How Do You Feel About the Death Penalty?

[MediumTex]

I used to believe in the death penalty based upon a combination of ideas about justice, retribution and deterrence.

I no longer feel that way.

It seems to me that the death penalty in the U.S. is administered based upon a combination of the race of the defendant and the amount of money the defendant has to spend on his legal defense.  In other words, the idea that certain crimes inevitably lead to the death penalty is not present at all--it depends on what state you live in, what race you are, how much money you have to spend on an attorney and probably where the district attorney is in the election cycle.

There is the deeply troubling matter of innocent people being executed on occasion, in part because prosecutors treat their cases as competitive matches rather than the search for justice.

There is also the problem of trusting an entity that has screwed up in so many other spheres of society with the task of determining who should die for their crimes, including when and how.

The death penalty doesn't save any money.  In fact, it would usually be a lot cheaper to lock someone up for life in a regular prison than to go through the trial and appeal process of a death penalty case and then warehouse them in the very expensive death row penal institutions for years or even decades before killing them.

To me, killing another person should be something that is confined to uncontrolled bursts of emotion that trigger serious consequences because it is such a ghastly act.  The idea that we take this ghastly act that we assume is only committed by seriously psychotic or mentally ill people and then turn around and do the same act to them in a controlled and clinical way is bizarre. 

It just seems to me that if I meet a 43 year old guy on death row 25 years after he committed his crime when he was 18 while high on drugs and he has turned his life around and has developed a sense of humanity and made the most of the time following his crime, I don't see the point in taking this human being and intentionally destroying him under a set of controlled conditions while others calmly watch. 

Although I didn't feel this way in the past, I now think that a belief in the death penalty reflects an enormous optimism in the ability of the state to improve conditions in society through the most coercive act imaginable--i.e., the ritualistic killing of another human being who has violated certain social taboos.

I know that there are many opinions on this topic, and this is just mine.  I'm interested in what others have to say.

[moda0306]

Though I am filled with disgust when heinous murderous acts are enacted against the most innocent people in society... so much so that I wish them a painful death... I generally agree.  Functionally, not much is gained, as murders are rarely thought out to the point where the death penalty will make a difference in whether one commits a crime. 

[Lone Wolf]

Although I didn't feel this way in the past, I now think that a belief in the death penalty reflects an enormous optimism in the ability of the state to improve conditions in society through the most coercive act imaginable--i.e., the ritualistic killing of another human being who has violated certain social taboos.

It seems to me that all flaws with the death penalty stem from this single one.  The concept of a death penalty is much more appealing when dealt out by some nearly-omniscient, emotionless avenger like Dexter's Dexter Morgan.  Unfortunately, the reality is that governments produce government programs.

If you take the element of the state away, does that change the calculus for you?

If you were being attacked and in mortal danger, would you kill your attacker to save your own life?

If your attacker succeeded in killing you but you had the ability as a ghost to reach out and immediately stop his heart after he did so, would you use it?  (Note to my enemies: I do have this ability and will use it.  You have been warned.)

I believe that it was Murray Rothbard who suggested giving people the option to waive the death penalty in their wills so that anyone who might kill them would be shielded from death row.  It's an interesting, personal way to look at the issue.

[MediumTex]

Although I didn't feel this way in the past, I now think that a belief in the death penalty reflects an enormous optimism in the ability of the state to improve conditions in society through the most coercive act imaginable--i.e., the ritualistic killing of another human being who has violated certain social taboos.

It seems to me that all flaws with the death penalty stem from this single one.  The concept of a death penalty is much more appealing when dealt out by some nearly-omniscient, emotionless avenger like Dexter's Dexter Morgan.  Unfortunately, the reality is that governments produce government programs.

If you take the element of the state away, does that change the calculus for you?

I don't know how to do that, although I'm generally not in favor of ritualistic killing under any guise.  To me, killing should be confined to self-defense situations where order and social norms have completely broken down.

If you were being attacked and in mortal danger, would you kill your attacker to save your own life?

Oh sure, and I am a gun owner and enthusiast, native Texan, etc. 

I would say, however, that over time my enthusiasm for killing animals has also waned.

If your attacker succeeded in killing you but you had the ability as a ghost to reach out and immediately stop his heart after he did so, would you use it?  (Note to my enemies: I do have this ability and will use it.  You have been warned.)

That's a very nicely constructed hypothetical situation.  I would reach out and stop his heart, because as a sentient being I would probably still view it as an exercise in the right of self-defense.  I would probably also be angry at having been recently killed, and thus there might be a bit of the chaotic emotion that I mention above that ought to be present when killings occur.  I don't know about the morality of a ghost killing a person, because part of the internal logic of the question dictates that death of the body isn't an end to consciousness, and thus death of the body is not nearly as big a deal as it would be if it were the permanent end of what we think of as life.

