I don't think the state should be in the execution business, but if they're going to do it they should just use a guillotine, or something along those lines. I'm not entirely kidding.
This sort of thing mystifies me completely. How hard is a morphine overdose?
This actually makes me feel sick.
Also, what LB said. Jesus.
I don't think the state should be in the execution business, but if they're going to do it they should just use a guillotine, or something along those lines.
I mostly agree with the sentiment I take to be expressed here. That is, I think the death penalty is wrong and that the government should not put people to death as a punishment. (to be clear, I believe it is constitutional, but just because something is constitutional does not mean that it is a good thing).
However, if we are going to do it, I am less upset by the fact that we botch executions. Indeed, part of the reason the practice survives is the fiction that it is clean and painless. And why should it be. If you really think that killing people as retribution for crime is a good thing, why not beat them to death with a 2 X 4 in the town square. It likely is no worse than whatever most of the people who were executed did to their victims.
If you really think that killing people as retribution for crime is a good thing, why not beat them to death with a 2 X 4 in the town square.
Because we're better than that.
Understand the sentiment though.
Yeah, what LB said. Of course, it may be harder if the "executioners" are pilfering the supplies to sell on the street.
I'm not in favour of the guillotine; it's messy. But Jesus Howard Christ, train someone to actually get the needle into a vein and make sure the solution is heavy-duty enough to off the guy. [Oh, and make sure he really did it, unlike the plethora of "aw, shucks" mistakes on Texas's over-active death row.]
Or hire me; I'd be perfectly happy to execute those who rape and murder, up-front-close and personal. I believe that if one is in favour of the death penalty for certain crimes, one must be willing to carry it out.
beat them to death with a 2 X 4 in the town square
Totally agree!
Or hire me; I'd be perfectly happy to execute those who rape and murder, up-front-close and personal. I believe that if one is in favour of the death penalty for certain crimes, one must be willing to carry it out.
Unf has a hilarious story about this, but I don't know if I'm allowed to share. Anyway, yeah, the "make sure they did it" thing is problematic, and why I don't, in fact, support the death penalty.
I am opposed to the death penalty in almost all circumstances. However, I have invented a clean, easy, safe, foolproof death penalty method.
Just have all the cells on death row hermetically sealed with piped-in air and an outflow vent. Whenever someone's time comes, just switch the air to nitrogen. The guy (or lady! sorry) won't even notice anything happening except that he's getting drowsy. No muss, no fuss, no toxins, no stress, no uncertainty, no cleanup.
Presumably there would be a certain amount of cleanup if you wanted to use the cell again.
The 2x4 method has recently been used in Pakistan, except with bricks. Construction materials of some kind. Rebar maybe.
If you really think that killing people as retribution for crime is a good thing
It's not retribution; it's to prevent those who have proven to society that they are too dangerous to be allowed to inhabit it to do so. [see Bundy, Ted]
Do you really think that maximum security solitary confinement, where the prisoner is deprived of all human contact, is more humane? There's considerable evidence that they go quite mad after a few years. Putting them down, as one would a diseased animal, strikes me as better all round.
You just wait for the body to cool thoroughly, take out the guy and his knicknacks, and do a routine cleaning.
Do you really think that maximum security solitary confinement, where the prisoner is deprived of all human contact, is more humane?
Culture of life, DE.
9: Sometimes, as in the case of Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer or John Wayne Gacy, there's no doubt whatsoever that they did it. That's when I favour offing the little sociopaths before they figure out a way to get out and do it again.
One of my main reasons for opposing the death penalty is the satisfaction that people take in it. I just don't see how one more death should give anyone "closure".
Dahmer did in fact get beaten to death with a broomstick or some such. Lately there have been credible reports that he might have been the killer of Adam Walsh, John Walsh's (from America's Most Wanted) kid--another reason to have them around, I guess--to ask them questions. But that's rare enough that I can still support the 2x4.
Don't be a Puritan, Emerson, and don't be fooled by the "closure" talk. Sometimes, it just needs doing--"closure" is just what we call vengeful bloodlust these days.
16: But procedurally, it's hard to guarantee that the system correctly identifies the 'no doubt whatsoever' cases. For this reason I prefer life w/o parole, where it's at least possible to partially undo the damage done if it turns out a mistake was made.
15: Dude, I was just thinking that that would be the most humane way to kill anything.
But for "no doubt," or even "almost no doubt" or "we're pretty sure," I'd be fine with the death penalty. But if we're going to do it, do it without untoward gratuity and as little pain as possible.
