Associated Press – December 12, 2007:
More than at any time over the past 30 years, the future of capital punishment is in limbo.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments next term in a momentous lethal injection case. While it’s widely expected that executions will resume in some form following that case, the moment gives Americans a chance to contemplate what would change if they stopped for good.
* States with many death-penalty cases would save millions of dollars now spent on legal costs in long-running appeals.
* Abroad, notably in Europe and Canada, America’s image would improve in countries that abolished capital punishment decades ago and now wonder why America remains one of only a handful of prosperous democracies that continue with executions.
* Among the American public, reaction would be deeply divided. Death penalty supporters would decry the loss of what they consider a valuable crime deterrent as well as the ultimate form of justice for victims and their families. Foes of execution would welcome the end of what they have deemed a barbaric national tradition.
A few years ago the Washington State attorney general figured out that it cost state governnments about 3 million dollars to try, convict, and imprison a murderer for life (with no parole).
It cost about 10 million dollars to try, convict and go through the required appeals process before executing a murderer.
How many years would you have to work to pay the extra 7 million tax dollars? It would take most of us several lifetimes. I would rather spend my one lifetime of hard earned tax dollars on something more beneficial than revenge.
#33 Yeah, but where’s the blood and guts? WHERE IS THE DEATH!?
That’s really what this whole death penalty thing is about; seeking retribution by inflicting the ultimate injury on another person. You killed somebody? That’s wrong! You can’t just kill someone! That’s SO wrong, we’re going to kill you!
if you support the death penalty then you yourself are a murderer
you can try to make any justification you like, but advocating the taking of life means that your actions driectly lead to taking of another persons life and by definition that is murder
it’s not really up for debate.
#32,
I refuse to accept that the convict is “often” awake for the KCl. Yes, it in essence gives the convict a heart attack, which people describe as the worst pain you can imagine.
The first two drugs are the same as common general anesthesia drugs, just in larger doses. I have never heard of someone waking up during surgery, but I would concede it could happen, but not “often”.
Would you like to debate the difference between “kill” and “murder”. They are not the same thing, and this is state sponsered “killing”, not “murder”.
#35, no its not murder. Here is a deffinition of murder.
murder n. the killing of a human being by a sane person, with intent, malice aforethought (prior intention to kill the particular victim or anyone who gets in the way), and with no legal excuse or authority.
So, soldiers do not (as a rule) murder. People acting in self defense do not murder, and capitol punishment is not murder.
#33 and #34,
it would be even cheaper to just tell the criminals that they were bad, give them a hug, and send them on their way. Think of how much money you could save, if in fact money is your only concern.
>>I refuse to accept that the convict is
>>“often” awake for the KCl.
Well, tough tits. Since they’re paralyzed (for reasons that remain obscure), they’re not going to tell you. However, evidence suggests that they are often (substitute “sometimes”, if you prefer) awake and in excruciating agony prior to their death. Kinda like being disemboweled, eh?
>>Would you like to debate
Nope. Either it’s wrong to kill/ murder someone, or it’s OK. There’s no debate.
#39,
the doctor who initialy came up with the three drug protocol was on NPR a month ago or so. He said that if he had it to do again, he would have left out the third drug, but he thought that the guillotine would be an perfectly acceptable solution as far as he was concerned.
I dissagree with your black and white “Either it’s wrong to kill/ murder someone, or it’s OK.” statement. I will repeat the legal definition here:
murder n. the killing of a human being by a sane person, with intent, malice aforethought (prior intention to kill the particular victim or anyone who gets in the way), and with no legal excuse or authority.
I cant think of a situation where murder would be ok (perhaps Hitler before he rose to power?), but can think of many instances where killing would be ok (the gaurd who shot the murderer in the church this week).
Wow, Godwin’s law strikes in 40 posts. 🙂
Given that the same induhviduals who oppose legalized abortion also support the death penalty, it seems that some people believe abortion should only be legal when state mandated after the 75th trimester.
#40 – Les,
Wow, Godwin’s law strikes in 40 posts.
Actually, Musty hit that way back on post #8.
#38 Les, either/or thinking is rarely useful.
My point was not that spending no money is better than spending lots of money for the sake of vengance. My point is that we can protect ourselves and punish the murderer for far less money than going through 10 or 15 years of expensive legal manoeuvers.
Perhaps you don’t care how the government spends your money but I want the most bang for the buck that I can get. I would rather spend my hard-earned tax dollars on police, firefighters, teachers, sanitation workers, and public utilities, things that will benefit everyone.
Instead, in every death penalty case we spend our hard earned tax dollars on lawyers. And we get no more benefit than if we merely locked up the murderer for the rest of his life.
>>doctor who initialy came up with the three drug
>>protocol ……. thought that the guillotine
>>would be an perfectly acceptable solution as far
>>as he was concerned.
