With heartbreak all around. I swear I don't believe in the death penalty. But the psychopaths do test your convictions, no? Why did they think they'd get away? My reaction is prejudiced, emotional and wrong. All I can think when looking at those boys, Where was your father?
I can't come up with a definite belief system of the death penalty. In my youth, I thought it was wrong. Then, there was a case here of a young man who killed his entire family for the insurance money:
But with the revelation of the DNA problems and a realization of how many people were being convicted wrongly, I went back to a more muddled picture about the death penalty.
The recruiters are dealing with the system as it is. Standards have been lowered (to basically, do you breath? levels) and the recruiters are under major pressure.
Not to hijack the thread with Houston Chron articles, but reading this story this morning brought that home. Houston has a huge problems with suicides among army recruiters who are reacting to the pressure from above.
Houston battalion recruiters have said they regularly work 12 to 14 hours a day, six or seven days a week. Many have to deal with long commutes to rural stations far from a military base. They have said if they don't sign at least two new recruits a month, they're punished with even longer duty hours and threatened with losing rank or receiving bad evaluation reports.
My problem with the death penalty was never one of "no one could possibly deserve to die!" but one of "would I trust the government to be able to figure out who committed a particular crime?"
I think the internal compromise I reached on the death penalty was "The death penalty should only apply to people employed by the Government".
As Jesse Jackson might have said, the question is moot. Where were any adults who could have taught them right from wrong and respect for their fellow man? Where are the Marine Corps' shrinks who are supposed to be able to identify the fine line that separates a good Marine from a psychopath? Where were the Marine Corps officers who are charged with training them not only to be good fighters but also to be good and honorable Marines? Did their commanding officers see anything in them that foreshadowed this ending? And, if so, did they ignore it?
We ask young people to volunteer to learn how to kill people. We teach them myriad ways to kill people. We send them around the world to kill people. Back in the U.S., though, a few of them can't stop killing. I don't know any solution, but I do know that killing them now is not the answer.
I believe in death, but not "the death penalty." I feel no sympathy for murderers and shed no tears at their death, at the hands of the state or otherwise, but it's impossible to argue that the state is in any way capable of actually enacting the death penalty as judicial policy in a moral or fair matter.
Given that, I'm ok with letting these guys "slip through the cracks" and rot for the rest of their mortal existence if it means the likes of the innocence project and others still get to try to save lives and find justice.
That said, I say that because there seems to be no question they are guilty. I switched to opposing the death penalty when they started overturning death penalty convictions on dna evidence--in one that stays with me, it cleared the man on death row while implicating the man whose testimony put him there. A second man convicted with that testimony remained on death row, there being no dna evidence in his case.
The attempts to craft a "no errors" death penalty bill seem too fraught with error--in the face of horror, we fall too easily into "we need to punish someone for this" even at the risk of some of the someones being innocent. Either you kill the people who confess or are particularly inept (announcing it on their myspace pages?) and imprison for life the rest, even if their crime was greater, or you're consistent and imprison people for life across the board.
A major problem with the death penalty is that our criminal justice system is class and race biased – from who gets stopped and frisked, through the quality of defense, to who gets capital punishment.
The death penalty is not right for this kind of crime. But the reason simply is that it is not cruel enough.
The world is full of unmentionable evil, both outside the US and within. Its not the majority of the population, but its most definitely out there. Since you can't ignore its out there, the best response to it is to be judicious in making sure that someone is indeed responsible for accused henious crimes and acts (use all your conscience and compassion here) and then, once certain, leave your conscience at the door and punish it with equal henious force.
Deterence as presently conducted is obviously not working. We are too compasionate at the wrong time in the process and not compassionate enough at the right times.
Can you see why stuanch conservatives dont trust liberals to govern the country (particularly with respect to our national security) if they worry about the rights of these four idiots.
How about, instead of death, we send people such as these to places like the Federal SuperMax in Florence, Colorado.
People sentenced to this hell hole are confined to their cells 24 hours with (I believe, but may be wrong) 2 hours each week to work out alone in an indoor yard. Prisoners are always locked down in their cells (which are designed so prisoners cannot communicate or talk to each other) and, when they are outside of them, movements are coordinated so they have no contact with other prisoners. Hell, even the TVs in their cells only show religious and educational programming.
The average prisoner here goes insane and dies within 15 years. It's absolute hell on earth.
Personally, I think I'd rather be shot than go here.
Whenever I see something like this, it think of the line uttered by Samuel L Jackson: "Yes the deserve to die, and I hope they burn in Hell".
However, like Jaybird mentioned, I draw a distinction between saying someone deserves death and trusting the State to make that decision. As someone who is conservative on many issues, I don't trust the government to effectively control my Social Security and tax dollars, I sure as hell don't trust them to effectively administer a death penalty.
Amen, KevDog. I can't believe they made it past the first meeting with their recruiter.
One can't help but wonder if they would have been recruited at all had President Cheney not invaded Iraq. I really think this starts with the Worst Administration Ever. It's on them as much as anyone else. Cheney et al can't go home and disappear too soon.
"Can you see why stuanch conservatives dont trust liberals to govern the country (particularly with respect to our national security) if they worry about the rights of these four idiots."
You have the wrong idiots. See the link below, those are the ones we're worried about.
If you are willing to give the state the right to execute innocent people, then that's an argument. But you can't pretend that the system is perfect--which is exactly what it would have to be to not kill anyone who was innocent.
If conservatives ever acknowledged the system is flawed and allowed such common sense measures as mandatory DNA testing (when there is such evidence) and proper legal representation in death penalty cases, then perhaps more people would have confidence in the system.
As such, our legal system for capital punishment is an absolute joke and a disgrace.
If the state is going to exact a punishment for which there is ability to correct for errors later on, then they damn well be prepared to administer it properly. Since we've proved utterly incapable at it, I cannot support it.
If the state is going to exact a punishment for which there is NO ability to correct for errors later on, then they damn well better be prepared to administer it properly. Since we've proved utterly incapable at it, I cannot support it.
It is wrong for the simple reason that our Justice System is not about finding out the truth, it is totally about what you can convince twelve human beings to believe.
The risks of potentially putting an innocent man or woman to death outweighs any "justice" obtained from killing the truly guilty.
I'm not against the death penalty in all cases. But it should be reserved for the absolute worst of the worst. Cases where not only is there no reasonable doubt, but where there's no shadow of a doubt, and no reasonable hope of rehabilitation. I'm thinking Ted Kaczynski, Tim McVeigh, John Allen Muhammad, Osama bin Laden.
As bad as it was, what those thugs did doesn't reach that level of evil. They deserve to rot in solitary forever.
BS_PI wrote:
"f the state is going to exact a punishment for which there is NO ability to correct for errors later on, then they damn well better be prepared to administer it properly. Since we've proved utterly incapable at it, I cannot support it."
I agree. That's why I don't support it in my state of Illinois. But I say we should damn well fix it. And once we do, we fire up Ol' Sparky until the lights flicker in downtown Chicago.
These guys knew going in the door that they were going to kill this couple. A couple of them worked for him the the Corps. They had to do it.
"Cases where not only is there no reasonable doubt, but where there's no shadow of a doubt, and no reasonable hope of rehabilitation."
Nah, that would be impossible to determine. That would lead us right back to where we are now. Who would get to determine what's beyond a "shadow of a doubt?" Who would determine who has no chance at rehabilitation?
These guys definitely DESERVE to die. But 'deserve' doesn't have anything to do with it.
Its impossible. Let's just get it out of our heads that it is. There will ALWAYS be innocent people executed if we allow the death penalty. Its not a problem that can be 'fixed.'
"Can you see why stuanch conservatives dont trust liberals to govern the country (particularly with respect to our national security) if they worry about the rights of these four idiots."
I can, but only because I that line of thinking is typically weak-minded of conservatives and the modern, Rush Limbaugh Republican party.
As many others have noted, the system of deciding who dies and who doesn't is unfair, but beyond that, as my Social Justice Catholic pals point out, it never will be.
I don't even get that far. All you have to do is ask, "What if they didn't do it?" You can't unkill someone. The best we may be able to hope for is freezing them in carbonite to be thawed out at a later date if it's shown that a person was unjustly convicted of a carbonite-worthy crime. Until then, it's life and day in a SuperMax (which opens up other problems for another thread).
All of the anti-death penalty arguments on this thread are good ones, but I'm surprised no one has mentioned the vengeance aspect. The death penalty serves primarily as vengeance, and a civilized society should shy away from such barbarism. What does it mean to say someone "deserves" to die? More than anything, such a killing only serves to justify our moral feelings. The closest example I can think of is, say, a killer who continues to kill in prison, but that person can be put in solitary confinement indefinitely and the problem is solved. The death penalty in that instance would be for convenience's sake. Even aside from incorrect rulings (and 1 innocent death is 1 too many), do we really want to be a society which kills people for revenge and convenience?
"Even aside from incorrect rulings (and 1 innocent death is 1 too many), do we really want to be a society which kills people for revenge and convenience?"
Getting into a discussion about the barbarism of the death penalty serves no purpose. You won't convince people the death penalty is wrong that way. Most people don't think its barbaric, and don't have a problem with the idea of murderers being killed. People need to be convinced that its unfair because we are currently executing innocent people. That's the only way to end the death penalty.
Unfortunately, we have no shortage of depraved crimes. Perhaps it says something about our society. We need to look in the mirror. These guys are Americans, marines. They’re not from France or Iran.
All murderers "deserve" to die, but there is no way for *society* to design an objective methodology for deciding who should live and who should die.
And isn't life in prison a death penalty of sorts? I don't know, but part of me feels like it is. Part of me feels like I would prefer someone to rot in prison for the rest of their life rather than allowing them to escape their own hell. No mercy. That's for my dog, or my horse, or an ailing family member or friend.
Second, I understand and agree that the State needs to do its very best to not execute innocent people (or punish them at all for that matter).
I think the practical reality is that deterance under a current system is approximately zero for certain individuals who may have little in life and think the risks of violence and jail are obviously worth taking.
