What aspects of the case are you thinking of when you say "like this"?

Stupid aside to Dana:

If "the quality of mercy is not strain'd", how do you get the lumps out?

I actually wanted to bring facts into the discussion - Again how many people are we talking about here? How many are on eath row right now in the US?

Well utopia doesn't exist. Not that we should strive for it, but we have to deal with reality.

Where suitable, I agree with Lookout.

Please describe how, in "reality," a law can be made to apply only "where suitable" (according to a criteria which hasn't been defined).

Am I allowed to use cheesecloth?

If by 'where suitable' you mean definately guilty: then that in no way resolves the problem of a flawed justice system. ALL convictions are deemed to show that the convicted felon has committed the crime and is definately guilty. At no point is someone found 'probably guilty'. There's no grading system involved in applying the death penalty. Either you've been found guilty or you haven't. Some people who are found guilty are in fact innocent of the crime. Some, as in this case, are most definately guilty. There is no legislative way to differentiate.

... and some found innocent are in reality guilty. <devils advocate>
Yeh I know these are the ones who don't get put to death.

:D

Because the system is flawed. Having the death penalty does nothing to ensure that no guilty person is ever acquitted. It just ensures that the effects of wrongful conviction are more terrible and irreversible.

OK. Let me be more clear - cases of kidnapping, rape, and murder are all worthy of the death penalty in my opinion. yeah i know that is extreme but it isn't some knee jerk reaction i just threw out there for the first time today either.

Dana, I understand your concerns about the possible wrongly convicted death row rider. Quite simply I don't care.

I'm an American, I don't have to care.
- Denny Crane

God, you're sexy when you're cold! :P

I do care. As is probably apparent by now :) I fail to understand why someone would care what happened to the innocent victims of a brutal murderer (enough to wish death upon their killer) and yet not care about an innocent victim of a brutal state execution.

Fair question. I do/would care about a "innocent victim of a brutal state execution".

Trials and appeals are there for a reason. Is it possible that someone wrongly convicted might make it all the way through the appeals and land with a needle in their vein? Sure. Would the lack of a death penalty suddenly make everything lollipops and butterfly kisses for them? No.

You are against the death penalty because there is a chance someone will be tried and wrongly convicted of a crime, receive the death penalty, work their way through years of appeals and maneuvering, then sit and wait their turn on death row which can be decades long, and then actually be executed.

I guess you'd have to show me some statistics on the likelihood of that happening on anything more than an anecdotal basis before I'd really be moved.

I often hear people stating that they do not feel comfortable giving their government the power to end a person's life--the reason being that an institution conceived of and administered by human beings is inherently flawed, and that this power over life and death should not be trusted to such an institution.

Also...

I often hear people stating that they do not feel comfortable giving their government the power to administrate a healthcare system--the reason being that the government cannot be trusted to do a good job at anything, i.e. delivering mail, etc. therefore this power should not be trusted to such an institution.

What happens when you throw all of these assessments together and try to make them work in the same reality?

__________________

You don't think that some objective assessment of whether the person is actually guilty or not should factor into this (other than the original verdict of guilty, the 100% reliability of which is precisely what is at question here)? Let me be more clear: if an innocent person is wrongly convicted of something really bad how does that make them more guilty than an innocent person convicted of a lesser offense?

I guess somewhere in here I've not made it clear that I'm not in favor of killing people who aren't guilty. My starting point on this was 1) the person was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, 2) that person still had the right to enter the appeal process.

I am NOT saying we should starting killing people accused of these crimes.

My basic position is that unless you can claim 100% reliability of the legal system, then you are "okay with" the possibility of an innocent person being murdered by the state. The same "state" whom we aren't supposed to trust with anything of importance (depending on our level of cognative dissonace).

As to the first part of your post: I'm American - I'm entitled to inconsistencies, deal with it.

My view is pretty simple. a vital function of government is to create and uphold laws. that might be constitutional or something. no other organization or system makes sense.

medical care already has a system in place. private companies exist to provide medical care at a price. I don't want the government stepping in and trying to do something I believe is better handled by private organizations.

I see what you are saying, but I don't really see why leaving someone to rot in prison is better than an execution on the off chance that one person "might" be innocent.

An execution is irreversible.

because a prison sentence can be ended if new evidence or a successful appeal shows that they were wrongfully convicted. A death sentence cannot be reversed once it is applied.

As to the appeal process: does everybody on death row have the same access to the same quality of lawyer? is the appeal process also dependant upon people to carry it out and make the decision? I know of several cases in the UK where initial appeals have upheld the conviction and later appeals (brought when new evidence has been brought forward, or when a lack of probity in the police case has been uncovered) have resulted in their being freed.

