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Gov. Newsom orders halt to California’s death penalty

My father worked in the criminal justice system, and I grew up with inmates as a child. The death penalty is a poor way to do justice. We are finding with a number of death row inmates, after years with the best lawyers -- they never committed the crime in the first place. That becomes a problem, with inmates serving life sentences that has no top performing lawyers -- how many did not act out the crime in the first place. That says, there are people in prison that did not do the crime. If we are discovering death row inmates not doing the crime, how many others with a different sentence being locked up in prison without a high level lawyer.
 
mrdeltoid said:
Something that I loved about Tip and Reagan was they could sit down as fellow Americans, and as friends, disagree passionately on an ISSUE, discuss it, find common ground, shake hands and then have a drink and talk baseball or something. I miss those days terribly.😞
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As do I.

Unfortunately our (two dominate) parties have strongly instigated in dividing us, and lately even our President relishes in dividing us as well. It's the politics of fear & anger, and it's cheap & sleazy.

It may be depressing to think of it, but it seems to take an existential threat to bring us together. WW-II, 9/11, or some such.
 
Some raped and then murdered children, should they be executed?
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Hmm... because locking someone up in a cage until they die (LWOP) is not barbaric. Is it not also barbaric for other inmates to be placed among those who have absolutely nothing to lose if they commit further violent acts?
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If and when evidence comes to light showing someones innocence, it is hard to exonerate and release them from prison once they've been executed. There is strong evidence that the state has executed individuals that were likely innocent. Any system that can allow just one innocent person to be put to death should not exist.
 
Comparing countries is apples to orannges. Sorry, but we have ample evidence of how progressive policies work without outsourcing it to completely different cultures, governments, and people.
 
Atheist 2020 said:
My father worked in the criminal justice system, and I grew up with inmates as a child. The death penalty is a poor way to do justice. We are finding with a number of death row inmates, after years with the best lawyers -- they never committed the crime in the first place. That becomes a problem, with inmates serving life sentences that has no top performing lawyers -- how many did not act out the crime in the first place. That says, there are people in prison that did not do the crime. If we are discovering death row inmates not doing the crime, how many others with a different sentence being locked up in prison without a high level lawyer.
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That's a matter for the justice department. For things like murder, which is why people are given the death sentence, that's a state issue. So obviously Newsom feels that his own state has some problems with how easy it is to find yourself on death row.

I don't know all the ins and outs, but I do know that by the time the DP is carried out, there have been multiple appeals. As a governor, he could have just dealt with the convicts on a one--on-one basis, but he just emptied death row in a state that has a real problem with violent crime. Hell, if Manson was still alive, he'd be in the general population now.
 
Bilgewater said:
That's a matter for the justice department. For things like murder, which is why people are given the death sentence, that's a state issue. So obviously Newsom feels that his own state has some problems with how easy it is to find yourself on death row.

I don't know all the ins and outs, but I do know that by the time the DP is carried out, there have been multiple appeals. As a governor, he could have just dealt with the convicts on a one--on-one basis, but he just emptied death row in a state that has a real problem with violent crime. Hell, if Manson was still alive, he'd be in the general population now.
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First off, Charles Manson died in prison. Second, it is the southern states that uses the death sentence the most, and it is the southern states with the highest level of murder. The death sentence, cost more in the long run to carry out. And, being in prison, it gives the person attention in the main stream media. It puts a name to the person, it gives empathy to the person, it makes the person as being the anti-hero. If he was just serving out a life sentence, he would be a nobody.
 
Atheist 2020 said:
First off, Charles Manson died in prison. Second, it is the southern states that uses the death sentence the most, and it is the southern states with the highest level of murder. The death sentence, cost more in the long run to carry out. And, being in prison, it gives the person attention in the main stream media. It puts a name to the person, it gives empathy to the person, it makes the person as being the anti-hero. If he was just serving out a life sentence, he would be a nobody.
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Yes, I realize that Manson died in prison, which is why I wrote "if Manson was still alive".

If you look at the demographics, it's the democratic cities that have the most violent crime. Just because some are in red states doesn't mean you can conflate the two.
 
Bilgewater said:
Yes, I realize that Manson died in prison, which is why I wrote "if Manson was still alive".

If you look at the demographics, it's the democratic cities that have the most violent crime. Just because some are in red states doesn't mean you can conflate the two.
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There is a passive New Zealand city with 49 dead people. Who would ever think of New Zealand with a violent underworld. Second, were is a Republican city with a population over one million people? With a massive amount of people living within a large city, you are going to see a high rate of crime. The question with red states, they do have a high rate of crime and violent crime. True, democratic supporters do not use shows about red states, they show heavy democratic cities to get more federal funding. So, they show the problems with Chicago.
 
jnug said:
Lets see if I can think like a Trumpet.

"Well now we know where all the Venezuelan MS-whatever murderers will be going [once we have thoroughly fregged up yet another country south of our border]."

