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Texas carries out its 500th execution since 1982

DVSentinel said:
Maybe we should. Public hangings might just help deter future criminals better.
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'Way back, before there were prisons, they'd hand thieves publicly in the city square. A crowd would gather, make a day of it, and pickpockets would be working the crowd.
Capital punishment isn't a deterrent. There may be reasons to have it but crime prevention isn't one of them.
 
Grand Mal said:
It's an enormous responsibility, holding the power of life and death. Your faith and trust in the government is inspiring.
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I have no faith in gov but in this instance our legal system seems very well run. My point is as of now there are no proven case of a single innocent person being executed so using that as an argument is pointless. There are plenty of reasons to be against the death penalty but innocent people being executed is not one of them.
 
Paschendale said:
Several of the ones I read about involved one of the key witnesses actually being the perpetrator. And prosecutorial misconduct all around. But no, it wasn't a matter of "getting off on a technicality", they were all exonerated. Which means the court, upon review, concluded that they were innocent.



No, it shows how the system doesn't work! Texas was all set to execute these 12 people, and only a lot of outside intervention prevented the murder of innocent people by the state. But you don't know how many of these 500 were actually guilty. You don't know how many slipped through the cracks. And as Danarhea said, one is too many. Why so gung ho about state sanctioned murder?



And since we can't be sure, how can we risk killing an innocent person?
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Gung ho? I'm actually on the fence about capital punishment but not for the made up reason that innocents are being executed and you risk killing an innocent person every time you get in your car so that has no sway with me either.
 
Grand Mal said:
'Way back, before there were prisons, they'd hand thieves publicly in the city square. A crowd would gather, make a day of it, and pickpockets would be working the crowd.
Capital punishment isn't a deterrent. There may be reasons to have it but crime prevention isn't one of them.
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Actually, they still do that some places. If there were pickpockets, never noticed them and they didn't bother anyone I knew that went there. But sounds like a really good idea, maybe we should start doing that again also.

Correction, Capital punishment as it exist today, has no evidence of being a deterrent. But then again, to prove one way or the other as to it's deterrence value, one would have to prove a negative, which cannot be done. There is absolutely no way to determine if it has or has not deterred people from crime. You can post all the statistics you want, but in the end, they do not, in anyway, prove whether or not someone did not commit a crime because of a particular factor.
 
VanceMack said:
It would be interesting to have discussion on those cases. Virtually EVERY thread on this site that has involved opposition to the death penalty involves some poor misguided illegal imigrant that surely wouldnt have bashed in 2 girls heads with a rock had he not been brought to the US when he was 2 so really...it was the countries fault. Oh...and the recent Baltimore case where the guy killed 4 people but there was a 'question' of his possible innocense because even though he admitted it to a firend, was caught with the murder weapon and blood evidence there was a foreign hair in one of the victims car and that COULD have maybe come from the 'real' killer...
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Really? Cuz most of the situations I've seen involve cops and prosecutors simply assuming guilt and not doing due diligence. Sometimes they get false confessions out of people (this actually happens a LOT), sometimes they don't examine other suspects, and sometimes they aren't honest with evidence or with procedure. Sometimes there's race issues, too. Not all such situations are racial in nature, but it would be equally wrong to think that none are. This is for wrongful convictions in general, not specifically for death penalty cases.
 
sawyerloggingon said:
I have no faith in gov but in this instance our legal system seems very well run. My point is as of now there are no proven case of a single innocent person being executed so using that as an argument is pointless. There are plenty of reasons to be against the death penalty but innocent people being executed is not one of them.
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The US government allows the death penalty for crimes against itself- treason and espionage. It also allows it for drug trafficking and "Attempting, authorizing or advising the killing of any officer, juror,or witness in cases involving a Continuing Criminal Enterprise, regardless of whether such killing actually occurs."

State gov'ts allow the death penalty for...

Treason (Arkansas, Calif., Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Washington)
Aggravated kidnapping (Co., Idaho, Il., Missouri, Mont.)
Drug trafficking (Fl., Missouri)
Aircraft hijacking (Ga., Mo.)
Placing a bomb near a bus terminal (Mo.)
Espionage (New Mexico)
Aggravated assault by incarcerated, persistent felons, or murderers (Mont.)

Death Penalty for Offenses Other Than Murder | Death Penalty Information Center

My mistrust of government and politicians won't allow me to approve of them having that kind of power. Maybe it's working for you now but they will abuse that power sooner or later- you know they will.
 
Paschendale said:
Really? Cuz most of the situations I've seen involve cops and prosecutors simply assuming guilt and not doing due diligence. Sometimes they get false confessions out of people (this actually happens a LOT), sometimes they don't examine other suspects, and sometimes they aren't honest with evidence or with procedure. Sometimes there's race issues, too. Not all such situations are racial in nature, but it would be equally wrong to think that none are. This is for wrongful convictions in general, not specifically for death penalty cases.
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I think that was probably a fairly common occurence in the 50s and 60's. Not so much today.

I think we have discussed this before. Id be fine if they built another 40/50 supermax prisons and could guarantee no murderer ever killed or maimed another soul in or out of prison and then did away with the death penalty altogether.
 
DVSentinel said:
Maybe we should. Public hangings might just help deter future criminals better. People used to be afraid of being hung, haven't heard of a lot of people afraid of lethal injection. But then, when we used hanging, we also executed a lot more murderers, etc. Wasn't none of this "special circumstances" bs. Murder is Murder, if not, then it is manslaughter, we don't execute for that, so if you commit murder, then the death penalty should always be available as an option. I personally think it should be there for rapist and several other types of hideous crimes.

