Cases like this:
Innocence Project client Steven Barnes was released from prison Tuesday morning, nearly two decades after he was wrongfully convicted of rape and murder in Oneida County.
New DNA test results support Barnes’ longstanding claim of innocence in the 1985 rape and murder of a high school student for which he was convicted in 1989.
19 years behind bars for something he didn’t do. What a waste of a life. We are not perfect. Sure, you can show me cases where it’s pretty much a given that the person is guilty (Hussein, Hitler, Manson, Bundy) but you are either for it or against it. Even in a nation that has a pretty good justice system (and with the exception of the inherent racism, the death penalty, and drug laws, the U.S. has a pretty good one) we don’t always convict the right person.
Steven Barnes will NEVER have a normal life. He’s spent the most productive days of his life in jail for something he didn’t do. He probably doesn’t know how to use a computer very well. Think about that? I don’t know this, but he probably doesn’t have many skills and is condemned to be unemployed for quite some time. Thankfully he has family there for him.
The whole thing makes me sick. But Steven Barnes is alive. He could very well have been put to death. The death penalty needs to die.
Warren Terra
It’s always worth noting that (1) the Innocence Project is funded by donations from people like you and (2) despite what you see on TV shows like CSI, most suspects don’t have the benefit of people with improbably broad and applicable knowledge possessing unlimited time, lab equipment, and money – all provided by the taxpayer, or the scriptwriter, or something – and certain to arrive at the truth.
In most places the resources provided by the state for the defense of indigents are lacking (the Nation had a great story on the situation in a southern state last year, Louisiana iirc, but all I could easily find was this 2001 story); in some places the resources are a downright farce; and the resources for appeals and further investigations are still less.
low-tech cyclist
Not only should we abandon the death penalty, but we need a more or less automatic system to recompense wrongly imprisoned people for the years we’ve stolen from their lives – not as recompense for lost earnings or anything like that, but for having stolen their freedom, pure and simple. Just the fact that we’ve released them doesn’t make it all even-Steven between them and us. We owe them, big time.
We can’t give them those years of their lives back, but is it too much to ask that we give them, say, $50K for each year they spent imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit?
The Moar You Know
The fundie response: "Well, I’m sure he was guilty of something, you know how those blacks/mexicans/gangsters/faggots/whatever are."
Which I have heard, verbatim, out of more people’s mouths than I care to recall.
Count me another absolutist against the death penalty. Innocent people have died on the scaffold and in the chairs of the gas chamber, on the injection table, in the leather grip of "Old Sparky". And that’s all the argument I’ll ever need.
The Moar You Know
@low-tech cyclist: How about that money come out of the pockets of the judges and prosecutors who, with dismaying frequency, refuse to give these wrongly accused folks a new trial even in the face of DNA evidence which clearly shows they are innocent?
Might speed up those wheels of justice a little.
Incertus
I got into a pretty heated argument about this with my girlfriend’s moron cousin a couple of weeks ago. This is a guy who is convinced that Bush was behind 9/11, who believes Obama hasn’t released his actual birth certificate, and who supported Ron Paul but who voted for Cynthia McKinney, just to give you a taste of what we’re dealing with here. And yet, while he recognizes that there are flaws in the capital punishment system, still thinks it can be made flawless, so we shouldn’t ditch it, or even put a moratorium on executions while we try.
Xanthippas
Anyone who supports the death penalty should be forced to defend the proposition that it will necessarily be imposed on innocent men and women by an imperfect justice system, and that they’re okay with that. Anything less is a dishonest defense of the death penalty.
Tim in SF
Governments should not have the right to execute their citizens. This even more true for the United States, where the Government explicitly derives its power from its citizens.
*
yeah, what Moar & Incertus & everyone else is saying.
I recall popping onto a pajama-colleague site to this one, where they have this LEO from La who routinely (~once a month) cites some terrible case where some depraved monster rapes and kills some child, who then proceeds to defy "any librul" to refute that the death penalty is an excellent, equitable deterant to violent crime.
To which one might retort "Albert Gell" or "Joseph Spaziano." Seriously, you can provide a laundry list of (168?)folks who were freed on Death Row, but to these dirtbags, it only bolsters their perception that since they were exonerated (in their mind "because" of rather than) in spite of prosecutorial and systemic malfeasance, that only the truly guilty die.
It blew my mind; literally, the way these lowest-denominators would fantacize about "imagine being the victim." The only way one could support this type of barbarism is to be so absolutely certain of the infallibility of the American judicial system with a teaspoon of imagining your kid sister brutally murdered.
The kicker was, this pro-state-sanctioned murder thread was usually posted one thread away from some bitching about Nifong.
Nope, no disconnect here.
Authoritarian statist nanny-with-a-black-jack staters in a nutshell. They have no problem trusting an entity with the authority to kill someone (else) but God help that entity if it imposes a transfer or estate tax.
Nicole
Was Steven Barnes sentenced to death or was he sentenced to life in prison? I ask because people sentenced to life in prison often have enormous difficulty getting anyone to pay attention to them if they feel they have a case for wrongful conviction- there seems to be an attitude of, "Well, they’re not dead, so it’s okay." Death penalty cases get an automatic appeal, correct?
I honestly am not sure what my feelings on the death penalty are- I do feel it is used unjustly in this country, but, on the other hand, there are the occasional cases of someone like Kenneth McDuff, who was sentenced to death in the ’60s, had his sentence commuted by the Supreme Court decision in 1972, and then, although sentenced to life, was paroled in 1989. And then killed, police believe, up to 8 young women before they caught him. Those are women who might be alive today. Do you want to tell their families the gov’t made the right choice in commuting his sentence?
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1005201-5,00.html
It’s a complicated issue, I think- I think one can also argue that life in prison, with no chance of parole is cruel and unusual punishment- incremental death, some might say.
Again, I don’t know the answer, but I don’t think it’s as simple as "death penalty is wrong! Life imprisonment without parole (until we parole due to overcrowding) all around!" Wrongful conviction is wrong; that I’m sure of.
I tend to believe the death penalty is appropriate for repeat highly violent offenses- I can see someone getting wrongfully convicted for one murder; it’s hard for me to see someone getting wrongfully convicted for more than one murder that happen at separate times. In those cases- the Bundys, the McDuffs- I think society is just safer without them on the planet, but it’s hard to imagine a legal system adhering to that- people are getting sentenced to life in prison without parole for an assortment of crimes besides murder. So again, I don’t know. I just don’t think it’s simple.
Wikipedia on life imprisonment- interesting history reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_life_imprisonment#Life_Imprisonment_without_Parole
Okay, start throwing the hate…
Snarki, child of Loki
Well, like many here I was also philosophically opposed to the death penalty.
But George Bush convinced me to change my mind!
Why, how could one look at the execution of Saddam Hussien and not conclude that he met a well-deserved fate?
So, at least in the case of sociopathic leaders, that drag their countries into pointless wars, imprison and terrify their own citizens, torture when it suits them, are responsible for the deaths of hundred of thousands of innocents, and otherwise trample over all humane norms….’scrag ’em.
Well, perhaps not hang them. That’s too quick. Just put them in a locked room with about a hundred bereaved widows, each armed with a pair of fingernail clippers.
So for ordinary criminals, no death penalty. Heads of state should get special treatment.
DrDave
Read John Grisham’s The Innocent Man and/or Robert Mayer’s The Dreams of Ada about a couple of murders that took place in Ada, OK in which prosecutorial and police misconduct led to the wrongful conviction of two (possibly four) men.
The Innocence Project was instrumental in exonerating two men in these cases.
The Moar You Know
@Xanthippas: Try having that discussion. It will terrify you to find out how many of your fellow citizens don’t give a flying fuck that innocents will die; they want the death penalty and they kind of don’t give a shit who actually gets killed for the offense, just so long as somebody dies.
Oliver's Neck
If we are to have a death penalty (we shouldn’t) it should only be applied for the sorts of crimes it is likely to prevent.
(Paraphrasing the great Stanley Hauerwas) I think we should build a guillotine on Wall Street and start executing executives of financial firms.
Not really. Though if we at least built the thing it might provide a moment’s pause to their unquenchable greed. Maybe.
*
Complicated issue, my ass. Nicole, either you support the right of the state of Florida to kill Joseph Spaziano or the state of North Carolina to kill Albert Gell, or you don’t.
Can you spot the number of differences between the state of Florida and Kenneth McDuff?
Hint: one is a governing body of millions of residents on a peninsula, one is a murderer.
Care to measure the culpability a citizen has in the murder of an innocent person by the state, versus the culpability a citizen has in the murder of an individual by another individual?
Jess
There is no rationale for the death penalty. It’s not a deterrent. It’s actually more expensive than keeping someone locked up for life (after all the appeals, etc.). And it kills the innocent along with the guilty. It solves nothing in practical terms.
What it really comes down to is revenge. Most of us want to utterly destroy the truly monstrous few–the merit of that is only rarely debated–but some of us won’t if it means that justice is compromised for others. Some people believe punishing the guilty is more important than protecting the rights of the innocent, and others believe the reverse. But it’s clear that we can’t have both.
Warren Terra
I’m not philosophically opposed to the death penalty – I think there are some people who are unequivocally such horrid monsters that killing them is the ultimate statement society can make that they have forfeited their right to be a living member of the human race.
But here in the real world, that’s not how the penalty is used, it’s often used on people who’ve done one or two bad things, but not so many or so inconceivably horrific as to fit my (arbitrary) criteria; and it’s often used on people whose guilt is not absolutely known, even if a jury of twelve people asserted there was no reasonable doubt.
And, of course, the same people who push the death penalty assert that it should be seen as a way to save money, and they want to limit appeals. To me, this is backwards; the verdict actually seems more important to me than the execution, and especially the rectitude of the verdict. The idea that we’d kill people quickly lest we learn first that they were innocent is reprehensible – and remember that in at least one case a state refused to allow DNA tests on evidence related to an executed convict because it was too late to change anything (having first refused a stay of execution, naturally).
It’s an odd example to hold up as being good jurisprudence, but maybe my perfect example is Adolf Eichmann, in Jerusalem: a country that does not have the death penalty made an exception and executed an exceptional monster, because he was exceptional and his guilt was certain. How you’d codify that into law, though, I have no idea.
