Another capital punishment thread

[dirtychinchilla]

It doesn't work. Besides any other reason, it doesn't work

Completely.

I'm not really sure how the logic stacks up if you kill someone for killing someone else. Do you then punish the state for killing the person who killed someone else?

Do you really want to live under a government that could terminate your life at some point?

 

[GordyR]

Apparently US prisoners on death row wait 10+ years to lodge their appeals just to lengthen the process.

Edit - indeed the links Gordy provided state that they don’t even carry out the penalty in most cases. I remember there was a big fuss last year (IIRC) when one of the states were going to actually carry out the sentence.

@GordyR - have you got any sources in your links where they actually break down true costs? There’s a lot of “this one was $200m”, “this one was $300m” but not a lot of what makes up those costs.

I don't have much time to go into detail I'm afraid but here's an interesting one:

https://files.deathpenaltyinfo.org/legacy/files/pdf/CostsDPMaryland.pdf

Among many other notable points in this study, it's worth considering that a single death sentence in Maryland cost almost $2 million more than a comparable life sentence; and before ending the death penalty, Maryland spent $186 million extra to carry out just five executions.

A similar study showed that California has spent over $4 billion extra for the death penalty since 1978.

California Cost Study 2011 | Death Penalty Information Center

DPIC...

deathpenaltyinfo.org

I'm off out now, so that's me done on this topic for now, but if you're interested, here's a link to a site that has a round up of studies from most other US states too:

Studies | Death Penalty Information Center

State Studies The following list is a sample of recent state studies focusing on issues of the death penalty. Alabama The Death Penalty in Alabama:…

deathpenaltyinfo.org

 

[arknor]

back to america again where their criteria would be very different to ours....

 

[dirtychinchilla]

back to america again where their criteria would be very different to ours....

What they have is a far greater sample size than we do.

 

[arknor]

What they have is a far greater sample size than we do.

they also put people on deathrow for reasons we wouldn't so comparing it makes absolutely 0 sense


If they only put people like dhamer, manson etc on death row then I'm sure the numbers would be completely different

 

[beany_bot]

Death Penalty is so stupid. people think its the "Worst" punmishment for the worst crimes. For me its a get out of jail free card. I'd much rather the death penalty than life in jail with no hope of getting out. You are doing people a favour with the death penalty. Also how can you expect people not to kill if the state does it?

 

[dirtychinchilla]

they also put people on deathrow for reasons we wouldn't so comparing it makes absolutely 0 sense


If they only put people like dhamer, manson etc on death row then I'm sure the numbers would be completely different

Fortunately we put no one on death row. Because it's barbaric and illogical.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

Death Penalty is so stupid. people think its the "Worst" punmishment for the worst crimes. For me its a get out of jail free card. I'd much rather the death penalty than life in jail with no hope of getting out. You are doing people a favour with the death penalty. Also how can you expect people not to kill if the state does it?

Yup. If you really want to punish people, I'm not sure death is a punishment. You don't know you're dead.

 

[Felon]

It's just not practical, in almost every way.

The cost of implementing it, getting it into operation, then the final cost - when some poor innocent person ends up getting killed and they get exonorated a year after execution..

It's just a crap idea.

Combine that with the current state of our criminal justice system, it's just a non-starter.

 

[Tonytank]

It would be worth asking as well as to where we draw the line? What constitutes a heinous of an offence to be put to death by the state for?

Also if we just say "murder" how do we scale that? The lad you discuss in the first post you want put to death killed one person. We currently have politicians who have arguably put hundreds if not thousands of people to death or as near as dammit it due to policies and procedures that keep them in £2,000 suits and £4 hair cuts...should we put them to death?.

What kind of society rewards death with death? An for eye for eye...Really? Also do you trust our Government with that power? I wouldn't trust them to run me a bath and of course it would always be the thin edge of the all of the time. First we execute the murderers. Then the nonces. Then the rapists. Then before you know it your look at the noose because your TV licence came in late. I wonder how many financial types would see the needle/noose?

There is no one in charge right now I would trust to issue a death penalty, not to mention the irony of a society trying to better itself by punishing people with execution.

Also I have hurt my jaw from the item of times I have yawned at the mention of "Tax Payers Money" being saved by putting people to death. Do you really think if they start digging graves tomorrow your gonna pay £50 less on your tax or something? Or is that just the more liberal side of the coin compared to the side drenched in Punisher fantasies?

A lot of innocent people died to make us realize the death sentence was wrong.

 

[Maple Leaf]

people would rather spend 2.5mil keeping someone like harold shipman alive for 50 years it seems.

no doubt way more than that for someone in a secure prison though with suicide watch etc and all the special treatment people like him would have got to try and keep them alive

Harold Shipman committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell at HM Prison Wakefield on the 13th of January 2004. That is a high security prison where gangsters, serial killers and serial rapists are held. The Krays and the Yorkshire Ripper were held there.

I always remember reading about Jesse Tafero. Executed by electric chair in the 90s but was overturned in 92 when a recreation proved that there was a third suspect who committed the crimes he was sentenced for. What's worse is that the chair malfunctioned three times and his head caught on fire...

That was a tragic miscarriage of justice. Due to the USA's uniquely corrupt "plea bargain" system the double murderer was able to get a shorter prison sentence by putting the blame for the killing of two highway patrol officers on to an innocent couple who were with him at the time. They were subsequently convicted entirely due to the testimony of this man (who ultimately confessed to the murders). Taferno and his wife were both sentenced to death by a rather inappropriate judge:

The jury in the Jacobs case recommended a life sentence, but Judge M. Daniel Futch, Jr. imposed death, as he had done earlier in the Tafero case. Futch, known as "Maximum Dan," was a former Florida Highway Patrol trooper who kept a miniature replica of an electric chair on his desk. Source

In an astonishingly cruel twist, they deliberately botched his execution by electric chair by inserting a piece of non-conductive rubber between the electrode helmet and his head. Therefore, three jolts of electricity were required to kill him, a process that took seven minutes and which caused his brain to fry and six-inch flames to shoot out of his eyes!

how many wrongly convicted serial killers and serial rapists/pedos have there been in this country?

There have been many wrongful convictions of people in this country for what would be capital crimes. In fact, Michael Howard, right-wing former Conservative Party leader and an experienced prosecuting Barrister has publicly stated that he does not want us to have the death penalty simply because so many innocent people were convicted of murder in the UK in recent decades.

In some cases our Police have even "framed" people for murder who they knew were innocent. Look into the Guildford Four case to see just how corrupt our Police can be when push comes to shove. They also suppressed exculpatory evidence for 15 years which they were legally required to disclose to the defence counsel at the original trial. Those innocent people would all have been executed if we still had the death penalty.

 

[bainbridge]

I think that we made an error when we invented prison as a form of punishment. In times gone by, people were put in jail on a short term basis while they waited to be judged, and were then punished straight away by hanging, flogging, the stocks etc.

Modern tech to prove guilt/innocence beyond reasonable doubt and harsh, immediate punishment would certainly reduce crime IMO.

 

[GordyR]

I think that we made an error when we invented prison as a form of punishment. In times gone by, people were put in jail on a short term basis while they waited to be judged, and were then punished straight away by hanging, flogging, the stocks etc.

Modern tech to prove guilt/innocence beyond reasonable doubt and harsh, immediate punishment would certainly reduce crime IMO.

Wow.

I’m grateful you’ve shared that view.

I mean, I find it utterly abhorrent and am pretty astonished that anyone alive today would think that bringing back flogging and hanging was a good idea, given that we have hundreds of years worth of evidence demonstrating quite clearly that it was an abysmally dreadful deterrent compared with modern systems.

Can I ask however, what do you think would be improved and why? And on what are you basing this view?

From a historical perspective, crime rates are the lowest they’ve ever been right now, so what exactly do you think we would gain by undoing all of that progress and reverting to a previously failed system?

 

[adidan]

I think that we made an error when we invented prison as a form of punishment. In times gone by, people were put in jail on a short term basis while they waited to be judged, and were then punished straight away by hanging, flogging, the stocks etc.

Modern tech to prove guilt/innocence beyond reasonable doubt and harsh, immediate punishment would certainly reduce crime IMO.

Welcome to the discourse Witchfinder General.

While we're at it we can save money on council bills, who needs sewerage when we can throw it out in the streets?

Awesome...

 

[arknor]

This guy could be #1

Man faces years behind bars after raping vulnerable woman six times

Pascal Jombla, 45, was found guilty of six counts of rape and two counts of actual bodily harm at Wood Green Crown Court on Wednesday. He will be sentenced on March 30, 2023.

www.dailymail.co.uk

instead,he probably gets a few years for raping a woman 6 times and breaking her back, but you never know maybe he's innocent and set up by the police, or so some people in this thread would have you believe.

 

[Wizzkidy]

Just because someone takes a life in the most horrible way doesn't give anyone the right to take the life of another.

This makes us no better then the person who originally took someone's life.

 

[Sankari]

I support capital punishment. It's the only penalty with a 100% success rate against recidivism.

 

[Maple Leaf]

instead,he probably gets a few years for raping a woman 6 times and breaking her back, but you never know maybe he's innocent and set up by the police, or so some people in this thread would have you believe.

In the UK the death penalty for rape was abolished in 1841. It was not used to punish convicted rapists here for over a century before capital punishment was abolished, were you not aware of that fact?

Using capital punishment as a penalty for rape would probably be counterproductive as it would almost certainly result in many more rape victims subsequently being murdered. After all, rape is a crime of passion often committed irrationally by judgement impaired individuals and afterwards if the perpetrator knows he will be executed for it then why not also kill the rape victim and dispose of their body? That would greatly reduce the risk of the rape being detected and successfully prosecuted and as the punishments for rape and murder (in your preferred society) would both be death, well, the rapist would have nothing to lose by committing murder too.

Also, miscarriages of justice in capital cases were quite common in the UK. Reviews prompted by the Criminal Cases Review Commission resulted in one pardon and three exonerations for people executed between just 1950 and 1953. Timothy Evans was granted a posthumous free pardon in 1966. Mahmood Hussein Mattan was convicted in 1952 and was the last person to be hanged in Cardiff, Wales, but had his conviction quashed in 1998. George Kelly was hanged in Liverpool in 1950, but had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal in June 2003. Derek Bentley had his conviction quashed in 1998 with the appeal trial judge, Lord Bingham, noting that the original trial judge, Lord Goddard, had denied the defendant "the fair trial which is the birthright of every British citizen." (His under-aged accomplice shot and killed a Policeman during a burglary, albeit after Bentley was already under arrest, so the Police and CPS were keen to put him to death.)

 

[StriderX]

I support capital punishment. It's the only penalty with a 100% success rate against recidivism.

Also the only penalty that you know will catch innocent people with no ability to appeal since they'd be dead and to stop that the costs become unsustainable versus just letting them rot for decades with the possibility of being let out if its found that they were in fact not the criminal society thought they were.

 

[dirtybeatfreak]

I disagree with the death penalty for the fact that it just feels like an easy out. Let them see out their days in misery, the longer the better.

Exactly what I was about to post. Killing them means they get off easy, let them suffer the consequences. I do agree with the cost of keeping them in prison argument though too. If only there was something that could actually work in the way of an island and chuck 'em on there type thing.