I believe that it was Murray Rothbard who suggested giving people the option to waive the death penalty in their wills so that anyone who might kill them would be shielded from death row.  It's an interesting, personal way to look at the issue.

That's brilliant!  I might be in favor of something like that, since killing another person wouldn't bring me back.

As an aside, I don't think we're going to see many people saying "What would Jesus do?" in the context of the death penalty, since I think the answer is probably out of step with the beliefs of many death penalty proponents.  The death penalty is a lot more of an Old Testament remedy and Jesus would probably have said something clever like:

"Let he who is without sin perform the lethal injection."

Jesus's life is also a dark reminder that capital punishment wasn't administered very fairly back then either.

[6 Iron]

Tough question, and one that bares our deepest beliefs about justice, often to conflict in my own case. I am left with a sense that there are some actions so depraved that it is reasonable for a just society to expect that the accused will forfeit his life if convicted. I do not think it blood-thirsty...and I fully recognize that it is not uniformly applied, and likely has been applied in error. That is true of every single thing humans do, though. How do we calculate the costs of recidivism to a family of a following victim? And the cost of increasing cynicism and distrust of people in their government?

[MediumTex]

Tough question, and one that bares our deepest beliefs about justice, often to conflict in my own case. I am left with a sense that there are some actions so depraved that it is reasonable for a just society to expect that the accused will forfeit his life if convicted. I do not think it blood-thirsty...and I fully recognize that it is not uniformly applied, and likely has been applied in error. That is true of every single thing humans do, though. How do we calculate the costs of recidivism to a family of a following victim? And the cost of increasing cynicism and distrust of people in their government?

I watched Werner Herzog's "Into the Abyss" documentary on Netflix a few days ago and it covers the death penalty topic through the lens of a multiple murder case in Texas.

In the documentary he interviews the former head of the "death house" unit of the Texas Department of Corrections and he talked about the 100 or so executions he presided over and how he would spend the last 12 hours of a person's life with them, talking about this and that, serving them their last meal, escorting them into the death chamber, watching them die, then removing them from the gurney and assisting with the placement of the corpse into a body bag that would be removed and later buried in a numbered grave.

He said that one day he just sensed that what he was doing was all wrong and he quit.  It was sort of chilling.

I think that it's easier to be in favor of the death penalty in theory than it probably is to spend 12 hours with a person who killed someone perhaps decades before, get to know them a little, and then participate in killing them because the state has ordered it. 

I also wonder if people would still be in favor of the death penalty if we still performed executions in public?

[Gosso]

I also wonder if people would still be in favor of the death penalty if we still performed executions in public?

Here's George Carlin's take on how to liven-up and market the death penalty (8:38) (WARNING: contains lots of f-bombs and requires a dark/sick sense of humour):

http://youtu.be/qDO6HV6xTmI

Added: George is not an MMRer.

[WiseOne]

It seems to me that the death penalty in the U.S. is administered based upon a combination of the race of the defendant and the amount of money the defendant has to spend on his legal defense.  In other words, the idea that certain crimes inevitably lead to the death penalty is not present at all--it depends on what state you live in, what race you are, how much money you have to spend on an attorney and probably where the district attorney is in the election cycle.

Right.  This has been clear for years.  Check out this article from (gasp!) the Nation regarding then governor Ryan's decision to suspend the death penalty:

http://www.thenation.com/article/talk-g ... eorge-ryan

It also doesn't deter crime.  I remember a great Jon Stewart quip on the Daily Show that you're more likely to be prosecuted if you're the governor of Illinois than if you commit murder.  (True according to his statistics.)

Personally, I've always been against it.  It might come as a surprise to most people to learn that the Catholic Church is every bit as opposed to the death penalty as it is to abortion, and for exactly the same reasons (the respect for life doctrine).  The Republican party's stance against one and for the other, especially with all the "Christian nation" and "family values" rhetoric, makes no sense whatsoever, and frankly strikes me as thoroughly hypocritical.  Of course, it works the other way around for the Democrats as well, only minus the religious pretense.

[Xan]

MediumTex, it sounds like many of your arguments are against our current long-drawn-out death penalty process.  Money-saving is one, and the 43-year-old 25 years later who has reformed is another.  If we didn't drag things out to a ridiculous extent, neither of those would be an issue.

