The death penalty...what good does it do?

I urge you to find the Innocennce Project and see the dozens and dozens of people released from death row. A quick death penalty would have killed them all

 

If life in prison is worse than death then understand that inmates don't agree with you. Every single one tries to reverse a death sentence.

 

You won't see any posts from me saying executions should be expedited at the expense of due process or appeal.

 

Public prisons are expensive, and private prisons undermine the labor market. Neither are a good answer to dealing with the criminal class.

However, giving the state authority to murder folks is dangerous as well.

Gladitorial combat, anyone? I kid, but theres gotta be another solution.

 

The U.S. is also one of the few nations with a substantial number of people serving life without parole.

I'm betting that if the death penalty disappears critics will start in on the use of life without parole.

 

You asked what good it does. The answer is that it provides justice.

 

Capital punishment is the most cold-blooded of murders. The state frequently begins with the cruel and unusual punishment of isolation and sensory deprivation. Then the state acts for its citizens by shooting, electrocuting, gassing, hanging or poisoning an individual who wasn't rich enough to hire a good enough attorney. Strange that the wealthy, when placed on trial, seem always to get off or get light sentences. Of course, it also helps to be white.

In the 1970's, Jessica Mitford argued that prisons only do harm and that we would have a less violent society if they were abolished. Probably still a good argument.

 

There have been wealthy people executed before.

 

The current system of court appointed attorneys working for very little has often left accused with inadequate defense. I'm sure some wealthy people have been executed, but not the same percentage as the poor. I do know that a list of executed who were later proven innocent of the crimes for which they were murdered by the state included no one who was wealthy.

 

The Constitution does not require a long and complex judicial process for capital cases, and there is no Constitutional requirement for mandatory review.

Seeing how your source cannot even correctly parse the Constitution, I seriously doubt their ability to conduct proper research.

That is absolutely correct.

In many murders, the body has been disposed, and the death penalty may be used as a bargaining chip to recover the body of the murder victim to provide closure for the family.

The States may enact legislation to ensure safeguards, such as mandatory appellate review for death penalty cases, where the appellate court may issue of stay of execution on the basis of circumstantial evidence, or where conviction was based solely on witness testimony.

I call bull-****.

Double Jeopardy attaches.

No pedophile has ever been rehabilitated. It simply isn't possible. Since they are of no value to Society, there's no problem terminating them.

The Poor™ have the option of pleading guilty to avoid the death penalty if the want to do that.

 

All but one of the judges on the U.S. Supreme Court said it didn't:
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/474/82/case.html

 

Yeah that's all well and good until one of your loved ones is murdered. The victims will never enjoy even a nano second more of life but because of hand wringers and panty wearers our penal system has been so perversely altered that life in prison doesn't mean life at all, even life without parole is subject to review and in rare cases appeals. Execution should never be carried out unless there's absolutely no question of guilt. Those who make such a determination must be meticulous in their examination of evidence and be able to rule out anything contrary to the evidence. Any argument based on cost is irrelevant as is the suffering of those incarcerated. When one loses a loved one their suffering is doubled just knowing that those responsible for that loss are going on with their lives even if that is behind bars. To add insult to injury the aggrieved may at some point find that by some impossible set of circumstances the murder is set free and some group of idiots will be patting themselves on the back for having rehabilitated a monster. The death penalty should be the law of the land and carried cautiously but expeditiously.

 

This is an argument that is rarely considered correctly. May i suggest? Two points of view.

1. The death penalty WORKS.
If you break into a house to do harm and find yourself looking at an armed citizen, you are looking at the death penalty. It is imminent. It is not subject to any kind of appeal. No question of mistaken identification, no technicalities to hide behind. Unless you are an idiot or high on drugs, you WILL believe it. If you wish to live longer than 60 seconds- you will comply with any order immediately.
And if it becomes necessary to use it, that criminal will never break into another home or be a threat to another person. It is a deterrent in multiple ways- Current crime instantly prevented, future crime prevented, example for other criminals is crystal clear.

2. The death penalty does NOT WORK.
The way the legal system applies the death penalty, things are much different.

* A murderer might get caught. (the chances are around 64%. That is the "clearance rate", it is not convicted, just arrested or identified. 1/3 of murders are never solved.
* If the murderer is arrested- He may not be convicted.
* If convicted, a murderer is unlikely to get the death penalty sentence.
* If given the death penalty sentence, it is unlikely it will happen at all.
* If it does happen, it will probably be 15 years later

So, we have an armed citizen that gives a choice to a criminal (if they are lucky) between surrender and dying in the next minute. Few people will fail to choose to die, they will comply.

