Capital Punishment: Should the Death Penalty Still Exist In A 'Civilised Society'?

I didn't really want to jump in here, but to respond to an earlier comment, yes, there are certainly cases in which survivors have specifically not wanted the death penalty but it has been imposed anyway. A friend of mine was murdered many years ago (I was, and still am, against the death penalty) and her parents wanted life in prison, because she wouldn't have wanted death. But he will be put to death at some point.

good thread

still a-ok with it obv

the absolute evil of capital punishment is one of the strongest moral certainties i have tbh

convictions, maybe that's a better word than certainties

Im ok with disagreeing about it, serious about it being a good thread. gbx and kev killin it (tho 'monster' or 'hurting ur a grown ass lawyer' comments seem incongruous enough to me tbh)

i do think it's one of those arguments where qualifications are disingenuous - "i would be okay with it if" - to me it's not an action allowing that kind of hedging. prove to me it has a deterrent effect, outline a system that cannot possible execute the innocent, i wd still say capital punishment is wholly evil.

otm, the only reason to mention those 2 conditions is because they are so plainly not the case & never will be, it's good to whittle these things down till ultimately there are few cogent reasons for being pro beyond just being into it, you know, for the yuks or whatever

God bless the goddamned Onion:

The heated debate over capital punishment has been reignited after the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma, in which the inmate suffered what has been described as a tortured death at the hands of the state, having succumbed to a heart attack 43 minutes after an untested combination of drugs was injected into his bloodstream. Here are the leading arguments for and against the death penalty:

FOR

Every now and then you get a guilty one
Last meals often inmates’ only chance to have king crab legs
Hammurabi’s Code has never steered civilization wrong before
Deterrent effect on those considering snapping and killing family in blind rage
Your constituency is pretty gung ho about it
Bestows much-needed closure for executioners

AGAINST

Better for prisoner to be fully rehabilitated over course of seven consecutive life sentences
We don’t get to watch
Prevents brutal rapists and murderers from being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment
Wasn’t a huge fan of victim
Squanders tax dollars that could be better used to build larger, scarier prisons
Prosecuting attorney already living with guilt of knowing he falsely imprisoned someone

these thoughts are maybe muddy so do not read them in too priestlike a voice, but: "i wanna kill that motherfucker" != "this person should die". the state is not just a rly big human. if you, a human being, personally murder your daughter's rapist (or hire someone to do it), in the knowledge that you are committing murder in the eyes of the state and of god, i will probably still be your friend. to have the mechanism of the state, in its supposed impartiality and overriding concern for justice, decree that your daughter's rapist does not deserve his life--that he has forfeited his sanctity as a human being, objectively, not just in the damaged hearts of those he's hurt--and go on to ceremonially confiscate it in solemn self-righteousness is not the same thing. one is a moral transgression made because the heart can only take so much. the other is an elevation of revenge to the status of a principle. now, probably almost every society since the dawn of time has performed such an elevation, so it's still a personal question, obv, as to whether you think it's valid. but it's not only not the same as wanting to kill someone; it's not the same as killing someone.

― difficult listening hour, Thursday, May 1, 2014 1:57 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a very good post imo

fwiw, I have been thinking lately a lot about death as the ultimate taboo in liberal societies, whereas it is not the ultimate taboo in all cultures. I think the fact that it is the ultimate taboo is probably a good thing, it's just something I've been wondering about. I think it's the same reason most liberal-minded people here probably don't support violent struggle in all but the most desperate contexts (if that), because it will inevitably involve killing people. Again, just thinking about this in a pretty abstracted way, not considering killing anyone/starting a violent uprising/calling for executions anytime in the foreseeable future. There's a lefty internet discussion group I read sometimes where people often half-jokingly call for the guillotine. I wonder sometimes whether they really believe it. I also wonder why attitudes about this have shifted so much since, say, the French revolution, or even the Cold War years. Anyway, this is meandery but what I'm saying is that my posts ITT are mostly just lonely guy thinking baout things. I like to reevaluate my moral feelings once in a while.

Any violent revolution is not going to change things, it's only going to place new bullies in charge. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is not a good guy with a gun (to begin with, there is not an "only thing", what are we, predictable machines?). In the end, there is a binary choice between life and death. If you are choosing death, you are the same as the murderer you claim to be better than. The choice to inflict violence on another human is an anti-human choice.

Any violent revolution is not going to change things, it's only going to place new bullies in charge.

Right, this seems to have become the widely prevailing view some time in, idk, the last 30-40 years? Less?

I don't really think it's a popular view (it's probably the opposite: 2nd amendment paranoia, "we should just hang the bankers in the town square" talk on both the left and right). I don't think it's a popular view at all, frankly, otherwise you would see far less support for capital punishment.

Gandhi was talking about nonviolence 80 years ago.

i don't believe that violence if absolutely tactically necessary to displace an oppressive regime is in the same ethical playground as state execution of captives

"the jeff penalty" About 691 results (0.33 seconds)

"the beth penalty" About 827 results (0.32 seconds)

No results found for "the steph penalty".