I'm assuming the alternative that you're recommending is life in prison.  Is that not worse?  What's the point of keeping a guy alive if it's guaranteed he's never going to get out?

[Ad Orientem]

I posted this on my blog on October 16 2007.

Apologia Contra Letum

This year the Supreme Court will address the constitutionality of certain aspects of the death penalty (DP). At one time I was a strong supporter of the DP. However as Winston Churchill once observed when asked why he was reversing his position on a policy, "I absolutely reserve the right to be smarter today, than I was yesterday." Today I am opposed to capital punishment. My opposition is not based on the issue of cruelty or justice. The truth is that some of those on death row deserve a level of punishment that we as a civilized nation can not impose. My reasons for opposing the DP are...

1. It has no proven deterrent value. Indeed the overwhelming body of evidence indicates the DP has no statistically significant deterrent effect.

2. There are no uniform standards for effective legal council. In some states if the defense attorney has a pulse and is not CURRENTLY disbarred he will do. Examples of some who have passed muster in the courts as adequate legal council in capital trials include lawyers who had no experience trying criminal cases (one was a tax lawyer who had never even tried a traffic ticket), drunks, a lawyer who slept through most of the trial, lawyers who called no witnesses for the defense and did not cross examine any prosecution witnesses, attorneys who have been previously suspended or disbarred and so on. It is not surprising that those states with the higher rates of executions tend to be the ones with the lowest (or no) standards for effective council.

3. Both in capital and non-capital cases their have been a disturbingly high number of wrongful convictions which have been brought to light in recent years. There are also at least two post Furman cases (one in Texas and one in Missouri) where available evidence indicates an overwhelming likelihood that innocent persons were put to death.

4. The appeals process is excruciatingly long and so expensive that it is generally cheaper to incarcerate someone for their natural life than pursue a death sentence.

5. Some states have severely limited the right of appeal in order to reduce expenses and speed up the rate of executions. In some of those states this even extends to prohibiting the introduction of exculpatory evidence discovered after the conviction! This greatly increases what I believe to be an already unacceptable risk of miscarriage of justice.

6. Statistics show that cases where the defendants were able to afford good legal council prosecutors rarely seek the death penalty even when the vital circumstances of the crime are demonstrably the same as other cases where the defendants could not afford top notch lawyers and the death penalty was sought. Translation: Those that got the capital, don't get the punishment.

7. States that do (or did in New York's case) have high standards for competent legal defense in death penalty cases see few capital sentences and very few or no executions.

New York had the highest standards for capital defense lawyers in the country during the roughly ten years the death penalty was on the books. Of the seventy-two capital cases prosecuted in New York between 1995 and 2005, sixty-three resulted in First Degree Murder convictions, fifty-one of those resulted in Natural Life sentences, eleven in death sentences and one died before being sentenced. Of the nine not convicted of First Degree Murder, seven were convicted of lesser charges and two were acquitted.

Of the eleven sentenced to death over that ten year period, in 2005 five were still on death row, six had had their sentences overturned on appeal and none had been executed. Shortly thereafter New York's Court of Appeals overturned part of the death penalty law. Subsequently the state legislature declined to amend the law to restore capital punishment to the state. The cost to the taxpayers over that ten year period exceeded $100 million (!) dollars. (Exact figures were not available from my primary sources since several counties had not reported their total expenses. The aforementioned figure is therefore conservative.)

8. There have been numerous documented instances of prosecutorial and police misconduct in capital cases. Those who question if this really ever happens should take a look at the recent case in Durham NC where a prosecutor attempted to railroad three young students from Duke University for a crime he knew never happened. It is likely the only reason they were not packed off to prison is that they came from families with the means to hire outstanding criminal defense teams.

9. Although the United States is a sovereign country, and we are within our rights to order our justice system as we see fit, I think that when virtually the entire of the developed world has abolished capital punishment and we have not, that should be cause for reassessing our position. When we stand alone in the developed world in defense of an institution that has been uniformly rejected, to not ask ourselves some very tough questions is perhaps tending towards the sin of pride and hubris. Why are we so isolated on this matter?

10. The argument for the death penalty as a form of societal self defense against irreformably violent offenders has been effectively nullified by the introduction of natural life sentences (life without parole). Yes, there are violent inmates in prisons. However, once identified they can be isolated in so called "super-max" security facilities and neutralized as a danger without killing them.

George Will once observed that for conservatives to support capital punishment they must be wiling to give the power of life and death over to an institution with all of the efficiency of the Post Office and the compassion of the IRS. This might also be a good time to draw everyone's attention to a news story reporting that Colorado today ordered released a man who spent 16 years in prison for murder and rape. Advanced DNA testing conclusively proved his innocence.

