Death Penalty?

in the long run, at least in america, our justice system is so focused on retribution that it is perpetually ineffective at actually tackling the problems we are facing. it breeds the culture of criminal behavors one would think it would deter.

the death penalty causes more harm to the family than it does the death row immate.

 

I just want to point out something to those of you who are defending some of these people. I actually have interacted with offenders on a day-to-day basis pretty consistently through my internship, for the last five months, and I'll continue to do so for the next year, at least. I actually have been inside super-maximum facilities before.

Offenders aren't like you and me or your mother. A vast majority of them not only don't feel remorse for what they've done, they feel justified by their actions. They'll cry and beg and plead for mercy and say that they've changed but they will play you like a fiddle if you let them. They consider your feelings, your empathy, and your heartfelt condolences as weakness. They really are compulsive liars. They'll sit through months of therapy and counseling and they'll play the part well, "Yes sir, No m'am." A large majority are faking it until they make it off papers or past a parole board. That's what they say to each other when they think you can't hear them in the other room. I can tell you right now that they would laugh in your face if you made some of these arguments to them. Some of them would probably spit in your face instead.

The recidivism rates don't lie. It's at nearly 70% in the United States. 7/10 people will re-offend if they are given the chance and they don't wait around or pause for anything. The recidivism rate is even higher if you extend the period studied beyond three years, which is the standard used by most research studies. That's part of the reason prisons are so crowded these days. 1/10th of the population commits 90% of all crimes. Very few of them are going to be genuinely rehabilitated. Very few of them are going to "think about what they've done" in any way beyond the most absolute superficial ways.

When they go to prison for life, they don't have anything else to lose. They victimize other offenders in prison because they know nothing worse could possibly happen to them, except death, and when you ask them if they're ready for that, they say they've been ready since they were 13, or younger. That's why death row is segregated from the general population. For the other inmate's safety. I think death is a less cruel punishment than 50+ years in solitary confinement. People really do go crazy there. Humans are social creatures. And let's not even get into the deplorable conditions. Have any of you actually been to solitary confinement, or "the hole?" It smells like piss and feces because the inmates throw it at officers through their food slots, or just smear it all over their cells instead.

That's just my two cents, though. I'm not going to argue the point any further. Do with it what you want.

 

then you don't understand one of the fundamental tenets of every civilised society's judicial system. It cannot work that way.

---------- Post added 28th Apr 2012 at 08:49 PM ----------

that's entirely non sequitur.

I think your emotional appeals evoking dirty and inhuman images of prisoners belie your feelings on this issue, which colour your perception.

 

I am entirely against any form of the death penalty.

I also have many issues with stories I hear about how some prison officers or guards treat their inmates. It could be argued that one can hardly blame recidivists if all they have received is pain and ridicule while in an institution that is supposed to be teaching them that what they did was wrong, and to equip them for comfortably living in our world again without causing themselves or anyone else harm.

I believe many people are capable of that, if they are given the correct amount of care, counselling and in some cases treatment. The ones that aren't are of course those who have some kind of mentally uncontrollable reason for their actions, such as psychopathic tendencies, an advanced form of schizophrenia, or a long standing history of abuse perhaps from childhood that has traumatised them.

To kill those people would be tantamount to a social cleansing, which I consider a horrendous idea.

An example I will give you (which I will not go into a lot of detail about for a reason that will be obvious in a few words' time) is of a member of my extended family who was unlucky enough to develop schizophrenia, as they were susceptible to it genetically and their life had not been going well and had made them vulnerable to the condition. As a result they ended up committing some very serious crimes (I am not in a position to elaborate). My country's judicial system wanted to just stick them in prison originally, but eventually it became apparent that they were mentally ill. So, after 15 years spent rehabilitating in a hospital, they are now back into the world, and are completely well and building a new life for themselves.

It seems certain people in this thread would have wanted to just kill that member of my family without giving them the chance to rehabilitate. Well, as I think someone else in this thread has said, doing that would have caused my family an extraordinary amount of pain and grief, especially when we knew that all this person needed was treatment and some time away from the world for a bit.

 

Maybe it because I come from a county where the death penalty hasn't been an option in my lifetime but I'm against it.

 

I am opposed to it however I do at an certain extent support it for those that commit massacres or genocide.

---------- Post added 28th Apr 2012 at 11:27 PM ----------

I believe that South Africa should have the reintroduction of the death penalty due to the prisons are over crowded and crime is out of control. I have heard enough horror stories from websites and expat south Africans that live in my country to see that there needs something done in order to reduce the crime there.

