Anyone still for the death penalty?

Ohcapzag

Ohcapzag

Banned
Prosecutorial misconduct and mishandling of evidence are serious issues that death penalty cheerleaders seem unprepared to discuss. Failure to disclose exculpatory evidence is a common finding when investigators look into prosecutor's practices.

Despite Berger v. U.S., prosecutorial misconduct and incompetence continue to wreck - and end - innocent lives.

For example, John Thompson was convicted of carjacking and murder and sentenced to death.

The state scheduled Thompson's execution for the day before his son's high school graduation.

Shortly before his execution was due to take place, his attorneys discovered that the prosecutors in the case had willfully concealed a lab report that proved the defendant could not have perpetrated the offenses.

He was retried with the previously-hidden evidence and acquitted.

Thompson was finally freed in 2003. A jury awarded him $14 million in compensatory damages, but he cannot keep the money because of prosecutorial immunity. Over 30 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled (Imbler v. Pachtman) that prosecutors can't be named as defendants in civil suits.

If death penalty proponents had their way, he would be dead by now.

In Texas, where the bloodthirsty demand "justice", Cameron Willingham wasn't so lucky. By the time he was exonerated, he was dead.

Lab tests used to convict accused persons have been found to be erroneous in many cases. Audits have revealed hundreds of wrongful convictions, yet the pro-execution lobby remains unswayed.

Many cases have been tried in an attempt to resolve this issue, i.e. U.S. v. Wilson, U.S. v. Koubriti, U.S. v. Sterba U.S. v. Eastridge

It's too late to clear someone when they're dead.

Is the death penalty just, given that so many cases exist that prove the state murdered the innocent on false premises, and those culpable go free?
 
I want my DeathTV, I think it should be broadcast and held in the open. Take the family, BBQ and make a day of it.

:good4u:
 
Facts

March 31st, 2009

There are many reasons the death penalty should be abolished. It is a complex issue and it is difficult to point to any single fact or argument as the most important.

1) Executions are carried out at staggering cost to taxpayers.
It costs far more to execute a person than to keep him or her in prison for life. A recent New Jersey Policy Perspectives report concluded that the state's death penalty has cost taxpayers $253 million since 1983, a figure that is over and above the costs that would have been incurred had the state utilized a sentence of life without parole instead of death. "From a strictly financial perspective, it is hard to reach a conclusion other than this: New Jersey taxpayers over the last 23 years have paid more than a quarter billion dollars on a capital punishment system that has executed no one," the report concluded. Michael Murphy, former Morris County, NJ prosecutor, remarked: "If you were to ask me how $11 million a year could best protect the people of New Jersey, I would tell you by giving the law enforcement community more resources. I'm not interested in hypotheticals or abstractions, I want the tools for law enforcement to do their job, and $11 million can buy a lot of tools."

2) There is no credible evidence that capital punishment deters crime.
Scientific studies have consistently failed to demonstrate that executions deter people from committing crime anymore than long prison sentences. Moreover, states without the death penalty have much lower murder rates. The South accounts for 80% of US executions and has the highest regional murder rate.

3) Innocent people have been executed.
The wrongful execution of an innocent person is an injustice that can never be rectified. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty, 138 men and women have been released from Death Row nationally....some only minutes away from execution. Moreover, in the past two years evidence has come to light which indicates that four men may have been wrongfully EXECUTED in recent years for crimes they did not commit. This error rate is simply appalling, and completely unacceptable, when we are talking about life and death.

4) Race plays a role in determining who lives and who dies.
The race of the victim and the race of the defendant in capital cases are major factors in determining who is sentenced to die in this country. In 1990 a report from the General Accounting Office concluded that "in 82 percent of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e. those who murdered whites were more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks."

5) The death penalty is applied at random.
Politics, quality of legal counsel and the jurisdiction where a crime is committed are more often the determining factors in a death penalty case than the facts of the crime itself. The death penalty is a lethal lottery: of the 22,000 homicides committed every year approximately 150 people are sentenced to death.

