Comments?
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Posted on 05/29/2003 4:59:23 PM PDT by rdb3
by _NONE
[posted online on December 18, 2002]
1. It is morally reprehensible to take a life, and it is especially reprehensible for the state to do so.
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." --Mahatma Gandhi
2. Executing innocent people outweighs any logic behind the death penalty.
Between 1973 and 2001, 89 death-row inmates were found to be innocent and subsequently were exonerated, escaping death by hours in some cases (The Nation, January 8-15, 2001).
3. Race is often a defining factor in death-penalty cases.
The United States favors prosecuting when the victim is white. More than 80 percent of completed capital cases involve a white victim, even though nationally 50 percent of murder victims are white (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org).
Jurors are far more likely to recommend the death penalty for people of color. Between 1995 and 2000, 75 percent of the federal cases in which juries recommended the death penalty involved black or Latino defendants (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org).
4. Whether or not the death penalty is applied depends largely on the quality of legal representation for the accused, and most death-row inmates cannot afford decent representation.
The Texas Defender Service concluded that defendants in that state have more than a one in three chance of being executed without benefit of competent appellate attorneys (Washington Post, January 4, 2002).
5. The death penalty does not deter crime.
The United States has a murder rate three times higher than that of European countries, all of whom have abolished capital punishment (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org).
There is no solid evidence that the death penalty decreases crime. Former Attorney General Janet Reno says, "I have inquired for most of my adult life about studies that might show that the death penalty is a deterrent. And I have not seen any research that would substantiate that point" (Reuters, January 21, 2000).
6. It is impossible for the death penalty to ever be administered fairly, given our legal system, and it is therefore unquestionably unconstitutional, because defendants often do not receive a fair trial.
Between 1973 and 1995, seven out of ten death-penalty cases were thrown out on appeal due to flaws in the trial (The Nation, January 8-15, 2001).
7. Administering the death penalty is far more expensive than imprisoning the offender for life.
Sending a killer to death row costs an average of $2.3 million (Dallas Morning News), three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for forty years (Jackson, Jackson Jr., Shapiro, Legal Lynching, The New Press).
Florida has spent more than $51 million a year more on state executions than it would have spent on punishing all first-degree murderers with life in prison without parole, according to the Palm Beach Post (Jackson, Jackson Jr., Shapiro, Legal Lynching, The New Press).
8. Capital punishment is administered cruelly, arbitrarily and unfairly.
Between 1982 and 2001, at least thirty-two executions went brutally awry. On April 22, 1983, it took fourteen minutes for the State of Alabama to electrocute John Evans. The executioner re-attached a burning electrode to Evans's leg twice, ignoring pleas from the defense lawyer, while the room filled with smoke and the smell of burning flesh. Evans's body was left charred and smoldering (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org).
Jeb and George W. Bush, among many others, have also expedited the appeals process, to execute as many prisoners in as short a period of time as possible, which increases the likelihood of error. As Governor of Texas, George W. Bush was the most active executioner in the nation, killing on average one prisoner every other week (The Nation, January 8-15, 2001).
9. The United States is one of the only First World country that still executes its citizens.
With its use of the death penalty, the United States is in league with Iraq, Yemen, Iran, China and Congo. Our continued use of the death penalty causes constant friction with US allies (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org).
10. The United States executes mentally retarded people and children.
Currently the state of Virginia is seeking to execute 17 year-old Lee Malvo. Iran and Nigeria are the only other countries who execute children, according to a 2001 Human Rights Watch Report on Children's Rights. Although a recent Supreme Court decision declared the execution of mentally retarded inmates unconstitutional (Atkins vs. Virginia), death row inmates who would be considered mentally retarded by the American Association on Mental Retardation may be executed, since states have the authority to define what constitutes mental retardation; while the AAMR defines mental retardation as having an IQ of 70 or below, states currently have the right to define mentally retardation differently. Thus, mentally retarded inmates are still at risk.
Compiled by Lisa Weinert
Comments?
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Vaguely relevant only if compared to the number of cases potentially carrying the death penalty which had white defendants. I suspect something around 75% of all federal capital trials had black or Latino defendants, especially because so many fed trials involve drug trafficking.
Support FOR the death penalty is actually increasing. NOBODY reads this marxist rag, the Nation anyway. Is probably kept alive by "foundation money".
Although, somehow, it is acceptable to abort children for the very same reasons.
