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    Yet another death penalty debate

    Every time I hear people clamoring for leniency, pissing about the "barbarity" of the death penalty, and going into the "poor criminal-as-victim" bla bla bla, I think about this kind of thing.

    If a society, with it's laws, legal system, and police force refuses to provide actual justice to victims of terrible crimes and their families, then, sooner or later (because the need for "justice" is an inherent part of human psychology) victims and their families will make their own justice.

    It's better that the law do it, because their is some kind of control over the law. But when the law refuses to do it's job, this is the kind of thing I'd predict would happen.

    I'm with Malflick on this - what I would have done had that been my daughter would make 20 years in prison or the death penalty look like a quick trip to Walmart.

    "An eye for an eye and all the world will be blind" is pleasant sounding poetic bullshit. Very few people in any population ever do anything terrible.

    Have you?
    Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.


    #2
    Re: "Mother sets fire to her daughter's gloating rapist"

    pissing about the "barbarity" of the death penalty
    The death penalty isn't barbarous because rapists or murderers are victims, it's barbarous because you can't undo it once new evidence arises, not to mention the fact that it costs more to kill someone than it does to jail them for life (and, personally, I consider life imprisonment the far greater punishment). The death penalty is just about satisfying blood lust, at a high price in terms of both finance and the lives of the innocent falsely accused.

    Comment


      #3
      Re: "Mother sets fire to her daughter's gloating rapist"

      Originally posted by Aeran View Post
      The death penalty isn't barbarous because rapists or murderers are victims, it's barbarous because you can't undo it once new evidence arises...
      I appreciate that concern, and understand it.

      However, when there is clear guilt, it's kind of silly to pretend that there is ambiguity. For example, Ted Bundy, who died in the electric chair, was beyond any doubt (reasonable or otherwise) guilty. Was his execution barbaric? (in composing your answer, please take into account the crimes he committed. His final crime was to suspend a twelve year old girl from a hook in a hog slaughtering shed while he butchered her like a hog. Her name was Kimberly. He did this in Florida because Florida has the death penalty, and that made it more fun for him. This was just ONE of many horrendous murders)

      The death penalty is just about satisfying blood lust...
      You call it blood lust, I call it justice. Tomato/tomato.
      Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: "Mother sets fire to her daughter's gloating rapist"


        However, when there is clear guilt, it's kind of silly to pretend that there is ambiguity. For example, Ted Bundy, who died in the electric chair, was beyond any doubt (reasonable or otherwise) guilty. Was his execution barbaric? (in composing your answer, please take into account the crimes he committed. His final crime was to suspend a twelve year old girl from a hook in a hog slaughtering shed while he butchered her like a hog. Her name was Kimberly. He did this in Florida because Florida has the death penalty, and that made it more fun for him. This was just ONE of many horrendous murders)
        But where do you draw the line? 'clear guilt' isn't as cut and dry as it might seem. Hell, technically speaking, people shouldn't even be convicted unless there's 'clear guilt,' but it obviously still happens. And that's not mentioning bias, prejudice, corruption, etc etc. The criminal justice system isn't perfect because people aren't perfect, and that's always going to be the case. How many innocent people is it supposed to be acceptable to kill if it means we get to kill the guilty ones too?

        You call it blood lust, I call it justice. Tomato/tomato.
        But it isn't "tomato/tomato." There's nothing just about killing innocents. The death penalty is tremendously appealing on an emotional level where we get to block out the ugly question of wrongful conviction, but at the end of the day it doesn't reduce crime (at least, I've never seen any clear evidence that it does), it doesn't save the state money and imo it certainly doesn't make criminals suffer more as a consequence of their crimes. So whats the point? What does it achieve?

        Comment


          #5
          Re: "Mother sets fire to her daughter's gloating rapist"

          Originally posted by Aeran View Post
          But where do you draw the line?
          Aeran, I'll make you a deal. I'll answer your questions, if you'll answer mine - answer, not replace them with other questions.

          Until that happens, I don't feel like I'm in an honest discussion - it feels more like I am trying to wrestle with smoke, a hobby that doesn't interest me, and seems like a waste of time.

          Only when you can tell me if the execution of Bundy was an example of barbarism does it become worthwhile to discuss the value of evidence.
          Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: "Mother sets fire to her daughter's gloating rapist"

            Originally posted by B. de Corbin View Post
            Aeran, I'll make you a deal. I'll answer your questions, if you'll answer mine - answer, not replace them with other questions.