6) Capital punishment goes against almost every religion.
Although isolated passages of religious scripture have been quoted in support of the death penalty, almost all religious groups in the United States regard executions as immoral.

7) The USA is keeping company with notorious human rights abusers.
The vast majority of countries in Western Europe, North America and South America — more than 139 nations worldwide — have abandoned capital punishment in law or in practice. The United States remains in the same company as Iraq, Iran and China as one of the major advocates and users of capital punishment.

8) Millions currently spent on the death penalty could be used to assist the families of murder victims.
Many family members who have lost love ones to murder feel that the death penalty will not heal their wounds nor will it end their pain; the extended process prior to executions can prolong the agony experienced by the family. Funds now being used for the costly process of executions could be used to help families put their lives back together through counseling, restitution, crime victim hotlines, and other services addressing their needs.

9) Bad Lawyers are a Persistent Problem in Capital Cases
Perhaps the most important factor in determining whether a defendant will receive the death penalty is the quality of the representation he or she is provided. Almost all defendants in capital cases cannot afford their own attorneys. In many cases, the appointed attorneys are overworked, underpaid, or lacking the trial experience required for death penalty cases. There have even been instances in which lawyers appointed to a death case were so inexperienced that they were completely unprepared for the sentencing phase of the trial. Other appointed attorneys have slept through parts of the trial, or arrived at the court under the influence of alcohol.

10) Life Without Parole is a Sensible Alternative to the Death Penalty
In every state that retains the death penalty, jurors have the option of sentencing convicted capital murderers to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The sentence is cheaper to tax-payers and keeps violent offenders off the streets for good. Unlike the death penalty, a sentence of Life Without Parole also allows mistakes to be corrected. There are currently over 3,300 people in California who have received this alternative sentence, which also has a more limited appeals process last approximately 3 years. According to the California Governor's Office, only seven people sentenced to life without parole have been released since the state provided for this option in 1977, and this occurred because they were able to prove their innocence.
 
A September 2000 New York Times survey found that during the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48 to 101 percent higher than in states without the death penalty.

FBI data shows that all 14 states without capital punishment in 2008 had homicide rates at or below the national rate.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/death-pen...ath-penalty-and-deterrence/page.do?id=1101085

Comparing homicide statistics in the United States, Britain, and Canada casts some doubt on the argument that the death penalty is a deterrent to committing murder.

In 2001, there were 554 murders in all of Canada. That was 8 more than the previous year, but 167 fewer than in 1975, the year before the death penalty was abolished.

From 1972 and 1976, when the death penalty was not imposed in the United States, there were between 8.8 and 9.8 homicides per 100,000.

After the death penalty was reinstated, the number of homicides (according to FBI statistics) reached a peak -- 10.2 per 100,000 -- in 1980.

After several fluctuations in the 1980s and early 1990s, the number has been on a downward trend and was 5.6 per 100,000 in 2001.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/11005/support-death-penalty-us-britain-canada.aspx
 
Ohcapzag said:
A September 2000 New York Times survey found that during the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48 to 101 percent higher than in states without the death penalty.

FBI data shows that all 14 states without capital punishment in 2008 had homicide rates at or below the national rate.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/death-pen...ath-penalty-and-deterrence/page.do?id=1101085

Comparing homicide statistics in the United States, Britain, and Canada casts some doubt on the argument that the death penalty is a deterrent to committing murder.

In 2001, there were 554 murders in all of Canada. That was 8 more than the previous year, but 167 fewer than in 1975, the year before the death penalty was abolished.

From 1972 and 1976, when the death penalty was not imposed in the United States, there were between 8.8 and 9.8 homicides per 100,000.

After the death penalty was reinstated, the number of homicides (according to FBI statistics) reached a peak -- 10.2 per 100,000 -- in 1980.

After several fluctuations in the 1980s and early 1990s, the number has been on a downward trend and was 5.6 per 100,000 in 2001.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/11005/support-death-penalty-us-britain-canada.aspx
Click to expand...