It's not retribution; it's to prevent those who have proven to society that they are too dangerous to be allowed to inhabit it to do so.
But mostly it is retribution; hence Idealist's It likely is no worse than whatever most of the people who were executed did to their victims. Most guilty folks on death row are fuckups who killed someone in a robbery or some shit like that, not serial killers who are clear psychopaths. I mean, honestly, if the argument against solitary confinement is that it drives people crazy, and the argument for the death penalty is that we don't want crazy people getting back out into society, it seems a pretty circular argument to me.
That said, yes: I would probably be in favor of euthanizing people who are insane killers, just as I'm reluctantly in favor of euthanizing dogs that have been trained to be insane killers. But the death penalty as we currently practice it is completely, completely fucked up, and getting rid of the death penalty and putting the insane killers in locked high-security mental wards would be a much, much better system than what we've got now.
uh, sorry, numerically dyslexic. 22 to 10, not 15.
20: I wonder if it's not closure from the death and the crime, but closure from the legal process.
I have no faith in my intuitions here, but it's the endless appeal process, never knowing whether the murderer would live or die, means that the chapter hasn't closed, not the fact that he's not just received a life sentence.
Unf has a hilarious story about this
...
Well, that was unexpected!
To clarify my original intent, not that it matters: I take the hard questions here to be whether there should be executions, whether they should be painless, what justifies our answers to these questions, and so on. But it stuns me that, having come to a political consensus about a painless and dignified execution, we have failed to develop medical procedures to bring this result about. Killing someone painlessly is not like sequencing the genome: it's a pretty easy problem to solve, and I can't imagine that it's hard to come up with a protocol that will reliably produce the result we've settled on.
28: What's interesting, though, about the quotes you pulled in the post, is that the executioners are uncomfortable enough with their role that that becomes part of why we can't do it right. It's like everyone's trying to kill the condemned using their peripheral vision, or something, because they don't want to actually look at what they're doing.
23: I think there's a fundamental conflict here. If we're concerned primarily with being good citizens towards our fellow human beings, we ought to go for the nitrogen or carbon monoxide or whatever kind of peaceful death can be managed. Because people are being given the death penalty as punishment for their crime, not for additional punishment (i.e., we don't say that the death itself should be as miserable as possible).
But if the point of the death penalty is to remind society of how violent and messy it is to kill another human being, then I think Idealist has it right: Why hide how awful it is? If you support the death penalty, then don't get skeeved out by the fact that it is, in fact, violent and painful.
I am always surprised at how little discussion of an afterlife there is in d.p. debates. Because if you don't believe in an afterlife, I can't imagine how 40+ years in solitary is going to look like anything but actual Hell.
Is there a good reason doctors cannot be involved? Blah, blah, Hippocratic oath, blah, blah, we ignore that or adapt it.
I get the general squickiness about doctors being empowered by the state to kill people, but is there a slippery slope I'm not seeing?
B, right, I noticed that a decent amount of the danger of botching comes from almost-sorta laudable traits like discomfort ending life, physicians' reluctance to kill, etc. Long ago I posted on the AMA's ruling on this (prohibiting participation by physicians), which I suspect is sort of incoherent. It's very much a case of (collective) internal dissent.
having come to a political consensus about a painless and dignified execution
Ah, but I don't think we actually have. I think as a country we're ambivalent and screwed up about what we want. Cf. the fact that we don't kill people on Sundays; that executions happen in the dead of the night; that (as others note upthread) the process is divided into enough bite-size pieces that everyone can plausibly claim they aren't the executioner.....
But it stuns me that, having come to a political consensus about a painless and dignified execution, we have failed to develop medical procedures to bring this result about.
Your reaction surprises me. In all seriousness, good help is hard to find, especially for a job that is likely to give you nightmares or yield worries about complicity. If you didn't have to be involved in the execution process, wouldn't you not be involved in the execution process?
8, 19: You're just trying to see if you can get someone to give you an excuse to ban them, aren't you?
if the point of the death penalty is to remind society of how violent and messy it is to kill another human being, then I think Idealist has it right: Why hide how awful it is?
Because killing people to "set an example" is using them as a means, rather than actually responding to their guilt and/or probable danger to the larger society. Same reason that throwing someone in jail to "set an example" is fucked up and wrong.
we don't kill people on Sundays
Jesus. I didn't know that. How truly reprehensible.
