Crimes against humanity

SamHuston: yes in my opinion Timothy McVeigh should not have been executed and the same goes for every other nasty assed murderer that may have deserved the death penalty.
It is better that these people serve life without parole rather than the death they may richly deserve, in order to protect the lives of those people who are wrongly convicted.
We have a greater responsibility to protect the most basic right of the individual.

elrod: With all respect to juries and grand juries (I've served on the former), The prosecutors and defense attorneys are not simple citizens good and true. The judges and police are not simply disinterested citizens.

A jury is only as good as the information presented to it. As I stated over 100 men have been removed from death row that were placed there by the jury system.

You might not have potential jurors questioned as to whether they support the death penalty or not. In many states and in federal trial that question is asked of potential jurors in capital cases. Potential jurors that say they don't support the death penalty can be excused for cause by the prosecution.
In other words capital cases are weighted toward giving the death penalty.

If you support the death penalty you also have to admit that innocents will be executed.
 
I'm just not convinced that any human courtroom can maintain a high enough standard of justice and evidence across the board for my tastes.
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As a society, we define an acceptable level of error in the criminal justice system. Fundamentally, we must weigh saving one innocent person against allowing {?} guilty people to evade proper punishment.
 
Those living in the great state of NC see up close and personal the problems with DNA evidence. And the problem is . . . . . not the technology of DNA identification. The problem is with incompetitent administration of the system and its outright manipulation by dispicable, corrupt, evil politicans (aka district attorneys). Nifong colluded with the ME to frame innocent victims of crimes that did not occur. The same set of law that allows DA to diddle exculpatory evidence also permits them to ignore damning evidence permitting the DA to simply avoid trial. This happens with capital charges more often than you would think.

That said, the solution to the problem is not to abolish capital punishment. The solution to the problem is to savagely go after the Nifong's and his ilk. The solution is to get the legislature to face what it so earnestly wants to go away. The solution is to build into the system checks and balances that trip up the Nifongs of the world. Nifong was setting the Duke players up for 25+ years. He should be forced to serve the time. Likewise, a DA that knowingly allows an innocent to go to the chamber should be forced to walk into the same chamber and be executed. Under no circumstances should the legal system tolerate institutional injustice. Shame on the state of NC and all others that have uncontrolled DA's.

Every single solitary human institution makes mistakes. Fact of life, reality, deal with it. Other than the usual blather about not being able to correct errors, can anyone tell me why we accept errors in all of human existence yet only in the case capital punishment do we demand absolute, and inhuman perfection?
 
It is better that 100 guilty men go free than to imprison an innocent man.
--Benjamin Franklin
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Everyone in prison is innocent, simply set-up by corrupt cops and prosecutors. At least, that's the way it is if you listen to those incarcerated. Very few people will admit to commiting a capital crime, even if they're guilty.

Prosecuting attorneys are supposed to turn over all information and disclose all evidence to the defense. This includes both incriminating and exculpatory evidence. The failure by any prosecutor to disclose the existence of known evidence should be grounds for felony prosecution.

In legal circles it's been known that good prosecutors "can indict a ham sandwich". Indictment and conviction are two different things, however this does indicate that prosecutors must be constrained not only by ethical standards, but legal ones as well. Government officials who commit perjury can be jailed for 10 years or more, however if that perjury leads to execution, then a life sentence is the only acceptable punishment.

I think that we can put people on trial for capital punishment cases and decide whether or not they are guilty. But to invoke the death penalty requires a high standard. That standard ought to include at least one witness to the deed and/or a confession by the accused, and should also include suffcient evidence that the accused (and only the accused) committed the crime (e.g. knowledge only someone at the scene would have known). Too, juries need to be instructed on how to give weight to some aspects of a trial. All too often some factor of "motive" is treated as "evidence" of the crime when it is not. For instance, many people may have a motive for seeing O.J. Simpson killed, but motive is not evidence that they committed or were involved in a crime.

I think the death penalty should be reserved for crimes that shock the conscience. One such case here in CA, involved a home-invasion where after shooting the victim, one of the shooters paused in the driveway and deliberately shot an infant through the head in his car seat. :mad:

I can think of a number of "poster boys" for the death penalty. Larry Singleton, who in 1978 raped a 15 year old girl and chopped off her forearms before leaving her for dead. She survived to testify against him. But in 1997, after his release to Florida, he was found over the bloody body of a prostitute in his home. Richard Allen Davis who kidnapped and murdered Polly Klass. I know a number of people who would have volunteered for Davis's firing squad if CA used one. Charles Chitat Ng and Leonard Lake who killed 25 people in a remote compound 150 miles northeast of S.F.
 