I understand. However, I am not the type to allow the Left one moment of rest. Every pitch they throw I send outta the Jake and into Lake Erie.
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An evil life for an innocent life makes the whole world safer.
Not just old arguments, but arguments that have been thoroughly and soundly trashed.
If anything, these are just stale cliche`s.
Morality is a bourgeois concept. There is no morality but class morality.
2. Executing innocent people outweighs any logic behind the death penalty.
Bringing a just new socialist world into existence must be done by any means necessary. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Revolution is not a dinner party.
3. Race is often a defining factor in death-penalty cases.
"Los tres negritos" deserved to die -- Fidel Castro, referring to three black dissidents who he executed recently.
4. Whether or not the death penalty is applied depends largely on the quality of legal representation for the accused, and most death-row inmates cannot afford decent representation.
During the Stalinist show trials of the 1930s, the accused got all the legal representation necessary to prove them guilty.
5. The death penalty does not deter crime.
The death penalty is used widely in socialist China, North Korea and Cuba and there is no crime in those countries.
6. It is impossible for the death penalty to ever be administered fairly, given our legal system, and it is therefore unquestionably unconstitutional, because defendants often do not receive a fair trial.
Convert America to a socialist country and every trial will be fair, subsequent to the execution.
7. Administering the death penalty is far more expensive than imprisoning the offender for life.
Not necessarily, if we adopt the Chinese practice of billing the survivor's family for the bullet.
8. Capital punishment is administered cruelly, arbitrarily and unfairly.
Yes, the gas chamber and lethal injection may misfire. That is why the firing squad or bullet behind the head as practiced in Communist countries is preferable.
9. The United States is one of the only First World country that still executes its citizens.
With its use of the death penalty, the United States is in league with Iraq, Yemen, Iran, China and Congo. Why is that bad? These are advanced socialist countries.
10. The United States executes mentally retarded people and children.
This is terrible and discriminatory. In addition, the State should execute poets, doctors, scientists and businessmen -- just as in the Worker's Paradise.
Not really, no. An eye for an eye makes the perp who has blinded another blind, but that's about it. The rest of us would have our sight, and we would get to watch him get what's coming to him.
I can live with that.
Then why are they constantly campaigning for state sanctioned, and in most cases state FUNDED abortion?
"2. Executing innocent people outweighs any logic behind the death penalty."
An unborn child is guilty of WHAT exactly?
(sorry, I was on a pro-life thread)
"3. Race is often a defining factor in death-penalty cases."
If more whites commit capital murder on black victims, the proportions would appear that whites get the death penalty only if they kill blacks. It's a non argument, based entirely on demographic collation and twisted to fit a particular agenda. BTW, what's the predominant race of all those unborn or partially born children killed every year?
"4. Whether or not the death penalty is applied depends largely on the quality of legal representation for the accused, and most death-row inmates cannot afford decent representation"
Bull. Death row inmates use public defenders to appeal, and appeal, and file trivial lawsuit after trivial lawsuit, and appeal and appeal, and appeal....and who defends unborn children? THEY certainly don't have the capital to hire a lawyer to commute THEIR death penalty.
5. The death penalty does not deter crime.
Yes it does, first by removing the offender from the human race, and secondly by scaring some others into not wanting to get caught. The rate of violent crime in the US has been steadliy DROPPING for 20 years, while the violent crime rates have been steadily RISING in countries like Britain and Australia.
6. It is impossible for the death penalty to ever be administered fairly, given our legal system, and it is therefore unquestionably unconstitutional, because defendants often do not receive a fair trial.
Between 1973 and 1995, seven out of ten death-penalty cases were thrown out on appeal due to flaws in the trial (The Nation, January 8-15, 2001).
The explanation they kindly provided invalidates their point.
"7. Administering the death penalty is far more expensive than imprisoning the offender for life."
Not if you kill them right away, after giving them, say, three appeals to prove their innocence. It's allowing an unlimited amount of appeals, on top of KEEPING those animals, that drains public funds.
8. Capital punishment is administered cruelly, arbitrarily and unfairly.
Injections don't hurt. Do you people think a PBA isn't unfair, cruel or painful to the baby??
9. The United States is one of the only First World country that still executes its citizens.
So? Besides, see answers 1 through 9: abortion is a worldwide thing.
"10. The United States executes mentally retarded people and children."
Malvo is neither retarded nor a child. The argument is invalid, and therefore moot. How many children are executed worldwide each year, via abortion?
Conclusion: immoral people absolutely suck at making quasi-moral arguments.
