Death Penalty - The Bigger Picture

When a person commits the worst crimes, they are sentenced to the worst penalties we can think up. That much, I feel, is a given.

However, being a civilized nation, we have laws that say that cruel and unusual punishment, even for these worst crimes, is not acceptable. This limits the penalties we can assign to those found guilty of these most heinous crimes. The current top two penalties in our system is "Life without Parole" and, in some states, "Death". I think what people fail to realize is that they are the same thing. Either you will rot in jail until the day you die, or you will rot in jail until the day you die, which will be sooner than you thought. In either case, you are placed into jail, and jail is where you remain until such time as you are dead. It doesn't matter if the weapon used to kill you is an injection, electrical current, or ... time. The point is that you are sentenced to "jail until death".

If you consider these various weapons that will deliver death to the convicted, I feel that the most cruel weapon of them all is "time". It is clearly the most cruel to let someone rot for decades upon decades inside a jail until they get so old that their bodies start to fail (assuming they don't get a shiv between the ribs in the meantime). And what's twisted about that, is that doctors are required by law to treat their failing bodies and are required to save them from natural death, to prolong their life, which in the end, will still end inside the jail.

If, as a moral, civilized person, you feel that letting someone age to death inside a jail is "kinder" than ending their life quickly and painlessly, then you are, I am sorry to say, a very sick and perverted individual. Getting old is not fun. Consider the amount of people that need things like kidney transplants, skin grafts, and many, many other life-saving procedures. Think about a prisoner who is sentenced to Life who requires a new liver or kidney. Think about them getting that kidney rather than a teenager. Now think about them DONATING their young, healthy kidneys TO that teenager. Which situation would you rather have?

My opinion is that if a jury decides to come back with a "Life without possibility of parole" sentence, we as a society should recognize that sentence as "jailed until death", because that is what it is. We should then remove the prisoners rights (as it should be), line up donors for their body parts, put them to death, and save some lives with their organs and tissues.


One last thing I want to bring up about "innocent people being put to death erroneously".

This no longer occurs. Or at least, it will no longer occur. The reason it used to occur was because we didn't have DNA technology. Now, we do. In every case of an "innocent person being put to death", their innocence was discovered via DNA testing after the fact. Since DNA testing is now pretty much standard procedure, it is highly unlikely that someone completely innocent of a capital offence will be put to death. Sure, many old cases, decades old that predate DNA testing, should all be reviewed to prevent the deaths of innocent people. But (and I hate this phrase) on a going-forward basis (/barf), anyone receiving the death penalty will be guilty as charged. That is just how our criminal justice system has evolved.

That is my 2 cents.

1. The First Amendment reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

2. Sentencing someone to death via time and sentencing someone to death via (something else) is the same thing, its still sentencing them to death.

who quoted a religious law as if it meant something to legitimate law.
Feel free to ignore.

Your statement that they will die in prison regardless of the death penalty or life in prison so there is effectively no difference is either naive or just plain idiotic.

If given the choice, most will choose a chance to postpone the DP, and LIVE a while longer.
AND the torturous incidents of malfunctioning electric chair executions are legendary.
Hanging was popular in the barbaric regions of the world, where sophistication was wanting in all aspects of society, including the technology of prision infrastructure, because like the prision industry, the rope was simple.
How many wrongful executions have you studied or can you remember?
Vendetta on the part of D.A.'s or police is the subject of libraries of text.

sentenced to death on the day we are born. What happens to us between birth and death is subject to many influences- including chance, and choice. Tookie wasn't 'rotting' he was attempting to bring something positive to the world from the ashes of his life.
Some people do 'rot' in jail. Some of those jails don't have bars, guards, or fences around them- some people 'rot' to death, right under our noses. Some of us are 'rotting'.

We are all imprisoned in some way- by the choices, we make- others make- and 'luck of the draw'-
No one will get out of this world alive.

That is the only indisputable 'truth' there is. And the great 'equalizer' in the end.

As much as I'd like to see an end to the death penalty, quoting injunctions from an ancient desert tribe isn't the way to do it.

Or an inept public defender?
Or a truly brutal murder without DNA evidence?
Or a corrupt judge?

You're putting WAY too much faith in the infallability of DNA evidence. You're also assuming everyone is good and honest, and nobody makes mistakes.

And we should...am I reading this properly...use death-row inmates as a source for organ transplants?

Egad.