 

Except sometimes it DOES work that way. Judges will take victim pleas made during, before, and after trial into consideration during sentencing. I work for one now. I don't want to be defensive here but you're not in any sort of position to tell me what I do or do not understand about the justice system in the United States. Ok?

There isn't an image of a prisoner that isn't dirty and inhuman, unless maybe you live in Scandinavia. I used to be just like you, totally opposed to the death penalty, but you don't know what these people are like. I'm not saying we should kill all offenders, obviously, but some people like Aileen Wuornos, are just beyond saving.

 

Hate speech is not a thing in the US. I can go into the local synagogue and say, "The Holocaust never happened, but it should have!" and I will get in trouble if and only if I refuse to leave when they ask me to. I can publish a book saying that people of other races and morally degenerate, or that women who don't dress conservatively deserve to be raped and I will not be in trouble with the law. A crime may be judged a hate crime based on my speech, but that is not the same thing.

Really, the term "hate crime" is a misnomer. It would be more accurately termed something like, "the aggravating factor of committing a crime based on hatred or prejudice against someone on the basis of a protected status." Hate crimes aren't a separate class of crimes, just something used to make the sentence harsher than it might otherwise have been. In the absence of something that was already a crime without that aggravating factor, it is impossible to commit a hate crime.

 

To me, it just seems terribly wrong to even think of it. What the hell is the point of punishing crime with crime?

Plus, who are we to decide who lives and who dies in that manner?

 

Completely against.

Firstly, we're committing the same crime as punishment that we're punishing them for. At what point do we get to say - but they're a murderer, it's fine, they deserve it? At what point does our killing of them become just?
Furthermore, there's so much room for mistakes and miscarriages of justice. There have been numerous cases of people being wrongly executed for their crimes.
Finally, the idea about it 'saving taxpayers dollars' is a myth. People usually stay on death row for years, and it's much more expensive than a normal prison. Plus the expenses of the procedure. It's actually more expensive to carry out the death penalty than to imprison someone.

Killing people is never okay.

 

Except psychopaths don't.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
Albert Einstein,

With all due respect then you aren't being consistent. There really are people out there who can't help themselves and don't realise what they do is wrong.

---------- Post added 28th Apr 2012 at 09:27 PM ----------

I see.

I know it can also be less than murder.

I know but we're discussing (hate) murder not speech.

I fully acknowledge my personal reasons for being against are partially based on subjective morals. It's also based on the risk of killing innocent people.
I do not agree with the idea that victim's have a say in the punishment of criminals, that's vengeance not justice nor protection.

---------- Post added 28th Apr 2012 at 09:30 PM ----------

With all due respect to your experience, you haven't met every murderer on this planet nor does your personal experience prevent you from making subjective and/or illogical arguments.

I'm not refuting this. I'm objecting to the hypocrisy of killing people for killing.

That's why I am not opposed to life imprisonment.

 

This is a true story, and a big part of the reason why I support the death penalty;

Troy Kell, at the behest of a female friend, killed a Canadian immigrant when they were just teenagers because this immigrant was allegedly stalking her. The police couldn't do anything about the stalking, because stalking laws had not yet been enacted. They weren't on the books yet. Troy shot him six times in the face, and then dumped his body in the desert and brought other friends to look at the body for several days after the fact. It was dubbed "The Show and Tell Murder." He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Once Troy got to prison he joined the Aryan Brotherhood, where he and his fellow gang members terrorized and assaulted racial and sexual minorities in the general population consistently. During one such incident a black man named Lonnie Blackmon decided to fight back in self-defense. Shortly after this incident Kell and his cellmate held Blackmon down on the prison floor and stabbed him 67 times, all of which was captured on the prison's CCTV. You can watch it on Youtube if you want. After Lonnie was murdered, Kell was given the death penalty, to die by firing squad. He's currently appealing his conviction.

If Kell had received the death penalty for his first pre-meditated murder, Lonnie Blackmon wouldn't have been so brutally killed, because Kell would have been on death row, segregated from the rest of the inmates. What do you guys suggest was given to Kell after he killed Lonnie instead of the death penalty? Another life-sentence, which, since he is already serving one, means nothing in a practical sense? Life in solitary confinement? Life in the hole? Is that any less cruel or inhumane than death?

 

that sounds more like fault in the criminal detainment system. thats why dangerous criminals are kept seperate from other inmates, and never in general population, at least where I am from.

so much of a whiff of insurection, and any and all parties are sent to solitary confinement.

