Utah counts down to firing squad execution

[9-10ths_Penguin]

There are crimes that forfeit your right to continue living... in my opinion...

Sadistic murder, rape/murder, repeat child molestation...

Why? What societal good is served by capital punishment?

Also, there's a different between someone losing a right and having their ability to do that thing actively stopped. If this were really just a matter of rights being forfeited, we'd be talking about people being made "outlaws", not actually executed.

Interestingly, in NZ, it costs $92,000 per year to imprison one person. That's what needs to be focused on - bringing that cost down. Some of these people have devastated the lives of others. I don't know if they should cost the government almost 3 times the average yearly income for the average citizen.

The average citizen doesn't have to have an escape-proof house, and doesn't require a staff of people to watch him 24 hours a day. These sorts of things tend to increase the cost.

I'm not entirely convinced they need underfloor heating when my house doesn't have state-funded under floor heating.

The economics can be a bit different in a large building than a small one. I don't know about underfloor heating specifically, but other technologies, e.g. demand control ventilation, would be insanely expensive (and completely unnecessary) in a single-family house, but they can be real cost-saving measures in larger buildings when they're used properly.

I'm also not convinced they need a TV when I don't have one, and can live fine without it. IMO books are a much cheaper option, and they're still reusable after 20 years. I'm also not convinced that every dinner meal needs a dessert.

A lot of the privileges that prisoners get aren't about being nice to the prisoners for their sake. There are a lot of reasons for giving prisoners privileges:

- if you control their behaviour with a system of rewards and punishments, this can help keep the guards and other inmates safer. If giving a prison full of inmates ice cream once a week stops even one guard from being assaulted, I'm all for it.

- if you treat a prisoner like an animal, he's more likely to continue acting like an animal on release. This can create more victims. OTOH, if you treat them like human beings, this can reduce institutionalization, which helps to prevent the criminal from re-offending.

I would say that allowing murderers to live cheapens the value of human life.

If human life is so valuable, then the one who steals a life should be made to forfeit his own.

That makes no sense at all. It's treating human life as disposable that cheapens it.

 

[methylatedghosts]

A lot of the privileges that prisoners get aren't about being nice to the prisoners for their sake. There are a lot of reasons for giving prisoners privileges:

- if you control their behaviour with a system of rewards and punishments, this can help keep the guards and other inmates safer. If giving a prison full of inmates ice cream once a week stops even one guard from being assaulted, I'm all for it.

- if you treat a prisoner like an animal, he's more likely to continue acting like an animal on release. This can create more victims. OTOH, if you treat them like human beings, this can reduce institutionalization, which helps to prevent the criminal from re-offending.

Ok, that makes sense.

But still, wouldn't you think that tax-paying citizens should get at least compensated under-floor heating over prisoners, for example?

 

[tumbleweed41]

I think that if he's requesting it, go for it. I don't disagree with capitol punishment at all, the execution will cost less than keeping them incarcerated. I have different opinions on it thought, and it varies from crime to crime IMO. I think that he should be allowed to be beheaded if that's how he wants to go. It's only barbaric to societies standards. That's what I think

Do you want your taxes to continue to pay for rapists, murderers, and child molesters?

Richard C. Dieter, JD, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, in a Feb. 7, 2007 testimony to the Judiciary Committee of the Colorado State House of Representatives regarding "House Bill 1094 - Costs of the Death Penalty and Related Issues," stated:
"In the course of my work, I believe I have reviewed every state and federal study of the costs of the death penalty in the past 25 years. One element is common to all of these studies: They all concluded that the cost of the death penalty amounts to a net expense to the state and the taxpayers. Or to put it differently, the death penalty system is clearly more expensive than a system handling similar cases with a lesser punishment. ...the most expensive system is one that combines the costliest parts of both punishments: lengthy and complicated death penalty trials followed by incarceration for life...
Everything that is needed for an ordinary trial is needed for a death penalty case, only more so:
• More pre-trial time will be needed to prepare: cases typically take a year to come to trial more pre-trial motions will be filed and answered.
• More experts will be hired.
• Twice as many attorneys will be appointed for the defense, and a comparable team for the prosecution.
• Jurors will have to be individually quizzed on their views about the death penalty, and they are more likely to be sequestered.
• Two trials instead of one will be conducted: one for guilt and one for punishment.
• The trial will be longer: a cost study at Duke Universityestimated that death penalty trials take 3 to 5 times longer than typical murder trials
• And then will come a series of appeals during which the inmates are held in the high security of death row."

