Crime and Extreme Punishment: The Death Penalty in America
The death penalty is becoming more popular again in America, yet...
There is scant evidence to suggest that the death penalty as a deterrent works. The murder rate in New York, New Mexico and Connecticut continued to go down after those states abolished the death penalty. Southern states execute more people than any other region of the country, yet the murder rate in the South is the highest. The death penalty is also much more expensive than imprisonment for life, because of costly trials and lengthy appeals. Ernest Goss of Creighton University estimates that each death-penalty prosecution costs Nebraska’s taxpayers about $1.5m more than life without parole. Ten people remain on the state’s death row.
Since the death penalty returned to America in 1976, 162 death sentences have been reversed and 1,480 people have been executed, so roughly one in ten was found innocent. Mr Dunham believes that, of those who were executed, at least a dozen were innocent. He cites the case of Carlos DeLuna, who was executed for murder in Texas in 1989 and who is now generally believed to have been convicted in error.
Comments (93)
The main difference between the death penalty you speak of and the one I speak of is the time element. The more time that goes by, the more time lawyers can reinforce a fake news narrative until the atrocity is confused and the rights of the victim is diminished in favor of the criminal. People, except the family of the victim, will wan to forget making them vulnerable to long term utopian deception.
The main reason the death penalty is not a deterrent is there is a sub culture who favors criminals over their victims. Death row inmates have a cult following. The criminals know that lawyers and criminal groupies will cover for them, until the time based confusion renders the penalty mute as a deterrent.
The faster between the time of the crime and the execution, the less noise has an impact. In my example above, only a few criminal groupies will complain of the shoot, unless they are those who use the minority card, before the facts. They always prejudge in advance.
I like the idea of using various truth serums, instead of long winded trials that create jobs for lawyers. During a drugged interrogation, a defense attorney can be present, along with the judge and prosecution. They can both cross exam the drugged person. An innocent man will not condemn himself by speaking the truth in front of a judge. The entire process can be done in a matter of days, so the time illusion factor is minimized. If the person is innocent he gets compensated for the blunder of the prosecution.
We should not be spending more on the criminals than on the victim. In a capitalist society where value is equal to the amount of money spend, spending more on the criminal, means he/she has more value. This helps to induce the criminal groupie affect.
No it's not. You might be using this legal term metaphorically, but that's not the same thing. For the same reason, abortion and collateral damage are not murder, and "misgendering" is not rape or sexual abuse, legal custody is not kidnapping, and so on and so forth. That just muddies the water.
The main reason the death penalty is so barbaric, and so dehumanising of the society that conducts it, is that it is done in cold blood, against a helpless, powerless individual. How anybody could think that killing somebody in those circumstance is comparable to what happens in self-defence, or even in any situation where the victim is armed and dangerous, is beyond me.
Develloped societies now typically see life as the highest value, and obviously there are good arguments for that, because when life ends nothing else matters anymore... But, I think there is an argument to be made that quality of life is even more important.
For instance, it seems pretty reasonable to me that torturing someone and then killing them, is worse then just killing them straight away, eventhough he does get to life longer in the first case.
If life in prison would be seen as negative quality of life, then the death sentence would be the more humane sentence.
It's a system that often de-humanizes, alienates, and degrades the criminal.
Whether justice is miscarried or not, a conviction and even a short term in prison is often an enduring punishment, because having been convicting and having served time is frequently an effective barrier against employment.
No, sometimes it - "we" (the people) - simply must.
Quoting tim wood
I would say no, because we don't actually need to. We can incarcerate him physically and financially, and that ought to be sufficient. Do we really need a lethal deterrent against elected officials turning traitor? (Who the hell have we been electing!?)
Regarding the broad question of capital punishment of criminals, I think that A, since it would be cheaper to incarcerate for life, and B we can afford to do so, even the worst criminals need not be put to death.
There is however a problem with the punitive system in general: it's inefficient, over-populated, inhumane, and utterly fails to rehabilitate. Perhaps a knee jerk reaction is to think that putting more inmates to death could solve the problem, but they're not stopping to consider how unethical that would be or why it wouldn't actually save money or make a positive difference of any kind.