DrDave
@Tim in SF:
When Mario Cuomo was governor of NY, he was presented with death penalty bills every year (by the Republican majority state legislature). And every year, he vetoed these bills. He gave some of the most impassioned speeches in opposition to the death penalty but the sum of his thought process is this: The state is not in the business of meting out retribution. The state is not in the revenge business. The state is not an angry mob. The state administers justice. And if that means that someone commits a crime so heinous that they should never re-enter civil society, then the state is obligated to put them away for life. But that is where the state’s right ends.
liberal
@Nicole:
But you omit the reason why he was paroled; Wikipedia and the source it cites claim it was because the TX prison system melted down after a federal judge ruled it was unconstitutionally crowded.
I think the choice between "must have death penalty on the books" and "idiots running the state who don’t spend money to pay for space for deadly criminals to be locked up" is a false dichotomy.
Duros Hussein 62
To be fair, Manson never actually killed anybody. He got others to do it for him. He still needs to be locked up, however.
Zifnab
Stories like this remind me of the old Willie Horton ad. There is a slight difference between hanging the defendant high and letting him run free in the streets.
Where was McDuff’s parole officer? Where were the local police? Who signed off on McDuff’s release? There are layers to every justice system and clearly they all failed here.
Someone somewhere decided that if we can only catch one criminal for every ten crimes, we should punish the criminals we catch for all the crimes that go unsolved. So you end up sending pot smokers to jail for five years or throwing the guys driving the getaway cars in robbery cases on death row. You stuff the jails to overflowing, massively overburden the guys who are paid to police the system, and become shocked – SHOCKED! – when you get a guy like McDuff who slips through the cracks.
America has been running cheap and dirty for a generation. That gets cheap and dirty results.
liberal
@DrDave:
Of course the state is in the business of meting out retribution, as well it should be, since retribution is a proper component of justice.
TheHatOnMyCat
Michael is right, and for the right reasons.
The death penalty is not about the penalty, which is surely justified in some cases. It’s about whether you trust the government to be given the power to kill its citizens, and to get that killing right every time.
Unless you are willing to let yourself be executed for a crime you did not commit, then you cannot support the death penalty on any moral grounds. Unless you are willing to suck it up and go to the lethal injection table without a whimper, an innocent victim of government imperfection, then you have no right to cause that to happen to anyone else.
I haven’t yet met the person who was willing to give his life for the death penalty.
*
Retribution is not punishment.
liberal
@TheHatOnMyCat:
Yep.
Comrade Nikolita
@Nicole:
You have the same name as me, and ironically, I agree with your entire post. Well said. :)
liberal
@*:
Looks like someone needs to learn how to use online dictionaries…
liberal
@Zifnab:
But for white collar crimes, this kind of utilitarian analysis—setting the financial punishment so that the expected payoff before the crime committed is not positive—seems pretty reasonable.
I read all the time about white collar criminals getting a some time in the can, plus "restitution," which is usually about what they stole in the first place. I never understood why the formula should be "1*(amount stolen)" rather than some higher multiplier.
elmo
Hooeee, my favorite issue to be contrarian. Not only do I believe in the death penalty, I don’t believe in life imprisonment.
If we believe, as a society, that some crimes are so heinous, and rehabilitation so unlikely, that we intend to lock a man in a cage — with other similar men –until he dies, then I say we should have the courage of our convictions and simply kill him.
Not just for murder. For rape. For attempted murder. For repeat armed robbery. Essentially for anything that would merit a 20-year or more prison term.
The alternative, what we have actually done, is to create a sort of "shadow society" of killers and rapists. Into that toxic society we then throw such minor criminals as petty thieves and drug users. The minor criminals have little choice but to accept the culture of the society we have thrown them into — and behold, we have now created the next generation of killers once they’re released from prison.
Prisons are evil, horrific places precisely because we put evil, horrific people in them.
And yes, I get the "but we could make a mistake" argument. Doesn’t sway me for two reasons.
One, because to me it’s no more morally reprehensible to put a man down than to lock him in one of our modern prisons for the rest of his life.
And two, and more importantly, if you think of crimes and criminals as forming a pyramid, with the vast majority of crimes being non-violent petty crimes at the bottom, it’s just statistically inevitable that you’re going to convict more innocent people for petty crimes than you are for really awful murders. Because there just aren’t that many really awful murders every year. And under the existing system, if you accept that premise, we are putting lots and lots of innocent people into this shadow society after convicting them of petty crimes, and putting only one or two in there for crimes that would get the death penalty. My system protects a much larger number of innocent people — by eliminating the awful prisons altogether — while, yes, condemning one or two innocents to death.
But you don’t have to worry — nobody’s going to listen to me on this one. :-)
liberal
@Duros Hussein 62:
The law doesn’t recognize that distinction; it’s still murder.
Randall
My argument against the death penalty is that is sets the precedent
that killing another person can be the solution.
TheHatOnMyCat
Hopefully that is true.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Philosophically, I’m not opposed to capital punishment per se; I think there are crimes for which the death penalty is the necessary and proper punishment. Having said that, I have absolutely zero faith in the American criminal justice system to administer that punishment accurately or fairly. We should institute a nationwide moratorium at the very minimum; outright abolition would be better.
Granting a new trial says three things:
1. The cops arrested the wrong guy;
2. The D.A. prosecuted the wrong guy;
3. The jury convicted the wrong guy;
In other words, granting a new trial implies that the system failed at every level. Instead of administering justice, it simply compounded injustice. No D.A. worth his Armani is going to own up to that.
liberal
@elmo:
Nonsense. In order to make prisons safe for the less violent criminals, you’d have to execute thousands of the nastier ones per year. You claimed that Because there just aren’t that many really awful murders every year. Which might be true. But there are plenty of prisoners who didn’t commit one of these most egregious murders, who are plenty nasty anyway.
Once you do that, the number of "false positive" death penalty executions skyrockets.
passerby
Or…
Ask them if they themselves would be able to be the one actually inflicting the punishment.
Could they throw the switch on the chair? Could their push the button that pumps the poison? Could swing the axe or release the blade on a guillotine? Could they be the one to tie the blindfold and speak the last words that the prisoner would ever hear?
I could not and so I’m not coward enough to let "The State" do it in my name.
Edit: Block quote fail.
TheHatOnMyCat
I like to cut to the chase, and ask them if they are willing to receive the punishment, if wrongly convicted.
If the pretzel hadn’t been invented, watching them deal with that idea would produce the pretzel immediately.
*
Liberal:
You first, Mr. Amateur Etymologist.
Contrast and compare:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=punishment&searchmode=none
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=retribution&searchmode=none
One is theologically oriented, one is judicial.
But you knew that, didn’t you?
elmo
Liberal:
You’re right, and thank you for pointing that out. Careless error on my part.
But I still maintain that my system will save more innocent people — just, as you correctly point out, not as many as I first claimed.
Oh, and if it matters, I’d also mandate that every public defender’s office be funded to exactly the same extent as the prosecutor’s office, complete with funding for labs and investigators to match the cops. It’s disgraceful that we pour our resources as a society into convicting people instead of into determining whether they are in fact guilty or innocent.
Beej
This has happened in the last 2 or three weeks. Unfortunately, Nebraska doesn’t have a law mandating recompense to the wrongfully convicted. I suppose we should take some comfort from the fact that it was the state which eventually exonerated the six who had been wrongfully imprisoned. Scant comfort.
liberal
@*:
(yawn)
From some of the definitions at dictionary.com:
"Something justly deserved; recompense."
"Something given or demanded in repayment, especially punishment."
"a justly deserved penalty"
"punishment imposed (as on a convicted criminal) for purposes of repayment or revenge for the wrong committed"
From Merriam Webster online: "3: something given or exacted in recompense ; especially : punishment".
elmo
HatonCat:
Explain to me why that logic should not also be used for life imprisonment.
Warren Terra
.
Well, no. Prisons contain evil, horrific people precisely because we put evil, horrific people in them. And it’s unlikely they’d ever be utopian societies. But we could do a lot more to impose order, to enable personal growth, and not incidentally to reduce recidivism than we currently do. Just as the most prominent example, I find it a tragedy that prison rape is essentially an accepted part of our society, seen somehow as being a part of the punishment and a thing to giggle about.
Leeds man
That this debate is even happening is the sign of a barbaric society. Elmo, you’re pretty bright for a high school student.
mightygodking
I work for the Innocence Project here in Canada, and let me tell you a few things:
1.) The "you know they’re guilty, right?" comment is by no means limited to fundy bigots.
2.) I am very, very glad we don’t have the death penalty here.
3.) Crown prosecutors and representatives will tell you to your face how much they admire you for what you’re doing, how nobody wants wrongful convictions, how a mistake in the system hurts everybody – then you leave the room, and they set the stone wall right back up again because they don’t want to be exposed as fuckups.
TheHatOnMyCat
I’ve answered that question before, but at this point it strikes me that the question is so incredibly stupid that it does not deserve an answer.
Maybe someone else will tackle it.
I have unwanted ear hairs to tweeze.
HumboldtBlue
If Saddam’s hanging was so justified why wasn’t George H.W.Bush hung alongside him, and anyone else in American government that paved the way for his rise to power and then helped him remain there?
Saddam was an American creation. His terror was aided and abetted by our policies even going so far as to provide the nerve gas he used against the Iranians and the Kurds. It wasn’t until he was suddenly perceived as the world’s worst man and greatest threat following 9/11 that anyone gave a flying rat’s ass what he did. Plenty of American arms’ suppliers got rich keeping his troops armed during his decades-long war with Iran, again, a monstrous debacle explicitly aided and abetted by American politicians and elected officials.
Yeah, we’ve seen over the past 8 years just how competent government can be.
Leeds man
I think The Ox-Bow Incident should be required viewing for all school-age persons.
12 Angry Men wouldn’t hurt either.
TenguPhule
Corrected.
Wrong Conviction is bad.
Death sentence, no more barbaric then death by jail for life. Either way, their lives are destroyed. And frankly, it should not be about revenge, it should be about some crimes simply being too far to allow those who committed them a chance to do it again & serve as an example to others as to why those crimes are indeed over and beyond the pale.
TenguPhule
"Because I said so!"
Leeds man
Death sentence, no more barbaric then death by jail for life
O thank the Gods! We have someone who can make life and death decisions for others. Bonus: Deterrence works! Er, because TenguPhule says so.
Trollhattan
How many zesty "pro-lifers" are also pro-death penalty? I’ll guess the majority of them. And that’s a discussion I never tire of having, watching them spin themselves into a whirling rats nest of knots rationalizing the dichotomy.
