Because all life is precious, not just an unborn babies. Plus I do not want the state to have the power to kill.
No. All life is not precious. Those who randomly kill and torture forfeit all their rights in a just society. By letting this perpetrator live another 40 or 50 years, we diminish the value of the life that he stole. And in a world with limited resources, how can we afford to give this murderer food, shelter, medical care for the next 50 years?
Miscarriages of justice happen all the time though. When you are sitting in the electric chair for a crime you didn't commit, and you're still calling for the death sentence, then I'll listen.
Cleotha Abston, 38, the suspect for the kidnapping and murder of Eliza Fletcher, had served 20 years in jail for kidnapping one of her uncle's former co-workers, a Memphis lawyers.
Women are planning a run Friday morning at 4:30 (the time she was running) from her neighborhood to the spot near campus where she was abducted. There will be a police presence.
There have ~190 death row exonerations in the past 50 years in the US. Many who read up on these cases become alarmed at the pattern of police and prosecutorial misconduct that allow these convictions to occur, and come away certain that there have been many more wrongful convictions in capital cases. Most will then concede that there should be additional guaranteed legal procedures in place to prevent wrongful executions. It is these procedures that end up costing more than a lifetime of incarceration.
I'd love to see homicidal sexually violent predators expeditiously expunged from existence. However, from available data I'm highly skeptical about the deterrence value of capital punishment, and I'm more comfortable removing this power from our legal system than trusting the people in power to wield it justly and without error. A prompt, painful, public execution may be what this perpetrator deserves, but it doesn't take a whole lot of thinking to realize this is not where we want to head as a society.
Great post. There are certainly people who deserve death but I can't trust the state to sort that out with acceptable accuracy.
The possibility of the victim in the first crime being connected to the victim in the second crime certainly raises the possibility that this was far from a random crime. It might have been twenty years in the planning, and might involve a motive such as revenge or financial gain (as in the first kidnapping). It also raises the possibility that others were involved in the logistics. She might have been killed in a botched attempt to subdue her. I hope the authorities don't follow the path of least resistance on this (i.e., let's convict him quickly and put him on death row).
No. All life is not precious. Those who randomly kill and torture forfeit all their rights in a just society. By letting this perpetrator live another 40 or 50 years, we diminish the value of the life that he stole. And in a world with limited resources, how can we afford to give this murderer food, shelter, medical care for the next 50 years?
Miscarriages of justice happen all the time though. When you are sitting in the electric chair for a crime you didn't commit, and you're still calling for the death sentence, then I'll listen.
This is an absolutely horrible story.
No. It doesn't happen all the time. Just because you say it doesn't make it true. What happens "all the time" are convicted felons who commit more violent crimes after their release. And no, you won't listen. You've made up your mind. And apparently, so has society. Until animals like this are put to death, they will be let loose back into society to do the same thing again and again.
Miscarriages of justice happen all the time though. When you are sitting in the electric chair for a crime you didn't commit, and you're still calling for the death sentence, then I'll listen.
This is an absolutely horrible story.
No. It doesn't happen all the time. Just because you say it doesn't make it true. What happens "all the time" are convicted felons who commit more violent crimes after their release. And no, you won't listen. You've made up your mind. And apparently, so has society. Until animals like this are put to death, they will be let loose back into society to do the same thing again and again.
Kind of odd that no uber rich people ever get the death penalty.
Hell, very few people who are not quite poor get the death penalty.
I worked with a forensic psychiatrist on a case where someone claimed they could not be held to a contract because of their mental illness (they could and lost the case). This guy's main gig was doing mental fitness examinations to determine whether people could stand trial and jailhouse examinations to determine whether violent child molesters could be released or needed to be retained due to a risk of repeat offenses. It is an extremely difficult task to try to determine whether even the worst of the worst offenders (who frequently are mentally ill) have been reformed or will go out and do it again. A few will snap during a session with a forensic psychiatrist and are easy to keep locked up due to an obvious outburst. But most are very aware that they need to say the right things in order to get out and often the worst of the worst are the best at getting through the process. The forensic psychiatrist I worked with told me that the main reason he sees recidivism in the cases that he handles is that the criminals are put right back into the same circumstances that existed when the first committed their crimes (no access to mental health services, extreme poverty, drug addiction, family violence, etc.). These end up re-triggering the same psychotic break that caused the original offense. This is why politicians like to call criminals "evil". It gets people to believe that certain people are just captured by the dark forces of Satan and can only be saved through religion or put down by execution (ironically, one of the most common moves child molesters use in their psych evaluations is to claim to have found religion in prison). But countries with very low recidivism rates all basically have the same approach. Prisoners are given the chance to get an education, learn life skills, work at a decent wage in prison and are give real support when they re-enter society.
There have ~190 death row exonerations in the past 50 years in the US. Many who read up on these cases become alarmed at the pattern of police and prosecutorial misconduct that allow these convictions to occur, and come away certain that there have been many more wrongful convictions in capital cases. Most will then concede that there should be additional guaranteed legal procedures in place to prevent wrongful executions. It is these procedures that end up costing more than a lifetime of incarceration.
I'd love to see homicidal sexually violent predators expeditiously expunged from existence. However, from available data I'm highly skeptical about the deterrence value of capital punishment, and I'm more comfortable removing this power from our legal system than trusting the people in power to wield it justly and without error. A prompt, painful, public execution may be what this perpetrator deserves, but it doesn't take a whole lot of thinking to realize this is not where we want to head as a society.
Great post. There are certainly people who deserve death but I can't trust the state to sort that out with acceptable accuracy.
Do not be so hasty and naive to concede that someone deserves a death sentence, regardless of a heinous crime they may have committed. That is purely a philosophical view, and one mired in the fallacious thinking that cruelly punishing someone for their crimes (any punishment beyond removing them from the public) provides utility to society or the surviving families of the victims.
Miscarriages of justice happen all the time though. When you are sitting in the electric chair for a crime you didn't commit, and you're still calling for the death sentence, then I'll listen.
This is an absolutely horrible story.
No. It doesn't happen all the time. Just because you say it doesn't make it true. What happens "all the time" are convicted felons who commit more violent crimes after their release. And no, you won't listen. You've made up your mind. And apparently, so has society. Until animals like this are put to death, they will be let loose back into society to do the same thing again and again.
I didn't bother linking any evidence because it's so easy to search for. The list of US cases is so big it has its own sub link in the below article.
Of course violent criminals shouldn't be released if they are going to re-offend, no-one would disagree with that. But that's not the same thing.
This is a list of miscarriage of justice cases. This list includes cases where a convicted individual was later cleared of the crime and either has received an official exoneration, or a consensus exists that the individual w...
Most of those exonerations were pre-DNA forensics cases that have been recently exonerated by contrary DNA evidence. If we need to raise the bar for evidence for death penalty cases, let's do it, but some people are so evil or commit acts of evil (often involving children) that there is no other just punishment regardless of the cost. We should also increase penalties for perjury (bearing false witness) in a death penalty case.
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