It surprises some people that I’m not a fan of the death penalty, given my line of work. It was part of my line of work that showed me wrongful convictions do happen. In Patrick Radden Keefe’s book on criminals, “Rogues,” we find this quote on page 258: “The administration of capital punishment is notoriously prone to error. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 155 death-row inmates have been exonerated, and it stands to reason that innocent people still face execution.” Share your thoughts. What is your opinion on the topic, and the reason for your opinion?
The only way in which I am in favor of capital punishment is if the perpetrator actually REQUESTS it as a form of suicide as an alternative to a life at hard labor. People (or savage animals, sometimes, who in my estimation don’t qualify as people) who have been convicted of crimes horrific enough to have (otherwise) earned a death penalty should be put into prisons in the middle of nowhere (say, a North Dakota prairie) in basic but not comfortable shelter, provided a minimum of food, and work their butts off for the rest of their life to earn a pittance of money, 100% of which goes as partial restitution for any survivors of their victims.
I’m thinking something along the lines of the gulag portrayed in “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, but with better food and clothing. The guards would need to be rotated in and out of the prisons to prevent them from too much interaction with the prisoners, who would be shot the instant they assault anyone else.
We are giving the actors for the State (by which I mean any governmental body) a tremendous responsibility in the prosecution and conviction of murderers, but if someone in such a system is eventually found to have been erroneously convicted, we may not be able to give them back the time spent in prison, but at least they’ve still got their life. If the State has executed someone, there aren’t any take-backs or do-overs…they’re dead forever.
I don’t want the State to have that power except in time of war.
I’m against the death penalty. Because I’m not infallible. No human is. So, yes, it is likely that innocent people have been executed.
Rather than abolish capital punishment, perhaps we should apply it to those in power who abuse it to punish those who are not obviously guilty of the crime. There is error and then there is malice. Beyond a reasonable doubt seems to cover the error part of the problem. Whether the malice part is caused by racism, ideology or simply ambition is immaterial. It undermines legitimacy.
NH has a handful of legislative bills this year, currently in the throes of public hearings, endeavoring to reinstate the (relatively recently departed) death penalty. This is my repeatedly submitted testimony:
Question: When is an individual justified in using deadly force?
Answer: Under conditions of a credible imminent threat of grievous bodily harm to self or innocent others.
I do not consent to a government that operates under looser requirements than individuals do, that may legally kill without similar sober justification — even if it could somehow guarantee that it would never get the verdict wrong (which, of course, it can’t).
No credible imminent threat? No lawful killing. Not even by the State (perhaps ESPECIALLY not by the State). Simple.
And if a defendant in custody IS such a credible imminent threat, then you’ve got bigger problems.
I believe in the death penalty because of Genesis 9:6. I believe in it for first-degree murder, rape, and child molestation. Maybe some other crimes, too. However, the fact that innocent people are wrongly convicted of murder is a big problem for me. I thought we would no longer have this problem in modern times, but we do.
In order to keep innocent people from being executed, I believe we should not execute anyone who might be innocent. This is a gray area, and a judge would have to determine if there is enough doubt to avoid execution. The convict-in-question could remain in prison, while the search for more evidence of guilt or innocence continues.
Would mistakes still happen? Would innocent people still get executed? Yes. I’m am willing to put up with a few mistakes. I believe dead criminals are good for society. If a few innocent people are executed, at least they died quickly, instead of fighting cancer for two years.
If the law makers don’t want to have the death penalty, and leave first-degree murderers in prison for life, I am OK with that. Imprisoned criminals cannot hurt anyone outside the prison. The situation which occurred in New York City, before Mayor Giuliani, whereby first-degree murderers did 7 years in prison, and then were released, is unacceptable to me.
I wonder, of the 155 exonerated, how many were imprisoned before the great strides we’ve made in forsenics, especially DNA testing.
How likely is it today, given our science, for the wrongly accused to be sentenced to the death penalty?
It’s not necessarily the science that’s the problem. Science doesn’t convict people; judges and juries do. People. The judges, juries, witnesses, and “expert witnesses” — whose job is to interpret the science to layman judges and juries — are all human and therefore fallible.
