Great Commentary - "Fatal Wounds to the Death Penalty"

[Facial_King]

Definitely worth your time:

http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/fatal-wounds-for-the-death-penalty/1063780

Excerpt:

"The death penalty costs a lot to implement, a side issue to be sure but in these tough fiscal times, a consideration. Florida, for instance, spends about $51 million a year on its death penalty system or about $24 million for each execution. While another broke state, California, spends an estimated $137 million. The high cost is largely driven by the layers of additional court proceedings intended to make sure that due process has been afforded the accused and a guilty person is being executed.

I can hear the cries of "who cares what it costs?" or "let's make it cheaper by cutting out all those extra legal *****." But what should concern capital punishment proponents is that the system, even with these expensive safeguards, gets it wrong. Executing the innocent is a distinct possibility.

Nine men in 2009 who had been convicted and sentenced to death were exonerated of their crimes and freed. The total now stands at 139 since 1973. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, those nine men served a combined 121 years between the time they were sentenced to death and their exonerations, which means that all that extra due process and all the system's delays that pandering politicians always caterwaul about were necessary to avert a tragedy.

And then there are the cases where a convict's innocence emerged too late...."

 

[SiCo]

Life imprisonment is the solution.

 

[georges]

I see and when one is convicted of capital ******, it is better to make sure he is never paroled and never gets on the streets again, so the death penalty is necessary. France had death penalty till 1982, the fucking socialists abolished death penalty and it was far to be a great idea. Releasing a convicted criminal because of a good behavior is stupid and irresponsible, a criminal should either be ****ed or sentenced to life without parole. Second chances with scum have not to be tolerated or accepted. We pay enough for the food and the comfort of these sick criminal bastards who endanger the life of the law abiding respectful citizens. It is time to stop it I think. Victimizing criminals is not the solution to solve the problem.

 

[Namreg]

"The death penalty costs a lot to implement, a side issue to be sure but in these tough fiscal times, a consideration. Florida, for instance, spends about $51 million a year on its death penalty system or about $24 million for each execution.

if they execute more people then the average cost will decrease.

And then there are the cases where a convict's innocence emerged too late...."

such as?

 

[Friday on my mind]

such as?

The innocence project and also clear evidence of police and prosecutorial miscounduct (framing innocent people) in states such as Illinois that led a republican governor to stop all executions.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/about/Mission-Statement.php

Mission Statement

"The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University to assist prisoners who could be proven innocent through DNA testing. To date, 249 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 17 who served time on death row. These people served an average of 13 years in prison before exoneration and release. "

 

[Namreg]

is there any hard evidence that in the US an innocent person was ever executed? i'm not saying there isn't, but i haven't heard of it. a link would be appreciated.

 

[Ace Bandage]

Meh, if a few innocents are ****ed occasionally because of being falsely accused, so be it. I can tolerate a few unnecessary deaths as long as we're about 98% accurate. The other 2% were probably undesirable anyway. Just speed up the process save some money. Problem solved!

 

[Will E Worm]

I see and when one is convicted of capital ******, it is better to make sure he is never paroled and never gets on the streets again, so the death penalty is necessary. France had death penalty till 1982, the fucking socialists abolished death penalty and it was far to be a great idea. Releasing a convicted criminal because of a good behavior is stupid and irresponsible, a criminal should either be ****ed or sentenced to life without parole. Second chances with scum have not to be tolerated or accepted. We pay enough for the food and the comfort of these sick criminal bastards who endanger the life of the law abiding respectful citizens. It is time to stop it I think. Victimizing criminals is not the solution to solve the problem.

It sure is necessary. :hatsoff:

 

[marquis2]

Meh, if a few innocents are ****ed occasionally because of being falsely accused, so be it. I can tolerate a few unnecessary deaths as long as we're about 98% accurate. The other 2% were probably undesirable anyway. Just speed up the process save some money. Problem solved!

One thing to bear in mind is that juries were often reluctant to convict on a capital case unless evidence was uncontravertable.Yet even so, much evidence simply showed that the defendant was there and COULD have done it.There are many known cases of wrongful execution in the UK , even at a time when the British justice system was considered the best in the world.It's logical to assume that there have been a lot in the US too.

 

[morison1954]

Civilized nations solve the wrongful, state-sanctioned ****** of innocents problem the easy, obvious, ethical way by not having primitive, barbaric, vengeful, meaningless, evil capital punishment. "Thou shalt not ****" comes up important somewhere. This is but one reason Uncle Sam has an image problem. There is foreign policy, and wars, and guns, and hateful greedy religions, and trying to **** African poofs, and Faux News, and Congress, and ghettoes, and ****ing Mexicans to score, and Palin, and Rush, and the mega-rich, and the immigration fiasco et cetera. Americans are impossible not to love individually but quite an embarrassment en masse. Sorry guys. If your friends can't tell you who can?

