Trump reinstates death penalty for federal crimes

Its I tricky one, on the one hand there's plenty to the argument of not wanting to murder innocent people because of a fallible justice system.

But at the same time, there are individuals out there who've proven they're wholly unfit for society, and in those cases it makes sense.

Those 5 cases, *if true* certainly fit the latter statement, but then i wasnt on the jury panel so theres not much point making a decision.
 
The Geezer said:
Man made term nothing more.

The state plans to kill a man; method, how, when, where ...... definition of murder sadly the state says they can do it
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By that definition, all soldiers who kill anyone are murderers too. Military forces usually plan things and killing people is sometimes part of the plan. Do you regard all deliberate killings in wars as murders? If not, why not? If murder is defined solely as killing deliberately, in a planned way, then all such killings are murders.

Or how about killing in defence? Imagine you're an armed copper. You get called in because someone is killing people. You get there and there are a couple of bodies on the ground and the person described is, right now, in the process of swinging a hammer at someone's head. If you kill the attacker to save the intended victim, are you a murderer? If not, why not? You planned to kill. And none of the "I'd shoot the hammer out of their hand" thing, please. That's for fiction.
 
ash_scotland88 said:
Between 2006 and 2014 Scotland's polls supported the death penalty greater than independence, never dropping to below 50% of those polled. If memories serves me.
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I think Britain as a whole supported the death penalty until only about 5 years ago IIRC.

Occasionally, the political branch is a few steps ahead of the population.
 
If there were some fail-safe guarantee of not wrongly convicting someone, then you really couldn't argue that these crimes don't deserve the death penalty.

Some people are beyond help; beyond redemption. The most ethical thing to do is just to put them out of their misery. It's certainly not about deterrence.
 
The Geezer said:
The death penalty is not a deterrent otherwise the violent crime figures would be lower.

This re-instatement to appease the god fearing conservatives who vote Trump. Obviously they never read the 2nd Testament where Jesus’ message is love.

Disclaimer: I’m not religious
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Arguments over its efficacy as a deterrent aside it's remarkably effective in stopping the ridiculous level of re-offending ;) I would certainly vote in favour of its return for treason.
 
Pawnless Endgame said:
I'm against the death penalty.

Our new PM BoJo a.k.a Boris Trump is basically Trump 2.0. He'll copy Trump, which will include reinstating the death penalty in the UK.
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Quoting for proof.

Marky said:
Our new Home Secretary supports it

I don’t agree with it
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No she doesn't.

I'm absolutely no fan of the new regime. But let's be truthful and not as bad as they are. Boris Johnson is not on record as supporting a reintroduction of capital punishment. Priti Patel has supported it in the past but subsequently reversed her view in 2016 and has made no further change in position since.
 
Evangelion said:
I don't have a problem with this. Reasonable policy.
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And if someone who is found to be innocent after that fact, does it continue to be reasonable?

The cost of these death's are also far greater than life imprisonment, so there's not even a financial saving.

Looking at countries with it being used, seem's to me like those crimes still occur, so it's useless.

All around just seems like a waste of time and provides the public a reasoning that violence is a viable answer for issues.
 
builder22 said:
I wonder if the death penalty is a bigger deterrent than a prison sentence to the people that are likely to commit these crimes
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The degree of punishment doesn't have as much as an effect on crime rates as you'd imagine.

In a lot of cases the psychology of criminals is such that they commit crime because they don't believe they'll get caught.
 
StriderX said:
And if someone who is found to be innocent after that fact, does it continue to be reasonable?
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Plenty of innocent people die in prison already, even without the death penalty. Reinstating it on a federal level won't change anything.

Best thing about the death penalty? It has a 100% success rate against recidivism.

The cost of these death's are also far greater than life imprisonment, so there's not even a financial saving.
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I'd like to see some evidence for that. There's no way an execution can be more expensive than 20 years in prison.
 
wesimmo said:
The degree of punishment doesn't have as much as an effect on crime rates as you'd imagine.

In a lot of cases the psychology of criminals is such that they commit crime because they don't believe they'll get caught.
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With these particularly heinous crimes, it's usually that the perpetrators are medically psychopathic and are, therefore, basically immune to the threat of punishment. The death penalty serves no purpose at all beyond sating a thirst for revenge.
 
Evangelion said:
Plenty of innocent people die in prison already, even without the death penalty. Reinstating it on a federal level won't change anything.

Best thing about the death penalty? It has a 100% success rate against recidivism.



I'd like to see some evidence for that. There's no way an execution can be more expensive than 20 years in prison.
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https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/costs

Admittedly a bit biased, but i doubt theres much better.