Yurtsie says you're a stalker and a hack, troll.
 
Yurtsie seems to have been convinced by the arguments against the death penalty, since he's not posting in these threads anymore.

Does this mean his Reign of Error is over?
 
Yurtsie returns to the fray, invigorated by the prospect of calling someone a stalker, hack or troll.

Justice, it is often insisted, requires the death penalty as the only suitable retribution for heinous crimes. This claim does not bear scrutiny, however. By its nature, all punishment is retributive. Therefore, whatever legitimacy is to be found in punishment as just retribution can, in principle, be satisfied without recourse to executions.

Moreover, the death penalty could be defended on narrowly retributive grounds only for the crime of murder, and not for any of the many other crimes that have frequently been made subject to this mode of punishment (rape, kidnapping, espionage, treason, drug trafficking). Few defenders of the death penalty are willing to confine themselves consistently to the narrow scope afforded by retribution. In any case, execution is more than a punishment exacted in retribution for the taking of a life. As Nobel Laureate Albert Camus wrote, "For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life."53

It is also often argued that death is what murderers deserve, and that those who oppose the death penalty violate the fundamental principle that criminals should be punished according to their just desserts – "making the punishment fit the crime." If this rule means punishments are unjust unless they are like the crime itself, then the principle is unacceptable: It would require us to rape rapists, torture torturers, and inflict other horrible and degrading punishments on offenders. It would require us to betray traitors and kill multiple murderers again and again – punishments that are, of course, impossible to inflict. Since we cannot reasonably aim to punish all crimes according to this principle, it is arbitrary to invoke it as a requirement of justice in the punishment of murder.

If, however, the principle of just deserts means the severity of punishments must be proportional to the gravity of the crime – and since murder is the gravest crime, it deserves the severest punishment – then the principle is no doubt sound. Nevertheless, this premise does not compel support for the death penalty; what it does require is that other crimes be punished with terms of imprisonment or other deprivations less severe than those used in the punishment of murder.

Criminals no doubt deserve to be punished, and the severity of the punishment should be appropriate to their culpability and the harm they have caused the innocent. But severity of punishment has its limits – imposed by both justice and our common human dignity. Governments that respect these limits do not use premeditated, violent homicide as an instrument of social policy.

Some people who have lost a loved one to murder believe that they cannot rest until the murderer is executed. But this sentiment is by no means universal. Coretta Scott King has observed, "As one whose husband and mother-in-law have died the victims of murder and assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder."54

Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, daughter of the slain Senator Robert Kennedy, has written:

"I was eight years old when my father was murdered. It is almost impossible to describe the pain of losing a parent to a senseless murder.…But even as a child one thing was clear to me: I didn't want the killer, in turn, to be killed. I remember lying in bed and praying, 'Please, God. Please don't take his life too.' I saw nothing that could be accomplished in the loss of one life being answered with the loss of another. And I knew, far too vividly, the anguish that would spread through another family – another set of parents, children, brothers, and sisters thrown into grief."55

Across the nation, many who have survived the murder of a loved one have joined Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation (headquartered in Virginia), in the effort to replace anger and hate toward the criminal with a restorative approach to both the offender and the bereaved survivors.

http://www.aclu.org/capital-punishment/case-against-death-penalty#retribution
 
I also take pleasure in knowing that if the government won't kill the fuckers, at least some of them get ass fucked in prison, catch AIDS, get paroled and spread it back into their community, taking out even more of their kind.
 
Texas has undoubtedly executed an innocent man. Perry has done everything he can to block an official statement from coming out and saying it, but it will eventually come out.
 
Socrtease said:
Texas has undoubtedly executed an innocent man. Perry has done everything he can to block an official statement from coming out and saying it, but it will eventually come out.
Click to expand...

Perry tried to mandate vaccinations on young girls, for personal gain.
 
Yurtsie must give board mods rim jobs to get all those points, he didn't get e'm any other way.
 
13 states do not have the death penalty. Alaska, District of Colombia, Hawaii, Iowa, Main, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

So move there.
 
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