The stories of gov Bush and Gonzo meting out the death penalty with glee make me physically ill. And let’s not forget that many states have ineffective public defender systems, guaranteeing inequal justice is built into the system.
The "state" has no business administering death, in my view. LWOP can really mean LWOP if we so choose. Willie Horton is a strawman, and not a very effective one, at least among the IQ-enhanced.
passerby
Yes Warren Terra, it’s time for a reform of our current prison system. Consider the possibilities if prisoners were put to work , for example, making license plates (like some used to?) or other things while they could learn light industrial trades on the job for apprentice level wages.
I don’t mean paid in money necessarily, but motivated to work voluntarily to earn points for privileges such as better food, phone cards, TV Time, NFL games, conjugal visits, mp3 players, mp3 music or whatever.
I agree that programs to enable personal growth and rehabilitation have not been given serious attention (read: funding) and it’s high time to reform these hell holes. The dark ages are over, it’s the 21st Century and the old ways don’t work . We gotta try something new.
TheHatOnMyCat
Because somebody as stupid as you would need an explanation of the subtle difference between death, and imprisonment.
You can get one, but not from me. I have a litter box to clean out.
Trollhattan
p.s. I was amazed to recently read Japan still conducts executions. I guess some habits die hard.
Cassidy
@Randall: You’d be amazed at how often that’s a good solution.
@passerby: Because studies show that the window of intervention and rehabilitation for career crimials is pretty narrow. By the time we’re talking about, they are lost causes.
The death penalty isn’t used often enough. 168 out of the countless POS’s isn’t a bad batting average.
Jody
From what I’ve seen, the only way people can justify the death penalty is they either A) turn a blind eye to the wrongly accused being executed, or B) don’t give a flying fuck and are simply out for blood.
And the discussion I’ve seen in this thread simply reinforces that observation.
A person serving twenty years and then being released at least has SOME of his life to lead. A person wrongfully put to death doesn’t even have that. He could even, you know, work to prove his innocence while he’s in jail, as opposed to, oh, I dunno, rotting in the ground.
A system that does not take into account that human beings are inherently flawed creatures is delusional at best. As are it’s advocates.
Bill H
I would actually be inclined to disagree with that. Police and prosecutors are more concerned with getting a conviction that with obtaining justice, and poor people (who are overwhelmingly the ones facing the bench) do not obtain the quality of advocacy that wealthy do, while the state will always have the highest quality advocacy available.
As long as criminal law remains an adversarial process, we will not have justice in our system of criminal law. Prisons at the lower levels will continue to be filled more with the victims of poverty than with the practicioners of crime.
Leeds man
168 out of the countless POS’s isn’t a bad batting average.
Now I get it. This is a moral vacuity/stupidity auction. You win, Cassidy. So far.
Jody
Exactly. As long as our system is more interested in revenge than it is justice, and punishment over rehabilitation, things will never get better.
The American inclination to look down the social ladder for someone to blame for society’s ills doesn’t help either.
Litlebritdifrnt
An attorney I worked for once was composing her closing argument in a murder case. I have to say, right here, that personally I thought the defendant should fry, the crime was that disgusting, however my boss, practicing her argument before me began "is it right to kill someone to let people know that it is not right to kill someone?" The argument obviously worked because the guy got life when everyone else was convinced that he was going to get the death penalty. As for the rest of the death penalty advocates I give you one name Timothy Evans. The man, who through his death, pretty much abolished the death penalty in Britain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Evans
Cassidy
@Leeds man: shorter: Help, help, someone call the purity police…halp meh, halp meh…
TenguPhule
"Because you’re stupid and I said so!"
Goesph Gerbils
Quite the company you’re keeping there, boys and girls.
TenguPhule
The execution rate for strawmen on the other hand is still 100% accurate.
TenguPhule
Could you add some cyanide to the well when you’re done?
TenguPhule
Has it been tried yet?
TenguPhule
"Sorry for effectively ruining your entire life, but hey look on the bright side! You’re still alive! So what if the quality of that remaining time may be horrible?
Adam CB
Not looking through ALL the comments, but one of the basic reasons to lament and reverse a patently false conviction with all alacrity is:
Somebody [else] got away with the crime.
In watching the overturning of the conviction of a man for the crime of armed robbery and attempted murder in North Carolina as documented on "Frontline," I remember focusing on what one of the defense lawyers said. Police and prosecutors are searching for a "plausible narrative" to sell to, potentially, sell to a jury. Once they’ve settled on said narrative, getting them to start building an alternate narrative is a task requiring extraordinary energy. In the "Frontline" case, police officers from an adjacent jurisdiction were convinced that the convicted teenager was innocent because another man had entered their custody and confessed to the crime, providing details not publicly known. State birth records buttressed the arguments for innocence because the confessor was the cousin of the robbery ringleader. But, only reaction to Ofra Bikel’s broadcast wrenched the boy from prison. Considering alternate outcomes only undermines the certainty of the original charge, so far as the authorities are concerned. The fact that the REAL KILLERS, so to speak, are running around free doesn’t seem to register.
passerby
Let me emphasize a point here. The prison system is a business. Government money/funding flows into it in such a fashion as to expand it to require more of this money. Anything that involves government money has been operating this way ever since God invented pockets.
If the Gov gives money per capita on prisoners, the goal becomes to get more prisoners. Consider how that is done.
Hence, the prison system (and its cottage industries) is not interested in the health of society at large because rehab solutions do not feed the bottom line.
If we were to shift the purpose of detention from simple, law-mandated incarceration to one of rehabilitation, the money would flow in that direction: put the per capita shoe on the other foot.
Which is why I think prisons/prisoners should participate in some kind of commerce venture tied to the goal of rehabilitation. It would cut the taxpayers’ costs.
It doesn’t surprise me that studies show failure when rehab is attempted. This is a deeply ingrained, social problem. The whole pot has to be stirred on this issue and, it cannot be hoisted on the shoulders of a handful of BSW’s.
I’m envisioning sweeping change that can begin with us voting into office politicians who share a vision for this kind of change.
ps: Bet Governor Janet Napolitano could circle the wagons on this issue via a Governor’s summit (as Homeland Sec Chief) How bout it?
Matt
@elmo:
Because if you discover that someone has been wrongly imprisoned, you can let them back out.
This has been another edition of Simple Answers to Stupid Questions.
Laura W
@Litlebritdifrnt: This is probably the worst thread ever to go O/T* on, but hey…kill me!
I revoke my proclamation that the 2008 Yellow Tail Pinot is the best.
The 2008 Yellow Tail Shiraz is better.
(that was you I was having this discussion with, right?)
*One could draw the tenuous connection between red wine –> Last Supper –> last meal.
If one were an alcoholic, Catholic, pro-death penalty sort of person, of course.
(Not me! Just sayin’.)
TenguPhule
Unless they died in prison.
Then what?
Leeds man
Did I say auction? More like a horse race. TenguPhule makes a late burst, unfortunately from his (her?) arse. Still, it’s Cassidy and TenguPhule, neck and neck.
TenguPhule
Please, death by execution and death by prison. What’s the difference save for the length of time it takes the prisoner to die?
trollhattan
@littlebritdfrnt
Thanks for that link. Crap. Now, how the hell am I supposed to sleep?
trollhattan
@Laura W
Maybe I’m behind the curve here, but is there anywhere in Australia appropriate for raising pinot grapes? They’re the trickiest of tricky bastards.
demimondian
@TenguPhule: So, what’s the difference between a three-year sentence and a life-sentence, given that some fraction of those so imprisoned will still die in jail?
What’s the moral difference between killing someone and not killing someone, but nevertheless judging them as too dangerous to release, or even as having caused such incredible harm that their release would itself be harmful?
TheHatOnMyCat
Then you bury them.
Then you look back on the thing and say, all those years, this person could have battled to establish innocence, and clear his name. Or did, and failed.
Conversely, that guy you executed 20 years ago? He dead. No chance for him to change his fate. Dead. Like poor Judd, just daid.
Poor Jud is dead
A candle lights his head
He’s layin’ in a coffin made of wood ([Curly] wood)
And folks are feelin’ sad
‘Cuz they used to treat him bad
And now they know their friend has gone for good ([Curly] good)
Do we see the subtle shadings of difference here?
Perhaps it takes a special intelligence to see them. Alas, some here may lack that special intelligence.
Pity.
TheHatOnMyCat
Oh dear, did I wander into another Wineanon meeting?
TheHatOnMyCat
Oh no, not because anyone said so. You are just stupid.
Accept it, and move on. Really. Don’t draw this out.
Laura W
@trollhattan: No. You are absolutely alongside the curve correct.
I was easily distracted by a Yellow Tail varietal I’d never tried, and in retrospect, upon trying the first bottle, I surely had the residue of Trident (with Xylitol) Minty Sweet Twist on my palate.
I am chagrined and chastened.
I’ve not kept up very well with the wonderful world of wine since moving to NC, and it shall be one of my NY’s resolutions.
Because I know how much my Grape Juice posts are valued here on BJ.
TheHatOnMyCat
You probably just picked up the mouthwash bottle.
I know when I’m drinking at work, I always keep the mouthwash right there in the drawer next to the vodka.
Just in case I have to have this conversation:
Boss: Why aren’t you working?
Me: I didn’t know you were coming.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Are you stating people shouldn’t be penalized at all? Of course a three year sentence that ends in death is not intentionally a death-sentence.
I’m not going to say people shouldn’t be penalized for wrong-doing, that’s taking things to the extreme. What’s the alternative to jailing someone for acting in such a way that it created a hazard to others around him, the whipping post? My father wanted the whipping post to be re-instituted, what’s your thought on that?
TheHatOnMyCat
Good luck trying to have a rational exchange with these potatoheads.
Welcome back, are you feeling better?
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Uh, TZ? You don’t drink at work, are you feeling okay? Also, if you were aware of what an alcoholic’s breath on vodka smells like, you’d have substituted a different alcohol. My mother drank a 1 + 3/4 litre bottle of vodka every day for at least 20 years (that was after she started drinking heavily about 20 years previous), she never smelled like a drunk, she just acted like one.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Yes, I am, thank you. :)
Objective Scrutator
The death penalty is a necessary function of society. You’re not going to be able to scare a potential criminal unless you remind him that the action he’s contemplating will throw him into Hellfire.