As to cost, that is only a problem because the state has to provide qualified defense lawyers and expanded procedures. A simple way to handle that would be not to allow anyone who cannot handle a death penalty case qualify to be a criminal lawyers under the BAR. All defense attorneys would then be qualified and we wouldn't have to spend extra money hiring "special" ones.
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Studies show that the threat of capital punishment doesn't really effect most criminals because they don't think they are going to get caught. I just got swamped, but I will link something later.
 
greyhat said:
How can capital punishment be
punishment if by virtue of the execution the person cannot absorb the punishment because they die? Doesn't make sense to punish someone by killing them; this may provide comfort to the families of those whose loved ones were harmed but that's vengeance- not punishment.
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Ask a Condemned Criminal on the way to the Gallows if what he's feeling feels like "punishment".
 
DVSentinel said:
Actually, they still do that some places. If there were pickpockets, never noticed them and they didn't bother anyone I knew that went there. But sounds like a really good idea, maybe we should start doing that again also.

Correction, Capital punishment as it exist today, has no evidence of being a deterrent. But then again, to prove one way or the other as to it's deterrence value, one would have to prove a negative, which cannot be done.
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Disproving a statement is not 'proving a negative'.

DVSentinel said:
There is absolutely no way to determine if it has or has not deterred people from crime. You can post all the statistics you want, but in the end, they do not, in anyway, prove whether or not someone did not commit a crime because of a particular factor.
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Actually, you can't refute statistics with anecdotes.
 
Fenton said:
Ask a Condemned Criminal on the way to the Gallows if what he's feeling feels like "punishment".
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It may "feel like punishment" but it isn't punishment because the person dies. That's just good ol' bible inspired "eye for an eye" revenge.
 
jamesrage said:
You are comparing people being punished for a crime that they were legally convicted of to people who were abducted and murdered by a terrorist group?
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Yep, that's exactly what he is doing.
 
VanceMack said:
I think that was probably a fairly common occurence in the 50s and 60's. Not so much today.

I think we have discussed this before. Id be fine if they built another 40/50 supermax prisons and could guarantee no murderer ever killed or maimed another soul in or out of prison and then did away with the death penalty altogether.
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There would be plenty of space for anyone who would be otherwise executed if we let the potheads out of jail. But I wouldn't be so quick to write off problems today. It's easy to think that we're past such shortcomings, but these problems do crop up fairly frequently. I think a lot of the problems that plagued our justice system in the past have been seriously exacerbated by the drug war. It's made the adversarial nature of it even more adversarial, and to our detriment. It fundamentally changed the duties and style of police, from attempting to protect people from harm to attempting to control us, because we're all potential carriers of contraband. I think without that mentality, we would see a lot less police misconduct. Because while some of those problems exist, you're right that they're not as bad as they used to be. Racism does not rule the day when a black man is accused of harming a white woman. At least not as much as it used to. But the adversarial nature of police procedure has gotten much worse to compensate.
 
greyhat said:
They may have time to think about it but the actual punishment prescribed is death therefore I revert to my original thought.
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Sorry, your original thought doesn't carry any weight. If you're against the death penalty, fine, but you need to do better than that.
 
Paschendale said:
I wonder how many of them were actually innocent. 12 inmates who were convicted and sentenced to death in Texas were later found to be innocent and released. Can anyone really feel certain that none of those 500 were innocent, too?
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People have looked pretty hard for one, haven't they?
 
I have no problem killing people who have actually murdered or committed heinous crimes, but until we invent a system that can be 100% sure that we have convicted the right person I can't agree with it.
 
danarhea said:
If the death penalty was foolproof, I would be in favor of it, but not as a deterrent. It would be simple. If you kill, then you will be killed. Nothing more, nothing less.
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Every murder is not the same.
 
NIMBY said:
It was a Republican governor in the 1990's in Illinois who did away with the death penalty. He just got out of jail for other misdeeds that were illegal. Many of us con/mod dems were against losing the death penalty but they did prove innocent people were executed and on death row. It was good politics also. Repubs held the governorship here for 26 straight years until Blago got it in 2003. He's now in jail.
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Many people think that George Ryan's grandstanding was intended to ingratiate himself with his future jury pool.
 
DA60 said:
I am against capital punishment no matter what the crime.

If Hitler was found alive (and 124 years old) I would still be against killing him.
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What would you regard as an appropriate punishment for the old boy?
 
greyhat said:
It may "feel like punishment" but it isn't punishment because the person dies. That's just good ol' bible inspired "eye for an eye" revenge.
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You are really committed to this silly idea!
 
danarhea said:
Yes, I am still against capital punishment, because an occasional innocent person does get executed every once in a while. But this lady deserved it. She killed 3 elderly women, and stole their credit cards and valuables from their homes. The murder that she was executed for is especially grisly, in that she cut the finger off her victim to get her wedding ring, which she pawned for 200 bucks.

To those who are against the death penalty - Don't feel sorry for those who deserve it, but only those rare cases where someone didn't deserve it, which is why I am against the death penalty.

Article is here.
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Well, I certainly don't feel sorry for someone like Osama bin Laden when they die, but I am not happy to see the state executing people in my and other American's name.

It's a nasty business and the USA should get out of it.

Killing people in war is one thing, but coldly executing people is a business that I want no part of.
 
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