Some good news from New Mexico:
Gov. Bill Richardson, who has supported capital punishment, signed legislation to repeal New Mexico’s death penalty, calling it the “most difficult decision in my political life.”
The new law replaces lethal injection with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. The repeal takes effect on July 1, and applies only to crimes committed after that date.
“Regardless of my personal opinion about the death penalty, I do not have confidence in the criminal justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes to who lives and who dies for their crime,” Richardson said.
Europe’s human rights watchdog on Thursday hailed the decision as “a victory for civilization.” The American Civil Liberties Union called it “a historic step and a clear sign that the United States continues to make significant progress toward eradicating capital punishment once and for all.”
But the New Mexico Sheriffs’ and Police Association opposed repeal, saying capital punishment deters violence against police officers, jailers and prison guards. District attorneys also opposed the legislation, arguing that the death penalty was a useful prosecutorial tool.
One of the things I have never understood is the seeming breakdown on opposition to and support for the death penalty. I have never figured out why conservatives, the people who flip out about zoning boards and if their taxes are raised 3% and who shout limited government until they are blue in the face have absolutely zero problem with the government taking that which is most precious- someone’s life. All this posturing about the “ability to tax is the ability to destroy” just seems silly when you turn a blind eye to the government executing people.
And I’m not saying that I don’t have strong opinions about what should be done to certain people. There was a picture of Charles Manson released the other day, and it makes me sick that that murderous cretin has spent the last four decades living relatively comfortably (although I still think existence in modern prisons is hell). I understand the desire for a death penalty, but I just can’t support it when we know that there are prosecutors who act in bad faith, we know there are police who perjure themselves, we know there are witnesses who make mistakes, we know that confessions are coerced, we know that there are two systems of justice in place for the rich and the poor, and we know that dozens of people on death row have been released after it has been determined they were innocent. With all that information, I simply don’t understand how anyone could support the death penalty.
Davis X. Machina
There are constituencies for each of those failings for whom they are not failings, but features. My ‘prosecutors acting in bad faith’ are other people’s heroes fighting fire with fire, salus populi suprema lex, ‘take the gloves, off, etc. Having two systems of justice, one for the rich, and one for the poor, is a boon, not a bane, if you’re one of the rich. Even the knowing execution of the innocent has its fans, who consider Schrecklichkeit an important tool of social control.
Principled opposition to the death penalty is always going to rely on minority traits in man — empathy, a sense of justice, etc. The salient fact in politics-with-a-capital-P, and if you forget it, it will immediately turn on you and bite you in the ass, is that people, most people, people-in-the-aggregate, are shits.
Carnacki
I can understand why someone at a base emotional level would want to kill someone who harmed or wanted to harm a family member. I’ve been there. But my view is I’ve always wanted my government to be better than me. The government should temper the rashness and emotionalism of human nature with reasoning. Government should be made of the better nature of human beings instead of playing to our baser instincts. We’ve seen how government responds when it is allowed unfettered by rationality. Tommy Friedman’s "Suck On This" was a good example of any how so many justified the invasion of a country that had not attacked us on Sept. 11.
Some Christians like to say how we’re a "Christian nation." Yet they ignore how we treat the least among us, including prisoners on death row.
Incertus
I’ve moved a lot on this issue over the years to where now I’m pretty firm on the "no death penalty ever" bandwagon now. It’s just a matter of realizing that no system can ever be perfect, and with a person’s life at stake, the system has to be. Given that, life in prison without parole works for me.
Plus, didn’t the ancient Greeks work out that whole revenge =/= justice thing back with the Oresteia?
Comrade Dread
I agree with him.
Yes, there are a lot of horrific crimes where death might be merited. But after everything I’ve read about how our legal system works, I have zero confidence in it to determine guilt or innocence with enough confidence that I would trust them to take someone’s life.
smijer
Don’t forget police departments that tamper with evidence.
You’re dead right. PTP.
joe from Lowell
To conservatives, taxes are something that happens to people like them, while the death penalty is something that happens to other people. In fact, it happens disproportionately to certain, particular groups of other people that they never much liked anyway.
Rick Taylor
Conservatives are just crazy, they take wrong positions on everything. I don’t understand it, but that’s been my experience. I used to respect them on fiscal responsibility, until that became tax cuts over everything else.
Of course a conservative would attack me for inconsistency for caring about the life of someone on death row, when I want to legalize the abortion of a fetus who’s never hurt anyone.
The Grand Panjandrum
I think I’m in the same camp as you John. Yes, I think some people should be executed. Unfortunately, the system is tilted against those who cannot afford top notch legal counsel. The government has many more resources when it comes to prosecuting an individual than most people could ever muster in their own defense. I would hate to be caught up in the legal system and had to rely on a public defender. No offense to the hard working folks in the public defenders office but I think I would would hire myself a very high priced attorney if I was ever in trouble.
You only get the justice you can afford in America.
itsbenj
depends on one’s real priorities. a person can talk about ‘the sanctity of life’ all they want, and some people actually mean that. but most just use it as another way of puffing their chests out and being a loud-mouthed tough guy. so, naturally, support for the government-sanctioned extermination of life just falls right into line with that mentality.
there are people who really care about life, and then there are the people who just want to force women to carry children to term, only to refuse them aid, proper schooling, pre & post natal care, etc. there is an argument that certain people can be found to be beyond rehabilitation, and that legal appeals for these people are an exercise in futility. and then there are the people who just assume that if you’re on death row you’re automatically guilty and deserve to die ‘just because’.
Comrade Stuck
Good news indeed. I am very proud of my state for making this change.
Emma Anne
I am mostly against the death penalty, and yet I was pleased when I didn’t have breath the same air as Timothy McVeigh anymore. My kids were in daycare when he blew up that building including those kids. And he was taunting the victim’s families from prison too.
But I think I should go with Carnacki’s view – the government ought to be better than I am. Especially the states – as far as I can tell Texas barely cares if they have the right guy so long as they get to execute someone.
cyntax
Yeah, I’m sure it is. But that doesn’t mean that our government should be threatening someone’s life. The problem with the death penalty is, as others have noted above, that our government should lead by example and state institutionalized revenge isn’t a good example.
Garrigus Carraig
"If you get lethally injected, can I have your stuff?"
Seriously, I wonder if some of it is sublimation. Some of us would like to kill a scumbag, but we can’t, so we enjoy having the state do it for us.
I’m 100% against the death penalty, but my gut feeling is, & always will be, that Josef Fritzl, for example, should die.
cleek
totally agree with Richardson.
MUNNY:
It’s a hell of a thing , killing a man. You take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.
KID:
Yeah. Well, I guess they had it coming.
MUNNY:
We all have it coming, kid.
Rick Taylor
And to state my own opinions, philosophically I agree with Socrates. Doing an evil to another human being no matter how vile is always in and of itself evil, and is only justifiable if it’s to prevent a greater evil. Punishment is never an end in itself. Since we don’t have to execute people to protect others, we can incarcerate them instead, that alone makes it wrong. Socrates further argued that this was not a point that could be debated; it was a fundamental principal one either held or did not.
On a practical level, how anyone could support the death penalty given how it’s been applied and given the obvious shortcomings in our justice system is beyond me.
Just Some Fuckhead
Amen, John.
Ron E.
Because it gives them the chance to kill lots of black people legally. This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.
BC
Just as drug laws are enforced more rigorously on those we don’t like, so with death penalty. Black on white crimes are more likely to get the death penalty than white on white or white on black. Then, there was the unseemly spectacle of Attorney General John Ashcroft venue shopping for the DC snipers – had to be tried in death-penalty-friendly Virginia rather than in DC or Maryland. This is a result of the southernification of our criminal laws. The South has always been big on "law and order" but mostly to keep the young black men in line. Not so much with others in their society.