Im trying to present the consrvative thinking on this point which is that, even if their are faults (which there will always be in our legal system - and modern DNA would hopefully lessen what seems to have a lot in the past), these horrible crimes are becoming more prevalant and more extreme. Therefore, there needs to be real deterence to help lower crime, and taking away a potential tool (the death penalty) with an outright ban can be perceived as an inability to deal with real practicalities.
Im not defending those who believe in the death penalty as a part of their general conservative plank (they obviously are completely impractical on gun control and their inability to admit that educational and economic opportunity is almost non-existant with many of the same people who turn to this life of crime). Im just noting why people who take the death penalty off the board as an absolute (and don't look for a reasoned way to make it work as a tool for deterence) might be seen by a portion of the right as too soft to deal with the threat of terrorism.
As a note for comparison, gun rights and abstinence are two examples from the other political spectrum. These would both be great to implement in theory, but practically you have to consider allowing gun restrictions and discussing other methods for preventing teen pregnancy and stds. You can see that there is a necessary element of sacrifice for one to move from their absolute positions (not to mention slippery slope fears aggrevating any fears of those who might compromise). Now how best to strike the balance is an issue by issue determination. But the practicalities have to push people from their theoretical absolute positions to come to the best compromises and solutions for all. Will innocent people be punished and still get the death penalty? Certainly it will happen and hopefully with modern DNA and better judicial advocacy it can be reduced to small numbers. Is protecting even one person reason enough to not have the death penalty as a possible deterent. I think as society becomes more violent, the argument for this position (a position I used to hold) needs to be reconsidered more than ever.
Strictly addressing the philisophical question of whether the state should kill and not the issue of accuracy of evidence or innocence (which to me is a no-brainer - innocent people should not be killed), I am pro death penalty in limited situations:
As an example I refer to a prison gang called the Aryan Brotherhood (there was a great New Yorker article some years back about brining these guys to justice) whose tyranny was felt both inside and outside the prison system. You had guys calling for the murder of people, both fellow inmates and persons on the outside who were already doing time in high security complexes for murder convictions. The fact that they happened to be a white supremacist gang (in name only actually - they formed alliances with gangs of other races for expediency) is not central to my point as many inter state gangs, and criminals, operate like the "Brotherhood" did and for some reason incarceration did not impede them from carrying out their murderous activities.
So my theory goes like this the DP needs to be available, but must only be used in cases where the actions of those found guilty show that they will continue their actions from prison there will be no other way to prevent this person from endangering the lives of other persons.
This is parallel to the common law doctrine of justified homicide in a sense because the state has an overwhelming interest in protecting its citizens from these alternative systems - ie, mafiosos, murderous political extremists and narcotics - related gangs, who do not abide by the principles of due process and human rights within their own micro systems and thus threaten the rights and well being of society as a whole.
This of course would rule out the DP for one- time murder convicts, even on the grounds of heinousness, as this suggests a type of collective revenge. I agree with TNC in saying that the idea of collective revenge, or retribution, does not sit right in a civil society - it infects the innocent bystanders with the same blood lust that consumed the perpetrator.
What I am about to say will probably offend. I apologize in advance.
I support the death penalty or at least the option of the death penalty. The issues of class, race, and improper imprisonment will not be solved by eliminating the death penalty. Instead of being executed the wrongly accused will die in prison. I don't see much of a difference between those two options.
This is how I see it. Either the state has a responsibility to determine a just level of retribution for grievences or the individual does. Individual retributive justice is usually more excessive than state run retributive justice. (Please no arguments about state sponsored terrorism or the horrors of gulags and concentration camps.) In general when the state has the authority to put wrongdoers to death it lessens the impulse for people to take matters into their own hands.
All this being said extreme restraint should be used when determining whether to implement the death penalty. The choice should usually be made in favor of life imprisonment. However the state should retain the option for the death penalty as a judgement in heinous crimes.
The crime TNC mentioned is horrible but I don't know enough about it to say whether the people who did it deserve to die. The SGT had a beautifull wife and it's a shame that they were murdered.
My girlfriend is a clinical psychologist who has been treating juveniles in a maximum detention facility. Having put in a number of years there, she noted that some of them are sociopaths and that they are likely to spend the rest of their lives in and out of jail. Yes, there are many kids who are born into horrible situations and that but for their environment would be respectable citizens who obeyed the law. But there are many for whom the lives of others are of no consequence. They care not how they affect others and if someone is in the way of what they want they'll do whatever act of violence is required to get it.
Now whether these marines committed these acts due to nature or nuture (i.e., are they just psychopaths?) is unknown, but for some of them - or at least others who commit similar acts - there is no way to really prevent it or treat it.
I didnt believe in the death penalty until Sept. 11, 2001. It forced me to re-examine my views.
I knew I wanted the people responsible to be executed. But then I thought, what makes one victim more important than another? How many people have to be killed before I think its OK?
How about the thousands of women who die at the hands of boyfriends or husbands? Why are they less important than our fellow Americans who died on Sept. 11? So that is why I believe that if you murder someone, the jury should be given the choice to execute or not.
That being said, it is important the prosecutors have hard evidence against these assholes.
Mr Coates, you absolutely have to read this month's Texas Monthly magazine. They have a feature on wrongfully convicted men in the state of Texas. There are 37 men who have been exonerated of their crimes due to DNA evidence. Sadly, they are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic men. Many of these wrongful convictions happened because of cops and lawyers who wanted to railroad the defendants. Many also were convicted because of witnesses who swear it was them.
Please let me know if you want me to mail you a copy of the article.
Despite reading about these men, I still think we need to continue the death penalty.
Mike BK,
Your comment fits in nicely with my proposal in the last thread here that discussed the death penalty. Which is, that I not only believe strongly in the death penalty, I don't believe in life in prison. Any crime for which we are willing to remove a person from society forever should be a crime subject to the death penalty. Murder. Rape. Aggravated mayhem. Aggravated armed robbery.
Let me just re-post what I said before:
I go the other way. It's life imprisonment that I don't believe in. If we believe, as a society, that some crimes are so heinous, and rehabilitation so unlikely, that we intend to lock a man in a cage -- with other similar men --until he dies, then I say we should have the courage of our convictions and simply kill him.
Not just for murder. For rape. For attempted murder. For repeat armed robbery. Essentially for anything that would merit a 20-year or more prison term.
The alternative, what we have actually done, is to create a sort of "shadow society" of killers and rapists. Into that toxic society we then throw such minor criminals as petty thieves and drug users. The minor criminals have little choice but to accept the culture of the society we have thrown them into -- and behold, we have now created the next generation of killers once they're released from prison.
Prisons are evil, horrific places precisely because we put evil, horrific people in them.
And yes, I get the "but we could make a mistake" argument. Doesn't sway me for two reasons.
One, because to me it's no more awful to put a man down than to lock him in one of our modern prisons for the rest of his life.
And two, and more importantly, if you think of crimes and criminals as forming a pyramid, with the vast majority of crimes being non-violent petty crimes at the bottom, it's just statistically inevitable that you're going to convict more innocent people for petty crimes than you are for really awful murders. Because there just aren't that many really awful murders every year. And under the existing system, if you accept that premise, we are putting lots and lots of innocent people into this shadow society after convicting them of petty crimes, and putting only one or two in there for crimes that would get the death penalty. My system protects a much larger number of innocent people -- by eliminating the awful prisons altogether -- while, yes, condemning one or two innocents to death.
But you don't have to worry -- nobody's going to listen to me on this one. :-)
Deborah,
You can't mete out different punishments based on different kinds of proof. It's an terrible, unjust idea, and won't pass constitutional muster.
Tony: that was the point I was trying to make--that trying to set up a standard wherein the obviously really really guilty have the death penalty, and the almost certainly guilty (but not confessing on myspace) have life in prison, is not reasonable. And so you go with the lesser punishment that does allow people to be released on new evidence, rather than killing someone for every heinous crime and hoping you don't kill the wrong people. As Jack put it "it's impossible to argue that the state is in any way capable of actually enacting the death penalty as judicial policy in a moral or fair matter."
As for the death penalty not being heinous enough: I don't hold with checking your conscience and inflicting torture. We must, at all times, keep our consciences. Not become what we claim to oppose. The death penalty, to me, is about removing a threat that can never live in society. Life in prison accomplishes that--you're stuck with the elderly prison population (and with giving them health care) but that seems an acceptable tradeoff amongst the bad choices.
@Tom's point above: I don't think the death penalty is much of a deterrent. You are either dealing with psychopathy, in which people don't care about future consequences (drawing from this week's New Yorker article), or you are dealing with people who bet they won't be caught, if caught won't come to trial, if come to trial won't be convicted, if convicted won't serve a full sentence, and so on... I don't know what exactly works to make crime more something you don't get away with, but I suspect the community policing and programs aimed at youth are a lot closer to what will work than having the death penalty in all states. Send these guys to SuperMax, as someone above described.
The more individualistic society seems to correlate to more of this type of violence. To take a hard turn into sci fi, a community on a space station emphasizes following rules and fitting in with the group, because a screw up affects everyone. A story about a bunch of wild card maverick screw ups on a space station wouldn't fly.
I appreciate Tom’s civil discussion above, but why is our society growing more violent? Most other societies don’t have the death penalty, and are much less violent.
Genuine rugged-individualist conservatives should oppose police, prisons, death penalties, or any government at all. Let the strong survive. If a car-jacker gets the drop on you, tip your hat and flip him the keys. He’s just proved that he’s a better person than you are. (not you personally, Tom.)
The average prisoner [at the Colorado Super Max] goes insane and dies within 15 years. It's absolute hell on earth.
This sounds less humane than the death penalty itself. And also seems to undermine the "innocent people get executed" argument. If you end the death penalty, innocent people get sent to maximum security prisons, live in isolation, and are driven crazy. Is that really that much better?
We ask young people to volunteer to learn how to kill people. We teach them myriad ways to kill people. We send them around the world to kill people. Back in the U.S., though, a few of them can't stop killing.
Nah. These kids were thugs. This isn't PTSD. This isn't the fog of war. The Marines may teach you many things that are not applicable in everyday society but torturing a couple for money is not one of them.
