed.
This should not include manslaughter, or other mishap. If two people are in a fistfight, and one accidently kills the other, that is not murder. It’s manslaughter. Self-defense is not murder.
To restate for clarification: If you deliberately kill another human being, the death sentence should be mandatory.
There should be the opportunity for one appeal, and if the verdict still stands, execution should be carried out within a month.
During that one month there should be a judge available for any and all evidence which may prove the convicted murderer innocent.
That judge should have the power to stay the execution for 1-3 additional months if he feels more time is needed to pursue newly presented evidence of the convicted killer’s potential innocence.
The day before the scheduled execution, a panel of three judges should review the case and evidence. They should have the power to overturn the case and set the convicted killer free if they feel unanimously that there is new evidence that proves the convicted murderer’s innocence, or that he is not guilty as a matter of law.
Setting the convicted killer free should be the only alternative to execution. There should be no more stays, or delays.
I believe that the automatic death penalty for murderers would be a deterrant in much the same way that professional burglers are rarely armed because that is an automatic escalation of the charge against them if they are caught.
If I am wrong and it’s not a deterrant, than consider this: Why should tax payers have to foot the bill for keeping these rabid dogs alive in prison? Why should we support the endless appeals?
Isn’t ten years or more on death row a cruel and unusual punishment? During the extended time period of reflection these murderers have, isn’t it reasonable to assume that some would change. Some might find God, or reform themselves to the point where they are no longer a danger to society. Indeed, they may change so much, that the person who committed those murders no longer exists. He/she has been replaced by another, the bulk of whose memories, ideas, and thoughts, in short, who they are, is a product of the death row environment they have perhaps spent a decade or more in. What is the point in executing these people? THe killers are long gone. Now somebody else is there.
If a dog turns mean and dangerous and attacks people, do we keep it around in a cage for years and then kill it, or do we end its life quickly? Do we do so for revenge, or because of the simple fact that we cannot suffer such an animal to live?
Why should it be any different with a convicted murderer.
Kill them. Kill them quickly. They have foirfeited their right to live.
First off I’d like to see some facts and figures on how well that whole “deterrant effect” works…
Secondly, already a relatively significant amount of people are later found to have been convicted and killed wrongly, or the death sentence is overturned later on-how would making it easier to execute people address this problem?
Finally, why should people who have killed other people die? Last time I checked, the ultimate goal of our legal system was rehabilitative, not retaliatory.
When I said it might be a deterrant, I specifically stated that as my opinion, not a fact. If you disagree fine. I won’t argue. I know it would make me think twice, before committing murder. Also, I believe that there are some facts and figures out there that can show some correlation between tougher laws and decreased breaking of them, specifically drunk driving. You could probably find them with a modicum of effort if you want. Either way it’s not crucial to my argument. I see “You kill, you die” as a moral imperative.
You said:
“Secondly, already a relatively significant amount of people are later found to have been convicted and killed wrongly,
or the death sentence is overturned later on-how would making it easier to execute people address this problem?”
You’ll need to substantiate that. What is significant? What percentage of executed murderers were later proved innocent? I would bet that it’s well under 1%. At any rate that’s a rather extraordinary claim that will recquire some backing up.
In today’s society, a convicted murderer can go free in seven years or so. The time in prison provides excellent training, in how to do it better and not get caught next time.
You said:
" Last time I checked, the ultimate goal of our legal
system was rehabilitative, not retaliatory. "
Where did you check?
This is simply not true. In response to the overwhelming repeat criminal activity of previously jailed felons, and the failure of our penal system to rehabilitate them, it was admitted that our federal prisons exist to incarcerate criminals and to punish them, not to rehabilitate them. THis occured in the early 1980s.
This was simply stating the obvious. One clue that this has been true for some time is the fact that we have a “penal” system, not a “rehab” system.
I agree with you on the first two points. I am not a big one on capital punishment.
