The death penalty

[bob]

CNN: Supreme Court agrees to review Boston Marathon bomber's death penalty case:

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review a lower court opinion that wiped away the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the brothers convicted in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three spectators and injured hundreds.

Last July, a federal appeals court said that Tsarnaev will remain in prison for the rest of his life for "unspeakably brutal acts," but that he should be given a new penalty-phase trial, citing jury selection issues and a failure to properly screen jurors for bias.

The appeals court vacated the death penalty with directions to hold a new penalty-phase trial but warned: "make no mistake" Tsarnaev "will spend his remaining days locked up in prison."

[AndyinPA]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 987772002/

JARRATT, Va. – The governor signed legislation Wednesday making Virginia the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty, a dramatic shift for the commonwealth, which has the second-highest number of executions in the U.S.

The bills were the culmination of a yearslong battle by Democrats who argued the death penalty has been applied disproportionately to people of color, the mentally ill and the poor. Republicans unsuccessfully argued that the death penalty should remain a sentencing option for especially heinous crimes and to bring justice to victims and their families.

Virginia’s new Democratic majority, in full control of the General Assembly for a second year, won the debate last month when both the Senate and House of Delegates passed bills banning capital punishment.

[noblepa]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 987772002/

JARRATT, Va. – The governor signed legislation Wednesday making Virginia the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty, a dramatic shift for the commonwealth, which has the second-highest number of executions in the U.S.

The bills were the culmination of a yearslong battle by Democrats who argued the death penalty has been applied disproportionately to people of color, the mentally ill and the poor. Republicans unsuccessfully argued that the death penalty should remain a sentencing option for especially heinous crimes and to bring justice to victims and their families.

Virginia’s new Democratic majority, in full control of the General Assembly for a second year, won the debate last month when both the Senate and House of Delegates passed bills banning capital punishment.

I'm a bit ambivalent about the death penalty.

On one hand, I agree with the arguments against it: its not really a deterrent, its applied to people of color disproportionately, it leaves no chance to correct an unjust conviction. And so on.

On the other hand, I feel that there are some crimes that are just so heinous that the perpetrator forfeits his/her right to continue living. Things like raping or murdering young children, torture-murder, mass shootings come to mind. I don't feel good about myself for feeling this way, and sometimes I think that I should not feel this way, but I do.

Ohio still has a death penalty statute, but it isn't used very often. I would not object if it were repealed or restricted even further.

In some ways, spending the next 40 or 50 years in a cage is arguably worse than death.

[fierceredpanda]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 987772002/

JARRATT, Va. – The governor signed legislation Wednesday making Virginia the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty, a dramatic shift for the commonwealth, which has the second-highest number of executions in the U.S.

The bills were the culmination of a yearslong battle by Democrats who argued the death penalty has been applied disproportionately to people of color, the mentally ill and the poor. Republicans unsuccessfully argued that the death penalty should remain a sentencing option for especially heinous crimes and to bring justice to victims and their families.

Virginia’s new Democratic majority, in full control of the General Assembly for a second year, won the debate last month when both the Senate and House of Delegates passed bills banning capital punishment.

I'm a bit ambivalent about the death penalty.

On one hand, I agree with the arguments against it: its not really a deterrent, its applied to people of color disproportionately, it leaves no chance to correct an unjust conviction. And so on.

On the other hand, I feel that there are some crimes that are just so heinous that the perpetrator forfeits his/her right to continue living. Things like raping or murdering young children, torture-murder, mass shootings come to mind. I don't feel good about myself for feeling this way, and sometimes I think that I should not feel this way, but I do.

Ohio still has a death penalty statute, but it isn't used very often. I would not object if it were repealed or restricted even further.

In some ways, spending the next 40 or 50 years in a cage is arguably worse than death.

This is pretty similar to my thinking. I do think the death penalty is wildly overused and disproportionately so against minorities, the mentally ill, the poor, etc. I also have real questions about whether lethal injection is as peaceful as it seems from the outside, or if the paralyzing agents involved in many states simply make it so an observer cannot tell that the condemned is dying in agony, which makes you ask of the "cruel and unusual" standard: Cruel by whose measure? Honestly, I strongly suspect that a properly conducted hanging or electrocution is probably more humane to the condemned, but those methods of execution are grisly for witnesses. Also, I suspect the death penalty results in a lot of innocent people pleading guilty in order to take the proverbial needle off the table in jurisdictions where prosecutors can threaten it during plea bargaining. I'm very grateful not to practice criminal defense in a DP state, because I don't know how I would weigh the desire of a client protesting their innocence against my own desire not to have this client's life on my conscience.

