simple answer
 

I say Death Penalty to all those "Confessing or Plea Dealing Out" to avoid a Death Warrant... They Truely, Absolutely, WithOut a Doubt are 100% Guilty.

I'm totally for the Death Penalty although I think it's an easy way out for the person that committed the crimes. People that hurt kids and shit get off too easy for me with the death penalty.

I'm not trying to sway you. I'm assuming that you have given this all necessary thought and have gamed out the consequences to your satisfaction. Working on that assumption, I just want to know what are the consequential and moral differences between killing the wrong man in personal vengeance and killing the wrong man in state-sponsored vengeance.

I'm just not comfortable with executing innocent people and since there are now a number of posts complaining not just about the lack of sufficient numbers of executions but that the convicted get appeals and are housed in comfort while they wait, one cannot help but get the feeling that what people would prefer is that people are convicted, sentenced, taken out and executed directly.

I'm not talking about a case where someone *actually* committed the crime, I'm talking about a case where someone *didn't* commit the crime but are executed none-the-less. I'm also very uneasy about the punishment fitting the crime. Here's why:

Man breaks into home, kills everyone in the home. There are signs that rape and torture occurred. He gets the death penalty.

Man breaks into home, kills everyone in the home. There are signs that rape and torture occurred. He gets 50 - life.

The difference? It works like this:

White perp/white victim. Second scenario.
White perp/black victim. Second scenario.
Black perp/white victim. First scenario
Black perp/black victim. Second scenario as likely as first.

Now, I'm not saying that whites never end up on death row--obviously they do. I'm not saying blacks always end up on death row--obviously they don't. However, statistically, if you hold the relevant details of the crime constant what you see sketched above are the most likely scenarios.

If folks were talking about innocent beyond any reasonable doubt, perhaps but that's not the general sense I’m getting. Rather, I have the feeling that folks would prefer a judicial system that was even more stacked against the defendant than it already is, where it is far more speedy, where the police have far more leeway, where the prisons are closer to medieval dungeons than they are currently, and where the courthouse and the executioner are right next door to one another.


Cheers
Aj

So you don't have a problem with torture?

Cheers
Aj

No not at all. For people that hurt children.

Hmmm...what about rape? Should rapists be tortured? What about murderers? What about terrorists? What about people who don't molest children but, say, beat them? Break shovel handles around their ass or make them walk into a hospital on a broken leg?

Can you describe to me how what you are describing is justice and not simply revenge?

Cheers
Aj

Issues of whether the United States exhibits the cultural maturity to actually exercise the death penalty to the side, my concern is not that we will execute the right people, it's that we will execute the wrong people. No one who is not convicted of a crime faces the death penalty, the problem is that in about a third of those cases it turns out the wrong person was convicted. As inconvenient as those cases are for proponents of the death penalty they should concern us and my view of the death penalty is seen through the lens of wrongful conviction and disparate treatment.

When we don't abstract this out but place it in the context of the real world, what we are talking about is a legal system that, left to its own devices, will kill black at up to four times the rate of white men holding every other relevant factor constant. When THAT is corrected and a black man is no more likely to receive the death penalty than a white man, I might be persuadable but at present, given the reality of the American criminal justice system as it is and not as we might like it to be I know that what we are talking about is a system that will fall most heavily on black and Hispanic men.

Cheers
Aj

It will also fall a lot more on men, in general, versus women correct?

I didn't describe anything you did. But people that molest children should feel pain. I have no sympathy for them at all.

In the case of murder it depends.
I think male rapists should have their genitals cut off.
Someone beating their children is a different story.

Have I expressed sympathy for them? No. This isn't about sympathy, this isn't about them, this is about US. This is about what kind of society we choose to be.

Pardon me for saying so, but I think torture is barbaric. I think that prisons that are no better than medieval dungeons are barbaric. I think that trial by ordeal is barbaric. I think that vendetta is barbaric. I think that any society that does not torture is a better society, a more humane society, a society less likely to turn in on itself and start doing gratuitously horrible things to itself.

