Death By Firing Squad

[satindesire]

There is a C in RACK, though. Risk Aware Consensual Kink.

 

[Etoile]

You are so right. I hate the idea of the death penalty for most cases, but some people are so evil that death is the only thing they deserve.

I disagree with this. Death is an easy way out. If someone is so terrible, they should be made to suffer. Leave them in solitary and feed them bread and water (and vitamins, I guess, or they're gone quickly) but don't let them just run away. I am against the death penalty because I believe nobody deserves to die...but hell yes I think some people deserve to suffer horribly.

 

[bambikiller]

No one deserves to die?
They all die though eventualy don't they.
I don't find anything wrong with helping the process along.

 

[specter170]

I am conflicted. I believe in the death penalty and I'm aware of studies that say it isn't a deterrent. I was surprised to learn that of the 5 marks men that took part in the squad, 4 of them fired live ammo while the 5th had blanks. I always thought it was 4 blanks, 1 live. Makes sense though, slight miss by one guy and you would need a doctor to treat the wounded criminal. That would be kinda funny though. Sick, but funny.

 

[JMohegan]

The key question here is not whether some people deserve to die, but rather: What are the implications of all those mistaken convictions? People on death row who were subsequently exonerated when it was determined that the DNA didn't match, or the prosecutor was grossly negligent, or the defense attorney incompetent, or whatever.

When God, or some other infallible authority, starts showing up in courtrooms to hand out guilty/innocent verdicts, then I'll support the death penalty. Until then, I find it unconscionable.

 

[Homburg]

The key question here is not whether some people deserve to die, but rather: What are the implications of all those mistaken convictions? People on death row who were subsequently exonerated when it was determined that the DNA didn't match, or the prosecutor was grossly negligent, or the defense attorney incompetent, or whatever.

When God, or some other infallible authority, starts showing up in courtrooms to hand out guilty/innocent verdicts, then I'll support the death penalty. Until then, I find it unconscionable.

Yeah, I didn't get into that, but it is another problem that I have. It's bad enough that innocent men go to jail for crimes they did not commit, but they can be exonerated. Yes, by then the psychological damage is done, but you cannot be exonerated back from the dead.

The very reason we have the extended mandatory appeals process is in an attempt to prevent wrongful executions.

 

[Etoile]

No one deserves to die?
They all die though eventualy don't they.
I don't find anything wrong with helping the process along.

As I mentioned earlier, I don't believe anyone should die at the hands of another. That shouldn't need to be qualified every time. Obviously I am not saying "nobody should ever die, ever." Let's keep it in the context of the discussion, shall we?

 

[Etoile]

The key question here is not whether some people deserve to die, but rather: What are the implications of all those mistaken convictions? People on death row who were subsequently exonerated when it was determined that the DNA didn't match, or the prosecutor was grossly negligent, or the defense attorney incompetent, or whatever.

When God, or some other infallible authority, starts showing up in courtrooms to hand out guilty/innocent verdicts, then I'll support the death penalty. Until then, I find it unconscionable.

See also Burton Abbott. "Oops, we already dropped the pellets, governor...let's just hang up shall we?"

 

[JMohegan]

See also Burton Abbott. "Oops, we already dropped the pellets, governor...let's just hang up shall we?"

A case older than I am. And yet, here we are. Still debating the issue today.


See also Illinois, as related by Governor Ryan -

"I never intended to be an activist on this issue, needless to say. But soon after taking office, I watched in surprise and amazement as the freed death row inmate Anthony Porter was released from jail. Anthony Porter was 48 hours away from being wheeled into the execution chamber where the state would kill him.

It would be so antiseptic that most of us wouldn't have even paused for a second, except that Anthony Porter was innocent. He was innocent for the double murder for which he had been condemned by the state of Illinois to die.

After Mr. Porter's case there was the report by Chicago Tribune reporters Steve Mills and Ken Armstrong documenting the systemic failures of our capital punishment system. Half of the nearly 300 capital cases in Illinois had been reversed for a new trial or resentencing.

Now, how many of you people here today that are professionals can call your life a success if you're only 50 percent successful? Certainly, I can't as a pharmacist. I don't think doctors can. I don't know how the Justice Department can think they have a system that works when 50 percent of the cases are sent back for fixing.

Thirty-three percent of the death row inmates were represented at trial by an attorney who had later been disbarred or at some point suspended from the practice of law. Of the more than 160 death row inmates, 35 were African-American defendants who had been convicted or condemned to die not by a jury of their peers, but by all-white juries. More than two-thirds of the inmates on death row were African-Americans. Forty-six inmates were convicted on the basis of testimony from jailhouse informants.

I can recall looking at these cases and the information from the Mills/Armstrong series, and I asked myself and my staff: How does that happen? How in God's name does that happen? In America, how does it happen? I've been asking this question for nearly three years, and so far nobody's answered the question. Even as I stand here today, nobody's answered the question.

Over the next few months three more exonerated men were freed because their sentences hinged on a jailhouse informant or some new DNA technology proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were innocent.

