Death Row Inmates and Capital Punishment
I was just reading on the news that Barr resumed capital punishment and people are so vehemently against it. But why? If you read up on Alfred Bourgeois (he systematically tortured and raped his 2 year old daughter before brutally killing her) or Wesley Ira Purkey (who killed an elderly woman with a claw hammer and also raped and stabbed a teenager to death before dismembering her while he was high on crack) or the other 3 Death Row inmates scheduled for execution, it seems like they deserve it. When people commit such atrocious and inhumane actions, shouldn't they be punished for it? What are your thoughts on the subject?
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Let me preface this by saying I completely agree that each of these individuals deserve the death penalty, but I believe the argument against the ruling lies in the principle of who's making the decision. The devil's advocate view I always take is along the lines with being okay that the state (gov't) is making the choice of life or death. We are allowing the state to be the end all be all on the determinant of life for wrong doing. As unbiased as the court systems are supposed to be, I'd say we can agree that no matter what there are always inherent biases whether conscious or not. Then that argument starts to roll down the avenue of infringement of freedoms but that is a completely different beast.
What those individuals did is terrible and IMO deserve what is coming to them.
+SB I agree that it is a gray area that the state gets to decide the life of an individual but that is why Death row is reserved for only the worst crimes. I heard that capital punishment is more expensive than keeping an inmate alive for the rest of their life but can anyone explain or confirm this? That's one of the biggest arguments for anti-capital punishment
It is more expensive and becoming more so, to place e a prisoner on death row...
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/costs
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/12/17/six-reasons-the-death-pen…
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/URLs_Cited/OT2016/16-5247/16-5247…
https://www.amnestyusa.org/issues/death-penalty/death-penalty-facts/dea…
The real cost is much lower, it's just the anti-capital punishment groups making it more and more expensive both to prevent it and to tip the argument.
Regardless of whether or not I agree with the whole Death Row concept, I hate how they play these petty games. "Oh, the opponent's option is cheaper? That can be fixed..."
This is wrong on so many levels.
A person is convicted of murder by a jury of his peers. Lawmakers are elected by the public who decide whether there is capital punishment. The idea that some faceless "state" is deciding who lives and dies is completely bizarre and bunk.
A judge does the sentencing, not the jury.
Agreed.
The death penalty carries the inherent risk of executing an innocent person. Since 1973, more than 160 people who had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S. have been exonerated.
I assume that was before DNA evidence was available? Of course wrongful convictions still exist but I assume they would be much lower due to DNA evidence being available. DNA evidence was the reason so many people were exonerated
No, not just DNA. Hair match, fingerprint match, bite mark match, are mostly fake an a pseudo science at best. The government has locked up many of its citizens using so called "expert" testimony.
This is the most important point. I would bet my life that there are many more who are innocent who are still waiting to be executed or have already been executed. It’s easy to sit here and say that life in prison is too easy, but I guarantee you it is not. I also guarantee that if you are the 1 person executed who was innocent, that it’s one too many from your perspective.
I think the bigger issue is the mass incarceration of people for relatively minor drug offenses. Just make the shit legal and a lot of the gang related violent crime drops dramatically overnight because there is no more turf and illicit profits to protect. The drug laws are ruining this country.
Myths, myths, myths.
Less than 1% of the U.S. population is incarcerated. There is no "mass" incarceration unless the word "mass" has no meaning. Literally, more Americans firmly believe in a flat earth (
I don't believe in the death penalty, but also believe in killing others for defense or war (non-innocent lethal combatants)
Not against it in principle and perhaps extreme cases, say a situation with limited resources where sustaining prisoners of heinous crimes would actually detract from the well being of a community.
In practice though, in a large organized society such as in the West the cost of keeping prisoners alive until a natural cause of death is much lower than the cost we would pay of sending an innocent man or women to death by accident.
100 % for the death penalty, but you better be legit sure that the person actually committed the crime with no doubts whatsoever. I am not surprised that there are people sitting and waiting for the death penalty takes years to accomplish. I can't imagine, if someone literally stabbed someone you knew or a family member closely to death, why shouldn't they be punished?