Welcome to DU.

Your arguement is moot.

Either our criminal justice system works, or it doesn't. The penalty received at the end has no bearing on its efficacy.

there is at least the chance that their conviction could be overturned even years later.

When you're dead, you're dead.

The system works most of the time; sometimes, it doesn't. That's true of pretty much every single system ever invented, from surgery to an assembly line to airport security to making pie crust.
It's when it doesn't work, there's the problem. The "penalty received at the end" matters in that life inprisonment is reversable up until the time of natural death.

And killing prisoners to harvest their organs is something I want no part of, thank you.

To argue that the system doesn't always work the first time, so therefore we should *not* fix the system but instead drag out the penalty "just in case we get a 2nd chance" is fallacious.

Either the system works, or you fix the system. You don't fugde the penalty to give the flawed system a 2nd chance to be right.

as perfection.

We are human. As such, we will make mistakes. We can try to make the system as close to perfect as possible, but there will still be problems. "Fixing the system" cannot make it perfect.

be convinced "beyond a reasonable doubt" of the guilt of the accused.

Thus, pursuant to law, any evidence that presents a reasonable doubt into the case means that you can not give a death sentence, or, for that matter, convict the accused at all.

Thus, while DNA evidence and it's potential flaws can be used to present reasonable doubt, it can not be used to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt because of the chance of error.

As to your lovely idea of using death row as an organ farm, just a tad barbaric don't you think? Well, that and using organs from someone poisoned or electrocuted to death by the state isn't exactly the most healthy source of organs.

Sentences are handed down that often are far too harsh, or too lenient.

If there were mitigating circumstances, some leeway should be incorporated, but if you are poor, of color, or illiterate, you will pay a higher price for the same crime that another has perpetrated.

An individual who steals something of relatively little worth, gets 5 years or so; yet people who steal millions from pension funds or corporate stockholders get away with the millions, and continue to perpetrate crimes as they see fit.

One thing I have against the DP, is it's finality. Your statement that individuals no longer are executed in error, is in itself an error. Would you, as an innocent individual caught up in dire circumstances, still feel that way if it were you about to strapped to a gurney because of flawed evidence, outright manipulation of the facts or an overzealous DA that has fabricated evidence?

Faith in a flawed system is truly faith...like so many other aspects of our society, faith needs to be placed aside and facts need to come into play. Just because one believes that the system is 'fine', doesn't mean it
is by a long shot.

we must decide if we want to kill people only to find out later that-oops-we were wrong. There was a fellow from St. Louis who was exonerated posthumusly for a crime-and the victim's family was outraged, because the wrong man was picked up, the real killer is free to kill again.

In the South in the last century, they felt it was perfectly ok to condemn blacks to death via all white juries, with lawyers sleeping during the trial, etc, etc. I'm sorry, but this is not justice. And therefore the punishment should not be something that is irreversible.

Once all the DNA is used, we are still faced with all the cases where there was no DNA, just eyewitnesses and such. DNA testing tells us that eyewitnesses in those cases were just wrong.

Now we are willing to continue the death penalty based on eyewitnesses. That's wrong.

Your arguement is moot.

Either our criminal justice system works, or it doesn't. The penalty received at the end has no bearing on its efficacy.

period

EOM

After all, the death penalty is the one that can't be ameliorated. It is the penalty that makes the efficacy of the system moot.

Therefore, if the criminal justice system doesn't work at trial but sometimes evidence appears years later, the penalty makes all the difference.

In fact, it's the death penaly making the issue of guilt or innocence moot that gives the high death penalty states a false confidence. Fact is, when a person is killed, everyone stops looking for innocence. The penalty allows the mistake to be buried.

The penalty makes the issue of efficacy moot by making sure that nobody is able to criticize the result. That's not justice. That's burying the mistake.

How would we ever know if an innocent person was mistakenly put to death if people always stopped looking for innocence once the convicted was killed, hmm?

after all their appeals have been exhausted. I suppose someone could say it's just plain luck, but the fact is that people have sat on death row and were ready for the chair indicates that the system is broken and evidence used to apply the death penalty isn't reliable.

I suggest you take a gander at what happened here in Illinois. I won't bore you with the details, but we freed 13 on death row as innocent. Not on technicalities, but because they were actually innocent. Some of them were based on the work of undergrads in a workshop at Northwestern University. If you're relying on whether a convict is close to someone working for class credit to dig up guilt or innocence, that's not a system. If we had an airline that came close to crashing fifty per cent of the landings, we wouldn't wait until someone could prove what exactly the problem is.

