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

Interesting point made in a Guardian article about this that about a third of people who have been exonerated through DNA evidence had either incriminated themselves or actually confessed to the crime they didn't commit.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/a-governor-threatens-to-execute-prisoners-out-of-spite/394949/

Under Eighth Amendment caselaw, Glossip is a hard case. But the legalities fell away when Justice Samuel Alito asked this question: “Is it appropriate for the judiciary to countenance what amounts to a guerilla war against the death penalty which consists of efforts to make it impossible for the States to obtain drugs that could be used to carry out capital punishment with little, if any, pain?”

Justice Antonin Scalia elaborated that the approved “drugs have been rendered unavailable by the abolitionist movement putting pressure on the companies that manufacture them so that the States cannot obtain those two other drugs. And now you want to come before the Court and say, well, this third drug is not 100 percent sure. ... [ T ]he abolitionists have rendered it impossible to get the 100 percent sure drugs, and you think we should not view that as—as relevant to the decision that—that you're putting before us?”

Scalia’s colloquy, along with Alito’s evident fury, was among the most bizarre I have ever seen in the Court chamber. Even The Washington Post’s George Will felt obliged to reprove his fellow conservatives: “The answers are: Public agitation against capital punishment is not relevant to judicial reasoning,” he wrote. “And it is not the judiciary’s business to worry that a ruling might seem to ‘countenance’ this or that social advocacy.” Ken Jost of Jost on Justice wrote that “Alito’s critique wrongly conjures up images of massive civil disobedience or direct action by death penalty opponents.” That hasn’t happened. In Jost’s column, University of Richmond Professor James Gibson (who has written a detailed article on the drug shortage) rejected the idea of “guerrilla warfare.” In an email, Gibson elaborated that the current shortage is “caused by political speech and foreign legislation.”

Under the First Amendment, criticizing the death penalty, even effectively, is as protected as, say, corporate electioneering expenditures. Judges have no right to expect “abolitionists” to be silent—as long as they remain within the law. And on that point, I can’t find a single documented case of threatening or harassing speech by “abolitionists.” In a 2012 brief, the Texas Department of Criminal Safety called the British non-profit Reprieve “authoritarian ideologues who menace and harass private citizens” and compared them to a Texas prison gang. The TDCJ warned that “Reprieve's unrestrained harassment will escalate into violence against a supplier.”

those authoritarian guerrillas, trying to force the state not to do what's right and kill people

tbf, using economic warfare to destabilise a foreign country's governance is something no true American cd tolerate

Had no idea the pharmaceutical industry was so susceptible to ground roots activism.

lol @ Nino calling death sentence opponents "abolitionists" as if this is a witty and deserved slur.

xp yeah when it's the having the drugs that kills and not the withholding of them

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/08/us/louisiana-prosecutor-becomes-blunt-spokesman-for-death-penalty.html?_r=0

these are the lunatics pushing death sentences

rachel aviv deserves a byline on that

her article was linked and yeah also we'll worth a read

@the_intercept
Clinton's vow to feel relieved when others finally win the fight against the death penalty isn't exactly courageous. http://interc.pt/1pBLjEN

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/07/the-death-penalty-and-the-liberal-constitutional-agenda

The fact that Bill Clinton’s two nominees — including Stephen Breyer, by far the squishiest liberal on the Court on civil liberties issues — have essentially come out for the position that the death penalty is categorically unconstitutional is another important signal. I’m not sure about Kagan, but I would be shocked if Sotomayor wouldn’t provide a fifth vote to rule the death penalty unconstitutional. If the Democrats can replace Scalia and Breyer and Ginsburg either remain on the court or are replaced by justices who share their views on the issue, it’s possible. Not inevitable by any means. But if public opinion continues to turn against the death penalty and the practice becomes increasingly rare outside of Texas — it’s possible. And at a minimum a Supreme Court with a Democratic majority is likely to place obstacles in front of the death penalty that might act to hasten its ultimate demise.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/10/us/dylann-roof-trial-charleston.html

Yet the verdict confers no certainty about whether Mr. Roof will ever be put to death at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. His case could spur years of appeals — the courts could well consider his mental competency and even the tearful tenor of the sentencing phase — and the scarcity of lethal injection drugs could hinder his execution.