But the penal system is actually not geared towards rehabilitation…it was for awhile there, but nothing panned out. You still here talk of “rehabilitation” but I think most folks will tell you the penal system is all about warehousing now.
From a practical standpoint, this whole “automatic execution” system would bring the criminal justice to a complete halt.
Anyone charged with murder (and do you mean first degree murder only or are you including second degree murder in this plan) is going to ask for a jury trial. And the trials are going to take a long time as you have a strong incentive to put up a fight.
This system is also going to end up executing more poor people as they will be less likely to be able to afford good legal counsel.
Overall, I don’t see what this extreme broadening of capital punishment would accomplish except to make our present society an even more violent place as the state would have to go into the murder business fulltime.
The Death penalty is a wonderful deterrant, it deters those on whom it is inflicted from commiting another murder, 100%.
And this is the only moral reason for the Death penalty. It protects the innocent from being killed by that man. No man has EVER commited another murder, or crime even, after being successfully executed. Society has a duty to protect the innocent from the killer.
And Life imprisonment does not do this. The convict could get paroled by an idiot govenor,or escape,or kill a guard, or kill another prisoner.
Of course, we must be sure. I would suggest that the standard for the Death Penalty be raised (for 1st offenders) to “beyond ALL doubt”. 2nd time killers are executed at once.
In a college class on civil rights, our professor showed us a text (sorry, forgot the name) that documented 400 people convicted of murder and sentenced to die that the state later admitted were not guilty. 400 people.
Lets assume for the sake of argument that those were the only people wrongly convicted. I’m certain that it is less than 1%. A statistically insignificant number.
UNLESS YOU ARE ONE OF THEM!!!
It is foolish to think that we are immune to the injustice
visited on others. And I am not very lucky. I want that appeals process just the way it is.
Getting caught is the big deterrant rather than the death penalty itself.
Felons do not think like regular people.They are often from the less well educated layers of society and even though they get caught time after time they still think that next time they won’t.
If you are going to advocate the death penalty then those inmates should be placed in completely separate jails to the rest of the prison population. The disruption caused by an execution to a jails normal running has to be seen to be understood.
Just for the record, we need to be careful about throwing around words like deterrence. The key part of the definition is “the inhibition of criminal behavior by fear especially of punishment” (from Merriam-Webster). To include the fact that executed murderes do not kill again is not evidence of deterrence. It is evidence of 100% effectiveness against recidivism.
The problem with achieving deterrence is not just one of making the punishment appropriately bad. The simple fact is that we could torture murderers, then kill them, and murders would still occur. The reason? Punishment is not guaranteed. We need deterrence along with guarantee of punishment. Most people who murder do so in the assumption that they will not be caught. Scylla:
Suppose John Doe breaks into my house and kills my wife while I am out. He is caught and tried, but due to an improper search, all the key evidence is thrown out and he is acquitted. Distraught, I take my hunting rifle and hunt him down and kill him.
Now, in your system, am I a murderer, or something else? That is, should I get the death penalty? Just curious.
Just because sometimes it takes years for exculpatory evidence to come to light (as it has in Illinois several times).
The conservative and previously pro-death penalty Illinois governor put a halt on executions for a reason – the system wasn’t working. They had released from death row as many people as they executed – all of them long after your little few-month waiting period. They would all be dead now under your plan. Oh, wait, but you don’t care about that. Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out, right? So what if some innocent folks die? You don’t care about them.
All of them innocent. All of them murdered by the state. Hmmm. Murdered. Since you’re such an advocate of this plan, you’d have to be executed for aiding in their murders…
There was a quote I read in Doonesbury, of all places, that was supposed to be “I would rather allow one thousand guilty men go free than allow one innocent person die.” Anyway, the comic said some other stuff, but I agree with this quote.
Does anyone know the stats on what countries have the death penalty other than kind old Uncle Sam? China and Nigeria do, I know, but I can’t think of any others.
