The death penalty is a disaster morally, legally, and practically.

[Hissyspit]

There's no particularly good reason to be torn about it or apply it just "rarely."

http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/death-penalty/us-death-penalty-facts



https://www.aclu.org/case-against-death-penalty

http://www.icomdp.org/arguments-against-the-death-penalty/

The risk of executing innocent people exists in any justice system
There have been and always will be cases of executions of innocent people. No matter how developed a justice system is, it will always remain susceptible to human failure. Unlike prison sentences, the death penalty is irreversible and irreparable.

The arbitrary application of the death penalty can never be ruled out
The death penalty is often used in a disproportional manner against the poor, minorities and members of racial, ethnic, political and religious groups.

The death penalty is incompatible with human rights and human dignity
The death penalty violates the right to life which happens to be the most basic of all human rights. It also violates the right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment. Furthermore, the death penalty undermines human dignity which is inherent to every human being.

The death penalty does not deter crime effectively
The death penalty lacks the deterrent effect which is commonly referred to by its advocates. As recently stated by the General Assembly of the United Nations, “there is no conclusive evidence of the deterrent value of the death penalty” (UNGA Resolution 65/206). It is noteworthy that in many retentionist states, the effectiveness of the death penalty in order to prevent crime is being seriously questioned by a continuously increasing number of law enforcement professionals.

Public opinion is not a major stumbling block for abolition
Public support for the death penalty does not necessarily mean that taking away the life of a human being by the state is right. There are undisputed historical precedences where gross human rights violations had had the support of a majority of the people, but which were condemned vigorously later on. It is the job of leading figures and politicians to underline the incompatibility of capital punishment with human rights and human dignity.

It needs to be pointed out that public support for the death penalty is inextricably linked to the desire of the people to be free from crime. However, there exist more effective ways to prevent crime.


http://www.listland.com/top-10-reasons-death-penalty-abolished/

- snip -

7. Exoneration

The Death Penalty Prevents Exoneration

In singer Alanis Morissette’s 1995 hit “Ironic”, she sings the verse “…it’s a death row pardon two minutes too late.” Morissette clearly didn’t know the definition of irony, as she spent close to four minutes describing things that were unfortunate or just plain old terrible. Still, the lyric reminds us of the irreversible consequences that can occur from continued enforcement of the death penalty.

What if an inmate sentenced to death is later found to be innocent of their convictions? What if the uncovering of this innocence comes after a lethal injection has already been administered?

This is much more than a hypothetical. A study titled “Rate of false convictions of criminal defendants who are sentenced to death” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America found that over four percent of prisoners sentenced to death in the United States are innocent. The team of researchers analyzed 7,482 death sentences from 1973 to 2004. Out of all these cases, it was found that 1.6 percent were later exonerated, and 4.1 percent should have been exonerated.

If a conviction is ever overturned, it can take decades at the very least. However, there are several documented cases of prisoners being released years after imprisonment. Life sentences serve as a better alternative to the death penalty in order to protect the potentially innocent.

6. Cost

Failing to Abolish the Death Penalty is a waste of money.

The cost of the death penalty as opposed to a life sentence without parole is exponential. Due to the extra measures taken in judicial proceedings, lawyer fees, extended trials, and expert witnesses, costs end up being higher. A Cost Study by the Sacramento Bee noted that California would save $90 million per year if it were to completely eliminate the death penalty.

MORE

[daleanime]

1. K&R.....

[Luminous Animal]

2. You know what I find disgusting? Her answer was directed towards a black man who spent 39 years

of his life on death row, And she brought up a white domestic terrorist to bolster her argument.

[JonLeibowitz]

4. You can be sure if Bernie had done something like that he'd be smeared from here to Sunday.

[forest444]

11. Exactly.

Hillary was just lucky that he was too much of a gentleman to rebut her non-response.

The man was asked by Roland Martin if he was "satisfied" with her answer, and he should have really spoken up at that point and said: "frankly, no. Not only do you refuse to reject the death penalty, even knowing it has a 15% error rate or higher; but you won't explain why, exactly, you find it worth keeping!" (or words to that effect).

[Major Hogwash]

29. Pure political posturing on her part.

And the fact that she thinks she is right, even unto this day, is why I won't even consider her to be a viable candidate.

[Logical]

3. I always ask people to look at countries who still have the DP! Disgusting! Nt

[whatthehey]

5. Predictably, such screeds ignore the only real DP argument

Already convicted murderers have killed again after rehabilitation, counseling, imprisonment, parole, escape, solitary, LWP, and Supermax.

Not one, ever, has killed again after being executed.

If you can find an equally effective alternative, I will become a DP opponent.

[Logical]

9. Wow, how GOP of you. Look up the other fucking countries that have the death penalty.

Like that list?

[whatthehey]

28. Strange argument given your handle

How is that relevant to any logical discussion of the DP?

