Capital Punishment: The end of the death penalty

by sergeant3 • 11 years ago

40 47 11 years ago

Critics complain that the idea of “evolving standards” is a mere pretense to wrap personal preferences in a scarf of constitutional law. But more than half a century after the concept was coined, “evolving standards” is deeply woven into Supreme Court tradition. The Justices all know that the modern death penalty is a failure. When they finally decide to get rid of it, “evolving standards” is how they will do it.

Does anyone else oppose both capital punishment and the use of judicial fiat to bring about its abolition?

joshmoz• 11 years ago

Maybe, but it's hard to get me too worked up about this mechanism when the government has people lined up to be killed.

smallddemocrat2• 11 years ago

What other issues would you prefer be decided for us by unelected judges using nebulous legal doctrines hardly reconcilable with the document from which they supposedly derive, and further, how can you still consider yourself a supporter of democracy despite these thoroughly anti-democratic leanings?

Natsu3• 11 years ago

The problem is what, in the end, we do with them? The options are, roughly:

A) Kill them - The current choice. It's disfavored because it's final and we've made plenty of mistakes after doing it enough times. Also, it's more expensive than (B) because we try harder to make sure we've got the right person.

B) Life in prison - Possibly a compromise option, but there are some who say this is equivalent to (A), or possibly even worse. Prison itself is rather detrimental to people, after all.

C) Free them after some time. This is great for lesser crimes (which probably shouldn't result in prison to begin with). But for major ones, we're no longer protecting the rest of society from the murderers and rapists we have locked up. We hope they've been reformed, but prison really doesn't do that very well.

And what do we do with the prisoners who have no reasonable prospects of life on the outside any more? You can expunge a criminal record, sure, but you can't make up for 20+ years in prison and a lack of marketable job skills overnight.

It would be good if we had better avenues for reform.

anigbrowl2• 11 years ago

Somewhat. I'd much rather just amend the Constitution, but that's a slow and unreliable process. I do not see it as inevitable that the Supreme Court will just get rid of it. The Constitution specifically mentions capital crimes so it cannot be argued that the DP is inherently cruel and unusual or otherwise prohibited by the Constitution - sure some people try to make that argument, but like all people that try to cherry pick only the parts of the law that suit their argument, they're wrong. An amendment is the only way to go, and frankly we should be making more use of the amendment process instead of treating the Constitution like some religious artifact that's going to disintegrate if we alter it.

Retric2• 11 years ago

You can easily argue that 30 years on death row and 6 stays of execution is Cruel and unusual punishment.

Basicly, while in theory there is nothing inherently wrong with the death penalty our current system is broken.

sukilot3• 11 years ago

Cherrypicking parts of the law is the entire purpose and design of the USA judicial branch of government. When a situation is ambiguous or inconsistent , judges decide.

atap• 11 years ago

To be honest, I'd rather have the government kill me, in many situations.

scrollaway• 11 years ago

Note: If you have https everywhere, the article doesn't load because time.com's https setup is broken. (They're using a *.wordpress.com cert...)

lutorm• 11 years ago

I'm surprised the fact that numerous people on death row have been exonerated after decades in prison only warranted a sub-point.

pakled_engineer3• 11 years ago

In Canada it was argued that democratic consent of the death penalty means you personally would be prepared to act as executioner. Most voters said no, legalized murder of other adult citizens is ethically unacceptable whatever the conditions. If the death penalty was done like jury duty, where citizens were asked to take turns being executioners nobody except the deranged would agree to it.

Reminds me of various cables from the front sent to commanders of the 'Axis' where they lamented how soldiers were uncomfortable or downright refusing to execute prisoners so they abstracted the entire nasty work of organized state murder away to solve this problem. Replace human conscience with bland prison bureaucracy and systems structures. Everybody passes paper, nobody thinks they are ethically responsible.

mistermann2• 11 years ago

If the death penalty was done like jury duty, where citizens were asked to take turns being executioners nobody except the deranged would agree to it.

I don't know, if I had the details and felt confident that the person was indeed guilty, I don't think it would cause me much anguish to push the button. However, if I didn't agree with the jury's decision of guilt, forcing that person to do it would be extremely inhumane, it could ruin your life.

derefr• 11 years ago

That's an interesting thought. Imagine if you needed the same jury of twelve people who were present at the trial, to all push a button simultaneously in order to mete out whatever punishment they had decided was fair. (Anyone other than those twelve might be acting on bias or stereotype due to a lack of information about the case, after all.)

In fact, to go a bit further with this—imaging that ongoing punishment required getting this group of people back together at regular intervals and getting them all to push the button again. (For example, meting out a lifetime prison sentence one year, or one month, at a time.) It isn't meant to cause re-evaluation due to the meeting being a hassle, so maybe they could just do this online—but it should cause re-evaluation of whether each juror still feels as strongly about the person's sentence now as they did before.