 

What you've just stated is a series of failures by the justice system, which is only more reason not to give said institution an unreversable solution as the death penalty.
More-over life-imprisonment possibly solitary is a viable option and not necessarily worse since the victim can still read, write and do other recreational things, he/she still has her life. More-over psychopaths might be cured in the future, innocent convicts be liberated and other criminals might make amends by performing services for society such a video's to raise awareness of the consequence of committing crimes and many other possibilities.
That's the point, life imprisonment leaves options, the death penalty does not.

 

There isn't enough space to hold all of the "dangerous" criminals in complete segregation from one another. They're all dangerous, that's why they're in prison. There isn't enough funding to build and operate more facilities either, especially now in this economy. Correctional officers are outnumbered by inmates by 50:1 or even more than that. They cannot possibly keep tabs on every single inmate. There isn't enough staff, funding, or time in the day for it. Keep in mind, by the way, that we couldn't have placed someone like Troy Kell in permanent solitary confinement for a few simple assaults. That's cruel and unusual punishment.

So what's the pragmatic solution for people like Troy Kell? You didn't answer the question. He's already serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, and he's committed nearly the same offense in an equally brutal fashion. What punishment should he get for killing someone else in prison?

---------- Post added 28th Apr 2012 at 05:05 PM ----------

See what I said above to Emberstone.

But is that really justice? It sounds like a pretty sweet gig to me. Free shelter, three hot meals a day, and all the time in the world to read up on some classical world literature and work towards a de facto English degree. They get to play cards and work out while their victim's family weeps bitter tears for their loved one.

But Troy Kell wasn't diagnosed as a psychopath, and he definitely isn't innocent since it was all caught on tape, and he hasn't made any amends to society by making any sort of PSA or restitution to Blackmon's family. So none of this applies to him.

Options for what though? To cure them of a mental illness they don't have? To confirm their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt again? To wait for them to do something they have no desire or will to do whatsoever? What's your solution for people like Troy?

 

The death penalty is definitely acceptable and a good option in many cases. The only problem is uncertainty that some people actually committed a crime (maybe later finding out that they did not), or corruption and discrimination (including blacks getting sentenced to death penalty more than whites... men more than women...). I'm not against taking someone's life who completely deserves it. If you take someone elses life purposefully and with evil intent, and especially if you take multiple other lives, you don't deserve to have your own life, basically. (I'd really only justify the death penalty with murderers... and maybe even rapists/people who do violent crimes if they do them enough.

But not really sure, thinking about it. It just seems pointless to keep those individuals alive. However, as it stands, it's more expensive for the death penalty, so prison it is.

 

Kidd, let's say Troy had been sentenced to death and was on death row when he killed his fellow inmate. How would his sentence be exacerbated? He's already been sentenced to death. The only thing you can do is move the execution to an earlier datel Your argument, taken to its logical conclusion, is an argument in favor of execution immediately following sentencing with no possibility of appeal.

 

If he had been on death row he wouldn't have had the opportunity to kill a fellow inmate in the first place, which is what I've been saying. They're in segregation for 23 hours a day on death row. He would have had to incapacitate a guard (or more than one) and then slice through a chain link fence and barbed wire to get to another inmate's recreation area, because that's the only place they would be, if they're not taking a monitored shower with guards present or in their cells. So, the question is really a moot one to me since I've never heard of two fellow death row inmates killing one another, but I'll answer it anyway.

I don't see anything particularly wrong with that, and I'm not going to apologize for looking at criminal justice from a practical stand-point. Troy's guilt and lack of remorse is very well-documented. This isn't a gray case where facts are disputed. An entire riot squad watched him kill Blackmon and the entire murder, every single stab, was documented by CCTV. What's he appealing? It's got a 0% chance of success. It's a waste of tax-payer money and the court's time. His guilt has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt and then some.

Let's keep in mind, by the way, that the scenario you're talking about and the one I've proposed are fundamentally different in that death really is the end-all be-all, but life in prison without the possibility of parole is not. An escalated punishment, death, can be delivered for people like Troy Kell without it being cruel or unusual. I'm wanting to know what the punishment is that he should receive other than the death penalty, and I've gotten nothing as an answer so far other than the punishment he's already serving for his first crime, which is just unacceptable to me, as it suggests that Blackmon's life and death is somehow lessened in the eyes of the criminal justice system.

 

Actually, given that the death penalty isn't used by any other country in the Western world, it can't be administered without being unusual.

 

That's true. I should have said cruel and unusual.