 

[simontim]

i thought the majority of criminals who get ******ed by the state are poor and black, so what's the problem there???

 

[ChefChiTown]

Meh, if a few innocents are ****ed occasionally because of being falsely accused, so be it. I can tolerate a few unnecessary deaths as long as we're about 98% accurate. The other 2% were probably undesirable anyway. Just speed up the process save some money. Problem solved!

I agree with that, to a point.

I know that it's obviously a much higher price that's at stake (a human life), but innocent people are found guilty and punished for crimes that they never committed every...single...day. I spent a few days in jail because of a clerical error. The entire legal system, or the money spent on it, wasn't changed around for me. Or, for anyone else that was falsely jailed. Like I said, I know that a human life is a much higher price that's at stake, but we can't start changing eeeeeverything just for a few mistakes.

Our legal system isn't perfect and innocent people will be punished due to mistakes, but if we start allowing our treatment of guilty parties (especially those of crimes that are worthy enough to even think of the death penalty as punishment in the first place) to get too soft just out of fear of being wrong, then we're not helping our society at all.

It's just ridiculous when a near insignificant amount of people end up changing things for eeeeeverybody else. One stupid person and one mistake somehow effects billions of people? How? And, why? Our country has things so ass backwards that it's not even funny. More people die because of excessive speeding in their cars than people who die because of false convictions that warrant the death penalty. We want to outlaw the death penalty to save a few lives, but we still make cars that are capable of going 120MPH. Cars, by the way, which are being driven by mindless, inconsiderate morons who have no regard for their own safety, let alone the safety of others. But, I guess the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of innocent people who die in car accidents every year don't mean as much as the handful of people who undeservingly got the death penalty.

:dunno:

i thought the majority of criminals who get ******ed by the state are poor and black, so what's the problem there???

Dude, what? I have a feeling that you won't be around much longer.

 

[tiger1977]

Why not bring back exile then? Saint Helena would be a great starting point. Maybe put them on Alcatraz and let them run the place themselves. At least they are no longer a part of society at that point.

 

[Namreg]

what is the job of the justice system? to protect society or to show mercy for rapists and ******ers?

"the death penalty is not a deterrent" - i disagree. if you execute a ******/******er, then you've pretty much deterred him right there. and the argument that executions are expensive isn't valid; it's completely beside the point. and keeping people locked up for 20+ years isn't cheap either.

i agree that the american system is unfair (indeed, the proportion of black inmates seems to be rather high), but that very system is the fault here, not the idea of a death penalty as a whole.

 

[D-rock]

I find it sad how some people in this thread have an ends justify the means and a to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs philosophy.

is there any hard evidence that in the US an innocent person was ever executed? i'm not saying there isn't, but i haven't heard of it. a link would be appreciated.

If you mean absolute, complete, almost certain, without a doubt evidence I don't think so, even though there have been some close calls. However, if you go by what most prosecutions standards are for convicting people and turned that level of proof to prove people were probably innocent by that standard then there has been a few people that were probably innocent that were put to death. Of course when it comes to self criticism the people that run the system have no problem using the utmost level of proof needed that they did something wrong before they are willing to even admit a mistake.


I would also like to point out that almost all our civil liberties in fact probably let more guilty people go than innocent people they protect. Everything from prevention from ******* search and seizure to protection from self incrimination, to Habeas corpus, to being afforded legal representation, to being read our rights on arrest, to the prevention of being put under double jeopardy to a countless list of other things. That doesn’t mean we should just do away with those things. One of the biggest concepts of civil rights around the world is that it's better to keep a fewer innocent people from being put to harm than it is to convict the greater number people that are probably guilty. If it comes down to it, the protection of the innocent is more important to me than punishing people that potentially might be guilty. It's also a check on unlimited power of the people in control. As soon as somebody can use the excuse that only most of the innocent people won't be effected or, "If you don't have anything to hide you don't have anything to worry about." that opens the door for somebody in authority to ***** that power to their own ends and eventually you will have to worry whether your innocent or not. Not to mention all it takes to make you not innocent is a law so distasteful your not willing to follow it.