I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but it's a fucking insult to men and women in the armed services to imply that their training led in any way to this. The only thing that military training gave these guys was additional motive and opportunity, IMO. It's as ridiculous as blaming video games for the Columbine massacre.
BS_PI, did you actually read what I wrote? What do China and Saudi Arabia have to do with the idea that our prisons are horrific, awful places, and it is horrific and awful that we perpetuate a shadow society of killers? And then throw innocent people and minor offenders into that shadow society -- essentially throwing them to the wolves?
Do you consider the prisons in China and Saudi Arabia to be models of humane reform? How odd.
"And yes, I get the "but we could make a mistake" argument. Doesn't sway me for two reasons.
One, because to me it's no more awful to put a man down than to lock him in one of our modern prisons for the rest of his life."
Really? Hmmm. Tell that to all the men on death row making appeal after appeal to save their lives. Good thing your opinion doesn't mean anything.
"but why is our society growing more violent?"
I'm not convinced it is. There's alway been evil people and heinous murders, and there always will be. Thinking that things used to be better falls under the trap of nostalgia. I don't buy it.
A few years ago one of the most imaginative speculative political writers I know got a tour of the supermax facility at Pelican Bay, CA
"Oh yeah folks, one more thing, if there is a riot or an uprising or something while we are in here, California considers you dead the moment it starts."
This succeeds in getting the attention of most everyone in the group, and we all stop what we are doing for a moment and look at Mr. James.
"We just need you to sign these forms saying that you understand that"
Strange things happen when the absolutely incorrigible collide with the absolute power of the state. Worth a read:
You seem to suggest the old school approach where the term felony was synonymous with capital crime, even if the felony did not result in another's death. What a long way we have come (Elmo would disagree probably) in that the word felony now means any crime punishable by imprisonment for over a year (crimes for which you get sent upstate here in NY).
One major change since the days where all felonies carried the death penalty is the use of prisons for something other than a waiting room for the gallows. Penitentiary comes from the French word "penser" (to think) and shares the same root with repentance and pensive.
As such, the prison sentence was originally seen as a progressive alternative to the DP. The idea, rooted in Christian theology, is that one deserves the chance to repent for their bad acts while they are still alive. As a christian myself (small c, please), I can appreciate this progress and cannot see how anyone would benefit from being killed as opposed to being allowed to live in (even minimally bearable) captivity. Torture and cruelty accompanying the captivity of course would give rise to different circumstances.
My point of view of course is countered by Asher's statistic about inmates dying early in Super Max. I question this statistic just because almost all prisons are subdivided and the conditions of an individual's incarceration in any prison depend a whole lot on the convict's behavior and the crime committed by the convict. You usually don't get stuck in the "SHU" for no reason. (Even Charles Manson seems to getting by just fine - a little too fine for most people's tastes.)
Hi again, Stacy. Yeah, that was the same point you disagreed with before. Still don't think your response really addresses the main point, which is -- as a moral choice, it is no worse to put a man to death than it is to put him in hell for 30 years. The prisoners' responses to their own situations don't really get to whether the choice is moral or not; the convicts sentenced to life also spend their time filing appeals.
Reasons death is a deterent:
(1) the obvious one that the person put to death has no chance to commit crimes in prison or out (or to conspire to or solicit such which are crimes) - part of this was adressed nicely by a reader above.
Reason death is likely a deterent:
(2) In some communities there is a level of respect earned by going to prison. In some communities there is a level of respect earned from taking actions that could send you to prison. The gamble of going to prison (risk/reward) is not the same as termination of your life. Look how mellow these death row inmates are, its hard to believe the realization that you are going to die or your crimes could cause it does not have some effect on ones behavior. Life prison does not have the same effect on people desparate for respect.
"Morals" is a loaded word. The morality of it doesn't concern me. People put on death row typically don't want to die. Some do, but the fact that most don't is pretty indisputable. We have put a lot of innocent men on death row. This is a problem. A problem that can only be remedied by abolishing the death penalty. Our penal system is beyond messed up, but we can't change the fact that some innocent people are going to be thrown in prison. Hopefully we can work on preventing it as much as possible. We also need to work on improving our entire system so we can eliminate the "Shadow Society," as you put it.
Some part of me wants the death penalty, but I'd rather see prisons themselves become more punitive. More focus on social isolation, and loss of common priveleges (including television). Longer sentencing for violent crimes (with reduced sentencing for nonviolent ones).
Basically, I'd like to see these guys spend the rest of their lives in virtual isolation, with no hope for release. I know these reforms will never happen.
Mike,
Thanks for the interesting thoughts. I think you're close to the mark in describing my proposal, although I certainly wouldn't support the DP for all modern "felonies." Our definition of "felony" has expanded well beyond the former synonym for capital crime: there are thousands of so-called "felonies" on the books now, some of which involve little more than careless record-keeping.
You say that you can't see how anyone would benefit from being killed as opposed to imprisoned. I don't disagree. I'm not interested in any proposed "benefit" to the convicted murderers and thugs that my proposal would condemn. I'm more interested in the thousands upon thousands of non-violent, petty criminals -- and the innocent people wrongly convicted as such -- whom we as a society force to live with murderers and thugs. I'm much more interested in the prison-industrial complex that we've created, the brutality we've sanctioned, in the name of "securing" ourselves from people who have no ability or desire to live peaceably among us.
For myself, I would greatly prefer to retrieve the "penitentiary" and return it to its root word, as you describe -- but only for those whom it might actually reform.
When you look seriously at the things people do, it's hard not to feel that some people have forfeited any claim on humanity. That doesn't mean that we have to kill them, though. Leaving aside the inevitable problems with the practice of capital punishment, one moral reason for not killing is about us, not them. About proving that those of us who act like human beings are better.
That's my point of view -- but let me throw something else into the mix.
I used to work for an organization that did prisoners' rights advocacy. There are a lot of innocent people in prison, and there are a lot of people in prison who haven't done much harm to anyone but themselves, but if you're going to do that work you need to be down with sticking up for the rights of the guilty. If a prison guard beat down one of these guys in Brooklyn -- took it upon himself to do back a small portion of what they dealt out -- it would still be wrong, and I respect the people morally tough enough to stand up for the rights of even people like this.
BTW, it’s a myth that death row prisoners postpone their sentences indefinitely, tying the courts in knots by filing numerous appeals. The fact is that there are only a handful of lawyers who do capital cases. Example: Scott Peterson. He paid Geragos a million for his trial, now he’s penniless like virtually everyone on death row, waiting for assigned counsel.
I'm more interested in the thousands upon thousands of non-violent, petty criminals -- and the innocent people wrongly convicted as such -- whom we as a society force to live with murderers and thugs.
Instead of killing the thugs, how about we don't put non-violent, petty criminals into the same prisons with murderers? How about we have drug laws that don't put petty criminals into prison at all?
Jordan, I'm all for that. ALLLLL for it. Especially the part about the drug laws. But unless we do repeal our drug laws, and lots of others, we just have too many prisoners and not enough prisons to separate the petty from the monsters.
One barbarous act is not remedied by perpetrating another.
The death penalty is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!
I'm not usually so definitive but I (obviously) feel very strongly about this. I say again, you cannot rectify a wrong by carrying out another wrong. If theese guys are executed, their victims remain dead! It really is as simple as that.
As for the insane notion that the death penalty is somehow a "deterrant" against violent crime, I ask "What's the murder rate in Texas?". Since they execute so many people there, their murder rate should be pretty close to 0, right?
What about the other argument "well if your wife and children were murdered, wouldn't you want the killer to pay the ultimate price?". Well, I'm sure I would want to exact revenge but does that make it right? As I said above, in this scenario, my family would still be dead.
Quite simply, a society that deems itself civilized does not execute people no matter what crimes they may have committed.
I'm pretty certain that our society is not growing more violent; what's different is that we now have cable news 24 hours to cover everything, and it's not a long look into the details of tax law that draws viewers. Sort of like sexual abuse of children always happened, but now it's actually reported rather than hidden, so the perception is that it never happened in 1940 and now is epidemic.
As for the deterrent effect when some communities respect prison time, they respect a few years. What you get for a minor offense. Are we going to put everyone to death, not just murderers? If you're 18, the idea that you might hypothetically be respected more after getting out of prison in 20-30 years doesn't make much sense as an inducement.
"One barbarous act is not remedied by perpetrating another.
The death penalty is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!
I'm not usually so definitive but I (obviously) feel very strongly about this. I say again, you cannot rectify a wrong by carrying out another wrong. If theese guys are executed, their victims remain dead! It really is as simple as that."
Never gotten this argument. Killing someone is a wrong, but locking people up in tiny cells by themselves is... not a wrong? Punishments are, by their nature, bad things. Things that would be wrong to do to innocent people. Even fines are wrongs. So yeah, any time you punish someone, you're "carrying out another wrong." The idea, though, is that the fact of the criminal's guilt makes these wrongs rights.
That these particular devils deserve to be deprived of their lives does not make the case that the government should do that - in my view the only really, completely morally sanctioned killing of people in a decent society is in self-defense specifically, or in a war (okay, so there's a whole big can of worms) which is collectively self-defense.
But don't worry for a moment - God will punish them far more severely than we ever could or would.
I knew a guy in High School who said he wanted to kill people. He meant it.
He joined the Marines, just like he said he would, where (in his words) "It'd be socially acceptable to kill people."
I'm not for the death penalty either, yet I don't know what we should do with psychos like these.
Maybe we shouldn't help create them in the first place?
Interesting piece in the New Yorker recently on pyschopaths mentioned the fact that little research money is allocated to the study of socio and psychopathy, in comparison with the funds spent on schizophrenia, when schizophrenics are far less harmful to society and commit far less crime.
I've often suspected if more study was done into mental illness it would seriously cut down on events like this, and possibly eradicate the school shooting phenomenon.
The comment above gives a good example of my point.
