Illinois drops death penalty

I am strongly ambivalent.

Pete Zicato;715905 wrote:

I am strongly ambivalent.

I agree half-heartedly

I will be watching closely.
Let's see those crimes escalate WAY out of control.
Because the Death Penalty is all about reducing crime.

My Dad will be horrified that one of the only Western Civilisations to still kill its criminals is turning its back on capital punishment state by state. I'll tell him tomorrow, put him off his Branflakes.
Maybe it's time he converted to Islam. Because everyone knows about the zero crime rate in Muslim countries... Although they see it as divinely accorded punishment, rather than justice. Sheesh - it seems you can't win either way.

The death penalty is about revenge and the big payback. The idea that it is a deterrent was promulgated by folks who didn't want to seem barbaric and engaging in the same behavior as those whom they were killing. It's the old "This is hurting me more than it's hurting you" rationale.

it may be about reducing crime, but, and i speak from experience, being locked up for life is way worse than the death penalty. when someone commits a heinous crime worthy of the death penalty then make sure they get life. am i for the death penalty? in a way yes and no. sitting in solitary waiting for your day on the bed is one thing...but being locked up until the day you naturally die is another. it is a seemly endless wait. now i had a friend that only had a 4 year sentence but he died after i left south texas. his sentence turned into a life sentence. he had 6 months left to go to freedom. but thanks to tdcj and their exquisite medical staff he had a ruptured appendix and died from it. they sent him back to his dorm knowing something was wrong. i'm getting off key here but yeah, do away with the death penalty. it;s cheaper for the state and longer for the inmate. being locked up sucks balls.

Despite having never been in prison (except visiting) I agree with you. I'd rather have the chair than spend life behind bars.

If they're guilty, I don't really care which they'd prefer.

If they're innocent, then any day they're not killed is a day they may be able to prove it.

and that is another reason to abolish the death penalty. the DA's do get it wrong sometimes. but yet they produce a conviction when it wasn;t warranted because they acted out and convinced a jury that they were right and the defense was wrong. fucking lawyers. there is no justice for the innocent when the prosecution is dead fast on convicting someone. they only care about their freakin resumes. not whether the defense is innocent or not. political gain. they don;t give a rats ass. i;m getting very pissed. i digress. and am stepping away from this thread. there is not one thing that any of you could say to change my mind on this one.

oh what i meant was this....if someone has a life sentence and then gets exonerated then at least they are alive to gain freedom. kinda sucks if you get exonerated after you have been slaughtered. which happens.

What he just said.

I've heard that it is more expensive to the taxpayers to execute a prisoner, than to incarcerate one for life.

Well duh!

Spexx, Shawnee: that is because of the care we take over it. It is not inherently expensive to kill somebody.

How much does a single Kalashnikov round cost the Red Chinese? That's their standard execution method.

Having a death penalty, however carefully implemented, is a sign that you are prepared to resist evil to the ultimate degree. Is this somehow not how evil should be resisted? Illinois dropped the ball.

Urbane Guerrilla;716242 wrote:

Spexx, Shawnee: that is because of the care we take over it. It is not inherently expensive to kill somebody.
...

Despite that care, Illinois was found to have wrongfully convicted 15 people.

That wrong can be corrected if those convicted were given life in prison. Not so easy to correct after being put to death.

Agreed. It is not. And is that sufficient reason to limit the vigor with which the good shall resist the evil? I don't see it that way -- I don't much care for decadence, and I see no reason to place arbitrary limits on damage control. There are some lives over which death adds up to improvement. We should not fail to understand this. I certainly don't, but I don't know what kind of thinking motivates the opposition. Moral cowardice, maybe. Makes you duck my central question with every fiber of your being. I'd be ashamed to do that.

Urbane Guerrilla;716260 wrote:

...I don't know what kind of thinking motivates the opposition. Moral cowardice, maybe...

The thinking that a state executing even one innocent person is immoral. And, you and I both know it has happened.

Urbane Guerrilla;716260 wrote:

Agreed. It is not. And is that sufficient reason to limit the vigor with which the good shall resist the evil? I don't see it that way -- I don't much care for decadence, and I see no reason to place arbitrary limits on damage control. There are some lives over which death adds up to improvement. We should not fail to understand this. I certainly don't, but I don't know what kind of thinking motivates the opposition. Moral cowardice, maybe. Makes you duck my central question with every fiber of your being. I'd be ashamed to do that.