Instead of deterrence through suffering as a general M.O, we really ought to just invest in full blown rehabilitation so that recidivism rates are actually reduced and we will save money in the long run. Somehow America has the largest prison population (both in total, and per capita) of any nation on the planet (22 percent of the world's prisoners are in America), so whatever it is America is doing, it's not working...
As an argument against capital punishment in this day and age, consider the following: If creating a deterrent is the main purpose of punitive justice, then why not have a daily prisoner lottery of all 2 million plus American prisoners and put 100 or so winners to death on live television each day? People in jail for crimes of any magnitude would be utterly terrified that they're going to be chosen for execution, and civilians on the outside would be utterly terrified of breaking the law for fear of being put into the death-lottery in prison.
If deterrence is an adequate justification, then why not?
I agree that punsihment just for the sake of vengeance is backward, and if rehabilitation is possible that would be preferable. But some people are beyond rehabilitation and need to be permanently removed from society to prevent further harm.
The question is what to do with those. And I think there is something to be said for getting it over with... for all parties involved.
There might be something to be said for an expensive, failed deterrent which has killed innocent people, and will likely continue to do so for as long as it remains in place? Whatever it is that might be said in its favour, it must be weighed against these sizeable faults.
Two points here. 1, you mean, in the United States. It's something Americans on the forum are often careless about and means something: about whether the rest of the world counts.
2. Evidentially, the last evidence I saw was that USA support for the death penalty was in quite steep historical decline: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/national-polls-and-studies But maybe in the last year it has changed.
Deterrence and costs don't seem like really substantial arguments for or against the death penalty, in comparison to life imprisonment.
The possibility of convicting someone who is innocent is obviously a relevant argument, but only insofar that person would otherwise be acquitted during his life-time in prison. I have no idea what the chances are of that...
Anyway, my point was more against an a priori dogmatic rejection of the death penalty as barbaric or some such. If there are good reasons for rejecting it, like the possibility of innocence, i'm on board with that.
Aaahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!
I might actually support this...
It seems unethical... But seriously? Imagine how the victims feel and the families? The only unethical thing was what the criminal did...
I say screw the child murderer or repeat child rapist... They should get what they bargained for... MORE THAN THEY BARGAINED FOR.
I wonder how many people would commit crimes if there was a system like this for serious criminal offenses.
@ChatteringMonkey@mcdoodle@Sapientia@ArguingWAristotleTiff@Maw@VagabondSpectre@Bitter Crank@tim wood@wellwisher@andrewk
However, there are some individuals I would make an exception for, such as serial killers. I don't care if they are helpless and powerless before the state given their crimes and general lack of remorse or possibility for reform.
The obvious retort is that it deters those who are put to death. But it's not about deterrent. It's whether some crimes are so heinous and some individuals so far beyond reform that they deserve to be put to death.
This is the strong argument against the death penalty. I think only those with overwhelming evidence that will never be overturned should be eligible. Jeffrey Dahmer would never have been found innocent, for example. So the question is whether it's better to put such individuals to death.
A decent argument against that would be that it benefits society more to study and understand them. Fair enough, but then that's what they should be used for if they're not put to death.
They should still be treated with dignity?
I think that is unethical in itself. It is a complete mutation of ethics.
A child rapist should have his penis cut off with a dull knife, waterboarded, then thrown into a dark cage for weeks eating nothing but hard raman noodles and drinking dirty water.
Bet you they wouldn't do that ever again!
Bet you after hearing this nobody would dare rape a child.
The man who murdered my partner's aunt, who got away with it, and left her body rotting for weeks deserved to be tortured.
Fear is the only real deterrant.
Some people aren't deterred by fear. There was one rapist who couldn't understand why rape was wrong because the idea of being raped didn't bother him at all. Also, some people like taking dangerous risks. It makes them feel alive.
I draw the line at torture. Putting them to death would be like putting a dog with rabies down. Torturing for revenge degrades us, although I understand the sentiment in the case of certain crimes.