In the same way that you are saying capital punishment is "WRONG, WORNG, WRONG" and can never be done, Conservatives say:
- sex education is school is wrong and you should teach nothing but abstinence in schools
- restrictions on gun control are wrong because the father gave us freedoms to bear arms
Both sides have their reasons, which I no doubt think they passionately care about. We must be able to make concessions (reasonable and intelligent of course) if we really want to solve our problems. Absolute policies in a large and diverse nation as we have with large and diverse problems do not provide the multi-layered solutions we need. In this case, it likely includes some form of gun control as well as stricter penalties including capital punishment (other items like better comprehensive education im ignoring for the purposes of this point). You can see how both sides need to make a concession. And even if you feel as though capital punishment wont help, many conservatives do, so you will never get anywhere on gun control, as a solution if you are going to try and completely prohibit any capital punishment.
Yeah, Galleymac. We’re warehousing a lot of mentally ill people in prisons. Their inability to function on the outside gets them locked up, and their inability to function on the inside gets them put in super max, where the social and sensory deprivation makes you crazy if you aren’t already.
It’s my understanding that, largely because of the ascendancy of sanctimonious religious fundamentalism, there is also relatively little research into pedophilia.
And Tom, this is snark, but sometimes I think that the way to get gun control would be to appeal to many conservatives’ enthusiasm for authoritarianism and the death penalty: no-warrant, no-knock searches, and anyone caught with a gun gets the chair.
Asher- False equivalency alert!!!
If we lock someone up and find out later that he is innocent, we can set him free. I'm not discounting the anguish and lost time he has spent behind bars but if we put someone to death and later find that they were innocent - oops, too late. Is locking someone up for the rest of their lives cruel or wrong, perhaps but that's no reason to institute the death penalty. And equating them both as "wrongs" is short-sighted.
Tom- I'm usually all for conciliation, you typically don't get anywhere by taking an absolute position. However, in this case, how exactly do we meet in the middle?
"In this case, it likely includes some form of gun control as well as stricter penalties including capital punishment"
But so do neo-conservative warmongers who kill hundreds of thousands of civilians while experimenting with global hegemony. And not a single one of them will pay. They will write books, give lectures, eat steak, and live the good life until they die.
I have become very confused about the value of human life, and why collateral damage is alright even when it is associated with a war that was not justified.
These young men have to dealt with, obviously, but it is hard to say what happened to them. If we continue to teach people that killing is wrong except when it isn't, then expect there to be some percentage of people who cannot separate the two. Who knows why? I suppose there are a lot of reasons.
We need to acknowledge our share of the responsibility. It takes a village to raise a child.
Paul, now you're making an entirely different argument, and, I should add, a totally reasonable one (although people's life expectancies are shortened by long stays in prison, you know - it isn't always the case that we can just let them out once they're exonerated, they might be dead by then). I'm just saying that the two wrongs don't make a right argument against the death penalty is silly. All punishments are "wrongs" when taken out of context.
No sympathy is needed for them, no excuses about a father missing etc. No sob stories excuse this. I would get going on the whole Marines training young men to be killers, but I'll stop at that.
The average prisoner [at the Colorado Super Max] goes insane and dies within 15 years. It's absolute hell on earth.
This sounds less humane than the death penalty itself. And also seems to undermine the "innocent people get executed" argument. If you end the death penalty, innocent people get sent to maximum security prisons, live in isolation, and are driven crazy. Is that really that much better?
There are myriad problems with specific prisons, like the SuperMaxen, but that answer to our question is: Yes, a zillion times yes. To repeat: you can't unkill someone if/when you make a mistake. You can take them out of prison and try to rehab them. Why is this a difficult concept?
TNC, I really enjoy the thoughtfulness of the discussion you spark.
I have lots of thoughts here.
Tom says society is getting more violent; I want to see some data there. I am suspicious.
I am usually unilaterally opposed to the death penalty- I do agree that some people deserve it, but very few, and I don't think you can draw any bright line between those who do and those who don't. So I was suprised to find myself agreeing with Elmo. But he says:
it's just statistically inevitable that you're going to convict more innocent people for petty crimes than you are for really awful murders. Because there just aren't that many really awful murders every year.
I disagree. The pressure to convict someone is much, much, much higher with a heinous and highly publicized crime. With a petty crime where the evidence is murky, the case may be thrown out of court or never prosecuted. In a high-profile heinous crime, the trial will go forward if there is ANYTHING to try it on. The strength of emotion we have about some crimes generates a level of attention and passion that is detrimental to the dispassionate investigation of what happened. It also creates a much higher incentive for those involved to pin it on the other guy, for those not arrested but accessory to cover things up, and so on. It's just harder to find the truth when everyone's looking so hard for vengeance. If we had a magic truth-o-meter I am quite sure that we would find innocent people convicted at all levels of the court system, but more of them at the capital level.
As sorn and others' points that that you can't undo an execution: true, true, and this is a basis for my opposition to the death penalty. But you can't undo 10 years in prison either. The person is let out; but those 10 years are lost. Time in prison is irrevocable. And those wrongfully convicted people who have been released from death row? They are let out. They just go. Go on, son, you're free do do as you please, at 47, having spent your entire adult life in a twisted and inhumane world, with no job skills, no money, an only a sad story to tell to the world. I understand it's better than death for those people, and that exoneration must be sweet. But the error of the state, in executing an innocent, is only a matter of degree greater than the error of wrongfully imprisoning an innocent for years and years.
it is so much MORE than that question. As a single mother, I struggle every day to raise my sons AND my daughter to respect themselves and others. Would a father help? The RIGHT father would. Otherwise, no.
I have no answers, and I have no hate. I have tremendous grief, and compassion..........weird, I know, but true.
Joel wants prisons to be more punishing. For capital and life prisoners, okay, I'll let that point go.
But for prisoners who will someday be released. I understand the desire to punish, and I think punishment has some utility. But to take a person who has their moral compass askew, and most of them don't have a lot going for them otherwise, and socially isolate them for extended periods of time, and then when they're done, just... let them go... sounds like a recipie for more crime. Society has an interest in protecting itself, and a person with not enough compassion, who does wrong things, I think will rarely develop more compassion by being punished and isolated.
Perhaps we need a punishment phase and a rehabilitation phase of imprisonment. But as morally appealing as punishment is, it's just not going to produce reformed criminals most of the time. I have an acquaintance who served 10 years for robbery and kidnapping, and who emerged much better for it, with a much stricter sense of ethics and limits. So it happens. But he's a rare bird.
Never gotten this argument. Killing someone is a wrong, but locking people up in tiny cells by themselves is... not a wrong? Punishments are, by their nature, bad things. Things that would be wrong to do to innocent people. Even fines are wrongs. So yeah, any time you punish someone, you're "carrying out another wrong." The idea, though, is that the fact of the criminal's guilt makes these wrongs rights.
I agree with this, although my hesistation to support the death penalty is the fact that all other forms of punishment are, to some extent, reversible. Once you've executed someone, you can't exactly give them their life back.
But for prisoners who will someday be released. I understand the desire to punish, and I think punishment has some utility. But to take a person who has their moral compass askew, and most of them don't have a lot going for them otherwise, and socially isolate them for extended periods of time, and then when they're done, just... let them go... sounds like a recipie for more crime.
On the other hand, widespread social interaction among prisoners isn't exactly rehabilitative. Prison gangs and other criminal assemblies have to be destroyed before you can address the issue of rehabilitation in my book.
I agree with this, although my hesistation to support the death penalty is the fact that all other forms of punishment are, to some extent, reversible. Once you've executed someone, you can't exactly give them their life back.
Asher, I appreciate the clarification. I combined 2 thoughts when using the "2 wrongs don't make a right" argument. My main point was meant to address the fact that the death penalty, for many, has come to represent a vengeful redressing of the balance when a "wrong", i.e. murder, is committed. We carry out a state-sponsored "wrong" to punish the perpetrator(s). This is particulary galling in light of the fact that the majority of our population practice (or claim to practice) christianity and revenge is something that jesus condemned (I'm not trying to get all religious on you, just pointing out a fact that many people choose to ignore about their faith).
I take your point that "wrong" is not limited to the death penalty and also that, prior to being found innocent, an inmate may indeed die while in prison (disease, natural causes, violence etc.).
So if the argument is "2 wrongs don't make a right", and we take the original crime to be a "wrong" then absolutely nothing can make it a "right". Execution, life in prison without the possibility of parole etc. are, as you said, in and of themselves wrongs, but no matter what you do, the original wrong cannot be changed. On this basis, the 2 wrongs don't make a right argument is, indeed, a fallacy.
My take on it, however, is from the viewpoint of the message that capital punishment sends to the citizenry. We claim to live in a civilized society and yet we execute criminals in the name of justice. In essence saying, killing is wrong, unless the government is doing it. Liza made a similar point upthread. Imprisonment, in and of itself is a "wrong", but a far more palatable and civilized option for punishing criminals than execution.
To conclude, I would say that the argument of 2 wrongs don't make a right is overly simplistic but that the basis of it has merit.
There is no usefulness in talking about the military "training people to be killers" as having any relevance in this situation. Lots and lots and lots of Marines never kill anyone (while serving or in 'regular life'), yeah? Some Marines are bad people and do heinous things; some civilians are bad people and do heinous things. Unles you can show that military personnel or veterans have a higher incidence of violent crime than the civilian population, the fact that these monsters were Marines has nothing to do with it.
Here's a piece no one cared about. Meh, whatever, probably the most enjoyable article I did during my stint at TIME. Premiered a month before I got laid-off. The nail in the coffin? Ya think?
Here's me going after Al. I didn't so much have a problem with him, as I had a problem with media acting like this dude was the go-to guy for everything black.
This was my first real story at time. I was writing for the Business section, a real change of direction for me. At any rate, it's about Wal-Mart's attempts to colonize the inner-city. As much as I enjoyed this piece, I mostly enjoyed going out to Chicago, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
This a piece I did about the cops just outside our nation capitol, in Prince George's County, a few years back. I wanted to offer a counter to the dumb, conventional wisdom that if you paint your police force black, you could eradicate police brutality. In fact, Prince George's--one of the richest, blackest counties in the country--also had one of the most brutal police force's in the country.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Can't we just drop these guys off in Waziristan with huge American flags tattooed across their heads?
That should take care of these scumbags...
And someone should throw the recruiters who let these maniacs into the Marines in the first place.
It's the hard ones that test moral principles, and these pieces of excrement are certainly a test.
it makes me wonder what kind of stuff was going on in Iraq.