The Birmingham Six are a classic case. They were convicted because they were in the wrong place, at the wrong time and happened to be Irish:


This is disturbing on a number of levels. Firstly, had the death penalty been an option at the time of their conviction these men would almost certainly have been executed. The impetus to keep pushing for appeals would therefore have been greatly lessened (although a recent pardon of a man wrongly hanged in the 60s would suggest it may have been possible) and the best outcome would be a posthumous pardon. The political nature of their conviction may have led to continued investigation into the safety of their conviction. That impetus would be a rarity, however. The man hanged in the 60s was a cause celeb because of his severe learning disabilities. An average bloke wrongfully convicted of rape or murder and hanged for it, wuold simply be dead and there wuold be no lengthy process of uncovering an uncomfortable truth: we would never know he'd died an innocent.

Secondly, because there was no death penalty involved, these men were eventually freed. Having lost half theirlives to a prison sentence for a crime of which they were entirely innocent, they at the least have had the opportunity to experience freedom again. It's a small comfort, but it's better than nothing.

Thirdly, the political element of this conviction and the unwillingness of the system to overturn it worries me. Class, race and politics. This is in our system where the judges are not elected. Add the potential for a Judge losing his job if he acts in a way that upsets his electorate (opens him to charges of being soft on crime for example) and the risks are, in my opinion, all the greater. How are you that there is never a racial/class/political element in either your original trials or subsequent appeals process?

As a final question, to repeat myself somewhat: is everyone able to access the same quality of legal representation? Is it free at the point of need? Are the lawyers representing the poor, the same as those representing the wealthy?

Well... they were Irish.

The wait on death row is loooong. Appeals constantly being refiled. Can we guarantee that everyone has the same quality of attorney? hell, no. Can I guarantee that two heart transplant patients have the same quality of surgeon? hell no, welcome to life.

I completely understand why you feel the way you do and I respect that. Your concerns just don't really move me. I simply feel some crimes are worthy of the death penalty so I believe we should have it and use it.

How sure are you that every person who is actually executed, is guilty of the crime they were convicted of?

you're playing to the wrong guy. I understand your point. It just doesn't grab me. Am I certain that no one who has been executed was innocent? Nope.

Ok. How convinced are you that the system willl never be subject to political considerations, rather than judicial ones?

I doubt that those in favour of the death penalty would be quite so philosophical about it if it were them or their loved ones wrongly convicted.

What I find really difficult to get my head around, is the fact that people who have such little trust in government and/or elected officials in most other respects, are prepared for them to have life and death power over individual citizens when it comes to judicial processes. (as Flint pointed out)

The world is full of double standards Dana. You should know that by now. ;)

Oh I do I do. But if your gut instinct is that government is inefficient and less competant at delivering services, open to corruption and partisan in nature: how can your gut instinct also lead you to allow it to have the power of life and death over you?

Perhaps that's the problem. It's other innocent people who go to death row.

But the jury isn't government or elected... although I agree there is enough possibility of meddling by those who are (or even just politically motivated).

Surely one cannot try and argue that the system of law is not a government organization? The fact that the jury is selected from 'peers' is not particularly relevent considering it is only one facet of the system.

Who pays the judges?

That's a good point Jinx. But the Judge that directs the jury is. And the appeals process is governed and administrated by officials.

Incidentally: how many appeals are death row convicts allowed to make, and on what grounds can they make them? Anyone here know?

Also, is it the jury that decides the sentence over there? Or do they just deliver the verdict?

Over here our jury reaches a verdict of guilty or not guilty, but it's the judge who then sentences: they are strictly governed on what sentences can and should be applied, with some crimes carryng mandatory sentences. Mandatory sentences are decided by the legislative process, which is of course, governmental.

It varies by state Dana. Here's Oklahoma's process though (came up first in google)

Oh heck, this is worrying:

Y'know. I'm not sure which I find more worrying: the idea of a judge making the sentencing decisions, or the idea of a jury making the decision ( I realise the jury makes a recommendation, but it would appear the judge's decision is a formality based on that recommendation). Especially if the appeals proces is as difficult as it would appear from this page. I realise it's a partisan reading of the system, but the 'routine' dismissing of applications for appeal at each of the different stages that this describes has a horrible ring of truth to it. Fits with the attitudes my own system had towards the Birmingham Six for most of their sentence. It's all very well people saying they have many chances to appeal, but if it's not acually given much of a hearing, or is routinely dismissed then it's not much of a safeguard.

