California's remodled death chamber at San Quentin
As you can well imagine, I support the death penalty. Many oppose the death penalty. This is not to argue why the death penalty is justified. Two current cases on-going in two different states illustrate the depth of the madness surrounding this issue.
First in Georgia, where convicted killer Brandon Rhode was scheduled to be executed yesterday. However, the state Supreme Court put the whole thing on hold because Rhode tried to cut his wrists just hours before the scheduled execution. Now, Rhode's attorneys are trying to file a mental competency challenge.
I'm not making this up folks.
Next, right here in California, where a federal judge put all executions on hold in 2006 because lethal injection has been accused of being "painful", the state is arguing (half-heartedly, probably) that Albert Brown is now cleared to be executed for his rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in 1980. The reason is that the state has complied with all requirements for making the procedure "painless". I hear they have added laughing gas to the deadly mixture. In addition, the state even remodeled the San Quentin death chamber ($835,000) to make it more airy and brighter since Judge Jeremy Fogel had judged it to be too cramped and dingy to carry out executions (OC Register 9-22-10).
Meanwhile, the ironic thing is that California Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown (no relation to Albert, I hope) is allowing the state to argue in favor of allowing the execution to proceed even though he is against capital punishment. When Brown was previously governor in the 1970s and 80s, he once argued that banning the death penalty would "elevate society to a higher state of consciousness".
(Well, at least for the prisoner in question, I suppose.)
20 comments:
Capital punishment: the one thing that the USA, Egypt, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba all agree on!
I do hope they rounded those corners on the equipment. The condemned just might hurt himself.
Hi Fouse . . . You poke fun at a serious issue. Good. Your take is hilarious.
Our laws are a mess . . and most lawyers. A convicted mass murderer is a cash cow. A dead guy isn't.
I am 99% against Capital Punishment, and the 1% is because I don't trust the system. Several innocents have been killed over the years. Sorry, not good enough. The system must be 100% positive of guilt. We have people in prison whose crime was witnessed, we have a picture of the person committing the crime, and the accused confesses guilt, and the dna, finger prints, eye scans all prove he or she did it. . . and the criminal is bright enough to tell up from down . . . then I say capital punishment is definitely in order and I don't care if it is or isn't a deterrent.
Bump
Bump,
At least you can go to the cemetery and say, "There lies Jake Snake. Never again will he take a life." That's deterrance.
Anonymous,
Unfortunately, our country is inhabited by a lot of bad people who should be in those countries you listed.
The rest of the civilized Western world seems to manage just fine without executing people.
At least you can go to the cemetery and say, "There lies Jake Snake. Never again will he take a life." That's deterrance.
Gary, there is absolutely no evidence that the death penalty acts as a deterrent. In fact, if it were such a deterrent, why do we have a higher murder rate than countries that DON'T have it?
Anyone of liberal sympathies who categorically opposes the death penalty should read A Time to Kill, in which a Mississippi lawyer defending a black man charged with murder for killing the two white men who raped his nine year old daughter explains to a card carrying member of the ACLU, a U Miss law student working for him on the case, why he is very much in favor of the death penalty.
I'm very wary of inflicting the death penalty. But, for example, there are those prisoners all the other prisoners are afraid of, who are eventually going to kill a cell mate, or a guard, or someone in the chow line. What do you do, give them a second life sentence? The death penalty should not be regarded as punishment. It should be used when it is the only reasonable way to protect the rest of us, including prisoners whose sentence did not include a death penalty, from the obvious hazard of having this character live one day longer.
Finally, its not pretty, nothing can ever make it pretty, we shouldn't try to make it pretty. I still favor allowing a last meal, in reasonably sanitary conditions.
Anonymous,
Yeah, they're doing just great. Ask the family of Theo Van Gogh in Holland.
Lance,
I just gave you an example of a deterrent. Jake Snake has been forever deterred.
As to your question. It's because we have more violent, vicious criminals than most other civilized countries. That is something I have always believed.
