The Death Penalty

[peasy23]

A throwback to Ian Hislop destroying the former home Secretary on the subject. 

 

 

Edited July 26, 2023 by peasy23

[Boo Khaki]

25 minutes ago, coprolite said:

I’m not suggesting everyone should go full Death Wish, but the concept of some element of punishment is central to a lot of people’s conception of justice, eye for an eye, karma etc.

I think that should be catered for in a justice system, although prevention and rehabilitation should be more important.

Deprivation of liberty is punishment. It's convenient that also allows for time to be spent rehabilitating, but I'm not comfortable with systems that use imprisonment and forced labour, for example, because it's tantamount to punishing someone twice for one crime. Why not just whip them every morning while you are at it?

Length of sentence should be commensurate with the magnitude of the criminal act, but that in itself isn't really the punishment, that's the imprisonment.

It's why we have laws about fining folk twice. Ok, a crime punished by a fine is never likely to be as serious as something you go to the clink for, but folk don't really go, 'fucks sake, they should be fined AND whipped' but there are plenty of folk who think prison should include hard labour, starvation rations, beatings, torture etc

I'm always really, really wary of 'string them up' folk, because when you scratch a bit deeper they usually turn out to be raving lunatics. I'm not suggesting that's you, so please don't think that, only that in my experience the folk who get really frothy about perceived 'lack of justice' even when the criminal in question is going away for a lengthy spell, also tend to have pretty wild opinions on a lot of other matters. OFTW as P&B often puts it.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Boo Khaki

[coprolite]

13 minutes ago, Boo Khaki said:

Deprivation of liberty is punishment. It's convenient that also allows for time to be spent rehabilitating, but I'm not comfortable with systems that use imprisonment and forced labour, for example, because it's tantamount to punishing someone twice for one crime. Why not just whip them every morning while you are at it?

Length of sentence should be commensurate with the magnitude of the criminal act, but that in itself isn't really the punishment, that's the imprisonment.

It's why we have laws about fining folk twice. Ok, a crime punished by a fine is never likely to be as serious as something you go to the clink for, but folk don't really go, 'fucks sake, they should be fined AND whipped' but there are plenty of folk who think prison should include hard labour, starvation rations, beatings, torture etc

I'm always really, really wary of 'string them up' folk, because when you scratch a bit deeper they usually turn out to be raving lunatics. I'm not suggesting that's you, so please don't think that, only that in my experience the folk who get really frothy about perceived 'lack of justice' even when the criminal in question is going away for a lengthy spell, also tend to have pretty wild opinions on a lot of other matters. OFTW as P&B often puts it.

I was just making a point that justice and vengeance aren’t completely opposites.

Agree that the string em up mob are for the watching, usually.

[Boo Khaki]

Just now, coprolite said:

I was just making a point that justice and vengeance aren’t completely opposites.

Agree that the string em up mob are for the watching, usually.

Sure.

It's something personal to me because I lost a family member to a careless act on someone else's part, and that person's relatives managed to stay completely rational throughout. As mentioned in an earlier post, their parents only concern was that the facts be made public. They didn't want anyone rotting in prison, or strung up, or beaten, or anything along those lines. There was no mention of 'hate', or 'monsters' or 'evil' or any such nonsense, because they could rationalise that the person who caused their loved one's death was also a human being, with a family, with a conscience, with a life.

They were able to stay objective and dignified, so when I see folk ranting and raving on court steps, wailing at the press, chasing prison vans banging on them and shouting invective, I don't really have a lot of time for them. I can understand the rage, to an extent, but I also can't help but look at them and think 'moron'. 

[GordonD]

For me one of the sickest aspects of US executions is when they invite the victim's family to witness it. The guy is strapped to a table waiting for the lethal injection, and some curtains open and on the other side of the window are the family, salivating in their excitement at what they're about to see. The prison could make a fortune if they sold popcorn.

FWIW the last public execution in the UK was in 1865 or thereabouts - a couple of years after the first London Underground line opened. So as QI pointed out it was possible to get a Tube train to watch a guy getting hanged.

[TxRover]

1 hour ago, stimpy said:

The extreme edges of vengeance is everyone taking the law into their own hands. The death penalty is part of that imo, look at the abuses of the "stand your ground" law in Texas. 