That being said, I'm also very sympathetic to the notion that a society does have the right to say to a select and terrible few unrepentant and unquestionably-guilty offenders that we will not suffer you to live amongst us any longer. (Note that I said "right," not "obligation.") I'm thinking of the Timothy McVeighs and Nazi war criminals of the world. Apart from those circumstances, we really oughtn't to be executing people

[Maybenaut]

This line from McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 US 279 (1987) forever erased any ambivalence I had toward the death penalty:

Apparent disparities [correlating with race] in sentencing are an inevitable part of our criminal justice system.

If such race-based disparities are inevitable, we should err on the side of not executing someone because of their race or the race of the victim. McCleskey involved a study conducted by Prof. David Baldus at Emory University which found that after accounting for over 200 variables, a defendant was 4.3 times more likely to get the death penalty if the victim was white than if the victim was black.

So, to me at least, it doesn’t really matter how heinous the crime is if the sentence is the result of inherent racism. And given the number of exonerations we’ve seen since the advent of DNA technology, I’m not at all sanguine that everyone on death row is actually guilty.

[fierceredpanda]

What Maybenaut said.

Also, it really doesn't help that a lot of death penalty advocates are really not all that shy about saying "Yeah, I'm fine with a system where some percentage of people we execute are factually innocent." That cavalier, "kill them all and let God sort them out" attitude is really disgusting.

As I said in my post about extraditions, there really are quite a lot of Americans that think you can build a just and law-abiding society atop a pile of corpses.

[Liz]

i believe having the option of a the death penalty does serve a purpose and is a deterrent.
For instance, a person found guilty of murder were no body has been located, the family of their loved one victim will often opt for a life sentence if the perpetrator will disclose the location of the body.
For me it would not be a consideration, i would insist for execution, no matter if humane or not.

[noblepa]

What Maybenaut said.

Also, it really doesn't help that a lot of death penalty advocates are really not all that shy about saying "Yeah, I'm fine with a system where some percentage of people we execute are factually innocent." That cavalier, "kill them all and let God sort them out" attitude is really disgusting.

As I said in my post about extraditions, there really are quite a lot of Americans that think you can build a just and law-abiding society atop a pile of corpses.

That, IMHO, is one of the big problems with the application of the death penalty.

Ron White, the blue collar comedian, once joked that "some states are abolishing the death penalty. In Texas, we're putting in an express lane". Disgusting.

The rise of DNA in the last couple of decades as a forensic tool has proven a lot of death-row inmates to be innocent. That, alone is a scary thought.

[noblepa]

Any state-imposed penalty, from a parking ticket to lethal injection has multiple purposes.

1) Convince the perpetrator of the error of his ways, and deter him from re-offending.

2) Serve as an example and deter others from committing the same offense.

3) Satisfy the victims natural desire for revenge. The bible says "Revenge is mine, saeth the lord". State punishment is the secular version of this.

4) Provide the perpetrator with the opportunity to "rehabilitate" themselves and return to being a productive member of society.

5) Protect (at least for a time) society from someone who has shown a proclivity for violating social norms, in an extreme manner.

A death sentence has no hope of accomplishing 1 or 4.

There is a lot of good evidence that, despite "common sense", the possibility of a death penalty does not deter others from committing similar crimes. There was an episode of The West Wing, in which Leo McGarry told president Bartlett "do you think that the death penalty scares these guys? They live in constant fear of being killed, and their executions are a lot messier than ours".

It obviously protects society from the perpetrator, but there are other ways of doing that.

It probably does fulfill 3. Some victims or their families can forgive the criminal and some want to inject them themselves.