But another thought – wouldn’t it be great if we had death penalty for those who, like Bernie Madoff, ripped off elderly people, depriving them of all their life savings and putting them back in work force at age 90? Or the AIG guys who got the whole world economy in this shape?
Cassidy
Well here’s your problem. The moment you stop looking at all life as sacred, then the quicker you’ll understand. Some people do not deserve to be alive. They should be put down like rabid dogs. The death penalty isn’t about justice and never has been. But sometimes, revenge is a damn good reason.
Persia
These are also, generally, the same people who think a fertilized embryo is just the same as ‘a real person.’
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
I have never figured out why conservatives, the people who flip out about zoning boards and if their taxes are raised 3% and who shout limited government until they are blue in the face have absolutely zero problem with the government taking that which is most precious- someoneâs life.
They’ve got plenty of problem with it, until they’ve actually been born.
cyntax
Hey, we care about the rich here, just look at the healthcare and education they get…
cleek
at least those people had a trial. compare that to the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis we killed without even that.
life is cheap, when it ain’t your own.
vivelame
That’s one thing the catholics have going for them: they’re consistent. They oppose abortion because "it’s murder", *and* they oppose the death penalty because, hey, "it’s murder". I disagree with their stance on abortion, but at least they’re internally consistent, and that’s a hell of a lot more than many so-called "social conservatives".
cyntax
Revenge is an understandable emotion when someone’s been wronged, but that doesn’t mean it’s good policy for a society.
Dave
I’ve gone over the years from a full-throated supporter of the death penalty to someone who acknowledges that our system of justice is too flawed to support the taking of life.
Â
The problem is that everyone looks at someone like McVeigh, where the guilt is clear-cut and says "See, the death penalty works!" while someone unknown guy gets the needle for a crime he didn’t commit.
Â
One wrong death invalidates the system.
RSA
I think there’s a slight conflation here between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives, but maybe that’s just because their views get swapped back and forth because of political alliances. My theory about social conservatives’ support for the death penalty is that they have a tendency to divide people (sometimes even the entire world) into the good guys and the bad guys. Alternatively, us and them. And so even if there are mistakes made in the application of the death penalty, it’s targeted at the bad guys, so that’s okay. (This also lets them say that even when mistakes are made, the victims were probably guilty of something anyway. They were among the bad guys or they wouldn’t have been tagged in the first place.) This perspective doesn’t apply to taxation because everyone gets taxed (except the very poor, of course, who are appropriately villified for their lack of initiative or ability).
hmd
There’s a structural impediment in our current justice system that prevents anything like a reasonable application of the death penalty.
Capital trials proceed in two phases. In the guilt phase, the jury is solemnly instructed to consider only guilt or innocence, using the standard "reasonable man" standard. Put aside for the time any concern about what the penalty might or might not be. Assuming a guilty verdict, we now take that decision as though it were absolute truth. Given that the defendant did do the crime, should the death penalty be invoked?
There’s no room here for the relatively obvious criterion: A permanent, absolute penalty should at the very least require a higher standard of proof than a slap on the wrist would. This problem is magnified by the fact that capital crimes are usually particularly disturbing or horrifying ones, where the jurors’ desire to hold someone responsible might impair their ability to apply appropriate standards of evidence.
Even if you accept that the death penalty might sometimes be justified, you’d really want to be sure that you are applying it to the right guy. In the case of someone like Charlie Manson, there’s little doubt. But experience shows that the death penalty is often applied in cases where there is (or should have been) substantial doubt.
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
How very un-Christian of Governor Richardson.
Cris
Comrade Stuck: remember when Toney Anaya commuted the sentences of all the death row inmates?
At the time (being a loyal Reagan Youth and all) I thought it was an outrage, a presumptuous overreach by a sanctimonious executive. But now, I at least admire Anaya for exercising his executive privilege on something that was literally a matter of life and death.
Because the thing is, I applaud Richardson for signing the bill, but at least he had a bill to sign. Anaya had no such luxury. Interesting that the repeal was finally signed by a pro-capital-punishment governor.
Breezeblock
There it is, in 6 short words.
cleek
my theory: "small government" isn’t really the root of their political philosophy. something else is the real root; "small government" is just one branch that comes from it, and support for the government’s power to kill people who offend is a different branch.
so, there is no contradiction internally, there’s only a contradiction when those two positions are compared out of context.
worms and birds are related? impossible! well, no, but you have to dig pretty far down to find their common root.
what is the root? what is "conservatism" ? beats me. but it’s the kind of thing Sullivan is always trying to figure out.
Mike in NC
Says a lot that as governor, George W. Bush was such an enthusiastic proponent of the death penalty.
Comrade Stuck
@Cris:
That was before my time living here, but I have read some about it and it was a courageous act. It is heartwarming to me, that SE NM "Little Texas" is losing it’s influence for it’s attempts to wingnuttize this state.
And I wonder if Richardson is really all that pro capital punishment once you peel away his Presidential ambitions.
Mojotron
There was a picture of Charles Manson released the other day
Holy crap did I read that the wrong way at first.
waiting for someone to propose that the problem is that the government is inefficient and then suggest that the solution is to outsource the death penalty to the private sector.
geg6
In my younger days, I used to take a lot of heat from all my more liberal friends who were anti-death penalty and from my Catholic mother over my support for the death penalty. Despite my sterling liberal stance on every other social issue, I was steadfast for it. I had two fairly close friends who were brutally murdered (one a cop just doing the "neighborhood" cop beat who got ambushed and shot in the face apropos of nothing) and that settled it for me.
My turnaround on the issue came when I first heard about the use of DNA to solve criminal cases. Right from the first reading I did on the subject, I understood that it would not only solve crimes, but absolve those accused or convicted of crimes. A couple of decades have gone by since then. And we’ve seen how many people released who have been falsely imprisoned over that time? And those were the ones lucky enough to force the DNA testing or who actually had useable DNA evidence for their cases. And it’s pointed up how truly horrible eye witness testimony is (which it always was, but was deemed very convincing by juries). I just can’t back the death penalty any more after seeing and reading about too many of these cases. Much as I want my friends’ murderers to pay the ultimate price for what they did, I cannot say that either of the perps are, without a doubt, the actual murderers. And I just can’t see putting people to death on what is, at best, a guess.
Martin
I think it’s just fear again. Fear drives a lot of GOP decisions and I think this is yet one of them. (I’m going to refrain from conservative, because opposing the death penalty seems like one of the more conservatives positions one can take.)
They’re afraid of the impact of ‘those others’ on their world. The death penalty not only takes them out of their world, but codifies that those who are executed are subhuman. It’s a weird mishmash of ‘God wouldn’t allow a person good in his eyes to be executed’ and the tautological ‘If they were people, the state wouldn’t execute them’.
If you’ve ever debated a death penalty supporter, you see it happen before your eyes. Even if it’s been proven that the person executed was innocent, the response will be either: "Well, I’m sure they did something else deserving of the punishment" or "Well, they would have just gone on to commit more crimes anyway"
There’s no recognition at all that the state is merely representing us as executor. There is no recognition at all that these people, even when innocent, are equals – they’re just ‘others’. That they are in prison is proof that they are subhuman, and if they weren’t subhuman, they wouldn’t be in prison. QED.
And yes, they have absolute faith that the government can never go too far with those others, and absolute faith that the government will always go too far with good people like them. They see no contradiction there either.