Agreed, but if you're on death row, it's usually for a crime that you're not getting out of jail to go have a job anyway. These are the kind of crimes where you don't want to see those people back in society, unless they're innocent, of course, which unfortunately happens too often.
LOL! Only because the nations who commit collateral damage control the international courts. Which goes to the point that the legal definition of murder is whatever society decides it is.
Lol! Right...
I think death row should be reserved for the worst of the worst where the evidence is overwhelming and they're not criminally insane, which means they know what they did was wrong but don't care. Richard Ramirez and Dennis Rader being too prime examples of that.
In some cases the Justice System screws up and convicts the wrong person.
Maybe he stopped. Maybe not.
No, not then. Neither for Saddam Hussein, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot or Fred and Mary West.
Such arguments are based purely on a lust for revenge, and giving in to that lust strips us of all that is good in our humanity.
I can see from your posts above that you hold the views you wrote very strongly, and I am unlikely to persuade you. It seems there are many in the USA, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and the Philippines that feel that way. I am fortunate to live in what I consider to be a more free and enlightened country, where the majority do not feel that way. It is not an overwhelming majority, and it is always possible for the lust for revenge to gather popular momentum, especially in this time of populist demagogues. All I can do is hope that doesn't happen here, and put in my arguments when I can to try to stop that happening.
But that's not true, because there is a concept of the victims having justice. That's part of the reason for sentencing perpetrators. It's not just to remove them from society. It's to punish them.
Thieves, on the other hand, tend to reoffend -- likely because they will not find prison rehabilitative, and will end up back in the community and circumstances where they started.
I acknowledge that forms part of the arguments of the less belligerent advocates of capital punishment - the ones that don't keep referring to child rapists. But most arguments for capital punishment that I encounter are of the latter kind, and are deeply rooted in a desire to harm.
I don't accept the justice-based arguments because I value compassion over justice, and also because, as Socrates pointed out so long ago, nobody seems to be able to agree on what justice is.
But compassion for whom? The perpetrator or the victims?
Quoting andrewk
There does seem to be a mostly universal desire to punish offenders who break the rules. Studies have been done on people cheating in a game where other players will go out of their way to punish the cheaters, even if it costs them.
First, performing torture unto death is an inherently dehumanizing, degrading experience for the person elected to perform the task.
Second, legislating torture unto death dehumanizes and degrades both the legislators and their electors
Third, viewing a torture unto death (these sorts of things have always been popular where allowed), is dehumanizing and degrading to the observer,
fourth, being tortured unto death is dehumanizing and degrading to the subject.
Everyone involved in torture unto death, either directly or as indirectly as merely approving of this kind of punishment is contaminated by the retrograde act of ancient tribal justice.
All this applies to torture short of death, as well.
Look, we're making some progress. Many in the world disapprove of female clitorectomy, female disinfibulation (scaring the vagina shut prior to marriage), and male circumcision. Foot binding in china was ended... about a century ago. There are laws in many countries (particularly in the West) against torturing people to extract information. There are strong objections to putting prisoners in solitary confinement for periods longer than... 3 days, is it? (Some prisoners have been kept in solitary for months or years.) Most countries in the west have patient protection through informed consent. #MeToo gets people fired for unsubstantiated claims of sexual harassment. Transexuals, Transgendered people, and homosexuals have legal protection. Et cetera.
If being hanged, electrocuted, drugged, gassed, shot, or strangled doesn't prevent people from committing capital crimes, I don't think making this even more grotesque will do the trick.
We have to accept that a certain number of slight, moderate, and very bad criminal acts will occur in society. they will range from shoplifting to serial murder and serial rape. The best we can do is try to prevent crime (we really don't try very hard in that area), rehabilitate criminals (we flat-out fail in most cases) and separate dangerous people from society (right now we separate way, way too many ordinary criminals from society -- at huge expense with no benefit to anyone except the prison business of states and private industry).
2. No it doesn't lol. Again. Humanity is an illusion.
3. Doesn't have to be in public. It would be better if they were alone.
4. They dehumanized themselves. That is radical responsibility.
Quoting Marchesk
Compassion is empathising with and seeking to end or ameliorate the suffering of others. The time to apply compassion to a victim is before they are harmed, to prevent the harm. If they survive the harm it is to help them heal. Once they are killed it is too late.