Weak....I know.....best I can do.....I'm not a Trumpet.
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Trumpanzee. The word is Trumpanzee :D
 
perthbum said:
Some raped and then murdered children, should they be executed?
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That's the conundrum. In order to be sure the guilty are punished accordingly, we must accept that there will be mistakes made, and innocent people executed. One must search their soul and decide whether or not getting the guilty their due, is worth killing innocent people. A good way to make this decision is to imagine your own child/parent/etc has been arrested, and mistakenly identified for murder. But you know this is impossible, as they were with you the entire day the murder took place. The problem is, you have no way to prove he was with you that day. Now, hypothetically, let's say you had the power to get rid of the DP forever, saving your child/parent from the gas chamber. Would you do it? If the answer is yes, it is impossible for you to support the DP. Unless you're a hypocrite. ( not you specifically)
 
TurtleDude said:
Partisan Hackery content-very high

useful commentary-very low

since when do left-wingers do anything but pretend to care while trying to get rich off of the wealth of others? See we both can make silly comments.

The fact is-there are people who honestly believe giving someone a life sentence-often in poor conditions is worse than killing them. Others believe that if you do say what Ted Bundy did, you cheapen the lives of the victims by not imposing a death penalty.
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I agree with Newsom in that when it comes to decisions to take the life of someone, that determination should NOT be based on popular opinion, in my view.

https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/3.13.19-EO-N-09-19.pdf

Governor Gavin Newsom Orders a Halt to the Death Penalty in California – California Governor
“The intentional killing of another person is wrong and as Governor, I will not oversee the execution of any individual,” said Governor Newsom. “Our death penalty system has been, by all measures, a failure. It has discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, black and brown, or can’t afford expensive legal representation. It has provided no public safety benefit or value as a deterrent. It has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. Most of all, the death penalty is absolute. It’s irreversible and irreparable in the event of human error.”

There are 737 people currently on death row in California. California has the largest death row population in the Western Hemisphere — one in four people on death row in the United States are in California.

The death penalty is unevenly and unfairly applied to people of color, people with mental disabilities, and people who cannot afford costly legal representation. More than six in ten people on California’s death row are people of color. A 2005 study found that those convicted of killing whites were more than three times as likely to be sentenced to death as those convicted of killing blacks and more than four times as likely as those convicted of killing Latinos. At least 18 of the 25 people executed in the U.S. in 2018 had one or more of the following impairments: significant evidence of mental illness; evidence of brain injury, developmental brain damage, or an IQ in the intellectually disabled range; chronic serious childhood trauma, neglect, and/or abuse.

Innocent people have been sentenced to death in California. Since 1973, 164 condemned prisoners nationwide, including five in California, have been freed from death row after they were found to have been wrongfully convicted. No person has been executed since 2006 because California’s execution protocols have not been lawful. Yet today, 25 California death row inmates have exhausted all of their state and federal appeals and could be eligible for an execution date.

Since 1978, California has spent $5 billion on a death penalty system that has executed 13 people. Three states — Oregon, Colorado and Pennsylvania — have Governor-imposed moratoria on the death penalty and in 2018, the Washington State Supreme Court struck down the death penalty as unconstitutional and “racially biased.”
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I find his argument, which is also Kamala Harris's, compelling. I support his decision 100%
 
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mrdeltoid said:
That's the conundrum. In order to be sure the guilty are punished accordingly, we must accept that there will be mistakes made, and innocent people executed. One must search their soul and decide whether or not getting the guilty their due, is worth killing innocent people. A good way to make this decision is to imagine your own child/parent/etc has been arrested, and mistakenly identified for murder. But you know this is impossible, as they were with you the entire day the murder took place. The problem is, you have no way to prove he was with you that day. Now, hypothetically, let's say you had the power to get rid of the DP forever, saving your child/parent from the gas chamber. Would you do it? If the answer is yes, it is impossible for you to support the DP. Unless you're a hypocrite. ( not you specifically)
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i am talking 100% guilty of murder the murders semen DNA inside the murdered child.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Hmm... because locking someone up in a cage until they die (LWOP) is not barbaric. Is it not also barbaric for other inmates to be placed among those who have absolutely nothing to lose if they commit further violent acts?
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Barbarity? It might be worth looking at the history of prisons and criminal justice. Jails and prisons were not designed or intended for long-term incarceration at the time of this nation’s founding. They were temporary accommodations - if a Petri dish for typhus can be called such a thing - to stash criminals of all sorts and genders in a common room until the day of their punishment arrived. Criminal justice, back then, was only that day of punishment - always public and always violent. You were hauled to the public square where you were either stockaded, branded, whipped or hanged. After which time you were released back into the public - the obvious exception being hanging. Which of those things it would be was anyone’s guess. It could be anything for any crime because there were no sentencing statutes so what happened to you was at the discretion of the local magistrate. A petty thief, for example, could never know if he was risking the branding iron or the hangman’s noose.