MH
@vivelame: It should say something to conservatives when the Catholic church’s position is more enlightened than theirs.
Joshua Norton
Well, there is still a Federal death penalty. A savvy pro-death penalty prosecutor could find a way to move it to their jurisdiction. So Richardson hasn’t really done away with it all together.
He has, however, removed his state’s responsibility to bear the multi million dollar costs of trials, automatic appeals and further appeals of those appeals, ad infinitum.
joe from Lowell
There are some people who deserve the death penalty, but if we’re looking at the question from that angle, there are some people who deserve quite a bit worse than the death penalty. There are sadistic child rapist-murderers, for example, who deserve torture and grotesque live dismemberment like they used to do in the old days. Drawing and quartering, burning at the stake.
I find it useful to make this point when arguing with death penalty supporters, and ask if they agree. They usually do. Then I ask, so, should the government carry out punishments like that? They usually disagree.
So then I ask, "Why not?" and let THEM explain why there are some punishments we should not allow the government to perform, even if the criminals in question deserve them.
Cris
Fascinating.
I don’t mean to oversimplify, but it it worth remembering the origin of the political terms "right" and "left" — namely, the right-hand side of the Assembly stood for aristocratic privilege, while the left-hand side were the bourgeoisie. In this analysis, a government that places minimal restrictions on the accrual of wealth, and that imposes the ultimate penalty on criminals, serves the interests of the aristocracy in both cases.
Amanda Marcotte once posited an interesting interpretation of the "small government" claim. She suggested "small" is not about the amount of money or power government has, it’s about the number of people it serves.
Krista
I agree with you that as a general rule, the death penalty should be abolished.
Still, it’s sometimes difficult to reconcile that when thinking of people like Karla Holmolka, who copped a plea deal and was convicted of manslaughter instead of murder, in order to get Paul Bernardo locked up for life, and once the video evidence came out, it turned out that she was just as culpable as he was. To think that this woman only served 12 years, and is now walking the streets free, when she tortured, murdered and helped rape three women, including her own sister…it galls. It really does. And there’s no doubt about the guilt, because they actually videotaped themselves. I should be a better person, but I honestly wish that someone had just taken her off the face of the earth while she was locked up.
Just Some Fuckhead
@joe from Lowell: That’s pretty brilliant Joe.
Comrade Stuck
@Mike in NC:
It is dark humor that NM needed enthusiastic assistance from Texan Hangmen to execute it’s only person in 2001, since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The man executed had to beg NM to execute him, but we (NM) didn’t know how, and had to get the grim Texas reapers to show us how. It dragged on for years in the courts and was a pathetic opera of death that played out on the news every so often. But no more, thank God.
John H. Farr
All well and good, but the BAD NEWS from New Mexico is that a few "fiscally conservative" legislators seem to have killed the bill to let the state university system take over the College of Santa Fe, which is struggling with a debt so small in comparison to the stupid f*cking executive bonuses we’re hearing about, it just tears your heart out.
A cultural & educational treasure in Santa Fe is about to go under for just a few (single-digits) million dollars, and nobody is doing a goddamn thing about it.
Mrs. Peel
Sorry, but no it’s not. It’s right up there with letting people marry their pets as an argument against same sex marriage. Reductio ad absurdum. The Constitution bans cruel and unusual punishment, which pretty much describes all his "what if" scenarios.
merrinc
Right, Dave. And what compounds that is the heart-ripping reality of our court system not giving a damn about actual innocence.
In the words of everyone’s favorite Supreme Court Justice: "Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached."
Is this the only planet I can live on?
Cris
Well said. To say "it’s better not to take an action we can’t reverse when we might be wrong" is conservative in the best sense of the word.
I think that’s the real key to this movement we’re seeing. Moving the conversation from whether capital punishment is morally right, to whether it can be applied reliably, allows even supporters to oppose its legal application.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Cassidy:
That’s some good spoofing, man.
jackie
I don’t believe in hell. Killing is too good for the folks who do horrendous things. Take them off death row put them in max security forever. Close enough to hell for government work.
And can we stop the ridiculous refusal to do dna tests, when available, to people previously convicted? I don’t think I can stand to hear one more prosecuter whine about societies need for "closure". My society needs justice. Seems a pretty easy place to start.
Cris
I suspect that the frequency of inter-inmate violence is a feature, not a bug, of the prison system. Was anybody really upset — or surprised — when Jeffrey Dahmer was beaten to death? He got the de facto death penalty, even though his sentence was life.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mrs. Peel: As an exercise in allowing the supporter of capital punishment to distinguish between what their revenge fantasies want and what their government should do, I think it could be useful.
Cris
The question of whether capital punishment — however supposedly painless its application — is inherently cruel or unusual is one of the most longstanding arguments in the death penalty debate.
Cerberus
Both wings of conservatism like the death penalty because they see it as keeping the troublemakers in line. Social conservatives love the idea because on one hand, hey, you still get to have example lynchings of black men and on the other, and on the other you get to play-act being a tough action hero by supporting someone you don’t know killing ultra-bad criminal other people you don’t know. Fiscal conservatives love the idea because they constantly cling to the idea that whatever they do is ok, because if the poor revolt they’ll be taken down and killed because stealing someone’s life and making them starve isn’t technically killing someone but anything physically retributive could potentially face the death penalty, especially if you stack the deck. They view it as insurance to check the impulse of the mob.
Both groups also assume they’re in a group that would never be targeted or subjected to the decision and also share the lack of empathy that would allow themselves to imagine themselves in a similar situation. It’s how they respond to everything. Same with the taxes and municipal services thing. Anything they don’t like is "don’t waste my money" whereas anything they need is either necessary or they’re the only ones who really need it. Similarly they can’t imagine that other tax payers have different ideas of "what is necessary" and what is "wasting my money".
joe from Lowell
When the death penalty has been banned, it is precisely its status as cruel and unusual punishment that has justified that ban.
Therefore, getting people to acknowledge the thinking behind the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment – that it is not a favor or indulgence we grant to criminals out of the kindness of our hearts, or a declaration that crimes can never be bad enough to justify extreme punishment, but rather a necessary protection against government abuse and a statement about our values and identity – is not a reductio ad absurdum, but a perfectly valid effort to think about first things.
Mrs. Peel
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Perhaps. But I think a better debate would be if the death penalty itself is "cruel and unusual punishment". Not a de facto straw man query based on actual cruel and unusual punishment that can be readily dismissed as already forbidden "cruel and unusual punishment".
The Grand Panjandrum
@John H. Farr: That would be a shame. I remembering going to the outdoor Shakespeare performances up on the College of Santa Fe campus. The productions were quite good and the that outdoor location just couldn’t be beat.
Loviatar
Because the death penalty to these people is never about "Justice" or "Deterrence" its about Vengeance (usually against a minority).
Cerberus
Yeah, and on the shifting the debate, it’s good for the moderates who never think about the "oh yeah, that could happen to me" aspect of any evil-minded law (Prop 8, death penalty, blocking abortion access or voting access), but for the conservatives, it’s a feature not a bug that innocent people get caught up, because that makes people more afraid of things like taking public action. There is no better silencing tool than the threat of death or jail without appeal.
See conservative support for torture.
joe from Lowell
But this is precisely the point of my argument – to delve into the nature of, and the reason for, the cruel and unusual punishment prohibition.
People have to first accept the purpose of that prohibition before they can find it to be a compelling reason to ban the death penalty.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
A friend in law school had the only pro-death penalty idea I’ve ever heard that I liked. He said they should make it a law that any cop or prosecutor who conceals or distorts exonerating evidence to obtain a conviction in a capital case should, themselves, face the death penalty for their efforts.