Not only am I for the death penalty, I think we should increase the use of the death penalty. A few years ago some detestable, subhuman rats successfully argued that you can't execute child rapists, which is patently insane and a complete abuse of the constitution. Not a single author or ratifier of the constitution would have conceived that you couldn't put a child rapist before the firing squad.
Our society would be much better if we expanded the death penalty to drug dealers, rapists, gang members (via RICO), and first degree murderers, and did not drag out the process for decades. And child rapists should be castrated while fully conscious and then drawn and quartered. The idea that executing child rapists is a violation of the 8th Amendment is unconsciounable and shows how the court system has abused its delegated authority, something that the authors of the Federalist Papers missed by a mile.
So I take it you're a big Rodrigo Duterte fan?
LOL probably
You sound like a very emotional and irrational person, I'm glad your opinion doesn't carry weight past an online forum.
I wasn't aware that his opinion carried weight here either.
Let me get this straight...You are a religious guy who wants the US government to murder people.
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
I'm pretty sure castration and quartering is both an unusual and cruel punishment.
By the way, the Federalist Paper authors didn't all agree with each other on everything. Which ones are you referring to exactly?
Good points though. I agree on principle, but not in practice. Rape is an iffy one, with the me two movement I would hate to see people getting executed if they were wrongly convicted in the first place.
SOLUTION
Death penalty for all those who take a life. If you kill someone driving drunk, driving fucked up on any assortment of narcotics, accidently drown someone, commit murder or manslaughter, or in summary take a life, you forfeit the chance of keeping yours.
Ah yes I see a bunch of pro-death penalty conservatives on here who believe in small limited government with the one exception being they should decide who lives and dies.
I’m vehemently against the death penalty because due to a long history of executing innocent people, systemic racism in our judicial system, the low intellect of our average juror (45% of the country supports Trump after all) and the poor quality of public defenders, I have no confidence we won’t continue to put innocent people to death.
I'm actually pretty liberal. I think we should have universal heatlhcare (similar to Switzerland's system), access to safe abortions, and higher taxes for the uber wealthy ($500m+). But I do not believe that vile and evil people who torture, rape, brutally murder innocent people deserve to live. And yes, it is not right that the government gets to decide who lives and dies, it is FAR from a good system. But is it fair that those murderers get to live the rest of their life while being fed, clothed, and taken care of (they have access to healthcare) with our taxpayer dollars while normal people in America don't even have access to healthcare? So many drug lords and rapists and murderers get to undergo life-saving surgery and chemotherapy while normal people are going bankrupt trying to afford chemo for their children or for themselves. How is that fair? How is it fair that a monster gets to rape and kill children but gets to live while those kids and their parents will never have justice? Our system needs so much improvement but there are certain things we cannot fix like juries with inherent racism. The only thing I can think of would be to hide the race and name of the accused person so the jury would be able to make a color-blind decision. In regards to wrongfully convicted people, the rates are going down due to DNA evidence and camera evidence.
I think these ideas are pretty conflicting. In a utopian, modern society, why would you have so many needs taken care of by the government, then also impinge on those assumed good participants in society, by taking their lives when wanting to do so? The two are antagonistic to each other.
Universal Healthcare literally means the government gets to decide who lives and dies.
Universal Healthcare is, in all actuality, Healthcare Allocation. Even if we say that having the government in charge reduces costs by 99% (lol), the fact remains that we don't have slaves or robots making virtual changes- healthcare requires paying people, and using resources.
Universal Healthcare means we all pool our money, and the gov decides who gets it. Will the child or the 80yr old get the cancer treatment? Every allocation of $$ for healthcare necessitates taking it from some other person (...unless you believe we'll have too much money). Literally every single decision will be a life or death decision. There will always be people on the deathbed with some possible radical treatment that could elongate their life. But whereas the financial decision is made by the family now, it will be made by the government if Healthcare Allocation is used.