That’s not to say science is 100% infallible, of course. The possibility of new evidence to be tested and taken into account, and potentially change the outcome entirely, is always there.
But humans are still human, and the human mind can be convinced of just about anything — including (in the case of judges) what evidence is allowed to be heard and what isn’t, and (in the case of juries) that available evidence means something it doesn’t*.
As long as humans are fallible, they will be the weakest link.
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* – I heard of a case — which I don’t have a cite for at the moment — in which a prosecutor told a jury that the suspect’s DNA was found to be a greater-than-99% match with evidence found at the crime scene, and that clearly meant a greater-than-99% likelihood that the suspect was guilty. An expert had to correct the prosecutor in that we share ~99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, and ~99.9% with any other unrelated human on the planet, so if it’s “only” a 99% match it actually means NOT guilty; there’s a reason investigators want to see 4-5 ‘9’s after the decimal point (i.e. a 99.9999% match). The problem isn’t the science, it’s laymen interpreting the science incorrectly.
In order to support capital punishment, you have to be o.k. with occasionally killing innocent people.
In order to support medical intervention, you have to be OK with occasionally killing innocent people. Everything is a trade off
That’s a false equivalency. What medical intervention INTENTIONALLY results in the death of the patient? None
I oppose the death penalty, for two reasons, one philosophical and one pragmatic. Like you, I oppose it due to the possibility of error. I also oppose it because it is actually cheaper to lock someone up for life than it is to put them to death.
I have heard that, from Democrats, that it is less expensive to house criminals for life than to execute them. I would need to see the math. It is hard to believe the state spent less money on Charlie Manson, or Tex Watson, who is still incarcerated, by housing them than by executing them in say, 1970 or 1972. Tex Watson went to college and seminary in prison. He married and sired offspring, too. Let’s see, room and board, legal representation and healthcare spent on Tex Watson since 1969. Someone else will have to do the math.
Not directly responsive but I once did the math comparing prison costs to college costs. It wasn’t close.
The common television drama scenario of an innocent bystander being railroaded to the death penalty is utter nonsense. It’s the Green Mile myth. What’s more likely, is that an equally depraved individual being substituted for another – and perhaps the “right” one.
The actual process of putting someone to death is so convoluted as to make mistakes truly negligible, if not zero.
And yes, I believe in the death penalty and think it should be used much more frequently, especially in our lawless age. I can assure you if the state doesn’t start taking some of these lunatics out of the equation, and i mean out totally, the law won’t be able to protect them anyway and you lose the faith of the truly innocent.
Violent crime is way down from 20-30 years ago. We have executed innocent people, I assure you. Look how many people have been exonerated for crimes 20-30-40 years later. There’s been a huge racial disparity in our country as to who receives the death penalty. In your and my home state of Texas, people have been executed while new exonerating evidence was ignored because of procedural deadlines. How can you feel good about that? I personally would LOVE the death penalty for someone who killed one of my loved ones, but “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.” The State should be rational, not emotional.
I am in favor where there is cut and dry, hard evidence, tied to it being a heinous crime. Murder plus rape especially, or offenses against children. And really don’t care about diminished mental state arguments.
Biggest reform I would like to see is to get completely rid of the congregation aspect of prison, and rather have it be strictly in cell time or doing physical labor. Recreation yards and prison games shouldn’t be a thing.
The only way I agree is if there is no argument that they are guilty, and it is such an extreme crime. Say a mass killer stopped in the act with multiple witnesses and video/DNA evidence. I think with this high of a standard we would not execute an innocent person.
I used to be a strong supporter of the death penalty, for the crimes that obviously make it appropriate. That is, until I learned that approximately 7% of all death row inmates are found to be innocent with the advent of DNA testing.
It seems to me that killing even one innocent person in the quest for just punishment of all of the rest of the inmates on death row that might truly deserve the ultimate punishment due to the severity of their crimes.