Nice way to practice his Hipocratic Oath. He wasn’t Josef Mengele by any chance?
>>murder n. the killing of a human being by a
>>sane person, with intent, malice aforethought
>>(prior intention to kill the particular
>>victim or anyone who gets in the way), and
>>with no legal excuse or authority.
Gosh. Except for the “legal excuse” part, it sounds just like the death penalty! It may be a legal “excuse”, but it’s sure as shit not a moral or ethical justification.
#43,
the victims relatives might have a different view, and only the state is there to give them retribution. You are of course correct about either or thinking. I was being tounge in cheek. I was pointing out the same thing to musty in #40. I dont think he was being tounge in cheek though.
Mister Mustard cranks the Godwin’s law score to 3.
#28
It is no less barbaric than torturing someone for life.
#35
> if you support the death penalty
> then you yourself are a murderer
If you support torture for life, then you yourself are a torturer. Neither solution can really be considered “right.” The idea is to determine which one is “less wrong” and none of those justifications will have anything to do with morality.
#39
> Nope. Either it’s wrong to kill/ murder
> someone, or it’s OK. There’s no debate.
Nonsense. So, killing someone in self-defense is wrong?
#45 yes, the victims family and friends (victims themselves) might want revenge to include execution. I might also, in their position.
#44,
heres the info on the guy who cmae up with the drugs:
Dr. Jay Chapman, formerly chief medical examiner in Oklahoma.
#43
Looking at you numbers, it costs about $7,000,000 more to execute a convict as opposed to incarcerate for life. Give the about 15 years it takes to execute someone, lets call that $500,000 a year. My state has a population of about 4,000,000. So doing some very inaccurate math, my part of that is about 12 cents per year. I am more than happy to pay 12 cents of the thousands of dollars tax I pay evey year for this.
As long as people execute convicted murders to prevent them from killing again, the “vengeance” argument is a crock.
As long as people by the millions get their guts opened up under anaesthetic, the “wide awake” argument on the few who get executed is also a crock. What you mean to say is you’d like to see a different anaesthetic protocol used.
RBG
#10 – RBG
“Most important of all, you would run the collective risk of killing an innocent – the innocents killed by escaped or released murderers.”
Why beat around the bush? The “risk” of innocents dying at the hands of some of those spared execution is 100%. IOW, it’s a certainty. And that number will be, as it is now, far greater than the number of innocents executed. Bottom line: no more executions, more murders.
AND – if a Federal law were enacted prohibiting a sentence of death without tangible physical evidence of guilt, no innocents would be at risk of execution, since every one who has been exonerated was convicted solely on some combination of eyewitness and circumstantial evidence. Every single one.
That way we could have our justice cake and eat it too. Prevent murderers from any further murders while safeguarding all of those who may have been convicted in error. Win-win.
Nope. Too sensible. The dogmatic extremists on each side would reject it out of hand.
52 THC. Personally, I think your plan would allow the loopholes needed for even more murderers to be given the freedom to kill again. Not to mention it does nothing for the 10 murdered below in a jail or after escapes. Too bad we can’t ask some of the following innocent dead for their opinion. They get no trial.
Partial list of Murders That Could Have Been Averted By Capital Punishment
Charles Fitzgerald killed a deputy sheriff and was released after serving just 11 years, and in 1926 murdered a California policeman.
• In 1931, “Gypsy” Bob Harper, who had been convicted of murder, escaped from a Michigan prison and killed two persons. After being recaptured, he then killed the prison warden and his deputy.
• In 1936, former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported the case of a Florida prisoner who committed two murders, received clemency for each, and then murdered twice more. On March 17, 1971 Hoover told a congressional subcommittee that 19 of the killers responsible for the murder of policemen during the 1960s had been previously convicted of murder.
• In 1952, Allen Pruitt was arrested for the knife slaying of a newsstand. In 1965, he was charged with fatally stabbing a prison doctor and an assistant prison superintendent
• In 1957, Richard Biegenwald murdered a store owner during a robbery in New Jersey. He was convicted and later paroled. After which he shot and killed an 18-year-old Asbury Park, New Jersey girl. He also killed three other 17-year-old New Jersey girls and a 34-year-old man.
• A man convicted of murder in Oklahoma pleaded with the judge and jury to impose the death sentence, but was given life instead. He later killed a fellow inmate.
• In 1972, Arthur James Julius was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. In 1978, he was given a brief leave from prison, during which he raped and murdered a cousin.
• In 1976, Jimmy Lee Gray (who was free on parole from an Arizona conviction for killing a 16-year-old high school girl) kidnapped, sodomized, and suffocated a three-year-old Mississippi girl.