We have a court that says, if you kill- we may eventually catch you; if we do there is a fair chance we will convict you, a lesser chance you may be sentenced to death, and virtually no chance that it will actually happen, and if it does happen, it may not occur before you die of natural causes in prison.

When the death penalty is seen as an idle threat due to so many ambiguous conditions, it has no credibility. It becomes an empty threat to the criminal, while creating huge legal bills for the taxpayers to pick up. That makes no sense.

We could change that, if we wanted to. Cases with absolute certainty of guilt could be allowed only one appeal and review to verify the procedures and conviction. Execution would then take place within a short time- perhaps 60 days. Such a case would be the Carr brothers, now imprison in Kansas for killing four people, attempting to kill a fifth, who survived and identified them. That was in 2000, 18 years ago. Not the slightest doubt of guilt. No provocation, no mitigating circumstances, just absolute evil without remorse. State supreme court overturned death conviction for procedural flaws. in 2014, hearing it again in 2017. This pair murdered for fun, and they are still hanging around us. Why?

 

Even when they are innocent. Some who believe in surrendering the power over life and death to the State believe that the State is infallible, but it is not, not China, not Iran, not North Korea, not Syria, not the United States, not Sudan, not Iraq, not Somalia - not any of the nations that persist in killing citizens under a pretext of law enforcement.

 

so many in jail costs money and a burden on others who pay to keep them alive.

 

The death penalty provides justice for the victim's families.

It guarantees the perp won't kill again.

And, hopefully, it makes the guilty party sh-t his pants on his final walk.

 

Properly applied, the DP rids society of murderers once and for all, and presents a deterrent to prospective murderers.

No they don't.

That's not a consequence of the DP, but of the impediments to it in the legal system.

You don't know what the hell you're talking about.

 

I oppose death as a form of punishment.

I do not oppose death as a consequence of self defense.

There’s some gray between those two statements that is difficult to define without situational context.

 

...and you have such absolute confidence in the integrity, competence, and incorruptibility of the legal system?

You'd trust them to be right in 100% of cases?

 

`I'm sure someone has already pointed this out, but it costs way more to prosecute a death penalty case than it costs to imprison a criminal for life without parole.

It cannot be justified on efficiency grounds because it is less efficient. Therefore, the death penalty is a symbolic spite measure. Nothing more.

 

So use it in those very extreme and uncommon cases where spite is called for.

 

Spite is never called for.

 

There is a situational element here. If it were not the case that our legal system were creating so many problems for itself, and I am referring here to vice crimes and their second order effects as well as the convoluted appeals system set up for death row, then more scrutiny could be applied to individual cases of atrocities. If someone is convicted of a murder and the motive is a repetitive compulsion constitutionally important to the condemned, why would we not kill them? I scratch my head and wonder why Charlie Manson was allowed to die of old age or why it was a bad thing that John Wayne Gacy was executed.

Perform the following thought experiment. Knowing what someone did, could you tolerate them in proximity to women and children without coercing them to leave. Could you go to sleep knowing they were loose and around you? If the answer is no than execution seems pretty legit.

Why not? Imagine a girl who was drugged, rapped to death and then lit on fire by her mom and her moms boyfriend. Just how are people supposed to react to that news? There are crimes that are beyond the pale and deserve violent reaction. Violence should be sparing but it should be available. Irredeemable evil should be stamped out.

 

You can’t base justice on vengeance or on private feelings, otherwise any form of justice would be meaningless and the basis of all laws i.e. ‘Innocent until proven Guilty’
Guilt cannot be decided on emotion alone unless you want to remove justice for a desire for vengeance.

 

These things are not mutually exclusive. One can seek reprisal while being sure of the guilt of their target. This is the entire operating principle of the criminal justice system. No one would support locking someone in a cage unless they were sure of that persons guilt. Vengeance is just what happens when an individual takes this upon themselves. The criminal justice system is in large part a collectivized form of vengeance. It is collectivized in order to get the clearest picture possible of what has actually transpired and to eliminate as much individual error as possible. It's still reciprocal force and could be accurately described as such.