I read that 7% number quite some time ago, and I don’t remember where I did get it from. So it could be much different or even totally wrong. But the idea remains the same.
I have heard the saying that even if the death row inmate was innocent of the crime for which they were sentenced, they no doubt are guilty of some other crime that would call for the death penalty because they are in that social economic class that hovers on that criminal edge of behavior. I have to disagree. That is like spanking your kid for breaking a dish, only to find out that the dog did it. Oh well, the kid probably needed spanking for something that they got away with.
Michigan led the world in outlawing the death Penalty. It was in response to the very public execution of a man, set on the banks of the Detroit River, so it could be seen in two nations.
They admitted they executed the wrong person soon after.
We developed the Juvenile Court system after Chicago hung a 12 year old pickpocket, 1899, I recall.
Uncorrectable errors, and excessive punishment. We try to learn. We have to keep learning.
In a perfect world we wouldn’t need a death penalty. But in a perfect world we wouldn’t have murder, hunger and a host of other issues. So until then, we need to accept that we as humans can make mistakes.
I do believe in the death penalty, but only with undeniable evidence. In the case of a murderer of a child, a peace officer, a mass murderer. etc, but in the end, the conviction & execution of a murderer, will never bring back a loved one.
God’s Word declares that whenever someone by his hand (that is, wilphully and deliberately) kills another who is innocent, by the hand o man shall that one die. Elsewhere God also says that there shall be no blood shed except on the testimony o two or three witnesses who have clean hands.
The problem is not with capital punishment per se. It lies with our corrupt and twisted legal system. The requrement that an accused mus be tried in the jurisdiction where the alledged crime occurred is one issue.. we all know that in certain jurisdictions murder is almost never convicted. In others any case will lkey esut in a guilty verdict. The lawyers can be as corrupt as the alledged killers in many jurisductions. There really do exist “hanging judges”. . Many public dephenders are lazy and/or corrupt. In some jurisdictions “ya can’t indict a ham sandwich”, in the next county over a white bread sandwich with one paper thin slice o cheap baloney and no mustard will be convicted, sentenced, and macerated in a ten minute trial.
Most times the accused cannot pay enough to get a decent lawyer. On he othe side the coin, very obviously guilty with lots o money can buy their way out with a powerphul attorney.
My sister was one o the court reporters in the OJ Simpson trial. While i was in progress she was bound to silence. Once the debacle was over she could and did open up. She said that man was as certainly guilty as anyone could ever be. HE had the bux to hire a crack legal team, who wrangled and played games. One o the “witnesses” on OJ’s side was skanky a witness as she had evev seen.
On the other hand, contemplate the sick circus brought to us by Pam Bondi in the case o the “white hispanic” One “witness” was an individual who was NOT even he person she was pretending to be and who gave totally made up “testimony”. Nothing was ever done in response to this txvavesy o justice. The atoney who set up this phoney witness should have been disbarred permanently. God’s Word also declares that when anyone gives testimony that is not true the lying witness SHALL receive the sentence the accused would have gotten. WheND the atoney whose her up to lie to the court should have recieved the death penalty they sought. Should this ever actually happen I think the issue o lying witnesses would venish almost overnight.
One possible solution to the crooked/lazy kawyer issue might be to set up a system where all trial attorneys practicing in a jurisdiction would be in a pool, and when an accused cannot hire his own lawyer a name would be randomly drawn out o the pot, the selected one becoming his lawyer. The outcome o that trial would become part o his record just as i he had been paid. Better yet, the jurisdiction would compensate the lawyer much as the public dephender system now does. But every lawyer in that jurisdiction would be “available” to ake such cases. Money or lack o it should NOT be part o the equation.
Another issue is the present jury system. Every citizen-resident in that jurisdicion should be in the jury pool. A present when I;m called I lose my income during the duty time. The jurisdiction should pay that. The present system pre-selects who will actually serve.This results in low-quality nurors. Not good.