People think that my opposition to the death penalty has something to do with sympathy or softness on crime. That isn't it at all. While I like individual members of our species and while I am quite impressed with what our species can do when we put our minds to it, I'm very realistic about our species and we are NOT a nice species. We aren't as nasty and horrible as we could be, but we are nowhere near a pacific or fair-minded species. To me, torture and execution, the pursuit of revenge instead of justice, is in keeping with our nature. But as Kate Hepburn says so memorably in The African Queen, 'Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were put in this world to rise above'. We do not and cannot have a perfect justice system, so in the absence of such, I think we should be as realistic about who we are--as a species and as a culture--and if we do that, I am drawn to the conclusion that putting the execution and torture in the hands of our species is always, at its very best, a risky venture. Putting it in the hands of our culture which seems to be positively drunk with blood-lust (there are enough murders *per year* in the United States to constitute a respectable death toll in low-intensity guerilla war) seems to me to be asking for trouble.

When torture stopped being part of law enforcement (until recently, that is) we became a better culture, a more civilized culture, more deserving of thinking of ourselves as a great nation. When we reach a point when we care more about justice than we do vengeance and when we, as a culture, tread carefully around the death penalty, recognizing what a solemn responsibility it is to execute another, then not only will be an even better culture we will be even more right to consider ourselves a great nation. Just as the only people who truly can be trusted with high and powerful office are those who don't want it, I think that the only cultures that can be trusted with execution are those that don't want to execute people. The United States *wants* to. We want vengeance. We want our pound of flesh. Whatever that is, it isn't justice.

Cheers
Aj

i remember debating the death penalty in college. We did a lot of research, read about people, almost always black, who had been put on death row and later found to be innocent.

More recently (cause i'm old like that), they actually have tv programs showing inside prisons, and interviews with the inmates, some of who are on death row. Definitely makes them more human and less killing machines...usually.

There are no easy, clean answers. There never have been and there never will be. Prison and the threat of being put to death doesn't deter the mind of someone who is mentally unwell. Nothing deters that sort of mind.

Prison, which is supposed to be for punishment and rehabilitation, is rarely ever successful. Recidivism rates and overcrowding prove that.

Personally, if someone has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be a child molester, i am so ok with the death penalty. Also for people with diagnosed sociopathic personality disorder who have killed and will continue to kill....again, i am ok with them dying.

The proof has to be solid. Not circumstantial, not even "just" the words of the person molested. But solid, viable proof. If the proof is lacking, no death.

Like Gemme mentioned, once i know for a fact someone has done something like this, i no longer look at them with any sort of compassion...i grow "cold" quickly.

Is it right? Is it moral? Is it my decision? *shrug*

It's just my opinion.

i wonder what the alternative is? What would be better? Obviously, America has some messed up legal systems, laws and ways.

What are some viable alternatives for the mentally insane who rape and kill? Hole them up in institutions for the rest of their lives? We don't want to give more money to help our brothers & sisters who are out of work and starving, living on the street....we're prepared to give more money for more institutions?

And then there is the whole argument regarding the "quality of life" in our institutions....so to improve that, it takes more money. That we don't want to give.

What is the answer?

Well since the conversation has turned to "what do you suggest?" I suggest that stop killing people until our civilized society has figured out a rational and compassionate response to violent criminials. And I suggest we divert the entire war budget to solving this problem.

There are certain situation's where people should rise above I totally agree with that. I think that revenge can also be justice. Especially if somebody does something horrific and doesn't feel any remorse from it. They obviously don't understand the difference between right and wrong. They forgot to pick up their conscience on the way to birth. People that don't want to forgive themselves in order to get forgiveness.

Terrorists are different because I think most of them are made up to scare the general public into giving away their freedoms when really they are defending their land or homes. I'm sure Native Americans were considered terrorists at some point in time.

What justice is to you and justice is to me are different. Let's agree to disagree.

The Barbarian

Yes, lock them up someplace where they will never again walk free. Keep them in a room where there is enough room for them stand up and lay down. Let their remaining years be a monotonous cycle of getting up, back breaking work, and food that sustains, and let the only thing they have to look forward to is the surety that the next day will contain only the same. Let this place be somewhere from which there is no possibility of escape.* Let them know that barring actual acquittal, they will never again be free and they will die in this prison, alone, nothing more than a number and an entry in a database. Let them know all of that.

