Discussion: The Death Penalty

[Thundercrack85]

Pff, Utah shooting people. Alabama is bringing back the electric chair. Top that, Mississippi.

 

[SV Fan]

Pff, Utah shooting people. Alabama is bringing back the electric chair. Top that, Mississippi.

To be honest I much rather take my chances with a firing squad then lethal injection(or electric chair) if I was given a choice of how I want to get the Death penalty

 

[Thundercrack85]

Why don't we just hang people?

How much does a rope cost?

 

[SV Fan]

Why don't we just hang people?

How much does a rope cost?

How about the guillotine

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Arizona Woman Cleared of Her Son's Murder After 22 Years on Death Row

On Monday, a judge formally dismissed the case against Debra Milke, who spent 22 years on death row after being convicted of conspiring to murder her 4-year-old son, The Associated Press reports. The case relied heavily on the work of a detective who has since been discredited. Prosecutors lost their final appeal last week.

"I just wanted to start off by saying I had absolutely nothing to do with the brutal murder of my son, Christoper," Milke said at a press conference on Tuesday. "I always believed this day would come I just didn't think it would take 25 years, 3 months and 14 days to rectify such a blatant miscarriage of justice."

Milke, 51, was convicted in 1990 of her son Christopher's December 1989 murder. From the AP:

Authorities say Milke dressed him in his favorite outfit and told him he was going to see Santa Claus at a mall in December 1989. He was then taken to the desert near Phoenix by two men, one of whom was Milke's roommate, and shot in the back of the head.​

Prosecutors alleged that Milke was after the insurance payout.

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Milke's conviction and death sentence in March 2013. "No civilized system of justice should have to depend on such flimsy evidence," the court wrote. She has been free on bond since then, wearing an electronic-monitoring ankle bracelet and awaiting the Arizona Supreme Court's decision on prosecutors' appeals to reinstate the charges.

Prosecutors did not disclose that the detective, Armando Saldate—who claimed that Milke had confessed to him—had a history of lying under oath. There was no witness to the confession and it was not recorded. "I believe he gave honest testimony," Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said in 2013.

The men with whom Milke was alleged to have conspired in her son's killing, James Styers and Roger Scott, are still on death row.

http://gawker.com/arizona-woman-cleared-of-her-sons-murder-after-22-years-1693465053

It's things like this that just go to show not everyone on Death Row actually deserves it though

 

[Destructus86]

It is probably less messy too. Or hanging could work. I remember the time a death row inmate that got morbidly obese on purpose to avoid being hanged cause his weight could cause him to get decapitated.

I understand a lot of people who are against the Death Penalty. But with the end of Jim Crow era laws and especially the rise of forensics the odd of a innocent person being executed is miniscule.

That's true.

Also...electric chair and chemical based death penalties cost tax payers way more than a bullet.

 

[herakles]

That's true.

Also...electric chair and chemical based death penalties cost tax payers way more than a bullet.

Yup! Also from what I understand only one of the shooters has the live round. The others have blanks so that the shooter doesn't know if he/she is the executioner.

 

[Thundercrack85]

No wonder Texas isn't a fan of it.

You'd have three bummed out would be executioners.

 

[herakles]

No wonder Texas isn't a fan of it.

You'd have three bummed out would be executioners.

LOL. I am sure that the shooters are not going to so excited about being an executioner.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Alabama Man Freed After 28 Years on Death Row

After being sentenced to death nearly three decades ago, Anthony Ray Hinton has been exonerated and was released on Friday. The Jefferson County district attorney's office moved to drop the case on Wednesday, after years of appeals that ultimately reached the United States Supreme Court.

Hinton was convicted of two separate shootings that left Birmingham fast-food workers John Davidson and Thomas Wayne Vason dead. The Associated Press reports that Hinton became a suspect after someone present at a third restaurant robbery identified Hinton in a photo lineup.

According to the AP, there was no evidence linking Hinton to the shooting other than bullets with markings that state experts said matched Hinton's mother's .38-caliber revolver—no fingerprints and no eyewitness testimony.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that Hinton's defense—his court-appointed lawyer mistakenly believed that he only had $1,000 to hire a ballistics expert—had been "constitutionally deficient," initiating a new trial and forcing prosecutors to review the evidence, the New York Times reports:

The only potential evidence that proves Mr. Hinton committed the murders “depends upon an absolute, conclusive determination that the bullets recovered from their bodies were in fact fired through the barrel of the firearm taken from the defendant’s home,” prosecutors wrote in their court filing on Wednesday.

After a new round of analysis, prosecutors wrote, state experts “found that they could not conclusively determine that any of the six bullets were or were not fired through the same firearm or that they were fired through the firearm recovered from the defendant’s home.”​

Hinton was released Friday after prosecutors dropped the case on Wednesday. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, he is the second American to be exonerated from death row in 2015, the 152nd since 1973, and the sixth in Alabama.

