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?

sashh, that doesn't surprise me.

The guilt phase of the trial is separate from the sentencing phase. Once the guilt phase has been completed, it is very difficult to get that part heard again in court.

People wonder why prisoners languish on DR for so long and why the state doesn't just drag them off and execute them once they've been found guilty, as they do in countries like China, Iran and North Korea.

The above is a reason why.

Would you be "quite happy" for there to be death penalty if the person being executed was your child, louise?

In our house, this argument is titled: How to change your mother's mind about capital punishment in five seconds flat.

Exactly, maid. I'm sure people imagine that those sentenced to execution have no family and no friends. Quite how the cycle of loss is supposed to help anyone is beyond me.

my dad is of an older generation where he remembers the 1940s and 1950s. He looks back and thinks there were far fewer murders therefore the death penalty must have worked. He was never strongly in favour of it, but was bit 'meh, it did the trick'. About 15 years ago he had one if those really vivid dreams, the sort that almost messes with your head. In the dream he was on the run, having been wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to hang, and he woke in a cold sweat just as 'they' had him cornered. Unsurprisingly he has never been keen on the death penalty ever since!

There were fewer people and no 'instant' news. Less in the way of distance news too. Eg. If there were a murder in say, Leicester, it would be unlikely to have been heard about in Brighton.

The murder rate did rise after it was abolished in 1965 but it was part of a general trend of homicide rates rising from the 1950s. There was no spike in the 60s onwards.

I think the rise in homicides around that time definitely have the confounding factors of the postwar baby boomer generation who grew up with austerity/rationing and in the shadow of World War 2. I may be basing this opinion on The Krays (the film) though...

Doubt over guilt is the overwhelming argument against the death penalty. In a judicial system such as ours, there will always be doubt, so the death penalty is absurd.

That's not a moral objection, though. Outside of our society, it is easy to imagine circumstances where it would be appropriate. If you lived on an isolated island community of 10 people, and 8 of you all saw one horribly torture and kill the other - I'd be fine with the death penalty.

Moral objections like "you become as bad as them" and such like are often just lazy sound-bite rationalisations. I'd listen to a pragmatic psychological argument along such lines, but that's not what's generally offered.

Be honest, if we all knew for certain that this man had shot a woman then watched his friends bury her alive, who would really feel bad about him being killed (horribly or otherwise)?

It's the thought that maybe there's a 5% (?) chance that he is innocent that disturbs me. After all, criminals lie. A lot.

MrsBethel - yes, even if I knew for certain that this man had shot a woman and then watched his friends bury her alive, even if I had seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't want him killed.

"You become as bad as them" is not a lazy, sound-bite rationalisation to me. It is firmly what I believe. I do not, in almost any circumstance, believe that a society that sets itself up with rules, laws and a notion of fair justice has any moral right to actually judge who has a right to live and who doesn't. I do not believe that the people in charge - whether the society it 500 or 500 million strong - can say on one hand "you must not kill anyone" while saying on the other hand "but it's ok if we do".

Your example about the island community doesn't hold up too well. In a community of 10 people, there is unlikely to be the resources to keep one person alive and restrained. It doesn't compare to what is possible in a community of 500 million people. It would also depend if this community had its own laws. Larger communities, countries, have laws. That is my problem with the death penalty.

No one has a right to say whether one person lives or dies. That applies as equally to a government, a legal system, a dictator, and a murderer.

The death penalty is barbaric no matter how it is carried out. It serves no purpose, it helps no-one, it changes nothing. It is not a deterrent. The USA already has life without parole. The death penalty isn't to keep 'them' away from 'us', it is vengeful retribution, plain and simple. I think the 'what if it was your child' argument is moot. We shouldn't kill people because all the people we kill are fully human, not as a defence against state sanctioned killing of us and ours. Even if you could argue that some people deserve to be killed, do we deserve to kill them?

if we all knew for certain that this man had shot a woman then watched his friends bury her alive, who would really feel bad about him being killed (horribly or otherwise)?

Honestly? I could kill him at the time with my bare hands to prevent the murder even though I know there is a logic fail in committing a murder to prevent another murder, but later, as an act of vengeance, then no.

