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Would you support instant executions upon sentencing for murder?

Would you support instant executions upon sentencing for murder?

  • Total voters
    67
GottaGo said:
No, not immediate execution.

I would, however, reduce the amount of time for appeals.
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Along this line... this prompted a question to pop into my head.

Not so much the time for appeals, but the equity or inequity of levels of legal representation. The way it is now, if the state wants you bad enough, money is no object and they will spend obscene amounts of money and run every test and hire the best "experts", and so on, just to get you in prison. The defense, unless the defendant is already wealthy, gets squat. They get a schmuck court-appointed attorney whose primary interest lies in having you agree to a plea deal where you agree to never accuse them of malpractice. Seriously, this inequity probably has a great deal to do with the resulting incorrect verdicts.

Should we be willing to equally fund the defense as we are willing to fund the prosecution?

Before we knee-jerk our response, think about the long-term implications. Even for those where cost is paramount, it still might be cheaper in the long run to better fund the defense AND get more accurate verdicts, which would lessen the need for monetary settlements down the road.
 
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Serenity said:
Like over in Iran, public executions, where you see people hanging from a large crane or a high place in front of crowds...Thousands of people watching as if it were a sporting match, shouting and cheering like savages. Great idea, bring the wife and kids along to have a look too...
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The wife and kids better have a good look, 'cause if there's a weak meal or someone talks to someone outside the family, they're next.
 
I wouldn't support any executions, period.
 
Luna Tick said:
The way it is now, a person who gets convicted of murder and sentenced to death spends years on death row going through numerous appeals at cost to the state. What if instead we had the gallows, the electric chair, a firing squad, the gas chamber, or the lethal injection chamber standing by for sentencing? If the murderer is sentenced to death, he or she is immediately taken out for execution. Would you support this policy?
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I don't know if you're seriously proposing the idea, or if you're just posing the question to stimulate conversation. Some people do honestly think along these lines, though, and all I can do is shake my head and wonder at the depth of their naivete in blindly trusting the accuracy of our government and justice system.
 
Luna Tick said:
The way it is now, a person who gets convicted of murder and sentenced to death spends years on death row going through numerous appeals at cost to the state. What if instead we had the gallows, the electric chair, a firing squad, the gas chamber, or the lethal injection chamber standing by for sentencing? If the murderer is sentenced to death, he or she is immediately taken out for execution. Would you support this policy?
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There was a time when I might have said yes... but that was mainly due to frustration, when the men who murdered my best friend spent 11 and 14 years respectively doing their appeals before being executed for their senseless and needless crime.

But while I do think decade-plus-long appeals are excessive, no I cannot support instant execution upon conviction. Our track record at correct convictions is under question, and any citizen has a right to legal due process, including reasonable appeals, before suffering the ultimate and irrevocable penalty of death.


Now, I do call into question a lot of these so-called errors in death penalty cases. I've talked to people who work in the field, and in many cases the inability to confirm via DNA typing is a result of poor sample storage in the days when DNA testing was either unavailable or very new... such as tissue samples being stapled to paper reports without any effort to preserve same for later testing, because it didn't occur to anyone at the time that later testing would be needed. We have not been able to do DNA testing for all that long you know.

So anyway, while I doubt that our conviction rates on captial crimes are actually as bad as the worst detractors claim, it is certainly the case that we are fallible and capable of error, and that no one should be put to death without a chance to appeal.

It just shouldn't take 15 years.
 
Ok..death penalty for murder..do you not agree that murder has many facades..i.e...jealousy...personal protection..

Not just some punk who shoots someone for no apparent reason..usually mentally ill or high..a spur of the moment scenario..

Is not execution..Murder by the state??
 
No.

There needs to be a robust appeals process, especially in a death penalty case.
 
Important to always remember that solutions to complex problems are generally not found at either unacceptable end of a long continuum, the solutions are found at some point along the line of degrees of escalation.

Moving immediately to the unacceptable far end of the continuum is generally the Liberal way of keeping any positive change from replacing unreasonable things that Liberals like.
 
wolfie said:
Ok..death penalty for murder..do you not agree that murder has many facades..i.e...jealousy...personal protection..

Not just some punk who shoots someone for no apparent reason..usually mentally ill or high..a spur of the moment scenario..

Is not execution..Murder by the state??
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Do you think it really matters WHY to the dead person?
 
After a chain of bad convictions over turned several capital murder cases here in Texas, I had to acknowledge that there must be a means to rectify mistakes. However, that means doesn't need to take 30 years or more.
 
wolfie said:
Ok..death penalty for murder..do you not agree that murder has many facades..i.e...jealousy...personal protection..

Not just some punk who shoots someone for no apparent reason..usually mentally ill or high..a spur of the moment scenario..

Is not execution..Murder by the state??
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I wouldn't classify personal protection as murder, but I would classify jealous motivation as murder. Killing does not always equate to being murder.
 