I suppose you might always be a little freaked out that the person might escape, somehow.
I remember at the end of reading Alice Sebold's Lucky I was horrified to realize that her rapist was probably getting out of jail oh, right about then. And if you read it there are concrete reasons why that's gotta be really f---ing scary, especially now that she's famous and stuff. So I can see how for some victims' families it might be not quite so much vindictive vengence as a kind of mutated, irrational fear.
that executions happen in the dead of the night
That, actually, I don't think is to hide our shame, but that executions are scheduled to take place on a day, and it seems particularly cruel to leave someone hanging (har.) all day as to when the execution will be. Plus, keeps the lawyers from any more last minute heroics.
If you support the death penalty, then don't get skeeved out by the fact that it is, in fact, violent and painful.
I think you're letting "is, in fact" do a lot of work there. The argument assumes, I think, that it doesn't have to be violent and painful. Otherwise, what's to argue about. So, to me, any increase above the least painful death is just gratuitous. I'm not teaching them anything; they're going to be dead shortly. And if the death penalty isn't a deterrent, I don't particularly believe that the "painful death penalty" will be.
37: Um, yes, I agree with you. I was saying that if we as a society have agreed that it's about the society, not about the person him/herself (i.e., we have already decided that they are the means) then why hide the true cost?
I was not advocating this as a policy; it's just that I'm not in favor of hypocrisy. Plenty of people claim to support the d.p. as a deterrent etc. but are strangely reluctant to make executions more public. I thought Ideal's comment was a refreshingly consistent take.
We Texans have learned humility about the inadequacy of systems of human justice, so we are changing our State Motto to :"Let God Sort 'Em Out"
The Californians just don't get enough practice. Outsource the jobs to Texas.
I generally don't support the dp but sometimes imagine that if we could have two new legal categories -- "beyond a shadow of a doubt" and "crimes of outstanding depravity" -- that I could get behind it, and wouldn't worry extra lots about humane it was.
But preventing the state from killing people seems like both a good practical and symbolic limit to put on state power, killing innocent people is an unacceptable price to pay for having the dp, it clearly has no deterrent effect, and the one legitimate purpose it actually serves - satisfying a popular desire for vengeance - it doesn't actually serve very well. All around a bad deal.
As for retribution, I for one would struggle to choose between prison or death - prison is pretty fucking punishing even for tough guys, and even if you get out after a while, the stay has pretty much taken the value out of your life. The dp doesn't have to be painful to be punishment; not many of us have to endure counting the minutes in anticipation of our end. That's a plenty good headfuck if you're trying to punish someone.
It's consistent, but it's consistently objectionable. I dunno, I get the aesthetic objection to hypocrisy, and sometimes I have it myself (in another mood, I'd be saying what you're saying here). But at least hypocrisy indicates that one is aware that what one *wants* is morally problematic. Probably it does more damage in the long run, but I'm not ready to concede that "if."
That Constiutution thing is tough to figure. Is it "cruel" or "unusual" meaning either one is wrong, or is it "cruel and unusual" meaning if we 2x4'd a dude in the town square every day 2x4'ng would become cool.
I must check with Balkin.
I don't find it unreasonable that there could be a slippery slope from assisting with executions to, say, assisting with torture. If they're going to do it anyway, why not do it competently?
And belatedly, to 38: Yes. The most mainstream reference I can think was on an episode of The West Wing, "Take This Sabbath Day."
Whoops, that was supposed to be a link to the episode summary.
Do you really think that maximum security solitary confinement, where the prisoner is deprived of all human contact, is more humane?
Maybe, although the calculus is difficult--if you truly faced the choice of being put to death now or sentenced to life in prison, which would you choose. I suspect if they really faced the choice, almost everyone would choose life. If true, I guess empiracally speaking, life without parole is more humane.
More fundamentally, I do not much care. My concern with the death penalty is about what it says about us--the people who vote for the people who make the laws and carry out the sentences--not the people who are executed.
B.Ph.D. argues that guilty folks on death row are fuckups who killed someone in a robbery or some shit like that. I am less sympathetic. During my last two years of law school and the year after, when I was clerking, I devoted thousands of hours to working on a major study of reversals of death penalty convictions. As part of that research, I read many hundreds of decisions about people sentenced to death. Efforts to generate sympathy for most of them generate little
traction with me.
And some states have been changing the time of execution.