Story here...
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/ ... iller?lite

[MediumTex]

MediumTex, it sounds like many of your arguments are against our current long-drawn-out death penalty process.  Money-saving is one, and the 43-year-old 25 years later who has reformed is another.  If we didn't drag things out to a ridiculous extent, neither of those would be an issue.

I'm assuming the alternative that you're recommending is life in prison.  Is that not worse?  What's the point of keeping a guy alive if it's guaranteed he's never going to get out?

I don't think that the appeal of alternatives to the death penalty have anything to do with whether the death penalty makes sense.

If we say "who would want to spend life in prison?", that's not a good argument for the state to kill them.

[AdamA]

I watched a documentary called Deadline a few years ago about the death penalty that made it clear to me that it is impossible to have a system of capital punishment that does not occasionally kill innocent people.  In fact, it probably happens a lot.  On these grounds alone, I think the death penalty is a bad idea.

[lazyboy]

I spoke recently with a friend who hosts NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meetings at San Quentin State Prison as a part of his own 12 step process for his own sobriety. That includes, for him,  going to meetings and also hosting them. He said that many of the lifers who come to his meetings are very serious about their own sobriety and also their personal spiritual development. And these are also individuals who have no illusions about getting out. It's an interesting observation and it gave me pause to consider what kind of changes can occur for a person in prison. When someone is executed that possibility is gone in this life and our world feels colder to me.

[Lone Wolf]

That's a very nicely constructed hypothetical situation.  I would reach out and stop his heart, because as a sentient being I would probably still view it as an exercise in the right of self-defense.  I would probably also be angry at having been recently killed, and thus there might be a bit of the chaotic emotion that I mention above that ought to be present when killings occur.  I don't know about the morality of a ghost killing a person, because part of the internal logic of the question dictates that death of the body isn't an end to consciousness, and thus death of the body is not nearly as big a deal as it would be if it were the permanent end of what we think of as life.

That's a good answer to this very contrived (but IMO interesting) proposition.

Where I imagine that we diverge is how we'd treat this power if there were a waiting period attached.  What if you had to wait some period of time before your ghostly self could kill your murderer?  Would you do it 5 seconds after the fact?  5 minutes?  5 days?  How about a year?

If I understand your philosophy correctly, once the "heat of the moment" had passed and you'd returned from fight-or-flight animal back to human, you'd no longer exercise any such powers.  Your philosophy on this issue is consistent, thoughtful, and honest.  That's an A+ in my book.

Practically speaking, you are bang on when you point out the death penalty is a government program.  It's the morality standpoint where I imagine we diverge.  By choosing to rob me of the only life I will ever have, my attacker chose to place himself in a profoundly deep debt to me and those that care about me.  The victim is given no such choice.

Morally, I have not the slightest issue with the attacker paying with his life for what he did.  I'm not surprised or worried in the slightest that bad actions should yield bad consequences.  That's the way of the world.  The tears of the 43-year-old that has gone from murderous young man to toothless, flabby old monster don't excite much sympathy in me.  Perhaps I've seen too many frauds and corrupt politicians cry on television.  What you realize after some time is that as often as not these people are crying for themselves.

My concerns relate solely to the side effects of metering out justice via imperfect instruments (such as the state or worse.)  It's like training your beloved pet dog to attack.  Even if you have the best of intentions with your actions and aren't doing anything wrong, once you weaponize something like that you change it.  You make it dangerous and difficult to control.  Innocent people are likely to get hurt.  And then there's the eternal question: who decides?  If the Flying Spaghetti Monster could instantly dispense perfect justice I'd be all for it.  Instead, however, we have government programs.  Having never encountered one that worked properly, it's hard for me not to have concerns!

[MediumTex]

LoneWolf,

So are you saying that you are for the death penalty in theory, but not in practice?

For me, there is also the issue of cruelty in some of the methods we use to kill people.  If I were a scientist studying a new breed of apes that we suspected might be just as advanced and intelligent as us, and I happened upon a group of them in the forest and they had one of the group strapped to a tree and several others were in the process of administering electrical shocks to his body as he screamed I would be concerned that these were the most savage of savages.  If I asked one of the group what was going on and they calmly told me that the ape that was strapped to the tree had killed another ape in an argument over bananas back in 1996 and he was now receiving his punishment, I would be concerned.  If I asked then how the punishment was to proceed and he told me that the ape would be electrocuted until he was dead, I would have a hard time reporting back that these apes were anything but cruel monsters, treating members of their own species worse than they treat other animals.