[Logical]

30. Lol, yes, because progressive countries are not to be respected! Nt

[whatthehey]

36. Heaping more irrelevance on the first

Either you are assuming a tautology that no DP = progressive, or assuming that countries with one particular law in common are broadly equivalent in sound ethics.

Either the death penalty is a moral benefit or a moral harm. You cannot rationally assume the latter against disagreement without arguing your case on its merits, and which countries have it or not is completely irrelevant to the answer one way or the other. Switzerland and Norway are both generally thought of as overall nicely progressive nations. The former only allowed women to vote in my adulthood and the latter has an established state church, both of which would cause quite the consternation here.

[rpannier]

12. Weak argument and you either know it or don't care

There is no evidence that the death penalty makes a society safer, that it prevents killing and the like
Your argument is a simplistic answer to problems in society and the criminal justice system
I could conclusively make that same argument about any spate of crimes out there... arson, murder, rape, assault, etc
But again, that doesn't address the underlying issues in a society that cause crime, it only makes you feel safer and better
Post industrialized countries that do not have the death penalty, are for the most part, safer and less crime ridden
According to FBI statistics regions of the country without the death penalty have less violent crime than regions that do -- the south has the highest violent crime rate at 5.5 per 100,000 persons; the only region of the country above the national average. While the northeast has the lowest at 3.9

I am guessing should you find yourself on death row for a crime you didn't commit you might feel different about the DP

or....
Maybe you could just ask those people who were sitting on death row what they think

[whatthehey]

31. Not at all

I wasn't aware the DP is supposed or intended to solve all society's problems. It's certainly not there to make me feel or, in anything but powerball level of improbability, be safer. Certainly a factor of utter irrelevance in my support for it.

It's, in my mind at least, a remedy to specific risks of recidivism applied to specific criminals. It's not just a way to make killers never kill again, it's the only reliable way to do so. Its deterrent impact, if any and which can be argued the other way despite your assertions, is of much lower importance. Some criminals fear the death penalty, some would choose it over LWP, some simply don't have the foiresight and self-control to consider it one way or the other.

My support is entirely based on the fact that many more people have been killed since the reinstitution of the DP by already convicted murderers who have been released, paroled, escaped, or allowed to kill in prison, than could ever have been executed wrongly even in the most dire calculations of DP foes. It's that black and white and utilitarian for me. No emotional concern involved at all.

Since such discussions never seem to avoid emotional irrelevancies however, I'll ask you very similar (and yes, similarly irrelevant, but if that's the milieu I'll go along) questions:

Maybe you should ask yourself if wrongly convicted of a crime you'd prefer decades locked in a steel cage 23 hrs a day allowed to consort only with the most vicious and bestial of humanity in a Supermax, or a quick injection to spare you all that?

Or maybe you should ask the parents of the 7, at the very least, and probably twice that, young women murdered by the already sentenced to death but then released Kenneth MacDuff whether they would have preferred his original sentence be carried out?

Whose, and how many, lives are you trying to save?

[mwooldri]

13. Not one executed convict found later to be innocent has came back from the dead.

Life without parole, often with solitary confinement is probably way more barbaric than the death penalty in a lot of ways.

Let's apply the religious argument. What part of "Thou shalt not kill" is not understood?

I can never support the death penalty. Even for the most heinous of acts. However the USA does need total justice reform, especially in the area of "corrections".

[racatiwood]

17. re: solitary confinement

pretty sure the US utilizes solitary confinement in its prisons at a disproportionate rate to the vast majority of so-called "civilized" nations, too. I can't seem to find the link to the relevant stats, but will keep looking!

[whatthehey]

32. True - just a far lower number than those killed by already convicted murderers

Last edited Tue Mar 15, 2016, 03:12 PM - Edit history (1)

The only rational question in this discussion is, or rather should be, how many and whose lives are more important?

The religious question, irrelevant to me but that's not the larger point, should also consider those we allow to die by not preventing killers from killing again.

I do agree the US justice system needs significant reform including less brutalizing and inhumane options, but elimination of the only perfectly reliable way to prevent further slaughter by those so inclined should not be part of it.

[Hissyspit]

16. "Screed?"

Jeez...

[RoccoR5955]

18. So then by that logic

the person who inflicts death on these people time after time is, in fact a murderer, and should be put to death.
If this was carried out, the population would be extinct.

[OnlinePoker]

21. The death certificates of executed people do list death as a homicide. n/t

[RoccoR5955]

23. Why not?

It is one human being killing another.
Oh, and please answer my question. Thanks.

[OnlinePoker]

24. What question?

There was a statement in your original post but I was just amplifying what you said with mine.

[RoccoR5955]

25. The person who executes someone

who gets executed time and again, should get killed, according to your logic. Yes or no.