Idealist, I don't get that: if your concern with the death penalty is what it says about us, rather than the ppl who are executed, then whether or not you feel sympathy for the convicted isn't relevant, is it?
Anyway, I wasn't trying to say "oh, the poor victims of society." What I was saying is that most of the death penalty cases I hear about are ones where any danger the person poses to the larger society is more about his being stupid or unmoored than about his being Determinedly Evil.
that executions happen in the dead of the night
This is apparently because death warrants are valid for a particular day, and scheduling an execution for 12:01 AM gives lets them deal with unexpected delays or complications without needing to get a new one issued.
whether or not you feel sympathy for the convicted isn't relevant, is it?
I was answering a question about whether the death penalty is more humane than life imprisonment.
What I was saying is that most of the death penalty cases I hear about are ones where any danger the person poses to the larger society is more about his being stupid or unmoored than about his being Determinedly Evil.
Right, and what I am saying is that after having spent a huge amount of time having to research the matter, IMHO what you hear about the most is not representative of the reality of most people sentenced to death.
"Efforts to generate sympathy for most of them generate little traction with me."
Please come to Texas?
There was the giuy who loaned his car for an armed robbery, wasn't there, didn't participate. Death.
There was the guy whose friend told him he was gonna kill a cop, friend left. Death.
Texas takes that accessory stuff seriously, 'cept course where distributing and trading guns are involved. Shoot, we all'd be on death row then.
Wait, Texas has the death penalty for accessory charges? Wow.
23: But for "no doubt," or even "almost no doubt" or "we're pretty sure," I'd be fine with the death penalty.
SCMT, please tell me that my plain reading of this, viz, "I'm fine with killing someone who I'm pretty sure is an irredeemable scumbag", is not what you intended to say.
28: I think that the difficulties with making the death penalty unproblematic come from the fact that no matter what anyone says, we want executions to be ritualized and in some way dramatic. My method would be completely undramatic, and I think that it wouldn't satisfy people.
There's also a ritualization of the condemned man -- his last meal, his confession or prayer, his last words, etc. Making execution undramatic would diminish that too.
I don't think that public execution would deter much, if at all, on the net. I suspect that big death penalty fans are also high risk for murdering someone. I'd like to see a study of that.
There was the giuy who loaned his car for an armed robbery, wasn't there, didn't participate. Death.
There was the guy whose friend told him he was gonna kill a cop, friend left. Death.
I would bet that there is a bit more to these facts. The first in particular seems to fit into the facts of a case where the Supreme Court made clear that death could not be imposed.
Because this area is highly politicized, it is hard to get all the facts from the public debate (indeed, part of the problem in researching death penalty cases is that it is impossible even from reported cases to know the entire truth).
57:Well. I don't if it is exactly an "accessory" but we interpret "in connection with the commission of another felony" way broadly.
we want executions to be ritualized and in some way dramatic
I think that's right. Why would you want to take that away?
SCMT, please tell me that my plain reading of this, viz, "I'm fine with killing someone who I'm pretty sure is an irredeemable scumbag", is not what you intended to say.
No. Particularly after the ultimate outcome of the "wilding" case, I don't really have a lot of faith in the criminal justice system's ability to determine guilt.
60: I didn't say "loaned his car" I said "loaned his car for an armed robbery", which might be the difference.
Just old stories. I don't pay much attention anymore now that I don't read the paper.
Further to 60.
To be clear, I am not claiming that there are not people who are unjustly convicted of murder and sentenced to death. I am just saying that I do not believe that it is nearly as common as many death penalty opponents would like you to believe, and of the people who are guilty, not nearly as many of them are poor misunderstood souls as some would have you believe.
62: Because satisfying atavistic urges isn't the state's job?
63: And how about the criminal justice system's ability to determine innocence?
The criminal justice system doesn't determine innocence. Only guilt or lack thereof.
62: Because satisfying atavistic urges isn't the state's job?
They're real, modern urges, and sure it is.
I guess I'd just rather have 99 serial killers alive in supermax than 1 innocent dead guy. I guess that makes me a bleeding heart liberal these days. I guess I'd better report to the Jack Bauer reeducation center to get that taken care of.
I'm having a really hard time telling who's on which side in this thread. This may be because I'm drunk.
65: But even real killers aren't always the soulless monsters that that dp proponents would have us believe. That's not a reason to kiss them on the forehead and send them back out on the playground; you have to minimize the risk to everyone else by taking these guys out of play. But I think it drains the force away from the vengeance function of execution.