Here is a question: If a dog attacked and killed another dog without any provocation or justification, would it be just for that dog to be electrocuted to death?  Would it be just to tie a rope around his neck and hang him from a tree limb until he was dead?  I suspect that someone who did this would be in a lot of trouble, including being charged with a felony for animal cruelty.  I wonder why we are okay with doing this to fellow human beings for the same type of past violent behavior.

[Ad Orientem]

LoneWolf,

So are you saying that you are for the death penalty in theory, but not in practice?

For me, there is also the issue of cruelty in some of the methods we use to kill people.  If I were a scientist studying a new breed of apes that we suspected might be just as advanced and intelligent as us, and I happened upon a group of them in the forest and they had one of the group strapped to a tree and several others were in the process of administering electrical shocks to his body as he screamed I would be concerned that these were the most savage of savages.  If I asked one of the group what was going on and they calmly told me that the ape that was strapped to the tree had killed another ape in an argument over bananas back in 1996 and he was now receiving his punishment, I would be concerned.  If I asked then how the punishment was to proceed and he told me that the ape would be electrocuted until he was dead, I would have a hard time reporting back that these apes were anything but cruel monsters, treating members of their own species worse than they treat other animals.

Here is a question: If a dog attacked and killed another dog without any provocation or justification, would it be just for that dog to be electrocuted to death?  Would it be just to tie a rope around his neck and hang him from a tree limb until he was dead?  I suspect that someone who did this would be in a lot of trouble, including being charged with a felony for animal cruelty.  I wonder why we are okay with doing this to fellow human beings for the same type of past violent behavior.

With the caveat that I am opposed to the death penalty, I would point out in fairness that lethal injection is now the default method of execution in every state in the Union.  Most of the older methods you refer to are no longer allowed except in a very few states, and then only at the specific request of the condemned.  That aside, I think hanging (done properly) is the fastest and most humane method we have ever used in the US.  

It got a bad reputation because Americans never developed a class of trained and professional executioners like Great Britain.  As a result we had a number of badly botched hangings.  But the British by contrast got hanging down to a fine science where the kind of horror stories we heard here were almost unknown.  In Britain the standard was no more than 30 seconds from the moment the executioner pinioned the condemned til he released the trap.  They had mathematical tables telling them exactly how much rope they needed to give based on the height/weight and neck size of the man in order to ensure a cleanly broken neck without either slow strangulation or accidental decapitation.

On the other hand here in the US we haven't found a method for killing people we can't seem to screw up. It is not at all unusual for lethal injections to take a half hour or more(!) while the poor sod is strapped to the gurney and the attendants are poking and prodding him with needles trying to find a suitable vein. The best (most humane and efficient) modus operandi I have found so far is the French method (mechanical decapitation). Of course the reason why it isn't used is that it would be too disagreeable for the witnesses and staff. One mustn't offend the sensibilities of those who have come to watch a man be killed.

[MediumTex]

Ad Orientem,

I would be concerned that increases in efficiency in the methods that the government uses to kill people could lead to unintended consequences.

My sense is that part of what made the French Revolution so bloody is that the guillotine made killing people so darn easy!

There is also this problem: You may start off with the best of intentions and be sincerely committed to having the state kill only the people that everyone agrees are the worst of the worst, but then you get into the political element of a district attorney's quest for re-election, the fact that a defendant happens to have a menacing "look" in his mugshot, the fact that an all-white jury may have passed judgment on a black defendant based upon factors other than just the evidence, the fact that the defendant's attorney was inexperienced and thus failed to get the defendant's very low IQ into evidence, etc.

By the time you get to the death chamber, the causal factors leading to the death sentence may have little to do with the initial goals on which the death penalty was premised.  It will certainly be true that the government will still be executing only people who we believe have done terrible things (though we will be wrong in some cases), but other people who have done equally terrible things will continue to live out their lives in prison. 

If I went into a prison and asked for them to line up all of the inmates who committed brutal murders and who are serving life sentences and selected a few of them based upon being: (i) scary looking and (ii) poor and said that these inmates should be killed by the state some people would object to this, but the way the death penalty is administered today looks a lot like this in the actual outcomes.

There is also the peculiar retribution idea that is built into the death penalty, and it seems to say that because you killed someone under certain circumstances, the state is going to kill you.  What is peculiar is that this same principle isn't present with many other crimes.  If you assault someone, the state isn't going to have a state-employed UFC fighter come beat you up as part of your sentence.  If you burn down a house, the state isn't going to send a state-employed arsonist over to burn your house down as part of your sentence.  If you are driving while intoxicated and hit another car and severely injure the other driver, the state isn't going to have you sit in a car while a state-employed stuntman plows into you in another car.