            Until that happens, I don't feel like I'm in an honest discussion - it feels more like I am trying to wrestle with smoke, a hobby that doesn't interest me, and seems like a waste of time.

            Only when you can tell me if the execution of Bundy was an example of barbarism does it become worthwhile to discuss the value of evidence.
            I figured my answer was implicit in my post, but let me state it plainly: Yes it's barbaric, because you can't pick and choose. The death penalty has to either be supported or opposed as an institution, you can't say 'well it's good, except for the times when it's bad' Doesn't work that way, individual executions don't happen in a vacuum.
            Cameron Todd Willingham was executed February, 2004, for murdering his three young children by arson at the family home in Corsicana, Texas. Nationally known fire investigator Gerald Hurst reviewed the case documents, including the trial transcriptions and an hour-long videotape of the aftermath of the fire scene and said in December 2004 that "There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire. It was just a fire."[12] In 2010, the Innocence Project filed a lawsuit against the State of Texas, seeking a judgment of "official oppression".[13]

            Statistics likely understate the actual problem of wrongful convictions because once an execution has occurred there is often insufficient motivation and finance to keep a case open, and it becomes unlikely at that point that the miscarriage of justice will ever be exposed. In the case of Joseph Roger O'Dell III, executed in Virginia in 1997 for a rape and murder, a prosecuting attorney argued in court in 1998 that if posthumous DNA results exonerated O'Dell, "it would be shouted from the rooftops that ... Virginia executed an innocent man." The state prevailed, and the evidence was destroyed.[14]
            Johnny Garrett of Texas was executed February, 1992, for allegedly raping and murdering a nun. In March, 2004, cold-case DNA testing identified Leoncio Rueda as the rapist and murderer of another elderly victim killed four months prior.[15] Immediately following the nun's murder, prosecutors and police were certain the two cases were committed by the same assailant.[16] In both cases, black curly head hairs were found on the victims, linked to Rueda. Previously unidentified fingerprints in the nun's room were matched to Rueda. The flawed case is explored in a 2008 documentary entitled The Last Word.
            Jesse Tafero was convicted of murder and executed via electric chair May, 1990, in the state of Florida for the murders of two Florida Highway Patrol officers. The conviction of a co-defendant was overturned in 1992 after a recreation of the crime scene indicated a third person had committed the murders.[17]

            Carlos DeLuna was executed in Texas in December 1989. Subsequent investigations cast strong doubt upon DeLuna's guilt for the murder of which he had been convicted.[18][19]
            Thomas and Meeks Griffin were executed in 1915 for the murder of a man involved in an interracial affair two years previously but were pardoned 94 years after execution. It is thought that they were arrested and charged because they were viewed as wealthy enough to hire competent legal counsel and get an acquittal.[20]
            Chipita Rodriguez was hanged in San Patricio County, Texas in 1863 for murdering a horse trader, and 122 years later, the Texas Legislature passed a resolution exonerating her.

            - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongfu...#United_States
            That's just a random selection of people who've died in the US as a result of the death penalty, only to later be cleared of the crimes they were killed for. The execution of Ted Bundy is barbaric because it is inseperable from their execution, and from the execution of countless other innocents. That is absolutely barbaric. The world isn't a better place because Ted Bundy is rotting in a grave, as opposed to a cell. Killing him didn't bring his victims back, and if there's any evidence that it discourages similar crimes, I've never seen it. He suffered less, cost your country more money, and not a damn thing was achieved in the process.

            So there's your answer, so how about mine? How many innocent people is it ok to kill if it means we also get to kill the guilty ones? Where do you draw that line? What ratio is acceptable?

            Comment


              #7
              Re: "Mother sets fire to her daughter's gloating rapist"

              Originally posted by Aeran View Post
              How many innocent people is it ok to kill if it means we also get to kill the guilty ones?
              None.

              Where do you draw that line?
              Mounds of unambiguous forensic evidence clearly placing guilt on those who commit terrible crimes.

              What ratio is acceptable?
              None. Only those who are clearly guilty of terrible crimes should be executed.

              Despite your belief that it is an "all or nothing" proposition - that you either execute everybody or you execute nobody, it doesn't have to be, and it shouldn't be, and it isn't.
              Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.

              Comment


                #8
                Re: "Mother sets fire to her daughter's gloating rapist"

                Originally posted by B. de Corbin View Post
                None.



                Mounds of unambiguous forensic evidence clearly placing guilt on those who commit terrible crimes.