"When the very people that you have been taught to believe in—the police, the DA, these are the people that are supposed to stand for justice—and when you know they have lied to you, it's hard for you to have trust in anybody," Hinton told the Times as he left the Jefferson County jail in Birminghan on Friday.

"When you think you are high and might and you are above the law, you don't have to answer to nobody," Hinton said, according to the AP. "But I got news for them, everybody who played a part in sending me to death row: you will answer to God."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/04/alabama-death-row-anthony-ray-hilton

I can't even imagine being stuck in prison for that long

 

[herakles]

Alabama Man Freed After 28 Years on Death Row

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/04/alabama-death-row-anthony-ray-hilton

I can't even imagine being stuck in prison for that long

With the improvement of forensics and genetic testing you will see and increase of "innocent" people getting convicted and "guilty" people getting released from prison.

 

[JtoDaP]

I haven't read the 13 pages of insights before my post but here are my two cents:

I live in Holland and in Holland we dont have the death penalty but what we do have is a true life sentence. So no noncence like 30 years or something like that. I think its better thats somebody'who did a horrible crime "rots" in a cell than dies a easy death.

Besides that, death is irreversible, so if someone is wrongfully imprisoned and sentenced to death...well that would be a true shame. And In my country there have vbeen cases of inoccent people going to jail (sentenced to life!) and they where innocent. In other country's they would be sentenced to death eve!

 

[DarthSkywalker]

 

[InCali]

Yeah. To me, the 2 strongest arguments against the death penalty is that once you've implemented it, that's it. There's no going back. I don't care how rare it is that an innocent person is killed (that's a stupid argument IMO because killing "1" innocent person in the name of "getting" others will always be a bad trade). The second argument I would make is our legal system itself. It is so clearly biased and representation is so clearly unequal that the death penalty can't be fairly administered. IF everyone got a court appointed attorney, this argument would be somewhat mitigated (but not completely).

So, the death penalty comes down to this; let's implement a punishment that is unfairly doled out and one that we also can't amend.

 

[squeekness]

Yeah. To me, the 2 strongest arguments against the death penalty is that once you've implemented it, that's it. There's no going back. I don't care how rare it is that an innocent person is killed (that's a stupid argument IMO because killing "1" innocent person in the name of "getting" others will always be a bad trade). The second argument I would make is our legal system itself. It is so clearly biased and representation is so clearly unequal that the death penalty can't be fairly administered. IF everyone got a court appointed attorney, this argument would be somewhat mitigated (but not completely).

So, the death penalty comes down to this; let's implement a punishment that is unfairly doled out and one that we also can't amend.

My thoughts are the same. We are better off without it.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

I truly despise my country:

South Carolina moves closer to allowing death by firing squad

 

[squeekness]

I truly despise my country:

South Carolina moves closer to allowing death by firing squad

Yeah, this really surprised me. Who would volunteer to shoot?

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Yeah, this really surprised me. Who would volunteer to shoot?

Way too many people.

 

[Sithborg]

Yeah, this really surprised me. Who would volunteer to shoot?

Cops

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

Another article on the Ledell Lee case:

CNN Digital - He was executed for murder 4 years ago. Now someone else's DNA has been found on the murder weapon

 

[chamber-music]

Yeah, this really surprised me. Who would volunteer to shoot?

Sociopaths.

The death penalty is barbaric. True life imprisonment for the most horrific crimes is a more humane punishment.

State sanctioned murder is about vengeance, not justice.

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

Reuters - Florida to allow death penalty with 8-4 jury vote instead of unanimously

 

[InCali]

Yeah.....I probably couldn't really support the death penalty under any circumstances, but there are two reasons that, for sure, make it unreasonable. First, and foremost, it is applied unequally. If you don't have expensive representation, you are far more likely to get it. Secondly, it can't be taken back. Any rational person knows that innocent people have been executed. That's not acceptable under any circumstances.

 

[squeekness]

Yeah.....I probably couldn't really support the death penalty under any circumstances, but there are two reasons that, for sure, make it unreasonable. First, and foremost, it is applied unequally. If you don't have expensive representation, you are far more likely to get it. Secondly, it can't be taken back. Any rational person knows that innocent people have been executed. That's not acceptable under any circumstances.

I'm against it simply because innocent people have been unjustly executed. Better to just give life without parole.

 

[InCali]

I'm against it simply because innocent people have been unjustly executed. Better to just give life without parole.

Yeah. That makes it unacceptable, but even if you were 100% sure (not possible) that someone was guilty, the unequal application makes it de facto discriminatory.