It does satisfy the desire for revenge, although some victims are not satisfied with a life-without-parole sentence. This is, to me, the biggest moral dilemma posed by the death penalty. Should we kill someone, simply out of our desire for revenge? It is in line with the Old Testament prescription of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth", but, as Ghandi said, (I"m probably not quoting this exactly) "then the whole world will be blind and toothless". It is also not in line with the New Testament admonition to "love thy neighbor" and to forgive our enemies. Religion aside, does execution not bring us, as a society, down to the killer's level? Don't we want to be better than that?

On a practical level, death penalties are extremely expensive. I've read that it costs more to execute someone, after you factor in all the automatic and optional appeals and supporting them on death row for years, than it does to keep them in prison for life.

And, there is always the possibility that the jury simply got it wrong, and the inmate is simply innocent, at least of the crime for which they were condemned.

[fierceredpanda]

Any state-imposed penalty, from a parking ticket to lethal injection has multiple purposes.

1) Convince the perpetrator of the error of his ways, and deter him from re-offending.

2) Serve as an example and deter others from committing the same offense.

3) Satisfy the victims natural desire for revenge. The bible says "Revenge is mine, saeth the lord". State punishment is the secular version of this.

4) Provide the perpetrator with the opportunity to "rehabilitate" themselves and return to being a productive member of society.

5) Protect (at least for a time) society from someone who has shown a proclivity for violating social norms, in an extreme manner.

Correct. In the profession, we use specific terms of art for these things:

1) Specific deterrence
2) General deterrence
3) Retribution
4) Rehabilitation
5) Protection of the Public

Statistics have pretty conclusively shown that the death penalty is not a deterrent. There is no correlation between the legality of capital punishment or the frequency with which it is carried out and the violent crime rate in a given geographical area. All arguments to the contrary are based on armchair psychology and simplistic thinking ("Well gosh, I'd sure think twice about murderin' someone if I knew they'd kill me for doin' it!") with no hard data to support them. Obviously you can't rehabilitate the dead. That leaves retribution and protection of the public. And protection of the public is adequately addressed by incarceration for life unless you believe there is an invisible epidemic of prison breaks going on.

As I've said earlier, I'm somewhat open to the notion that a very very small minority of offenders (again, thinking about TIm McVeigh or the Nazi leadership here) whose crimes are so heinous and who are so openly remorseless and even proud of their actions that society has a right not to suffer such monsters to live any longer. And to be very clear, I'm probably thinking about one in every million or so offenders here. Of course, at that point, society would also need to ask very hard questions about whether the extra expense and bother of "tinker[ing] with the machinery of death," to steal from Justice Blackmun. My gut says "no" in response to that, so I guess that makes me a retentionist in theory, but an abolitionist in practice.

[AndyinPA]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... tion-drugs

Republican-controlled states are spending astronomical sums of their taxpayers’ money to buy pharmaceutical drugs from illicit dealers in a desperate and almost certainly unlawful attempt to carry out lethal injection executions.

Documents obtained by the Guardian reveal the full extent of the spending blitz that American death penalty states have embarked upon as they try to restart executions delayed by the pandemic. The findings show that Republican leaders are not only willing to run roughshod over their own state and federal laws, but are also prepared to spend lavishly in the process.

Civil and human rights groups urge Biden to end federal death penalty
Read more

The most jaw-dropping outlay has been made by Arizona, a state in which Republicans hold both chambers of the legislature and the governor’s mansion. A single-page heavily redacted document obtained by the Guardian records that last October the department of corrections ordered 1,000 vials of pentobarbital sodium salt, each containing 1mg, to be shipped in “unmarked jars and boxes”.

At the bottom of the document, the record states: “Amount paid: $1,500,000.”

[LM K]

i believe having the option of a the death penalty does serve a purpose and is a deterrent.
For instance, a person found guilty of murder were no body has been located, the family of their loved one victim will often opt for a life sentence if the perpetrator will disclose the location of the body.
For me it would not be a consideration, i would insist for execution, no matter if humane or not.

Research shows that the death penalty is not a deterrent.

Studies on Deterrence, Debunked

Report: Deterrence is Based on Certainty of Apprehension, Not Severity of Punishment

[LM K]

I used to believe that the death penalty was a just punishment for extreme crimes. I no longer support the DP for anyone. I'm tempted to support the DP for adults who premeditate the murder of children. But my current reasons for opposing the DP leave me without justification for sentencing any prisoner to death and executing that prisoner.