There are times I also believe that life in prison with no parole would be a better than lethal injection. After attending the funeral of a 10yo and seeing the family in pain I do believe there are crimes that warrant death. It's very up close and personal.

http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/mays800.htm

If you keep a gun in your home or carry on the street, are you not also approving of lethal death for certain crimes?

I must admit I am surprised by California. After doing a little research on the web it appears CA juries are giving the Death Penelty when they feel its deserved.
 
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http://crime.about.com/od/serial/p/gaskins.htm

Better yet just google Pee Wee Gaskins.

Pee Wee Gaskins was found guilty of killing an unknown number of people (technically incorrect but who knows how many) and sentenced to 7 consecutive life terms. In hs book he claims to have killed at least 80 people and most around he believe that to be true. We know that the number was well over 20. While in prison he killed a fellow inmate for hire who ironically was on death row. For that final murder he was executed. If you read his book and are able to finish it, then discuss the case with the families of the victims and those who knew his in his younger days and still have problems with capital punishment then you need to seek counseling. :barf:

A student in my wife's 2nd grade class missed shool one day and she asked him the next day where he was. He said he had to go to his granddaddy's funeral. His grandfather was Pee Wee Gaskins.
 
A jury is only as good as the information presented to it. As I stated over 100 men have been removed from death row that were placed there by the jury system.
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On a side note, it should be made clear that just because somebody was released from death row doesn't mean they were actually innocent. I'm sure some portion of that 100 (even a good portion) were still guilty of the crime they were convicted of. But again, I'd wager that at least some of them weren't.

If you read his book and are able to finish it, then discuss the case with the families of the victims and those who knew his in his younger days and still have problems with capital punishment then you need to seek counseling.
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This is the problem, though. Nobody is saying (well, at least nobody here) they disapprove of capital punishment in individual cases. Like I said, I'm not shedding any tears for this Pee Wee Gaskins. But to allow it in those individual cases means we're allowing it's use in general, at which point we have to determine if it will be applied accurately and fairly.

If you keep a gun in your home or carry on the street, are you not also approving of lethal death for certain crimes?
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I'm not going to bother explaining the difference between on-the-spot defense of one's life or limb and making a calculated decision to execute somebody years later. I'm hoping most of us at least can see that there is one.


I'll not bother quoting, but everything BillCA just posted was pretty compelling. If I actually thought the kinds of standards he seems to be thinking of would be applied by juries, I'd probably have little issue with capital punishment.
 
I have talked with the families of crime victims, including murder.
The damage a crime does extends beyond the victim and includes the family and friends of that victim.
As several people here have attested the grief, and anger is heart rending. One of my strongest memories is of holding my nephew in my lap and talking about the nightmares we'd been having about his younger sisters kidnapping.
If I had been able to remove one iota of that boys pain and fear by torturing the perpetrator to death I would have done it happily.
Grief and pain don't work that way. It's easier said than done but the healing process begins with letting go of anger and revenge. We don't do the family any good by giving them the false hope that executing the criminal will somehow make them feel better or worse give them "closure".

http://www.amazon.com/Theresa-How-God-Orchestrated-Miracle/dp/1579210686
If you want to get the book there's the story of my niece.
At two years old she was kidnapped beaten weighed down with cinder blocks submerged in an irrigation canal. She was found around 45 minutes later, her body gray and her lungs filled with sand and water.
In the hospital we waited for her to die. Then we waited for her to live the rest of her life with permanent brain damage.
Now more than twenty years later she is a happy and beautiful adult.
The man who did this is in prison for life.

Over the years in conversations on this topic, I've been asked or it has been asserted that had my niece died then I would have wanted to see the murderer executed. The odds are that yes I would have and my experience has taught me that I would have been wrong.

Several people now have invoked the "better trial" The lawyers being competent and sober, the judge being not Lance Ito. That if we develop a way of trying capital cases that insures that only the truly guilty will be executed.
I can only say that I place my faith in human nature. Meaning that I have faith that people will be venal, lazy, corrupt and at best do the wrong thing for the best and purest of motives.
Humans are endowed by their creator with an ability to mess things up.
 
