States With and Without the Death Penalty

[biggunsbob]

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/states-and-without-death-penalty


I did not know that Michigan was the earliest state to abolish it.. I have always been a tad torn about the DP...

 

[Mitchrapp]

Thing about the DP is some states the criminals are waiting around forever..up to 20 years or so.

 

[biggunsbob]

Yup That is a huge problem.

 

[Thumb]

Look past states. Very few "civilized" nations allow executions. The bright shining beacon of democracy and liberty that is the United States of America ranked 5th behind China, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia and just ahead of Somalia in executions in 2013.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Capital_punishment.PNG


Those 32 other states bring the rest of us down.

 

[elrod817]

Look past states. Very few "civilized" nations allow executions. The bright shining beacon of democracy and liberty that is the United States of America ranked 5th behind China, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia and just ahead of Somalia in executions in 2013.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Capital_punishment.PNG


Those 32 other states bring the rest of us down.

You can temporarily not include PA as one of those states. Temporary moratorium announced yesterday by our new governor. Personally, I am in favor of the moratorium and would like it to be permanent.

 

[Michchamp]

if you're "on the fence" about the death penalty, I strongly suggest you watch the documentary "The Thin Blue Line"

Prosecutors and police lie in order to get convictions all. the. time. Even in death penalty cases.

it's a open secret that prosecutorial misconduct is often unpunished, or way underpunished by state bars, and judges (who were often prosecutors prior to getting on the bench) are sympathetic to the prosecution, more than PDs or criminal defense attorneys.

look at all the exonerations that law school innocence projects have gotten just in the last decade (the University of Michigan and Northwestern University run two of the more well known clinics). And if you think getting the State to reopen a case is easy - even with admissible DNA evidence that contradicts the result in the case - you're sorely misinformed.

Hell, for decades, the CPD beat confessions out of suspects... I'm always bewildered by people who are aware of that story, but can't connect police/prosecutorial misconduct with false convictions, or just don't care because it mainly happens to poor defendants, or mentally impaired defendants who don't know not to talk to the police & demand an attorney.

 

[byco42]

I oppose the death penalty. For any living or viable person.

 

[Michchamp]

this case was pretty shocking too. Not a death penalty case, but that's only because Illinois has abolished it... it would've been a DP case in most states, and definitely in Texas.

I remember the dumb cop-lovers in comments saying "well, if he didn't do it, why did he confess?" Would love to see what they confess to first enduring the stress & pain of their child's death, then being kept awake for questioning for 14 hours while being fed false information by the cops...

 

[biggunsbob]

Well I lean toward abolishing the death penalty but then I always think what I would be thinking if my wife, son or daughter were killed or raped and killed or any of my loved ones were murdered. Its hard not to see blind rage in my mind if that happened.Anyone saying they would not want the perpetrator offed is just lying to themselves. Hopefully no one we know will have to go through that.

 

[Michchamp]

Well I lean toward abolishing the death penalty but then I always think what I would be thinking if my wife, son or daughter were killed or raped and killed or any of my loved ones were murdered. ...

well, don't think about that then!

:tup:

 

[byco42]

Well I lean toward abolishing the death penalty but then I always think what I would be thinking if my wife, son or daughter were killed or raped and killed or any of my loved ones were murdered. Its hard not to see blind rage in my mind if that happened.Anyone saying they would not want the perpetrator offed is just lying to themselves. Hopefully no one we know will have to go through that.

I would not want the perpetrator to be killed. It would not bring back my loved ones.

 

[Michchamp]

I would not want the perpetrator to be killed. It would not bring back my loved ones.

I might want to kill them myself, but I would not want the state to do it.

...and that would only be if I had witnessed the crime, or somehow knew who did it. Knowing what I know about police & DA's, I wouldn't necessarily trust that they arrested & charged the right person.

 

[elrod817]

I'm with you byco. I've always been fond of Gandhi's statement that an eye for an eye would leave the world blind. Yeshua, too, in so many words alluded that an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was not the way asking followers to offer their other cheek if slapped on the right one.

Any kind of satisfaction one may receive from the execution of a criminal, I believe, would be fleeting at best. After the initial rush of justice being served there is still emptiness as byco pointed out that killing one cannot bring back another.

 

[biggunsbob]

Well I would hope I could come to terms with it. But I just do not think it would be that easy.

 

[grandy]

My issues with death penalty mostly revolve around money, accuracy of guilty verdicts, and whether it's an effective deterrent or not.

Money - This has been a well documented issue. The execution itself doesn't cost much, but the process is much more costly than life without the possibility of parole. There are quite a few factors that contribute to these costs...additional trials/appeals (cost of extra time for court personnel), death row housing can cost more (reportedly twice as much per year in Kansas). These are probably the two main ones, also keep in mind that some of these prisoners sit on death row for several years, even several decades, some of these guys are spending a third to half (or even more) of what would be the rest of their life in prison anyway. Costs could probably be cut down with a faster process but then you run into the issue of point two...

Accuracy - deathpenaltyinfo.org has a list of 150 death row inmates that have been exonerated since 1973. That's quite a ridiculous amount for a punishment so permanent. I haven't even looked at the statistics for innocent people who have been wrongly executed. If even one innocent person is killed in this process, then I start to question the process itself. How can you possibly justify execution if you're not 100% certain?

Deterrent - This point I'm a little shaky on, I haven't read enough studies that conclusively proves whether the death penalty is an effective deterrent or not. One study I did find showed higher murder rates in death penalty states vs non-death penalty states, but I think there are more factors to consider before making a conclusion based on raw data. This point is more of a personal opinion for me, I honestly don't see a criminal weighing life in prison vs execution before committing a gruesome murder.

Personally, I'm against the death penalty. Some of it is moral, but most of it is just common sense to me. Both execution and life without parole achieve the same thing, removing the criminal from society...one just happens to cost the taxpayers a lot more and it's an irreversible decision. I think people tend to let their emotions get the best of them in these situations, "eye for an eye" is not the smartest choice in today's justice system.


P.S. I can provide links if needed

 

[Gulo Blue]

Where's the pro-death penalty crowd? Guess they don't like this thread.

I think I'm to where BYCO is, where even if it were me, my position would hold, but I agree with Bob to the degree that most people can't know how they'd react.

 

[Mitchrapp]

IMO, the DP is the easy way out. I rather see the real bad guys rot in jail for 40-50 years.