[Lone Wolf]

So are you saying that you are for the death penalty in theory, but not in practice?

I think that's quite fair, although I'd take that a step further and say "in the abstract".  I have no moral problem at all with the abstract notion that someone would find their life forfeit if they choose to commit some heinous act of murder.  Once you even talk about specific actors (states?  vigilantes?  surprisingly likable serial killers?) taking the life of this individual away, the issue immediately becomes muddy.

This is why many times people enjoy placing God into this role.  It's appealing to place this job in the hands of a being who sees everything, has infinite patience, and never plants evidence.

For me, there is also the issue of cruelty in some of the methods we use to kill people.  If I were a scientist studying a new breed of apes that we suspected might be just as advanced and intelligent as us, and I happened upon a group of them in the forest and they had one of the group strapped to a tree and several others were in the process of administering electrical shocks to his body as he screamed I would be concerned that these were the most savage of savages.  If I asked one of the group what was going on and they calmly told me that the ape that was strapped to the tree had killed another ape in an argument over bananas back in 1996 and he was now receiving his punishment, I would be concerned.  If I asked then how the punishment was to proceed and he told me that the ape would be electrocuted until he was dead, I would have a hard time reporting back that these apes were anything but cruel monsters, treating members of their own species worse than they treat other animals.

I like this Planet of the Apes hypothetical.  Would a more humane method of execution make your report look any sunnier?

How would you feel if the apes tell you that the way they used to handle these disputes was to engage in endless rounds of bloody, escalating revenge raids?  Then one day they decided that it was less savage to go through a logical (if flawed) process that determined the guilt or innocence of the accused.  At the end of this process, the kin of the slain ape bash the head of the guilty ape with a rock and thereafter the matter is considered settled.

I think my report would say, "Well, I hope that government programs work better in this species than they do in mine.  Thought about lecturing apes about 'unintended consequences' but noticed one was holding a rock."

Here is a question: If a dog attacked and killed another dog without any provocation or justification, would it be just for that dog to be electrocuted to death?  Would it be just to tie a rope around his neck and hang him from a tree limb until he was dead?

The notion of justice for animals is a slippery thing given their limited capacity for empathy and long-term reasoning.  Still, in such situations, dogs are typically euthanized via lethal injection.  (From what I understand, the animal version of this process is painless.)

If you assault someone, the state isn't going to have a state-employed UFC fighter come beat you up as part of your sentence.  If you burn down a house, the state isn't going to send a state-employed arsonist over to burn your house down as part of your sentence.  If you are driving while intoxicated and hit another car and severely injure the other driver, the state isn't going to have you sit in a car while a state-employed stuntman plows into you in another car.

These examples are hilarious.  As for your UFC fighter idea, the private sector has already answered with Bully Beatdown. 

[MediumTex]

For me, there is also the issue of cruelty in some of the methods we use to kill people.  If I were a scientist studying a new breed of apes that we suspected might be just as advanced and intelligent as us, and I happened upon a group of them in the forest and they had one of the group strapped to a tree and several others were in the process of administering electrical shocks to his body as he screamed I would be concerned that these were the most savage of savages.  If I asked one of the group what was going on and they calmly told me that the ape that was strapped to the tree had killed another ape in an argument over bananas back in 1996 and he was now receiving his punishment, I would be concerned.  If I asked then how the punishment was to proceed and he told me that the ape would be electrocuted until he was dead, I would have a hard time reporting back that these apes were anything but cruel monsters, treating members of their own species worse than they treat other animals.

I like this Planet of the Apes hypothetical.  Would a more humane method of execution make your report look any sunnier?

How would you feel if the apes tell you that the way they used to handle these disputes was to engage in endless rounds of bloody, escalating revenge raids?  Then one day they decided that it was less savage to go through a logical (if flawed) process that determined the guilt or innocence of the accused.  At the end of this process, the kin of the slain ape bash the head of the guilty ape with a rock and thereafter the matter is considered settled.

I might say that these apes are heading in the right direction and to keep up the good work.  I would definitely make them aware that their "softcore" approach to barbarism was an improvement over their previous practices.

I think my report would say, "Well, I hope that government programs work better in this species than they do in mine.  Thought about lecturing apes about 'unintended consequences' but noticed one was holding a rock."

The "getting your face torn off while organizing your thoughts" problem is one that should not be overlooked in these situations.