Justice? Humanity?
Rofl, the determinants and the foundation of the whole situation is absolutely devoid of ethics, so how could there be an ethical solution? Screw an "ethical solution" the sake of some philosophical pontification on 'humanity,' with regard to this.
You had better stick to speaking for yourself. It only harms your case to make angry, erroneous assertions about what others feel or believe.
I think those arguing that justice should never be about revenge are missing an important function justice has in society.
And the thousands upon thousands of innocent children that die every year from preventable causes is somehow justified or accounted for? And the perpetrators or the people responsible should be treated with dignity, to 'protect' our humanity?
Humanity is based upon lies. Lies have been told for generations and have manipulated humanity.
Protecting humanity is protecting the basically baseless.
What I mean by unaccounted for is this.
If a person is raped and murdered. This must be accounted for by a refusal. This refusal is that of reciprocation. The refusal to let that death and terrible event fade away in vain.
Obviously it can never be erased.
But an ethical reaction should be to at least try. To at least try the hardest to erase it. Although it is impossible.
You are, no doubt, aware that in a number of countries (Nigeria, for example) homosexual sex is a capital crime. It's a capital crime, punished by cruel and unusual methods elsewhere too. Homosexuals are considered abominations by some people, so... are they justified in burning us at the stake?
Quoting Blue Lux
Execution machines? Is this the best idea you can come up with?
Quoting Blue Lux
I said "bullshit" when Margaret Thatcher said there is no such thing as society, and I say "bullshit" when you say there is no such thing as humanity.
Quoting Blue Lux
Yes. Child rapists, serial murderers, mass murderers, and others defile themselves by their heinous acts, dehumanize themselves and alienate the rest of humanity from themselves, etc. We are well advised to avoid the same to ourselves by giving in to blood lust, by listening in to the screams of the tortured, etc.
We know full well how we operate: People have greatly enjoyed watching lynchings which involved castrations, penis removals, burnings alive, and so forth -- not in the medieval period, but within the lifetimes of living people.
But look: There isn't a wide gulf separating any human being from a murderer, a rapist, a bomber, etc. The difference is somewhat in kind, certainly, but mostly the difference is in degree. That's why we can contemplate cutting off the penis (without anesthesia, I suppose) of someone who committed rape. That is why we can imagine disemboweling someone who committed murder. Not only can we imagine it, there would probably be plenty of applicants for the job.
Staying human isn't a passive act. We have to work at, mostly by expending considerable energy in suppressing our worst urges.
A rapist deserves to have his penis cut off. IDGAF what you say.
My partner was raped as a child. You don't know what that does to a person!
Vengeance!
The guy got away with it.
If humanity is constituted by the behavior and actions of humans... Humanity is diseased!
No one here has suggested that the suffering of murder and rape victims does not matter. If it didn't matter, there would be no laws against either of those acts, and no punishment either. Obviously, they matter. Equally obvious is that evil most certainly does exist.
That your partner was raped as a child is an evil; that someone was prepared to rape him as a child is an evil. But evil is not undone by more evil. We needn't get into theology here. Just as a practical matter, the evil done to your partner would not be undone by anything that was done to the rapist.
Quoting Blue Lux
Lots of countries are shitholes, no doubt about it. Of course it is stupid to call homosexuality a crime -- though the mongoloid idiot people in the US, Germany, UK, and other imbecilic places decriminalized homosexuality only recently. I know a few elderly people who were subjected to brutal medical treatment--frontal lobotomy--for being homosexual--never mind acting on it.
Quoting Blue Lux
You may have heard of original sin, perhaps? That man is incapable of not sinning? That the Fall left us depraved? I don't subscribe to original sin theology, but it's one theological theory that seems to have plenty of historical validation. We need not fear walking through the valley of death, because we are the meanest sons of bitches in the valley.
There is no totality of humanity. There couldn't be anyway, more people are born every day and every second and people die every day and every second. There is only the totality of the psyche. And the psyche has intense darkness. And this has to be integrated into consciousness lest people reject their being as human and not some divine creature, which is a myth. The only reconciliation of this is in art.