Horsefeathers! Japan is very much a First World Country. So, arguably, is Singapore, Taiwan and Korea. All hang those who deserve it.
I'll just address the one, but I think it's a key point. The moral argument for the death penalty is as follows - the desire for revenge killing is common to all societies. If, in fact, it is equally wrong to take life, then taking a life in return for one having been taken from family is no less incorrect and has a good deal more in its favor morally, not the least of which is the idea that moral stigma is properly distributed more to the one who initiates the killing than to the one killing in response.
In order to prevent revenge killing as a common practice the state reserves to itself the moral prerogative to intervene in such cases; that is, the state functions as an orderly surrogate for the wronged individual. This only works if that individual is assured that the state will assume the function and not simply prevent it. Where the state simply prevents it, killing for revenge happens anyway, or where it does not the killer escapes justice. Neither of these is a recipe for social order.
This differs from the simple claim that all killing is wrong all the time, rather the weight of moral disapproval is laid on who initiates the killing.
The real difficulty is that in these days of social engineering by class, the way is opened up for the excusing of murder as an act of class justice - individual A may kill individual B without censure if A is considered a member of an oppressing class and B a member of an oppressed class, regardless of the personal particulars of the individual case. This idea is popular among the more statist social engineers and is a characteristic of both fascism and communism. It is fantastically insidious - its purpose is not social order, but the upturning of social order in the interest of a new, more "just" one. Here no member of the "oppresser" class may hope for conventional justice at all - the Jews in Nazi Germany, the bourgeoisie in Soviet Russia - these class members may, in practice, be killed with impunity. Among theorists of this school this is a consummation devoutly to be wished. It's perfect hell to have to live under, however.
Many of those - not all, perhaps not even a majority, but many - who oppose capital punishment do so because of class motivations. What possible difference would it make if the punishment falls disproportionately on minorities, otherwise?
One step from there is : "Since it is morally wrong to kidnap someone, it is equally morally wrong for the state to arrest someone."
That's it, the thugs win. I think the lib's would like that just fine. I wouldn't.
I'm not so sure about that, recent polls that I have seen, show 2 things, opposition against abortion is rising, and in equal and corresponding numbers, opposition to the death penalty is growing.
I.E. The new generation of pro-lifers appears to also oppose the death penalty. These are hardly left wing views or right wing for that matter.
The case of Lee Malvo is a good example of the utility of the death penalty.
No other punishment appropriately reflects the nature of his crimes. Justice is only served by executing him.
A life sentence would leave him free to attempt to kill prison guards or other prisoners. What would be punishment for that offense--life in jail?
There is anecdotal evidence that some are deterred by the death penalty. Beyond that the executed criminal is definitely deterred.
The cost of the death punishment is a flaw in the justice system, not the death penalty itself. Swift trials and expedited appeals would minimize the cost and change the economic argument in favor of the death penalty.
Now Malvo is not an African-American but his co-murderer, Muhammed, was. Each case should be judged on its own merits. I am open to the argument that too many Caucasian perps get off easy. This just means that we should execute more of these white scumbags, not that we should execute fewer minority scumbags.
Now, if it didn't run afoul of double jeapordy, perhaps Malvo could be tried and executed for the federal crime of killing an FBI employee. Then President Bush could preside over Malvo's execution, thereby adding to the luster of his marvelous Presidency.
Regarding the matter of "civilized" countries not employing execution: The great thing about air travel is that any liberal who wants to live in France can be there in a matter of hours. Honestly, the lack of a death penalty reflects an immoral attitude, namely that society cannot employ proportionate punishment. This is de facto minimization of the heinousness of capital crimes.
One of my college teachers used to say this word for word. I used a simple Q and A for the response.
Let me see if I get this straight, because some places ask for life instead of death, then the death penalty is administered unfairly, doesn't that mean life sentences are also administered unfairley, and if so, shouldn't we just get rid of line in prison as a punishment.
Executing innocent people outweighs any logic behind the death penalty.
Name one person, in this centuary, who was executed, who recieved the death penalty, and then was exonerated, i.e. it was found out they really didn't do it, and somone else did, all I ask for, is just one person, who was innocent and executed.
The death penalty does not deter crime.
When we got the death penalty here in New York state, murder went down, now you can say it was because of law enforcement, but how do we know that it wasn't the death penalty, how do you know its not a deterrent, what kind of data, the most brutal regimes that have used the death penalty, always have crime increases, when they stop. If you can say that it doesn't deter, I can show you a stat that it does, and then it becomes no correlation, right.