I also want to make it clear that I don't think drug dealers and such should get the death penalty. I think it should be reserved for very rare, very atrocious acts. Such as terrorist acts, mass shootings, cruel murders, and things of that nature. It should only be used in extreme circumstances
the bigger irony is they've likely recited bible verses by Matthew. something about turning the other cheek, not lethal injection. the hypocrisy in my party and my religion is appalling.
i agree, but pretty hard to turn the other cheek when you are murdered?
the Christian in me wants to forgive and offer a nonviolent response to violence (new testament, none of the stuff in Genesis or Leviticus)
the skeptic in me realizes the judicial system is imperfect so you run the risk of executing the innocent
the libertarian in me wants to stop spending so much on the prison system and quickly and unapologetically execute savages (death row is crazy expensive)
the liberal in me wants to rehabilitate people with mental illness instead of killing them
the cynic in me wants to say fuck it because some people are just born fucked
and the kid who grew up being around senseless murders wants revenge for the victims
this is one of the hardest issues for me, some days I'm pro, some days I'm against, dialogue and nuance are important, issues with this much gravity should not be either/or. I have no clue where I stand.
The law can't be too ambiguous or it will be misapplied.
Also, if you're going to apply the death penalty someone has to do the killing. Why drag more people into the senselessness?
I don't think there's a serious argument for rehabilitation with the types of people you outlined. However, that doesn't mean it's ok for the state to take lives of its citizens.
Then it's also a political question about whether a modern civilization should practice capital punishment.
In terms of my personal beliefs, I do think you can make a morally sound argument for an eye for an eye, since it can have the effect of rebalancing injustices. Although, obviously that's discretionary to a more personal level.
Other countries who execute their citizens: Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan.
The Greatest Country on Earth "Love it or Leave it" USA sure keeps some strange bedfellows at time!
I don't think about this issue much, but I know that Jeffery Epstein, El Chapo, and the Boston Bomber should hang.
There were multiple Boston Marathon Bombers.
Its more expensive to execute someone than it is to keep them in prison for their whole life
How expensive can a rope and wooden frame cost?
They don't hang criminals it's considered "cruel and unusual punishment"
Was talking to family recently about a rather grotesque murder back home and we were discussing why the perp should be put to death. "Well the state only does lethal injection and the waiting list is long." My reply: I'll build the gallows myself.
We would like to think that the justice system is always fair, but it isn't. These people allegedly committed what are clearly extraordinarily terrible crimes against individuals and our society at large. In most cases, these people were proven to be guilty of these crimes beyond a reasonable doubt.
In some cases, innocent people were wrongly convicted. There shouldn't be one. The appeal process for the death penalty is prohibitively expensive, and despite the supposed rigor of the process, men (and disproportionately black men may I add) who were murdered with our permission were found to be innocent afterward.
At the end of the day, the only people who benefit from the death penalty are the attorneys who drag out a process which serves to satisfy our most vile sensibilities. Even of those who are truly guilty, their crimes cannot be undone. The death penalty provides no additional justice that is not already provided for by the most severe conditions in American prisons today.
I would argue that the failure to ensure that everyone executed was really guilty is a far grosser injustice than allowing the guilty to live. The death penalty is wrong.
Something like 3% of our prison population is innocent. The death penalty is irreversible - at least a lifer who's exonerated can be freed and helped adjust into what little life he/she has left.
So yes, I'm gonna take the bleeding heart liberal stance here and say the death penalty should be abolished.
I think that calling yourself "sensible" makes a lot more reasonable than "bleeding heart liberal". Abolishing the death penalty shouldn't really be a controversial issue based on how fallible the process is.
Well, for one, it's vastly more expensive to put someone on death row than to keep them in prison for life, because the cost of the appeals process is so high.
Moreover, it should be prima facie abhorrent that an innocent citizen be wrongfully sentenced to death. It's objectively better that we not execute 1,000 prisoners to save the one wrongfully convicted one. It's not as if the alternative is letting them out on the streets again; those folks are staying behind bars for life.
There just isn't an ethical justification for sentencing someone to death. Do many criminals "deserve" it? Yes. Of course, that brings up the potential for a slippery slope whereby progressively less serious crimes become execution-worthy. But ignoring that, the purpose of the criminal justice system is, ostensibly, not revenge but rehabilitation. If rehabilitation is impossible than we shouldn't be using the courts as a way to extract a pound of flesh but to keep a criminal from preying on society. None of that requires the death penalty. The only argument for it is emotional, and that has little place in the justice system.
What about those specific examples I included in the OP about the guy who tortured, raped, and killed his two year old daughter? You think he will ever be rehabilitated? I dont think people who commit such evil acts can be "rehabilitated". He feels no mercy for what he did.