I know from my own country's use of an appeals process in asylum decisions how fraught that can be and hhow easily barriers can be placed on the process. For example: a second appeal on an asylum decision can only be brought if 'new' evidence is available. Which means that evidence that has been seen and summarily and unfairly/disingenuously dismissed cannot be reviewed. Prior to that law being passed, it was very common for asylum cases to fall at the first and second hearings and pass on the third, when it was heard at a higher level. Which suggests that the first and second hearings were often faulty decisions.

Actually I should fact check that. It may be that the first appeal now requires 'new evidence' I know that was in the pipeline. Particularly concerning after a parliamentary commission found that the Home Office asylum system (which deals with the initial hearings) had 'a kafkaesque culture of disbelief'. So when good evidence is routinely dismissed and has to go through two and three appeals to be taken seriously, our response was to make it virtually impossible to get to that second and third appeal and allow the initial poor reading of the evidence to stand.

Fuck. Now I've drifted into a topic I really feel angry about. I know so many people who've been unfairly denied asylum, and whose cases have been dismissed despite very clear physical evidence of torture and brutality. I know several (one of whom was a volunteer who worked with mum) who've been refused and deported back to their country of origin only to vanish suspected of being imprisoned or killed; two we actually know were killed.

So...I don't trust 'appeals systems' as a true safeguard against miscarriages of justice. I know only too well how they can be skewed against actual usefulness.

Why?

Present me with the facts of a case where an innocent person was executed. Together we can go through the details on how the system failed and you can change my viewpoint.

Sorry Jinx, I went back and added some stuff. Didn;t think anyone had posted in the meantime, and got carried away as I got onto a subject that's a bit of a sore one for me

Here's Alabama's process. (pdf)

Unfortunately that's not all that likely. How many lawyers are going to fight to get a conviction overturned posthumously? Surely their main concern wold be to work on cases where they might have a chance of getting a conviction overturned before the sentence of death is carried out.

Interestingly, on the wiki page that shows overturned convictions where the death penalty has been passed, there are no posthumous examples given for the USA. There are however, a number of cases where the death penalty has already been commuted and the person is serving a life sentence. One of these was overturned 9 years after he was convicted when new DNA evidence which was not available at the time of his conviction showed he coulld not have committed the crime. Had his sentence not been commuted, there is a good possibility he;d already have been executed by the time DNA evidence was available. There are several such cases of people whose sentence had previously been commuted to life sentences and then later were cleared by new evidence.

It wuold be interesting to find out how many appeals are either sought or granted after execution has been carried out.

What I can point you to is a few examples of convictions where the death penalty has been carried out and where serious doubts as to the safety of the convictions have been raised. The site is partisan, but some of the testimonial evidence from people involved in the trials is fairly disturbing. Including jury members and witnesses for the prosecution:

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/exec...sibly-innocent

Here's one example from the list:

So the judge, jury, and the appeals process are crap. What then? Just take the accused's word for it... or just don't bother having laws at all?

*chuckles* no. But don't have an irreversable sentence. I am not arguing against laws. I am arguing against capital punishment. Political situations change. Views on race and class change. Standards of evidence change, as do types of evidence as new techniques are developed.

Since this woman's conviction and execution times have changed. Likewise in the period that the Birmingham Six were convicted in Britain, English attitudes towards the Irish changed. Their conviction didn't survive that change in racial attitudes.

The man who was cleared of a crime 9 years after he was convicted because of new DNA evidence was released. The new evidence was because of scientific advances during that 9 year period.

The point I was making about appeals, is that they are not a gurantee that someone wrongly convicted will get a fairer hearing. Nor are they a guarantee that they won;t. There are many deathrow convicts whose cases are heard and whose convictions are overturned on appeal. But...we don;t know how many people are wrongly executed. So no, I am not arguing against having laws. Nor am I saying that removing the death penalty removes the potential for miscarriages of justice: clearly it doesnt. There will no doubt be people who will unfairly serve long sentences for crimes they did not commit. People who fall through the gaps in the system: all justice systems are flawed, because all rely on us, flawed human beings. But where miscarriages are discovered the wrongly imprisoned can be released, the wrongly executed cannot be revived. And, we are less likely to discover the miscarriage once the victim of that miscarriage is executed. Whilst they remain alive and incarcerated there is an impetus for the legal system to review new evidence as and when it arises, or as and when the political winds change direction.

Ya, that's a good argument Dana...

A highly emotional case in Texas where a man was convicted of intentionally setting his house on fire with his three young kids inside:
Convicted and sentenced to death after a two-day trial....no motive was ever presented by the prosecution.

Additional evidence at the time of his executive that suggested the initial arson investigation was flawed.

And now, more compelling evidence of a wrongful conviction. At the very least, serious doubt.

You can NEVER undue a wrongful execution. The system failed.