You can only kill someone once. If you imprison them, however, you do that for every miserable and monotonous day that they live. Prison does not have to be medieval dungeon filled with the screams of the tortured to be a horrible place. You can create a prison that is filled with such sheer mind-numbing monotony, devoid of creativity in any form, that anyone who had to live in that environment, day after day, year after year, would come in short order to pray for death. If after a time, they wish to kill themselves either you let them or if you really believe that they should truly suffer, then medically intervene, going to whatever heroic efforts you think appropriate, to keep them alive. Let them live with whatever scars they leave themselves, but do not let them die. When, in the fullness of time, their body starts to break down their fate can be decided one of two ways. If, say, they have cancer let the disease take its course. Most forms of cancer, at the end-game, are horrible ways to go. If, on the other hand, they have a heart attack and, again, their suffering is something you relish revive them. Do not fix their heart, but do not let them die. So, for instance, if we are talking about someone who is arrested in their thirties they may be looking at another thirty, forty, possibly fifty years in prison. They have longed for death as the only possible surcease of the soul-killing, mind-numbing, unchanging, routine of monotony. And now, after decades of waiting they finally think that their meeting with Death has finally come and their one means of escape has opened up to them and you snatch it away.

You know what the most devious part of this is? You cannot even give them something to hate. This prison does not go out of its way to make the inmates lives miserable. No one is tortured, not in any conventional sense of the term. But they are cut off from the things that make us human. They need no books or exercise. They need no facilitation of their religion. They need no visitors, no contact with the outside world except their lawyers if some new evidence comes to light. The guards in this prison would, as far as possible, be removed from them so that the prisoners do not even have that contact. There are no recreation facilities, no sports. No art. No music. No games. No cards. No cigarettes. If it is not absolutely required to maintain metabolic functions at a nominal capacity, it is forbidden. I am not talking about an evil place, I am talking about a place that is it to be absolutely and completely impersonal. They will never again feel anything like human warmth.

The prison I am talking about is like exile but without even the hope that you could find another tribe.

If someone does something inhuman, let them live out the rest of their days under conditions that are as far removed from human as is possible. If it were ever possible to completely automate the place so that there need not be human guards *inside* the facility (while still being outside to prevent anyone from escaping) all the better.

Whatever you might want to say about me, having sympathy for the worst of criminals is not it.

*(If lifting out of the gravity well ever becomes inexpensive, I would suggest putting prisons on the moon. There is no possibility of escape, any attempt would bring the absolute certainty of death one way or another--where can you run? )

Cheers
Aj

i'm diggin it....and know that the possibility of it happening is about as likely as America ever being fair and just.

Not snarky, but a real question....

So, in this barren, inhumane, devoid of anything worth living for place that Aj describes....what happens to that same wrongfully convicted person?

They suffer. That's what happens. But if evidence comes to light that would exonerate them, they can be released. Now, that depends upon some evidence coming to light but it at least holds out the possibility.

Now, I'm not sure what kind of person would emerge from this place. It might take some adjustment. There is no way to design a penal system where people are truly punished without the problem of there being innocent people inside that system. But if they are alive, they can be retrieved and hopefully, the human spirit is resilient enough to overcome even that. If they are dead, they are completely irretrievable.

We should build a criminal justice system that is as robust and accurate as it is possible to design and which gives to the defendant the means to establish their innocence if they are, indeed, innocent. That way we can minimize the chances of innocents being subjected to an environment that is, as you so accurately put it, devoid of any reason to live.

The difference is whether we can retrieve someone from our being error-prone or social prejudice.

Cheers
Aj

Actually, no. Australia was both exile and colonization by another name. I'm not talking about exile. While an island is a perfect example a very secure prison can be built on the mainland as we already know. There was, in fact, possibility of human hope in Australia. There was variety. People could have human interactions. What I describe is nothing like that. Outside of the basics of medical care and sustenance, I'm talking a prison devoid of any other thing that makes life worth living. The idea with Australian penal colonies was to expand the the British empire. The prisoners would be going nowhere and outside of the exemption of their lawyer with new information, they would never again have contact with a living person from outside the walls of that prison.

Australia, a person could have hope. Outside of the truly innocent, who through some majestic act of will hold on to hope, no inmate would ever have anything to hope for again. There's no parole. There's no getting out unless you were actually innocent. Your sentence is up, when your life is over.

None of that is remotely like what happened in Australia. Even exile would offer more to hope for than this prison environment. At least in exile, you might be able to find a quiet place in the wilderness where you could live out your days. This isn't even that.

Cheers
Aj

I am absolutely, unequivocally opposed to the death penalty under all circumstances.

It actually scares the shit out of me that we live in a world where other people get to decide if someone lives or dies based on breaking rules of society.

Now, before anyone twitches, Im not at all saying that people who rape, murder, commit child molestation, etc. don't need to be punished, but I am greatly bothered by different people receiving the death penalty based on the systemic oppressions in our world.