The death penalty also only costs more to implement if it is used sparingly. If it is the primary method of execution, it will be dirt cheap. You could use either a gunman with a pistol to blow the brains out of the criminal, or you could just have a crowd throw stones at the criminal. The cost of a bullet is about 88c, the cost of a 9mm Beretta is about $700 (and that would only have to be bought once), and the cost of clean-up supplies of the mess (mop, vacuum, garbage) would also be around $100. And, if you want to make execution procedures a public matter, they’d cost even less. As Gary North says, "Stones should be the preferred method of execution, since they are cheap and plentiful." TIME found that the average cell cost is $24,000 a year, by comparison.
Yes, capital punishment sentences often have lots of appeals and other means used to delay the sentencing; THAT is costly. However, if we take away the right to appeal for a suspected criminal, we can substantially save on money.
If you think you can ‘rehabilitate’ the majority of rapists, murderers, kidnappers, and robbers, you are insane. There’s a difference between a drug addict and a violent criminal.
As for Steve Barnes, he should probably be executed. There was probably enough evidence to legitimately make an attempt to convict him, and I’d rather not give him an opportunity to murder anyone. Do we really want another Mike Huckabee rapist incident?
demimondian
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: Well, a good Quaker would argue that the purpose of imprisonment was repentance, not punishment; to him or her, any fixed sentence would seem barbaric. Doesn’t is seem a little hard to justify imprisoning someone, training him or her to be a more effective criminal, and then releasing him or her, unrehabilitated, just because some arbitrary period of time has elapsed? Similarly, if someone is beyond doing harm, is there any real reason to continue to confine them, even if no time at all has gone by?
TheHatOnMyCat
Well, I have probably averaged less than two drinks a month in the last 3 years. Maybe less than one.
I don’t really drink, for all intents. Not that I wouldn’t mind doing so on occasion.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
I’m not against rehabilitation, but it should be performed while paying for a crime, meaning the person should be penalized for their actions. I would not want people to have no chance to rehabilitate, but I wouldn’t want rehab only (it doesn’t work for some, it’s a risk that someone will rehabilitate and they need to be in a controlled atmosphere until they do).
trollhattan
@OS
Dude/dudette, you’re not even trying. Care to give it another shot or shall we mock you solely based on this feeble effort? Low-hangin’ fruit.
There, that’s a sekyoular humanist for ya.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
If you don’t include sake, that statement is true. ;)
Objective Scrutator
"Dude/dudette, you’re not even trying. Care to give it another shot or shall we mock you solely based on this feeble effort? "
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Can you make an argument against the death penalty, without resorting to ad hominems and strawmen?
demimondian
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: The problem with that argument is that it presupposes that we know how to make someone "pay" for a crime. There’s no good reason to consider isolation and restricted freedom appropriate to a crime like, say, murder; they aren’t of the same kind as the original offense. In fact, the only punishment which *is* a punishment in kind would be execution, with a comparable amount of fear and pain. Anything else, including imprisonment *for the purpose of punishment*, is mere barbarism.
The purpose of imprisonment isn’t punishment, in the end; it is protection of the society. As a result, someone might be reasonably imprisoned for life if it were never shown that they were no longer dangerous. (That is, for some people, the burden of proof to recover their freedom would lie on them, not on the society.) It’s only in the fact that we’re focused on the wrong use of penitentiaries that leaves us in this mess.
demimondian
@Objective Scrutator: He’s saying that your effort isn’t worthy of your abilities, and that he’s disappointed in you for producing such a low-quality, uninspiring piece of tedious trollery.
passerby
Scrutator, we don’t know who’s rehabilitatable and who is not.
What percentage of the prison population is serving a limited sentence and will be returned to the streets?
Those who will serve time and be released constitute the target population for rehab. It might work for them or it might not. That’s up to them. But, either way they’ll be back on the street.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
I touched on that in my post. I agree society needs to be protected.
If someone has acted barbarically towards others, I don’t see anything wrong, personally, with giving them a dose of what they dished out. The problem is making sure we employ judges having the fortitude to sentence appropriately. Someone with an ounce of weed in their home should NOT spend time in jail just as someone who murdered another (or several others) with intent should not be walking the street.
Leeds man
Objective Scrutator has a post entitled A Recommended Conservapedia Article praising Pinochet. Satire? Serious? Who cares. Comedy gold, dude!
It’s a three-
asshathorse race now.Vincent
By that logic, I might as well kill you the instant you were born. I mean, you were going to die eventually anyway right?
And if you’re in prison, you get a chance to prove you were innocent whereas if you were executed there probably aren’t that many people willing to see if you really were guilty. I think having a chance to clear the stain on your name and honor is worth something.
Look, I think there are some people who have done things so terrible that they don’t deserve to live. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that the state should have the right to kill them.
You can always let someone who was wrongfully imprisoned out. Yeah, that person could die in jail but at least he has a chance. A guy who was executed had no chance at all. What is so hard to understand about this?
As for the notion that it’s not much better to let a guy out to live a crappy life, the solution is to do a better job of making things up to him or her and improving their lives, not to throw them in the ground and wash our hands of the matter!
demimondian
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: Well, the problem with that is that (except in truly heinous cases) we don’t usually deal with people who’ve imprisoned other people. Punishment for the sake of punishment is cruelty.
Cassidy
While the joyful utopia would be nice, some people just deserve to die. And I’ll happily call it what it is: retribution. And I’m okay with that. Some people do not deserve to walk amongst the decent living.
Objective Scrutator
"Scrutator, we don’t know who’s rehabilitatable and who is not."
The results aren’t good, though. From a Renew America column:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(edit: this is where the bquote should have ended)
[Note: this is from a study done at the University of California by David Farabee]
So, the results say that rehabilitation, in general, does not work. Why should we, as a nation, sacrifice the security of the many for the lives of the few?
"Those who will serve time and be released constitute the target population for rehab. It might work for them or it might not. That’s up to them. But, either way they’ll be back on the street."
That would be very nice, if we can determine who can be cured of their ailments.
Now, I think that all criminal activity is caused by an anti-social streak in a person. Thus, locking them up in a hazardous social setting for ‘rehabilitation’ is hardly worth the effort. The solution is to punish them, and as any experienced mother could tell you, time out doesn’t work unless you want to sacrifice the rest of your output for the deranged subject.
Ergo, we need to put criminals that commit lesser crimes into indentured servitude. Ideally, the government can make a profit off of this, by selling the slave to the private entity or enterprise that pays the highest amount. This, I feel, would be an excellent way to pay off the national debt the Democrats and RINOs have given us.
"Objective Scrutator has a post entitled A Recommended Conservapedia Article praising Pinochet. Satire? Serious? Who cares. Comedy gold, dude!"
Augusto Pinochet worked tirelessly to bring the free market to deprived nations. Even if he had to kill a few Marxist terrorists to do so, the effort is undeniably worth it. Would you rather live in Chile, or Venezuela?
And my answer for you is that the article is serious. I couldn’t do satire at gunpoint.
Cassidy
@ OS
Don’t be a moran. I’m on my phone so I can’t cite, but there are plenty of studies that show that rehabilitation does work, when the repeat offender is caught at the right time.
Objective Scrutator
"Punishment for the sake of punishment is cruelty."
Tell that to any parent in the nation. If people seriously believed that statement, they wouldn’t punish their children at all for beaning the neighborhood five year old in the ear, for example. You can’t ‘rehabilitate’ a bully without violence.
Martin
I always thought it interesting that we would choose to kill people with clearly enumerated rights under the Constitution, but we can’t manage to do the same to corporations, who have no fundamental rights, when they are found to be more harmful to society.
Objective Scrutator
"Don’t be a moran. I’m on my phone so I can’t cite, but there are plenty of studies that show that rehabilitation does work, when the repeat offender is caught at the right time."
Oh. So THIS is how you spoof! Maybe I’ll have to try spoofing a liberal moonbat sometime. Let me give it a try:
I need some practice. Could you help me?
"I always thought it interesting that we would choose to kill people with clearly enumerated rights under the Constitution, but we can’t manage to do the same to corporations, who have no fundamental rights, when they are found to be more harmful to society."
Corporations are people, too. Corporations are also one of the few entities that can benefit society, so the harms they may cause should be ignored. In the meantime, we should allow them to have more personhood than people do, since they can increase our GDP faster.
Martin
Too bad it doesn’t work. If it did, we’d have lower capital crime rates than nations without a death penalty, when in fact the opposite is true. More severe punishment simply isn’t leading to less crime.
Cassidy
@OS
I’m guessing you don’t know me well. That was funny.
Cassidy
While I support the dp, you’re out of your mind if you think it’s about justice.
Cassidy
While I support the dp, you’re out of your mind if you think it’s about justice.
TenguPhule
So should we just have unlimited appeals then based on the hope that they are wrongfully convicted?
Or can we tighten standards to ensure that those who do deserve to die do so?
TenguPhule
You can’t. Those twenty, thirty, forty years are gone. There’s no making up for it. Their lives are ruined.
Again, wrongful convictions are the problem. Blaming the Death Penalty for it is just a sop.
ThymeZone
There really seems to be no limit to the density of your head. I think your head is made up entirely of particles with such a strong gravitational field that entire galaxies might be pulled into it. They were worried about the collider thing in Europe? No, your head is the greatest threat to the universe at this juncture. The people who expect the end time were right all along. It’s you.
But anyway …
The question we started with was whether the death penalty can be supported in view of the fallibility of the system.
The answer is that no, it cannot. If the system is infallible, then the death penalty is not supportable.
If you are attempting to extrapolate that simple exercise into a discussion of whether imprisonment and punishment are supportable in view of a fallible system, all I can say is, your neck is going to get sore from all that staring into your navel. The world is not about to abandon incarceration as a response to crime.
However, it might be persuaded to abandon capital punishment as a response to crime, and for good reason.
As for you, in your case I would make an exception … I think capital punishment is justified in order to take your genetic material out of the gene pool before the incalculable stupidity spreads.
No offense, of course.
ThymeZone
Do you, now?
Objective Scrutator
"Too bad it doesn’t work. If it did, we’d have lower capital crime rates than nations without a death penalty, when in fact the opposite is true. More severe punishment simply isn’t leading to less crime."
We don’t use it enough, and we aren’t implementing it soon enough. That’s why it doesn’t work. If we extend the death penalty to be required for any kind of felon, it would work a lot better.
"I’m guessing you don’t know me well."
