The prisons are full

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I'm opposed to drug use but I have to agree with what's been said about ending this ridiculous war on drugs. The cops should be focussing on catching people who engage in violent crime or who through lack of self-control or consideration for their fellow citizens cause pain and suffering to those citizens (I am specifically referring to drunk drivers who kill decent people.)

For people who commit heinous crimes like murder and rape, I'm tired of them getting "nice" jail conditions. They need to suffer for what they have done, and there are so many cases where it is bloody obvious to anyone with half a brain that they are guilty. These people (the case Gnarff brought up about Paul Bernardo being a good example -- the videotapes he made are beyond damning evidence) they should be killed, ASAP, with extreme prejudice. After what he did to those little girls, it is a disgrace that my tax dollars go toward his care and feeding. I'd cheerfully pull the trigger/pull the trapdoor/perform the injection myself at his execution.

Release the peaceful potheads!

 

All I need is a pair of handcuffs, a crowbar, and for irony, a video camera...

Actually, how many drug users end up in jail, where Rehab might be able to help them? Break the addiction, then what resources they have can be used better int he future...

 

For the first time in U.S. history, more than one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison.

So it's not so much a reflection about an increase in crime but about harsher incarceration and sentencing policies. Where is the utility in that I wonder?

 

I disagree, it IS about an increase in crime. The real question is WHY is there such an increase.

 

Last I checked all the violent crime rates had fallen significantly from where they were a few decades ago. Hence that bit in Freakonomics about abortion lowering the homicide rate.

I haven't paid too much attention, so I suppose it's possible that the nonviolent offense rate was increasing in the same time period.

I direct your attention back to the War on Drugs. Yeah, yeah, I'm a broken record. But, y'know, it ain't self-interest; I've smoked me a bold a grand total of one time, and have no intention of doing anything harder. Ever.

 

We need to put in an express lane for the death penality. No more appeals you had your already.
Also we need to work on rehapiliting criminals back into society. If we keep treating them like animals thats all they will ever be. We need to change the way they think.

 

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0504-09.htm

 

Still, they were found guilty in court. They have an implied contract with the state. We are obligated to obide by the laws. Does the obligation count for an unjust conviction? Law and Morality are not identical.

Overall, I still say an express lane to the death penalty would be better. Background checks would account if it really is someone who really did just fall in with the wrong crowd would account for a lesser sentence. But this really doesn't apply for the death penalty.

What is death? We all are going to die sooner or later. What is Justice? Can you really be so sure they didn't deserve it? The law must be upheld over personal greavences.

 

Vhailor, something about what you said struck a chord with me, so I may be a tad more personal than usual. Death, whatever it may be, is not something to take lightly. To release an unjustly convicted prisoner is a matter of paperwork. To restore an unjustly killed one is a matter of divine intervention - and for good or ill, God does not often intervene in the judicial process. So until we find a way to restore people from death, I'd say go easy on ordering it. We only have one life, and there's no greater insult - or injury - than to waste yours or someone else's.

As for justice, as humans we seldom know all there is to know about an act or a person. We are imperfect, and so is any judgement we may pass - and we should have that in mind when dispensing it. I don't have any sympathy for mass murderers or rapists - but I cringe every time that I hear that someone who's been executed turns out to have been innocent. Hell, some of them were probably sentenced by well-meaning judges who actually believed they were doing the right thing - but lack of knowledge, mistake in judgement and/or lawyers' skill (or lack thereof) led to the person being convicted. I'm not quite sure how much it would cost me, but saving a man's life is supposed to be worth something, damn it.

Certainly, and thankfully, such cases are rare in many countries - but that doesn't mean I should be okay with it.

 

First of all, the death penalty is not necessary for the rule of law. Second, you quite clearly advocated taking the right to appeal, a right expressly guaranteed by our constitution, away from death row inmates. This isn't just wrong. It's stupid.

You didn't just say that, did you? You aren't seriously trying to defend the death penalty by arguing that, while some innocents may be put to death, that isn't a problem because they may still have deserved it? Wait...no, it looks like you did. Dude, there are a few reasonable arguments that can be made in favor of the death penalty. This is not one of them.