For example, adultery is punishable by death in countries such as Yemen and Iran. If adultery is defined as "sex outside of marriage", I would venture to guess that a great many of us would be dead had we lived in those countries.

Is it fucked up that these countries kill grown adults who want to have sex with one another consensually? I think so.

Now think about this, homosexuality is punishable by death in countries such as Yemen and some parts of Nigeria. 100% of the people on this website would be dead if we lived in those countries.
Is that fucked up?
I think so, but those are the laws of those countries.

My point is that I don't think that human beings, no matter their level of education, class, creed, or history, have a right to put another human being to death. Punish the shit out of them? Yes. Throw them in prison? Yes. Rehabilitate them? Yes.

Kill them? Not for me, no.

I think about the thousands of men of Color in the prison systems in this country and how the crimes they committed were often perpetrated under an oppressive and intentional system of power abuse. Does that mean that these people aren't responsible for their crimes? Absolutely not. I think that if you are an adult and you rob, rape, murder, etc. then you have to pay for your crimes.

Do I believe that many of these men raped, robbed, or murdered because they were trying (in a fucked up way) to gain power? Maybe.

Again, not diminishing the fact that there are people in this world who do terrible, evil things. There are.

Still, I think about the people who do terrible things because of what they have been through, people who are wrongfully accused, people who are mentally ill and still put to death.

I think of those people and know that there is a better, more humane way.

So let me ask you a question. What does justice mean to you? See, it seems that execution is about vengeance. What I'm talking about is punishment. Quite honestly, I think death is too good for some criminals. I want them to have quite a bit of time to sit and reflect upon their crime.

As far as the innocent person, I think that the issue is whether we can retrieve someone from it. I don't know what this would be like, although as I have developed this idea over years of writing, I have refined it in my mind for maximum psychic impact. If there is anything left in someone that can be called human, this place will have an impact on them. But I believe that people are astoundingly resilient. People survived the death camps, people survived the gulag, people survived Sarajevo and people survive war. Perhaps people could survive this. But if they're dead, they're gone.

Cheers
Aj

This isn't because I think anyone here doesn't know, but to show there's a wide variety in the definitions.

Justice
–noun
1. the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness: to uphold the justice of a cause.
2. rightfulness or lawfulness, as of a claim or title; justness of ground or reason: to complain with justice.
3. the moral principle determining just conduct.
4. conformity to this principle, as manifested in conduct; just conduct, dealing, or treatment.
5. the administering of deserved punishment or reward.
6. the maintenance or administration of what is just by law, as by judicial or other proceedings: a court of justice.
7. judgment of persons or causes by judicial process: to administer justice in a community.
8. a judicial officer; a judge or magistrate.
9. ( initial capital letter ) Also called Justice Department. the Department of Justice.
—Idioms
10. bring to justice, to cause to come before a court for trial or to receive punishment for one's misdeeds: The murderer was brought to justice.
11. do justice,
a. to act or treat justly or fairly.
b. to appreciate properly: We must see this play again to do it justice.
c. to acquit in accordance with one's abilities or potentialities: He finally got a role in which he could do himself justice as an actor.


For myself, it's along the lines of Newton's Laws of Motion...action/reaction to be exact...like a pendulum. They (criminals) swing to the extreme left and the punishment is the corresponding swing to the right. Justice, to me, is not only the determination of a proper punishment but the administering of the punishment that should be equal to or greater than the crime.

As for any potential innocents surviving that sort of punishment....surviving is not living and my experience with people with who have survived extremely traumatic events has shown me that, in many of those circumstances, death would have been kinder.

Thanks for the debate and have a good night.

If I'm ever convicted of a crime I didn't commit, I would prefer life to death.

People who are wrongfully convicted and given death sentences don't always give up hope, even if it's the hope that someone, somewhere might believe their story and fight for better rights for prisoners.

Check out the West Memphis 3: http://www.wm3.org/

These three were (I believe) wrongfully convicted of murdering 3 boys here in Arkansas and have been in prison for the last 17 years. Damien Echols has been on death row that entire time.

He has written a pretty thoughtful book and has given countless interviews about being wrongfully convicted and how it has affected not only his personal life but the people who believe him to be innocent. Some of these people have been fighting right alongside him for 17 years.