Too many innocent people have been sentenced to death.

Too many executions have been botched. There is sufficient evidence from botched executions to support the likelihood that lethal injection is torture.

We choose methods of execution based on observer's comfort, not on the science of execution. We, as a society, want to feel like we're being as humane as possible when executing inmates. As long as an execution appears fast and painless, we're ok ignoring the science.

It is significantly more expensive to execute inmates than it is to sentence them to life in prison. I'd prefer that money be used for prison reform.

The death penalty is inherently racist. We cannot ignore the fact that black men and women are sentenced to death more often for less severe crimes than white men and women.

In addition, those on death row are housed insolitary confinement, which is torture. Solitary confinement is
significantly damaging and is cruel.

We, as a society, must be more humane than those we sentence to death.

Amnesty International


ALCU

[Foggy]

[Mrich]

The death penalty is hard on the prison employees too. I read an article by someone who had recently retired from the Texas (I think) prison system, and he said it was a horrible job.

[noblepa]

I used to believe that the death penalty was a just punishment for extreme crimes. I no longer support the DP for anyone. I'm tempted to support the DP for adults who premeditate the murder of children. But my current reasons for opposing the DP leave me without justification for sentencing any prisoner to death and executing that prisoner.

Too many innocent people have been sentenced to death.

Too many executions have been botched. There is sufficient evidence from botched executions to support the likelihood that lethal injection is torture.

We choose methods of execution based on observer's comfort, not on the science of execution. We, as a society, want to feel like we're being as humane as possible when executing inmates. As long as an execution appears fast and painless, we're ok ignoring the science.

It is significantly more expensive to execute inmates than it is to sentence them to life in prison. I'd prefer that money be used for prison reform.

The death penalty is inherently racist. We cannot ignore the fact that black men and women are sentenced to death more often for less severe crimes than white men and women.

In addition, those on death row are housed insolitary confinement, which is torture. Solitary confinement is
significantly damaging and is cruel.

We, as a society, must be more humane than those we sentence to death.

Amnesty International


ALCU

I pretty much agree with everything you wrote.

As for lethal injection being torture, I agree, there have been many reports of prisoners being in apparent agony before dying.

I have hesitated to bring this up before, because it is exceedingly morbid, and might be viewed as minimizing the issue. I assure you that I intend neither.

We have had a couple of dogs who grew old and very ill. They were looking at a very diminished quality of life, so my wife and I made the difficult decision to have them put down. I clearly remember the last one, when we had our Cocker Spaniel, Cheyenne, euthanized. I held her in my arms while the vet injected her. I was crying like a baby.

She just seemed to go to sleep. She made no sound, there were no convulsions or other physical signs or distress. A couple of minutes later, the vet checked her with a stethoscope and pronounced her dead.

I've always wondered why they can euthanize a dog in an apparently painless way, they can't seem to be able to do the same for a human. I don't know what drugs are used in either case, or if there is some reason that they can't use the same drugs on humans.

As I said, I do not intend to minimize the suffering or to compare condemned prisoners to dogs, but it seems that the biochemistry should be the same.

[bob]

The short, rough version is that the three-drug cocktail basically was invented by a doctor with no practical experience in executions. States started copying the methodology, with everyone saying, "That's what everyone else does." There was no real science behind it.

After much litigation, there has been a push to one-drug "cocktails," that is, an overdose of a barbiturate. Which in turn caused the manufacturer to ban its use in executions, and also to ban reselling it to executioners. Which led to states buying drugs on the black-ish market, using doses beyond their stated shelf life, etc.

[SuzieC]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 987772002/

JARRATT, Va. – The governor signed legislation Wednesday making Virginia the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty, a dramatic shift for the commonwealth, which has the second-highest number of executions in the U.S.

The bills were the culmination of a yearslong battle by Democrats who argued the death penalty has been applied disproportionately to people of color, the mentally ill and the poor. Republicans unsuccessfully argued that the death penalty should remain a sentencing option for especially heinous crimes and to bring justice to victims and their families.

Virginia’s new Democratic majority, in full control of the General Assembly for a second year, won the debate last month when both the Senate and House of Delegates passed bills banning capital punishment.

I'm a bit ambivalent about the death penalty.