"the deaf penalty" About 30,000 results (0.49 seconds)

these thoughts are maybe muddy so do not read them in too priestlike a voice, but: "i wanna kill that motherfucker" != "this person should die". the state is not just a rly big human. if you, a human being, personally murder your daughter's rapist (or hire someone to do it), in the knowledge that you are committing murder in the eyes of the state and of god, i will probably still be your friend. to have the mechanism of the state, in its supposed impartiality and overriding concern for justice, decree that your daughter's rapist does not deserve his life--that he has forfeited his sanctity as a human being, objectively, not just in the damaged hearts of those he's hurt--and go on to ceremonially confiscate it in solemn self-righteousness is not the same thing. one is a moral transgression made because the heart can only take so much. the other is an elevation of revenge to the status of a principle. now, probably almost every society since the dawn of time has performed such an elevation, so it's still a personal question, obv, as to whether you think it's valid. but it's not only not the same as wanting to kill someone; it's not the same as killing someone.

― difficult listening hour, Thursday, May 1, 2014 1:57 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a very good post imo

otm

i still remember being kind of shocked when i first realized that america was still regularly executing people, even as a kid it seemed like one of those horrible medieval practices that no decent person would ever advocate for anymore. what struck me as particularly awful, actually, was the fact that it was left up to the states, so you could commit a crime and die for it in one state but not in another. which still strikes me as one of the more fucked-up outcomes of federalism.

but even if you somehow accept that the state should be empowered to kill prisoners (which i don't), it's beyond me how anyone can look at the number of cases where the state's actually executed people who later turned out to be innocent and still support the death penalty.

the only plausible case i've ever heard for the death penalty is for major war criminals -- e.g., i doubt i'd have been against israel executing eichmann. but obv that's really never been enforced in any coherent way, and prob never will be.

violent revolution is tempting to support because the idea that it is always wholly evil and can never do anything but make things worse is a sanctimony power loves invoking while it hides its own constant pervasive violence inside the law or the market (the difference between pirates and the royal navy is that one does violence to capital and the other does violence for it, and only the first is Evil, etc.) and in the orgy of increasingly wicked self-congratulation following the end of the cold war the idea that bolshevism was poisoned from the beginning by violence, as if capitalism is not, can def drive a lefty to extravagant remarks abt the cleansing power of the guillotine; as can bromides about the power of "protest" and (my favorite -- change the world with your consumption patterns) boycotts. but nonviolence as practiced by gandhi or mlk was hardly some compromise with power: it was so disruptive and terrifying both of them were assassinated. (admittedly not by Power itself, but, i think, by representatives of its way of seeing.) in every respect except the physical nonviolence was incredibly violent. i don't think its power has been exhausted. but it's also as difficult and dangerous as an actual war, because what it does is force power to make its implicit violence explicit. (which power always will, because at that point the next step backwards takes it off the cliff.) this is why foreclosure resistance--which almost always ends in the bank and its police committing violence; which unmasks--seems to me like one of the best tactics we've got right now, the most analogous to the sit-ins. meanwhile, those iraq war protesters who allowed themselves to be corralled into "free speech zones"--who didn't force the state to beat them, even to kill them--actually did damage to the cause, imo: they allowed the state to display its mask of reasonable tolerance while giving up nothing. (i don't mean to sneer at these people, who at least did more than i did, but still i think this is true.) SO i think what needs to be rediscovered en masse after the defeat+complacency of the last few decades isn't violence but real dedicated non-ornamental violence-provoking nonviolence. this is all kind of a derail tho sorry.

jd (and hurting earlier) otm that the death penalty issue suddenly becomes way easier when you leave yr study.

can def drive a lefty to extravagant remarks abt the cleansing power of the guillotine

wait what

There's a lefty internet discussion group I read sometimes where people often half-jokingly call for the guillotine. I wonder sometimes whether they really believe it.

I changed from being a liberal who had no problem with the death penalty to one who opposes it but thinks we endow our states with many powers, some of which have to do with life, death, and taxes so I don't worry much about whether the state can take a life. But states don't work either, and fucking Florida doesn't work either. Did you know we haven't executed one white for the murder of a black man? No one, zero? A state that allows white men with expensive lawyers to get off on life with or w/out parole and a black man to die for the same crime and for not being able to afford Johnnie Cochran is a diseased one.

how about revisiting whether the state can take a life then

He said he opposes the death penalty. You want him to revisit that?

I want him and everyone else on this thread to revisit the idea that the state can take a life

We are all visiting that idea atm, by virtue of participating in this thread.

are we? or are some of us just blowing off steam

are we?

yes. even you, in your own way.

