bring back hanging yes or no?

[deepsepia]

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?

[2cheap]

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.

[Baxter49]

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.

[tygrkhat40]

Originally Posted by 2cheap

Either that or a massive overdose of a euphoric drug.
That way no one can say they were hurting.

When the many states in the US switched over to lethal injection, then Buffalo News cartoonist Tom Toles published a cartoon with a representative from the Federal Drug Agency coming up to a prison.

"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."

[Alvin Lucifer]

Originally Posted by billybunter

All you have to do is watch those programs about USA jails. It is like night and day compared to this side of the pond. Over there life means LIFE. Here 10-15 years sometimes.

Most of the time "life" here in the USA means parole after as little as 15 years or as long as 35 years depending on the state. The courts (state and federal) are permitted to impose life without the possibility of parole for crimes deemed heinous enough. Some life sentence convicts are released in advanced age or in terminal illness. I think a lot more gravity should be taken with issuing life sentences and a lot less parole should be given. If we're going to call it "life" let's not do it in the heat of judicial vengeance. That's what I object to about the death penalty. Its supporters confuse justice and revenge.

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.

[deepsepia]

@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.

[jawbone]

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.

[classicfan101]

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?

[donitz89]

Originally Posted by 1952224

with an online poll of 100,000 signatures parliament is likelyto have a debate on reinstating the death penalty.i believe in an eye for an eye but looking back at cases

1. derek bentley
2. timothy evans

2 cases from the 50s who were hung

1. the birmingham 6
2. guildford 4
3. stefan kizsco

these 3 cases and many others like them where these people would have recieved the death penalty had it been in force at the time,spent many years in prison before being found innocent.i can see the case for it for serial killers,child killers and terrorist but is it a price worth paying when they get it wrong

*Hanged

[daz]

Yes