Here is a question: If a dog attacked and killed another dog without any provocation or justification, would it be just for that dog to be electrocuted to death?  Would it be just to tie a rope around his neck and hang him from a tree limb until he was dead?

The notion of justice for animals is a slippery thing given their limited capacity for empathy and long-term reasoning.  Still, in such situations, dogs are typically euthanized via lethal injection.  (From what I understand, the animal version of this process is painless.)

I would say that many of the more gratuitous murder cases involve killers who come pretty close to meeting your definition of an animal. 

I have always thought that executing a person who was basically mentally disabled didn't feel much like justice.  If, however, we had some kind of state-sponsored "Of Mice and Men" setup where a good friend of the defendant could cap him after telling him a sweet story, that might be a reasonable alternative approach.

[rhymenocerous]

Has anyone ever read this piece in the New Yorker called Trial by Fire:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009 ... ntPage=all

[MediumTex]

Has anyone ever read this piece in the New Yorker called Trial by Fire:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009 ... ntPage=all

Whoa!

That's an amazing story.  I recognized from other cases a lot of the arrogance, sense of infallibility, and reluctance of law enforcement to let go of a theory of guilt once it is established.  This pattern of self-deception seems to pop up a lot in these situations where innocent people are convicted.

What a terrible tragedy for this guy to be killed by the state in that way and under those circumstances.  I don't know if he was innocent (though it seemed like he probably was), but I don't think anyone could possibly say he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

I always wonder why there are so rarely any prosecutors in on these wrongful conviction investigations.  If a prosecutor's job is to pursue justice, shouldn't that include pursuing justice even when it involves admitting you made a mistake?  Shouldn't the prosecutors be leading the charge to get guys like this out of prison if it is clear that a mistake was made in convicting them in the first place?

Below is a link to a story about the current Dallas County District Attorney, who has put a lot of effort into the problem of wrongful convictions (despite a lot of resistance early in his efforts) by focusing on the potential for DNA evidence to clear people who had previously been convicted of serious crimes and given long prison sentences.  Guess what his office found in reviewing many of these cases? 

http://harpers.org/archive/2011/01/hbc-90007895

[6 Iron]

It also doesn't deter crime. 

maybe. I am reminded of Thomas Sowell's quote on this subject:

"I am prepared to admit that the death penalty does not deter if the opponents of the death penalty can show me just one case where a murderer who was executed then committed another murder."

I have far greater sympathy for the victims, their families, and their need for justice that goes beyond incarceration, possible early parole and free medical care for the most evil and depraved. There is no perfect solution. But if I were called to jury duty for a child rapist murderer,  and the evidence was overwhelming, I would support  a death sentence. 

[smurff]

Here is a question: If a dog attacked and killed another dog without any provocation or justification, would it be just for that dog to be electrocuted to death?  Would it be just to tie a rope around his neck and hang him from a tree limb until he was dead?  I suspect that someone who did this would be in a lot of trouble, including being charged with a felony for animal cruelty.  I wonder why we are okay with doing this to fellow human beings for the same type of past violent behavior.

Animal Control in many locales does this (sans rope and electric chair) quite often.  And sometimes the dogs don't have to kill another creature to get the punishment--just be caught in public without a license or other evidence of human ownership, and stay in jail past some arbitrary point.  Then it's to the gas chamber, or to a pet bed for lethal injection.

That said, your point about human barbarity is well-taken.

[MediumTex]

It also doesn't deter crime. 

maybe. I am reminded of Thomas Sowell's quote on this subject:

"I am prepared to admit that the death penalty does not deter if the opponents of the death penalty can show me just one case where a murderer who was executed then committed another murder."

I have far greater sympathy for the victims, their families, and their need for justice that goes beyond incarceration, possible early parole and free medical care for the most evil and depraved. There is no perfect solution. But if I were called to jury duty for a child rapist murderer,  and the evidence was overwhelming, I would support a death sentence. 

If we presuppose that in all potential death penalty cases we are talking about whether to lock up the killer for life or kill him, I think that the idea that he will be returned to the streets to kill again should be removed from consideration.

It sounds like you are saying that you support the death penalty in principle, but do you support it in practice?  Do you think that the state's criminal justice apparatus is sturdy (and wise) enough to handle the option of ordering the death of selected criminals?  Having seen the criminal justice system up close as an attorney, I do not have anywhere near that much faith in the system.  Criminal justice proceedings rarely have much to do with justice.  Most prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges treat it sort of like a board game, with the criminals serving as the game pieces.

