August 4th, 2011, 10:23 PM | #31 |
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Its always curious to me that many of those here in the US who are most ardent proponents of the death penalty are also "you can't trust the government" conservatives.
There's nothing "conservative" about giving the government the power to kill citizens, and DNA evidence has given us "ground truth" that even well conducted trials sometimes reach the wrong verdict. So: If you have a death penalty, sooner or later you'll find you hanged an innocent man, and then it'll be abolished. So why go through that pain? |
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August 5th, 2011, 01:27 AM | #32 |
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Proponents of capital punishment are not totally distrustful of government.
They distrust Political leaders and the constant built-in desire of any bureaucracy to grow beyond it's resources. Opponents of capital punishment are also very distrustful of government. They distrust law enforcement, the court system, and the prisons. Capital punishment has become outrageously expensive because opponents and their allies in political office have managed to build in automatic appeals and other roadblocks that make a death sentence start with 20 years of death row waiting. If that is not enough, every form of capital punishment has come under fire as being cruel for one reason or another. Knowing that you will likely be killed, but not knowing for sure when it will happen seems cruel and unusual to me. I would like to see a form of execution be used that completely destroys the body in a microsecond. No pain, no sensation. Either that or a massive overdose of a euphoric drug. That way no one can say they were hurting. |
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August 5th, 2011, 02:25 AM | #33 |
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Living in the US, it's a concept so unknown to several past generations since 1936, it seems inconceivable here that it would ever become a discussion.
Here is a history of many other countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging Iraq seems to be the place where it's practiced most right now. Only case in Israeli history was Eichman. |
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August 5th, 2011, 03:58 AM | #34 | |
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Quote:
"I'm from the FDA. We want to know if the drugs you use for execution are safe and effective." The prison official looks at him and says, "Can't be both."
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August 5th, 2011, 04:07 AM | #35 | |
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Capital Punishment in the United States
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The USA needs to reform mandatory minimum drug sentences. These crowd prisons with nonviolent potheads and pressure courts to give early release to robbers and rapists because there are more dopers coming in for a mandatory seven-year stretch. The USA's maximum security prisons, such as Pelican Bay in California, are a human rights crime. Ten years of sensory deprivation, violent encounters, social isolation, and unrelenting noise on the cell pods would drive any sane man too mad to release into decent society. These need some serious reform. Most of our states have death penalty statues on the books. They're very uneven. I'd say the average number of convicts executed state-by-state is 12 since the Supreme Court affirmed Gregg v. Georgia in 1976. Among states with death penalty statutes, the top two are Texas and Virginia. Texas is 479 and counting since 1976. Virginia is second at 108 since 1976. In contrast, New Hampshire and Kansas have not executed any convicts since 1976. States such as Connecticut and Wyoming have used it only once. The majority of executions in Texas are sentenced specifically in Harris County, home to Houston. Bloodthirsty folks out there. Lethal injection is nearly universal now. Some states have an alternate method a condemned person can choose. To wit, electrocution in Virginia, firing squad in Utah, gas chamber in Arizona, and hanging in Delaware. Since 1996 one prisoner in each state has chosen to die by the alternative method. I am absolutely opposed to the death penalty in ALL cases. I find it barbaric and I am embarrassed my country allows it at all. I also find the emotional revenge with which death penalty supporters speak of heinous crime to be an alienating mentality. The death penalty is not a deterrent. It is reserved for First-Degree Murder (a deliberately planned crime) and not for so-called "crimes of passion," such as where you walk in on your wife balling another man and you shoot them both dead. The First-Degree Murderer thinks he's smarter than the law and he doesn't think he's going to get caught. He's got it all figured out. He's not going to death row. He's going to cash out the life insurance policy and live high on the hog. The cops will NEVER figure it out! So there's that. I always say, if O.J. Simpson had been Oscar Simpson, a bus driver from Compton who offed his white wife and her friend, he would have been sent upstate double quick. Too often whether you get the death penalty is contingent upon the amount of money you can spend on your defense. We all believed O.J. was guilty as the devil, but he spent his millions tricking a sympathetic jury into declaring him innocent. Furthermore, death is immutable. If exculpatory evidence comes to light twenty years later, the point is moot because the prisoner is dead. I dream of seeing the death penalty phased out of use and off the books in the US in my life time. It's not going to happen. Too many of my fellow Americans, especially in the South, believe the death penalty is righteous sure as the sun sets in the west. I certainly hope the UK does not bring back hanging, though you guys got wonderfully efficient at the hanging process by the time the last UK executions took place in the 1960s! I don't think capital punishment makes a more human, just, reasonable, or moral country.
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August 5th, 2011, 05:18 AM | #36 |
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@Alvin Lucifer: well put.
here's one more odd thing about the death penalty, which should give you pause: the mode of execution has a disturbing "trendiness" with mechanical invention: the guillotine with state militarism: the firing squad with industrialization and electrification: the electric chair with industrial chemistry: the gas chamber with the advances in medicine: lethal injection Each of these "innovations" has some claimed humanity. A review of the various ghoulish botched executions suggests otherwise, and that hanging is probably as or more humane. The habit of popularizing the "contemporary" means of killing people should be disturbing. I find the present vogue for adopting medical procedures for a decidedly non-Hippocratic function (lethal injection) obscene . . . when someone puts in an IV, it shouldn't be to kill you. |
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August 5th, 2011, 07:25 AM | #37 |
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For everyone who proposes the death penalty first let them be the victim of a miscarriage of justice and see if they still support it.
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August 5th, 2011, 08:12 AM | #38 |
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Three warm meals a day, a warm cell, social interaction with other inmates, regular exercise and access to books, TV and counselling all courteousy of the tax payer. A decade down the line and who knows? Parole maybe? A fresh start. How is this justice?
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August 5th, 2011, 08:59 AM | #39 | |
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August 5th, 2011, 09:02 AM | #40 |
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Yes
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