Are you good at double-bluffing or something?
"That was funny."
I still need help spoofing, though. The day I can run rings around the Kostards by fooling them is the day the AFL-CIO stops bothering me.
"While I support the dp, you’re out of your mind if you think it’s about justice."
It’s not just about justice, but also my tax dollars and an orderly society.
"Do you, now?"
Yes. And if others did, too, then they would support the death penalty as the first resort.
ThymeZone
Wow. What cream do you apply to your rectum to ease the pain of all that big stuff you are pulling out of your ass? I’d like to buy some, it must be a powerful balm.
TenguPhule
Tautology.
Because a slow death is preferable to an execution?
TZ, when you’re wrong, you’re really wrong.
Objective Scrutator
Yeah, TZ, you’re going to have to stop resorting to ad hominem attacks if anyone’s going to take lunatic Leftist ideas about the death penalty seriously.
TP also has the superb point that it’s much more humane to execute the criminal, and remove the thought from his head ASAP.
ThymeZone
No, I’m not wrong. You show me a person who is willing to be the innocent victim of wrongful prosecution and a death sentence, and then you can say I’m wrong.
Otherwise explain how the death penalty is supportable without that commitment. Go ahead, you colossally stupid fuck, explain it, I double dog dare you.
If you think you aren’t up to making that argument, then find the argument as made by someone else. Bring it forth. It doesn’t have to be your original idea. You can just be a subscriber.
Show me the argument in favor of the death penalty in the face of fallible prosecution, and which accepts the possibility of one’s own wrongful execution.
Take all the time you need to get back to me. I’ve been four years on this blog waiting for that argument, I can wait a while longer.
It’s clear to me that you don’t get this. I don’t really expect you to argue anything. Maybe your allies, the fans of accidental execution, can rally to you here and help you out?
I expect them to show up any minute now.
ThymeZone
I would agree if he himself were the victim. A humane death for him would benefit all mankind, lest the mad cow gene of fall-down stupidity be passed on to others who don’t deserve such a fate.
See, TP can’t pull his face back from the screen far enough to see the picture. He thinks this is all about criminals, while in fact, it is about the rest of us. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I deserve to live in a society that would accidentally kill me by mistake and think nothing of it. TP deserves that, sure, but I don’t.
Do you get my meaning? I know you do.
Cassidy
Life sucks. Get a helmet. Most people don’t get what they think they deserve.
ThymeZone
Oh oh, I think somebody forgot Rule Number One!
(Never post drunk).
Cassidy
Not even +1, baby. Will let you know, though.
Dennis - SGMM
The 7th century BC Greek, Draco, created Athens’ first code of laws. This code mandated the death penalty, even for some minor offenses. When asked why he had fixed the death penalty for so many offenses Draco answered that he felt that even these lesser crimes deserved it and that he could think of nothing worse for the more serious ones.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
I suppose that means you believe that if a three year old has been acting up and is stuck in the corner for 20 minutes, he should just get up and go back to doing whatever he was doing previously with no regard to authority and suffering a bit of punishment to learn a lesson?
Punishment is not just about cruelty, it is designed for teaching a lesson.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Those who support the death penalty always suffer from "other-guy-ism" where the other guy is a completely unrehabilitative monster who must be destroyed, and the id who expounds such drivel is thinking nothing like a mistaken identity could ever happen to an innocent.
ThymeZone
The American tradition of justice that goes out of its way to protect the accused from wrongful prosecution is faithful to Blackstone’s principle.
Blackstone’s assertion, which is the basis for my assertion, is based on the importance of protecting the innocent.
Protection of the innocent must be the foundation of any acceptable justice process. Otherwise, what would be the point of having a justice system?
demimondian
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: I’ve actually parented three of the little monsters, thanks, and, yes, I’ve timed them out when the need arose. (OT: three-year-olds have a fairly short attention span. Making one stand in the corner for three minutes might be worth it; more than that isn’t doing any good.) Effective time out serves as a chance to break up a cycle of misbehavior for a child who can’t be redirected.
The goal, after all, is to teach the kid to redirect himself or herself, and if he or she reaches a point where that’s not possible, to remove himself or herself from the situation and calm down. The goal is not to teach them to feel guilty about being in a situation that makes them unhappy, but rather to teach them to find ways to handle such situations.
ThymeZone
There ya go. A justice system that models the guy whose name is the root of the word "draconian" is the justice system we all want, eh?
ThymeZone
Yes. Force them to blog!
Comrade Stuck
Since 1973, there have been 130 Steven Barnes released from death rows in 26 states. Most because of DNA testing. They were lucky that testable evidence was collected.
The penalty of death for a crime is the perfect punishment, It is final and cannot appealed once carried out. To be justified, it requires equally perfect adjudication, by imperfect humans. Can’t be done. Case Closed.
Cassidy
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: That’s a lot of assumptions to make, considering i’ve only stated my support for the DP. You’ll also notice, that I do believe in rehabilitation. Our criminal justice system should be a multifaceted approach: rehabilitate those who can be and isolate/ exterminate those who cannot.
Incertus
@TenguPhule:
You can’t ever tighten the standards enough to ensure that you won’t make a mistake, and you really can’t tighten the standards enough to make sure that a DA who’s looking to make his or her political future as a law & order hardass won’t fudge a prosecution on some dumb slob who doesn’t have the means to defend him or herself. We don’t live in the best of all possible worlds.
And by the way, fuck you for making me be on the same side of an argument as Thymezone.
ThymeZone
LOL. I feel your pain.
But cereally, enjoy being right for once. Maybe you will get used to it?
Hey, could happen.
:)
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Limited jail sentences are the same thing on a larger scale. They are designed to do the same thing, make the person see that what he did was not acceptable and that if he cooperates with the system and goes through the programs offered to rehab, he too can be accepted back into society.
Life sentences are like leaving that child in the corner forever.
p.s. – your timing of 3 minutes, while your prerogative, is not really much different from mine when you compare it to, say, my ex-husband, who kept my five year old daughter standing facing the wall, holding her buttocks for five hours before he ordered me to go to 4th of July fireworks without her. When I returned 3 hours later, she was still in that corner. I left him soon after that and started custody proceedings. He’s dead now, and if I ever find his grave, I’ll dance on it.
Objective Scrutator
"I suppose that means you believe that if a three year old has been acting up and is stuck in the corner for 20 minutes, he should just get up and go back to doing whatever he was doing previously with no regard to authority and suffering a bit of punishment to learn a lesson?
Punishment is not just about cruelty, it is designed for teaching a lesson."
Thank you for stating in a better way what I was trying to say a few posts ago. A society without punishment would be anarchy, and we all know how mature anarchists are.
At any rate, to those subsequently proven to be innocent, but executed: Life is tough, and isn’t fair. Too bad you couldn’t get used to it.
"Not even +1, baby. Will let you know, though."
I’m going to assume that it’s a good thing I’m not ‘+1’ with a liberal.
"I’ve actually parented three of the little monsters, thanks, and, yes, I’ve timed them out when the need arose. (OT: three-year-olds have a fairly short attention span. Making one stand in the corner for three minutes might be worth it; more than that isn’t doing any good.) Effective time out serves as a chance to break up a cycle of misbehavior for a child who can’t be redirected."
As a Christian Conservative who has parented eight of them, I can tell you that time-out is ineffective unless you can devote all of your energy to monitoring the misbehaving twerp. Generally, a good flick of the Rod is the best way to make them behave. In order to make children realize that they’ve done wrong, you have to scare them. In the same way, about the only way you can scare potential criminals is by a common usage of the death penalty in a society. It is impossible to monitor the improvement of each cellmate with the prison staff we are provided, and I don’t really want to pay for more prison staff. Money doesn’t grow on trees, and a better usage of our tax dollars would be to kill the criminal ASAP, and not bothering with due process or other Leftist blathers. Children can learn; criminals, as the Renew America article I linked to explains, can not.
ThymeZone
Good lord, the man was sociopathic. I’m sorry that happened to you.
ThymeZone
OMFG I just spit my tea all over the monitor.
That is some spoofalicious spoofifyin there, pardner.
Laughing my ass right off.
Objective Scrutator
"Since 1973, there have been 130 Steven Barnes released from death rows in 26 states. Most because of DNA testing. They were lucky that testable evidence was collected."
I’d rather 130 Steve Barnes die than the thousands of people that have been killed by ex-convicts. In fact, even one innocent life saved would be worth 130 Steve Barnes.
"p.s. – your timing of 3 minutes, while your prerogative, is not really much different from mine when you compare it to, say, my ex-husband, who kept my five year old daughter standing facing the wall, holding her buttocks for five hours before he ordered me to go to 4th of July fireworks without her. When I returned 3 hours later, she was still in that corner. I left him soon after that and started custody proceedings. He’s dead now, and if I ever find his grave, I’ll dance on it."
Wow. That’s kind of sick. Did you see it coming?
Dennis - SGMM
I’d support the death penalty on one condition: if an accused is given the death penalty and is subsequently proved to be innocent then the prosecutor of the case will be executed.
ThymeZone
Snap!
I think we just solved the CP problem.
TenguPhule
Then obviously you don’t think hard enough.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
First of all, I wasn’t talking to you, so I don’t know why you call me out specifically to deal with YOUR beliefs. I was quoting TZ.
Second, who the fuck are you to decide what makes a person rehabilitative? Perhaps they are, and the correct methods to get that person to work towards being a better person more useful to society just aren’t being utilized.
You assume too much regarding who is not rehabilitative.
Incertus
@Objective Scrutator:
I notice that you’re real ready to sacrifice Steve Barnes, but not so ready, it seems, to put your own neck on the line. Jesus died for you–are you willing to do the same for some poor slob?
Comrade Stuck
@Dennis – SGMM:
And that would sentence the death penalty to death.
Objective Scrutator
"I notice that you’re real ready to sacrifice Steve Barnes, but not so ready, it seems, to put your own neck on the line. Jesus died for you—are you willing to do the same for some poor slob?"
There’s a reason my family and I avoid hotbeds of criminal activity. If you’re too stupid to go near one, you do not have my sympathy.
"OMFG I just spit my tea all over the monitor.
That is some spoofalicious spoofifyin there, pardner.
Laughing my ass right off."
I will pray that you cast out the demon that made you do this. And I’m not a spoof. I’m a sincere Christian, a sincere Conservative, and a sincere Republican.
