well, the difference is you can let someone out of jail later when you find out they are innocent.  that's not some liberal appeal to emotion, that's fact. it's happened in real life. the glimmer of a possibility of a man's innocence is more important than whatever emotional bloodlust appeal the death penalty offers (because it's clearly not a deterrent or anything).
 

not to mention it currently costs more to kill a man than feed him the rest of his life in jail.

maybe we could learn something from her during treatment that could prevent these things from happening in the future? nope, sorry, gotta stone her to death since we're apparently primative as all hell.
 

Death penalty foes have to come to terms with the "blood on their hands" as do the proponents who need to acknowledge the possibility of a wrongful execution.  Still awaiting the facts of this mythical person wrongly executed in recent US history, btw.  But it is the number of repeat murders committed by convicted murderers behind bars or after prison escapes that dwarfs the non-existent stats on wrongful executions in the USA over the past 50-60 years. 

DISCLAIMER:

NOT TO SAY THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO EXECUTE THE WRONG PERSON FOR A FIRST DEGREE MURDER. 

It is.  

Only to say the wrongfully convicted (notice I do not use the term "innocent" but more on that later) become poster children for a false concept:  the "flawed" judicial system where unfortunate lambs are railroaded out of their hitherto peaceful existences and cast onto death row by bloodthirsty prosecutors aided by racist juries. 

Perhaps those relatively few cases touted by Barry ("OJ is an INNOCENT man") Scheck prove the opposite --the  US system of criminal justice actually functions pretty well inspite of the fact that human beings are occasionally capable of drawing the wrong conclusion in capital murder trials.  Which is why we have such a prolonged appeals process that delays execution in most states for years post-conviction and multiple appeals.   Checks and balances.  But yeah, it is still possible to get it wrong.  And that's wrong.  And tragic.

PS  The mother of the young murdered child in question will not be executed, so no worries.  With any luck she'll live a decent captive life, get an education, meet a swell guy on the internet, enjoy conjugal visits and maybe even give birth to another child or two some day.

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Gary Ridgway bargained his way out of the death penalty by helping find more of his victims' bodies, thereby helping the victims' families get "closure." This move was controversial, because if someone can kill 48 and not get the death penalty for it, how can any state give the death penalty to someone who only killed one? The GRK has a private, max security cell in Walla Walla where he will die of old age, under the care of a physician tax payer's get the bill for.

Mass murderers and child killers should not be allowed to plea bargain. Critics say the death penalty doesn't set an example and prevent future crime. I'd wager that's because there's no consistency. Most killers kill because they truly believe they can get away with it. As thing stand now, they do.

If you fuck up REALLY bad and it ends up being a high-profile case, you are guaranteed to get a good lawyer who will bank on your celebrity.

EDIT: Or the state will pay millions for your defense, so any potential conviction doesn't get overtured on the grounds of inadequate defense.

Bundy 10 years of appeals and imprisonment fees cost Florida taxpayers over $6 million dollars.

They should really just hang Casey from a tree.

 i think this is essentially correct. i think the punishments that result are pretty laughable in terms of correcting the individual or deterring future crime, but yes, the criminal justice system does tend to do a pretty damn good job.

as for "waiting for a US citizen in recent history," give me a break. could you narrow down the criteria even further? it's happened twice in england, that's good enough for me. why not learn from their mistakes instead of waiting for it to happen here? again, it's more expensive to execute. it's not a deterrent. so why should we bother?

so with a little more consistency on the part of the legal system, john wayne gacy would've just....chosen not to have severe mental problems? or maybe the wife who finds her husband in bed with another woman will quietly reflect on the consequences before flying into a rage and killing them both? i'd wager that the vast majority of murders are committed by people who wouldn't even worry about the consequences anyway.
 

It's not a deterrent because, as I said above, it's not done widely enough. Well, and, psychopaths (like Ridgway) aren't scared of lethal injection. Ted Bundy cried-- for himself-- on the way to the chair.

