Can a vein save a convicted killer? It the case of Romell Broom—it might. Broom was sentenced to death for raping and murdering 14-year-old Tryna Middleton on Sept. 21, 1984. Broom isn’t supposed to be alive to witness the 25th anniversary of Middleton’s death—but he is. Last Tuesday, the execution team at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility spent several hours trying unsuccessfully to find a viable vein for a lethal injection. Now, Ohio is faced with the difficult task of determining whether it can try to execute Broom a second time, after it botched the first attempt.
Broom’s execution was originally rescheduled for Sept. 22—but that won’t be his last day either. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost issued a 10-day temporary restraining order that will prohibit the second execution attempt from happening. A new execution date cannot be set unless someone, it could be the state or the victim’s family, files a motion with the Ohio Supreme Court. So far, no motion has been submitted. In the meantime, Broom’s attorney will begin to litigate U.S. Constitution, Ohio Constitution, and Ohio statutory claims on his client’s behalf. “Broom should not be executed because the state tried once and failed,” said Tim Sweeney, Broom’s defense attorney. Sweeney hopes Broom’s prison sentence will be converted from death row to life in prison.
Newsweek – Sep 21, 2009:
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Damn, that girl’s hot… she can kill as many criminals she want…
#30–Jag==She’s a lib. I think symbolically she is shitting on the death penalty. But I’d kill just about anybody for one night with her.
#29–Phydeau==I’m a competing lib who also loves the label. I agree with you, but lets quibble: Its not “the government” that is putting a guilty person to death: it is “the people.” Now, that can be real rough around the edges, but when most people support the death penalty, I wouldn’t raise the bugga-boo of “big bad government” to sway to gullible.
Like abortion, the death penality should be safe, rare, and provided when needed.
#31 Bobbo, I understand your viewpoint. Mine is that “we the people” have supported a number of unsavory things like slavery, no vote for women, Jim Crow laws, laws against blacks and whites marrying, that looking back on, we slap our forehead and say “what were we the people thinking???” I happen to believe the death penalty is going to be one of those. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
#32–Phydeau==hypothetically: what if only guilty people got the juice?
#33 You’d have to throw in 100% conclusive proof that it is a deterrent to crime. (The actual evidence seems to indicate it’s not a deterrent.) And 100% certainty that the person was a cold-blooded killer, not a human being who made a stupid foolish decision. And 100% certainty that killing the killer would help the victim’s family heal.
But by now you’re getting into the same neighborhood as the hypothetical “ticking time bomb” scenarios that some people use to justify torture. If all these hypotheticals lined up, sure. But they won’t, so the answer is no. For me, anyway.
And yes, even if someone murdered my dearest family member, I would think the same way. I would have feelings of rage, but containing feelings and acting according to principles is a hallmark of civilization. I’d like to be civilized. And no, I’m not a pacifist.
#34–Phydeau==a liberal but not intellectually honest. Hypotheticals reveal that sometimes. Answer yes or no, don’t waffle all around and then answer a different question.
Very liberal of you though.
My answer: Yes. THEN you say, this is what make hypotheticals irrelevant because the premises can never be met. They do help sort out the various issues though, should anyone actually want to understand an issue.
#35 bobbo, don’t know what you mean by not intellectually honest. If all those hypotheticals were true, then I would consider debating the merits of such a death penalty.
Calling someone intellectually dishonest because they don’t answer your hypothetical questions with clear yes or no answers is bogus. Like LL and his bizarre “would you save ten people or your wife” question.
#32-Phydeau-“we the people” have supported a number of unsavory things…
I wouldn’t classify it as unsavory, but I’m willing to revisit the – no vote for women part.
Given the emotional and motherly tendencies of most females it is easy to see how we swerved into being a nanny state.
Another clue is the insistence that the government take care of everyone.
You are right, sometimes we should slap our forehead and say “what were we the people thinking???”
#36–Phydeau==OUCH!!!! Comparing me to LL is way harsh, even after I accurately pulled your chain.
You are wrong. Hypotheticals are not true or false. They isolate an issue and ask for a response.
Right now, I still don’t know if you are for or against death penalty “on principle” or pragmatically. I am for the death penalty in principle but against it pragmatically.
Phydeau: if only guilty people got the juice, would you support it or not?
Anyone who supports State sponsored execution is a bad as the Chinese and their death buses.
#39–Hugh==whats wrong with executing guilty people?
#39 – Hugh Ripper – Anyone who supports State sponsored execution is a bad as the Chinese and their death buses.
Which is state sponsored execution, correct?
Apologies for the glib comment.
Bobbo – I’m assuming your taking the piss with #40.
Jag – Any form of State sponsored execution is barbaric and has no place in a democracy IMHO. I’m surprised that many American’s, with their holy-than-thou libertarian anti-statist, anti communofacistosocialsimowhatevero bent, would sanction it.
#42–Hugh==not an unreasonable assumption, but no. I think certain heinous crimes do fairly raise the question about whether or not the death penalty is warranted. Its a moral question always fun to tease thru the various easy hypocrisies to determine if it is a well held conviction, or just brain dead regurgitated dogma.
Nothing is more fun to sniff thru than regurgitated dogma.
Even more fun==how much free health care should a prisoner for life get when he killed others for whatever reason. Morals are fine in a vacuum, its only the real world that causes pause.
Take that guy just released to Libya. If he crashed an airplane killing 280 people (whatever) I don’t see a strong moral argument for keeping him alive. The fact that he may not have done it is a separate argument that Phydeau is not able to discern. Perhaps you can do better?
And the last prisoner says “Im no engineer, but if you use the pointy end of the syringe its gona work better”
#43 Bobbo
“how much free health care should a prisoner for life get when he killed others for whatever reason”
I think being incarcerated in a prison, that is having most of your freedoms taken away, is punishment enough. Even with so called ‘free health care’ prison no picnic. Preventing the criminal from re-offending is the aim of the exercise, no?
Perhaps the gradual erosion of basic rights and freedoms have closed the gap between prison and non-prison life, making incarceration seem like a holiday with free health care.
Having said that, many see the aim of the justice system as dealing out the ‘lost’ Christian virtues of punishment and retribution. An eye for an eye that leaves everyone blind.
The idea that if you take a life in vain you pay with your own is not intrinsically immoral IMHO. Its guaranteeing guilt that worries me. Is the execution of 19 guilty men worth the life of the 20th that is wrongly convicted?
The State is so endemically corrupt I have no great faith in such judgements.
Phydeau: if only guilty people got the juice, would you support it or not?
Short answer: I don’t know.
Long answer: in my late-night college bull sessions, I discussed many mythological concepts, but a fairly applied death penalty was not among them. (I was more concerned with issues like if I had the brain of a genius and a body of a god, would I attract both the smart girls and the hot girls, or would I turn both types off?)
There are so many obvious problems with the application of the death penalty that it doesn’t really matter if in some hypothetical world as I specified in #34 a fairly applied death penalty might be OK. Whether it does or not, it wouldn’t affect my opinion of the death penalty in the real world, which is that it’s not possible for it to be applied fairly and justly. That is so clear to me that I’ve never really found it necessary to speculate about hypothetical worlds.
But tell you what, let’s have a beer sometime and I’ll speculate all you want about the death penalty in that hypothetical world. And whether torture is justified by “ticking time bomb” scenarios, whether I would sacrifice my wife for 10 strangers, and how the heck unicorns are born with that horn. 🙂
# 43 bobbo, liberal, conservative and pragmatic,
As usual, you parsed your arguments on lots of false dichotomies in an effort to show certitude, a false certitude.
If only all cases could be settled with honest certitude; not a certitude of political or social theory but a rigorous analysis of known facts with out any false reasoning or logic.
Unfortunately given the reactionary and media educated masses (just look at the health care debate), it seems best to error on the side of caution.
As far as cost, some prominent Californians have asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to get rid of executions. Especially now, as service cuts and tax increases are pegged to fill a $42 billion budget hole.
Late in the day to tumble into a worthy discussion. We have two lively issues–the role of a hypothetical in analysing an issue, and the issue of capital punishment.
My hypo re capital punish does in fact sharpen the issues and moves the anlysis along. If you disagree, you really can’t tell until you answer it and then the discussion ensues. I recall answering LL’s hypo with a dig and no discussion followed. Fair enough.
The point is: there is a lot that should be done to protect innocents against the death penalty. Standards of Proof, process, review etc. There is no reason to get into that if you maintain “Thou shalt not kill” as core dogma. Making that clear distinction can save a lot of time with whom you discuss certain issues with.
There are some other ways to approach the moral question: do some people “deserve” to die, is close but different from the first question.
If a society decides to take the death penalty off the table for those who are surely guilty ((confession, dna evidence, videotape all agree)), it still makes little sense to confuse such a person with someone else who is in jail because of civil protest or harm only to himself?
Why should an honest tax paying citizen die from lack of cancer care while a jailed death deserving prisoner gets it for free? Does THAT make sense to anyone? Should I be against the death penalty as another argument in favor of single payer? And so forth.
#45–Hugh==the foregoing answers most of your issues, may have to pick thru it to see it?
#46–Phydeau==the more relevant discussion would have been how can I get the girls I want with what I’ve got? There are “techniques” to help every one of us. You certainly do waffle all over the place. I don’t think that is being balanced or informed. I call that lack of analysis. We probably only differ by a few onces. A pound of difference in how we characterize it.
I think the death penalty is NOT FAIRLY imposed now, but I think it is possible to do so. Possible in a way that greatly reduces the risk of innocents being convicted to near zero==but no absolutes. I also think the difference between death and life in prison is close enough as to not be worth the argument “until” the healthcare issue is hypothesized.
Hypotheticals are a lot like building blueprints don’t you think? Design something based on experience and construct your system that way? Not just do whatever you are too lazy to figure out and hope it works?
Both of us drinking beers at the same time is as close as we can get, and problably 80% as fun? Pick some Friday Night?
#47–nosense==name 1-2-3 dichotomies?
Bobbo, that’s what I ended up with re the girls… go with what you got. 🙂 Same thing with the death penalty… and what we got is something that can’t be applied fairly. You may think that someday we can apply the death penalty fairly. I disagree. But if you’re so confident, how about we stop executing them for a while until that time arrives?
Here’s a principle for you: I’d rather have 100 lowlifes rotting in jail the rest of their lives than execute one innocent man. You may have decided that executing the occasional innocent person is acceptable “collateral damage” for the ability to execute all those lowlifes. If so, we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Speaking of which, did you read about that man in Texas executed for murdering his children (via arson) who was exonerated? Whoops, too late… our bad! No hard feelings, right?
http://stopexecutions.blogspot.com/2009/08/texas-executed-innocent-person-cameron.html
Hypotheticals can be like building blueprints. But if your blueprints involve six hundred story tall buildings made of green cheese, then they’re just fantasy. Like many hypotheticals.
#49–Phydeau==You keep injecting more disagreement between us than I repeatedly affirm we have. Hypotheticals got us off on that path. They will tend to do that.
You know the joke: the first trick to getting girls is learning to fake sincerity. And its no joke.
“You may think that someday we can apply the death penalty fairly.” /// I never said anything even close to that. Why don’t you fake Paying Attention?
“I’d rather have 100 lowlifes rotting in jail the rest of their lives than execute one innocent man. ” /// Well, thats one formulation. The more common one is “100 guilty people set free, than one person left to rot in jail forever.” Again, close questions, but not the same.
Yea, the purely circumstantial case should be “by law” not able to convict. This is only another example that such evidence does not rise above a reasonable doubt. Same with convictions based on jail house snitches, single eye-witness testimony, a host of other issues.
The able arguer does not equate blueprints with blue cheese. One has value and should not be rejected just for the smell of Limburger.
None. Life in prison is a worse punishment than death anyway.
#48 Bobbo
IMHO there is no way to determine guilt with 100% accuracy, and I wouldn’t trust the State to determine this guilt reliably even if there was. Therefore incarceration and deprivation of liberty it the only practical and humane alternative. Even that is pretty harsh if you’re wrongly convicted but I see no practical alternative.