I don't think the state should take lives and I think we, as a nation, should study *why* people commit crimes, go to jail, and then work within communities to give people more opportunities. the way we treat prisoners is a fucking crime as well. solitary is inhumane and life without parole almost as bad. if people can't be rehabilitated they shouldn't be released into society but they shouldn't spend the rest of their lives in a shithole prison.

waterface out

more opportunities=invest more in schools, businesses, apprenticeships, after school programs, pre-k. all that shit

oh yeah college should be free or at least there should be no interest loans from the feds

problem is so many Americans believe in "evil". no need to study why people commit crimes...it's cause of the Devil duh.

I don't think the state should take lives

I fully agree.

we, as a nation, should study *why* people commit crimes

I think experts know a fair bit about that already. The trick is using that information in a way our society will readily accept and submit itself to. Ordinary people are likely to feel more comfortable sticking with the present system than embarking on a huge transformation of society. They would anticipate too many unknowable and unforeseeable consequences to that approach.

One rather odd (and probably insanely unpopular) idea I had was: what if the police force was supplied by a popular draft? Has this ever been tried anywhere?

Western towns used to form vigilance committees, aka vigilantes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

exactly

i didn't know last meals had a $15 limit, thats stupid

As with all things capital punishment, it varies from state to state.

oklahoma is stupid

there should be a legal pathway for the state to take lives (like say in an epidemic situation) but never for punishment's sake.

or if you're caught, say, listening to post-2004 Interpol.

zzzzzzzzzz ing?

Seriously though it's no wonder our prisons are so bad if people in America think so little of prisoners that the idea of them suffering sexual abuse is seen as funny. Attitudes need to change.

― très hip (Treeship), Wednesday, April 30, 2014 10:03 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a lot of smart, somewhat admirable people will not hesitate to make prison rape jokes. which is really appalling IMO.

Apparently and unbelievably, this Oklahoma story gets worse:

Early on the morning of Clayton D. Lockett’s scheduled execution, he defied prison officers seeking to shackle him for the required walk to get X-rays. So they shocked him with a Taser, Oklahoma’s chief of corrections stated in an account released Thursday of Mr. Lockett’s final day, before his execution went awry.

Once Mr. Lockett was in an examining room, the staff discovered that he had slashed his own arm; a physician assistant determined that sutures would not be needed.

Finding a suitable vein and placing an IV line took 51 minutes. A medical technician searched both of his arms, both of his legs and both of his feet for a vein into which to insert the needle, but “no viable point of entry was located,” reported the corrections chief, Robert Patton, in a letter to Gov. Mary Fallin that her office released. A doctor, the letter said, “went to the groin area.”

A catheter was inserted into Mr. Lockett’s groin, and officials placed a sheet over him for privacy. The account did not make clear who inserted the catheter.

. . . With something clearly going terribly wrong, the doctor “checked the IV and reported that the blood vein had collapsed, and the drugs had either absorbed into the tissue, leaked out or both,” Mr. Patton wrote.

The warden called Mr. Patton, who asked, “Have enough drugs been administered to cause death?” The doctor answered no.

“Is another vein available, and if so, are there enough drugs remaining?” The doctor responded no again. Mr. Patton then asked about Mr. Lockett’s condition; the warden said that the doctor “found a faint heartbeat” and that Mr. Lockett was unconscious.

At 6:56, Mr. Patton called off the execution. Ten minutes later, at 7:06, “Doctor pronounced Offender Lockett dead,” the letter states.

Legal experts on the death penalty said they were surprised, and even shocked, by several things revealed in the new letter. “I’ve never heard of a case of an inmate being Tasered before being executed,” said Deborah Denno, an expert on execution at Fordham Law School and a death penalty opponent.

David Dow, a death penalty appellate lawyer in Texas, said that prisoners sometimes resist leaving their cells, but that “it’s not something that happens regularly.” He expressed surprise that the medical staff administering the drugs did not have a second vein ready in case of problems with the first. “For a state that executes people,” he said, “they are awfully bad at it.”

. . . Anesthesiologists said that while they sometimes use a femoral vein accessible from the groin when those in the arms and legs are not accessible, the procedure is more complicated and potentially painful.

Putting a line in the groin “is a highly invasive and complex procedure which requires extensive experience, training and credentialing,” said Dr. Mark Heath, an anesthesiologist at Columbia University. Oklahoma does not reveal the personnel involved in executions.

“There are a number of ways of checking whether a central line is properly placed in a vein, and had those been done they ought to have known ahead of time that the catheter was improperly positioned,” Dr. Heath said.

Dr. Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist at the Emory University School of Medicine, said that the prison’s initial account that the vein had collapsed or blown was almost certainly incorrect.

“The femoral vein is a big vessel,” Dr. Zivot said. Finding the vein, however, can be tricky. The vein is not visible from the surface, and is near a major artery and nerves. “You can’t feel it, you can’t see it,” he said.

Jesus fucking Christ, that's horrific.

The femoral vein is right underneath the femoral artery at the spot where the femoral pulse is taken. The femoral pulse is very strong but very deeply buried--I sometimes ended up with half a hand buried in the groin, even with relatively skinny people. I couldn't imagine having to stick an IV in there.