USA Death Penalty

[Secret Chief]

decisions should be left up to the evidence

Mostly I agree but of course such is not infallible. One infamous example (and how many don't come to light?):

"The Birmingham Six were six Irishmen who were each sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975 following their false convictions for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings. Their convictions were declared unsafe and unsatisfactory and quashed by the Court of Appeal on 14 March 1991. The six men were later awarded financial compensation ranging from £840,000 to £1.2 million.

Forensic scientist Dr Frank Skuse used positive Griess test results to claim that Hill and Power had handled explosives."

- Birmingham Six - Wikipedia

With the death penalty, three of these innocent men would have been murdered by the state.

(@Revoltingest will also appreciate the men were assaulted etc by the police whilst in custody)

 

[PureX]

There's no denying the effectiveness of decapitation or a bullet to the head but it's notably graphic.

Cheap, effective, and arguably painless when done right.

My own personal concern about executions is what most people fear is that of people who are innocent of the crime, so what I feel is those decisions should be left up to the evidence and the victims , not the government or the executioners who make the final decision.

The people that we should execute will have committed multiple murders. And will have made it clear that they will continue to do so if they ever get free. It would be very unlikely that an innocent person would be convicted of this kind of crime.

 

[Twilight Hue]

The people that we should execute will have committed multiple murders. And will have made it clear that they will continue to do so if they ever get free. It would be very unlikely that an innocent person would be convicted of this kind of crime.

I agree such sentences should only be carried out in cases of undeniable guilt with overwhelming evidence.

Psychopaths for instance are like wolves, they look all cute and cuddly but the mind inside is very very set in its ways and cannot be changed by any sense of empathy or sympathy negating any and all therapies and hopes for rehabilitation.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Okay, although He didn’t tell everyone to stop. He didn’t say the penalty was not allowed. He said whoever was without sin should throw the stones to kill the woman caught in adultery. Since no one threw a stone, then obviously all those men were guilty of sin, possibly even adultery as she.

He said what he needed to say in the moment to convince them not to kill her.

... and never dealt directly with the death penalty again in the gospels.

The one time that he had an opportunity to weigh in, he argued against applying the death penalty specified in the OT. Whether we take this to be about the death penalty generally or this one specific narrow case, the one lesson we can take is that just because a death penalty is given as the legal punishment for a crime, we aren't obligated to kill the accused.

That is a much different situation that an adult deliberately premeditating and murdering someone or an adult trafficking and/or raping children.

How is it different?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Mostly I agree but of course such is not infallible. One infamous example (and how many don't come to light?):

"The Birmingham Six were six Irishmen who were each sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975 following their false convictions for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings. Their convictions were declared unsafe and unsatisfactory and quashed by the Court of Appeal on 14 March 1991. The six men were later awarded financial compensation ranging from £840,000 to £1.2 million.

Forensic scientist Dr Frank Skuse used positive Griess test results to claim that Hill and Power had handled explosives."

- Birmingham Six - Wikipedia

With the death penalty, three of these innocent men would have been murdered by the state.

(@Revoltingest will also appreciate the men were assaulted etc by the police whilst in custody)

In Canada, there's the Steven Truscott case, which was especially famous because he was the last inmate on death row when Canada repealed the death penalty.

The sentence was horrific in its own right at the time - he was tried as an adult for a crime that happened when he was 14 - but he ended up being exonorated and released nearly 50 years later.

Steven Truscott - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[metis]

I’m sorry , but I don’t remember where you quoted Jesus speaking against the death penalty.

"Let he whom is without sin cast the first stone", which I posted before.

 

[Bthoth]

The number of people a country kills is not a measure of justice.
It is a measure of its barbarity.

and how many died by the justice of capital punishment here in the USA last year? 24 in 2023 and 18 in 2022.

The number is too low to even consider, since the murder rate is about 1000 times those numbers.

Maybe if the government killed more people that commit murder, the murder rates would drop?

or perhaps let the families of the murdered persons, get to take out their justice personally.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

J

It's actually a measure of security and safety over future victims by ensuring that a killer will never kill again.

A measure of maintaining humanity against subhuman monsters.

That is exactly why I consider American justice barbarous. It is the degenerate tooth for a tooth system. That does not care who they kill as long as some one is punished by death.