Deleted. And you're done. Stormfront awaits thee.
I can't come up with a definite belief system of the death penalty. In my youth, I thought it was wrong. Then, there was a case here of a young man who killed his entire family for the insurance money:
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1994_1208486
and I revised my opinion. That was evil.
But with the revelation of the DNA problems and a realization of how many people were being convicted wrongly, I went back to a more muddled picture about the death penalty.
That said, this crime fits into that evil mold.
KevDog,
The recruiters are dealing with the system as it is. Standards have been lowered (to basically, do you breath? levels) and the recruiters are under major pressure.
Not to hijack the thread with Houston Chron articles, but reading this story this morning brought that home. Houston has a huge problems with suicides among army recruiters who are reacting to the pressure from above.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6099800.html
Excerpt:
I have a hard time fightin the urge to cut throats (and other things). And the USMC really needs to check things out here.
My problem with the death penalty was never one of "no one could possibly deserve to die!" but one of "would I trust the government to be able to figure out who committed a particular crime?"
I think the internal compromise I reached on the death penalty was "The death penalty should only apply to people employed by the Government".
Amen, KevDog. I can't believe they made it past the first meeting with their recruiter.
I'm still against the death penalty (for mostly the same reasons Dewberry listed), but cases like these really put my principles to the test!
I'm sure Ta-Nehisi is going to be busy deleting troll comments with this post.
T-NC: "Where was your father?"
As Jesse Jackson might have said, the question is moot. Where were any adults who could have taught them right from wrong and respect for their fellow man? Where are the Marine Corps' shrinks who are supposed to be able to identify the fine line that separates a good Marine from a psychopath? Where were the Marine Corps officers who are charged with training them not only to be good fighters but also to be good and honorable Marines? Did their commanding officers see anything in them that foreshadowed this ending? And, if so, did they ignore it?
We ask young people to volunteer to learn how to kill people. We teach them myriad ways to kill people. We send them around the world to kill people. Back in the U.S., though, a few of them can't stop killing. I don't know any solution, but I do know that killing them now is not the answer.
I believe in death, but not "the death penalty." I feel no sympathy for murderers and shed no tears at their death, at the hands of the state or otherwise, but it's impossible to argue that the state is in any way capable of actually enacting the death penalty as judicial policy in a moral or fair matter.
Given that, I'm ok with letting these guys "slip through the cracks" and rot for the rest of their mortal existence if it means the likes of the innocence project and others still get to try to save lives and find justice.
I knew a guy in High School who said he wanted to kill people. He meant it.
He joined the Marines, just like he said he would, where (in his words) "It'd be socially acceptable to kill people."
I'm not for the death penalty either, yet I don't know what we should do with psychos like these.
Maybe we shouldn't help create them in the first place?
I would have no problem killing all 4 of them.
That said, I say that because there seems to be no question they are guilty. I switched to opposing the death penalty when they started overturning death penalty convictions on dna evidence--in one that stays with me, it cleared the man on death row while implicating the man whose testimony put him there. A second man convicted with that testimony remained on death row, there being no dna evidence in his case.
The attempts to craft a "no errors" death penalty bill seem too fraught with error--in the face of horror, we fall too easily into "we need to punish someone for this" even at the risk of some of the someones being innocent. Either you kill the people who confess or are particularly inept (announcing it on their myspace pages?) and imprison for life the rest, even if their crime was greater, or you're consistent and imprison people for life across the board.
A major problem with the death penalty is that our criminal justice system is class and race biased – from who gets stopped and frisked, through the quality of defense, to who gets capital punishment.
The death penalty is not right for this kind of crime. But the reason simply is that it is not cruel enough.
The world is full of unmentionable evil, both outside the US and within. Its not the majority of the population, but its most definitely out there. Since you can't ignore its out there, the best response to it is to be judicious in making sure that someone is indeed responsible for accused henious crimes and acts (use all your conscience and compassion here) and then, once certain, leave your conscience at the door and punish it with equal henious force.
Deterence as presently conducted is obviously not working. We are too compasionate at the wrong time in the process and not compassionate enough at the right times.
Can you see why stuanch conservatives dont trust liberals to govern the country (particularly with respect to our national security) if they worry about the rights of these four idiots.
How about, instead of death, we send people such as these to places like the Federal SuperMax in Florence, Colorado.
People sentenced to this hell hole are confined to their cells 24 hours with (I believe, but may be wrong) 2 hours each week to work out alone in an indoor yard. Prisoners are always locked down in their cells (which are designed so prisoners cannot communicate or talk to each other) and, when they are outside of them, movements are coordinated so they have no contact with other prisoners. Hell, even the TVs in their cells only show religious and educational programming.
The average prisoner here goes insane and dies within 15 years. It's absolute hell on earth.
Personally, I think I'd rather be shot than go here.
Deborah,
You can't mete out different punishments based on different kinds of proof. It's an terrible, unjust idea, and won't pass constitutional muster.
Whenever I see something like this, it think of the line uttered by Samuel L Jackson: "Yes the deserve to die, and I hope they burn in Hell".
However, like Jaybird mentioned, I draw a distinction between saying someone deserves death and trusting the State to make that decision. As someone who is conservative on many issues, I don't trust the government to effectively control my Social Security and tax dollars, I sure as hell don't trust them to effectively administer a death penalty.
Amen, KevDog. I can't believe they made it past the first meeting with their recruiter.
One can't help but wonder if they would have been recruited at all had President Cheney not invaded Iraq. I really think this starts with the Worst Administration Ever. It's on them as much as anyone else. Cheney et al can't go home and disappear too soon.
"Can you see why stuanch conservatives dont trust liberals to govern the country (particularly with respect to our national security) if they worry about the rights of these four idiots."
You have the wrong idiots. See the link below, those are the ones we're worried about.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/04/0408_050408_tv_dnadeath.html
If you are willing to give the state the right to execute innocent people, then that's an argument. But you can't pretend that the system is perfect--which is exactly what it would have to be to not kill anyone who was innocent.
If conservatives ever acknowledged the system is flawed and allowed such common sense measures as mandatory DNA testing (when there is such evidence) and proper legal representation in death penalty cases, then perhaps more people would have confidence in the system.
As such, our legal system for capital punishment is an absolute joke and a disgrace.
If the state is going to exact a punishment for which there is ability to correct for errors later on, then they damn well be prepared to administer it properly. Since we've proved utterly incapable at it, I cannot support it.
Whoops, I meant to say:
If the state is going to exact a punishment for which there is NO ability to correct for errors later on, then they damn well better be prepared to administer it properly. Since we've proved utterly incapable at it, I cannot support it.
I'm not drinking at work, I swear!
Horrible.
Those four "men" aren't Marines. I know it says they are, but they are not. Real Marines have honor, they don't.
On the death penalty.
It is wrong for the simple reason that our Justice System is not about finding out the truth, it is totally about what you can convince twelve human beings to believe.
The risks of potentially putting an innocent man or woman to death outweighs any "justice" obtained from killing the truly guilty.
I'm not against the death penalty in all cases. But it should be reserved for the absolute worst of the worst. Cases where not only is there no reasonable doubt, but where there's no shadow of a doubt, and no reasonable hope of rehabilitation. I'm thinking Ted Kaczynski, Tim McVeigh, John Allen Muhammad, Osama bin Laden.
As bad as it was, what those thugs did doesn't reach that level of evil. They deserve to rot in solitary forever.
BS_PI wrote:
"f the state is going to exact a punishment for which there is NO ability to correct for errors later on, then they damn well better be prepared to administer it properly. Since we've proved utterly incapable at it, I cannot support it."
I agree. That's why I don't support it in my state of Illinois. But I say we should damn well fix it. And once we do, we fire up Ol' Sparky until the lights flicker in downtown Chicago.
These guys knew going in the door that they were going to kill this couple. A couple of them worked for him the the Corps. They had to do it.
They should be killed or never let out ever.
The problem is not only that innocent people may be executed; it’s that guilty people are not treated similarly.
It’s like saying that executing only Irish-American murderers would be better than not executing anyone at all.
"Cases where not only is there no reasonable doubt, but where there's no shadow of a doubt, and no reasonable hope of rehabilitation."
Nah, that would be impossible to determine. That would lead us right back to where we are now. Who would get to determine what's beyond a "shadow of a doubt?" Who would determine who has no chance at rehabilitation?
These guys definitely DESERVE to die. But 'deserve' doesn't have anything to do with it.
"But I say we should damn well fix it."
Its impossible. Let's just get it out of our heads that it is. There will ALWAYS be innocent people executed if we allow the death penalty. Its not a problem that can be 'fixed.'
"Can you see why stuanch conservatives dont trust liberals to govern the country (particularly with respect to our national security) if they worry about the rights of these four idiots."
I can, but only because I that line of thinking is typically weak-minded of conservatives and the modern, Rush Limbaugh Republican party.
As many others have noted, the system of deciding who dies and who doesn't is unfair, but beyond that, as my Social Justice Catholic pals point out, it never will be.
I don't even get that far. All you have to do is ask, "What if they didn't do it?" You can't unkill someone. The best we may be able to hope for is freezing them in carbonite to be thawed out at a later date if it's shown that a person was unjustly convicted of a carbonite-worthy crime. Until then, it's life and day in a SuperMax (which opens up other problems for another thread).
All of the anti-death penalty arguments on this thread are good ones, but I'm surprised no one has mentioned the vengeance aspect. The death penalty serves primarily as vengeance, and a civilized society should shy away from such barbarism. What does it mean to say someone "deserves" to die? More than anything, such a killing only serves to justify our moral feelings. The closest example I can think of is, say, a killer who continues to kill in prison, but that person can be put in solitary confinement indefinitely and the problem is solved. The death penalty in that instance would be for convenience's sake. Even aside from incorrect rulings (and 1 innocent death is 1 too many), do we really want to be a society which kills people for revenge and convenience?
"Even aside from incorrect rulings (and 1 innocent death is 1 too many), do we really want to be a society which kills people for revenge and convenience?"