Great. And those one thousand guilty men are going to kill an additional what? Two hundred victims? Five hundred?
If your objective is to reduce the number of deaths of innocent people to a minimum, then it is best to execute nearly all convicted killers, even if you know that there are probably some innocent people among them. For example, assume that you have 100 convicted killers, 10 of who are innocent of the crime that they were convicted. Of course, ‘innocent’ is a relative term. These people are not choir boys. Most of the 10 ‘innocent’ people would have been guilty of other violent crimes themselves, just not the particular crime that they were convicted of. Say that on average, a released murderer has a 20% chance of killing again. Working out the math, for every 10 convicted killers released we have one ‘innocent’ released and 9 guilty, who go on to kill 1.8 other people.
These are not the actual percentages, of course. If someone has the actual percentages, it should be possible to find out how many additional deaths have occurred due to releasing convicted killers, and how that number compares to the number of ‘innocent’ people wrongfully executed.
You are not surely advocating killing people on the basis of what they might or might do in the future !
That looks to me like a short step from executing people whose lifestyle might not meet your standards.
Ten percent error eh ? How many times have you been in a less than 10% minority on any issue and been right.
Every sytsem makes mistakes or is at times just plain wrong.
Many killers are extremely unlikely to kill, again possibly most, and it is likely that many could easily be identified so why bother killing them if the object is to reduce risk ?
The real difficulty is when the margins between unlikely and likely reoffenders are explored in practice.
Every offence and offender is differant and all require differant approaches but this is time consuming and expensive, a customised penal system .
Should we discuss killers only here because there certaily are those who, IMHO, have committed offences of such grave atrocity short of murder who might merit execution too.
Setting aside for the moment your unsubstantiated assumption that wrongfully convicted murderers are likely to be guilty of other violent crimes (that presumption of innocence idea is just soooo inconvenient isn’t it) why don’t we simply apply your statiatical reasoning more completely.
Convicted murderes are not the only people likely to kill. We can generate populations breakdowns by economic and/or socio-cultural class. Then, we simply kill the appropriate number of newborns from each class before they have a chance to commit murder. Sure, some innocent babies will die, but statistically we will be reducing the overall number of murders within the population, right?
Justice is so much simpler when you do not need to worry about punishing the innocent.
Yes, innocent people would die under my plan, as innocent people die today.
At least one reason why it takes years for this evidence to come out is because of the snail’s pace of our current legal system.
The idea behind the one appeal and judicial review is not to prevent a convicted killer from receiving justice, but rather to fast track his case towards quick resolution.
Then you whined:
"They had released from death row as many people as they executed – all of
them long after your little few-month waiting period. They would all be dead now under your plan. Oh, wait,
but you don’t care about that. Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out, right? So what if some innocent folks die?
You don’t care about them. "
That’s the kind of half Ad hominem, half emotional blather argument I’d expect from CB or Pashley. I expect better from you, so let’s take it piece by piece.
The assertion that they would all be dead is false. It is equally possible that under my system, the judicial review would have determined that they were all innocent and set them free, givng them back a decade or so of their lives which were instead wasted on death row. No longer will the innocent pine away endlessly on death row, neglected by our legal system. They will either be wrongly executed, or set free. I would like to believe that my system would find the innocent quicker. Even if it doesn’t, innocent people die under our current system.
The assertion that I don’t care is not germaine to the argument. I could equally say that you don’t care about all the innocent victims of the killers that are set free only to kill again. I wouldn’t say that though, because I do not know it for a fact. I am not privy to your personal feelings towards murder victims. Neither are you privy to my feelings and motivations concerning the death of the falsely accused.
Unless you have a specific claim for such insight (perhaps ESP,) this is a ridiculous assertion.
State committing murder, “Let God sort them out.” I would be a murderer for passing such a system, and the rest of your bull**** argument.
I have already stated that if you commit murder, I believe you have forfeited your right to live. You need to be destroyed just as a rabid dog does. This killing is not a pleasurable act of bloodthirsty revenge, but a necessity.