Comrade Stuck
In fact, even one innocent life saved would be worth 130 Steve Barnes.
This is how you spoof.
ThymeZone
Think smarter, not harder. That’s my motto.
Hey, I just made that up!
I await your public appeal for the death penalty:
Fellow Americans, join with me in signing this pledge to die quietly, or permit our children and parents and loved ones to die quietly, if wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death. Justice requires this level of commitment. March with me to the courthouses and the state capitols to demand that we keep the death penalty! You know in your hearts it’s the right thing to do!
Go for it, TP. I can’t wait to hear you on talk radio!
I can tell my friends, I knew him when he was just a crazy fucker on a blog.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
While I believe in imprisonment where necessary, I don’t support the death penalty and I don’t want my post associated with such. Humans are fallible creatures, and placing the life of a possibly innocent man in the hands of a jury who may contain people who have no qualms about ignoring the trial and not listening to evidence and probably spend half of the time in the courtroom daydreaming about their own lives isn’t my idea of a reliable system.
TenguPhule
Off with the Strawman head! Whack Whack Whack!
We get three appeals. We get commuted sentences. We get pardons.
I see no difference between "die in prison" and "stick a needle in them". Either way they’ve been written off.
Does an innocent who dies after 40 years of confinement suffer any less then the one who was executed after 12 years of appeals?
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Criminal activity doesn’t just happen in hotbeds of such, sometimes it happens right under your nose.
TenguPhule
Life without parole. Never getting out. Never getting rehabilitated. Cut off from the rest of society, forever.
Sometimes I wonder who really are the cruel ones here.
Dennis - SGMM
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII:
I’m all for rehabilitation, it makes much for sense to turn people into reasonably productive citizens rather than warehousing them on the public’s dime. That said, whatever is being done by way of rehabilitation in the US prison system is largely not working. The recidivism rate stands at 67%. This despite numbers of bright people putting their best thinking into rehabilitating the incarcerated.
Among all of the other looming crises, the fact that historically crime goes up when the economy goes down is going to put a huge amount of pressure on the prisons. The notion of rehabilitation will finally go out the window because of the necessary focus on just keeping the inmates from killing each other. My state, California, has already packed its prisons beyond their designed capacity. An influx of new inmates will result in more killings, more riots and far more court-mandated early releases. The system that already creates more accomplished, more vicious, criminals will create more still.
Cassidy
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: You made a general statement regarding those who support the DP. It is a logical assumption that you were specifically speaking to those involved in this debate; unless you were attempting to make a snide, backhanded insult, but I prefer to assume you were not.
I personally, have no intention of deciding who is rehabilitative. That’s not my job, as it is not my job to decide who is incarcerated for life/ executed. I do support rehabilitative attempts based on studies that show that young, repeat offenders are still open to rehabilitative processes, so that they do not graduate to adult, violent career criminals. But, realistically, we have to accept that a violent career criminal is at some point unable to be rehabilitated into an upstanding citizen. Sadly, even those few with the will to change are faced with nigh insurmountable odds, in a society that is unwilling to trust them, to have a legitimate shot at becoming a good citizen.
The infallible humans argument is a bogus set of logic. By that judgement, we should just let the robots take over. Humans are infallible so they can’t make laws. Humans are infallible so they can’t be medical providers. Humans are infallible so they can’t be NFL refs. etc., etc., etc.
TenguPhule
I’d support that.
Objective Scrutator
"While I believe in imprisonment where necessary, I don’t support the death penalty and I don’t want my post associated with such. Humans are fallible creatures, and placing the life of a possibly innocent man in the hands of a jury who may contain people who have no qualms about ignoring the trial and not listening to evidence and probably spend half of the time in the courtroom daydreaming about their own lives isn’t my idea of a reliable system."
I didn’t mean to associate you w/ the death penalty, but my sincere apologies go out to you if you felt you were. At any rate, I think that making every felon punishable by the death penalty would be the best solution in dealing with fallible Man, as well as requiring that each member of the jury submit to Jesus Christ in the courtroom. Our trials are also too long, and invoke too much due process for our nation’s own good, which is why we need to shorten them, or only allow society’s wealthy to have them.
ThymeZone
The word Whoosh does not begin to describe the large idea that has sailed far, far over your pointy head.
That noise you heard? Not a B1 bomber. Not a tornado. Not the gas escaping from the vast chamber that would normally house your brain but instead lies empty, dark, cold, windblown. It was the point of the thread, sailing so far over your head that even with the most powerful optical instruments known to man, you would not be able to see it on a bright, sunlit day.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Do we? Appeals are doled out by those who have biases that may hold sway against an innocent man.
Think of the right-wingers stating they need "non-activist judges" to get their anti-abortion legislation passed. All judges hold biases of one thing or another.
Corruption also has a tendency to be found in high places.
TenguPhule
Fine, you have a choice between death and life without parole in a maximum security prison even though you know you are innocent. You know that odds are very high that by the time your innocence is proven you will have died either way.
Pick one.
ThymeZone
What? What?
The germ of an agreement?
Bring me the smelling salts, my vasovagal reaction is kicking in ……….
TenguPhule
Er, I believe you are referring to pardons and commuted sentences.
Appeals are part of the system.
TenguPhule
Er, I believe you are referring to pardons and commuted sentences.
Appeals are part of the system.
Objective Scrutator
"Fine, you have a choice between death and life without parole in a maximum security prison even though you know you are innocent. You know that odds are very high that by the time your innocence is proven you will have died either way.
Pick one."
While I think you and I are mostly on the same ground, TP, we need to make it completely clear that the criminal has no choice in the matter. By the orders of Jesus, that criminal, if /s/he be a felon, must be executed. The criminal shall not be a burden on MY tax dollars by rotting in jail, and they shall not have that option.
" I’d support the death penalty on one condition: if an accused is given the death penalty and is subsequently proved to be innocent then the prosecutor of the case will be executed."
I agree, too! The death penalty’s reputation shall surely be restored, if we do this!
ThymeZone
Are you in the prison?
Then give me the needle.
TenguPhule
I can be quite agreeble when people are not acting like assholes.
Granted, I often am an asshole on this blog too.
Comrade Stuck
@Cassidy:
When NFL refs face the death penalty for blown calls, then you can use this analogy. You were just kidding , right?
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Ha! That shows how much you don’t know. I would never submit to Jesus Christ, innocent or not, on pain of death.
Which Jesus Christ would that be, anyway? There are actually two, but I’m sure you don’t realize that. You rely on the lies the world teaches as truth.
TenguPhule
I look forward to your new support of the death penalty.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
You’ve never heard of an appeal being denied?
Cassidy
@Comrade Stuck: Depends on who’s playing.
ThymeZone
Hey, that’s my job you are talking about.
ThymeZone
Okay, I guess I should have stipulated that there are some things that really require the death penalty …………..
Leave it to you to point a finger at one.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
TZ, I’m opening the cheesecake now. ;)
(one bite taken, OMG, you’re right, that IS good!)
Comrade Stuck
@ThymeZone:
Best of the Best.
ThymeZone
‘Kew.
Yum, for me that stuff is mouth heroin.
Incertus
@TenguPhule:
I’ll take life every time. It’s not even close.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Yeah, one cannot stress hard enough how important it is that bad decisions involving a ball and a bunch of men can justify the desire to see someone punished. hehe!
TenguPhule
Yes, when there isn’t enough evidence or a credible argument to support the case presented by the defense.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
One thing I do have to say for you, you DO have good taste.
TenguPhule
Times are tough, your hours are being cut.
ThymeZone
DAMN YOU COLE!
TenguPhule
And there we disagree.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
But the person could be innocent, and since there isn’t enough evidence to seek an appeal, the appeal is denied. How does an innocent man without enough credible evidence get off the hook?
Comrade Stuck
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII:
Hey now. It’s football your talking about. No greater human enterprise.
TenguPhule
And therein lies the dilemma of our entire justice system.
ThymeZone
I’m the Charlie Tuna of the blog world.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
I would take life every time too.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
TZ I think that fire is getting worse, I hear more sirens.
TenguPhule
Heh, just wait until you see the green elf costume he’s haveing you to wear for Christmas to fundraise.
Incertus
@TenguPhule: The difference is that if you’re in that situation, you can always off yourself. I’d rather leave my options open.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Better than sex? Not according to that "See Alice" commercial.
ThymeZone
Another potential agreement. This is getting just a lit-tle too cozy for me ………….
Comrade Stuck
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII:
Nope. I stand corrected.
ThymeZone
That bastard! I am not wearing that hat with the bells on it.
ThymeZone
Last shots I saw on tv looked like that whole building was a giant torch.
Also I just looked out that way and saw lightning. Some storms in the area.
TenguPhule
I freely admit some personal prejudice here. I’d be offing anyone within reach in the first hour in that situation. I simply can’t handle a confined space against my will for any length of time. It drives me to sanity.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Ha!
;)
TenguPhule
One of us. One of us. One of us.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
They said it was a two alarm earlier, must be more now?
TenguPhule
Sex.
Food.
Sleep.
Internet.
Reading.
Not in any particular order.
ThymeZone
Yeah, I have that same thing. It’s called my place of employment.
TenguPhule
But the difference is that you choose to be there. Even if you must be dragged kicking and screaming into it.
ThymeZone
It looked bigger than that to me on the tv. Of course the tv shots don’t always paint a true picture.
TenguPhule
The cameras add 15 pounds to everything.
ThymeZone
That’s on the good days.
ThymeZone
So, Barbara Bush doesn’t really look like her head is way too big for her body?
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Not everyone works underground. Of course you find it confining.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Fifteen percent more smoke and flames than actually exist?
TenguPhule
In that case, the cameras are simply redundant.
ThymeZone
I feel like a vole.
Of course, where can you get good vole this time of night?
/ba-da-bing
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Personally, I think television has a strange anomaly called "Barbara Bush Syndrome" where the tv cameras actually shrink the subject by 15 lbs.
ThymeZone
I think the only thing more disturbing than the way she looks on tv is the way she talks and acts. That woman is just weird.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
At least you didn’t say "try the vole". ;)
Mako
By hanging! Japan also has a 90% conviction rate almost always based on confession and, no jury system.
ThymeZone
Ok all, good convo, some good laughs, good thread.
Gotta go. Tomorrow is another day for good old verbal abuse!
Have a pleasant night.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Well, since you obviously don’t know the different between fallible and infallible, you obviously shouldn’t be the one to make those judgments.