A single piece of physical evidence, being an expended shotgun shell matched to a gun that he owned, which was kept in the house of one of those who testified against him.

No DNA evidence whatsoever.

The only other evidence was a collection of statements by other criminals, all of whom stood to gain by cutting a deal with the DA.

The DA wanted a conviction not because of the murders, but because he was a founder of the Crips -- this was a political trial, not a criminal trial.

was under indictment for killing someone else.

As to your premise, the DP and a life sentence is the same thing...Removing someone who is a danger to society and keeping them in prison is NOT the same as state sanctioned killing, as you claim. Allowing the state to MURDER someone is not even close to the same thing as allowing the state to remove someone from the greater society.

You also fail to mention prisoners do have lives in prison. Granted, it can be a bleak existance, but some prisoners continue to educate themselves, have relationships, work and even do community service. If it were worse to live out a life sentence, then why do most death row prisoners try to get out of a death sentence?

If, as a moral, civilized person, you feel that letting someone age to death inside a jail is "kinder" than ending their life quickly and painlessly, then you are, I am sorry to say, a very sick and perverted individual.

'If you are anti death penatly, then you are a sick, perverted individual.'

Ad hominems don't prove a point. Weak.

Saying "No its not" doesn't make it so.
Sorry.

"I think what people fail to realize is that they are the same thing"

Your premise is incorrect. If it were the "same thing" then why do convicts fight to get life over the death penalty?

It's totally illogical to say that state sanctioned killing is the same as a state sanctioned LIFE in prison. No matter how you attempt to extrapolate, they are not the same thing.

If you'd like to refute that, feel free, this is a discussion.

Life = Death by Aging
Death = Death by (some form of lethal procedure)

Both are "Prison until death". One just happens chronologically sooner than the other.

It's nonsense.

'Because life in prison convicts, eventually die in prison, then the death penalty, is the same as life in prison. '

That would be the same as saying, "Euthanasia is the same as dying from old age because everyone dies at some point."

Sorry, totally illogical.

Its not illogical, its 100% logical.

If I put someone in prison for life, what I've done is removed them from society forever.
If I execute someone, what I've done is removed them from society forever.

100% logical.

Again, just saying "its not logical" doesn't make it so. You need to provide your point of view as to why you think that.

'removed them from society forever'-
You HAVE limited their freedom to interact in society on a physical level. There is 'society' in prison- and Mr.Williams certianly was a 'participant' in our society, until last night- when WE CHOSE to put an end to any hint of his participation in this world- for good or ill.
Do you seriously believe your statement has logic??? Tell me, if you will, how people who are imprisoned for life can maintain relationship with others outside the prisons, if they are not still INDEED a 'participant' in society?

You can take their physical ability to walk 'among' us away- but you don't take away their voice.
Until you kill them. THEN you have removed them forever- by CHOICE. PRE-Meditated, cold, calculated, murder. Brought to you, courtesy of 'the american people'.

SHAME on us all.

They forfeitted their life voluntarily when they violated the law in which the DP was the listed punishment.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

many people who 'forfited their life' have died in prison of natural causes.
There ARE bad laws- and fallable humans. If the letter of the law is always to be followed, then most of us would be in prison.

How many times have you broken the speed limit and not been tagged? enough times to warrant more than removing you liscence i'd be willing to bet.

Never driven drunk? used illegal substances? never broken ANY law and 'not been caught'? Selective enforcement of the law weakens it's validity. * has spoken lies to the american people time and time again- he did it last night- saying he DOES read the paper and watch tv- when he sat there on the same tv screen and said, he never read the papers- he had other people do that for him.

Sex, violence, and murder- oh, yeah, we'll insist that be punished- but the 'little sins' done by those we find 'palateable'- or who have power, money and influence hell, they don't really 'matter'-

We all condemn ourselves to certian death when we wake up to another day (when and how that death comes many never know). Death comes to us all- some by the hands of others, some by our own hand, and some by acts beyond anyones control.

Gee, let's see. LIFE, alive in prison, or DEAD. Are they the same? :eyes:

Killing a convict or allowing a convict to LIVE in prison for the duration of their LIFE.