Ahhhhh, I see. "Totality of the psyche". Yes, totality of the psyche is the very model of limpid clarity, compared to that murky clunker "humanity".
The totality of the psyche constitutes all of the impulses, desires and inclinations of mankind. The totality of the psyche is apprehendable.
Humanity is an objective ideal about what humanity is. There is no definition of humanity. There is only ambiguity in talking about humanity. People hate this. Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity (Freud).
It seems to me that killing someone isn't a punishement (beyond the actual mechanics of getting a needle stuck in your arm, and the fear you would preceeding and during it), rather the death penalty just removes a persons capacity to be punished entirely.
This is the final word on the subject. Anything further you might add on the matter will just be sour grapes.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Yes, it's highly relevant. There have been cases, like the one given as an example in the article, where there's a consensus that it's a wrongful conviction, yet it's now too late, given that he was put to death. It's never too late whilst the prisoner is alive. That's a big difference.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
It [I]is[/I] barbaric, and the possibility and actual occurrence of innocents being killed is part of the reason why. It's also barbaric because of the hideous consequences of it not going quite as planned. (There are some details of this in the article). And there are probably other reasons that could be given that it's barbaric, but these are enough.
Yes, I might also. (If I was a depraved savage, which I'm not).
But at least there's a system in place, even if in practice it's arguably corrupt. It's not supposed to be such that murder is whatever is in a persons or a societies or a nations interest to call murder.
Personally, I despise how the concept of collateral damage is used, and I think that abortion should be the last resort, but I recognise that calling these things murder is not accurate and is an appeal to emotion through language.
What's that an argument for? No system is perfect. If he was sent to a psychiatric hospital, then there was probably evidence which was professionally considered as a basis for his being sent there. Are you suggesting that he should have been killed instead? Is that what we should do with those deemed criminally insane?
You have expressed the views of a brute, so what is to be your consequence?
You really haven't thought this one through, have you? You would need people to operate the machinery and to handle the convicted criminals. Remember also, that at least some of these convicted criminals will be innocent. Would you be willing to put an innocent man into a penis chopping machine and then pull the lever?
:up:
I'm suggesting it would be preferable to kill someone like that than to let them go because of good behavior, given their propensity toward killing, and how adept sociopaths are at fooling people.
There was this guy named Charlie Brandt who shot his mom and dad when he was 13. He spent a year in a psychiatric hospital. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with him, so he was released back to his family (the father survived the shooting). He seems to go on and have a normal life, getting married. Then, 33 years later he kills his wife and her niece before hanging himself. There's reason to believe he had been an active serial killer during the years he was married.
It would be better not to let them go than to kill them.
Maybe, but I'm not convinced by the moral argument against capital punishment in this case. If you murder a bunch of people in cold blood, why should you continue living?
You mean, if you're [I]convicted[/I] of murdering a bunch of people in cold blood...
And I've presented several reasons against it. It's expensive, it doesn't work as a deterrent, it kills innocent people, and it's barbaric.
The thing is I don't think locking people up for life is any less barbaric. You are essentially taking their life away just the same. The difference is that it looks superficially more moral, because it doesn't involve the actual act of killing someone. We 'just' lock them up and forget about them...
That has been my argument from the start.
I never said deterrence or costs where good arguments for the death penalty.
And as for things going wrong with execution, sure, but at the same time plenty can go wrong with life imprisonment. That would actually be one of my main agruments contra life imprisonement for certain categories of criminals. You can never exclude the possibility of psychopaths or sociopaths doing harm to other inmates, prison personel, or even escape, if you keep them arround.
It's not barbaric. What's the alternative? It would be more barbaric to let them loose to cause havoc in society. You can't have a civilised society without prisons. That's the reality.
And we don't just lock them up and forget about them. Most end up eventually being released.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I know, you said that you don't think that they're substantial arguments, and that's what I disputed.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
That's a different kettle of fish, and again, what's the alternative? If one inmate kills another inmate, then the other inmate would be guilty. The same thing can happen on the streets, with one person and another person. If the death penalty goes wrong, then the state is responsible.