One could even imagine a situation where any capitol punishment would be measured in QALYs, and then the jury each have to do that many man-years of confirming in order to apply the punishment. (Thus, applying a sentence of death to an eighteen-year-old would require decades of total work, or years per juror.) That seems about the right weight upon one's conscience. It would also mean you'd probably never be able to do jury duty more than once in your life.

gizmo686• 11 years ago

I don't like the arguement that if you are not willing to do or watch something that it should not be done. I, for example, do not want to inform people that their loved ones have died, but that does not mean that as a society we should not do it.

JesperRavn2• 11 years ago

Does Canada have an armed forces? Is everyone in it deranged?

pakled_engineer3• 11 years ago

Do you know what a court martial is? It's typically where you end up after executing prisoners.

beloch2• 11 years ago

"Most voters said no"

I'm curious about your argument. The death penalty was suspended, limited, limited again, and finally the last loopholes allowing it in special case were closed by the passing of more than one bill by parliament, none of which were referendums. Are you basing this on polls?

pakled_engineer3• 11 years ago

Basing it on representatives who campaigned with abolitionist policy who were elected like Pearson and Trudeau. Constituents also let their MPs know in the 1980s the attempt to reinstate executions wouldn't be tolerated so it failed to pass, of course back when representative democracy sort of worked and parties weren't just hawkish theatre like they are now.

viggity2• 11 years ago

I know I have an unpopular opinion, but I'm glad Clayton Lockett had a gruesome execution. He eventually died of a heart attack. He was convicted of rape, sodomy, kidnapping and murder. HE BURIED A 19 YEAR OLD GIRL ALIVE. Fuck him. I hope it hurt. I hope he was scared. I hope he is rotting in hell.

Every one of these god damn articles on the death penalty, THEY NEVER SPEND ANY FUCKING TIME TALKING ABOUT THE VICTIMS. They have a fancy chart for how 15,000 murders were executed. Do they have a fancy chart to count the victims? Do they have a fancy chart to show how many of the victims were raped before they were murdered? Do they have a chart to show how many victims cried out for their mother while being tortured? No, because you can't undermine the death penalty unless you turn the victims into faceless abstractions.

The last time Bill Richard saw his son alive was right after the boston marathon bombing. The bomb exploded and 8 year old Martin Richard was still alive but gravely wounded. Bill had to leave his EIGHT YEAR OLD SON TO DIE ALONE so he could rush his seriously wounded daughter to the hospital. Bill may have advocated against the death penalty for Tsarnaev, but no parent who has experienced that should be denied witnessing Tsarnaev's death if they so chose. It isn't about revenge, it is about justice.

mikeash2• 11 years ago

Executing a criminal does nothing for their victims. That's why the victims aren't usually mentioned.

Personally, I oppose the death penalty on practical grounds. It costs more than life in prison, it eliminates the possibility of reversing a false conviction, and it has no real advantage, so why do it?

viggity2• 11 years ago

putting them in prison doesn't do anything for the victim, maybe we should just let them go free, amirite?

it is about justice. not vengeance. not revenge. justice. if you burn my house to the ground, you go to prison, I sue you and take your property. that is just.

if you intentionally and with malice kidnap, rape, beat, shoot and then bury alive a 19 year old girl (like Clayton Lockett did). then you don't get to breathe the same air as the rest of us. you don't get to go outside, you don't get your prison tv. you get a needle and an unmarked grave. it is what is fair.

mistermann2• 11 years ago

I 100% agree with you. However, think about the cases where the person is not guilty, and they are railroaded (for whatever reason, I won't pretend to understand) into either a guilty plea or just a conviction, with not only no supporting evidence, but plentiful evidence that refutes the charge.

The "justice" system in the US and many other countries isn't even trying to be "right", they are just processing through people. If they were truly concerned about justice, we wouldn't have stories of people who can't afford lawyers sitting on death row for crimes there's no evidence they committed. It is just another example of theater.

csomar• 11 years ago

I don't see how killing to the killer do justice to the victim. (or his family).

mixmastamyk• 11 years ago

Good article, though I wasn't sure of his conclusion. He says they will be exhausted and give up, however will the justice-system be willing to give up the gravy-train of the death-penalty?

beloch2• 11 years ago

Just to put a slightly different spin on this... The U.S. penal system has a fundamental problem: it's for-profit nature. Prisons create money and jobs, which create lobby groups and, occasionally, bribes for crooked judges (e.g. the "Kids for Cash" scandal). The incentives for this system are all messed up. For example, a prison that effectively rehabilitates 100% of its inmates would get fewer repeat "clients".

If the death penalty offers no deterrence and costs more, instead of less, why is anyone still using it? It seems like something certain lobbyists would like, but which actually runs against the public interest.

Capital Punishment: The end of the death penalty

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