On the other side, even if the unjustly executed are small in number, the injustice is great, and in the context of a liberal democratic ideal, intolerably great. Preventing that kind of injustice on the part of the state is kind of what liberal democracy is for. So the arguments for dp would seem to have to be very strong to justify the risk of that kind of injustice.
Once again, wordiness + slow typing slays me.
69 & 70, what they said.
(redacted in the interest of civility and my future career as a campaign blogger)
And after reading this thread for a while, also 3: me too.
74: Your 73 has the benefit of eloquence, though.
I don't understand this whole thing about killing innocent people. They're already in jail, and if not executed, would probably be there for a long, long time hence. Haven't we already done pretty much everything to their lives that we can to completely ruin them?
I really don't think there's any difference between a decade of imprisonment and the death sentence. But that's probably just personal preference speaking.
Didn't we have this thread already?
78: Dude, check out the Innocence Project, I'm sure they have a page. hilzoy just posted on an innocent guy released after 15 years with good DNA testing. The guy was grateful and generous and stuff. No, better off dead doesn't fly.
Course, those innocent guys with 15 years in maximum probably have had their expectations lowered a shade.
78: Sometimes new evidence comes forward and an innocent person's conviction is overturned. Rarely, I'll grant. But it happens. When this happens a decade after sentence is passed, then, yes, there's a slight difference between a decade of imprisonment and a death sentence.
In jurisdictions where the authorities aren't too concerned with getting the right guy, as long as he's the right color -- and don't you tell me those jurisdictions don't exist any more -- having a live prisoner is a much greater risk to the authorities than a dead one, by the way.
That had a slightly narrower focus, SB.
79: Maybe, but at least it's more civil than the abortion debate.
Hamilton: I think you misunderstood me. I don't know the numbers of innocent to supermax, but I was saying that I no longer fully trust the convictions that seem to be most obviously appropriate. IIRC, in the wilding case, they got confessions from people who were later shown to be innocent.
So to speak.
So young, so naive. Show him your fangs, ogged.
86: Sounds like I misunderstood you. So what are you really saying in 23?
Huh. I just thought of something: people who have unsafe sex are working from the same impulse as people who confess to crimes they didn't commit in order to stop Jack Bauer from twisting their balls off.
"unsafe" should be understood to mean "blatantly risky" in the above.
I don't understand. People who have risky sex generally do so to avoid mutilation?
80, 81: I know about all of that. I'm saying I'd rather be killed immediately than spend a decade in prison and then get out. Like I said, personal preference.
I imagine that some of the people who are grateful *when* they get out would still have preferred to be killed immediately. Maybe not many.
92 Immediate short-term relief vs. increased possibility of untimely death in the not-too-distant future.
Y'all are lucky I'm not a mean drunk.
94: IMO the solution to that is to make prison less completely horrible. Like I said, bleeding heart liberal.
Are you drunk, teo? I can't tell.
It's customary to misspell things when you're commenting drunk, so people know what's up.
I'm sobering up, but I'm going to go drink some more in an hour or so.
98: Fully agreed. It makes me really angry how deplorable (and avoidably so) the conditions in prisons are.
101: It's nice to have you around commenting, SB.
101: I know, but I just can't bring myself to do it. Instead I spend a long time carefully proofreading each comment I write.
86: Sounds like I misunderstood you. So what are you really saying in 23?
That I take "absolutely sure" to be silly, as we can't manage "sort of pretty sure," as near as I can tell.
69: Which is modern--blood lust, or the desire for ceremony? B/c, as a Catholic, both seem pretty old to me.
Anyway, the "it's natural, so let's condone it" argument is lame. C'mon, Ogged. Either there's a good reason for supporting the death penalty (which it seems to me you're doing?) or there's not, but "we really really want to" isn't it. After all, we really really want to torture people, too.
A criminologist acquaintance of mine has written a couple papers which relate to prison conditions.
One is Swiftian, on the question of whether punitive coma - chemically putting prisoners to sleep for the duration of their sentences - would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. His conclusion is that it's far less cruel than most high-security prisons.
The second is on a defense attorney's ethical obligations with a client who wishes to "volunteer" for the death penalty - i.e. wishes to waive appeals after a death sentence. He concludes that the nature of the system is such that such a client must be presumed to not be in a rational state of mind, and that the defense attorney should defend his client to the best of his ability rather than comply with client's stated desire. I personally disagree here.