I think if we made that a law, we’d have very few capital cases in our society. But I still prefer outright abolition.
joe from Lowell
@Cerberus # 60:
You’ll like this:
We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors. — Ann Coulter
Tsulagi
Death penalty, like abortion, is one of those touchy subjects. Personally I think it has been way overused.
Without going all googly to get numbers, I recall that after advanced DNA testing Illinois found that 10% (maybe it was more) of people on their death row could not have committed the crimes for which they were convicted. Thatâs amazing. And scary. Properly, the governor at the time immediately suspended executions.
Can see and respect that position.
Itâs not necessarily all revenge motivated. Not trying to sound toughy, but intentionally harm my family and it will not be an eye for an eye, it will be a head for an eye. Just the way it would be; itâs in the family genes. If worst case scenario for the bad guy in his cost-benefit analysis would be to break even, not much of a deterrent.
Some people do deserve to die. Take a life, be prepared to forfeit your own. It all ties in with that personal responsibility and accountability thingy.
Cris
@Cerberus: I’m inclined to be a little more generous about their motivations. I think "law and order" conservatives genuinely believe the criminal justice system (especially the enforcement end) is consistently and thoroughly honest, cautious, judicious, and efficient. Yes, that contradicts their view of every other public servant and every other branch of government, but even if you point out the contradiction, I think they would respond that cops, judges, and wardens inherently take their jobs more seriously than the bureaucrats at the DMV do.
Cris
@joe from Lowell: Yeah, but Ann Coulter is Hitler.
Von Cracker
Even first-year CJ majors understand that criminal sentencing, as a punitive response, must be swift, severe, and certain, in order to be an effective deterrent.
As it’s applied throughout this country right now, the Death Penalty is batting .333…
Cris
Fun fact: this year, there’s a good possibility that in the same legislative session, Montana will both repeal capital punishment and institute a strong castle doctrine.
John PM
You should read the "Left Behind" books if you are looking for an answer. The protagonists in those novels, individuals who were left behind during the Rapture but then subsequently accepted Jesus as their savior, perpetrate untold acts of violence on the followers of the Anti-Christ. All this violence is done in God’s name, and it is OK because the non-believers are doomed to an eternity in hellfire. In the last book, Jesus comes down from heavan with his angelic army and takes about three seconds to obliterate the Anti-Christs army. Jesus then consigns all remaining non-believers to hell for eternity. So, it really is as simple as "You’re either with us or against us."
I cannot remember the last time I debated someone about the death penalty, but it occurs to me that a useful starting point would be to ask them what the Fifth Commandment says. If they know the answer (always a big assumption with Christians), then ask how their support for the death penalty is consistent with God’s prohibition against killing. I would be interested in hearing that response.
jrosen
To hear some people fume and fuss
All things are simply black or white
And most of all they like to cuss
The government, thatâs never right.
It canât fill potholes, save our bucks,
Feed the poor or push our pills,
At running pens it really sucks:
Itâs at the root of all our ills.
The criticism never stops,
So I canât puzzle out just why
They think that when the needle drops
Theyâre sure theyâve offed the guilty guy.
Martin
And yet if that played out and you were convicted and executed for taking a head for an eye as you have declared you would do intentionally, you would have failed the test yourself. You would have lost your life, and your family lost a spouse/parent/child. The cost benefit analysis is not break-even in your case, yet you say you would do it anyway.
The answer to the question is that when emotions such as rage or desperation or mental illness get involved, there is no cost-benefit analysis taking place. Like you said, it’s in the family genes.
joe from Lowell
I actually agree with this. My opposition to the death penalty has nothing do with the idea that poor Ted Bundy was mistreated. Ted Bundy probably got quite a bit better than he deserved.
The argument against the death penalty that makes sense to me is that it behooves us as a people, who wish to remain a free people, for the government to show more mercy to such people than they actually deserve – not for their sake, but for ours.
Martin
Oh, that response is well known. They argue that the 5th commandment doesn’t say ‘thou shalt not kill’, but ‘thou shalt not murder’. Since capital punishment isn’t construed as murder, by definition, they’re in the clear. Even if you argue the definition, there’s a shitton of examples in the Bible supporting capital punishment that they’ll wheel out.
Arguing with magical thinkers will get you nowhere.
Cassidy
@cyntax: On one hand I agree that emotionalistic urges are not the good basis of policy. But then again, history says throughout that our society will make decisions based on emotion rather than cold hard fact. Why start now?
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss: It’s no spoofing. I support the death penalty. I don’t support it as some sort of deterrent; that’s been proven not the case (but maybe if we used it more…). I personally support justice. Our court system isn’t about justice and never has been. Justice is allowing the father of a raped and murdered 3 y/o girl in a closed room with the perpetrator and enough time to wear himself out. That’s justice. So, if the closest we can get is pushing some amps through the top of someone’s head, then that’s the best we got.
And yes, the system is flawed. And yes 160 some odd people have been exonerated (out of thousands mind you; not a bad average). And yes blah, blah, blah. I’ve heard those same tired arguments before. Thing is, I’ve been to two different warzones in the last 10 years, so all this talk of "life is sacred" and whatnot is bullshit. Life is cheap. In some countries cheaper than food. In some countries, it’s much cheaper than our gourmet coffees and locally grown organic produce (which I used to make the most awesome eggplant parmesan two nights ago), etc. Our society doesn’t get to see this stuff. We see one guy who was exonerated through DNA and scream "the system is flawed". But so what. That’s one guy compared to who knows how many. And in other countries, he doesn’t get an appeal or an innocence organization with pro bono lawyers, etc.
Life is cheap and sometimes, revenge is all we have left. You take what is given and sometimes that must be enough.
Cerberus
Cris-
I can see how one could come to that idea naturally.
But for my money, "law and order" conservatives have always been pretty obviously motivated by a rather specific fear *cough*black people*cough*. It goes rather hand-in-hand with a view that some races are just inherently more criminal and thus only the good (small print)mostly white(/small print) cops can protect their areas from the violence and crime and only do so with the threat of "being tough" aka arresting a lot of people innocence aside and threatening many with the death penalty.
Even without the color coding, it still comes to a desperate myopia as to a) the cop’s basic humanity and b) that they themselves could ever fall under suspicion.
The infallible cop thing is also interesting because it usually leads to two other behaviors: a) assuming any obviously bad cop must have been provoked if not by the incident then the toughness of their job and/or b) that since cops are perfect, a great way to save money would be to execute all criminals and clean out the prisons.
These people as expected also never seem to be aware or as angry at white-collar crime, especially when it’s aimed at minorities. Druggies and prostitutes get way more scorn than slumlords and insurance executives.
Cris
@John PM: Thanks for the Cliff’s Notes recap, since I don’t plan to read the books.
However:
My wife’s copy of the Pentateuch translates "lo tir’tzach" as "do not commit murder." In that reading, it’s not a blanket prohibition against killing. "Retzach" allows exemptions for taking life in war, and arguably for capital punishment.
John PM
@Martin:
Of course, what the Fifth Commandment says depends upon the translation being used. In the Catholic Church, the Fifth Commandment uses the word "kill." As for the examples from the Bible in support of capital punishment, all of those are from the Old Testament, save one. The one example of capital punishment in the New Testament is Jesus crucifition, probably the most well-known example of an innocent man being put to death by a government. Unfortunately, one would be pointing this out to the same group of people who so reverently flocked to see "The Passion of the Christ."
Anyway, my ultimate point is that, should the Book of Revelation actually come to pass, the biggest supporters of the Anti-Christ will be the Southern White Male Christians.