GottaGo said:
Do you think it really matters WHY to the dead person?
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Which dead person..the victim or the perpetrator??

It would matter to me..
 
radcen said:
I wouldn't classify personal protection as murder, but I would classify jealous motivation as murder. Killing does not always equate to being murder.
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Personal protection could be classified as murder..if you have a gun and your robber/mugger was unarmed..as for jealousy...have you never been jealous?
 
GottaGo said:
Victim.
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Having had being in a lot of places where you wouldn't want to go..

I can truthfully tell you..that before men are going to die..they always call for their moms..not their fathers!
 
wolfie said:
Personal protection could be classified as murder..if you have a gun and your robber/mugger was unarmed...
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"Personal protection" implies threat, not quantity and type of weapon, if any. Absence of a gun does not necessarily eliminate said threat.


wolfie said:
...as for jealousy...have you never been jealous?
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I have. It's a childish self-destructive emotion and is no excuse. I absolutely hated the feeling. If it's so bad you want to kill somebody over it, you need serious professional help.
 
radcen said:
"Personal protection" implies threat, not quantity and type of weapon, if any. Absence of a gun does not necessarily eliminate said threat.



I have. It's a childish self-destructive emotion and is no excuse. I absolutely hated the feeling. If it's so bad you want to kill somebody over it, you need serious professional help.
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OK..let's go..

If you woke up one night and heard someone in your house..you had a gun he did not..you have no idea what weapon he has on him...would you give a chance to a young fit robber..who could probably leap on you and shove your gun up your ass..or would you shoot him??

Sure jealousy is a childish self-destructive emotion...Doesn't stop you feeling it though..does it??
 
No, capital punishment is barbaric and less cost effective than a life term anyway so it makes no sense. In addition, crime rates are not effected by capital punishment so there's no use for it.
 
wolfie said:
OK..let's go..

If you woke up one night and heard someone in your house..you had a gun he did not..you have no idea what weapon he has on him...would you give a chance to a young fit robber..who could probably leap on you and shove your gun up your ass..or would you shoot him??
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*sigh* You're going to chase this down a rat hole with some example that is so absurdly narrowly-defined that there's no choice but to concede you're right, aren't you? Fine, I give. You're right. You're 'the man'. :roll:


wolfie said:
Sure jealousy is a childish self-destructive emotion...Doesn't stop you feeling it though..does it??
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Are you a mature adult in control of your own actions, or are you not?
 
radcen said:
Are you a mature adult in control of your own actions, or are you not?
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No..I am prey to human emotions..such as love..hate... jealousy...

Otherwise..I would be a robot!!!
 
Cardinal Fang said:
You are plainly no mathematician if you think that bit of rubbish is the pertinent equation.
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Do you let your emotions get in the way of logic?

Humans each have varying values towards society, including potentially zero or negative. If we restrict our attention to those positive, the value of 1,000 random humans is almost surely greater than the value of 1.

Although the use of automobiles is going to lead to unintentional deaths, society recognizes that the value of driving outweighs the risks and costs associated. Sentencing to death will do more good than harm over time, especially given the significant improvement in accuracy over time. Putting someone in a cell for decades is not worth the cost to society.
 
Mathematician said:
Do you let your emotions get in the way of logic?

Humans each have varying values towards society, including potentially zero or negative. If we restrict our attention to those positive, the value of 1,000 random humans is almost surely greater than the value of 1.

Although the use of automobiles is going to lead to unintentional deaths, society recognizes that the value of driving outweighs the risks and costs associated. Sentencing to death will do more good than harm over time, especially given the significant improvement in accuracy over time. Putting someone in a cell for decades is not worth the cost to society.
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The fatal flaw in your "logic" is in presuming the error stops with the one wrongfully convicted/executed person. There are other considerations, not the least of which include...

  • The family of the innocent person, and how they become a drag on society.
  • Any potential additional victims that the actual perpetrator victimizes because they weren't caught and convicted.

It's not just an "Oopsie!", it's the first domino of many.
 
I cant give an answer because my answer is maybe


its 2013 so going on from here id be ok with it in certain cases but never as a blanket solution

i would NEVER make it retroactive and kill all the people on death row because we have got it wrong to many times back in the day, especially based on racism, classism and power.
 
radcen said:
The fatal flaw in your "logic" is in presuming the error stops with the one wrongfully convicted/executed person. There are other considerations, not the least of which include...

  • The family of the innocent person, and how they become a drag on society.
  • Any potential additional victims that the actual perpetrator victimizes because they weren't caught and convicted.

It's not just an "Oopsie!", it's the first domino of many.
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The same applies when a killer serves 15 years, is released and kills again, does it not? They can also get out by escape or twchnicality. Oopsie, we should have put him down the first time we knew he was willing to kill. I'm willing to bet this happens more often today than wrongful murder convictions.
 
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