The whole "prison for life is worse than the death penalty" argument is an argument for improving prison conditions, not killing people.
All of which is to say that we put people into a system which is guaranteed to drive them insane, then say that these madmen can't be rehabilitated.
Likewise we pick up a bunch of people who may or may not want to destroy America, then abuse them until Gandhi himself couldn't help but want to destroy America, then say that we can't let them go because they want to destroy America.
GHAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
Have we asked any Democratic presidental candidates what they're going to do about Gitmo if they get elected?
Sara Robinson has a relative in prison, and prints his letter here about the conditions in his prison.
Medical services are no longer free. You must pay for them before your appointment. If you have no money on your books, it's deducted from your gate money. If it exceeds your gate money, you are billed by the parole board. Failure to pay is a parole violation, and lands you back in [prison] for 90 days.I have a friend [in a previous prison] who was given an appointment, charged for it, and stood in line for two hours at a time, two days a week, NINE times without getting to the doctor. He filled out another request to receive his medication (previously prescribed), and was charged again. He still had not received his medication when I left -- charged twice for medication he never got.
111:That's some catch, that catch 9/11. If you don't want to destroy America, obviously you are not being honest, so we have to torture you some more, until...
112:Shhhh.
For me, just about the strongest argument against the death penalty is that we have to employ people to kill people in cold blood, plus sustain a bureaucracy to do it. And--casual joking and momentary outrage aside--I think that's a lot more horrible than it sounds at first. Even I, filled with leftist rage as I often am, don't think I could kill someone in cold blood, even if I felt they really deserved it.
In fact, my first reading of the incompetent-people-can't-even-get-the-execution-right paragraph was that those people didn't want to be killing someone.
10: The problem with the nitrogen (or my personal choice for my own exit, helium) is that the heart keeps beating for some time, like maybe a half-hour, even though the brain is well scrambled by then. The same goes for a massive dose of a plain sedative. That means the witnesses have to watch. And I've seen enough trained pros have great difficulty starting an IV that I really don't expect prison guards to do better.
What we need is a huge national research effort to nail down a quick, non-painful, and neat method. I'm thinking something like an Los Angles-styled SUV with custom sound system only on steroids might be the place to start. The condemned gets to pick the last tune they'll hear.
114: God, we're going to have Camp X-Ray for 50 years minimum, aren't we. No one will dismantle it for fear of being painted as soft.
115: For the sake of consistancy, I would add that I'd like to seriously reduce the number of offences that result in full-on imprisonment, as well. A lot of the time, we're imprisoning people for drug offences, property offences, and situational violence--people who aren't actually very dangerous on a day-to-day basis. We should be able to come up with some form of "soft" imprisonment like a workhouse, and some form of significant restitution rather than putting people into our increasingly nightmarish prison system.
Plus--prison guards! How horrible it would be to work in a prison because it was the best job available! Being a prison guard--as far as I can tell--is an exceedingly corrupting profession.
It just seems dumb to me that the US is setting itself up as a place where there are a lot of ex-prisoners, prison guards, and ex-soldiers with PTSD.
Yglesias occasionally mentions that when you look at how the US prison system really works, Singapore-style corporal punishment doesn't seem so bad.
24: I'm not in favour of the death penalty for the average gas station robber; I am in favour of it for cerebrocrat's "crimes of outstanding depravity", proven beyond reasonable doubt. [Tho' not for any crimes in Texas, where they believe that a defense attorney sleeping through the trial doesn't disadvantage a defendant.] I do include rape/murder as one of those crimes; Morales gets no sympathy from me.
What does it say about society if it feels that locking a sociopath into a box forever, where he goes raving mad, is less cruel than executing him? IMO, the former is far more vengeful than the latter - it's function is to torment, to punish endlessly. It's a far more subtle form of lex talionis, and far more inhumane.
Utah was still doing firing squad like 10 years ago, but it's no longer done.
I'm with SCMT. There's plenty of people I wouldn't be sorry to see beaten to death with Idealist's 2x4, but I'm not ready to put that much faith in the system.
"We want executions to be ritualized and in some way dramatic".
I think that's right. Why would you want to take that away?
As I've said, I don't think that the satisfaction people take in executions is good for people. I'm not even sure that the deterrent effect is greater than the incitement effect. (As I've said, I'd like to see a study. But I suspect that death penalty enthusiasts are more likely to become murderers. My only data point is the man who killed the mayor of San Francisco, who had been a crusader for the death penalty.)