Actually, Florida is the best case for those sorts of laws…but all the U.S. is an open lab for it.

2 hours ago, Johnny Martin said:

Travesties of justice take place.

For me, one innocent person wrongly being put to death is worse than 100 getting away with it.  

We can't take the chance.

2 hours ago, jaybeee said:

how about 100 people have a terminal disease, which will prove fatal to all but with undefined timelines, then this new medicine has been developed, with just one slight flaw, due to some ..................unexplained circumstance, it always on testing has a 1% mortality rate, what would you do?

 

The problem here is the current rate for innocent people on death row in the U.S. is about 4%.

To be properly comparative, the 100 people chosen for the medicine test should include 4 people without the disease, grabbed randomly off the street because the selector didn’t like the way they looked, and who will die when administered the medication.

[Silvio Tattiescone]

34 minutes ago, GordonD said:

For me one of the sickest aspects of US executions is when they invite the victim's family to witness it. The guy is strapped to a table waiting for the lethal injection, and some curtains open and on the other side of the window are the family, salivating in their excitement at what they're about to see. The prison could make a fortune if they sold popcorn.

FWIW the last public execution in the UK was in 1865 or thereabouts - a couple of years after the first London Underground line opened. So as QI pointed out it was possible to get a Tube train to watch a guy getting hanged.

The last guillotine execution in France was 1977 so you could have watched Gordon McQueen power in that header against England at Wembley then wander over to Paris and see a guy take a header into a bucket. 

[TxRover]

32 minutes ago, GordonD said:

For me one of the sickest aspects of US executions is when they invite the victim's family to witness it. The guy is strapped to a table waiting for the lethal injection, and some curtains open and on the other side of the window are the family, salivating in their excitement at what they're about to see. The prison could make a fortune if they sold popcorn.

FWIW the last public execution in the UK was in 1865 or thereabouts - a couple of years after the first London Underground line opened. So as QI pointed out it was possible to get a Tube train to watch a guy getting hanged.

Actually, it’s not that clear. Until the 1990’s, only Louisiana allowed victims relatives to witness executions. Now, “right-to-view” laws have passed in a number of States, but there are still only 27 States with current death penalty statues, plus the Federal Government. Of those, 5 have a Governor imposed hold on executions, as does the Federal government. I can only find 16 States with current “right-to-view” laws.

[Boo Khaki]

There are some interesting anecdotes about the last moments of executed prisoners in the US system. John Wayne Gacy. Taunted his victims' relatives while he was strapped to the table.

When it comes to systems of justice, this is why you don't permit vindictiveness, spite, and other negative emotions  to be a factor in sentencing. Play stupid games with nasty people, and you win stupid prizes.

[Brother Blades]

4 hours ago, Boo Khaki said:

Every study I'm aware of that has investigated criminals and what would motivate/demotivate them concludes that severity of punishment is utterly inconsequential. It's not even a consideration for them. What is overwhelmingly significant is fear and likelihood of being detected and caught.

I doubt you can do much about the Ed Geins and Ted Bundy's of the world, because they aren't rational people in any sense really, but if you want to prevent children being abused, then it's obvious we need to protect them better, because that would then increase the likelihood of anyone planning to harm them being detected and either prevented or caught and punished more quickly. 

Again though, I think it's fair to question how rational people intending to harm vulnerable others will likely be.

Studies of self-confessed paedophiles are interesting, because a good number of them say that they would have been willing to engage with prevention schemes, including things like voluntary chemical castration, if the option had been available to them. Instead, we have this odd situation in the UK where we just sit back and wait for it to happen, then punish them after the fact, which does absolutely nothing in terms of lowering instance of abuse of children, which is what is universally agreed that we want. Can you imagine what would happen right now if someone, who had never ever acted on their impulses came forward at 18 or 20 years old and said 'I am a paedophile, help me before I commit a crime'?

Sorry if this point has been made in between page 1 & now.

Correct, penalty isn’t a deterrent at all, it doesn’t even figure in criminal activity until you get down to very low level crime - shoplifting etc & even then, social stigma plays a far bigger part than anything the judicial system can do.

I understand why this thread was started & it’s a particularly abhorrent set of circumstances, but the overall question is regarding death penalty.

No, never, whatever the crime. There are far too many instances of false conviction & you can never take that back.