What I’m saying is that there is no way to trust humans to know when a man should be put to death. Incarcerate them, yes… kill them, NEVER!
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Perhaps that recidivism rate has to do with the chance to make an honest buck. Most of those who end up in prison know that when they get out, they can probably look forward to a job that pays shit, has few benefits, if any, and leaves them poor. That is no different than what many who don’t end up in prison face as well.
If they were allowed to earn a living wage and health care, I personally think they would commit less crimes. Many of those who are in prison are just reactionaries of the social disease called poverty.
Michael D.
@Objective Scrutator:
Because of the appeals process, it is much more expensive to sentence someone to death than it is to keep that person in prison.
Next argument, please.
bedlam UK
You could get rid of the appeals process. That would save some cash?
Anyway, The Death Penalty is morally wrong as it is flawed.
but to take the morals out of it and be used practically you could see it like a heartless bastard:
You have 2 choices,
99 evil bastards and 1 innocent on Death Row. Kill them, save some money for the civilised folk on feeding and housing.
Or the taxpayers pay for those 100 in prison,
then finally the 1 innocent gets released
– and the taxpayer gives him $50,000
then the 99 evil bastards get released at the end of their term.
50 of them are reformed; get a job and become all lovely
20 of them are unemployed bums still leeching off of the taxpayer
19 of them go back to raping / killing / pillaging innocent men, women and dear old grandma.
So thats 19 times however many innocents killed, and a whole lotta cash to save that 1 original innocent guy.
Times that by a million and thats alot of innocents and money spent to save the few innocently incarcerated.
Maths has no morals.
Just a thought for far too early in the morning.
Cerberus
Actually OS already tipped his hat about the true intention and force against any form of genuine criminal rehabilitation program, ending of the death penalty, or even sensible sentencing so that rape and murder wasn’t considered more minor than drug charges. His mentioning of not living in the "criminal neighborhoods" thus not needing to fear the law. How could he be so sure of this. Suburbia and other "nice areas" are often filled with drug deals, wife-beatings, child-beatings, rapes, and any number of white-collar criminals. But he is so sure that his neighborhood is criminal-free. Why?
Brown people. He lives away from brown people and when he imagines criminals, violent criminals deserving of death, he is not imagining Ted Bundy, he’s imagining brown people. A vast majority of people in jail are brown people and they make up a disproportionate number of those on death row. The Death Penalty is supported, harsh sentencing laws are supported, because it is the last refuge of lynching. The death penalty in Southern states with broken systems allows citizens a way to lynch blacks with plausible deniability. Overcrowding due to selective enforcement against brown people allows them to reinforce narratives that brown people are more criminal and thus undeserving of aid or basic rights while allowing an "overcrowding" excuse to release guilty white men for paltry crimes against women. It’s not one to one, but it sure seems that many of the cases of man released early, killed again, were ones who committed violent crimes against women. They have also been predominately white, especially when compared to the prison population as a whole.
The South and people like OS still bristle that slavery ended, that these subhuman non-whites can wander around and be people. They cling to the death penalty because it lets them retain all of their lynching desires, all of their racist views, with the rhetorical out of saying that they are "removing criminals", "punishing them before God". I can say this with conviction, because there never seems to be the same push among these white conservatives when a white man is sentenced for bombing black churches, committing lynches, bombing abortion clinics, and other acceptable terrorist attacks. In fact, these same people seem to always be aiding these people and helping them escape any form of justice for their actions.
Let’s let the bullshit end. And to the other two dimwits, yes, of course we need massive prison reform and Sweden has proven that it can work counterintuitively with rehabilitation and psychological counseling in an open air environment. The point to start is not by conceding ground to white conservatives who want injustice to reinforce the racial hierarchy. You start by moving towards progress and justice bit by bit, victory by victory.
Or are you secretly gleeful that those scary wild brown men are kept from your white female property so that you don’t have to be afraid of them?
Cassidy
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: Call it an ADD typo. I was kind enough to give you the benefit of a doubt.
You like emotionalism. I like logic. Oh well.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Excuse me? WTF? Because humans are fallible you think that gives us carte blanche to just go ahead and put innocents to death? Fuck you.
You wrote:
No, it’s not bogus, it’s only bogus to you. Many people here are arguing about the fallibility of humans, or else we wouldn’t have innocents dying on death row.
By the way, I like both emotionalism AND logic. I’m a complicated woman, ask TZ. I’m like no one you’ve ever met before. Take your gender stereotype and shove it up your ass sideways.
Cassidy
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: I’ve made no assumptions about your gender. You’ve told me you’re a woman, but for all I know you’re not. That has nothing to do with it. Stop projecting.
You mistook it for an insult. Most of your stances, that I’ve seen here, are based on some sort of emotionalistic foundation, as mine are not. No better, no worse, just not worth arguing over. On some issues, I do get very emotional, but not many.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Cassidy, you know I’m a woman, and you take what I write to be emotional, yet many times it’s not, it’s female intuition mixed in with logic.
What part of my argument that if Obama ceases to fight the war on terror would end up making the Islamic Jihadis moot is emotional, huh? It’s fucking logical. Get over yourself.
By the way, most of what I write on this blog regards my studies in religion, which again aren’t emotional, they are about the things I’ve learned, the logic of a message which is turned up on it’s head which I’ve studied and picked up, a logic that most people don’t understand.
And what exactly is it you’d wish I stop projecting? I know you’re not female. I know you’re not anything like me. I’m certainly not projecting. Perhaps you should take a look in the mirror.
ThymeZone
"Fascinating" is the word I would use, but, yes.
Good morning Circus, just woke up.
Need coffee. You guys are still at it?
demimondian
The fact that it’s not consistent with the facts on the ground might be a start.
The various medievalist factions aren’t interested in the United States, except as a convenient demon which embodies a successful secular society. If we ignored them, they’d go back to doing what they did before they found us — which was hardly moot. Whether you talk about the Klan here, or the 1979 occupation of the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia, organized medievalist terror groups were sowing local terror for years before the attacks on the World Trade Center, and would revert to doing so if we left them alone.
demimondian
@ThymeZone: Happy Tofurkey day, TZ, and of course they are.
ThymeZone
Gobble gobble to you too, demi.
Please see my post to the Happy Thanksgiving thread. I’d like everyone to get on board with my new way to enjoy this day.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
well excuse me demi, but I meant moot to the US. Do you always have to be so anal retentive? Do you think you could have asked me in which way I meant moot rather than just having to come along and tear into what I was saying? I wasn’t talking about rendering them completely peaceful, we know that won’t happen. I was talking about rendering them completely moot to the purpose of trying to trap the US into a war that means to tear our entire country and economy down. And now, facts on the ground do not suggest that if Obama were to ignore the attempts to trap him into such a war that they would gain anything.
The one huge mistake Bush made was to take the war of 9/11 and project it onto Iraq. He played right into al Qaeda’s hand. If he had not done so, this country would probably still be financially sound, at least for a while.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Good morning to you too! What time is this thing today?
Do I have time for a shower? Do I have to take it right now? Give me a while please?
Talk soon. :)
ThymeZone
I think the current phony WOT must be scrapped, it is a fraud.
I am in favor of a new Strategy for Worldwide Terror Reduction which is grounded in an integrated plan to employ foreign policy, economic and trade policy, defense policy and smart anti-terror measures aimed at reducing the threats and protecting populations and infrastructure from attack.
I’ll be very interested in how the new defense and foreign policy teams approach this problem. Hopefully the idea of preemptive wars as a deterrent is now behind us.
ThymeZone
I’m thinking shortly after noonish.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
k, thanks!
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Yes, it is phony, and it’s only designed to take our country down the tubes, and Bush foolishly went there and almost succeeded (perhaps he has and we just haven’t figured it out yet).
demimondian
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: Two things. First, as to anal retentivity — you wrote something. If you meant something other than what you wrote, then you needed to have been clearer; it’s hardly my fault if what you wrote wasn’t what you meant, now, is it?
As to "moot to the US", I doubt that. TZ’s position (God help me) is actually very close to mine — but "defense policy" does mean "fighting a war when it makes sense." Iraq doesn’t make any sense, and never did. Afghanistan, however, does make sense, and will continue to do so.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
I never said Afghanistan didn’t make any sense, I agree with TZ. Why do you assume that I mean things I don’t? Because you twist my words to your own meanings. You read things into them that aren’t there.
When I spoke of Islamic Jihadists being moot, I was speaking "from my point of view" which means from where I sit, which is in the US. I speak from my own view quite often, the GWOT doesn’t involve anyone but the Jihadists, the US and those countries stupid enough to send some soldiers into a war that makes no sense because they feel they need to kiss American ass to keep us sharing our good fortune (which we’ve gone through).
I’m sorry if you don’t like the fact that I don’t speak from other’s points of view, would you like me to hound you from now on when you don’t do this as well? I can, if you wish.
demimondian
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: Well, Rome, if you choose to play Humpty Dumpty, that’s your choice. I don’t have to play along, though, and I won’t. If you don’t like that, tough.
As to "your point of view": one phrase. 1993 World Trade Center Bombing.
Cassidy
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: Just like a woman…just trying to pick a fight. Stop giving me softballs. :)
Seriously. 1) I don’t know that you’re a woman. You have stated as much, and I have no reason to disbelieve you, but without visual confirmation, then it isn’t something I can know to be true.
2) I’m not insulting the basis for your positions. As I stated earlier, it’s no more right or wrong than mine, but is also useless to debate with someone who is playing by different rules. From what I’ve seen, you have an ethical, emotional basis for what is right or wrong. I happen to think right and wrong is a more fluid concept and not set in stone.
In the end, we want the same thing, we just disagree on how to get there.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Ummm, it happened on U.S. soil, I was on U.S. soil at the same time. We didn’t go crazy as a nation because some terrorists decided to bomb a building. I think we did the right thing, personally. What is this argument about my point of view? I’m sorry, I don’t follow.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Yes you are, you’re stating that the fallibility of humans is not a valid point, and yet without the fallibility of humans, innocent people wouldn’t end up in jail or on death row.
demimondian
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: Would you say that Islamist terror was moot to the United States on that day? In this case, you are simply wrong, and you should accept that and move on.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Well since I do wax emotional sometimes (and I admit I do sometimes), it’s a good thing I’m not male, correct? Otherwise, I’d be pretty pathetic. It’s appropriate that I’m 100% woman. :)
btw, I’m not being sexist when I talk about my own gender, I’m not stereotyping, I’m speaking truth from the mouth of the one that knows, so don’t start talking about some stupid double standard.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Well, they managed to kill some people, ruin a few vehicles and create construction work for some people for a while, but if their attempt was to push us into a war, they failed miserably on that try – which we’ve learned since 9/11 is what keeps their hydra alive, so, yes, they were moot.