Getting into a discussion about the barbarism of the death penalty serves no purpose. You won't convince people the death penalty is wrong that way. Most people don't think its barbaric, and don't have a problem with the idea of murderers being killed. People need to be convinced that its unfair because we are currently executing innocent people. That's the only way to end the death penalty.
Dostoevsky said that ‘A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.’
We should never give up on rehab. Super max facilities are barbaric. (see e.g. http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/us0608/3.htm)
Unfortunately, we have no shortage of depraved crimes. Perhaps it says something about our society. We need to look in the mirror. These guys are Americans, marines. They’re not from France or Iran.
All murderers "deserve" to die, but there is no way for *society* to design an objective methodology for deciding who should live and who should die.
And isn't life in prison a death penalty of sorts? I don't know, but part of me feels like it is. Part of me feels like I would prefer someone to rot in prison for the rest of their life rather than allowing them to escape their own hell. No mercy. That's for my dog, or my horse, or an ailing family member or friend.
Mr. Coates,
First thanks for the good work.
Second, I understand and agree that the State needs to do its very best to not execute innocent people (or punish them at all for that matter).
I think the practical reality is that deterance under a current system is approximately zero for certain individuals who may have little in life and think the risks of violence and jail are obviously worth taking.
Im trying to present the consrvative thinking on this point which is that, even if their are faults (which there will always be in our legal system - and modern DNA would hopefully lessen what seems to have a lot in the past), these horrible crimes are becoming more prevalant and more extreme. Therefore, there needs to be real deterence to help lower crime, and taking away a potential tool (the death penalty) with an outright ban can be perceived as an inability to deal with real practicalities.
Im not defending those who believe in the death penalty as a part of their general conservative plank (they obviously are completely impractical on gun control and their inability to admit that educational and economic opportunity is almost non-existant with many of the same people who turn to this life of crime). Im just noting why people who take the death penalty off the board as an absolute (and don't look for a reasoned way to make it work as a tool for deterence) might be seen by a portion of the right as too soft to deal with the threat of terrorism.
As a note for comparison, gun rights and abstinence are two examples from the other political spectrum. These would both be great to implement in theory, but practically you have to consider allowing gun restrictions and discussing other methods for preventing teen pregnancy and stds. You can see that there is a necessary element of sacrifice for one to move from their absolute positions (not to mention slippery slope fears aggrevating any fears of those who might compromise). Now how best to strike the balance is an issue by issue determination. But the practicalities have to push people from their theoretical absolute positions to come to the best compromises and solutions for all. Will innocent people be punished and still get the death penalty? Certainly it will happen and hopefully with modern DNA and better judicial advocacy it can be reduced to small numbers. Is protecting even one person reason enough to not have the death penalty as a possible deterent. I think as society becomes more violent, the argument for this position (a position I used to hold) needs to be reconsidered more than ever.
Strictly addressing the philisophical question of whether the state should kill and not the issue of accuracy of evidence or innocence (which to me is a no-brainer - innocent people should not be killed), I am pro death penalty in limited situations:
As an example I refer to a prison gang called the Aryan Brotherhood (there was a great New Yorker article some years back about brining these guys to justice) whose tyranny was felt both inside and outside the prison system. You had guys calling for the murder of people, both fellow inmates and persons on the outside who were already doing time in high security complexes for murder convictions. The fact that they happened to be a white supremacist gang (in name only actually - they formed alliances with gangs of other races for expediency) is not central to my point as many inter state gangs, and criminals, operate like the "Brotherhood" did and for some reason incarceration did not impede them from carrying out their murderous activities.
So my theory goes like this the DP needs to be available, but must only be used in cases where the actions of those found guilty show that they will continue their actions from prison there will be no other way to prevent this person from endangering the lives of other persons.
This is parallel to the common law doctrine of justified homicide in a sense because the state has an overwhelming interest in protecting its citizens from these alternative systems - ie, mafiosos, murderous political extremists and narcotics - related gangs, who do not abide by the principles of due process and human rights within their own micro systems and thus threaten the rights and well being of society as a whole.
This of course would rule out the DP for one- time murder convicts, even on the grounds of heinousness, as this suggests a type of collective revenge. I agree with TNC in saying that the idea of collective revenge, or retribution, does not sit right in a civil society - it infects the innocent bystanders with the same blood lust that consumed the perpetrator.
What I am about to say will probably offend. I apologize in advance.
I support the death penalty or at least the option of the death penalty. The issues of class, race, and improper imprisonment will not be solved by eliminating the death penalty. Instead of being executed the wrongly accused will die in prison. I don't see much of a difference between those two options.
This is how I see it. Either the state has a responsibility to determine a just level of retribution for grievences or the individual does. Individual retributive justice is usually more excessive than state run retributive justice. (Please no arguments about state sponsored terrorism or the horrors of gulags and concentration camps.) In general when the state has the authority to put wrongdoers to death it lessens the impulse for people to take matters into their own hands.
All this being said extreme restraint should be used when determining whether to implement the death penalty. The choice should usually be made in favor of life imprisonment. However the state should retain the option for the death penalty as a judgement in heinous crimes.
The crime TNC mentioned is horrible but I don't know enough about it to say whether the people who did it deserve to die. The SGT had a beautifull wife and it's a shame that they were murdered.
My girlfriend is a clinical psychologist who has been treating juveniles in a maximum detention facility. Having put in a number of years there, she noted that some of them are sociopaths and that they are likely to spend the rest of their lives in and out of jail. Yes, there are many kids who are born into horrible situations and that but for their environment would be respectable citizens who obeyed the law. But there are many for whom the lives of others are of no consequence. They care not how they affect others and if someone is in the way of what they want they'll do whatever act of violence is required to get it.
Now whether these marines committed these acts due to nature or nuture (i.e., are they just psychopaths?) is unknown, but for some of them - or at least others who commit similar acts - there is no way to really prevent it or treat it.
I didnt believe in the death penalty until Sept. 11, 2001. It forced me to re-examine my views.
I knew I wanted the people responsible to be executed. But then I thought, what makes one victim more important than another? How many people have to be killed before I think its OK?
How about the thousands of women who die at the hands of boyfriends or husbands? Why are they less important than our fellow Americans who died on Sept. 11? So that is why I believe that if you murder someone, the jury should be given the choice to execute or not.
That being said, it is important the prosecutors have hard evidence against these assholes.
Mr Coates, you absolutely have to read this month's Texas Monthly magazine. They have a feature on wrongfully convicted men in the state of Texas. There are 37 men who have been exonerated of their crimes due to DNA evidence. Sadly, they are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic men. Many of these wrongful convictions happened because of cops and lawyers who wanted to railroad the defendants. Many also were convicted because of witnesses who swear it was them.
Please let me know if you want me to mail you a copy of the article.
Despite reading about these men, I still think we need to continue the death penalty.
Mike BK,
Your comment fits in nicely with my proposal in the last thread here that discussed the death penalty. Which is, that I not only believe strongly in the death penalty, I don't believe in life in prison. Any crime for which we are willing to remove a person from society forever should be a crime subject to the death penalty. Murder. Rape. Aggravated mayhem. Aggravated armed robbery.
Let me just re-post what I said before:
I go the other way. It's life imprisonment that I don't believe in. If we believe, as a society, that some crimes are so heinous, and rehabilitation so unlikely, that we intend to lock a man in a cage -- with other similar men --until he dies, then I say we should have the courage of our convictions and simply kill him.
Not just for murder. For rape. For attempted murder. For repeat armed robbery. Essentially for anything that would merit a 20-year or more prison term.
The alternative, what we have actually done, is to create a sort of "shadow society" of killers and rapists. Into that toxic society we then throw such minor criminals as petty thieves and drug users. The minor criminals have little choice but to accept the culture of the society we have thrown them into -- and behold, we have now created the next generation of killers once they're released from prison.
Prisons are evil, horrific places precisely because we put evil, horrific people in them.
And yes, I get the "but we could make a mistake" argument. Doesn't sway me for two reasons.
One, because to me it's no more awful to put a man down than to lock him in one of our modern prisons for the rest of his life.
And two, and more importantly, if you think of crimes and criminals as forming a pyramid, with the vast majority of crimes being non-violent petty crimes at the bottom, it's just statistically inevitable that you're going to convict more innocent people for petty crimes than you are for really awful murders. Because there just aren't that many really awful murders every year. And under the existing system, if you accept that premise, we are putting lots and lots of innocent people into this shadow society after convicting them of petty crimes, and putting only one or two in there for crimes that would get the death penalty. My system protects a much larger number of innocent people -- by eliminating the awful prisons altogether -- while, yes, condemning one or two innocents to death.
But you don't have to worry -- nobody's going to listen to me on this one. :-)
Deborah,
You can't mete out different punishments based on different kinds of proof. It's an terrible, unjust idea, and won't pass constitutional muster.
Tony: that was the point I was trying to make--that trying to set up a standard wherein the obviously really really guilty have the death penalty, and the almost certainly guilty (but not confessing on myspace) have life in prison, is not reasonable. And so you go with the lesser punishment that does allow people to be released on new evidence, rather than killing someone for every heinous crime and hoping you don't kill the wrong people. As Jack put it "it's impossible to argue that the state is in any way capable of actually enacting the death penalty as judicial policy in a moral or fair matter."
As for the death penalty not being heinous enough: I don't hold with checking your conscience and inflicting torture. We must, at all times, keep our consciences. Not become what we claim to oppose. The death penalty, to me, is about removing a threat that can never live in society. Life in prison accomplishes that--you're stuck with the elderly prison population (and with giving them health care) but that seems an acceptable tradeoff amongst the bad choices.
@Tom's point above: I don't think the death penalty is much of a deterrent. You are either dealing with psychopathy, in which people don't care about future consequences (drawing from this week's New Yorker article), or you are dealing with people who bet they won't be caught, if caught won't come to trial, if come to trial won't be convicted, if convicted won't serve a full sentence, and so on... I don't know what exactly works to make crime more something you don't get away with, but I suspect the community policing and programs aimed at youth are a lot closer to what will work than having the death penalty in all states. Send these guys to SuperMax, as someone above described.
The more individualistic society seems to correlate to more of this type of violence. To take a hard turn into sci fi, a community on a space station emphasizes following rules and fitting in with the group, because a screw up affects everyone. A story about a bunch of wild card maverick screw ups on a space station wouldn't fly.