• Also in 1976, Timothy Charles Palmes was on probation for an earlier manslaughter conviction when he and two accomplices robbed and brutally murdered a Florida furniture store owner.
• In 1978, Wayne Robert Felde, while being taken to jail in handcuffs, pulled a gun hidden in his pants and killed a policeman. At the time, he was a fugitive from a work release program in Maryland, where he had been convicted of manslaughter.
• In 1979, Donald Dillbeck was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for murdering a Florida sheriffs deputy. In 1983, He escaped and stabbed a woman to death at a Tallahassee shopping mall.
• In 1981, author Norman Mailer and many other New York literati embraced convicted killer Jack Henry Abbott (who had murdered a fellow prison inmate) and succeeded in having him released early from a Utah prison. Abbott later stabbed actor Richard Adan to death in New York.
• On October 22, 1983 at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, two prison guards were murdered in two separate instances by inmates who were both serving life terms for previously murdering inmates.
• On December 7, 1984 Benny Lee Chaffin kidnapped, raped, and murdered a 9-year-old Springfield, Oregon girl. He had been convicted of murder once before in Texas, but not executed
• Thomas Eugene Creech, who had been convicted of three murders and had claimed a role in more than 40 killings in 13 states as a paid killer for a motorcycle gang, killed a fellow prison inmate in 1981.
Kenneth Allen McDuff 1998 — freed from death row and then returned after killing again.
Autopsy Set for Priest Killed in Prison. Joseph L. Druce, 37, who received a life sentence in 1989 for murder, armed robbery and other counts, was placed in isolation and will face murder charges in priest’s death.
2007. Daniel Tavares Jr. served 16 years in a Massachusetts prison for killing his mother with a carving knife. Tavares now faces two counts of aggravated murder in the killing of a newlywed couple in Washington state after his release.
53 – Life without parole.
That would have saved all those lives too (except the two prison guards), without forcing the American government (what’s left of it) to stoop the the same level as the criminals.
How would being in jail for life have spared these people? In fact, life would provide even more opportunities for killers to kill again.
2: escaped from a Michigan prison and killed two persons
2: After being recaptured, he then killed the prison warden and his deputy.
2: fatally stabbing a prison doctor and an assistant prison superintendent
1: killed a fellow inmate
1: while being taken to jail in handcuffs, pulled a gun hidden in his pants and killed a policeman.
1: escaped and stabbed a woman to death
2: two prison guards were murdered
1: killed a fellow prison inmate
1: Autopsy Set for Priest Killed in Prison
Total from above: 13.
RBG
Jesus… I’m agreeing with Mister Mustard again..
… are these the end times?
…and I’m in agreement w/ RBG.
Allah works in mysterious ways, do he not?
#54
Let’s not kid ourselves by thinking that punishing someone for life is any more moral than executing them. Both are equally wrong in their own way but are necessary in the interest of protecting society as a whole.
IMO, the argument that you might find them not guilty (no one is ever deemed innocent anymore) later down the road is weak because it presumes that little or no harm was done and that is clearly not true. The psychological, financial and emotional damage caused by arresting, charging and incarcerating someone, even if later released is irreparable. Further, the State makes no attempt at providing any sort of compensation for their mistake.
Frankly, the only reasonable argument against capital punishment is cost. If the overall process of capital punishment were comparable in cost to life imprisonment, then capital punishment would be the better solution for the very reasons RBG presented: it eliminates recidivism. However, that is not the current state of affairs nor do I ever believe it will be. I’m not sure that the appeals process nor the high costs that go along with those appeals can ever be realistically reduced. Thus, it makes sense to chose the less expensive solution.
While we’re at it let’s analyze the direct and indirect costs of “I would rather see a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent man imprisoned.” Most people don’t realize that Thomas Jefferson said that based on advice from his accountant.
That said, in the real world, society – especially lawyers and and the Righteous – has/have never had any problem throwing whatever Other People’s Money is necessary at a case in the name of justice. Economy and Justice are mutually exclusive terms. If you believe otherwise, let’s try economy first.
RBG
#58–Thomas==Just what are you thinking of: “Let’s not kid ourselves by thinking that punishing someone for life is any more moral than executing them. Both are equally wrong in their own way.”
Really?
So, your ready alternative is what?===prefrontal lobotomy or chemical sonombulation?
#60
Yes really. I’m thinking that you have no idea what maximum security prisons in the US are like. Yes, both are morally wrong with respect to the individual. However, to ask of an alternative is a completely different question. Since neither solution is morally superior, we must look to alternate metrics to determine which is a “better” solution and that brings us back to cost.
As long as killers can escape and/or kill again without being stopped, execution has to be accepted as the cost of doing business – like safety equipment is. If cost was the only issue to be concerned with, all prisoners would simple be set free with ankle braclets. But again, that wouldn’t be safe for society.
RBG