MikeJ
Actually I think most people would say it says, "Honour your father and mother."
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mrs. Peel: If someone does dismiss the hypothetical dismemberment and mutilation thought exercise as "cruel and unusual punishment" then you’re having the argument you want to have.
But for the folks that don’t immediately dismiss it as cruel and unusual punishment, you can have both.
McWyrm
Really? Charlie Manson is your poster boy for people who deserve the death penalty? Scum of the earth though he may be, he never killed anybody.
I understand and appreciate how ‘conspiracy to commit murder’ can and should be prosecuted as murder, but I really don’t see how it puts one high up on the list of folks that should see the chair.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Cassidy:
Statistically, it’s been proven NOT to deter. But it sounds like your conception of "justice" is the same motivation that drives a lynch mob. I can’t argue with you except to say that I disagree with you on fundamental principles. Vengeance is not "justice," and a surrogate lynching by the State is not something I could ever comfortably endorse.
One exoneration is enough to invalidate the system. Our system is premised on the notion that it’s better for 1,000 guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to languish in jail. That’s what due process is all about, fundamentally; if the cops can’t prove you did it, you get to go free. Even if you really did it. And that’s also why we have things like exclusionary rules- even if they find a dead body in the trunk of your car, if they searched your car unlawfully, the evidence is suppressed, and you probably go free. You probably wouldn’t regard that as justice, but I do, because without safeguards to protect us from governmental misconduct, we have much bigger concerns than individual criminals.
The principles that guide our society transcend the fate of one sordid offender, or the bloodlust of a lynch mob. The principles affect all of us, and the lack of principles behind your conception would affect all of us, too, if it were enshrined in our system. Fortunately, it isn’t. If we wanted a society founded on vengeance, we could have gone back to tribal retribution killings. But this nation was founded on something greater than primitive conceptions of revenge.
Brachiator
Easy. Because with all the problems and errors that occur, there are people who deserve to be killed. The Austrian who imprisoned and degraded his own daughter for years, for example. Anyone really want to make a case about how "precious" his life is?
Susan Smith also comes to mind who, after implicating a nameless black guy for the murder of her kids, fessed up, went to jail, and later had sex parties with a couple of guards. What especially offends me about Smith and other cases is an extension of foolish "progressive" thinking that holds that there should not be life in prison without parole, that after some specified period of time, all should be forgiven because … you can’t bring the dead back and so why continue to be hard on a poor convicted felon who is now harmless.
I think that people who believe this should demand that the police in their town be absolutely prohibited from ever, ever, EVER, using deadly force. Even better, there should be no police force in their town, lest the state ever be in the position of representing them as executioner.
Still, the fact of errors in the application of justice nudges me in the direction of supporting the abolition of the death penalty. And in this, I think of the words of Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun in the Texas death penalty case, Callins v. Collins, who struggled with trying to fairly apply the death penalty, but who finally came to this stirring conclusion:
John PM
@MikeJ:
Not in the Catholic Church. Which leads back to the problem of interpretation, or more precisely, misinterpretation. And frankly, when you get to heavan and meet St. Peter at the pearly gates, do you really want to get into a debate whether the death penalty counts as "murder" versus "killing"? And if, as a result of your support of the death penalty, an innocent person was executed, then wouldn’t you be guilty of murder anyway?
wilfred
It’s not the place, it’s the people who make life cheap. To you and your kind life is cheap, that’s why you killed so many muslim niggers and be so glib about it – it’s their lives that are cheap, you helped make them so.
6 Years today. Go fuck yourself.
Cris
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
"I’d rather let a thousand guilty men go free than chase after them. " — Chief Wiggum
Cassidy
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Are you sure of that? We play house really well, but when the chips are down our more animalistic tendencies come out. What you call lynch mob, I consider a pack tendency. We are pack animals and no amount of dress up can change that.
My only real, fundamental disagreement with you is the difference in justice and revenge. Justice is an eye for an eye, which is nothing more than codified revenge.
Interrobang
A family member of mine was murdered on the 6th of January. If I were to support executing the (alleged) perpetrator (in a country where state-run executions are illegal) my hands would be just about as bloody as his. I can’t commit that grave a wrong; not in person, not by proxy. I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror if I did.
Cassidy
@wilfred: I love hearing stuff like this. It just shows how ignorant and insulated you are. Go back to your blogs. That’s all your good for.
Interesting thought exercise though. How many Iraqi lives have you saved? I need both hands to count that, but you keep doing your "good work" from the computer. How many people have you killed? Our number will be the same.
And yes, I admit that I call my Serbian friends and asked them to commit genocide…all my fault.
You’re an idiot. Don’t procreate.
Edit: and its Sand Nigger or Raghead or Haji. Stop mixing your racial epithets, it just makes you sound dumb.
Svensker
Because they support the Culture of Life, obviously.
McWyrm
@Cassidy:
We are pack animals and no amount of dress up can change that.
I’m sure that didn’t come out quite right.
MikeJ
A book written in Hebrew by Jews for a Jewish audience. Even Jesus was Jewish. I’d go with the numbering system He would have used if I were a christian.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Cassidy: Fair enough. So a few innocents executed is a fair price for killing the really bad guys.
If that innocent were your brother, your son, or your father, would you still support whacking him, pour encourager les autres?
Ricky Bobby
Conservatives support the death penalty for one simple reason: It’s teh brown people and teh poor people who are getting gassed and killed.
When was the last time a rich white guy got put down like Ole Yeller behind the wood shed?
mtraven
Because conservatism is not, and has never been, about "small government". Conservatism is about perpetuating existing power relationships and particularly keeping priveleged elites in place. It is only since government started acting as an equalizing force that conservatives adopted the banner of small government, treating idealistic libertarians as useful idiots. But it is pretty obvious from this issue and others that conservatives in fact love government when it acts to perpetuate inequality and injustice.
bloodstar
I’m going to take a slightly off kilter look at this. To me, if I Were not guilty of the crime, I’d almost prefer there to be a death penalty. Why? Because the death penalty galvanizes people to look at the crime. to look at the circumstances and to do some actual investigation to see how the case was handled. I don’t have enough money to hire people to do that myself, so I need someone else to pony up the money. Saving someone from life in prison has less glamor than saving someone from death. and there will be less interest, less money and less time spent assisting those who are convicted of a crime where the punishment is life in prison, as opposed to death.
I wish I was wrong, but I don’t think I am.
scarshapedstar
Um, yeah, not to mention their endlessly-praised, completely bullshit, fucking… drumroll…
"Culture of Life!"
In addition to all the things we know about the death penalty, we also know that it’s a relic from an age when you couldn’t keep people in prison for any length of time without them dying, and so aside from flogging or branding or something along those lines an execution was one of the few options. We also know that the only countries who still execute people are China, Russia, Iran, basically everyone we proclaim to oppose.
Go figure.
wilfred
@Cassidy:
I’m in the region right now asshole, working overtime to correct the murderous excesses of stupid motherfuckers like yourself.
I’m a member of the American mission in a country where people have learned to despise shits like you. They laugh at you because you have no honor, and they seem images that people in the US never see. I don’t ride around in hummer or tank, boy, but I put on the line every fucking day to show some people that all Americans aren’t cretins like yourself.
Save your tough guy talk and lame war stories for somebody who gives a shit.
Cassidy
@McWyrm: LOL good catch. But you know what I meant. Bottom line is that our more animalistic urges come out when times are tough. They always have. And our base natural instincts are not nearly so civilized as we’d like to believe.