                None. Only those who are clearly guilty of terrible crimes should be executed.
                That makes absolutely no sense, the justice system just doesn't work that way. If the justice system wasn't convinced of their 'clear guilt,' then they would never have been convicted in the first place. And yet innocent people are convicted, and are executed. Do you really think the judge said 'oh, well it's not clear that he's guilty, but he's the closest thing we've got so meh, might as well kill the bastard'? Every time an innocent person is convicted and executed, the justice system has decided that they were 'clearly guilty.' And yet they were wrong, because in the end they're just a bunch of people who make mistakes sometimes too.

                If you don't feel that any level of wrongful execution is ok, but you still want the death penalty, you must have some kind of vast revamp of the legal system in mind which would allow execution, but somehow filter out the falsely accused. How would that work?

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: "Mother sets fire to her daughter's gloating rapist"

                  Originally posted by Aeran View Post
                  That makes absolutely no sense, the justice system just doesn't work that way. If the justice system wasn't convinced of their 'clear guilt,' then they would never have been convicted in the first place.
                  Show me where the ambiguity lies in Bundy's case, then.
                  Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: "Mother sets fire to her daughter's gloating rapist"

                    Show me where the ambiguity lies in Bundy's case, then.
                    You're completely missing the point. Like I said, you can't pick and choose. You can't support the death penalty when it kills a scumbag but oppose it when it kills an innocent person. I don't think there's much ambiguity about Bundy, but that's the point, for every single wrongful execution, a whole bunch of people looked at the case and said 'there's no ambiguity here, he clearly did it.' And yet history proved them wrong, because humans make mistakes. Time passes, evidence emerges, stories change, technology improves. How many cases have there been where there is, to the observer, absolutely no ambiguity, the evidence is overwhelming, until suddenly DNA is found, or a witness, and the whole story totally changes? Supporting the death penalty means supporting killing those people before that evidence has a chance to emerge.

                    If you don't think wrongful executions are ok, then obviously you don't support the system as it stands, so how would you change the legal system to guarantee absolutely no wrongful executions? I mean that's what you're saying right - either you oppose the death penalty, you support the current system and wrongful execution, or you want to keep the death penalty but change the system to somehow reduce wrongful convictions down to an "acceptable" level. How would that work exactly?

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: "Mother sets fire to her daughter's gloating rapist"

                      Originally posted by Aeran View Post
                      You're completely missing the point. Like I said, you can't pick and choose. You can't support the death penalty when it kills a scumbag but oppose it when it kills an innocent person. I don't think there's much ambiguity about Bundy, but that's the point, for every single wrongful execution, a whole bunch of people looked at the case and said 'there's no ambiguity here, he clearly did it.' And yet history proved them wrong, because humans make mistakes. Time passes, evidence emerges, stories change, technology improves. How many cases have there been where there is, to the observer, absolutely no ambiguity, the evidence is overwhelming, until suddenly DNA is found, or a witness, and the whole story totally changes? Supporting the death penalty means supporting killing those people before that evidence has a chance to emerge.

                      If you don't think wrongful executions are ok, then obviously you don't support the system as it stands, so how would you change the legal system to guarantee absolutely no wrongful executions? I mean that's what you're saying right - either you oppose the death penalty, you support the current system and wrongful execution, or you want to keep the death penalty but change the system to somehow reduce wrongful convictions down to an "acceptable" level. How would that work exactly?

                      I think that you CAN support the death penalty and desire all those executed are legitimately guilty. What kind of barbarians do you think supporters are?

                      I might joke "kill em all and let the deities sort them out" but that's no way to run a society. There's a man being executed in Ohio there's a big hoopla about because they are trying a new method. He gutted a pregnant woman and there is no doubt he did it.

                      Humans DO make mistakes and the big one would be letting this crap live.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: "Mother sets fire to her daughter's gloating rapist"

                        I think that you CAN support the death penalty and desire all those executed are legitimately guilty. What kind of barbarians do you think supporters are?
                        But in that case, surely those supporters must have some kind of revamp of the system in mind (and a way of bringing that revamp into being) which will stop the wrongful executions - otherwise it's just a pipedream.



                        Humans DO make mistakes and the big one would be letting this crap live.
                        How is him rotting in a grave better than him rotting in a cell? Suffering is hard to quantify, but personally I think that execution is letting someone off easy, I'd take death over life in prison any day of the week. It's been well established that executing a prisoner is more expensive than just locking them up for life. So what exactly is the benefit of executing him, as opposed to locking him up and throwing away the key?