Cassidy
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: Arguing that human fallibility is not a valid point is not attacking the basis of your position. It’s debating the conclusion of your opinion. To me humans are fallible and always will be, so the answer is not to eliminate human fallbility (impossible) but to consider it as part of the equation. How you arrived at said conclusion comes from an emotional/ ethical stance on right and wrong. I don’t mean emotional as hormonal.
Once again, you keep bringing gender into this. I would say that most of the more liberal commenters here are coming from an emotional standpoint. Gender is not even part of the equation. I don’t find it pathetic at all. I do think it is slightly narrow minded and produces a sort of purity tunnel vision, but as stated, I’m not interested in attacking the foundation. The foundation for said beliefs (mine and yours) come from experience, life, etc. and neither of us have a legitimate critique.
Being emotional is neither pathetic or wrong. I personally, have found that it colors my ability to look at a topic objectively. As you can easily find, topics that do make me emotional narrow me to a couple of responses.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Cassidy, you are stating that one single person being innocent doesn’t matter and execution of that person is acceptable and it shouldn’t matter that humans are fallible and choose wrongly at times. That is not acceptable from a moral point of view, not an emotional one.
If you would like to volunteer to be an innocent man put to death, and offer up your loved ones as additional innocents to be put to death, I may rethink the matter. Something tells me it wouldn’t be okay if you or your loved ones are the ones subject to die for crimes you didn’t commit.
Cassidy
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII:
Don’t parrot TZ’s talking points. His psuedo-intellectual self-righteousness is ridiculous enough as it is.
I’m willing to bet I’ve been in positions to die for my beliefs more times than the both of you combined, so don’t try that crap. There are no moral absolutes.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
In other words, you mean to say: "it’s okay with me if innocent people are put to death for crimes they didn’t commit."
You should be ashamed for taking this stance.
There is ONE moral absolute, an innocent man shouldn’t be put to death for a crime he didn’t commit. That is the ONLY moral absolute.
Cassidy
Secondly, I never said that human fallibility is an issue. It is their regardless of what we do. You don’t cut off the leg to fight an infection on the toe. Instead keeping human error in mind, we do our best to set multiple protocols that will detect errors. You set the proper controls and something will catch.
Cassidy
No it’s not not okay. But I accept that human error exists and even the most well intentioned law enforcement personnel will make mistakes. People die for all kinds of reasons, most of them seemingly unfair to those around them.
All this talk of innocence begs the question, how many people do we know for a fact were innocent and put to death before they could be exonerted?
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Well, either we don’t have the proper controls (and if we don’t, I wonder if you’d like to suggest a better way?) or they haven’t caught the problem, because innocent people HAVE been killed.
Yes, I know you never said human fallibility was an issue, it’s where this whole argument began, because it IS an issue.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Bullshit, either you don’t accept that it’s okay or you do accept that humans being executed for crimes they didn’t commit is okay.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Cassidy, I’m not going to do the work for you, you asked the question, but, I can help you:
Google results for your question
Are you trying to state there has never been an innocent man executed for a crime he didn’t commit? Or are you going to try to negotiate how many are acceptable?
Cassidy
It isn’t my work to ask you to point me to factual basis of your argument. For all I know your position is being conducted in a vacuum. Your trying to convince me, remember. I’m sure it has happenned, but what is the context? 5 out of 5000? 1 in 10?
No system is ever perfect. Personally, I do have a few ideas on controls, but I’m not a lawmaker.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
You asked the question, I didn’t.
I knew you were going to try to negotiate.
Even ONE is too many.
Cassidy
Trying to understand context is not negotiating. You’ll notice I didn’t set an "acceptable" percentage. I’m just curious if this is an abberration or rampant throughout our penal program.
Sorry for asking for facts to support your position. I know better for next time.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Previous to DNA it was more common, but, even with DNA it still happens.
It happens because of false witnesses, over-reactive prosecutors, coerced confessions and sometimes even via higher courts that have the evidence and still can’t come to a consensus that would overturn a conviction of people who were quite possibly innocent.
How many times it happens doesn’t matter, it happens. That’s what should bother you, but sadly, it doesn’t.
Humans were fallible, and sometimes even complicit in allowing an innocent man to die.
ThymeZone
We don’t know. But it’s not reasonable to assume that the answer is zero. Based on incorrect prosecutions in general that we do learn about, the answer is not likely to be a trivial number.
But there are multiple problems with CP. One is that its use is capricious. There is no uniform standard for what constitutes a proper use and what does not. Factors of rank emotionalism and prejudice are surely involved.
All of this said, the central problem with the use of CP in an imperfect system is that there are no sane and reasonable people who will volunteer to be executed for crimes they did not commit, in order to support the use of CP. In other words, people seem fine with the idea of you getting killed accidentally, but don’t seem too eager to stand up and want to accept that fate for themselves. That takes any pretense of a moral basis for the thing away. What right do you have to shrug at my being victimized unless you gladly accept the same fate for yourself?
None. Case closed. If you think I am wrong, I suggest that you go forth and publicly appeal for public support of wrongful execution to be demonstrated by asking proponents to pledge to die quietly without complaint when their time comes. See how long it takes society to round you up and put you in the loony bin.
Cassidy
Gotta love the old (and by now it is ) Tz standby. Like I said, I have risked me life for my beliefs. What have you done?
@Circus
For me, the DP is not a moral issue. I don’t believe it is immoral to kill someone if the circumstances warrant it. I do believe any process can be made better, though. And I think an overhaul of the system is warranted. But, as I said earlier, you don’t need to amputate the whole limb.
I don’t think the death of one innocent is okay, but one death does not convince me it should be scrapped entirely.
Cassidy
FYI, I have every right to shrug at misfortune. Shit, I’m shrugging right now.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
How do the circumstances warrant it if the supposed perpetrator is actually innocent?
Well, that’s your problem, it’s become apparent now. I see no reason to argue further with someone who doesn’t find any immorality in the Death Penalty being used inappropriately.
We’re done. I’m glad I don’t know you personally, I wouldn’t like you.
ThymeZone
Sorry, you dont get this. You are asking me to risk my life for your beliefs.
Sorry, no sale. I seriously doubt that you will get most people to agree to be killed by the government in order to support a flawed system. Even if, like you, they lie and say they will, they really won’t.
ThymeZone
At your own. Not at others’.
ThymeZone
Duh. That’s clear, that’s why you can’t discuss it on that level.
You can throw your own life away if you like, but CP throws other peoples’ lives away. Clearly you either don’t get that or don’t care. But at the end of the day, I just think you’re a liar. You are not going to lie down on the lethal injection table for somebody else’s crime and just shrug it off. Unless you are just mentally ill. Which is a distinct possibility, based on what you are saying here.
Ed Marshall
What good about the death penalty anyway? The people who seem to be guilty seem to like the thing. It doesn’t seem to be a deterrent at all, it’s something of a status symbol.
The people who were innocent went down as martyrs, and the people proclaiming their guilt took the same sort of attitude.
I don’t even understand why the innocent went down like that. If you put me in that situation I’d force the guards to light me up in a cell. I’d kill whoever was trying to kill me and make them kill me in a straight-up if imbalanced fight. I’ll never understand why anyone walks over to the death chamber and submits like that.
Cassidy
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: You really need to stop reading into things (as you lamented to Demi in regards to your words).
As I tried to say earlier, it isn’t even worth arguing.
Seriously TZ, tell us. What have you done to put your life on the line for your beliefs? I want to hear the story. I want to know the source of the smug, psuedo-intellectual bullshit you put out. C’mon, regale us with your courage of convictions.
Cassidy
Strawman bullshit. Move on to the next exercise.
Xoebe
My Dad had an interesting idea. For every person released from prison or exonerated on technical grounds, their lawyer should register as a "vouchsafe"; should the released person commit another crime (and be convicted), the vouchsafe lawyer should accompany the criminal to jail, or whatever punishment was duly awarded.
So, conversely:
For every person convicted of a capital offense, we should take one death penalty supporter, randomly selected from a pool of registered death penalty supporters, and execute them together.
Once upper class, white, suburban mommies start dying, only then will it matter.
The sad thing is, the death penalty people will still agree that this is a good thing. It isn’t about right or wrong. It’s about "justice". By which they mean killing others (regardless). They will gleefully cheer as "criminals" die, and will hold prayer vigils for the innocents who go along with them.
In full disclosure, I should note, I "support" the death penalty. It is my belief that there are crimes so heinous that death is an appropriate punishment. However, I also strongly believe in the "reasonable doubt" clause, and in the case of capital punishment, there should be no doubt of any kind. Unfortunately, juries of 12 do not understand the distinction.
You are correct to want to get rid of the death penalty.
P.S. Yes, you who have observed the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime, are entirely correct. Nobody commits a crime thinking they will be caught, much less of what the punishment will be.
I always think of Paul Davis turning to the cameras and giving everybody the finger as they read his death sentence.
Unfortunately, innocent people will die because of the mass emotional reaction to this. Which is exactly the kind of thing that makes Mr. Davis happy.
How ironic.
Objective Scrutator
Phoebe
Hi, I’m making a documentary on the topic of how innocent people get convicted [not necessarily in death penalty cases], which will be focused on prosecutorial, um, culture.
I am in the research phase, and would like anyone with any experience or story or whatever to email me please, @ [email protected]
Thanks a lot.
ThymeZone
You must think everyone is as stupid as you are. As I have explained, shrugging at someone else’s death is not having the courage of your immoral and wrongheaded convictions. It’s asking someone else to have the courage of your convictions.
If you are actually willing to die in order to support wrongful capital punishment, then you are quite literally crazy.
There’s nothing more to say to you. You don’t get this. Among other things you have proven you don’t get, over the years.
You are a complete fucking idiot, man. Give up the charade.
Cassidy
Shorter TZ: I’m a pansy and a phony who likes to issue challenges, but can’t live up to them myself. Instead, I stroke my own self-inflated ego with psuedo-intellectual bullshit to compensate for my lack of anything regarding courage.