One last thing and I’m done. In all cases where the jury acquits, that’s the end o the matter, the accused walks. In all cases where the case goes against th accused, thexve shall be a new trial in a new jurisdiction (even perhaps another state)
Same or other dephense attorney, accused’s choice. No new evidence, the jury only has what the earlier trial heard. I that jury acquits, he walks. Should it convict again, the death sentence is carried out. Quickly. Back to God’s Word: the two juries convicting would be the same as two “witnesses” concurring in the matter. The chances o two distinct juries convicting would be close to nil.
I’m in favor of it in instances of obvious guilt such as multiple witnesses, overwhelming evidence, freely given confession. My father was of the same mind; his father had been executed for kidnapping and murder when Dad was 9, within 60 days of the death.
I definitely understand your argument against the death penalty: basically, that it may be administered in error. I think anyone that has taken your classes knows exactly how fallible and downright malicious the justice system can be.
However, I would say that the death penalty still belongs on the table. I don’t draw a meaningful distinction between the death penalty and someone spending life (or all of their productive years) in the hellhole that is a prison, or being sent to prison for so long that there’s very little you can do to rebuild afterwards. I don’t think a life in prison — or damaged by prison beyond the point of recovery — is significantly better than no life at all; it might be worse, in many regards.
I don’t think you can mitigate the damage of the state or its falliability by taking the death penalty off the table because the state already has so many things it can do to you that are just as bad, or sometimes even worse than death. On the other hand, it does cause a real increase in harm when people that obviously should be put to death, are not.
If the state is falliable that it can’t be relied upon to execute the death penalty — which I do believe is the case — then it similarly can’t be relied upon to execute any of these other (completely debilitating) punishments either. It really is the premise of the system itself that should be reworked.
I think the problem with the death penalty is the lack of accountability when the system gets it wrong, especially when it comes to matters like prosecutor misconduct. As long a prosecutor’s advancement depends on conviction rating rather than getting to the truth, wrongful convictions are going to be a problem.
In the real world unfortunately, mistakes do happen. So the death penalty should cost more to implement than life in prison. But for the people that are definitely shown to have committed outrageous crimes the death penalty is a suitable action to keep the killer from killing others while in prison. And to keep future liberal legislatures from freeing them a few decades later. Lastly while some have been mistakenly executed, how many others have been killed by those not executed?
I’ve never been a fan, death row exonerations are but one reason. Yes, there are individuals who never should have been conceived and who have been convicted of heinous crimes, but I have yet to see any evidence of any deterrent value in the ultimate sanction. I do think that places like Alcatraz (the original, not the present one about being surrounded by alligators) should make a comeback at both federal and state levels.
I am generally against it, primarily because of the concern that courts are not infallible.
However, I would accept an exception where the evidence is unequivocal (significantly higher than the usual BARD standard), with multiple modes of confirming, concrete evidence AND where the crime was especially heinous.
Another exception might be someone already in prison for murder who commits additional murder in prison (again, using BARD+++ criteria). Absent the ability to up the ante with respect to punishment, a murderer in prison for life has relatively weak incentives to not murder again.
I’m not sure if it really has such an impact, but it occurs to me that in the most heinous cases, the complete lack of any prospect for “ultimate & final justice” might increase the risk that some fugitives would be more prone to being captured dead, rather than alive, with the risk of injustice worsened in that particular case. It is possible that not all lynchings and revenge killings are discovered and we certainly don’t want to motivate more of those.
What we really need to deter all crime is higher rates of catching perpetrators. And then they need to be incarcerated rather than spun loose so easily as they are in some settings, especially in the case of recidivists. Right now, the risk of capture paired with the intensity of punishment are not sufficient to adequately motivate the people we are trying to reach.
Ted Bundy who was executed in Florida was convicted of murder in the north west and escaped jail twice after being convicted. This was before he killed anybody in Florida. For all the excuses there could be for his escape the fact is that if he had been executed he could not have killed anybody in Florida. I agree that wrongful convictions happen all the time so my feelings about the death penalty are mixed.
I’d like to be forgiving enough to favor the death penalty, but I’m afraid I’m not.
Wearing blue taught me how awful criminals are.