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: Never said it was a fair price to pay. I agreed that the system is flawed and unfortunately this will happen. I am all about change and checks and balances, but I’m not sure cutting off your nose to spite your face is a good idea. Otoh, the number of people found innocent vs. the number of guilty is a big difference.
AhabTRuler
Y’know, it’s exactly this subject that made me so interested in Cassidy’s thoughts on pie!
OTOH, where’s Teez?
elmo
Until we as a society are prepared to spend the resources it will take to have a humane prison system, while still incarcerating murderers, brutal rapists, and other unrepentant violent criminals, I have no choice but to support the death penalty, and support its extension to as many violent, dangerous felons as possible.
Somebody up above said that the death penalty is wrong because we don’t need it to be safe. "We" don’t; but the other poor bastards in prison do. We are spending all of our resources on housing violent, dangerous people who are a genuine threat; and in the meantime, we devote exactly zero resources to educating and rehabilitating those minor criminals who might actually benefit from help.
Our priorities are upside-down.
Cerberus
Scruffy-
Yes on the false determent. It’s always bothered me all the hideous immoralities people will defend under the illusion that it somehow stops something worse. It really came under a head with the whole torture thing, where it was clear we were creating way more terrorists who now felt justified, because hey, they’re torturing people.
Same thing is true with crime. It doesn’t stop criminals to begin with and it makes the whole thing more justified, because it forms and us vs. them with police forces and government and removes the position of higher moral authority that the latter rely on. If a government and police can’t claim to be better than the criminals they arrest and try, then what authority do they have to be claiming justice rather than power. And once power trumps justice, you get all manners of institutionalized abuse (see police infiltration of anti-war groups and the like or the quick loss of any international good will in the post 9/11 years).
It also is funny seeing defenders angry at the potential of murderers being set free or let off the hook easily, when marginalized groups have become numb to how many times that’s happened. See Dan White, any white cop who’s shot an unarmed black man, most rapists, even convicted ones who serve terms laughably short compared to drug convictions, etc… For the marginalized, the system has always been obviously f***ed and thus why the trepidation about capital punishment (also the marginalized are the groups it’s disproportionately used against). At least with life in jail there is the possibility of clearing one’s name.
Given that the sickest of criminals will never see a jail cell and instead be given multi-million dollar speaking tours, I see no reason to worry over much about Joe Spree Killer having to serve life in jail instead of life on death row. Especially when we can focus on the institutional problems that lead to Joe Spree Killer to begin with and tackle the bigger evils.
MBunge
"I understand the desire for a death penalty, but I just canât support it when we know that there are prosecutors who act in bad faith, we know there are police who perjure themselves, we know there are witnesses who make mistakes, we know that confessions are coerced, we know that there are two systems of justice in place for the rich and the poor, and we know that dozens of people on death row have been released after it has been determined they were innocent."
The problem is that most folks aren’t as terrified at being held responsible for the actions of their government as liberal death penalty opponents. The anti-capital punishment folks on the left seem to emphasize the whole "killing an innocent person" thing far more than the whole "killing is wrong" thing, because the first argument perfectly fits into the fear of judgment that runs through a lot of liberal thought and emotion.
Mike
John PM
@MikeJ: #91
I agree that approach would make sense, if the Catholic Church were to consistently acknowledge Jesus’ Jewishness. However, be it the Fifth Amendment or the Sixth Amendment, the larger point is that God’s prohibition against killing should give Christian supporters of the death penalty pause. Unfortunately, it does not.
Tsulagi
@Martin:
Nope.
Of course we can all cite an extreme case trying to bolster our argument. But sometimes thatâs valid. One offhand I can recall illustrates my position somewhat.
Occurred in a small town or city in northern CA. A guy raped plus brutally butchered a young girl leaving her to die. The guy was identified, found and arrested; evidence including DNA was solid. In pretrial hearings, the perp enjoyed taunting the girlâs mother including making sexual gestures. Obviously an emotionally charged situation.
During one hearing the defense was petitioning to have the case moved out of that county due to publicity. While the attorneys were arguing, the defendant was taunting mom. Mom then showed clear wisdom in her choice of tools and ability to use them to make her position known. She stood, pulled a .357 and emptied it. Not one round missed its mark. Impressive. She then dropped the weapon and awaited to be taken into custody.
The DA charged her saying there was no room for vigilante justice. I respect that. She was tried. The jury found her not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, plus found her now sane not warranting further incarceration recommending her immediate release. Perfect verdict. Justice.
Mom made a decision, implemented that decision, then stood to take full responsibility and accountability for her actions. I would like to think I would do no less. I applaud her. That guy deserved to die and earned that justice.
Cerberus
elmo-
Well we could easily separate them out with private cells and keep them away from non-violent offenders.
But then we’d have to admit that using the War on Drugs to arrest lots and lots of brown people is a dumb racist idea.
Further more, the violence breeds from the prison guards who wouldn’t at all be subject to the increase in innocent people sent to the chair. The guards will still beat who they feel and try and stoke up tribal identification to get the inmates to work against their common interest. See reports from all-female prisons for a particularly vile taste.
And finally, you show a willful assumption that you are white enough or rich enough that you’d never have to face a trial against you without adequate protection. If your wife was killed and you stupidly picked up the gun, would you like to be killed for that mistake just because former you didn’t understand that prisons being poorly run was a feature of the law and order craze?
Well, even if you would, I wouldn’t.
scarshapedstar
I don’t think we’re a society of oxen, I’ll say that much; however, I suspect that early human society looked a lot more like that of the bonobo than that of lions or wolves or whatever you’re trying to say. BTW, this "sooner or later we all resort to cannibalism, right folks?!" argument just sounds sociopathic.
Actually, I don’t think "an eye for an eye" has ever been a tenet of our justice system. But historically, "an eye for an eye" was about fairness and moderation, not retribution. For example, at the time it was more the norm to take the life of someone who took out your eye, and then there would be a series of revenge killings on top of that. Revenge is precisely what justice was invented to oppose.
Cerberus
MBunge-
That’s the most convoluted attempt yet to try and make basic human empathy seem like a character fault.
Also, the government is us you UN-fearing twit.
Cassidy
@wilfred: Keep talking. And still don’t procreate.
Seriously? You think saving someone’s life is lame? I am a Medic and have worked on Iraqis after VBIED’s, etc. How can you think that saving someone’s life after a traumatic event like that is lame. You’re disgusting.
Martin
That’s disingenuous.
Deadly force is granted to police so that they can defend the public (themselves included). The public need not be defended from someone who is locked in prison. They present no threat. The use of deadly force, as it has been granted is not an execution, it is self-defense, and the police are applying self-defense on our behalf.
I won’t argue that it doesn’t go astray in application, it certainly does, but it doesn’t in policy.
Cassidy
@scarshapedstar: It’s not sociopathic to recognize that humans are what they are. The reality is that if circumstances were dire enough, most of us would resort to cannabilism or any other baser actions to survive. We are not a strong willed group of animals and never have been. Survival always wins against morals.
Cerberus
And I can tell when a thread has been taken over by gun nut fetishists with small penises worried about not seeming "manly" enough against evil.
Yeah, empty the clip, kill those others I will never meet who were clearly guilty.
Let’s not talk about the inherent sexism in society where such a man could get to the point of raping and killing a little girl and feeling confident enough to taunt the mother afterwards.
Let’s not talk about the set-up of injustices that gave him that confidence being based in most rape trials centered around how slutty the victim was.
Nor how unlikely that anecdote is real (seriously, she pulled a random gun in a courtroom? Yeah, and your canadian girlfriend is a Maxim model).