There are just some creatures who should NEVER get out of jail. Richard Allen Davis for one. Charles Manson, David Joseph Carpenter, Richard RamÃrez, Craig Price, etc.
I could go on with the list.
Unless one can guarantee society that these people will never be released back into society and will be imprisoned for the rest of their unnatural lives, keep the death penalty.
The wonderful thing about the internet is that you can look up the answer. Here it is on whether and in what circumstance the murder rate goes up or down with capital punishment.
http://www.benbest.com/lifeext/murder.html#punish
The US is not the most murderous country in the world either. See
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
.
Miggie, while my statement could easily be accused of being overly-simplistic, your links don't really contradict it either. It mentions one instance of a drop in the murder rate coinciding with an increase in executions. However, it also mentions that there was a decline of both executions AND murders at another point. (Of course, it should also be pointed out that just because two things happen at the same time, that doesn't mean that one causes the other.)
Basically, what I'm saying is that if the death penalty were a deterrent, then countries with it would have the lowest murder rates. This is most definitely not the case.
Personally, I am absolutely in favor of the death penalty, but only if some omniscient and omnipotent being could carry it out for us. I don't trust the government to do it.
Lance, you don't trust the government? What kind of neo-Nazi Tea Party Republican conservative have you turned into?
Findalis, I agree with your list. (When you recover from the fainting spell that statement induces, read on). Most of Manson's "family" should have been released long ago. They were no danger to anyone once they'd had ten or twenty years to think over what silly fools they had been to be enamoured of Manson, and what a high price they paid for it. (That's the ones who were arrested with him. The followers who remained at large were real nut cases).
"Most of Manson's "family" should have been released long ago. They were no danger to anyone once they'd had ten or twenty years to think over what silly fools they had been to be enamoured of Manson, and what a high price they paid for it."
Do you think 10-20 years is enough for the crimes they committed? Do you want us to be like Holland?
Lance, you don't trust the government? What kind of neo-Nazi Tea Party Republican conservative have you turned into?
I want my country back!
You go Lance!
Gary, I do think that twenty years is enough for ANY crime, provided there is good evidence that it is not going to be repeated. I've had some experience advocating for prisoners who were denied parole, including some guilty of homicide. As one of them observed "Lifers are the best parole risk there is. I'm not even going to j-walk with that hanging over me." (Incidentally, parole does mean for a number of years, they could be sent back for the rest of their life sentence, and unlikely to be paroled again, not for another murder, but for being drunk in public or shoplifting.)
Although I would have to read his file to be sure, from everything I've read, I would never vote to parole Manson, because he IS a continuing danger. However, I've seen some news clips of some of Manson's girls at parole hearings, and I once knew a California prisoner who knew one of them, who observed "they should just let her out." She's no danger to anyone. She'll go home and live a quiet, conventional life. What's the point?
NO number of years can COMPENSATE for a loss of life, so unless death is going to be the automatic penalty for any degree of homicide, including negligent or involuntary, let's not make quantitative comparisons. The point is to deter future commission, and protect the public from future harm.
I should add, I was once told by a woman doing time for trafficking crack in a quiet semi-rural county where nothing much happens, that one year would NOT have been enough for her. "I'm pretty hard-headed. I needed two or three years. I didn't need ten."
"Gary, I do think that twenty years is enough for ANY crime, provided there is good evidence that it is not going to be repeated."
Duly noted.
The Manson girls, as you like to call them, were originally given the Death Penalty. When the courts said it was wrong, their sentences were commuted to Life in Prison. They should be grateful. They were given their lives back.
They are where they should be. In prison until they die. Life should mean just that. What parole did their victims get?
They did the crime, now they have to do the time.
Your opinion, Findalis, as always, is impeccably your own. I wouldn't have given them the death penalty in the first place. And there is NO rational basis for comparing what happened to their victim with what their sentence is. The only thing that matters is, deterring future crimes, and protection of the public.
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