The federal government has not killed one of its prisoners since 2003. Mr. Roof also faces a separate capital prosecution for murder in South Carolina, where no inmate has been put to death in more than five years. The state trial, initially set for Jan. 17, has been indefinitely postponed.

That it at times seemed more important to Mr. Roof to not be depicted as mentally ill than to avoid execution prompted some in the courtroom to question whether he simply preferred to die than to serve a long life in prison. His writings and confession offered evidence on both sides of that question, wavering between glimmers of hope — even that he might someday be pardoned — and an attraction to the prospects of martyrdom. But his commitment to his cause — the restoration of white power through violent subjugation — never publicly flagged.

“I have shed a tear of self pity for myself,” he wrote in 2015. “I feel pity that I had to do what I did in the first place. I feel pity that I had to give up my life because of a situation that should never have existed.”

If a defendant is intent on portraying himself as mentally competent, represents himself in court (as Roof did), and is convicted on that basis, why would there be any appeals in which his mental competency is brought back into question?

death penalty is always wrong

ah now

yeah fuck the death penalty

lads lads its an emotive topic and yr president pays ppl to piss on him and i know yere upset but cmon will ye not think of what yere saying

That it at times seemed more important to Mr. Roof to not be depicted as mentally ill than to avoid execution prompted some in the courtroom to question whether he simply preferred to die than to serve a long life in prison.

life in prison is cruel as well. maybe even crueler.

kevin otm

lol i just looked upthread and even the cast is the same probably no reason to put this play on again

heh i'm pretty sure i've posted that same post a few other times. it's still true!

i appreciated kev abd gbx itt iirc even tho they are wrong in it iirc

not about cruelty to me, about the probability of putting an innocent person to death (which undoubtedly has happened) plus giving the State the right to determine whether someone lives/dies.

and of course the myriad of other factors such as perpetrator's mental standing, environment, etc......

the pope is v disappointed in ye xp

that is not breaking news or hearts

moscow hotel maids are seeking the source of the leak but trump alreadys says he has been consistent about his belief in trickle down economics etc etc

ah feck wrong thread

Won't somebody think of the Rhodesians?

kevin otm

― Οὖτις

life in prison is cruel as well. maybe even crueler.

― Mordy

http://i.imgur.com/af0Ppe8.png

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/execution-list-2016

don't worry, most people who get murdered by the state get to enjoy a nice long prison sentence beforehand

must be a mare having to take all that time to work out whether somebody is sufficiently compos mentis to thoroughly appreciate their judicial murder or not

its not worth doing really i agree

I'd butcher a million death penalty proponents rather than allow one guilty man to be executed tbh

they should just take that racist murderer and shoot him before week end.

still not clear on why we have to spend a bunch of money and time on this lethal injection nonsense. We make it easy for shitheads like dylann roof to buy guns, why can't the state just execute him with one.

Really he should be murdered by another racist for the symmetrical justice to really work, shouldn't be too difficult to arrange

i think the us criminal justice system might even employ one already tbh

we should bring back the guillotine

Have so far resisted mentioning anti-capital punishment campigner Robespierre on this thread until right now.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/d5/a0/c3/d5a0c3466154200b02beb660ab369ee4.jpg

2017, time for a comeback.

im usually very anti-DP but yeah i stand w sarahell here

very anti death penalty except when I feel total disgust

lol at "usually anti-DP but" you frikkin squish

like dont worry guys we still believe that you dont like racist murderers even if you dont think its acceptable for the state to execute them

lol could give a shit what u believe

I thought you weren't American unless there's at least one person you'd happily see killed

it's not like a life in prison is some great benevolent violence-free solution

of course it isn't! the prison system is rotten and awful

i just think, imo, and you dont care what i believe, that accepting the death penalty for really bad ppl you dont like is, at best, a way of working through grief and railing against the horror of what the bad person did and the societal failings it represents, and, at worst, virtue signaling and a way of letting ppl know that you're willing to take a hardline on the right sort of bad things, lest they think you weak

the death penalty is bad and unacceptable, is what i'm saying here