The transition to incarceration as punishment and the standardization of sentencing is a thoroughly American invention primarily influenced by Quakers. The idea being that a person would be placed in what we now call solitary confinement in absolute silence for the duration of their sentence to be determined by the moral severity of the crime. The death penalty being reserved for premeditated murder and treason. There they would spin wool or make shoes in their cells to raise money to pay for their incarceration and more-or-less set themselves right with God.

Today’s conditions are hardly what I would describe as barbaric. In fact it’s absolute luxury by comparison so I’m curious to know what you think the next evolution in criminal justice is to be.
 
Chomsky said:
What the hell took them so long? It never occurred to me a progressive state like Cali had clung to barbarianism.
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CA didn't support gay marriage for the longest time, nor recreational pot. But, we came around.


I think, similar to gay marriage, the popular opinion on the death penalty will change, as well.
 
Chomsky said:
There's no easy solutions for those instances when one is deemed unfit to be free in civil society. But I find the death penalty particularly abhorrent for two primary reasons:

1] Mistakes cannot be rectified; One cannot be brought back from the dead.

2] I do not believe we have the right to play God, to no immediate physical threat.
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There are more reasons, equally as compelling, as stated in Newsom's EO

https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/3.13.19-EO-N-09-19.pdf
 
perthbum said:
i am talking 100% guilty of murder the murders semen DNA inside the murdered child.
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I felt the same way for a long time. I was for the death penalty completely back in the day, eye for an eye. Here's the problem; as long as human beings are involved with the process, mistakes will be made. Medical examiners, scientists, police, judges, all can be corrupted. Confessions can be coerced. Even in your example, as extreme as it may be, as rare as it may be, one can be bribed, bought off. The only way to understand how final this mistake can be is to put yourself in the position I posited in my example. How would you react, if you KNOW your child is innocent because he/she was with you the entire time, and could NOT have committed the murder in the time frame that was reported . In the hypothetical you had the power to get rid of the death penalty for good, would you?
 
mrdeltoid said:
I felt the same way for a long time. I was for the death penalty completely back in the day, eye for an eye. Here's the problem; as long as human beings are involved with the process, mistakes will be made. Medical examiners, scientists, police, judges, all can be corrupted. Confessions can be coerced. Even in your example, as extreme as it may be, as rare as it may be, one can be bribed, bought off. The only way to understand how final this mistake can be is to put yourself in the position I posited in my example. How would you react, if you KNOW your child is innocent because he/she was with you the entire time, and could NOT have committed the murder in the time frame that was reported . In the hypothetical you had the power to get rid of the death penalty for good, would you?
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I would get rid of the the death penalty yes
 
:peace
perthbum said:
I would get rid of the the death penalty yes
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Thank you for your honesty. I came to understand the lbgtq dilemma in the same way. My youngest daughter is lesbian, and I’m not the “disowning bla bla bla” type. I tried to imagine I woke up one day and my sexual preference ( I’m straight) was not the norm, and 96% of the population was gay. It was quite sobering. Especially if confronted with a “ deprogramming “ type. Not a very inviting proposition. I think the world could use some more empathy.:peace
 
poweRob said:
Bold move. Could cost him politically.

Gov. Newsom orders halt to California’s death penalty

Gov. Gavin Newsom is declaring a moratorium on California’s death penalty Wednesday and granting reprieves to 737 condemned prisoners on the nation’s largest Death Row, calling capital punishment discriminatory and immoral.

In the process, he is ordering an end to prison officials’ struggle for more than a decade to devise lethal injection procedures that will pass muster in federal courts. Newsom also ordered an immediate shutdown of the state’s execution chamber at San Quentin prison, where the last execution was carried out in 2006.​
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Good. California joins the rest of the civilised world. And please, everyone spare me the 'what if it was your *insert relative* whom he killed?', appeal to the emotions.
 
mrdeltoid said:
:peace

Thank you for your honesty. I came to understand the lbgtq dilemma in the same way. My youngest daughter is lesbian, and I’m not the “disowning bla bla bla” type. I tried to imagine I woke up one day and my sexual preference ( I’m straight) was not the norm, and 96% of the population was gay. It was quite sobering. Especially if confronted with a “ deprogramming “ type. Not a very inviting proposition. I think the world could use some more empathy.:peace
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That actually shocked me that you were even slightly bothered that your daughter was gay, I can honestly say it would not bother me one bit if my daughter or son was gay or straight.
 
perthbum said:
That actually shocked me that you were even slightly bothered that your daughter was gay, I can honestly say it would not bother me one bit if my daughter or son was gay or straight.
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I gotta be honest. As a Christian, if given a choice (hypothetically), I'd prefer all my children be straight. They all know that. My youngest daughter is the closest to me of all 5 siblings. She and I believe that only one man who walked this earth was sin free, and was executed. That said, there was a part of me that was relieved I didn't have to worry about any a-hole guy hurting her. Her partner is a sweet, gentle person and I love her as well.
 
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