In the case of a perpetrator convicted of a heinous crime where there is solid evidence (that would satisfy BillCA's high standard) I say kill 'em. I'm talking sickos like McVeigh, Singleton, Joseph Edward Duncan, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, et al.

And don't waste $20,000,000 and 20 years dillydallying just to give them a humane painless death-by-injection. Wait until the ink dries on the paperwork, then use a single $0.20 9mm round to the base of the skull. Use the $19,999,999.80 in savings to pay down the national debt.

Of course don't do this unless your proof is tangible, rock-solid, zero reasonable doubt.
 
jakeswensonmt said:
Of course don't do this unless your proof is tangible, rock-solid, zero reasonable doubt.
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This is the only thing that bothers me. I just saw another story about new DNA testing that freed an innocent man of rape after a dozen years in prison.
 
This is the only thing that bothers me. I just saw another story about new DNA testing that freed an innocent man of rape after a dozen years in prison.
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There is the rare case where an innocent person is freed due to DNA testing or similar but the majority I have read about just cast some doubt on the case or add a new variable in. In the case you are refering to did it find that the person could not have done it or as in many that it couldn have also been someone else? I remember one case where a man was freed because the DNA evidence showed that the semen was from more that one man but did include the one convicted. Since the possibility of multiple attackers was not brought up in the trial he as released.
 
I don't have any problem with the perp ending up dead at the scene, but...
Once someone is sitting in a cage, it's really hard for me to justify killing them.
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Killing them is justified because it ensures that they will never kill again. Life imprisonment is no guarantee that a convicted killer won't repeat, if not in prison (e.g. Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz) then after escaping (e.g. Ted Bundy).

How is this supposed to prove killing is wrong? Or is it just about vengeance?
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It's about punishment.
 
Grief and pain don't work that way. It's easier said than done but the healing process begins with letting go of anger and revenge. We don't do the family any good by giving them the false hope that executing the criminal will somehow make them feel better or worse give them "closure".
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You're projecting here. Your experience isn't universal. Many family members of murder victims have said seeing the death penalty carried out does indeed provide closure, and that seeing killers receive only life in prison without the possibility of parole only prolongs the grief.
 
I don't have any problem with the perp ending up dead at the scene, but...
Once someone is sitting in a cage, it's really hard for me to justify killing them.

Killing them is justified because it ensures that they will never kill again. Life imprisonment is no guarantee that a convicted killer won't repeat, if not in prison (e.g. Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz) then after escaping (e.g. Ted Bundy).
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How is this supposed to prove killing is wrong? Or is it just about vengeance?

It's about punishment
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Putting them in a cage doesn't do a lot of good for many criminals. There has been a great number of cases where someone in jail either killed someone in jail, escaped and killed someone or arranged for someone to be killed. Add to that the number of families that have been harassed by prisoners through mail or even the court system. My cousin was murdered and while one of the ones involved was in jail he talked his brother into hiring a hitman to kill one of the witnesses in order to get his conviction overturned and arranged for another witness to be killed in jail one day before he was to be paroled.

Being in jail provides little protection from a murderer. Execution usually does but not always from his friends and family. I don't go along with execution as punishment but rather doing our best to be sure that they don't do it again. Read my previous post about Pee Wee Gaskins.
 
Prison's a pretty good lifestyle by some people's standards. After they've been there a while, it's just where they live. It's not even punishment anymore. The death penalty, however, is repugnant to most criminals and they dislike it. Very few, if any, become habituated to it.
 
I'm no fan of the death penalty. Innocent people do end up on death row, and no doubt some are exacuted for crimes they didnt commit. Seems to me that many of the supporters of the death penalty like to overlook this pesky little fact. You get comments like "well, look at this criminal. do you think he deserves to be exectued?" and "Dont you think the family of the victim wants this?" etc. In doing that, youre attempting to build an arguement on a foundation of sand. Overlooking facts and basing choices on emotions is rarely a good idea. No doubt, doing just that has sent several innocent men to the chair.

So how about I turn this around. Would you be willing to aproach an innocent man who sat on death row for 10 years, and tell him that his death would be justified for you, as long as they got a few real crimials along the way?
 
I don't believe that most people for the death penalty base their view on emotions. I certainly don't. Most convicted are guilty without a doubt, I would leave the appeals to those not 100 percent. There are countless examples of murderers doing their time only to recomit later. Where's the compassion for those victims? What do you tell the family members of those people? In Washinton there was a guy that knived his mom to death, got out and recently killed a young neighbor couple, how do you deal with that?
 
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