It's horrible actually. I don't think somebody who is innocent should even be on death row.

If you can prove without a doubt that someone committed murder, then by all means execute them. if someone murdered anyone in my family and it was proven that they did it I would not want them to live.

I said proven without a doubt. Key words WITHOUT A DOUBT. Yes it would satisfy me very much.

• There have been 113 people released from death row since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.​
• There have only been 907 executions since 1976.​
• This means that for every 7 executions in the U.S., 1 person has been found innocent on death row.​
• There have only been 6,000 people on death row since 1976.​
• That means that almost 2% of the people on death row have been found innocent.​
• 8 people were found innocent in 1999, 8 also in 2000, 5 in 2001, and so far 1 in 2002.​
• Which means that 1/4 of the innocent were found within the last 3 years.​
• During that time (1999-present), there have been 266 executions, over 30% of the total.​
• Examples of Innocent Men on Death Row:​

• Gary Gauger - Illinois - Conviction: 1993, Released: 1996 --- He was convicted of killing his parents, but was found innocent after his conviction, when police heard the real murderers talking about the killing. ​
• Sabrina Butler - Mississippi - Conviction: 1990, Released 1995: --- Convicted of murdering her nine-month old child. When she found her baby not breathing, she performed CPR and took him to the hospital. Even after doing this, the police thought that she was the killer, and she ended up getting sentenced to death. It is now believed that the child died of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). ​
• Andrew Golden - Florida - Conviction: 1985, Released: 1995 --- Convicted of killing his wife, even though the prosecution failed to prove that his wife's death was anything more than an accident. He was finally released from death row in 1995, "to the waiting arms of his sons." ​

Two American researchers, Professors Hugo Bedau and Michael Radelet, reported 23 instances in which innocent people have been executed in the United States in this century. Among the cases noted by Bedau and Radelet are cases in the south of black men tried by all white juries and executed for the rape of a white woman. In some of these cases, subsequent evidence revealed that the woman had an ongoing sexual relation with the accused, but such evidence was considered either unbelievable or irrelevant at the time. The difficulty with such cases is that generally no court decides that an executed person was innocent. Courts hear current cases brought by live petitioners. Whether an executed person was innocent becomes a matter of historical research (which is rarely undertaken) and an evolving consensus among the public. This is a much slower and less precise process than a retrial ending in an acquittal.
Innocence and the Death Penalty: The Increasing Danger of Executing the Innocent | Death Penalty Information Center

My sig has nothing to do with the certain humans who's lives I do not value.
I could care less about anyone in prison and on death row and who's about to be executed.
They did nothing to me personally and I don't care what happens to them one way or the other.
I don't have time to worry about people who do not matter to me.

"all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"

 

[Sunstone]

Why not? They get to make life and death decisions over its soldiers and they're citizens too.

Logically, that says nothing at all about the wisdom of allowing the government to have life and death decisions over its citizens.

 

[Smokeless Indica]

"all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"

So I'm supposed to care about child molesters, murderers, and rapists?
I'm supposed to worry about their well being?
I should care what happens to them?
What exactly am I supposed to do?
I'm sorry but I don't have the time to worry about people in prison or on death row whether they are innocent or not.
I have my own life to live and have too many people and too much stuff in my own life to worry about than to worry about the well being of a bunch of people who I don't even know.
I used to be like that. I used to worry about strangers all the time. It does them no good for me to worry about them and it does me no good to worry about them.
I got tired of wasting my time when it could be spent doing things that I need to do to get my life straight.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I don't disagree with capitol punishment at all, the execution will cost less than keeping them incarcerated.

Actually, after all the extra trials, appeals, specialists, and everything else, the death penalty cost more than LWOP.
Costs of the Death Penalty | Death Penalty Information Center
Does the death penalty cost less than life in prison without parole? - Death Penalty - ProCon.org (this site has arguments for both sides, but they state at the end they couldn't find anything better for the death penalty being cheaper. Actually, the pro-death penalty "arguments" on this site are rather ignorant.)

I am against the death penalty, but if they guy requested the firing squad, I don't see why he should be denied it.

 

[kai]

why not save all the money you can and do away with appeals etc and just shoot suspects after a summary trial, save even more money by not giving them legal representation.and you could even get them to shoot themselves.

 

[Truth_Faith13]

Actually, after all the extra trials, appeals, specialists, and everything else, the death penalty cost more than LWOP.
Costs of the Death Penalty | Death Penalty Information Center
Does the death penalty cost less than life in prison without parole? - Death Penalty - ProCon.org (this site has arguments for both sides, but they state at the end they couldn't find anything better for the death penalty being cheaper. Actually, the pro-death penalty "arguments" on this site are rather ignorant.)