Why bother? Because it satisfies the people, whom the justice system is supposed to represent.

 could you check out my case againt why it works as a deterrant and get back to me on this? i mean i know we're bickering in this thread but i do honestly respect your opinion and i'd value feedback on that one.

as for satisfying people i do see some legitimate value there, but i can't really wrap my head around the idea that "satisfaction" is enough. what if a victim's family demands torture first?

And huh? You keep saying it's not a deterrent, and stats (whatever those are good for) agree.

My point is, who cares what criminals think of the punishment? If it stops one person from killing, that's a good thing. For those is doesn't stop, they couldn't have been helped. Moot point.

I love the idea of the governor asking everyone at home to take 5 minutes prior to the hitting of The Switch to not use non-essential electricity at home, as Graham did with Bundy, so the administration of extra volts becomes truly democratic.

One of my profs thinks executions should be televised, so voters know what they are doing. I argued that watching any kind of death will put people off, but only because we live in a culture where death is sanitized.

I agreed that it should be televised, but not to make us feel sympathy for the criminal; but to break through this unhealthy Victorian psychological avoidance of the most real thing in the world.

lol

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

"It's not so bad as long as you can keep the fear from your mind." - D. Cooper

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." - P. Atreides

"Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe" - L. tzu

For me, I can mostly speak to the US system of justice because I know it best.  We vote here.  If we stretched the discussion to include China, Saudi Arabia or the Palestinian Territories, we'd have a really wide-ranging debate over which we US citizens have little say.  I'd have a problem with those justice systems that I do not have with ours.  If I lived in any of those places, I'd probably be anti-capital punishment because I believe that is the punishment for the worst of the worst. 

When spilling tears for the hypothetically wrongfully executed, why not spread the compassion to  the innocent prison guard murdered by a murderer who is a lifer?  Or the victims of the type of cases described by Angel.  Those are many and well-documented while there are no known cases here in the US of A over the past half century.  We could probably go back much further.  These days with advanced forensic techniques plus raising the bar on which crimes are heinous enough to merit a death penalty charge, the chances of wrongful execution are miniscule. 

I think having a death penalty option has always been about justice though -- not which costs more -- Execution or Life Imprisonment.  US death penalty cases are the minority of murder 1 convictions so that narrows the discussion even more.  Considering only about half of the 50 states still have the death penalty, smaller still. 

Deterrent effect?  If it were no deterrent, I don't know why so many defendants charged in capital cases go to the N-th degree trying to avoid a death sentence.  I know it's after the fact, but the knowledge of the punishment has got to cross the radar screen of at least some potential murderers. But even if it deters no one, I would still favor ending the life of the wanton murderer whose act of taking another human/s' life was especially heinous and calculated and whose guilt was near certain.  Fair enough criteria?

I wonder how much the concern over possible wrongful executions factors into the anti-death penalty position.  Seems to me it's more of a philosophical aversion to putting another human to death.

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Lemme guess which position your prof has on the death penalty???  Yawn, that's an old argument.  But fine.  It could one day come to that as a new public execution.  I don't think it's a grand idea but if it ever came to pass, I'd favor it only if a reenactment of the murder of the convict's victims were televised FIRST along with actual crime scene photos.  Maybe a few family members giving victim's impact statements.  After that, fine.  Bring on the IVs.

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Some people's children overstep the boundaries of what the society they live in should be expected to show mercy for.

Public records laws give "we the people" the same information the judges and juries have. Journalists are kind enough to do that legwork for us. If they speculate or repeat speculations, even if you disagree with them, that doesn't make the essence of the reporting less truthful. Crime reporting is pretty cut and dry.

You're just too clever for me, j. Cuz that one went right over my head.

 Not working out too well, however.

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Where we disagree is that I don't value the life of an individual over the greater good for the most people; over a strict enforcement of right and wrong.

What you suggest is that human life should come before everything else, even when its the life of killers who truly have no respect for human life at all, then that's idolizing human life, not respecting it, in my humble opinion.

I respect the lives of victims. I respect the lives of victims' families. I respect a law that's in place for the good of society, avenging injustices on behalf of those who abide by that law, and not to protect and coddle rotten seeds who lack self-control and conscience.

Nicely put, Angel.

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin