Executions to resume in U.S. after high court OK's lethal injections
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0
tkoind2
The Death Penalty lowers the moral level of society. How can a society say that murder is an absolute wrong if we then use the death penalty as a punishment for crime. If murder is a solution for problems for political society, why not for individual problems? It is a moral conflict. We already know that it is not a deterrent to crime, it is more costly than long term incarceration due to appeals and legal battles and the frequency of wrongful convictions makes it a danger to the innocent who have been unlucky enough to be convicted. We should mature as a society and ban the death penalty as the barbaric revenge motivated moral travesty that it is. Murder is murder. State sanctioned or personal.
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greenteaonsens
Some people are beyond redemption, so why bother?
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rtrhead1
What is it with the whole world going touchy feely politically correct? Okay, so if someone murders someone else, is convicted of murder in the 1st degree, we (tax payers) should just support them for the rest of, what I'm sure will be long, lives because it is morally reprehensible to execute them? I don't personally (although you may disagree, and that's fine. We are entitled to our opinions) believe that the Death Penalty is a deterrent to violent crime. I think it is merely a consequence. You plan to kill a person then do it, we take you out of society. Period. And locking up an innocent person for the rest of their natural lives is so much better? How? No system is perfect. Even if we do away with the death penalty, we'll still have the same bleeding hearts (you) whining about how cruel and unjust life imprisonment is. Again, no system is perfect. Just try to make it as close to perfect as possible.
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jambon
We must kill murderers so they cannot murder again (and yet again in prison).
The primary purpose of capital punishment is not deterrence. It is to prevent the greatest conceivable injustice -- allowing a person who deliberately takes an innocent person's life to keep his own.
0
bushlover
Ohhh Tkroid. Don't get all teary eyed over this. If someone comes into your workplace brandishing a gun threateningly and refuses to put it down for police do you think they should just make him a cup of hot chocolate and talk it out? No way if he seems unstable I guess he just deserves the big bad shot in the butt over the cuppa.
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Patrick Smash
It's amazing how many people believe it's okay to kill innocent people. This is really very, very simple.
Question 1: Do you believe that everyone on Death Row is definitely guilty? YES: You're a complete idiot then, and your opinions don't count NO: Move on to Question 2
Question 2: Do you belive it is okay to murder innocent people, which is what you're annoyed at these murderers doing? YES: You're a complete idiot then, and your opinions don't count NO: So you cannot support the death penalty.
QED, get rid of the bloody thing.
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jambon
The Left has difficulty dealing with evil and therefore refuses to differentiate between murder and killing.
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Princeska
America is a cruel country
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skipthesong
so nice to know there are people out that will debate a form of punishment, but yet refuse to come up with better ideas to prevent people from getting into the predicament in the first place.. kind of like walking backwards.
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Patrick Smash
jambon
Do you think it's okay to have the state kill people who have not committed any crime, including you, your friends and members of your family then? If you don't, you cannot support capital punishment in an imperfect justice system. That's common sense, not some weird piece of leftist propaganda.
We abolished this in the UK, and later discovered numerous cases of error. We were able to release people and compensate them, because we hadn't killed them. Guildford 4, Birmingham 6, and who knows how many others. You seem happy with a justice system that allows the state-sanctioned killing of innocent people. I don't, and that doesn't make me a commie in the mind of any normal person. I view killing the innocent as murder.
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skipthesong
Patrick: I think you are taking some post wrong. no one is really advocating the death penalty and I am sure the mere presence of it doesn't suit well, but it is a necessary evil. At the moment, do you have any better ideas that are going to prevent crime?
Also, most death row cases are given quit a number of years and now with technology, I am sure mistakes as you point out would decrease.
We were able to release people and compensate them, because we hadn't killed them." Ok, and how many people who have done a crime walked away?
0
RomeoRamenII
"A splintered Supreme Court"
Splintered or not, it is a good decision.
A needle into a deserving forearm is a much kinder end than what most of the victims in the crimes ever recieved.
RR
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RomeoRamenII
"Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented."
Gee, no surprise there.
RR
0
Nessie
Do you think it's okay to have the state imprison people who have not committed and crime? If you don't you can't support imprisonment in an imperfect justice system. Open the jails.
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cleo
If you find out you've imprisoned someone who hasn't committed any crime, you can let them go.
If you find out you've executed someone who hasn't committed any crime, you can't un-execute them.
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Nessie
Yes, but many if not most wrongfully imprisoned people are not let go.
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jambon
Name for us the last time this happened in the U.S. Tell us what year it was.
It is the absence of the death penalty that leads to more innocent people being killed. When there is no death penalty, convicted murderers kill other prisoners and guards; and, when these murderers escape, they kill innocent civilians.
0
cleo
The last time a prisoner on death row was released, all charges dismissed, was Mr. Edward Chapman earlier this month.
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/2669008/
Maybe they don't bother going over the evidence once the 'criminal' has been executed. After all, it's not like you can bring them back to life.
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jambon
Requiring "un-executing."