Administering the death penalty is far more expensive than imprisoning the offender for life.
So you support limiting appeals for death row inmates, since thats what drives up the costs, okay, no more appeals, now executions become the cheapest mode of punishment.
The United States executes mentally retarded people and children.
How do you define retarded? By IQ tests, you mean the same ones that are racist against african americans, so, even though African americans do worse on average on IQ tests, your going to say they are not culterally biased, Okay. You are right we do execute children, but unless you overturn Roe vs. Wade, there's nothing we can do about that.
First of all, name the executed innocent. Names and cases please, or you're just blowing smoke.
Second, if the logic employed above is sound, imprisonment for kidnapping and fines for theft are also inappropriate punishments.
Finally, those who have more compassion for the criminal than for the victim have an incredibly bizarre foundation from which to make decisions.
GOOD POINT! Thank You! My brain cells don't work so good when they're overheating.
Leviticus 24:17 "And if a man takes the life of ANY HUMAN BEING he shall surely be put to death." [Do you think this includes abortionists?]
Romans 13:1-5
1 Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.
2 Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.
3 For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same;
4 for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.
5 Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience' sake.
All of the arguments against the death penalty pale in comparison to God's very specific directives.
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There was a time when I thought it was ethically equivalent to be against the DP because it was coming from the "state"
Then I graduated from high school.
The DP doesn't come from the "state" it comes from the jury, many different ones. More importantly you should watch who is against the Death Penalty. Eurotrash elitists and the Sarandon/Penn wing of the American Left. Gee wiz Wally, I wonder which side is conservative.
This is known as the doctrine of the "Divine Right of Kings". One would think that the virtues of a Free Republic would make such feudal practice repugnant to a thoughtful citizen.
You aren't talking to me, are you? I don't know whether or not your "you" is rhetorical.
The bombing starts in five minutes.
What?! You mean Paul lied when he wrote this under the inspriation of the Holy Spirit? It may have been distorted by some, but never-the-less, how would you interpret these verses?
Abuse of Scripture does not negate Scripture, it only condemns the abuser!
Actually, "an eye for an eye" was one of the greatest advancements in justice the human race has ever made. It enforces a proportionality on punishment, so that a small injury doesn't result in an excessive penalty. For much of the world, "an eye for an eye" would be a step UP in their legal systems.
The single biggest argument one can make for the death penalty is the word "penalty" itself. It's a punishment. If someone else is deterred, that's great, but it's not the main reason. Just like imprisonment is a punishment, although reform may also happen during imprisonment, but don't bet a lot of money on it. Deterrence and reform are accidental byproducts, nice to have, but never to be held above the primary purpose, which is punishment.
Hello! It's from The Nation for crying out loud.
Look at how I rephrased the title. I purposefully added "Amazingly, the Left shows its hand."
So now I guess I agree with the article and am now against the death penalty. Gimme a break, puh-leeze!
The bombing starts in five minutes.
I was hoping that was what your point was, its hypocritical to be against the DP, but proabortion, but your in title/first post there certainly was too little indication of that how you were defining "show their hand".
I'm pleased you aren't with those on the right who do define their pretentious beliefs against DP, but you do need to s'plain these things, don't assert it. There are many in the Catholic Church (left) who are adamently against the DP who are characterized as the "religious Right." I'm a Catholic so I hear this cr@p too much and I fight against it being defined as Conservative, sorry to jump down your throat.
These are salient points.
I think everybody is being a little hoodwinked here.
The Nation ran this. What if we assume that this is not a tipping of the hand, but a faux tipping of the hand? The greatest political ability is the ability to set the agenda. Do we want to run in 2004 on the death penalty?
No. We want to run on the success in the war. Face it.
Getting into hair-splitting semantics about the death penalty (which I seem to shift positions on about five times a day, although I always end up leaning right) creates opposition and dissent in our camp, not theirs.
Why let it? Most of us are in agreement on this issue. The few who are not in agreement (on our side) do not see it as a defining issue.
Let's not make it one. ;-)
How about taking third-trimester abortion and repeatedly shoving that down the Dems' throats? Make sure we take the agenda -- that we are proactive, and not reactive.
Thats a lie.
I know the bump list register was closed to new additions but perhaps an exception could be made for this since we have so many articles dealing with black issues and mhking can't ping everyone of them.
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