Florida Supreme Court: Florida's current death penalty is unconstitutional

Schism said:

Costs of the Death Penalty | Death Penalty Information Center

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The innocent person they killed priceless.

TurtleDude said:

at best I am ambivalent about the death penalty and I agree, the cost of a mistake is too great though in all fairness few people who get the death penalty are first time offenders. That being said, I support honest citizens having the ability to use lethal force against violent attackers

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Of course!

The use of deadly force is appropriate in many situations, such as self-defense in an individual or collective sense. Individual self-defense is one example, and the concept of 'Just War' - while more obscure and perhaps dubious - is another in collective terms.

My problem is with state sanctioned ex-post facto killings, once the immediate threat has ban neutralized.

You know Turtle, once you're out of the gun sub-forum I find you a pretty reasonable guy! :2razz:

Chomsky said:

Of course!

The use of deadly force is appropriate in many situations, such as self-defense in an individual or collective sense. Individual self-defense is one example, and the concept of 'Just War' - while more obscure and perhaps dubious - is another in collective terms.

My problem is with state sanctioned ex-post facto killings, once the immediate threat has ban neutralized.

You know Turtle, once you're out of the gun sub-forum I find you a pretty reasonable guy! :2razz:

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I am always reasonable

that is because I reason!!!:mrgreen:

apdst said:

And it can be changed legislatively, as well. The United States Constitution cannot be changed via legislation.

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So you missed the whole Amendment thing?

He aha te mea nui? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata!

Chomsky said:

In terms of the death penalty, it seems quite a few places.

I find the death penalty barbaric.

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Fair enough.

When other factors besides the DP are factored in however, I'm not certain this is a civilized world.

Crovax said:

This one is debatable because of how many plea deals taking the death penalty off the table can force. Without the death penalty the bargaining chip would be to go from life without parole to life with the possibility of parole and we dont need some of the most vicious murders walking the street just to save a few bucks.

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We don't need innocent people to be executed just to give prosecutors more bargaining chips.

Wow.

danarhea said:

This is a huge decision because the death penalty was often arbitrarily applied in Florida. Sometimes, a person with a history of violence might not be executed for murder, but someone with a non-violent crime on his record might be. Although the decision won't end executions in Florida, it is going to cut down on them greatly.

I still believe that the death penalty should be totally abolished.

1) If it stops only one innocent person from being executed, it's worth it.

2) The second reason boils down to basic economics. As it stands, it is much more expensive to send someone to the death chamber than it is to lock him up for life.

Florida Supreme Court: Florida's current death penalty is unconstitutional - Orlando Sentinel

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And sadly, we know that lots of innocent people have been executed. Groups like the Innocent Project have wracked up quite a list of exonerations 30, 40 years after the fact, and that's only in that very limited slice of cases in which something like DNA evidence was collected and preserved.

How many innocents were executed because we didn't know who to test for DNA? Because samples were lost? Because the police missed DNA, and so forth? No way of knowing. But we at least know that a tragic amount of innocent people have been proven innocent before execution.

It's always some poor shmuck facing the full resources of a state, represented in some cases by someone with minimal experience in any sort of criminal case. (One ought be appalled at how little provision for defense of the poor exists in many states)



If we could be 100% certain of guilt and truly treat like cases alike, I'd support the penalty. But neither is possible, so I cannot.

This reminds me of an interesting local segment on NPR earlier this month about the death penalty. One of the guests, a Professor of Criminal and Constitutional Law, made a very interesting point:

"There's a big difference, I've come to learn, among robbers. One guy robs and in the course of robbing he looks and he notices that there's somebody watching the robbery from a window upstairs. He counts, he says, "Okay, third floor, third window." goes up the stairs, breaks into the apartment, and kills the person in order to eliminate the witness. He deserves to die.

But there is another kind of robber - someone who robs and, for example, his cohort gets caught and turns him in to the police and then he kills him. He doesn't deserve to die. Or someone who resists a robbery - look you have every right to resist a robbery and its a brave thing but its a foolish thing to do when someone's got a gun on you - but if you resist a robbery and you go for the gun and the robber shoots you and kills you; he's terrible, he deserves a life in prison, but he doesn't deserve to die for it.

So there are gradations, there are moral gradations. Its partly a function of attitude - look if someone killed my child of course my instincts would be to kill him, heaven forbid. But he might have killed my child by accidentally running through a stop sign or in the worst case my child may have run out to get a ball. My instinct would be rage and to attack, but I would be wrong and I should be and hopefully would be restrained by the law."

So I think we have to ask, and the Florida Supreme Court did assess, whether the law is consistent with proper moral gradation and they decided that it wasn't.