Elmo: Move to China and you'll have your wish. I also hear that Saudi Arabia is quite nice this time of year.
I appreciate Tom’s civil discussion above, but why is our society growing more violent? Most other societies don’t have the death penalty, and are much less violent.
Genuine rugged-individualist conservatives should oppose police, prisons, death penalties, or any government at all. Let the strong survive. If a car-jacker gets the drop on you, tip your hat and flip him the keys. He’s just proved that he’s a better person than you are. (not you personally, Tom.)
The average prisoner [at the Colorado Super Max] goes insane and dies within 15 years. It's absolute hell on earth.
This sounds less humane than the death penalty itself. And also seems to undermine the "innocent people get executed" argument. If you end the death penalty, innocent people get sent to maximum security prisons, live in isolation, and are driven crazy. Is that really that much better?
We ask young people to volunteer to learn how to kill people. We teach them myriad ways to kill people. We send them around the world to kill people. Back in the U.S., though, a few of them can't stop killing.
Nah. These kids were thugs. This isn't PTSD. This isn't the fog of war. The Marines may teach you many things that are not applicable in everyday society but torturing a couple for money is not one of them.
I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but it's a fucking insult to men and women in the armed services to imply that their training led in any way to this. The only thing that military training gave these guys was additional motive and opportunity, IMO. It's as ridiculous as blaming video games for the Columbine massacre.
BS_PI, did you actually read what I wrote? What do China and Saudi Arabia have to do with the idea that our prisons are horrific, awful places, and it is horrific and awful that we perpetuate a shadow society of killers? And then throw innocent people and minor offenders into that shadow society -- essentially throwing them to the wolves?
Do you consider the prisons in China and Saudi Arabia to be models of humane reform? How odd.
"And yes, I get the "but we could make a mistake" argument. Doesn't sway me for two reasons.
One, because to me it's no more awful to put a man down than to lock him in one of our modern prisons for the rest of his life."
Really? Hmmm. Tell that to all the men on death row making appeal after appeal to save their lives. Good thing your opinion doesn't mean anything.
"but why is our society growing more violent?"
I'm not convinced it is. There's alway been evil people and heinous murders, and there always will be. Thinking that things used to be better falls under the trap of nostalgia. I don't buy it.
And Elmo, yes, I'm aware we've gone through this before. I think you have some valid points, but its ultimately faulty reasoning.
A few years ago one of the most imaginative speculative political writers I know got a tour of the supermax facility at Pelican Bay, CA
"Oh yeah folks, one more thing, if there is a riot or an uprising or something while we are in here, California considers you dead the moment it starts."
This succeeds in getting the attention of most everyone in the group, and we all stop what we are doing for a moment and look at Mr. James.
"We just need you to sign these forms saying that you understand that"
Strange things happen when the absolutely incorrigible collide with the absolute power of the state. Worth a read:
http://oregonbrickblockrock.com/blog_pelican_bay.html
Elmo:
You seem to suggest the old school approach where the term felony was synonymous with capital crime, even if the felony did not result in another's death. What a long way we have come (Elmo would disagree probably) in that the word felony now means any crime punishable by imprisonment for over a year (crimes for which you get sent upstate here in NY).
One major change since the days where all felonies carried the death penalty is the use of prisons for something other than a waiting room for the gallows. Penitentiary comes from the French word "penser" (to think) and shares the same root with repentance and pensive.
As such, the prison sentence was originally seen as a progressive alternative to the DP. The idea, rooted in Christian theology, is that one deserves the chance to repent for their bad acts while they are still alive. As a christian myself (small c, please), I can appreciate this progress and cannot see how anyone would benefit from being killed as opposed to being allowed to live in (even minimally bearable) captivity. Torture and cruelty accompanying the captivity of course would give rise to different circumstances.
My point of view of course is countered by Asher's statistic about inmates dying early in Super Max. I question this statistic just because almost all prisons are subdivided and the conditions of an individual's incarceration in any prison depend a whole lot on the convict's behavior and the crime committed by the convict. You usually don't get stuck in the "SHU" for no reason. (Even Charles Manson seems to getting by just fine - a little too fine for most people's tastes.)
Hi again, Stacy. Yeah, that was the same point you disagreed with before. Still don't think your response really addresses the main point, which is -- as a moral choice, it is no worse to put a man to death than it is to put him in hell for 30 years. The prisoners' responses to their own situations don't really get to whether the choice is moral or not; the convicts sentenced to life also spend their time filing appeals.
Reasons death is a deterent:
(1) the obvious one that the person put to death has no chance to commit crimes in prison or out (or to conspire to or solicit such which are crimes) - part of this was adressed nicely by a reader above.
Reason death is likely a deterent:
(2) In some communities there is a level of respect earned by going to prison. In some communities there is a level of respect earned from taking actions that could send you to prison. The gamble of going to prison (risk/reward) is not the same as termination of your life. Look how mellow these death row inmates are, its hard to believe the realization that you are going to die or your crimes could cause it does not have some effect on ones behavior. Life prison does not have the same effect on people desparate for respect.
"Morals" is a loaded word. The morality of it doesn't concern me. People put on death row typically don't want to die. Some do, but the fact that most don't is pretty indisputable. We have put a lot of innocent men on death row. This is a problem. A problem that can only be remedied by abolishing the death penalty. Our penal system is beyond messed up, but we can't change the fact that some innocent people are going to be thrown in prison. Hopefully we can work on preventing it as much as possible. We also need to work on improving our entire system so we can eliminate the "Shadow Society," as you put it.
Some part of me wants the death penalty, but I'd rather see prisons themselves become more punitive. More focus on social isolation, and loss of common priveleges (including television). Longer sentencing for violent crimes (with reduced sentencing for nonviolent ones).
Basically, I'd like to see these guys spend the rest of their lives in virtual isolation, with no hope for release. I know these reforms will never happen.
Mike,
Thanks for the interesting thoughts. I think you're close to the mark in describing my proposal, although I certainly wouldn't support the DP for all modern "felonies." Our definition of "felony" has expanded well beyond the former synonym for capital crime: there are thousands of so-called "felonies" on the books now, some of which involve little more than careless record-keeping.
You say that you can't see how anyone would benefit from being killed as opposed to imprisoned. I don't disagree. I'm not interested in any proposed "benefit" to the convicted murderers and thugs that my proposal would condemn. I'm more interested in the thousands upon thousands of non-violent, petty criminals -- and the innocent people wrongly convicted as such -- whom we as a society force to live with murderers and thugs. I'm much more interested in the prison-industrial complex that we've created, the brutality we've sanctioned, in the name of "securing" ourselves from people who have no ability or desire to live peaceably among us.
For myself, I would greatly prefer to retrieve the "penitentiary" and return it to its root word, as you describe -- but only for those whom it might actually reform.
When you look seriously at the things people do, it's hard not to feel that some people have forfeited any claim on humanity. That doesn't mean that we have to kill them, though. Leaving aside the inevitable problems with the practice of capital punishment, one moral reason for not killing is about us, not them. About proving that those of us who act like human beings are better.
That's my point of view -- but let me throw something else into the mix.
I used to work for an organization that did prisoners' rights advocacy. There are a lot of innocent people in prison, and there are a lot of people in prison who haven't done much harm to anyone but themselves, but if you're going to do that work you need to be down with sticking up for the rights of the guilty. If a prison guard beat down one of these guys in Brooklyn -- took it upon himself to do back a small portion of what they dealt out -- it would still be wrong, and I respect the people morally tough enough to stand up for the rights of even people like this.
BTW, it’s a myth that death row prisoners postpone their sentences indefinitely, tying the courts in knots by filing numerous appeals. The fact is that there are only a handful of lawyers who do capital cases. Example: Scott Peterson. He paid Geragos a million for his trial, now he’s penniless like virtually everyone on death row, waiting for assigned counsel.
I'm more interested in the thousands upon thousands of non-violent, petty criminals -- and the innocent people wrongly convicted as such -- whom we as a society force to live with murderers and thugs.
Instead of killing the thugs, how about we don't put non-violent, petty criminals into the same prisons with murderers? How about we have drug laws that don't put petty criminals into prison at all?
Jordan, I'm all for that. ALLLLL for it. Especially the part about the drug laws. But unless we do repeal our drug laws, and lots of others, we just have too many prisoners and not enough prisons to separate the petty from the monsters.
One barbarous act is not remedied by perpetrating another.
The death penalty is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!
I'm not usually so definitive but I (obviously) feel very strongly about this. I say again, you cannot rectify a wrong by carrying out another wrong. If theese guys are executed, their victims remain dead! It really is as simple as that.
As for the insane notion that the death penalty is somehow a "deterrant" against violent crime, I ask "What's the murder rate in Texas?". Since they execute so many people there, their murder rate should be pretty close to 0, right?
What about the other argument "well if your wife and children were murdered, wouldn't you want the killer to pay the ultimate price?". Well, I'm sure I would want to exact revenge but does that make it right? As I said above, in this scenario, my family would still be dead.
Quite simply, a society that deems itself civilized does not execute people no matter what crimes they may have committed.
I'm pretty certain that our society is not growing more violent; what's different is that we now have cable news 24 hours to cover everything, and it's not a long look into the details of tax law that draws viewers. Sort of like sexual abuse of children always happened, but now it's actually reported rather than hidden, so the perception is that it never happened in 1940 and now is epidemic.
As for the deterrent effect when some communities respect prison time, they respect a few years. What you get for a minor offense. Are we going to put everyone to death, not just murderers? If you're 18, the idea that you might hypothetically be respected more after getting out of prison in 20-30 years doesn't make much sense as an inducement.
"One barbarous act is not remedied by perpetrating another.
The death penalty is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!
I'm not usually so definitive but I (obviously) feel very strongly about this. I say again, you cannot rectify a wrong by carrying out another wrong. If theese guys are executed, their victims remain dead! It really is as simple as that."