The question of weather you would kill 10 strangers to save a loved one is tricky, but if any one of these strangers is an innocent, that makes you a murderer and as guilty as the one you wish retribution upon. Its a risky proposition.
Generally speaking I’m of the ‘thou shalt not kill’ opinion, but then again none of my loved ones have been victims of a brutal crime, so I have no idea how that feels and how that would affect my feeling on the matter.
As for health care, Bobbo, wouldn’t the answer be to even the score and give the taxpayer universal care, just like prisoner gets?
#50 “You may think that someday we can apply the death penalty fairly.” /// I never said anything even close to that. Why don’t you fake Paying Attention?
bobbo in #48: I think the death penalty is NOT FAIRLY imposed now, but I think it is possible to do so.
No need to fake it bobbo… I’m a natural. 🙂
#53–““You may think that someday we can apply the death penalty fairly.” /// I doubt that someday we would ever apply the death penalty fairly. I DO THINK AND POSTED, that is was merely possible to do. Not a difficult distinction.
#52–Hugh==”IMHO there is no way to determine guilt with 100% accuracy,” /// I agree, which is why I said near zero.
“kill 10 strangers” /// Relatively easy all down to morals and ideology with the understanding that “you” aren’t killing anyone, rather the person who set up the situation did==or not, depending on specifics. You are unfairly adding quite a lot to the hypo to go to “not innocent strangers.” Stay within the hypo. Its always “unjust” to kill more instead of a few. The fact that your emotions pull you one way or the other doesn’t change the justice/philosophical question.
“As for health care, Bobbo, wouldn’t the answer be to even the score and give the taxpayer universal care, just like prisoner gets?” /// Of course, thats what I said, or strongly implied.
Funny how you guys don’t engage what is said and plainly meant. No wonder arguing with people that actually disagree with you is even more problematic.
# 48 bobbo,
I’ll show you one, the other are for to dig out with your own work.
Let’s start with a definition.
dichotomy: a puzzling situation which seems to involve a contradiction, but this use is generally thought to be incorrect.
# 48 bobbo said
“Take that guy just released to Libya. If he crashed an airplane killing 280 people (whatever) I don’t see a strong moral argument for keeping him alive.”
1.) You second sentence raises a question, since you started the sentence with “if”. 2.) Then you provide a conclusion in the 3rd sentence with out an answer to your “if” question.
3.) Your conclusion in the 3rd sentence expresses a certitude that contradicts the uncertainty raised in your “if” question.
That kind of reasoning is bogus, disingenuous and intellectually dishonest.
# 48 bobbo
Just to be clear, in case you should claim it.
# 48 bobbo said
“Take that guy just released to Libya. If he crashed an airplane killing 280 people (whatever)”
is not the if of an if-then statement where if X is true then Y -known respectively as the antecedent and consequent, formulae of a formal theory.
#55–nosense==you took that long and you still got it wrong? Hah, hah.
You have the definition of dichotomy wrong. Closer but still wrong would be identifying a “false dichotomy” but you got that wrong too. Then you win the trifeca by getting the conditional phrase if-then also wrong.
Really Dude–actually read that dictionary, its not just a doorstop.
@Hugh Ripper
If someone like Richard Allen Davis or this Garrido guy rapped, kidnapped, or murdered my daughter, I can guarantee there wouldn’t be any state involved in his execution. I’d do it myself.
BTW, good thing The United States isn’t a democracy, it’s a Republic.
#52–hugh==really take to heart TooManyPuppies. As a matter of fact, some people really don’t deserve to live. Or being incarcerated, don’t deserve what should be common decency offered from one person to another for their OWN benefit. Richard Allen Davis and the rest of the serial killers are of that type. Let 95% of those on death row now serve life sentences. Still, there are “some” that life in jail affronts the common decency. So does waiting 20 years to perform the execution. So Does having a system convict innocent people. Or, one can disagree, and the reasons they do need to be understood. Two way street.