Be easy for them to have a way out from the living death of prison. But criminals are too cowardly to take it, so they appeal.
I’m very happy to pay more taxes to know they are suffering.
There are ways death row inmates could be of service to the public. When pharmaceutical companies need to test new medicines, they could test them on convicted killers.
You know how we wonder how various bullets will perform in the human body? A firing squad could be used to test these bullets on living, human tissue.
This next idea even gives me the shivers. I don’t think our military needs chemical or biological agents. But, we should at least know how to make them. Various nuclear, biological and chemical weapons could be tested on death row inmates.
If such experiments were publicized, would it deter some people who are thinking about becoming goblins from carrying out their twisted fantasies? “Look, here’s how __________ was treated after he murdered those people. The government test a nerve agent on him. See his hideous reaction?”
Does my idea about using convicts for experiments violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment? Yes, absolutely, it does. However, slavery is supposedly illegal in the USA, but both prison inmates and conscripted servicemen (draftees) are slaves, so there are exceptions to rules.
What Michael H. said. How many people serving life without parole are innocent? Any erroneous homicide conviction is a tragedy. (Not least because the actual perpetrator escapes.) Our justice system is appallingly inaccurate.
Also – there are about 20,000 homicides in the US each year. Consider the worst 1% of the perpetrators. If they are sentenced to life imprisonment, then after 10 years there would be 2,000 in prison. Who goes into the cage with the animals?
In my younger years, I believed in the application of the death penalty. Since then, life experience has taught me that nothing in life is infallible, and that includes jury decisions.
I now subscribe to Blackstone’s Ratio (aka Blackstone’s Formulation).
I would much rather see a guilty person slip through the crack than to have an innocent person to suffer mistakenly.
Karma has a way to take care of those that don’t meet their just deserts.
“According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 155 death-row inmates have been exonerated, and it stands to reason that innocent people still face execution.”
One statistic? Over what time frame? The number of ‘death penalty’ convictions during that period? How many escaped and committed further crimes? Number of fellow prisoners killed?
The one thing I can be sure of, an executed criminal will not commit further crimes.
Death Penalty should be given ONLY if there is NO doubt as to guilt. The legal threshold for death must be beyond all doubt. An example wold be where the criminal recorded his actions. In addition the death penalty would need to be available to protect the guards and other prisoners.
There are certainly people who are so evil they deserve to die, but there are just as certainly innocent people who have been executed. That is unacceptable. Moreover, as it is used in Texas, the delay between arrest and execution–typically 20 years or so–removes any deterrent value it may have. In the third place, the trial and endless appeals process is hideously expensive. From a purely economical standpoint, it is immeasurable cheaper to give them life without parole and it also avoids making celebrities out of criminals. We still protect law-abiding people and we still take the criminals’ lives from them, we just do it one day at a time.
If you are against capital punishment then you better be against abortion in any case, the unborn are truly innocent. There needs to be a deterrent against crime and capital punishment is the answer. If you believe that criminals should be rehabilitated then have at it and volunteer to take one or two into your home and turn their life around. People talk a lot about what needs to be done by somebody else.
Some people, by their actions, write themselves out of the human race.
I, too, used to think that the death penalty was justified until I began to reflect on it. The conviction error is a powerful argument itself against killing a convicted murderer. We can’t bring the dead back to life.
One other perspective also factors in; one with connections to the area I live in. Typically, the death penalty is sought for those convicted of particularly heinous crimes; those that may have social/political motivators. Like anti-government ideology or racial hatred.
The problem is that there is a fractional percentage of the population that has a fanatical ideology based on that hatered; they follow those criminal acts idolizing the perpetrator as a hero. Usually the act is well publicized by the media; the bombing of the Murrah Office building in Oklahoma City, OK or slaughter of unarmed victims in the Jefferson Ave. Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, NY.
I am certain that there are those deranged individuals in society that would view the execution of the perpetrator (deserved by their actions) as “martyrdom”; elevating them to a undeserved high status among the criminaly deranged. Life confinement in a supermax setting until they die would serve as an example to current and future generations that such behavior will be punished.