 

[Heyo]

It still happens, and even just one is far too many. You can't give years of life back, but the state could at least give lavish amounts of money to those wrongly imprisoned and sentenced to make the rest of their life easier and more comfortable. Someone wrongly put to death, there's nothing that can be done except "oops."

Well, there is one thing that could be done. I wonder nobody has thought of it before.
When an innocent person gets killed, that is considered murder. Murder is considered to be punishable by death. Those people who are responsible for the murder, DA, police officers, judge, jury and executioner should be killed when a death penalty victim is later exonerated. I don't know if it would deter people from wrong conviction, but at least those people won't do it again.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Well, there is one thing that could be done. I wonder nobody has thought of it before.
When an innocent person gets killed, that is considered murder. Murder is considered to be punishable by death. Those people who are responsible for the murder, DA, police officers, judge, jury and executioner should be killed when a death penalty victim is later exonerated. I don't know if it would deter people from wrong conviction, but at least those people won't do it again.

Good and fair point.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The people that we should execute will have committed multiple murders. And will have made it clear that they will continue to do so if they ever get free. It would be very unlikely that an innocent person would be convicted of this kind of crime.

Wouldn't it be better to treat them like lab rats to hopefully one day prevent the next Arthur Shawcross?

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Psychopaths for instance are like wolves, they look all cute and cuddly but the mind inside is very very set in its ways and cannot be changed by any sense of empathy or sympathy negating any and all therapies and hopes for rehabilitation.

Yet psychopathy is clearly a mental illness, a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior. Accumulating research suggests that psychopathy follows a developmental trajectory with strong genetic influences, and which precipitates deleterious effects on widespread functional networks, particularly within paralimbic regions of the brain.

I suppose killing the psychopath would "cure" him. Any other diseases for which you think death is the correct answer, Doctor?

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

In Canada, there's the Steven Truscott case, which was especially famous because he was the last inmate on death row when Canada repealed the death penalty.

The sentence was horrific in its own right at the time - he was tried as an adult for a crime that happened when he was 14 - but he ended up being exonorated and released nearly 50 years later.

Steven Truscott - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

I actually knew Isabel LeBourdais, who wrote the book, "The Trial of Steven Truscott." I learned a lot about the case from her.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

In Canada, there's the Steven Truscott case, which was especially famous because he was the last inmate on death row when Canada repealed the death penalty.

The sentence was horrific in its own right at the time - he was tried as an adult for a crime that happened when he was 14 - but he ended up being exonorated and released nearly 50 years later.

Steven Truscott - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Here in Canada, just under the letter "M," we have David Milgaard, Donald Marshall Jr., Guy Paul Morin, all wrongly convicted of murder, later exonerated.

 

[PureX]

Wouldn't it be better to treat them like lab rats to hopefully one day prevent the next Arthur Shawcross?

No.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

No.

Don't you think that eliminates the possibility of early detection of budding serial killers?

 

[PureX]

Don't you think that eliminates the possibility of early detection of budding serial killers?

Other humans are not fodder for our lab experiments. Also, these people are very dangerous. The whole point of execution is to eliminate that ongoing danger.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Other humans are not fodder for our lab experiments. Also, these people are very dangerous. The whole point of execution is to eliminate that ongoing danger.

And I would rather use them to help detect and prevent the next Ted Bundy. Serial killers repeatedly killed. They did great damage and thus they can help society out so we can prevent another Richard Ramirez.

 

[PureX]

And I would rather use them to help detect and prevent the next Ted Bundy.

That would be a longshot. And probably unethical. Safer for everyone to eliminate them.

Serial killers repeatedly killed. They did great damage and thus they can help society out so we can prevent another Richard Ramirez.

People who repeatedy kill, especially strangers, and for the thrill of it, have proven that the will do so again if they are able. This is not a risk we can ask society to take. Especially on the mere chance that we will find some miraculous cure for it.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

People who repeatedy kill, especially strangers, and for the thrill of it, have proven that the will do so again if they are able. This is not a risk we can ask society to take. Especially on the mere chance that we will find some miraculous cure for it.

That's why we keep them in a place we call prison.
And thise who kill repeatedly usually aren't doing it for ****s and giggles. They are very terribly and tragically sick with a dangerous psychopathology they didn't ask for.

That would be a longshot. And probably unethical. Safer for everyone to eliminate them.

I argue it's unethical to not use them for early detection and prevention of another serial killer.