 

I meant limiting the number of apeals. Which if you read closely I said.
Are you against the death penalty in general?

I wasn't defending the death penalty. What I was getting at was the law shouldn't be changed because some "innocent" was put to death. It is regreatable but the justice system isn't perfect.

 

Death row inmates are allowed just as many appeals as any other prisoner. No more, and no less. Limiting their appeals would mean giving them less rights than every other inmate. The difference you are seeing in frequency of appeals is simply that death row inmates are far more likely (and , in some states, even required) to actually use their appeals than the general prison population. This is probably because if they don't appeal, they will die. A man who was fairly sentenced to life in prison is a lot less likely to appeal than a man who was sentenced to death.

Yes, although I can respect reasonable arguments made in its defense. Your argument was not reasonable.

Rather coincidentally, I wasn't making a case against the death penalty. I was making a case for not taking away their appeals. Think about it, had the appeals process lasted just a little longer, Cameron Todd Willingham would likely be a free man today instead of dead, dead, dead for a crime he didn't commit.

 

So, you didn't answer my question. What is Justice?
socrates anyone?

Put your self in their shoes would you want the death penalty?
And don't go taking the "swan dive" if you don't get it.

 

Ah, Vhailor, do you have any idea how many people would have to be executed to meaningfully reduce the prison population in either the US or UK?

 

No, but I'm sure they aren't the most upstanding members of society having got the death penalty. How many people? I'm not saying kill everyone, rehabilate whom you can. Are you saying you would perfer life imprisionment?

 

I propose that all convicts get one free. Anything beyond that, they must provide new evidence to warrant re-opening the case.

Hence EVERY convice gets ONE free appeal. It would have no bearing what the sentence was or what the crime was. This dragging out the execution for 20 years from cinviction to execution is cruel and unusual punishment...

How about anyone that has no realistic chance to be released from prison? What's the difference between life with no parole and death? Assume that the convict was guilty and the conviction was fair.

 

Vhailor,
in my country we differentiate between a revision and an appeal. The Anglos lump it all together in the term appeal. An appeal addresses procedural mistakes, in criminal cases mainly violations of the accused's rights, that have been made. No new evidence is allowed. What's the point here? In criminal law procedural rights are not about coddling criminals but about protecting the innocent - this can hardly be stressed enough.
Revisions mean that the trial has been so severely flawed that it has to be re-opened. New evidence is permissible. You see that rarely.

People who have been sentenced to the death penalty are supposed to have less or different rights than other criminals? What is jail time about then? Drew makes an excellent point

Your 'express lane' sets a double standard for criminals, that cannot be justified on ground of facts. The distinction is essentially arbitrary.

An 'express lane' rule would have an absurd consequence: It would mean that the severity of the accusation to an accused even before trial already determines the rights an accused will have after a verdict, with the perverse result that the more severe the consequences, with the death penalty being the ultimate consequence, the less possibilities there will be for appeal - while a person accused/ convicted of lesser crimes would have the full quiver at his disposal even though he might only face a few years in jail and has much less at stake. That doesn't reflect the supreme value attributed to life and individual freedom in western societies and their constitutions, including the US.

As for flawed, think of an inexperienced, hostile or drunken judge, an incompetent or sleeping attorney, a hostile jury, a hostile or self interested prosecutor (keen on building a portfolio of death penalty convictions to demonstrate him being 'tough on crime' for a later political career). Think of incompetent evidence assessment by experts, mistranslation of evidence or testimony, coerced confessions, sloppy or crooked cops, lying witnesses. All this is not the norm, but it happens. What I aim on is this: If the process that found them guilty has been flawed, how much worth is the verdict? Considering the demonstrated reality of faulty convictions we are speaking of 'guilty beyond reasonable doubt', guilty in a legal sense. Is a verdict, in a positivist sense, by default, just for being a verdict - no matter how flawed - reason enough to be executed? If that is the legal idea behind the 'express lane' America is moving on thin ice.