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keech2
jambon,
Your information is incorrect. The majority of states in the US that do not have the death penalty have a significantly lower homicide rate than states that do have the death penalty. Please check here:http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=169
While this group is anti-capital punishment, their information comes from the FBI Crime Report. Here:http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm
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jambon
Finally, in a given year, nearly 17,000 agencies contribute data to the FBI; however, because of computer problems, changes in record management systems, personnel shortages, or a number of other reasons, some agencies cannot provide data for publication. The FBI appreciates the conscientious efforts made by law enforcement personnel throughout the nation to report accurate and reliable crime data. Their efforts make it possible for the FBI to provide assessments of the nature and type of crime in the United States.
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jambon
The great thinker Ernest van den Haag brilliantly made the case for execution as deterrence: Imagine if a state announced that murders committed Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays would be punishable by execution and murders committed the other days of the week would be punishable by imprisonment. Would murder rates remain the same as they are now on all the days of the week? I doubt it.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table20.html http://wiki.answers.com/Q/WhichUSstatesallowcapitalpunishment
(cough)
0
keech2
jambon,
Thank you for the quote from the FBI and the interesting philosophical argument, but neither of these posts really has anything to do with why I posted. That is the fact that you got your information wrong. If you are implying that, according to Professor van der Haag' argument, people would kill people more on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, then I have to ask why do states that have no capital punishment, for the most part, have lower homicide rates than states that do have the death penalty? By that argument, states with no death penalty should have bodies strewn in the streets, which I don't see happening in Iowa or Maine.
0
cleo
There is no judicial mechanism for review of guilt or pronouncement of innocence after an execution. The courts are done with it. Therefore, it should go without saying that no court has announced that an executed person was innocent, since American courts by definition do not make such findings.
Anthony Porter, was only two days from lethal injection when his execution was stayed. .....had Porter been executed, he simply would have been regarded as guilty by definition and there would have been no hand-wringing over executing the innocent.
http://www.justicedenied.org/executed.htm
People whose executions would probably require "un-executing" if the US ever admitted the possibility that it may have killed an innocent man include:-
Jesse Tafero, executed in 1990. He and Sonia Jacobs were convicted of the murder of a state trooper and his companion, the main evidence against them being provided by Walter Rhodes, an ex-convict who negotiated a plea-bargain to have his own part in the crime reduced to second-degree murder and a life sentence. He later admitted that he had lied. Jacobs was released in 1992, the conviction against her thrown out by the courts. Since the evidence originally used to convict Jacobs was the same evidence used to execute Tafero, either a murderer walked free or a man was executed for a crime he did not commit.
Girvies Davis, executed May 1997 for murder. Iliterate and intellectually slow, Davis was convicted on the strength of confessions he had been forced to sign although he was unable to read them.
Odell Barnes, executed March 2000 for a murder for which another man was later implicated.
Philip Ray Workman, executed May 2007 for the murder of a police officer. The conviction rested heavily on the testimony of a witness who later retracted that testimony. Five of the jurors who convicted Workman later said they would have voted to acquit him of the charge of first-degree felony murder without the so-called eye witness testimony.
There are many others.
0
jambon
et al, urban legend.
Start here: http://judiciary.house.gov/media/pdfs/marquis063005.pdf
0
1keiron
"inhumane this..in humane that... Picture this...a mad man mutilates your new born daughter, wife and son while you're at work ust because he felt like it. The mad man gets a 25 year jail sentence cut short. Is that fair for him to still breathe air?
0
SuperLib
Capital punishment is useless. It should be abolished.
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RomeoRamenII
"Capital punishment is useless. It should be abolished."
I agree. Open up the doors on all Death Rows in the States and let the liberals take the condemned prisioners into their homes and financailly support them instead of the U.S. taxpayer. They can all sit around dining room tables across America, hold hands and sing "Kum-bah-ya."
RR
0
SuperLib
Sorry but the financial argument is meaningless to me. My tax dollars also pay for rapists and arsonists and child molesters to be kept in prison. If you want to debate the financial aspect of it then we might as well just look at the actual time sentenced and kill every prisoner who gets sent away for more than X years regardless of the crime.
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dano2002
why should i pay for a killer's meals three times a day, TV and internet, and food, water and clothing?
I think we should go back to hanging or more painful executions. maybe if someone knows what will happen they think twice. maybe not but maybe. look at charles manson getting TV converage. this guy killed how many people that never had a breath again but he is still living and painting pictures? how long did john wayne gacy live on death row? imagine how you would feel if he raped and killed your son.
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1keiron
^^ and if the murder is proven then eradicate these sick people from existance the day after trial. Just like in them old days. pff Awwww dont sentence that murderer who killed your loved ones for the hell of it, its inhumane, its cruel! I know its in prison but let him live his life!..barbaric..inhumane?!..People are too soft nowadays. I know wonder rape mutilation, paedophillia and serial killing is a hobby amongst sick men. Prison is nothing to them but a giant slap on the wrist whilst they live in a mental time warped version of a life sentence whilst living with their murderer friends. Only to be let out on parole. Not to mentioned we've paid for em to live and study in Prison for that duration in form of Tax. Sick sick world.
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