Anyway you slice it, LIFE in prison is NOT the same as the DEATH Penaly. Get real. Even the law distinguishes between the two.

Have you been on deathrow lately?
No? So you don't know what you are talking about. Neither do i, but i don't claim that i do.
Sorry.

Because that is the same end result.

When did they stop teaching logic in school?

It is YOU who are saying "yes it is" like a broken record.

"This no longer occurs. Or at least, it will no longer occur."

That's putting a lot more faith in our state governments than I can muster. These are the same people who can't keep the interstates in good repair or count votes accurately. In both cases, just like with DNA testing, the technology exists to do the job right, but human incompetence or malevolence remains a factor.

... death, only 15 involved DNA evidence of innocence! For anyone to claim that the flaws in the legal system that result in convictions of innocent people, even with the death penalty, are overcome by "DNA technology" is one of the most ill-informed, idiotic claims I've seen on DU for over a year.

Do some homework at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/index.php

"Just in case we make a mistake or there is willfull corruption in the conviction."

i.e. Anti-DP comes down to "We don't mind killing the guilty, but we can't live with mistakes."

Considering, as well, that decades go by for people on death row, with many, many appeals hearings.
I mean, its not like they are killed a week after sentencing. It literally takes decades.

The state is actively involved in killing another human being for vengeance. If they're spending their life in jail, the state is not ACTIVELY killing them. They're letting them die a natural death, albeit confined. Perhaps one can consider the state a passive participant in the person's eventual death...but it's not active.

Let's consider an analogy:

A dying person enters a hospital. He likely will never leave. Maybe a <1 percent chance he'll get to go home again.
Why don't we just kill him right then and there? You know, against his and his family's wishes, because the outcome will be the same. He'll be dead either way, and this way will be quicker. (I'm not talking consentual euthanasia or disconnection from life support -- I'm talking non consentual, hospital-sanctioned homicide.) We don't do it because we're not barbarians, and we don't get to decide to actively kill people because keeping them alive longer is inconvenient.

We're refuting YOUR particular argument with the "in case there's a mistake" argument, which is not insignificant either.

suicide if they want.

Why do we feel obligated to force the issue if we're being so high fallutin' moral?

Human error,or stupidity or incompetence is.

Williams is given the spike for killing people during a robbery - John Gotti who ordered the death of his boss so he could take over and had rivals and a neighbor killed died in a prison hospital being treated for cancer. why the difference? They were both gang leaders. Was it race? Was it class? was it Gotti had better lawyers? That he made good copy? Was it an accident of fate? Who the hell knows.

And bad lab work, bad lawyers, corrupt and/or lazy or bad cops and DA's will continue to put people who didn't do it on death row. hell they argue and fuss even when the damn DNA evidence goes against them.

And what are the long term effects? I suspect both Gotti and Williams will be role models for would be wise guys and gang bangers - Gotti for style points and Williams will prove to angry young men that the justice system is savage and merciless when it comes to them, so why bother to try and reform, the man wants you dead anyway. I'm not auguring that's the truth but that's the lesson that will be drawn from all this.

It's the 21st century - the rest of the west seems to do very well with out the death penalty - we can do better than this.

There was a program on the Discovery Channel back in October about people who have two different DNA signatures in their bodies. It appears that the other DNA is the only trace of an undeveloped twin. I think the condition is call chimera or something like that. Anyway, a woman had her children taken away from her for a while because DNA test "proved" she wasn't the mother-even though she had witnesses who were there at the birth. She finally was able to have the tests that found the elusive second DNA.

Also, DNA is not always present at a crime scene. As criminals realize the importance of DNA, they will take precautions against leaving any trace around, just like criminals started wearing gloves when fingerprints were started to be used for criminal investigations.

falls off your body with each and every movement you make.

Unless murderers are going to go around with a body glove, which would make them easy to spot, DNA will help exonerate and implicate people involved in crimes.

but I did see the program about the people with two sets of DNA, and the problems they have had with that. It may be rare, but it can happen.

First off, you are putting a lot of faith into a justice system that has not only proven to be inherently racist, but also wrong many many times. And while DNA evidence does can indeed cut down on the number of errors that slipped through the legal system previously, it is still inherently infallible for two reasons. First off, while matches of DNA are numbered in the millions and billions to one, there are still matches, and thus errors can be made. It is the law of large numbers, and everybody and everything is subject to it. Secondly, DNA is still subject to the same set of errors that previous methods were subject to, namely human error, which is more worrisome and prevalent than the law of large numbers. People can and do make mistakes all the time. Samples are contaminated, misread, misprinted, misplaced, etc. etc. on a regular basis.