When the guy on death row is more likely to be Bernie Madoff or Dick Cheney than some guy who was the wrong color when some 9/11 clerk got shot or a convenient scapegoat on a child murder case or when a jury won’t acquit a video-taped murderer because he’s a cop or he killed a transwoman or a prostitute or when rape victims are in jail longer than heroin addicts, I’ll listen. Until then, I’ll leave the thread to the trolls.
gwangung
Hm. Bet’s that what sociopaths say.
Cassidy
And someone hit on it earlier. If we poured more money into rehabilitating first time, minor, non-violent, etc. criminals, then we really could seperate the bad from the saveable. If we were to do away with the WODs then yes, we could make severe headway into incarcerating those who truly deserve prison.
wilfred
@Cassidy:
Fuck off, you lying shit. Assuming your telling the truth, you participated in a criminal war that has left hundreds of thousands of innocent people dead or homeless. Iraqi women have been reduced to whoring to find food for their children.
You want absolution? Drop dead. I’m not interested in your stories. Incidentally, I have procreated – my children have been taught to turn their backs on people who talk like you, all nonsense about revenge and human worthlessness and Oh! the horrors!
You cut people in half and gave them a bandaid, eh? Congratulations.
Cassidy
@gwangung: No, a sociopath calls humans prey.
scarshapedstar
@Cassidy:
Yeah, but we’re not executing people to eat them. That’s my point. After a nuclear holocaust, it may become normative to shoot your neighbor and take his canned beans, but that doesn’t give you an excuse for doing it today.
wilfred
Christ. With animals maybe. Gee, all that time in Iraq and never heard anything about Hussein ibn Ali ibn Abu Talib, or sunnat of the Prophet, or the opening of the Ghulistan?
joe from Lowell
MBunge imagines it’s a put-down to say that liberals don’t wish to be responsible for the death so innocents.
This, perhaps, explains why conservatives are held in such low esteem these days.
wilfred
Cf. Sharia (gasp!). In cases of intentional murder, the victim’s family has the right to a) retaliation; b) blood money or c) pardon – the Koran recommends c "if you only knew what was best for you". The Prophet said that if the victim’s family tried anything else, stop them.
Cassidy
@wilfred: Oh no, I don’t need absolution. I’m quite awright with the actions I’ve performed, although you seem to be confused on a lot of things. I personally, have never shot anyone, or cut them in half for that matter. And even if I had shot someone, the M4 is severly incapable of cutting someone in half. Now if I were allowed behind the 240, then maybe…
Damn. Is it too late to deprogram your kids from your idiocy? Really, the last thing we need in this country is some partisan, emotionally hysterical idiot that has no use for relevant facts and logic. Maybe this year or so away from you will be put to good use and they’ll realize that dad might be full of shit. I’ll tell you the same thing I tell right wingers: black and white only exists in your myopic world view, but the rest of the world is built on gray.
And you still haven’t addressed your lack of empathy for Iraqi wounded. They aren’t my favorite people on the planet, but I’m professional enough to have put aside my prejudices to save lives. I still don’t see how you can think that is lame. Really, you are a disgusting example of American’s abroad. How can you think so little of the lives of people you are claiming to help?
The Moar You Know
This ain’t Somalia, for starters. This is America. And on cursory reading, the US Constitution disagrees profoundly with you on the value of life and of law.
TenguPhule
Make the Death Penalty apply only to people making more then $250,000 a year.
It would solve at least some of our problems right there.
The Moar You Know
@Cassidy: Wilfred lives for this kind of exchange, by the way. He’s probably jerking it behind the monitor as I type this.
The only way to win is not to play.
Cassidy
@scarshapedstar: Well of course. You’re talking about an extreme situation. And it’s never awright to eat your neighbor. Like I said, I just recognize human nature for what it is and it isn’t good. Years of warfare and atrocity can show you that.
In regards to this topic, all i’m saying is that it’s human nature to seek/ exact revenge for crimes committed against us or our families (pack). And for me the DP is the only sanctioned way to get said revenge and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. As with the anecdote above, most any of us who are parents would joyfully pump bullets into someone who harmed our children and you’re a liar if you insist you wouldn’t. But, doing so would open us up to criminal charges and whatnot. So, the DP is the way to go. I don’t believe it’s a deterrent. I don’t believe it’s perfect. But it is a useful tool.
TenguPhule
It is a fine and ancient Christian tradition to butcher other people for the good of their souls.
wilfred
@Cassidy:
I think you’re a phony. Nothing that you indicates to me that you know aanything whatsoever about Iraq, Arabs or Muslims.
Lack of empathy? Don’t prattle to me you stupid shit. Tremendous efforts are being made to correct the damage done these past 6 years, if that’s even possible.
Save the lives of people destroyed by the very war you participate in? Spare me the stupid. If you are for real, speak out in the name of justice for the crimes committed against the Iraqi people.
There’s nothing left but that.
Svensker
Which is why humans need a society of laws and a better organization than "this is what my gut tells me right now."
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Cris:
LOL
@Cassidy:
How "we" feel is irrelevant. Laws exist, to supersede our feelings. There are plenty of people I would kill, personally. I’m a vengeful, spiteful piece of shit, just like you. In my crankier moods, I’d extend the death penalty to include people who slash my tires, people who cut me off in traffic, and people who annoy me. The law exists so that my individual moods- or the moods of a mob, which is as capricious as an individual but much more dangerous- don’t get to act on our emotional whims.
Justice is a lot of things. There’s your primitive notion of blood-letting as justice. Justice is also the idea of social utility to some. To others, justice is the corrective actualization of every citizen- even those who require years, if not life, in jail in an effort to rehabilitate them or make them see the error of their ways. I’m sure we could come up with numerous other definitions, but we do have a fundamental disagreement. I don’t see punishment for its own sake as comprising justice. I support punishment (via incarceration) for the sake of correction, and for the sake of public safety. I don’t see vengeance as a legitimate goal of the legal system.
Cassidy
@The Moar You Know: Oh I know. I baited him from the beginning. If all of you would kindly disregard my exchanges from him as part of this debate, I would appreciate it.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Interrobang:
I’m very sorry for your loss. I can’t imagine how awful you must feel.
Martin
But you are holding up this case as a good example knowing the outcome. What of the case where the jury didn’t find for temporary insanity, saw that she brought a gun into the courtroom to shoot an unarmed and restrained person in a clearly premeditated fashion, found her guilty with special circumstances and then executed her. Would that have been a good trade? Would it be a good trade considering the impact on her family?
Now, I think in 90% of the cases the jury would be merciful and produce the outcome you describe, but if the mom was black and the victim white and in Alabama 50 years ago, I suspect you’d see the outcome I describe. You’re assuming a set of variables that are not codified.
My point being, you brought this case up because the outcome is one that you expect to see today and because the anecdote fits your narrative. Here’s another mom that did the same thing. Shot her son’s accused molestor, got convicted. In the end, she went to prison a 2nd time for meth dealing and her son ended up getting convicted for first degree murder.
I would argue that the cost-benefit analysis was stacked against her, yet she committed the crime anyway. The problem with the analysis is that the variable aren’t clear at the time of the decision, yet they will become clear later and will become part of the trial and the sentencing. Your head for an eye might seem perfectly appropriate, but you don’t know the variables behind the person who wronged you and you don’t know the variables yet to come.
Tsulagi
@Cerberus:
It was pre-9/11, and the small town or city didnât have metal detectors installed at the courthouse. Some were like that. Random gun? Donât think so, I would think she chose her weapon carefully and deliberately.
wilfred
@Cassidy:
Right. You can go back to playing college freshman Nietzsche now. Fake.