Furthermore, I think the whole idea of "closure" is utter crap. Nothing is made better or settled by an execution. "Closure" was a main motive behind lynching -- people felt better once someone was dead, even if it was the wrong person. Therapy should be done some other way.
I also look at places with and without the death penalty and, on the average, the death penalty places seem like worse places with worse people.
Trivia: Wisconsin has only executed one person, ever (almost 150 years -- Minnesota has had very few executions). This whole part of the country has been anti-death-penalty for a long time, and I see no reason to change.
For a nation "founded on Christian principles" the US follows the Code of Hammurabi more than one would expect. What happened to forgiveness, guys?
I hope that soon there will be so few death penalty states that the debate switches from death vs life-in-prison, to life-in-shitty-prison vs life-in-tough-but-humane-prison.
I'm not sure about the heart continuing to beat without oxygen. Does it take that long to use it up? Anyway, I don't see the problem.
The best number I've come up with is 8 to 10 minutes during drowning experiments on animals. Yeah, as long as we're doing it I'd think a witness should be able to put in that much time and a bit more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drowning#Cardiac_arrest_and_death
Yeah, let's go ahead with it. I suppose we have to start with animal experiments.
DNA proof has fueled the creation of innocence projects all over the country; they are in turn driving investigations not limited to DNA evidence that are demonstrating that there are at least enough cases of wrongful conviction to make the death penalty very, very troubling. I'm on the board of one of them, about which more can be found, here.
I've always had a strong belief against the death penalty because I thought the process of picking who to execute (not just guilt/innocence, but selecting which guilty people) was flawed and infected with things like race, class, and money in ways that could not be cured. I'll elaborate if asked. But beyond that, I am opposed to the idea of the state killing people in my name.
Finally, I think the assumption that someone sentenced to life without parole gets anything like a supermax sentence is mistaken. The guys on death row are in that kind of incarceration; LWOP inmates aren't by and large.
And I think that it's easy to say "i'd rather be executed than in prison 10 years" when facing neither. It's my experience of death penalty inmates that very, very few see things that way.
"It's my experience of death penalty inmates that very, very few see things that way."
Sunk costs.
TomF, you're doing the Lord's work. Thanks. Much as I'd like to see people beaten to death in the town square, I'm against the death penalty precisely because of the flaws in its application. The number of innocent people sentence to death is flabbergasting--nevermind the people of convicted of lesser charges, whose cases don't get much review at all.
Anyway, the "it's natural, so let's condone it" argument is lame.
True, but people rarely try to make this argument. The real argument is, "it's natural, so we'd better deal with it somehow."
112: The only thing that's ever made me actually almost want to be president is the fantasy of making it my very first act in office to close Gitmo. There is no more sickening blight on American identity than this.
117 -- X-Ray is already in the past. The shiny new Haliburton prisons -- Camp V and Camp VI -- look and are designed to look like permanent facilities.
Being a prison guard--as far as I can tell--is an exceedingly corrupting profession.
Exhibit A: Huntsville, Texas. Have a town in the middle of nowhere where the only jobs are at a ginormous state prison and leave be for 3 or 4 generations. It's like a breeding experiment in selecting for mean.
133 -- It's said that in the very early years, the city fathers of Deer Lodge Montana were given a choice: state prison or the agricultural/mechanical university. They chose the prison.
Movie stars move to Bozeman, but not Deer Lodge. I wonder what choice the fathers make today.
134: The city of Santa Fe was given the same choice, and made the same decision. It didn't turn out too well.
Speaking of innocence projects, as long as you're reading the NY Times magazine, I recommend this story, about a guy who escaped from prison in the late 1980s and was later exonerated thanks to DNA evidence and the Innocence Project.
I believe that if one is in favour of the death penalty for certain crimes, one must be willing to be the wrongly-convicted executionee.
I wholly endorse Emerson's view of the issue. I used to be very pro-death penalty in that I felt there were actions which could render someone no longer worthy of treatment as a human being. The question of humane administration - something I still cared about - was in natural conflict with that. When I stopped and really thought about the kind of people who so angrily agitated for the death penalty, the people you see standing outside the prison with the BURN IN HELL signs, I decided I did not want to be one of those people.
I refuse to quote Yoda on this, but that thirst for revenge must surely help to train people to performances of public aggro and while that's not going to bring a single victim back from the dead it must surely increase the overall average bloodlust of the living.