Never gotten this argument. Killing someone is a wrong, but locking people up in tiny cells by themselves is... not a wrong? Punishments are, by their nature, bad things. Things that would be wrong to do to innocent people. Even fines are wrongs. So yeah, any time you punish someone, you're "carrying out another wrong." The idea, though, is that the fact of the criminal's guilt makes these wrongs rights.
That these particular devils deserve to be deprived of their lives does not make the case that the government should do that - in my view the only really, completely morally sanctioned killing of people in a decent society is in self-defense specifically, or in a war (okay, so there's a whole big can of worms) which is collectively self-defense.
But don't worry for a moment - God will punish them far more severely than we ever could or would.
I knew a guy in High School who said he wanted to kill people. He meant it.
He joined the Marines, just like he said he would, where (in his words) "It'd be socially acceptable to kill people."
I'm not for the death penalty either, yet I don't know what we should do with psychos like these.
Maybe we shouldn't help create them in the first place?
Interesting piece in the New Yorker recently on pyschopaths mentioned the fact that little research money is allocated to the study of socio and psychopathy, in comparison with the funds spent on schizophrenia, when schizophrenics are far less harmful to society and commit far less crime.
I've often suspected if more study was done into mental illness it would seriously cut down on events like this, and possibly eradicate the school shooting phenomenon.
The comment above gives a good example of my point.
In the same way that you are saying capital punishment is "WRONG, WORNG, WRONG" and can never be done, Conservatives say:
- sex education is school is wrong and you should teach nothing but abstinence in schools
- restrictions on gun control are wrong because the father gave us freedoms to bear arms
Both sides have their reasons, which I no doubt think they passionately care about. We must be able to make concessions (reasonable and intelligent of course) if we really want to solve our problems. Absolute policies in a large and diverse nation as we have with large and diverse problems do not provide the multi-layered solutions we need. In this case, it likely includes some form of gun control as well as stricter penalties including capital punishment (other items like better comprehensive education im ignoring for the purposes of this point). You can see how both sides need to make a concession. And even if you feel as though capital punishment wont help, many conservatives do, so you will never get anywhere on gun control, as a solution if you are going to try and completely prohibit any capital punishment.
Yeah, Galleymac. We’re warehousing a lot of mentally ill people in prisons. Their inability to function on the outside gets them locked up, and their inability to function on the inside gets them put in super max, where the social and sensory deprivation makes you crazy if you aren’t already.
It’s my understanding that, largely because of the ascendancy of sanctimonious religious fundamentalism, there is also relatively little research into pedophilia.
And Tom, this is snark, but sometimes I think that the way to get gun control would be to appeal to many conservatives’ enthusiasm for authoritarianism and the death penalty: no-warrant, no-knock searches, and anyone caught with a gun gets the chair.
Asher- False equivalency alert!!!
If we lock someone up and find out later that he is innocent, we can set him free. I'm not discounting the anguish and lost time he has spent behind bars but if we put someone to death and later find that they were innocent - oops, too late. Is locking someone up for the rest of their lives cruel or wrong, perhaps but that's no reason to institute the death penalty. And equating them both as "wrongs" is short-sighted.
Tom- I'm usually all for conciliation, you typically don't get anywhere by taking an absolute position. However, in this case, how exactly do we meet in the middle?
"In this case, it likely includes some form of gun control as well as stricter penalties including capital punishment"
That doesn't sound very conciliatory to me!
how exactly do we meet in the middle?
That reminds me of what the ANC used to say about negotiating with the apartheid regime: it’s like a whale talking to an elephant, where do they meet?
I agree that psychopaths test our convictions.
But so do neo-conservative warmongers who kill hundreds of thousands of civilians while experimenting with global hegemony. And not a single one of them will pay. They will write books, give lectures, eat steak, and live the good life until they die.
I have become very confused about the value of human life, and why collateral damage is alright even when it is associated with a war that was not justified.
These young men have to dealt with, obviously, but it is hard to say what happened to them. If we continue to teach people that killing is wrong except when it isn't, then expect there to be some percentage of people who cannot separate the two. Who knows why? I suppose there are a lot of reasons.
We need to acknowledge our share of the responsibility. It takes a village to raise a child.
Paul, now you're making an entirely different argument, and, I should add, a totally reasonable one (although people's life expectancies are shortened by long stays in prison, you know - it isn't always the case that we can just let them out once they're exonerated, they might be dead by then). I'm just saying that the two wrongs don't make a right argument against the death penalty is silly. All punishments are "wrongs" when taken out of context.
Off with their heads too.
No sympathy is needed for them, no excuses about a father missing etc. No sob stories excuse this. I would get going on the whole Marines training young men to be killers, but I'll stop at that.
The average prisoner [at the Colorado Super Max] goes insane and dies within 15 years. It's absolute hell on earth.
This sounds less humane than the death penalty itself. And also seems to undermine the "innocent people get executed" argument. If you end the death penalty, innocent people get sent to maximum security prisons, live in isolation, and are driven crazy. Is that really that much better?
There are myriad problems with specific prisons, like the SuperMaxen, but that answer to our question is: Yes, a zillion times yes. To repeat: you can't unkill someone if/when you make a mistake. You can take them out of prison and try to rehab them. Why is this a difficult concept?
TNC, I really enjoy the thoughtfulness of the discussion you spark.
I have lots of thoughts here.
Tom says society is getting more violent; I want to see some data there. I am suspicious.
I am usually unilaterally opposed to the death penalty- I do agree that some people deserve it, but very few, and I don't think you can draw any bright line between those who do and those who don't. So I was suprised to find myself agreeing with Elmo. But he says:
it's just statistically inevitable that you're going to convict more innocent people for petty crimes than you are for really awful murders. Because there just aren't that many really awful murders every year.
I disagree. The pressure to convict someone is much, much, much higher with a heinous and highly publicized crime. With a petty crime where the evidence is murky, the case may be thrown out of court or never prosecuted. In a high-profile heinous crime, the trial will go forward if there is ANYTHING to try it on. The strength of emotion we have about some crimes generates a level of attention and passion that is detrimental to the dispassionate investigation of what happened. It also creates a much higher incentive for those involved to pin it on the other guy, for those not arrested but accessory to cover things up, and so on. It's just harder to find the truth when everyone's looking so hard for vengeance. If we had a magic truth-o-meter I am quite sure that we would find innocent people convicted at all levels of the court system, but more of them at the capital level.
As sorn and others' points that that you can't undo an execution: true, true, and this is a basis for my opposition to the death penalty. But you can't undo 10 years in prison either. The person is let out; but those 10 years are lost. Time in prison is irrevocable. And those wrongfully convicted people who have been released from death row? They are let out. They just go. Go on, son, you're free do do as you please, at 47, having spent your entire adult life in a twisted and inhumane world, with no job skills, no money, an only a sad story to tell to the world. I understand it's better than death for those people, and that exoneration must be sweet. But the error of the state, in executing an innocent, is only a matter of degree greater than the error of wrongfully imprisoning an innocent for years and years.
you ask, where were their fathers?
it is so much MORE than that question. As a single mother, I struggle every day to raise my sons AND my daughter to respect themselves and others. Would a father help? The RIGHT father would. Otherwise, no.
I have no answers, and I have no hate. I have tremendous grief, and compassion..........weird, I know, but true.
oh, and another thing:
Joel wants prisons to be more punishing. For capital and life prisoners, okay, I'll let that point go.
But for prisoners who will someday be released. I understand the desire to punish, and I think punishment has some utility. But to take a person who has their moral compass askew, and most of them don't have a lot going for them otherwise, and socially isolate them for extended periods of time, and then when they're done, just... let them go... sounds like a recipie for more crime. Society has an interest in protecting itself, and a person with not enough compassion, who does wrong things, I think will rarely develop more compassion by being punished and isolated.
Perhaps we need a punishment phase and a rehabilitation phase of imprisonment. But as morally appealing as punishment is, it's just not going to produce reformed criminals most of the time. I have an acquaintance who served 10 years for robbery and kidnapping, and who emerged much better for it, with a much stricter sense of ethics and limits. So it happens. But he's a rare bird.
I agree with this, although my hesistation to support the death penalty is the fact that all other forms of punishment are, to some extent, reversible. Once you've executed someone, you can't exactly give them their life back.
I agree with this, although my hesistation to support the death penalty is the fact that all other forms of punishment are, to some extent, reversible. Once you've executed someone, you can't exactly give them their life back.
Indeed. Why is this a difficult concept?
Asher, I appreciate the clarification. I combined 2 thoughts when using the "2 wrongs don't make a right" argument. My main point was meant to address the fact that the death penalty, for many, has come to represent a vengeful redressing of the balance when a "wrong", i.e. murder, is committed. We carry out a state-sponsored "wrong" to punish the perpetrator(s). This is particulary galling in light of the fact that the majority of our population practice (or claim to practice) christianity and revenge is something that jesus condemned (I'm not trying to get all religious on you, just pointing out a fact that many people choose to ignore about their faith).
I take your point that "wrong" is not limited to the death penalty and also that, prior to being found innocent, an inmate may indeed die while in prison (disease, natural causes, violence etc.).
So if the argument is "2 wrongs don't make a right", and we take the original crime to be a "wrong" then absolutely nothing can make it a "right". Execution, life in prison without the possibility of parole etc. are, as you said, in and of themselves wrongs, but no matter what you do, the original wrong cannot be changed. On this basis, the 2 wrongs don't make a right argument is, indeed, a fallacy.
My take on it, however, is from the viewpoint of the message that capital punishment sends to the citizenry. We claim to live in a civilized society and yet we execute criminals in the name of justice. In essence saying, killing is wrong, unless the government is doing it. Liza made a similar point upthread. Imprisonment, in and of itself is a "wrong", but a far more palatable and civilized option for punishing criminals than execution.
To conclude, I would say that the argument of 2 wrongs don't make a right is overly simplistic but that the basis of it has merit.
There is no usefulness in talking about the military "training people to be killers" as having any relevance in this situation. Lots and lots and lots of Marines never kill anyone (while serving or in 'regular life'), yeah? Some Marines are bad people and do heinous things; some civilians are bad people and do heinous things. Unles you can show that military personnel or veterans have a higher incidence of violent crime than the civilian population, the fact that these monsters were Marines has nothing to do with it.