A system based on punishing the worst of the worst should never fail those similarly charged but where the facts are in doubt from the very start.

Putting the morality of the death penalty aside with the understanding that morality is subjective, a system of justice should never be based on the worst case but rather on preventing the miscarriage of justice for any case.

I would like to hear the arguments FOR the death penalty.

Considering that we all damn well know that any human institution is prone to glitches and imperfections, what is the payoff that society receives in exchange for granting our government the power to take a human life? What are the benefits?

I'm a little late on this comment but....
 

I have a nephew who had shit for parents, now he has a small son and he's a great father. He's determined to be better than what he saw / experienced growing up. So lots of folks do decide to go an entirely opposite route....we all do have choice....(unless, of course, we're completely deranged...!)

We get to save about $50,000 a year. Oh and it works really well as a deterrent. <dripping with sarcasm>

I would like to note that the number of federal death row inmates was infantecimally small. But as we all know, even one is too many.

To add to Redux's post. The problem with this is we cannot nor will we ever be able to legislate morality.

I'm not in favor but the answer, for those who are in favor, is "perceived justice".

As an American you should care. Part of the basis for the formation of the US was the respect of the rights of the individual. Not just you. Every individual.

Cite?

The California example. More here.

We the tax payers don't have to pay for the care, food, accomidations and education of those prisoners. That is the pay off...

I personally don't want to pay for keeping ANY prisoner... solution: kill em or put them to work to support their own keep. Let them make the decision for themselves. Make sure you tax them yearly and charge them for the cost of the wasted realestate space that the prison is located on while you're at it... make the prsion 100% self sustaining. There is no reason they can't grow their own food, use old parts to build solar panels and turbines to supply power. Prisioner don't need gyms or TV... let them work the fields. Its healthier and cheeper. Strip away all the nicities... no vending machines... no basket ball courts or play yards. No cafeteria... they can eat in their cells. No education... donated books and a library only. No internet. In fact... now that I think about it ... what is wrong with letting them live like the Amish. Its a good clean healthy lifestyle that costs the rest of us nothing.

@Pooka

I like it. Why isn't it like that?

I believe that is why they call it Capital Punishment. It is used for punishment.

You bitch - I love it!!! :D

Prisoners are paid far less than minimum wage, which creates an unfair playing field. Small business owners hate competing with prison labor. They consider it to be unfair competition. If you own a wood working shop and pay your employees $10/hr to make furniture, how are you going to compete with a prison shop that only pays its workers $0.25/hr? Your bar stool will cost $75 and you will have $5 profit, while the prison can sell its bar stool for $40 and have $30 profit. (Numbers pulled out of my ass to illustrate a point.)

change your business to make disposable wooden electric chairs and coffins.....

Also, the idea of them living like the Amish is all very attractive: but the Amish are peaceful rule-following folk. By the very nature of the prison population that's not going to work without a degree of coercion/compulsion and that requires guards and security. It is safer for the guards if they can persuade prisoners to good behaviour through positives and negatives. Carrot and stick. Rewards and withdrawals. The little elements of ordinary life to which prisoners have access (such as tv, access to education courses, a smattering of comforts) are powerful because they can be given or withdrawn according to the prisoner's behaviour. If they only had the stick and no carrot the prisoners would soon lose all respect for and fear of that stick and become uncontrollable. Bear in mind a significant number of them are violent and lacking in restraint. Without the option of rewarding good behaviour, prison guards would be in an ever-tightening cycle of brutality until brutality lost all effect beyond immediate injury. That would then create an even more volatile and dangerous situation for both the prisoners (some of whom will not be causing trouble) and the guards.

The worse prisoners are treated the more likely they are to become fractious and dangerous and the more likely it is that prisons will erupt into riot and mayhem. Especially if someone is in for a long sentence: they've very little left to lose. TVs and radios and a chance to leave their cell and learn a new skill/earn a few cents are all things they can lose. Much cheaper than trying to control them without those things.

We're killing small babies? Are they recidivists? :confused:

;)

That didnt work out so well for Cameron Todd Willingham in Texas?

Why dont the capital punishment supporters want to address the fact that system is not fail-proof? And when it fails, it cant be corrected for at least one innocent person.

Is it acceptable that even one innocent person be executed or is it just a numbers game....a willingness to sacrifice one or a few to get rid of the worst permanently?

I never said it wasn't.

So is it acceptable to you, assuming you are a capital punishment supporter, that even one innocent person be executed?

I'm not singling you out, the question is for all the capital punishment supporters.
______

No. But I still fully support it for those who are convicted and deserve it. It is certainly a moral delima for the legal system and society at large.