Imagine you’re a juror on a crime for which the death penalty is a possibility. In the case of the death penalty being given, it is immediately applied. As in right there in the courtroom in front of you. Does that affect your Guilty / Not Guilty verdict?
No, bad people deserve to die.
Yes, especially if I’ve just eaten.
Yes, because there well could have been errors in the trial that are fodder for appeals, but as a juror I probably would have no idea about that. For example, the judge may have ignored Supreme Court rulings on the admissibility of some evidence that was seized in an unlawful manner. On appeal, that evidence might be thrown out and the jury may come to an entirely different decision.
It would definitely make it a lot more House Stark-ish*, if not completely so, in that you’re confronted immediately with the consequences of your decision, instead of voting that someone die, and then maybe reading about it in the paper a decade later.
I think for me, it would reduce or eliminate any theoretical aspects of the decision- it would be a lot easier to decide impassively if I didn’t have to either actually execute the prisoner or stand right there while it was done.
OTOH, if it was someone clearly guilty, and clearly a threat to society, I don’t think I’d flinch.
(in the sense of “The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.”)
I’m for capital punishment, but have a crazy idea that one of the jurors gets to inject the drug, pull the trigger, flip the electrical switch, ect. If no one will do it, the sentence is commuted to life with no chance of parole.
Nope. And that’s a system I could get behind. The whole “ten years of appeals” is bullshit.
Everyone is pretty bad then.
If I believe the defendant is guilty, I would vote guilty whether I agreed with the punishment or not.
Taking out follow on controls would raise my standard of proof. I’d go from beyond a reasonable doubt to there’s no question in my mind short of super advanced aliens with almost omnipotent powers trying to frame them.
And do you stand for goodness, or badness?
Entirely depends on the heinousness of the crime. Basic murder based on evidence - life. Multiple murder with other assorted nastiness, like the two guys who kidnapped a family, tortured them all raped and killed the wife and daughter in front of the father (who escaped) then set the house on fire to cover their crimes and were caught while fleeing - I’d shoot them myself.
Immediate execution? No problem.
It would be funny to watch the perp’s face when the judge says: “Bailiff, you may fire when ready.”
I’m OK with it if the death sentence only applies in cases where the criminal is a repeat offender with a proven history of crimes of violence against others. So serial killers, serial rapists, child molesters, maybe even some of those guys you see with long records of violent assaults. Mind you it would have spelled trouble for Floyd Mayweather’s career unless he decided to stop belting women…
I’d never be on jury that has the possibility of the death penalty. I’d excuse myself.
If somehow forced into the situation above I’d find the defendant not guilty no matter what they had done, then I’d leave the country. At the point such a system was introduced the judicial system loses all credibility and I’d want no part of it.
As I am opposed to the death penalty it is unlikely that I would even get selected as a juror in a trial like you propose. That said, if I were seated for such a case I would listen to the evidence and try to convince my fellow jurors to accept a penalty that spares the life of the defendant.
Like DrumBum, I am opposed to the death penalty, so I would not be selected.
There have been enough criminal convictions which have been overturned on appeals so I would not be able to accept the normal standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Implicate with that standard is the appeals process, and without the process then I could not convict.
I’m generally against the death penalty both because of the cost (time/money in appeals and death row) and the odds that we’ve got the wrong guy/gal. This sidesteps the former, so it actually makes me more likely to vote guilty in that sense, but it substantially raises the burden of proof for the latter to the degree that it would be unlikely that I’d ever vote guilty in practice.
Considering that a certain percentage of convictions are overturned on appeal, and that other people are then convicted of the same crime, would you want their to be a higher standard of proof before execution immediately after a first trial, or would you keep it the same?
I too am against the death penalty, but the validity or not of the death penalty is a subject for another thread.