In any case nobody should fool themselves. The death penalty isn't about justice. Anybody with some commons sense and a few brain cells should see it's not a very effective deterrent either. What it is a tool of vengeance. At one point in the history of the world, and maybe even not that relatively long ago, whether it be because of poor prison systems in a more primitive age, long distances from places of civilization or ***************, somebody having a powerful ****** or organization that could literally break them out of a prison, or because of the wide range of territory one would have to patrol or escort a dangerous criminal I could see some situations where in the past ****ing somebody might be the only reasonably way to insure that person wasn't a danger to other people any more. In modern times that has stopped being the case a long time ago. I can not except the ****ing of other people except as the last reasonable resort in self defense or either oneself or others when circumstances just don't give any other reasonable choice.

 

[ChefChiTown]

I find it sad how some people in this thread have an ends justify the means and a to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs philosophy.

But, you do have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.

With the mentality that the "break a few eggs" philosophy is wrong, then you would be deadset against everything in this world that even has a remote chance of resulting in someone's death. People shouldn't be allow to own guns, because it might acidentally go off and break a few eggs by ****ing someone. People shouldn't be allowed to drive cars in order to make travel more convenient, because someone might fall asleep behind the wheel and break a few eggs by ****ing an innocent motorist in an accident. People shouldn't be allowed to take medicine, because someone might have an unexpected allergic reaction to it and break a few eggs and die. Etc.

Nothing is perfect, especially when it comes to our legal system. Is it unfair that innocent people are acidentally put to death for a crime that they didn't commit? Yes, absolutely. And, I'll never claim otherwise. But, is it fair to eliminate or even drastically alter the use of the death penalty when it comes to punishing criminals who have committed an ultimately unforgivable crime? No, absolutely not.

The death penalty isn't about justice. Anybody with some commons sense and a few brain cells should see it's not a very effective deterrent either. What it is a tool of vengeance.

One can argue that living a life behind bars is worse than being put to death, so should we stop sending criminals to prison too? After all, imprisonment is a legal form of vengeance as well. Sentences that are handed down are all at the descretion of the judge who is hearing the case. What one judge deems to be fair, another judge can deem to be unjust. And, since there is no consistency in law and the punishments that are given to the guilty, it just goes to show that all forms of legal punishment are nothing more than an individual's (the judge's) perception of what they deem to be an acceptable measure of vengeance.

:2 cents:

 

[bob_dole4]

Nothing is perfect, especially when it comes to our legal system. Is it unfair that innocent people are acidentally put to death for a crime that they didn't commit? Yes, absolutely. And, I'll never claim otherwise. But, is it fair to eliminate or even drastically alter the use of the death penalty when it comes to punishing criminals who have committed an ultimately unforgivable crime? No, absolutely not.

But somehow you determine it is more fair for a government body to ****** an innocent person than it is to imprison a criminal for life.

Never,ever, should a government be able to ****** one of its own citizens. Where is the accountability? Where is the justice? Person A ******s person B, so they get put to death. But the government ******s person C, and they get to say "Break a few eggs to make an omelette". No, sorry, nobody in their right mind can say that it is an appropriate cost to **** innocent people in order to get to the ones that deserve it. That isn't justice, that's war.

 

[sporty_carr]

Why not bring back exile then? Saint Helena would be a great starting point. Maybe put them on Alcatraz and let them run the place themselves. At least they are no longer a part of society at that point.

This is the best idea me thinks.

 

[ChefChiTown]

But somehow you determine it is more fair for a government body to ****** an innocent person than it is to imprison a criminal for life.

What? Where did I even come close to saying that? I said that it's unfair to put innocent people to death.

Is it unfair that innocent people are acidentally put to death for a crime that they didn't commit? Yes, absolutely. And, I'll never claim otherwise.

Sooooo...:dunno:

Never,ever, should a government be able to ****** one of its own citizens. Where is the accountability? Where is the justice? Person A ******s person B, so they get put to death. But the government ******s person C, and they get to say "Break a few eggs to make an omelette". No, sorry, nobody in their right mind can say that it is an appropriate cost to **** innocent people in order to get to the ones that deserve it. That isn't justice, that's war.

So, citizens that live underneath the rule of a government should be able to ****** other citizens without getting a just penalty? ******ers should be punished with nothing more than a room behind bars for a while? Where is the accountability for their actions if their punishment is nothing more than a room without a view? Where is the justice if somebody who ******s one of my loved ones gets to live until they die of natural causes?

You misread my prior comments which caused you to bring up the level of fairness. Well, where is the fairness in one of my loved ones having their life taken away before their time was up by the hands of a heartless ******er, but that ******er is allowed to live the rest of their life in relative comfort? Explain to me how that is fair.

 

[maildude]

Great. We blitz our citizens with waves of violence, hatred, gloom and fear throughout their lives via the media and even at home. Then when a few of the people on the edge cross over, we scream for their death. In many ways those who cry for justice via the death penalty experience the same type of blood lust the perpetrators are guilty of.