On one hand, I agree with the arguments against it: its not really a deterrent, its applied to people of color disproportionately, it leaves no chance to correct an unjust conviction. And so on.

On the other hand, I feel that there are some crimes that are just so heinous that the perpetrator forfeits his/her right to continue living. Things like raping or murdering young children, torture-murder, mass shootings come to mind. I don't feel good about myself for feeling this way, and sometimes I think that I should not feel this way, but I do.

Ohio still has a death penalty statute, but it isn't used very often. I would not object if it were repealed or restricted even further.

In some ways, spending the next 40 or 50 years in a cage is arguably worse than death.

noblepa, Senate Bill 103 and House Bill 183 are pending in the Ohio legislature to repeal the death penlty. Surprisingly, they have bipartisan support. I have written to my Senator and my Rep to express support.

[roadscholar]

If euthanasia can be mercifully done, so can a death penalty.

If it isn’t a deterrent, why do defendants bargain to take it off the table?

Humanity and economics agree here, that it should at the very least be done rarely, where a crime is especially heinous, and the perp is manifestly, unquestionably guilty.

But then there’s the genealogy of morals; from an eye for an eye to taking the high-ground, rising above the level of the murderer.

I’m still undecided.

[Maybenaut]

If euthanasia can be mercifully done, so can a death penalty.

If it isn’t a deterrent, why do defendants bargain to take it off the table?

Humanity and economics agree here, that it should at the very least be done rarely, where a crime is especially heinous, and the perp is manifestly, unquestionably guilty.

But then there’s the genealogy of morals; from an eye for an eye to taking the high-ground, rising above the level of the murderer.

I’m still undecided.

There’s a difference between a deterrent and a bargaining chip. Folks bent on murder are unlikely to be deterred by the prospect of the death penalty. Folks already charged are very likely to plead guilty in exchange for life.

Even when we thought we knew that a person was manifestly, unquestionably guilty, DNA has proven us wrong.

And we’ve been unable, as a society, to apply the death penalty in a racially neutral manner. If we can’t do that — and it appears that we can’t — we have no business executing anyone.

[Sunrise]

There’s a difference between a deterrent and a bargaining chip. Folks bent on murder are unlikely to be deterred by the prospect of the death penalty. Folks already charged are very likely to plead guilty in exchange for life.

Even when we thought we knew that a person was manifestly, unquestionably guilty, DNA has proven us wrong.

And we’ve been unable, as a society, to apply the death penalty in a racially neutral manner. If we can’t do that — and it appears that we can’t — we have no business executing anyone.

x 1000

[LM K]

If euthanasia can be mercifully done, so can a death penalty.

If it isn’t a deterrent, why do defendants bargain to take it off the table?

Humanity and economics agree here, that it should at the very least be done rarely, where a crime is especially heinous, and the perp is manifestly, unquestionably guilty.

But then there’s the genealogy of morals; from an eye for an eye to taking the high-ground, rising above the level of the murderer.

I’m still undecided.

The conditions on "death row" are barbaric. I think many plead guilty so they're not in solitary for 12+ years.

Solitary confinement is defined as torture. People start hallucinating in as little as 36 hours. Some last longer, but just a few days more.

[roadscholar]

Fair enough. The bargaining chip issue was a specious argument. I agree.

But I can’t help thinking it has acted as a deterrent occasionally... not when murder is the goal, but ancillary murders. Do we really think it has never happened that a pair of criminals has discussed sticking to armed robbery, trying not to then shoot someone, making it capital?

If it has been a deterrent, I’m guessing pretty rarely so.

And I can’t help thinking about the victims. A guy mad at his boss slaughters him, his wife, her mom and their three little kids... how am I to have one ounce of sympathy for the suffering he has royally earned for himself?

That said, as to method, and isolation beforehand, you have convinced me that if it can’t be done well, fairly and humanely, it shouldn’t be done at all.

[Foggy]

My solution, once, long ago, was to transport them to some island that was survivable. That way, we wouldn't execute anyone who might be innocent, and if they were later exonerated they could get a ride back to where they lived. But if they escaped and somehow returned to the US, then we would use the DP.

When I become Lord High Muckety-Muck of this great land of ours, we'll try that and see how it goes.

[Suranis]

I hear that policy was tried before, and resulted in Australia.