Biden promises to end death penalty after DECADES of advocating for it

Joe Biden has promised to end capital punishment at the federal level after decades of advocating for it as a senator.


https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...acts-on-vow-to-end-federal-capital-punishment

https://www.motherjones.com/crime-j...-now-he-wants-to-stop-trumps-execution-spree/

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/20/joe-biden-death-penalty-1371932


Talk about inconsistencies. This man has flip-flopped more than Mitt Romney, and that's not an easy feat to beat.
(And this certainly is far from the only example of that)
Will Biden take on whatever position is required to consolidate support from his support base?

 

Your horse died.

The country goes hot and cold on punishment. What happens is we get all excited and push for harsh treatment. We then have plenty of time to watch what we've done, and change our collective mind.

That's what is happening here. The country has changed it's mind.

In addition to the usual swing to the Left, the rising activism of Blacks has added an awareness of racial bias, which is making the shift more pronounced than usual. I don't know why Koch got involved, but recently Koch added it's support to the criminal reform movement. The ACLU and Koch working towards the same goal? Never thought I'd see that happen.

It's about time. Every aspect of the justice system, from cops to Supreme Court justices needs reform. Esp. where the death penalty is concerned. Usually the states that want to kill have crap judicial systems.

 

Seems kinda moot, considering most death row inmates stand a better chance dying of old age rather than execution.

 

The country hasn't changed it's mine, Biden flip flopped.

Starting the excuses already are you?

Nothing Biden has ever done is relevant since he will now go with whatever seems popular.

He will be like Obama and let the polls run his presidency.

 

The Death Penalty should NOT be decided by juries or judges IMO because neither can be impartial having been exposed to the trial itself.

instead if a defendant is found guilty of one of the crimes for which the DP applies then there should be an automatic referral to a DP panel set up for the specific purpose of deciding whether the severity of the crime warrants the DP. They will get to review all of the evidence and then make an impartial ruling. If the rule FOR the DP then the lawyers for the defendant can still appeal to higher courts so the DP panel must have a ruling that is consistent and justifiable.

The advantage of this method is that it REMOVES the ONUS of the DP from the trial itself. The judge and jury can focus on just the facts establishing guilt or innocence. They do not need to concern themselves with the "morality" of the DP itself.

IMO the DP should be RARE and justifiably warranted BEYOND any doubt whatsoever. The instances where we see the mentally disabled on death row should never happen because an impartial independent DP panel would decide that while the defendant did commit the murder the degree of mental disability was such that the act was not committed by someone capable of having a full understanding that it was wrong to murder.

 

Screw that, cops should decide guilt or innocence and shoot them on the spot if he thinks they are guilty.

Don't need the courts.

I guarantee that the country will become very friendly very quickly.

 

I oppose the death penalty for several reasons. Just the same no one really knows what Biden believes. I don’t know if he knows what he believes.

 

the dp costs more, and it's the get out of jail free card

 

yeah, cause that is what happens in all countries where the cops are corrupt

 

You guys would never have been duped into voting for Donald Trump as the pro life candidate, would you? You could never trust someone who flip flopped on an issue like that after years of being pro choice?

 

Trump is going to live in the head of every liberal or Democrat for the rest of their life.


Every criticism of Biden in the future will be be responded to with “but but but Trump.”

 

During Trump’s term, when did he ever execute any policy or make any decision which stabbed pro life people in the back?

 

As long as we can shoot cops when they break the law too.

 

He should have no problem doing it. After all, Democrats generally don't like it, and Republicans consider themselves the "party of life" so clearly they oppose killing people. That is how it works, right?

 

Do you deny a person's right to learn & grow & change their mind about an issue that involves a human life? Do you still have the same view on every issue you had when you were a teenager, or in your early twenties? I don't. What's wrong with the maturing process? Doesn't it involve changing one's mind on things?

 

The problem is that people who are most against the death penalty, will stretch logic in any inconsistent direction to argue against it (because their real objection is a moral one) while its strongest advocates are willing to look the other way at exculpatory evidence of those who've been executed, or at statistics showing blatant racial bias in who receives the death penalty, as well as at problems that have arisen in administering lethal injections.

I think my general feelings about it are more mainstream than those at the two extremes, above, but that also includes my being less incentivized by the issue to either base my vote on it, or become an activist. That mainstream view is that the death penalty should be rare, but in certain cases it does seem justified. The MOST IMPORTANT thing, though, is that NO ONE gets put to death who might later be found to have been innocent. A possible remedial step would be to raise the standard for a death verdict way beyond simply, beyond a reasonable doubt, to something more like, to an absolute certainty.

I even have a way to ensure this standard would be kept, though I realize it is not a plan with any hope of being enacted. Yet, if the law were to stipulate, w/ no statute if limitations, that both the judge & the members of the jury involved in convicting someone to death, should that person ever be exonerated, should be forced to serve a 5 year mandatory prison sentence, you can be sure that no one would get the death penalty unless the evidence was SO overwhelming, so indisputable, that even a blind man would be DAMN CERTAIN that the person was guilty. This would reduce, naturally, the number of death sentences to only those few in which there was not the slightest possibility if innocence-- and wouldn't that be a good thing?

As to the problems that states have been having administering lethal drug cocktails, this is puzzling to me-- haven't there been books written, full of deadly recipes for suicide? We never hear of cases of Dr. Kevorkian, for example, that were problemmatic in achieving their ends. In fact, I remember seeing an old movie w/ George C. Scott as a doctor, General Hospital, I think, was the title, in which they even talk about how large an injection of some form of potassium was known to stop the heart (the doctor was contemplating suicide). So why all the difficulty?

Though, if I had a choice, I don't think I'd opt for injection. While I realize this might seem overly gruesome to the perceptions of most Americans, the guillotine was actually a very humane way to execute: very swift, and 100% effective.

 

Biden has flip flopped on everything except high taxes and gun bans. He was for taxing Social Security.

 

Usually the states, like Texas, that want to kill have the crappiest justice systems.

There is a lot of hypocrisy with the death penalty. We got lethal injections because they looked humane. But at the same time, the cocktail make the person suffer while suppressing the appearance of suffering.

I live in Maine, we don't have a death penalty. We voted on it recently, and rejected it again.

The use of the death penalty has been in decline in the West for generations, and for very good reasons. Let it die.

 

Modifying one's position on an issue isn't necessarily a bad thing. Rigidly clinging to a position, can be a bad thing.

 

Only if you have no principles.

 

No one is an expert at everything, and even expert opinions are often dependent on incomplete knowledge. If one is objective and intelligent, one's position OUGHT to evolve as one learns more.

 

I'm not a big fan of death penalty, but in my country it led to a general judicial laxism, letting ultra violent criminals run free to ruin more people lives, so I would sometimes being tempted to get that big old guillotine back.

 

Well it is more than flip-flopping. His infamous crime bill created several new death penalty offenses. He is probably now afraid Hunter and his cohorts could stumble into one of them one day.

 

Just as abandoning your principles to placate your left wing can be a bad thing as well. Make democrats explain then their gulags using reconciliation counsels. Ask when democrats demand that trump supporters be killed. Ask whether that applies to them.

 

The only problem I see with it is how certain can we be that anyone did anything. Just no reasonable doubt isn't enough for life and death IMO.

OTOH if the event particulars are COMPLETELY certain and the crime is very heinous I have no problem with it.

But then OTOOH wouldn't life in solitary on bread and water make death preferable? And my knowledge is that we do that now with escapees.