If you want to streamline appeals, then do it for everyone, and take care that after that effective legal protection still exists. As I see it, a guy who is proven innocent, say by the Innocence Project, and is executed anyway proves that legal protection as afforded by the law is ineffective. The system fails. In face of this I doubt that speeding up executions will help, to the contrary. The question you must ask yourself is if you want to be caught with such a prospect in this legal system as an innocent. Do you think it's better to sentence (and perhaps execute) a hundred innocents than let one guilty man go free? Or is ten innocents and one guilty more to your taste? Or one innocent for one guilty man? Because this is what limiting appeals is about.

I think that just pressing them to be executed to generate a desired deterrent effect (that appears to be more of an article of faith than rooted in reality) and 'serve justice', free up space in jails, reduce costs, or to drive down a political point of how 'tough' you are 'on crime', makes the innocents as much as the guilty a mere object of 'justice', and I find that very cynical. I put those words in quotation marks because I'm distrustful of language. To use such considerations to speed up executions is in irreconcilable conflict with the idea of criminal law per se - to judge offenders based on their individual guilt.
Also, there is and ought to be one set of rules for them all. If you don't think the legal system works, fix the system by generating 'justice for all', and without special and essentially arbitrary rules for special people. Imo the idea of an 'express lane' is a political stunt, it has nothing to do with justice. I say that because such an express lane rules would be, ignoring the issue of the death penalty, unconstitutional in Germany because it at the very least would violate the right for equal treatment under the law.

Do not mix up what you think they putatively deserve and what their real rights are. Especially ponder about what the purpose of their rights is.

 

I think Ragusa's objections to Vhailor's 'express lane' suggestion were well put and need no additional support from me. Well said.

That, in the former, someone gets to live. If, like myself, one does not believe in an afterlife then the continuation of life gets a very high priority. Of course, if they are guilty as you say, then I can see quite a powerful argument for the death penalty in certain circumstances.

I don't see how you think that translates to a justification of ending life prematurely. Just because something is inevitable, does not mean that it should take place immediately.

Be careful here, Vhailor. The force of the social contract argument is highly debatable. I am yet to see a contract theory (be it actual, tacit or hypothetical) that is not flawed in some way(s).

You mean that you believe the law should not be changed, even if it is proven to unjustly convict innocent people? Surely the whole purpose of the law is to ensure justice is carried out?

Secondly, you appear to be claiming that the justice system is not only imperfect, but that we should not be attempting to perfect it. Even if true perfection is unattainable (a belief about perfection that I hold in general), it does not follow that striving for it is unjustified. Care to explain how you feel that you are avoiding the perfectionist fallacy?

Socrates as portrayed in various dialogues was hardly without his flaws. If you are referring to his decision to take poison on command of the state, then there is a large difference between his act and the current debate. Quite simply: he chose to die when he had the chance to live. People convicted to death row are not really choosing to die- I can't imagine that most of them really desire to die. You cannot even argue that they chose to die by commiting the crime; we have already seen that innocent people can be convicted (something that you seem to be saying should be regarded as an unavoidable consequence of the law). Personal choice is a large factor here.

In who's shoes?

In the convicted's shoes? In that case, no I would not be particuarly approving of the death penalty.

In the shoes of the victim's family (as I assume the victim himself/herself would not be alive at this point)? Again, while I obviously cannot be entirely certain what I would feel in a situation I have never been in before, I do not believe that I would be in favour of the death penalty. Even then.

Even the innocents who get wrongly executed? Do not forget that it is not just the guilty who can run afoul of the law.

 

You are aware that, while all inmates are allowed to file an appeal with a higher court, the appellate court isn't actually obliged to hear it, right? If the appeal gets heard, it is because the convict actually has a case.

Why should I assume this? Not all of the convicts will be guilty. Not all of their convictions will be fair. Aside from the fact that re-sentencing inmates who were already fairly sentenced once would be double jeopardy, which is banned under our constitution...

 

Gnarff,

If you do that, and derive from your considerations a rule, it will be unfair to those who are not guilty and who weren't convicted in a fair trial. They would have to face the same rules as those who are guilty and whose conviction was fair.

This approach must, inevitably, lead to excess. Under such a paradigm you'd have trials under the assumption of guilt. You don't ever want that. To give you a taste how that looks and sounds like ...

As a result of that insight there are procedural rights of an accused that someone who's guilty perhaps doesn't deserve, but that an innocent desperately needs.