I am against the death penalty, but if they guy requested the firing squad, I don't see why he should be denied it.

Add to that the fact that he was convicted in 1985 - 25years ago!!! That 25years would have cost money, so it still costs just as much to put them to death!

Because he is a murderous scumbag and shouldnt get what he wants....I find it quite amusing how people thing these people deserve their human right taken away from them and put to death...yet ultimately give them what they want anyway...

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Add to that the fact that he was convicted in 1985 - 25years ago!!! That 25years would have cost money, so it still costs just as much to put them to death!

Yes, people on death row do tend to sit for a very long time as a part of all the extra trials, reviewing all available evidence, and, sometimes in theory at least, making sure they got the right person.

 

[KatNotKathy]

why not save all the money you can and do away with appeals etc and just shoot suspects after a summary trial, save even more money by not giving them legal representation.and you could even get them to shoot themselves.

Why even bother with a trial when it's just cheaper to shoot everybody on sight?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

So I'm supposed to care about child molesters, murderers, and rapists?
I'm supposed to worry about their well being?
I should care what happens to them?

You should care about justice. It's important and valuable separate from the value of any rapist or murderer's life, but it's reflected in how we treat these people.

 

[Smokeless Indica]

You should care about justice. It's important and valuable separate from the value of any rapist or murderer's life, but it's reflected in how we treat these people.

I understand what you're saying. Like I said I don't have the time to worry about people who I can't help. I personally cannot help them, I don't have the time or the money. I need to just worry about myself for the most part and get my life in order. I've spent so much of my time in the past worrying about people that I don't know and it's done nothing but set me back. I know how it sounds but it's time for me to just worry about myself and my family at the time. How can I help someone if I can't even help myself at the moment?

 

[kai]

Why even bother with a trial when it's just cheaper to shoot everybody on sight?

its even cheaper and better for the planet if we all shoot ourselves. It seems to me the main argument is its cheaper to kill prisoners than jail them .


come on everyone lets do the death penalty quiz


DPIC's Death Penalty Quiz | Death Penalty Information Center

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I understand what you're saying. Like I said I don't have the time to worry about people who I can't help. I personally cannot help them, I don't have the time or the money.

If you're calling for someone's execution, you're worrying about him.

 

[Smokeless Indica]

I never said whether or not he should be executed. He could be let off I don't care. If it doesn't directly affect me or my loved ones then I don't care one way or the other what happens.

 

[Herr Heinrich]

Why even bother with a trial when it's just cheaper to shoot everybody on sight?

Hey are you going to answer my question from page 9? I think it was page 9.

 

[KatNotKathy]

Hey are you going to answer my question from page 9? I think it was page 9.

This one?

I have a question for you. Why does human life have value in your eyes?

It's simple. I rather like myself. When I look at myself and why I like myself, I find a list of attributes that aren't unique to me, but instead almost universal to mankind. I see other people's lives as valuable because of simple empathy. It's not rocket surgery. Humans are pretty screwed up sometimes, but we have our moments.

Does that satisfy your question?

 

[Herr Heinrich]

This one?
It's simple. I rather like myself. When I look at myself and why I like myself, I find a list of attributes that aren't unique to me, but instead almost universal to mankind. I see other people's lives as valuable because of simple empathy. It's not rocket surgery. Humans are pretty screwed up sometimes, but we have our moments.

Does that satisfy your question?

So does your empathy only extend to humans or also to other sentient life?

 

[KatNotKathy]

So does your empathy only extend to humans or also to other sentient life?

Humans, certain animals, and theoretically intelligent aliens. Really though, the further from human it is, the harder it is to empathize with it. That's just the nature of empathy. So is there anywhere you're trying to get with this, or are you just curious as to why somebody wouldn't want other people to get killed?

 

[Mercy Not Sacrifice]

I think that if he's requesting it, go for it. I don't disagree with capitol punishment at all, the execution will cost less than keeping them incarcerated. I have different opinions on it thought, and it varies from crime to crime IMO. I think that he should be allowed to be beheaded if that's how he wants to go. It's only barbaric to societies standards. That's what I think

I'm sure it's already been pointed out, but the highlighted statement is false.

Re the OP, I'm not a big fan of the death penalty. But given that it will be used, the firing squad's OK with me as long as the prisoner would have to choose it, which is what this person did.