It doesn't have to be.
Quoting Sapientia
But it does guarantee that person never re-offends.
Quoting Sapientia
This is a problem. The standard should be really high for receiving the death penalty.
Quoting Sapientia
Is barbaric some kind of moral argument? We shouldn't do things that are barbaric as a society because they're barbaric, because I guess only Barbarians did those things in the past. Unlike say, the Romans.
I am a brute now because I am personally involved with someone whom has been raped and abused and I believe whole heartedly (call it my Jungian shadow or whatever) that that person should be tortured.
Vengeance is not an illusion. It is not inconsequential either. And I am merely reciprocating, cancelling it out.
The legal system simply needs an upgrade in its determinations of whom are innocent or guilty.
Well it is in reality, and why should I simply take your word for it? You've fully costed a business plan which outdoes all of the competition within that market, have you?
Quoting Marchesk
At considerable costs, financially and ethically. And imprisonment for life duration would do the same thing, except it has the advantage that if the person is found to have been wrongfully convicted, then they'll be released. You can't release a dead person. You can't undo the death sentence, once carried out.
Quoting Marchesk
It can never be high enough in reality. That's pie in the sky thinking, or thinking with a ruthless acceptance of killing innocents.
Quoting Marchesk
Yes, of course it being barbaric is a moral argument against it. Just think of other barbaric practices, such as burning people at the stake. And yes, haha, very clever, I see what you did there with that reference to the Romans. You know what I mean.
In this you would rather protect those who brutally murder people and rape them! And whom rape children!
Bwaahahahahahaha
Vengeance! Reciprocity! What they inflicted, the torture and the pain, should be exactly mirrored and given back to them.
That is the only ethical solution.
An eye for an eye?
Yes, really. That's repulsive, brutish thinking which ought to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. Stop using your relationship with someone who has been raped and abused as an excuse for your vile thoughts and desires.
And you're not "merely" anything. You don't "merely" advocate the most gruesome and sickening methods of torture and execution. Get a sense of perspective.
Oh, right, it "simply needs an upgrade". Some of your comments are incredibly naive. Have you the slightest idea how complicated what you're talking about would be?
Yes, I accept my brutal desires! They are justified!
"Wisdom"!
...
Guess what? Fortunately it doesn't matter what you say! At least not in any developed nation, like here in the UK. We're a civilised nation.
This is a thread.
And I was, TBH, just positing an idea of what might be justified.
I don't speak in absolutes, contrary to you
I'm guessing hanging and the guillotine were a lot cheaper, not that I'm advocating that, although I'm not sure giving someone a lethal injection is that much better.
Probably the high cost comes from all the appeals and housing these prisoners in their own wing of the prison while appeals are exhausted and the state gets around to executing them.
But it could be a whole lot cheaper if we skipped most of that. I realize there's a reason for the appeals in not wanting to execute an innocent person. Thus the requirement has to be really high. There are some crimes were there is no way the perp is going to be found innocent. The evidence is overwhelming and they confess while leading police to yet more evidence.
Okay, so it doesn't have to be expensive, because there are completely unrealistic alternative options which you guess were a lot cheaper, and which you don't even advocate. (Well, actually, I was quite shocked to discover that there were three hangings in Washington between 1993 and 1994, but that's only one state, and besides those three cases, there hasn't been a hanging in the US since 1965. As for the guillotine, that has apparently been used only once in the US, and that was in the 1800s).
Those options weren't always unrealistic. Do you mean in contemporary society? That we're not just going to take the guilty from the court room to the platform for a quick, speedy and cheap death?
Sure, there is a legal process. I'm saying the legal process is what ends up costing so much, and this could be shortened if the requirement for the death penalty was exceedingly strict so that we weren't worried about them being found innocent later.
I'm not sure the quick & speedy death isn't more humane than drawing it out for years in solitary confinement while giving the prisoner some false hope their case will be overturned or the state won't go through with it.
Of course, this is a discussion about the death penalty in contemporary American society. I'm not talking about Colonial America, the Wild West or the Antebellum.