Why is the death penalty so expensive?
  • Legal costs: Almost all people who face the death penalty cannot afford their own attorney. The state must assign public defenders or court-appointed lawyers to represent them (the accepted practice is to assign two lawyers), and pay for the costs of the prosecution as well.
  • Pre-trial costs: Capital cases are far more complicated than non-capital cases and take longer to go to trial. Experts will probably be needed on forensic evidence, mental health, and the background and life history of the defendant. County taxpayers pick up the costs of added security and longer pre-trial detention.
  • Jury selection: Because of the need to question jurors thoroughly on their views about the death penalty, jury selection in capital cases is much more time consuming and expensive.
  • Trial: Death-penalty trials can last more than four times longer than non-capital trials, requiring juror and attorney compensation, in addition to court personnel and other related costs.
  • Incarceration: Most death rows involve solitary confinement in a special facility. These require more security and other accommodations as the prisoners are kept for 23 hours a day in their cells.
  • Appeals: To minimize mistakes, every prisoner is entitled to a series of appeals. The costs are borne at taxpayers’ expense. These appeals are essential because some inmates have come within hours of execution before evidence was uncovered proving their innocence.
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So unless you want to just shoot people before their charged with anything, it has to be expensive by definition as you're having to chase absolute guilt. Hundreds of millions on a few inmates is not good value, when the moral argument is so solid and the evidence from centuries of use has offered little reprieve from crime... it's just not worth it when you can throw them in a box.

Recidivism doesn't matter if it's life imprisonement and you'll NEVER get a zero crime rate as psychopaths aren't just going to disappear when you have a death penalty.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4059069/

Psychopathy is a constellation of psychological symptoms that typically emerges early in childhood and affects all aspects of a sufferer’s life including relationships with family, friends, work, and school. The symptoms of psychopathy include shallow affect, lack of empathy, guilt and remorse, irresponsibility, and impulsivity (see Table 1 for a complete list of psychopathic symptoms). The best current estimate is that just less than 1% of all noninstitutionalized males age 18 and over are psychopaths.1 This translates to approximately 1,150,000 adult males who would meet the criteria for psychopathy in the United States today.2 And of the approximately 6,720,000 adult males that are in prison, jail, parole, or probation,3 16%, or 1,075,000, are psychopaths.4 Thus, approximately 93% of adult male psychopaths in the United States are in prison, jail, parole, or probation.
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1% of the population, 93% of which are in prison... it's just a revenge tactic that solves nothing other than to pointlessly make people feel better, by murdering someone else.
 
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wesimmo said:
The degree of punishment doesn't have as much as an effect on crime rates as you'd imagine.

In a lot of cases the psychology of criminals is such that they commit crime because they don't believe they'll get caught.
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It shouldn't be about only deterrence anyhow.

Those extremely dangerous criminals remain extremely dangerous inside prisons. Dangerous to prison staff and other inmates. Requiring the construction, expansion or at the very least maintenance of maximum security facilities. Requiring specialist medical attention/psychiatric care, etc. The costs must be fair astronomical in some cases.

And I would also like to see the costs of, for example, a whole-life prison term for an 18 year old psychopath vs the cost of a lethal injection.

But also why would you be keeping such persons alive? So they can live in prison as deranged and dangerous as you like for the rest of their lives? There is no reintroduction in society for these persons. No repairing such mental brokenness. No rehabilitation.

I agree with anyone who says that revenge has no place in our justice system. But in these cases it seems more humane to put these persons down. They can never be a part of society - ever again. They will always be incredibly dangerous and unfit to be around normal people.

In short, they have no future, regardless.
 
FoxEye said:
It shouldn't be about only deterrence anyhow.

Those extremely dangerous criminals remain extremely dangerous inside prisons. Dangerous to prison staff and other inmates. Requiring the construction, expansion or at the very least maintenance of maximum security facilities. Requiring specialist medical attention/psychiatric care, etc. The costs must be fair astronomical in some cases.

And I would also like to see the costs of, for example, a whole-life prison term for an 18 year old psychopath vs the cost of a lethal injection.

But also why would you be keeping such persons alive? So they can live in prison as deranged and dangerous as you like for the rest of their lives? There is no reintroduction in society for these persons. No repairing such mental brokenness. No rehabilitation.

I agree with anyone who says that revenge has no place in our justice system. But in these cases it seems more humane to put these persons down. They can never be a part of society - ever again. They will always be incredibly dangerous and unfit to be around normal people.

In short, they have no future, regardless.
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It's not for them then, it's for us.

In california a death sentence is 18 times more expensive on average than a life term. EIGHTEEN.

Further,

• Defense costs for death penalty trials in Kansas averaged about $400,000 per case, compared to $100,000 per case when the death penalty was not sought. (Kansas Judicial Council, 2014).

• A new study in California revealed that the cost of the death penalty in the state has been over $4 billion since 1978. Study considered pretrial and trial costs, costs of automatic appeals and state habeas corpus petitions, costs of federal habeas corpus appeals, and costs of incarceration on death row. (Alarcon & Mitchell, 2011).

• In Maryland, an average death penalty case resulting in a death sentence costs approximately $3 million. The eventual costs to Maryland taxpayers for cases pursued 1978-1999 will be $186 million. Five executions have resulted. (Urban Institute, 2008).

• Enforcing the death penalty costs Florida $51 million a year above what it would cost to punish all first-degree murderers with life in prison without parole. Based on the 44 executions Florida had carried out since 1976, that amounts to a cost of $24 million for each execution. (Palm Beach Post, January 4, 2000).

• The most comprehensive study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of sentencing murderers to life imprisonment. The majority of those costs occur at the trial level. (Duke University, May 1993)

• In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. (Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992)
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https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/URLs_Cited/OT2016/16-5247/16-5247-2.pdf
 
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