[OnlinePoker]

26. I'm anti-death penalty. I think they should rot in jail for the rest of their lives. n/t

[whatthehey]

33. Nope

The IRS and its agents can force you to pay them without being guilty of extortion.

The police can detain you without being guilty of kidnapping.

Soldiers can unleash all manner of death and destruction without being convicted.

Agents of the government in carrying out their legally prescribed duties can and always have been empowered to act in ways that are illegal if applied generally.

[LWolf]

22. They don't kill again if you don't let them out.

They don't need to be executed.

From the ACLU:

The death penalty is not a viable form of crime control. When police chiefs were asked to rank the factors that, in their judgment, reduce the rate of violent crime, they mentioned curbing drug use and putting more officers on the street, longer sentences and gun control. They ranked the death penalty as least effective. Politicians who preach the desirability of executions as a method of crime control deceive the public and mask their own failure to identify and confront the true causes of crime.

https://www.aclu.org/case-against-death-penalty

It's interesting to see that states without the death penalty consistently have lower murder rates than states that use the death penalty:

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterrence-states-without-death-penalty-have-had-consistently-lower-murder-rates

[whatthehey]

34. How many examples to the contrary do you need?

Kevin Johns of MD killed on the bus to prison

Timothy Hancock of OH strangled another prisoner to death

If you're not too concerned about criminals killing their own, Robert Pruett of TX killed a prison guard in jail.

Then sometimes they get out even when you don't let them out. Kenneth Williams of AR escaped and killed again.

None of these is a unique or even particularly rare occurrence, and they don't even include the numerous LWP convictions that later became very much with parole. Binding future judicial decisions is a fools game.

Even Supermax is not reliable. Silvestre Rivera managed to kick a fellow inmate to death in a prison regime the ACLU already thinks is rigid enough to be cruel and unusual punishment (and they are frankly probably correct).

Now yes it's theoretically possible to prevent any possible way for someone to kill again and let them live, but not in a way that wouldn't be laughably unconstitutional and that any sane individual would choose over a swift and easy death.

About those states; they are equal in terms of known precursors of violent crime like poverty, drug use, lack of social safety nets, demographics of race and age, etc so as to be a valid comparison, right? Thought not.

[LWolf]

37. You want to kill people and

you're worried about constitutionality?

Okay.

[beam me up scottie]

6. Thanks for making this an op, K & R!

I would also add that the death penalty is inherently racist, another reason liberals should oppose it.

[Lorien]

7. Hillary lights up whenever she talks about killing people

it's creepy as hell.

[Segami]

8. I'm glad I'm not the only one who notices that!

[farleftlib]

27. you noticed too?

It's quite ghoulish. She has that in common with PBO's predecessor.

[SheilaT]

10. I like to point out that almost every other

first world country (I think Japan is the only exception) no longer has the death penalty. And weirdly enough, most of them, all of them actually, have vastly lower violent crime and murder rates than we do. Remind me again how the death penalty is a deterrant?

[nomorenomore08]

14. Two points:

1. On the one hand, I can understand the emotional/psychological appeal of capital punishment, as applied to particularly heinous crimes. And I would even concede that, perhaps, there are those who've committed such evil acts that death is the only adequate (or "deserved&quot punishment.

2. On the other hand, in any imperfect legal system (which every legal system known to man) there will always be some number of people wrongly convicted. The certainty that innocent people will die as a result, along with the fairly obvious racial and class biases involved with the DP's real-life application, means that I, personally, can never justify its existence.

[eggman67]

15. Amen!

It's just plain wrong.

[RoccoR5955]

19. My response to death penalty advocates is

Why do we kill people, who kill people, to show people that killing people is wrong?

[aikoaiko]

20. I'm almost ready to give it up.

Its just difficult for me to give up on it across the board when we have heinous murders with known agency and no compelling mitigating circumstances.

Also, eliminating the death penalty will likely lead to some murders being released from prison. With the DP as an option, a plea deal can offer life without parole. If life without parole is the most severe option, then plea deals will offer life with parole.

Still, executing innocent men and women is a terrible thing.

[Punkingal]

35. I think it's easy for people to support the death penalty when it's some anonymous person.

I knew someone who was executed. I knew him when he was 13 years old because he was the nephew of a friend of mine in high school. He was a sweet, nice kid, just like millions of others. He was convicted of murder in his thirties, and executed. I don't know the circumstances, and I don't know if he was guilty or not. There were some who doubted it. I do know he had children and a loving family. I was told he died with dignity and grace, trying to comfort his family.

When I heard about it I could only remember that sweet boy and his family. I thought of my friend, who I haven't seen since high school, and his mother who I only met once. How horrible it must be for a mother to experience this. The death penalty does no just kill a person, it kills families.

This is not to say murder victims are not deserving of our concern, but continuing the murders does not bring them back. It just continues the destruction.