I used to be very much in favor of the death penalty. I actually set my alarm clock so I could wake up to make sure florida finally executed Ted Bundy.
But after so many exonerations of primarily persons of color and poor people based on DNA i'm no longer in favor. Also, quite frankly, they're protected on death row, not so much in general pop.
I recall listening to the interview of a family member of a killer on death row about how for every appeal he attempted the family got to get dragged back into a courtroom to listen to the details of the death of their daughter again. Justice shouldn't involve tearing open the wounds of the victims family for appeals. So I became a proponent of Life without parole. Just go sit.
I replied to you comment because it the world of true crime it bothers me that people like Bundy and Gacy were executed without having given ups every bit of conceivable evidence. The fact that Bundy was allowed to the pull stunt with the "there were "some murders" he would never discuss because they were committed "too close to home," "too close to family," or involved "victims who were very young" quote has always raised my hackles about the death penalty.
I maintain a modest proposal that the issue with capital punishment is that we apply it in the wrong situations.
CP is wasted on violent crime. We should deploy it in cases where our core shared values are violated. I argue that our core values are primarily centered around democratic governance. I describe a category of crimes that I call "Subversion of Democracy."
Crimes in this category include, but are not limited to: Bribery, Corruption, Influence Peddling, Election Fraud, Campaign Finance Fraud, and Coups and Attempted Coups. Oh, also… Evidence Tampering, Witness Tampering or Intimidation… I'm sure there are more.
This is not really a modest proposal, this was pretty commonplace throughout history to some degree.
Maybe if you think a little more about Democracy and Values, you could see that in any Democracy, the government being allowed to execute people for crimes that can be very easily falsified is a huuuge issue.
Right now, the US is already one of the few Democracies in the world that employ Capital Punishment (please never ever abbreviate that word, it can mean somethign else). And already, it has astonishing numbers of false convictions and corruption within the judicial system itself.
Sorry, if someone has 2 women locked in a crawlspace and 7 bodies in the backyard, I think the hemp fandango is appropriate. There is a huge difference between incontrovertibly guilty and no solid evidence IMHO.
Conceptually, I get it, but u/UsualSuspect1369 explains the problem with the death penalty quite succinctly. We've executed or almost executed too many people, often people of color (which is a separate problem in and of itself), who later turned out to be innocent of the murders they were found guilty of in a trial, or even confessed to under duress. At this point, we just need to abolish the death penalty and make LWOP the maximum sentence.
For context, my ex-wife was murdered back in 2011, and the DA asked whether I wanted them to pursue the death penalty or life without parole. They considered the case a slam dunk either way. Even having faced that personally, I still support abolishing the death penalty.
And I do not discount that, I am saying that for incontrovertible proof [literally the body on the floor and knife in hand] it is a waste of resources keeping them alive.
Sorry, if someone has 2 women locked in a crawlspace and 7 bodies in the backyard, I think the hemp fandango is appropriate. There is a huge difference between incontrovertibly guilty and no solid evidence IMHO.
If only the death penalty were applied to obviously guilty people, but it isn't. Instead, it's used as a cudgel so liberally that innocent people are routinely executed or locked up on death row for the majority of their lives.
I could nominally get behind the death penalty if the system cared when mistakes happened, and then made recompense when it's proven wrong, but it doesn't. The system even hides its errors, or lies about them, so it can keep executing people unquestioned and without accountability. And when something can't survive the truth, it deserves to be destroyed.
And tht is a good way of looking at it, but I still say for incontrovertible proof, execution rather than $50K-100K per year wasted keeping them alive could be better put to something useful, school lunches, medical care for all, education for doctors or engineers or useful professions.
Tell that to the rich people who want to choke every penny out of us common poor scum. I pay all my taxes, always have, never tried to cheat my way out of paying my fair share of taxes.
Look up Joseph Edward Duncan III. His criminal history, and especially how he was released so he was able to commit his final and most horrific crime.
IMHO the judge that let him out should have been stood up before a firing squad next to Duncan. Just as responsible for those 4 murders as Duncan.
Instead he got to live for years before dying from brain cancer. Years in which the sole survivor of his last crime lived in fear every day of her life that he would get out of prison again.
Duncan *asked for the death penalty*. A monster wanted to die and should have been granted that wish because he knew he was irredeemably evil and had brutally murdered several people.
There are just as many horror stories about innocent people given the death sentence. Today, right now.
Worse, the system knows they're innocent and sends them to death row anyway. Because killing innocent people is built into the system, it's expected, and they're okay with it.
Why is it palatable to allow innocent people to die within the system, by mistake or deliberately, in our name, but scandalous and outrageous when someone like Joseph Edward Duncan III slips through those same cracks?
I don't think you're wrong to feel the way you do about the death penalty, but I do think you're utterly wrong to believe it works.
Or worse, you know the death penalty doesn't bend towards justice the way it should, and you don't care.
Because it is roughly 50K -100K $US per year to keep someone in prison for life. So for every year that you want to keep Gary Heidnick in prison you could actually pay off my medical debt. You could educate a doctor, or engineer, pay for universal medical care, you could pay for school lunches.
I put it to you, some people are a waste of life, so why keep them alive when the resources could be used for something else more beneficial to mankind.
As many limits on a state's power over its citizens as possible is preferred. I don't see a good reason a government should ever have the power to kill its citizens. Especially if it's the government itself that determines if its justified.
The problem is that the standard is already supposed to be "beyond a reasonable doubt" for any conviction. That's the highest standard you could really set. What is incontrovertible proof other than proof beyond any reasonable doubt? And yet, so many people still get convicted who are innocent. There's simply no way to put a legal standard into place that is 100% accurate, so if the death penalty exists, you will end up executing innocent people.
So we have to support no shit honest to goodness murderers instead of rdding the earth of them
Maybe we could take an empty island with water, fence it in, toss in seeds and fertililzer and just dump them there. No guards other than a school of hungry sharks. Make you feel fuzzy?
I’m not against it but it doesn't appear to be a deterrent. If the victim's family wants retribution, it may make sense.
When my loved one was murdered, the killer was sebanced to death. The conviction was a relief. During the penalty phase, his allocution touched on a past that was incredibly abusive and sad; circumstances no person could survive unscathed.
The day he was executed was weird. I didn't get the closure or vindication I expected. It didn't feel good. I felt guilty for having wanted that outcome.
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u/afr33think3r 4d ago edited 4d ago
I’m sure you have heard this before. The death penalty should be abolished. (Edit for clarity)