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: "Mother sets fire to her daughter's gloating rapist"

                          Originally posted by Aeran View Post
                          Do you really think it's possible to have a justice system where 'clear guilt' can be established with 100% accuracy? And if it's possible, then why don't we already have it - why have so many wrongful executions already happened?
                          We're just not quite to the point of most fictional crime dramas - mainly due to budgeting and time restrictions. When I worked for our District Attorney's IT Office 5 years ago, approximately 1600 crimes were committed in Clark County, NV every week. We have a population of approximately 2.7 million people. Imagine the backlog of forensic work Los Angeles or New York has. I've been to the criminal investigation labs here in Las Vegas, and they are a far cry from anything shown on CIS. Labwork is still sent out for processing and still takes 6 - 8 weeks to be returned because there are so few processing labs and so many crimes. Suspects have to be charged within a certain time frame, usually 72 hours, after their arrests or they go free. Most places would rather initially charge someone with a crime they didn't commit than let a potential murderer or rapist or armed burglar walk free. It takes the Clark County jail around 12 hours from arrest to even having the arrestee in the case management system. If someone gets arrested for something on a Friday night, by the time the courts open on Monday morning, that person is probably going to be released on their own recognizance unless charged. So yes, mistakes happen - often on purpose. Once a person is charged with a crime, they can move forward with gathering evidence and building the case. Sometimes, the original suspect is released due to lack of evidence. Sometimes they aren't - either because they are guilty or because evidence mounts up against them and makes them appear guilty. Our legal system isn't inherently malicious - the people working behind the scenes generally want to bring the guilty to justice and protect the innocent. But the laws we have put in place as part of our checks and balances work against certain aspects of it.

                          People in the criminal fields continue to research and develop detection skills and tools. Forensic science gets better all the time. And so does surveillance. The one benefit to living in a privacy-less world is that everything everyone does is caught on some form of electronic or digital recording system somewhere. There are even websites where you can watch surveillance cameras online. It's crowd-sourced security. People watch these security feeds, just waiting for something to happen.

                          I watched one of these Forensic Files-type shows last year, and they were talking about the amazing surveillance system in Atlantic City. A man and woman were in a casino, drinking and gambling. They did not arrive together. The man remained fairly in control of his faculties while the woman got drunker and drunker and more incoherent. The man ushered her out of the casino, into his car... They had some sort of tussle in the car & he shoved her out of it, half-dressed, into the casino parking lot. He drove home, where he was apprehended by the police for attempted kidnapping, along with sexual assault/attempted rape, something along those lines.

                          The casino surveillance tapes both inside and outside in the parking lot caught all the action from multiple angles, including the man slipping something into the woman's drink. Traffic cameras were able to film the man's departure once he was off casino property - almost all the way to his home. There was really no defense he could come up w/for his actions. He was clearly, undeniably, 100% guilty as charged.

                          Even Las Vegas as a city can't boast of anything so advanced or cooperative yet. We have the infrastructure in place - but it seems like the traffic cameras are broken or turned off, and every casino and business uses its own camera and recording system (many of them have proprietary software, too - so if you don't have the decoder for the format, you can't watch the tapes, which is really frustrating!). We did have an individual with home surveillance catch a burglar via facebook - their home security camera caught very clear imagery of the guy breaking into their home, rummaging around & stealing a few things. They posted it to facebook & the collective viewers were able to identify the thief.
                          The forum member formerly known as perzephone. Or Perze. I've shed a skin.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: "Mother sets fire to her daughter's gloating rapist"

                            Originally posted by Aeran View Post
                            So what exactly is the benefit of executing him, as opposed to locking him up and throwing away the key?
                            If someone I loved had been murdered, it would benefit me greatly to know their killer was dead. Justice isn't just metrics and money.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: "Mother sets fire to her daughter's gloating rapist"

                              If someone I loved had been murdered, it would benefit me greatly to know their killer was dead. Justice isn't just metrics and money.
                              Fair enough. Personally I'd prefer they rot in prison for the rest of their (very long) life, but I guess it's a question of personal preference.

                              But that doesn't change the situation. Either:

                              1) You oppose the death penalty in all implementations.

                              2) You support the death penalty in it's current implementation, and so support wrongful execution.

                              3) You oppose the current implementation of the death penalty as flawed due to aforementioned wrongful executions, but support it in theory, in a more ideal implementation, if a situation could be brought about which would reduce those wrongful executions to a level which you deem acceptable.

                              I just don't see any other options.

                              Comment

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