It is thinking like this which exposes you as the biggest Statist on this board.

Griff is correct again

Griff;716325 wrote:

It is thinking like this which exposes you as the biggest Statist on this board.

Remember, 85% af Statists are made up.

Urbane Guerrilla;716260 wrote:

Agreed. It is not. And is that sufficient reason to limit the vigor with which the good shall resist the evil? I don't see it that way -- I don't much care for decadence, and I see no reason to place arbitrary limits on damage control. There are some lives over which death adds up to improvement. ...

It is not necessary to prove someone’s guilt in order to execute him. I need only to prove that his execution is necessary for the Revolution.

Change "Revolution" to "Status Quo", and Che has found a new soul-mate.

ok. where do i even begin to start this response. are you saying UG that it;s ok or tolerable, even an accepted loss for someone to get axed if they are innocent? kind of like 1 out of 10 and that is an acceptable loss? why don;t you go and spend time in prison for something you did not do and then think again about the death penalty. you WILL change your mind. now i do agree with you on the firing squad. much cheaper than the drugs that texas and other states use. but inmates on death row are inherently more expensive to take care of. man power wise. that;s where the cost comes in. the solitary that is mandated to those on death row is what rises the cost by means of the guards watching over them and they do get 1 hour of rec a day so there are the guards watching the rec yard, the guards watching death row, the guards watching the guards. i know you won;t get what i;m saying but it;s worth a shot anyway.

And the numerous mandatory appeals, required by law, slogging through the courts.

Also, death row inmates don't usually participate in the work assignments that help defer the cost of prison.

So many reasons it costs SO much more to put someone to death than to incarcerate them until they die. BUT, I don't think it's ok to say "meh, one or two mistakes here and there. Gee, sorry."

Abolish the death penalty. Think what it will save the courts and the prison systems. It's never worked as a deterrent (the typical "crime of passion" killer or psychopath doesn't think about the death penalty when killing...gee, I'd love to go all crazy and murderous right now but let me weigh the pros and cons.)

If something happened to someone I love (and it did, and he got away with murder) I would want revenge, but I would want it to be a revenge that lived with them, literally, for the rest of their life. Death is only an easy way out for them.

(here is where UG tells me I should be ashamed. Funnily enough, I'm not.)

And howdy Bruce!

hiya bruce!

good points both.

now Here is a little tid bit i found.

FINANCIAL FACTS ABOUT THE DEATH PENALTY
• The California death penalty system costs taxpayers $114 million per year beyond the costs of keeping convicts locked up for life. Taxpayers have paid more than $250 million for each of the state’s executions. (L.A. Times, March 6, 2005)
• In Kansas, the costs of capital cases are 70% more expensive than comparable non-capital cases, including the costs of incarceration. (Kansas Performance Audit Report, December 2003).
• In Maryland, an average death penalty case resulting in a death sentence costs approximately $3 million. The eventual costs to Maryland taxpayers for cases pursued 1978-1999 will be $186 million. Five executions have resulted. (Urban Institute 2008).
• The most comprehensive study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of sentencing murderers to life imprisonment. The majority of those costs occur at the trial level. (Duke University, May 1993).
• Enforcing the death penalty costs Florida $51 million a year above what it would cost to punish all first-degree murderers with life in prison without parole. Based on the 44 executions Florida had carried out since 1976, that amounts to a cost of $24 million for each execution. (Palm Beach Post, January 4, 2000).
• In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. (Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992).

Fair&Balanced;716294 wrote:

The thinking that a state executing even one innocent person is immoral. And, you and I both know it has happened.

That does not satisfy. It is instead a dodge: are you going to resist evildoing to the fullest measure or are you going to wimp out, confining resistance to evil to some lesser level? Wimping out does not demonstrate moral development: it demonstrates a misplaced fearfulness. Cowardice, I say, and you have made no cogent rebuttal to that.

Statism? I doubt that, Griff. The coercive -- law-enforcement -- apparatus of the state is used to eliminate insofar as possible a vengeful or feudative aspect to the damage-control effort that a death penalty is -- since nobody thinks blood feuding between the relatives of the decedent and of the murderer would be conducive to civil society, and we do like having that around.