The knowledge that if you murder, you are also killing yourself, is something I see as an effective deterrant, and also inherently just. THe state is not committing murder, and neither am I. THe murderer is responsible for his own death which he has brought about by his own actions.
The proper quote is “Kill them all, for God will know his own.” Again, if you could demonstrate that innocent people are not executed under our current legal system, or that fewer innocent convicted criminals would be executed this may be valid. If you can demonstrate that net of net fewer innocent people die by turning murderers loose than by executing them you might have a point. Until then, it’s meaningless vitriolic blather.
Smartass:
A good question. I guess a court would have to decide if you had committed murder. Perhaps you might argue that what you have done is committed manslaughter. That your act was a direct response to the murder of your family member, and provoked, that you were insane with grief. I don’t know what a court would decide.
On the other hand, if the search was improper, perhaps evidence was falsified, and you have murdered an innocent.
Perhaps your wife attacked the intruder and he killed her unintentionally in a struggle, and is only guilty of manslaughter.
I don’t beleive you have the right to take the law into your own hands in any of these circumstances.
BobT:
I suppose you wish to argue that our court system is not overloaded now? Actually, I think my system would make justice swifter and free up resources within our court system.
2sense said:
"How about because it is Barbaric?
Would you agree that a modern government should not unneccessarily kill its citizens?"
How is this more barbaric than the mental cruelty of keeping a person on death row for a decade or more? Is it barbaric to kill a rabid dog? No. It is a necessity.
I agree that a modern government should not kill its citizens unneccessarily. I would argue that a murder no longer has the right to life, and no longer deserves the privilege of citizenship of the government or more importantly, the human race. I would argue that such a persons death is indeed a necessity.
What? I was trying to provide an analysis of the actual costs of execution vs. release, and in fact was asking for the true numbers in order to get a better handle on the facts:
I never said that I approved of execution., but was giving a hypothetical analysis:
Spiritus Mundi said:
I guess the best thing to do would be to kill all babies at birth. This absurd statement does not deserve a reply.
Or you could get rid of the death penalty altogether and sentence them to life without parole.
Gosh, what an idea!
How the hell do you know? What, if they’re charged with something, they must have done it, or something else, or whatever, just kill 'em, eh?
Scylla said:
Ah, so the proper way to handle it is to subject more people to the death penalty. That makes sense. Kill more innocent people…
And in other cases, there are other reasons. For example, in Illinois, several cases were due to witness testimony that was bogus. However, the witnesses apparently needed time to mull over what they had done – many years in some cases. Under your system, they would be dead. The state would have murdered them.
Bullshit. The fast track would mean more innocent people die. Sure, more guilty would die as well, but some of us aren’t willing to sacrifice the innocent for the sake of quick killings for the guilty. Some of us care more about justice.
That was a “whine” in your world? Pointing out the facts and the ridiculous nature of your plan is a “whine”? Gosh, I’m soooo sorry to point out the flaws, but if you’d have thought your little pro-death plan out a bit more, maybe I wouldn’t have had to.
Talk about ad hominem. First you claim I’m “whining” and then you compare me to the worst examples of creationists! The problem, of course, is that I have pointed out facts – problems with the death penalty. I’m sorry you don’t want to hear it, and I’m sorry you feel it’s worth sacrificing innocent lives in the pursuit of “deterrence,” but some of us aren’t so willing to simply toss away life that way.
You are apparently unfamiliar with these cases. Many of them already were through all the legal appeals they had and were just awaiting execution. In fact, one would have been dead already if he’d scored higher on an IQ test (it put off the date for further examination, but didn’t let him free). It wasn’t until outside actions took place that many were released. In a few cases, a professor and some of his students at Northwestern University took interest and found evidence to set them free. Under your system, that never would have happened. In other cases, as I mentioned, witnesses finally had the guilt build up inside of them and admitted they were wrong/had lied. In your system, that would not have happened. In other cases, years later a different person was found to have committed the crime (he was caught for something else and admitted to the earlier one). Under your system, that would not have happened.