Once a mechanism is in place, as society changes the parameters change too. I am against the death penalty not just because of the margin, not just because I think it's barbaric, but because I think it does no good to society at all. Just look at how much more enlightened in almost every aspect of life the scandanvian countries are compared to America.

Not read whole thread.

I am against the death penalty, as others have said it is state sanctioned murder, it is uncivilised.

What especially grates on me is the way the US go about it. This lethal injection stuff - they are trying to make it look "humane" somehow, when in fact this option is often not terribly humane, as evidenced in this case, and will increase as their supply of drugs gets reduced more (many pharma companies will not sell them drugs any more for this purpose).

If they want to execute people then be honest about it. There are cheaper, more effective and more honest means. Hanging is very quick and effective when done properly, ditto a guillotine. They love guns, what's wrong with a firing squad?

But they wouldn't do that - because then it would be more obvious what they were doing ie murdering someone.

It really sticks in my craw. There was a man fairly recently who petitioned to be executed by firing squad and they told him no.

I'd rather be quickly hung, beheaded or shot than strapped to a bed and slowly anaesthetised to death with a real possibility of it going wrong or failing entirely.

It's all so fucking hypocritical and disingenuous and just everything makes me so angry.

What I'm more concerned about is the fella who has been on death row since 1999 and has only just been put to death. Why is the wait so long? Surely it's a waste of money?

I agree, sardines. Guillotine always struck me as the most effective way of executing someone. But that is too brutal, too raw. The US states that still practice execution seem to want to distance themselves from the reality of it, somehow. They want that person not so much dead as simply excised from existence, and "putting them to sleep" without anyone pulling a trigger is immensely distancing.

The second man due to die (delayed after the first one fucked up) raped and murdered an 11 month old girl. 11 months old baby girl raped and murdered . How can people spend time and effort defending his rights?

I have no problem with the death penalty for people like this. OP YANBU

We have to be better than the killers or else who are we?. Anyway what's a more severe punishment a life behind bars or death? Doesn't Brady, Manson as well as others I'm sure, yearn to be put out of their misery? No, they must spend everyday of their existence facing the consequences of their actions.

Stop pretending the death penalty is a medical procedure

Interesting article on the use of pharmaceuticals in executions. The EU prohibits the export of drugs to be used in executions which has an effect on the availability of the drug for other procedures (normal surgery for example).

Interesting article on the use of pharmaceuticals in executions. The EU prohibits the export of drugs to be used in executions which has an effect on the availability of the drug for other procedures (normal surgery for example)

Interesting article. Amazed that China isn't pumping out a generic though.

Tequila, it costs more to execute someone than to keep them in prison. There's a recent Economist article about it, and other reports, referenced upthread.

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?

You've not heard of police corruption then? Police who frame suspects, just because they want to get someone for the crime?

Not to mention miscarriages of justice.

The Innocence Project

Now the majority of people (mainly men, but there are a couple of women) cleared by the Innocent Project weren't sentenced to death, but some were (18 in fact, figure provided elsewhere on the site), but looking at all these names makes me wonder who many innocent men may have been executed. It can take years for these innocent people to be cleared, and for some on death row, the time probably runs out.

There aren't any concrete figures on how many innocents have been executed in the US, because American courts don't tend to entertain appeals of innocence after execution.

However, there are cases of people executed, where strong evidence exists of their innocence. The most recent of those was the abhorrent execution of Troy Davies in 2011.

It is estimated that one in 25 of the people sentenced to death in the US are actually innocent, and while that's clearly a minority, in my mind the execution of just one innocent is one too many.

they are unconscious and high as a kite he wont have felt a thing this is why they want to bring back the firing squad unless you get a bunch of really bad shots job done

deaky
We don't know that. They are using untested combinations of drugs.

they are unconscious and high as a kite he wont have felt a thing

Please post the link to show this is a fact and not propaganda to support the DP.

I am amazed that the likes of Huntly and Brady are allowed to continue breathing.

I am amazed that the likes of Huntly and Brady are allowed to continue breathing.

Err ... Because we don't have the death penalty in the UK perhaps?