" Later, when he was in jail, Bourgeois laughed to a fellow inmate that “that f---ing baby's head got as big as a watermelon.”
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-5th-circuit/1369349.html
I think many criminals do deserve rehabilitation and a second chance. But what about this specific evil guy? I think he deserves death row
I said that not everyone can be rehabilitated. That is not equivalent to death. Lets settle something right off the bat; for you, or anyone else, whether or not this guy is killed or incarcerated for life is equivalent. Either way, he'll never hurt someone again, he's no danger to society. So really, the only reason you want him executed is because you think his crime is heinous enough to deserve death. And the problem with that should be immediately obvious; who decides what crimes are worthy of execution? It's completely up to the emotional makeup of a judge/jury, which in turn is dependent on social mores. I don't think it's necessary for me to point out the numberless historical and contemporary examples of societies which regularly enact sentences or judgments that we as 21st Century Americans find horrifying.
You can post whatever horrific details you want and it won't change the fundamental problem that your only leg to stand on here is that you think the crime committed deserves execution. And even aside from all the ethical issues there, what if the guy is innocent? In this case he may not be, but in the future it's possible that a person is wrongly convicted, and if you sentence him to death you remove any chance to rectify that mistake.
It's better than everyone in prison be as a bad as Joseph Goebbels and not be executed than that we execute one innocent, wrongly convicted person.
"In addition, Bourgeois constantly beat and otherwise assaulted JG. He punched her in the face with enough force to give her black eyes. He whipped her with an electrical cord, and he beat her with a belt so hard that it broke. Bourgeois hit JG in the head with a plastic baseball bat so many times that her head “was swollen like a football.” Later, when he was in jail, Bourgeois laughed to a fellow inmate that “that f---ing baby's head got as big as a watermelon.” There was also evidence that, before the Bourgeois family left LaPlace, Bourgeois had thrown JG against the wall of the master bedroom. He scratched and pulled her ears, bit her hands, feet, and forehead, and burned the bottom of her foot with a cigarette lighter. Bourgeois's wife, Robin, and others noticed that bruises and other injuries appeared on JG's body shortly after she came to stay with the Bourgeois family, and that, between the middle and end of May, JG's hands and feet had become extremely calloused and swollen. When others tried to clean the sores on JG's feet, Bourgeois would stop them and jam his dirty thumb into the wounds, then force JG to walk on her injured feet.
In addition to physically torturing JG, Bourgeois traumatized her emotionally. For example, on one occasion, Bourgeois decided that it was time for JG to learn how to swim, despite her tender years and fear of the water. Bourgeois picked up the two-year-old and tossed her several feet in the air and into a swimming pool. He allowed her to sink for several seconds before pulling her out, then repeated the “lesson” for thirty minutes while JG choked and gasped for air. Similarly, when the family visited a California beach on Bourgeois's long-haul trucking route, he forced JG into the ocean even though she was terrified of the water, holding her under the water and letting the waves roll over her. By the time they left the beach, JG had swallowed so much salt water that she had difficulty walking and was ill with a swollen stomach.
There was also evidence of sexual abuse. When the family was staying in LaPlace in May, Bourgeois slept in the master bedroom with JG and AB1994 behind a locked door, while Robin slept in a different bedroom. Late that month, a family friend noticed blood in JG's diaper and convinced Bourgeois and Robin to take JG to Louisiana Child Protective Services (“CPS”) for an evaluation. There, the examining physician concluded that the source of the blood was external irritation to JG's genitalia. Although the doctor determined that the cause of the injury was inconclusive, he noted that it could have been the result of vaginal trauma. The same doctor examined JG after her death and found a similar but more severe irritation to JG's genitalia, this time concluding that the irritation was likely caused by vaginal trauma. Furthermore, after JG's death, rectal swabs revealed the presence of semen."
Jesus Christ that makes me want to throw up
If legal I would say to kill them, slowly, as slow as possible.
Who should kill them then? Do you want to do it? Are you willing to stoop to the same level as these monsters?
Eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
For the death penalty if there is undeniable evidence of a heinous crime. Heinous to me would generally entail a premeditated homicide. Again, only if it is clear without a doubt.
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