[shoestring]

The short version of this is I’m actually sympathetic to the argument of the state being too incompetent to administer the penalty, and that’s pretty much the only argument I’m sympathetic to, because while some cases are bungled, there have also been specific cases where there was so much proof that the person so accused was guilty of what they were charged with that they clearly earned the penalty by the law of the land.

It is my opinion when you do something like kill a peace officer trying to maintain public safety in the commission of his duties in front of multiple witnesses, or there’s video and forensic evidence of your slaughter of several infants, the safest thing to do for the rest of us is string you up.  Some will disagree but that’s academic to me.

The phrase “Abusus non tollit usum”?, or “misuse(abuse) does not preclude(take away) use”? describes my opinion well.  I also like to use the phrase “Band-Aid on a broken arm thinking”?.  The problem I have isn’t with the death penalty it’s with poor jurisprudence.

The argument we should take the death penalty away because the system that enforces it is broken is a flawed one because it implicitly assumes that it’s acceptable to have a flawed judicial system so long as we don’t give that system significant power.  That’s no way to run a railroad.  It is “Band aid on a broken arm “ thinking because we want to treat the symptom (cases improperly resolved) rather than the disease (incompetent courts).

Consider this:  death penalty cases are our most highly scrutinized cases, and if the system is screwing these up, what else are we getting wrong?  How much inestimable, vast damage are the courts causing to society if we must cast this much doubt on every single proceeding?   Seriously if the courts are this bad, this incompetent they cannot handle these cases, there should be an open rebellion at this point among all reasonable people.  

Rather I think people just get very heated about this one issue, and arbitrarily decide that at this point we should have no confidence in the judiciary, but everything else they’re screwing up, that’s okay apparently.  Tacitly it seems most people who tell me they oppose the penalty actually agree it’s best to have confidence in our courts although they are flawed, so I see an inconsistency I can only chalk up to an emotional aversion to killing.  I do not mean this as an insult.

For the record I am not meaning to imply the courts do a good job, rather that if you’re against the state administering the death penalty at all regardless of circumstances it seems to me the logical implications of that stance are so much bigger than this one issue that it seems rather misdirected to be putting effort into reforming something you don’t buy into in the first place, it’s like a Christian suggesting passages of the Koran be reinterpreted.

Now I realize that everything humans do gets fucked up at some point, and badly, very badly, and it usually results in utter tragedy.  I understand that humans are very risk adverse and we tend to install some controls to mitigate these problems.  But universal prohibition of anything, even things I think are horrible that no one should ever do, has never been the answer.  Every time someone says “There ought to be a law against that”? it means there ought not to be.  

Universally hedging against using a tool, practice or behavior which is inappropriate for the sake of eliminating these outlying events always creates more problems and costs than allowing the thing to happen within parameters while accepting that the controls you create are just going to fail sometimes.

I rather think it’s more productive to keep the death penalty but address the concerns we have with it.
For example, the insularity of the courts is a problem I see and something we could perhaps address; we only have a small group of people who tend to think in similar patterns running the systems we are not happy with.  

Bear in mind we entrust these systems and proceedings to the persons of exceptional qualifications, means and temporal power.  The legal profession wields power over us like no other, this one body of people creates most of the rules as our legislators and interprets them as our judges, and the executives who enforce them (POTUS for example) are most often attorneys.  

I kind of understand this, if your butt is in the hot seat, you want decisions made by people who are so competent that others judge them to be worth paying hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions of dollars in a year.  And our officials have to be people who are independently wealthy who are more accomplished than most of us because while I’d love to be a legislator, I can’t get off work for 2 years.   I’m not terribly smart but these people are, or I’d be charging $5000 to do 48 hours of probate work.  That’s not sour grapes, that’s just reality.

The problem is though even smart people benefit from external accountability and some checks on their power.  Remember the scene from Sling Blade where Billy Bob Thornton’s character diagnoses the impossible engine problem by pointing out there’s no gas in it?  There are advantages to thinking in different terms than people who are formal experts.

Surely there are reasonable people who can make learned decisions in other fields and professions who could be brought in to serve as judicial officials to help mitigate this problem.

But notice how this is a big issue with far reaching societal implications well beyond the death penalty, which is why no one wants to frame the argument this way.  It’s far easier cognitively to debate minutiae which is ultimately what the death penalty is.  Again this is not an insult to anyone it's just how people tend to think and it's how I used to think myself.

I raher think the US alread has an ideal system for it.  If you beleive in the death penalty and find the risk of living somewhere that has it to be acceptable, you may live somewhere that has it, and if you wish to avoid it, live elsewhere, and those who are most at risk of suffering the penalty can simply commit crimes and murders in states which do not have it.  This largely mitigates the perceived risk.