Also you are missing another point. The DP is a dark stain on this nation's soul. With state sanctioned murder, in a nation supposedly civilized as ours, in a democracy where government is supposedly of, by and for the people, the use of the death penalty means that we all have blood on our hands. You may be able to live with that, but many many people, including myself cannot.

And yes, there is a huge difference between the DP and life in prison, and one big difference is that with a life sentence you give the criminal the chance at redemption, and of being forgiven therein. That should be what we as a civilized country should do. But sadly it turns out that we are as barbaric as our ancestors, even though we try to wrap that barbarism in clean, sterile packages.

Given the fallibility of the human being, I am all for giving people chances to overturn their convictions.

However.

If someone spends 26 years in jail, and can't get it overturned, what makes you think another 26 years would make a difference?

In other words, just because someone is given Life without Parole instead of the Death Penalty, what makes you think that that extra time will allow an otherwise innocent person to overturn their imprisonment?

Death Penalty cases take decades to complete. Don't you think an innocent person can overturn their conviction in that time?

One fellow in Illinois was finally freed from a rape charge because the so-call 'victim' recanted. There have been people on death row who were freed only after the real killer made a deathbed confession.

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

It certainly is. :rofl:

Life=Death
Innocents aren't wrongfully executed anymore due to DNA
Anyone who is anti DP is "perverted and sick."

WTF?

some people spend their entire life trying to achieve what others achieve quite easily.
That doesn't mean they aren't as deserving- or don't try hard enough.

Life isn't fair- if it was, the poorest among us would be rich- and everyone would 'get what they deserve'- for good or ill. Far too many 'not nice people' live easy lives.

And many people who 'deserve' only kindness, praise, and comfort (based on their actions) are treated with cruelty, condemnation, and continual want.

That, is the sad, but honest reality of life on this earth- bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people- how we chose to lead our own individual lives is up to us- but no promise that our lives will be 'good'. The only thing we can hold onto is the knowledge that we know we've done 'our best', regardless.

There are constantly emerging new technologies, such as DNA, that can exonerate an innocent man. And people have been released after decades just because such new technologies have come out. You cannot put a time frame on the matter, for once you are in jail, everything you attempt takes much longer than if you were free. There have been people freed after ten, twenty, even thirty years because new technologies came along and proved their innocence.

testified against Williams saying that at least one of those who testified did NOT get information from Williams, but was instead handed files pertaining to him by Guards and prosecutors to study and return in exchange for a reduction in his own sentence, I'd say that it COULD happen.

time?"

Not when they have no resources, and the prosecution has all the resources of the state behind it. It's like putting a Pekinese in a dogfight with a Doberman. That little dog has got to be extremely lucky. Of course, if he's wealthy he can hire a pit bull to do his fighting for him.

and you KNOW that. How about

- Failing to deter the intended crimes.
- The general immorality of killing another person when it's not self-defense.
- The propagation of a culture of death throughout society.

I'm sure there's more.

on second thought: you're just plain DUMB if you believe that. and if you think someone would prefer to die than live, why not volunteer to test your hypothesis?

Any system made up of human beings is bound to fail.

I'm just curious, how old are you? I, too, once belived that systems could be made infallible. Now that I am older I just see how fucked up human beings are. I am continually amazed that anything at all works.

Humans are idiots.

Well, maybe not idiots, but flawed. Severely flawed.

Based solely on human flaws, I would have to give in and take a non-DP stance.
That, and Life without Parole is actually cheaper on the American Taxpayer than the DP, believe it or not.

that the god of this world- (MONEY) always rears it's ugly head.
I would hope you could come up with a better reason to base your values on.
But i'm an idiot.

And i believe.

If it was just money, I'd still go for spending a little extra for the DP.
But, its the human fallability arguement that convinced me, really.

on what those he chooses to call idiot think?

You have some good points, but I argue your point on DNA.

First it is not required to have DNA matches to get convicted of murder.
Second, DNA is not infallible. If you have a broken or diluted sample then you may not get a 1 in 1 billion match. When you start talking 1 in 1000 then I don't see that as the "nail in the coffin" kind of evidence.
DNA is not the end all of the debate, unfortunately.