The biggest thing for me is that it’s essentially state sponsored murder- how can we see taking a life as the most heinous crime & then as a society say it’s ok? 

[Boo Khaki]

1 minute ago, Brother Blades said:

The biggest thing for me is that it’s essentially state sponsored murder- how can we see taking a life as the most heinous crime & then as a society say it’s ok? 

It is a completely irreconcilable contradiction, and why I am against it no matter the circumstances of the crime.

I also have no time for points about 'consider the family of the victims' either, because that also contains the contradiction of concern for the impact on the family of the victim, but total disregard for the family of the person the State wants to execute. You can argue 'ah, but one is a murderer/rapist/whatever, the other is an innocent victim', and that is true, however, if you are accepting that one family suffers because they lost a loved one, you must also accept that applies to the next family, and why is it perfectly ok for them to be punished and made to suffer because of someone else's actions?

I'm not a parent, but I have seen a family struggle to deal with the fact their young son went to prison for murdering someone. He served his sentence, was still relatively young when he left prison, was able to get a job, had a family of his own, and was always open, honest, and contrite about what he had done. I can't imagine what it would have done to his parents had he been executed, but I don't believe it would have been much different to the impact my relative's death had on their parents, i.e. devastating. In fact, I suspect it would have been far more difficult to come to terms with, because his death would have been even more needless, because it would have been as the result of a deliberate, contrived, planned, wilful act rather than a 'moment of madness'. When someone dies because of a deliberate, contrived, planned, wilful act, it's usually described as a murder, so I think it would be entirely reasonable for them to feel their son had been the victim of a State-sponsored murder.

[Brother Blades]

Despite all my arguments against the death penalty, I hope nobody brings Jim Goodwin into the discussion. 

[Silvio Tattiescone]

War is State-sponsored murder.

[Brother Blades]

6 minutes ago, Newbornbairn said:

War is State-sponsored murder.

What’s that got to do with the current topic being discussed? 

[Fullerene]

6 hours ago, Boo Khaki said:

Every study I'm aware of that has investigated criminals and what would motivate/demotivate them concludes that severity of punishment is utterly inconsequential. It's not even a consideration for them. What is overwhelmingly significant is fear and likelihood of being detected and caught.

I doubt you can do much about the Ed Geins and Ted Bundy's of the world, because they aren't rational people in any sense really, but if you want to prevent children being abused, then it's obvious we need to protect them better, because that would then increase the likelihood of anyone planning to harm them being detected and either prevented or caught and punished more quickly.

Ted Bundy was a lawyer.  If anyone knows what the law is, you would imagine a lawyer certainly would.  Did that deter him?  No.

[stimpy]

I read an interview with Clive Stafford Smith a few years ago and some of the snippets from trials he spoke about made your brain itch. There was one guy accused of murder and the defence showed a video of the fella playing basketball at the time of the murder, witnesses, the whole 9 yards. The prosecuter in his closing said the only decision the jury could come to was guilty and to send him to the chair. 

He said generally poor black people go to death row because when they are arrested the police advise them to confess and it'll go in their favour and they believe them. Wealthier better educated suspects immediately get a lawyer. 

If you can.check him out, he's a fascinating character. 

Edited July 26, 2023 by stimpy
Typo

[Boo Khaki]

Is he the guy who advises that  in an interview with US police, you should never, ever give them anything other than 'no comment', regardless of circumstance?

Edited July 26, 2023 by Boo Khaki

[stimpy]

24 minutes ago, Boo Khaki said:

Is he the guy who advises that  in an interview with US police, you should never, ever give them anything other than 'no comment', regardless of circumstance?

No idea, he went to the US after uni for work experience and saw the mess of the judicial system around death sentences and decided to stay and work as a lawyer. 

[dirty dingus]

I watch a lot of these police interrogations from the states on youtube, it's weird how they seem to be so forthright and open with the guys doing the interviews. Maybe it's only showing the idiots that think they can outsmart the police because on the Ch4  24hr in police custody every suspect just says "no comment." I was told they are more willing to take on the accusations because remand can take as long as 5 years waiting on the case to get processed in the US. Anyone know if this is true?

 

[sophia]

Andrew Malkinson is free at last.

There seems to have been a lot that went wrong in his case.