The requiring that someone who has killed wrongfully should atone for it by relinquishing their life is not an example of a society's villainousness, but of the degree of its regard for innocent life. This point is usually lost on the death-penalty opposition, which is drawn from that portion of the population that generally does miss vital points.

I am, Griff, a libertarian whether you want me to be or not. If you do want, excellent. If you don't, then fuck you in a highly libertarian manner. Be damned to any stumbler who thinks I'm a statist. I'm just not an anarchist, and do not trust anarcho-libertarian ideas very much.

(I have no idea what "fucking in a highly libertarian manner" would look like either. :3eye: Am I curious, eh?)

Pithijinx's cites are all of the manner the United States does its executions. What does one AK bullet cost Red China? A nickel? It isn't like they pay the triggerman any special emolument. And what they use for execution sites is grassy open fields. Seems executing a death penalty is not inherently expensive.

We spend the money we do to be careful about how we do it. For those who say death is no deterrent, I reply "Then why do the condemned use, well, every appeal avenue open to them between sentencing and a date with the executioner?" And is it not remarkable how few of the condemned waive any of their appeals process and hasten to their deaths? Should it happen, it is material for headlines, is it not?

It's a point of fact that far more bad guys get killed by private parties than by the state. The private parties, often being criminals themselves, are as often pretty unsavory... but effective, in illustrating J.R.R. Tolkien's adage Oft evil will evil mar, if nothing else; getting shot while doing something wrongful definitely adds up to a marring.

Urbane Guerrilla;717908 wrote:

Pithijinx's cites are all of the manner the United States does its executions. What does one AK bullet cost Red China? A nickel? It isn't like they pay the triggerman any special emolument. And what they use for execution sites is grassy open fields. Seems executing a death penalty is not inherently expensive.

It isn't expensive in a totalitarian state. Since we aspire to a more liberal society, it will be more expensive here and still some innocent will die.

We spend the money we do to be careful about how we do it. For those who say death is no deterrent, I reply "Then why do the condemned use, well, every appeal avenue open to them between sentencing and a date with the executioner?" And is it not remarkable how few of the condemned waive any of their appeals process and hasten to their deaths? Should it happen, it is material for headlines, is it not?

Saying that capital punishment is not a deterrent has nothing to do with the fact that most on death row would prefer to live. The crack head who shot up a neighborhood, the crazy wife who kills her husband and kids, the jealous boyfriend who strangles his estranged for leaving him: these folks weren't thinking "gee, I'm really mad but you know what? I sure don't want to be gassed. I think I'll just watch TV." They may, however, wish they hadn't done it...when all has passed. That they want to appeal and keep on living when the deed is done and the punishment is before them is irrelevant to the crime of 'passion' (read: rage, despair, crackheadedness) that occurred. The comparison is laughable. It's intellectually lazy to not make the distinction.

Whether one is for or against capital punishment one has to be cognizant that it is NOT a deterrent, it is retribution. One's feelings on whether this retribution serves society are what is up for debate; anyone without their head in the sand (for which one should feel the shame you bat about like so many fuzzy mice) knows that the death penalty has never served as a deterrent. This is common sense. Maybe this kind of sense is really only reserved for us common folk.

infinite monkey;717925 wrote:

They may, however, wish they hadn't done it...when all has passed.

Whether one is for or against capital punishment one has to be cognizant that it is NOT a deterrent, it is retribution. .

Exactly. The threat of capital punishment did not deter them from doing the deed in the first place.

I deny any and every accusation about sand-heading, inasmuch as I also advocate armed self defense -- the ragers against self defense end up ashamed before me -- and point you once again towards the utilitarian idea that an executed man does not commit further atrocities. Highly reliable, that one. Capital punishment is a societal edition of armed self-defense: it removes threats permanently.

. . . capital punishment did not deter them from doing the deed in the first place.

Which is where the intelligent man who shoots back comes in -- a quite libertarian idea, Griff. Spexxvet, however, gets bent altogether out of shape at the prospect, lacking rational thinking as he does: he is profoundly hoplophobic and mistakes this phobic pattern of thinking for virtue. Otherwise, he would have abandoned it long ago, as I did, though I did not have as long a path as he to walk.