@The Moar You Know:
Oh, dear. An Israel Firster. Been quiet of late, haven’t you? No comments about your homies shooting women and children? Or rabbis exhorting to religous war?
Cassidy
@Svensker: I agree totally. I’m just saying that those laws tend to go out the window when they clash with our baser urges.
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
And there it is.
Look I don’t claim it’s right. Someone harms my kids, I would happily spend a better part of a week making them regret it. And it would be wrong and a crime. And maybe I’d go to jail or be given the DP (ironically). But recognizing that my baser instincts are there, as with all humans, is not wrong. I would suggest that being aware of your shortcomings gives you an edge on fighting them as opposed to being "surprised" by your yearning to murder some son of a bitch. But that’s a personal opinion.
wilfred
@The Moar You Know:
Actually I was hoping to take advantage of your language skills:
Can you translate "1 shot, 2 kills" into Hebrew for me? Thanks.
Cassidy
@wilfred:
Says the guy who has total disdain for the saving of Iraqi lives while claiming to be helping them.
I don’t speak hebrew. I think you’re confusing 2 different wars.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Sorry, this isn’t very clear. That’s what happens when you try to work and blog at the same time. What I meant to say is that the law exists so that neither individuals nor mobs get to act on their emotional whims, to the detriment of the stability and order of society or to the detriment of their hapless victims.
Our laws are based on reason, not emotion. Emotion should not be a part of the legal system. A lynching that involves a judge is little different than a lynching that involves men with hoods. Certainly, the victim’s family should be consulted before a judge pronounces sentence; but the judge works for all of us, and for our system itself, not just for the victim’s family.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Cassidy: Let me ask once again– if it were your brother, your cousin, your son who was the innocent to be executed– would you still support it?
wilfred
@Cassidy:
Oh, are you still baiting me? Sorry? But this is a bit tamponny, isn’t it? Or is that all part of the super-sophisticated genealogy of morals baiting process?
Brachiator
@scarshapedstar:
Close. "An eye for an eye" is meant to be poetic, so that the concept would easily be remembered in an oral tradition culture. But the idea is that justice must be proportionate and fair. So, in theory, a prince cannot call for more justice than would be due a poor person. And one cannot punish the entire family for the crimes of an individual. To see how hard it is for people to grasp the idea that the supposed "honor" of the family or the tribe should not be taken into account, one need only recall the case of a woman in the news recently because she was a victim of "family honor" justice:
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
You’re missing my point. The law exists so that my personal flaws and emotional whims don’t cause irreparable harm to others. The fact that I’m lynching someone who, say, killed my whole family doesn’t justify the lynching any more than if I were lynching someone who, say, keyed my car. It’s still criminal, awful, and contrary to the tenets of American justice and western civilization.
Well, we can share in the "hail fellow, well met" sentimentality of realizing that we’re all capable of being bloodthirsty assholes. I’m okay with that. But the law exists because humans are also capable of being better than bloodthirsty assholes. The law is the conscience of humanity, and codifies the better aspects of our nature, not the worse ones.
Hob
@John PM: If you’re talking to a Christian, the question isn’t "What’s the 5th(*) commandment?"; it’s "What does Jesus say about responding to violence?" Jesus specifically refers to "an eye for an eye" as the existing custom (which was supposed to be a fair limitation, compared to what Tsulagi in #64 called "a head for an eye"); then he says no, don’t even do that. Turn the other cheek. That wasn’t a throwaway line in a mysterious parable; it was a direct instruction.
Support for capital punishment and war in nominally Christian societies over the last 2000 years has required explaining away that part of the Gospels. One popular strategy for that is to say "Oh well he just said you can’t take revenge for things done directly to you! Of course it’s a whole different thing if you’re out for justice on someone else’s behalf." Well, people will find a way around anything; there are fighting Buddhists too.
(* Or 6th, if you’re not Catholic or Lutheran – that’s what MikeJ in #78 is talking about. The assignment of the 10 numbers isn’t in the text, it’s just a tradition that varies between sects.)
Cassidy
@wilfred: No it’s just fun.
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: I’d still support the DP. It is what it is.
Cassidy
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss: I disagree. The law provides window dressing; what I meant by dress up earlier.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Cassidy: I presume then that you wouldn’t support that innocent brother/father/son’s appeals or help pay for his lawyers, either, as you would approve of his execution pour encourager les autres.
I gotta respect you for consistency. But I’m damn glad you’re not my brother/father/son/cousin.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
We disagree fundamentally on the spirit and purpose of the law, and of society itself. You seem to view American democracy as being identical to tribal vengefulness, only overburdened with hypocrisy and excessive formalities. Rest assured that those who toil within the American legal system do not view it in this fashion.
Cassidy
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: Supporting the concept vs. the instance are different things.
Cassidy
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
I don’t think we disagree on that. I think that our ideas are better than us as a species and we’ve done a pretty shitty job of aspiring to that greatness. I don’t believe we we are capable of living up to those ideals.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Every time a state abolishes the death penalty, it gets one step closer. We claim progress, rather than perfection.
Tsulagi
@Martin:
Wouldnât expect them to be.
We should be a proud nation of law. No disagreement. Youâre also right that sometimes the law is unevenly applied. Sometimes justice denied.
My main point is that if you feel circumstances warrant and do decide to step outside the law, simply take full responsibility for the consequences without complaint. At the supermicro level, when Iâve been over the speed limit breaking the law then got pulled over given a ticket, no bitching, accepted the consequences and monetary punishment. In my anecdote above, of course donât know, but my guess is that mom wasnât relying on going free as a precondition for her action.
When I said âa head for an eye,â of course I did still mean proportionality without emotion. When my daughter starts dating (donât look forward to that) if an asswipe were to give her a black eye, I would be emotional about it. My emotions would tell me to take him to a range and prop him up at the 300m mark and go for a sub 1â grouping. However, calm reason would prevail. Broken arms would suffice. These recent years seems Iâve been getting all progressively liberal and shit.
As in areas like abortion and religion, everyone has their opinion on the morality of the death penalty. Can argue and argue, but likely not much movement in belief. Everyone entitled to their position.
Bob In Pacifica
A little off-topic: The best book on the Manson thingie in my opinion was Ed Sanders’ "The Family". You can still find plenty of used copies for cheap all over. Much better than Bugliosi’s self-promoting effort, as I recall. I reread Sanders book within the last five years and it held up.
For those of you who are as creaky as me, you may remember that Sanders was a beat poet in Greenwich Village in the Sixties and also a member of The Fugs, but neither of these facts should dissuade you from reading the book. Well-researched, well-written. Go for it. It’s spring and soon it will be summer and then there’s summer reading to be had.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Cassidy: So, "justice for me and not for thee?"
Either you don’t mind that someone YOU love gets whacked, or you accept that the concept is unjust.
Which shall it be?
Cassidy
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: As I said earlier, it’s not a black and white world. To pretend it is either reflects a willful ignorance or a deep naivete. Either way it’s inaccurate.
And no, it isn’t either way.
joe from Lowell
A man’s reach should exceed his grasp. We are a nation defined by what we aspire to be.
You’re right about the execution of prisoners being part of our feral, pack heritage. So was torture, so was public hanging, so was lynching.
We don’t want to be that; we should abolish the practice of executing prisoners because it will help us move closer to what we want to be.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Cassidy:
You’re right, the world is not "black or white-" but this hypothetical is.
You’ve as much as said you support executing innocent people so long as they’re not people you care about.
I just don’t see how you can cram nuance into that clear, black-and-white position.
Cassidy the Racist White Man
Not ignoring you. Thinking about Joe’s perspective.