Briefly, these boys were convicted of murder by a backwoods judge here in Arkansas and a prosecuting attorney who painted them all as "devil worshippers" simply because they had black hair and wore Metallica t-shirts. The ENTIRE case was built on circumstantial evidence and it was recently found (as recent as last month) that new DNA testing has proven that NONE of these 3 boy's DNA was found at the crime scene.

It was a modern-day witch hunt by ignorant people and a prosecutor who was trying to win a campaignship for judge. He later DID win and has thrown out multiple requests for new trials and appeals even though he prosecuted the first case. Conflict of Interest anyone?

It's cases like these that bolster my stance on the death penalty. Damien Echols, Jesse Misskelley, and Jason Baldwin would all be dead right now.

A synopsis of the trial and convictions is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Memphis_3

Prepare yourself if you choose to read it. It will make you sick to your stomach at such a gross and obvious miscarriage of justice.

And these are 3 White boys from Arkansas. Imagine if they had been Black.

Web address:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/
090804090946.htm

Brain Difference In Psychopaths Identified
enlarge

Scientists have found differences in the brain which may provide a biological explanation for psychopathy. (Credit: iStockphoto/Hayden Bird)ScienceDaily (Aug. 5, 2009) — Professor Declan Murphy and colleagues Dr Michael Craig and Dr Marco Catani from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London have found differences in the brain which may provide a biological explanation for psychopathy.

The research investigated the brain biology of psychopaths with convictions that included attempted murder, manslaughter, multiple rape with strangulation and false imprisonment. Using a powerful imaging technique (DT-MRI) the researchers have highlighted biological differences in the brain which may underpin these types of behaviour and provide a more comprehensive understanding of criminal psychopathy.

Dr Michael Craig said: 'If replicated by larger studies the significance of these findings cannot be underestimated. The suggestion of a clear structural deficit in the brains of psychopaths has profound implications for clinicians, research scientists and the criminal justice system.'

While psychopathy is strongly associated with serious criminal behaviour (eg rape and murder) and repeat offending, the biological basis of psychopathy remains poorly understood. Also some investigators stress mainly social reasons to explain antisocial behaviours. To date, nobody has investigated the 'connectivity' between the specific brain regions implicated in psychopathy.

Earlier studies had suggested that dysfunction of specific brain regions might underpin psychopathy. Such areas of the brain were identified as the amygdale, ie the area associated with emotions, fear and aggression, and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the region which deals with decision making. There is a white matter tract that connects the amygdala and OFC, which is called the uncinate fasciculus (UF). However, nobody had ever studied the UF in psychopaths. The team from King's used an imaging method called in vivo diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI) tractography to analyse the UF in psychopaths.

They found a significant reduction in the integrity of the small particles that make up the structure of the UF of psychopaths, compared to control groups of people with the same age and IQ. Also, the degree of abnormality was significantly related to the degree of psychopathy. These results suggest that psychopaths have biological differences in the brain which may help to explain their offending behaviours.

Dr Craig added: 'This study is part of an ongoing programme of research into the biological basis of criminal psychopathy. It highlights that exciting developments in brain imaging such as DT-MRI now offer neuroscientists the potential to move towards a more coherent understanding of the possible brain networks that underlie psychopathy, and potentially towards treatments for this mental disorder.'

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff

I do believe in the death penalty. I voted other. I voted that way because I think for me it depends on the crime committed and the evidence shown at trial. Now I'm going to be a good boy and go sit beside Snowy and be quiet.......Maybe:cigar2:

We don't have the death penalty here, which I think is a good thing. Even with forensics being what it is today, people are still wrongly accused. There are some people like Paul Bernardo that, if it were up to me, would get what's coming to them, but then the repercussions of legalising the death penalty for cases such as that aren't worth it, in my view.

I am against the death penalty. Killing someone will not bring anyone back to life or erase someone being molested, raped or anything else. We need to figure out how to deal with criminals and people who are mentally ill in a rational and humane way (not for the criminal's sake but for ours) and above all try to figure out how to prevent more of these crimes from occuring in the first place. Otherwise we stoop to their level. Exacting revenge is not a way for me to show I love or care about someone.

Since it does cost a lot of money to imprison them, I think they should have to work for their keep if that is feasible. I agree with Aj, make their lives as monotonous as possible.

p.s. it doesn't surprise me that Canada doesn't have the death penalty. They also don't obsess over owning guns.

That trash has been locked up for 23 hours each day in a tiny cell with squat to do for the last 16 years...and he will live like that until he dies of old age...he wishes Canada had the death penalty.