In all of these cases, the innocent person would be dead.
You can believe anything you want. The evidence says otherwise.
So we should make it worse instead of better? What kind of illogic is that? Talk about sounding like Pashley or CB…
Why not? You are promoting something that would result in more innocents being executed. I think whether you care or not is very germaine. If you cared, you wouldn’t be promoting something so ridiculous.
Not at all. I based it on the cavalier way you already dealt with the question of innocence. To me, that showed you didn’t care.
Hey, I was just taking your example to an extreme. If it’s bullshit, that’s your problem, not mine.
Of course, you’re ignoring the fact that I was talking about the innocent people that are killed under this plan, not the guilty ones. If you promote a plan knowing full well that more innocent people will die, and innocent people do die because of it, I think you have committed murder. You knew it would happen. You planned it. It happened. You murdered an innocent person.
You’re completely missing the point. Under the current system in Illinois, for example, we can rest assured that no innocent person will die. Know why? 'Cus the governor saw it was a faulty system and haulted all executions. Oh, horror of horrors – the guilty will now face life in prison instead (if his decision is ratified into law; otherwise, they’ll wait 'til the next governor comes along to see what he does). So if we do away with the death penalty, we know there will be no innocent people executed. But instead, you want to increase the use of a faulty system.
Talk about meaningless blather. You seem to think it’s ok for the state to execute innocent people as long as the net will mean reduction of death. I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous! It must be nice to live in a purely statistical world, where real people aren’t involved. But they are. How would you feel if you were one of the innocent men condemned by your plan? Would you go to the electric chair thinking, “Gosh, at least I know fewer innocent people will die overall. So I’m willing to give my life”? Somehow, I rather doubt it.
The funny thing about this debate is that we have, or are near to having, technology that would reduce homicide, and most other violent crimes and robbery, to a small fraction of its current level. However, it will likely never be adopted.
The main deterrent to crime seems not to be the severity of the punishment, but rather the likelyhood of being caught. So if the likelyhood is increased to a very high level, and everyone knows this, the non-white-collar crime rates should drop dramatically.
So, how about having everyone be implanted with a transmitter giving their location and heartrate, possibly with a ‘panic button’? If someone is murdered, the records could be checked to see who was with the victim at the time of death. Similarly, if a store is burgled, check who was in the store that night. And so on…
The obvious problem is, who will watch the watchman? The potential for an absolute police state is clear. Not to mention all the spouses discovering adultery in their partners. OTOH, if you are stupid enough to commit adultery when this system is operational…
Perhaps some system for controlling access to the tracking data is possible, but personally I doubt that this system would ever be implemented.
I used to argue in favor of it on computer bulletin boards.
Now, I didn’t use some of the ridiculous arguments we’ve seen here (like the one about how the supposedly innocent people were probably guilty of something anyway). But I was definitely pro-DP.
Then I saw how the system worked – or rather, how it didn’t work.
Eventually, my mind changed.
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against the idea of the state killing a guilty murderer. But I do have quite a lot against the idea of the state killing an innocent person. Yes, even one.
We are all human. Humans make mistakes. There are certainly some cases where it’s incredibly unlikely the person might be innocent. For example, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, etc. If we could only execute those for whom there is absolutely no doubt, I’d have no problem. But no doubt according to whom? The problem is that no matter what, you’re putting a possibly innocent person’s life into the hands of a fallible human being.
So until and unless somebody comes up with the perfect system, I will remain against the death penalty. I certainly will oppose any idea to make it easier for the state to execute innocent people!
Lock 'em up and throw away the key. If, 15 years down the road, it turns out that a witness lied or a prosecutor screwed up, let 'em out. It’s not great that they served 15 years for a crime they didn’t commit, but it’s better than being dead.