The death penalty?

[WaywardOn3]

Ok so I was reading this article about a man sentenced to death taking half an hour to die. The state have upped the dose to try to prevent it happening again.

While I'm against having a death penalty his lawyers comments bugged me as him potentially suffering for up to half an hour before death breached his human rights. What about the young pregnant woman's human rights to not be raped and murdered? She must surely have suffered far longer than half an hour and in actual pain/fear for herself and her child not assumed and unconfirmed pain.

AIBU to not care that he may have suffered ever so slightly in his last unconscious half hour?

Wayward all you need to do is look for miscarriages of justice and you will find that there is no 100% certainty. Forensic science is not advanced enough to be 100%, and that is before you get people involved who have an agenda. It's very easy not to ask for certain tests to be done because you are already sure you have the right person in custody. People are lax, people are prejudiced, people are corrupt, people are racist. One look across the pond is all you need to find enough arguments against ever having the death penalty, anywhere at all.

how can forensics ever be 100% forensics don't PROVE anything - it's just part of the over all evidence used to out a case together

it doesn't constitute proof

I would hope that forensic science is advanced enough that guilt should be 100% proven before a death sentence was even considered a possible punishment?
It isn't.

Prison Governor and the death penalty

perhaps a better way

The purpose of the death penalty is not to cause pain. It is not an eye for an eye. The purpose of it is to end the life of that person as a punishment for their crimes.

On the whole I don't agree with the death penalty. 2 wrongs don't make a right, statistically the states where they still have the death penalty do not have a lower amount of crimes which carry the death penalty therefore the crime would still be committed - it does not seem to be a deterent.

I used to be in favour of it until I actually realised that things aren't as black and white as they seem - if you watch the documentary on BBC at the moment (Life on Death Row I think it is) it really opens your eyes.

Of course, that said, if anyone harmed one of mine then I would want them hanged so that does make me a total hypocrite.

The reoffending rate for those released from Bastoy speaks for itself. At just 16%, it is the lowest in Europe. But who are the prisoners on Bastoy? Are they the goodie-goodies of the system?

Silly Surely as a civilised society we should be aiming for rehabilition?

Dawn- i completely agree and am torally against the death penalty. I was just posting directly in response to the OP saying "what about the victim's pain? (Not verbatim) i was saying that te DP isnt about avenging a death/pain caused. It is to end that life, not cause suffering.

Have you been watching Life on Death Row on BBC?

IMO, there is absolutely no moral or ethical argument for the death penalty. How a state can say "murder is wrong" but then murder its own citizens is absolutely beyond me.

Let alone killing them in a method which has serious questions over how torturous it is.

It's biblical retribution, nothing more, nothing less. It is utterly shameful and disgraceful, even more so that the apparent 'leader of the free world' still continues to murder its own citizens publicly and with hurrah.

There was one man on Life on Death Row who killed a police officer in Texas at the age of 18. What he did was undoubtedly wrong. But he was young, he was in with the wrong crowd, he didn't know the man approaching his car was an off-duty officer (and it is the cop-killing that is important to his sentence), he saw this man reaching into his coat and made the instant and terribly wrong decision that this man was reaching for a gun, and so he shot first.

There is no country in which this man should not be punished. But to be sentenced to death, for that? For a snap decision? A young man who had been thinking of joining the armed forces, a young man who showed every sign of the potential to be rehabilitated, to pay the price for his mistakes. And this is all state sanctioned. Appeal after appeal determined that the death penalty was the just sentence for this mistake.

That is one of the saddest things I have heard in a long time.

Yanbu to care if he was in pain.

He didn't give a second thought to the pain he put another human though, didn't stop to think of the fear, lonelyness , pain degradation he put a fellow human being though.

The pain he went though he deserved. His victim didn't.

I apologise, Silly, and thank you for clarifying.

X-post too with Betty. Did you see the second episode? I said I wouldn't have convicted him. DP said he would have. The evidence was no way clear cut or overwhelming.

thirty years on death row

Thurlow - I saw the one with the young lad who killed the police man. Like you say, he didn't know the guy was a policeman and in his experience when someone approached him and pulled something from their back pocket it would normally be a knife or a gun - he panicked and fired - a mistake he will regret for the rest of his life.

I would not have imposed the death penalty on him even when I see the devastation it has caused his victims family. I was glad his execution was stopped.........as he knew it would be.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Earl_Johnson

I remember watching a documentary abut Edward Earl Johnson in the late 80's - a total miscarriage of justice.

I don't think you are being unreasonable. There are some people who don't deserve to live. What I think is unreasonable is to expect the victims family after their loss to continue to work hard and pay taxes to house and keep this barbaric individual alive and in relative luxury for the rest of their life. Some people should not be allowed to walk amongst the general population but we should not be forced to pay for them to be contained.

Watching the death row series I was very impressed and humbled by the victims family who wrote to the governor to appeal against the death penalty for the murderer.

It was very thought provoking indeed.

No applogy needed dawn- i can see why there was confusion. I wasnt clear in my position.

Betty, the second episode was about this man, and it followed the whole trial. It was fascinating but incredibly disturbing. There was no solid evidence that he had killed them, and it was hard to understand how one man could kill 8 people by blunt trauma over a period of time without anyone fighting back. The police also mishandled the evidence and blood spatter analysis seemed to obviously show that more than one person had been involved in the murders. Yet Guy Heinze's alibi didn't stack up, he did a few things on apparently discovering the murder scene that were very suspicious, and he also had one blood stain on him that was almost impossible to explain unless he had been there when the murders too place.

To me, there was still enough reasonable doubt to not be comfortable saying guilty. It was the perfect case for highlighting how these things are never clear cut.

yanbu , i would want him to suffer much longer than that if it was my relatives he raped and killed.

Also interestingly, when we teach the topic at school we find nearly all students opposed. (Aged 14). We try to provide a balanced argument too!

I wonder why this is? Perhaps many are lucky enough to have never been victim to a serious crime to themselves or family, perhaps youth makes us idealistic?

Ronmione, none of us really know whether that man gave 'a second thought to the pain he put another human though, didn't stop to think of the fear, lonelyness , pain degradation he put a fellow human being though.' We don't know what was going through his mind or what in his life had contributed to his feeling and acting the way he did.

I can only think that someone who can act like that and make someone suffer like that must be suffering horribly themselves.

I would argue that neither he nor his victim 'deserved' the pain they went through.

None of what you say makes me think for a second that maybe the death penalty is justified.

OnlyLovers I agree with you - the emotional response to the victim is one of the (many) reasons I am against the death penalty, but unfortunately I think that is always going to be a risk when you have a jury of peers regardless of whether the penalty is death/life imprisonment etc. You're right, the fact is that the visceral response when hearing the details (or even seeing images) of a particularly vicious crime is very difficult to overcome. It's the response to the victims suffering that would make me go "what a monster, he doesn't deserve to live", it would take a second or two for my overriding ideals to kick in and go "hang on, regardless of the foul things he has done he is still a person, it isn't my/the states right to take his life". It's pretty mind blowing that tit for tat killing is so accepted in some places.

I would however be interested to know if anyone has any stats on the effect of capital punishment as a deterrent? I can see the use of it more clearly for that purpose than as a method of revenge and getting people off the streets (not condoning it, just saying I can more easily understand), but I'd be intrigued to know whether it has any real impact.