We then had the dubious distinction of exonerating more men than we had executed. Thirteen men found innocent, 12 executed. As I reported yesterday, there is not a doubt in my mind that the number of innocent men freed from our death row stands at 17, with the pardons of Aaron Patterson, Madison Hobley, Stanley Howard and Leroy Orange.

That is an absolute embarrassment. Seventeen exonerated death row inmates is nothing short of a catastrophic failure. But the 13, now 17, men is just the beginning of our sad arithmetic in prosecuting murder cases. During the time we have had capital punishment in Illinois, there were at least 33 other people wrongly convicted on murder charges and exonerated. Since we reinstated the death penalty there are also 93 people -- 93 -- where our criminal justice system imposed the most severe sanction and later rescinded the sentence or even released them from custody because they were innocent.

How many more cases of wrongful conviction have to occur before we can all agree that this system in Illinois is broken?"

 

[Sir_Winston54]

".... How many more cases of wrongful conviction have to occur before we can all agree that this system in Illinois is broken?"

And it's not just the system in Illinois. I firmly believe that EVERY state that has carried out the death penalty more than once or twice in the last century (would that be all of them?) has a better than 99% probability that it has put an innocent man or woman (or more than one) to death for a crime he/she didn't commit.

There is NO WAY, given today's technology and absent a completely credible confession, that a judge and/or jury can be CERTAIN that a defendant is guilty of the crime of which he/she is accused in 95% or more of the cases brought against defendants. I say this as someone who has been a (minor) part of the Florida judicial system and listened to more than a thousand trials over the last eight-plus years. I have heard witnesses who were, to my mind, blatantly lying, but who were ultimately believed by a jury which convicted the defendant. I *haven't* heard that in the dozen or so murder/manslaughter trials I've processed, but to me, it's hardly less sinful to send someone to prison for years upon years upon years, destroying their spirit (in most cases), than to put them to death for a crime they didn't commit.

Our system of justice is broken. I've done over a hundred voir dires (jury selection process), and my ultimate conclusion regarding juries is that three quarters of those picked to serve on a jury were picked because they were too stupid or too uninformed to know how to *avoid* jury service. The vast majority of those who are intelligent and informed enough to be able to listen to hours (or days) of testimony and pick out the occasional granules (not nuggets) of truth provided, and to determine how the facts of the case comport with the law, for the most part either find a way to be excused from service, or are eliminated from the jury pool by one attorney or the other. The fact is, for the most part, attorneys in jury trials don't WANT strong, intelligent, informed jurors! They want people who are easily swayed by rhetoric, somewhat (but not *obviously*) prejudiced toward one side or the other (depending on the attorney's affiliation - prosecution or defense), and willing to be swayed by the opinions of others if the first few votes are 5-1 or 10-1 or 10-2 and they're in the minority.

The American "justice" system is broken... but sadly, it's STILL the best system in the world. It just needs to get better.

 

[DVS]

I'm anti-death penalty, if we can't be sure we're killing the right individual. There have been way too many cases where police were quick to catch someone, maybe because the case was very high profile and the media was hot on their backs to catch someone.

Not being able to prove a negative isn't proving a positive. Trust me, I know a lot about that. Or some poor slob was in the wrong place at the wrong time and only looked guilty to a witness who just saw a glimpse of the guy on a dark night. Or, just because he's black and acts nervous doesn't mean he did it. If someone has no alibi, it could mean they live alone and nobody saw them at home watching TV, except maybe the cat that they also fed that night.

And I remember the medical pathologist that decided to make a name for herself and taint evidence in cases so it would match DNA or whatever was necessary to show how fantastic she was in solving cases...her own personal CSI unit, she was. Until it was proven she was doing that, I wonder how many people were wrongfully convicted and spent time in prison for her moment in glory.

I don't know why she did it, and I don't know if she was ever convicted of altering evidence. And I don't know if she ever felt remorse for those lives she destroyed. Last I heard (and this was several years ago) she was just fired from her job and the court began checking evidence in the cases she had been involved.

Everybody in prison says they're innocent. It's the mantra of the house. So when someone says it and he's telling the truth? How do you give back lost years of freedom to someone? How to you make their mental state whole again, after society didn't believe they were telling the truth? That's got to mess with your head.

How many have we killed that were really innocent? Unless we know we have the right person, we don't have the right. There are just too many ways someone can slip through the cracks.

But, if there is an irrefutable way of knowing that we have the correct individual...I'm OK with it.

 

[Etoile]

You're giving me deja vu there, DVS!

 

[DVS]

You're giving me deja vu there, DVS!

it was just a test.



you passed.

 

[WriterDom]

If a guy's rap sheet takes 15 minutes to print from all the violent crime he has done in his life then I'm not sure we aren't doing the world a favor by killing his ass even if he is innocent. But I'm against the death penalty being carried out by any state simply because it is much cheaper just to lock them away than have 103,939 appeals and having the taxpayers pay for them all. Some like Obama and Timmy do deserve it for acts like OK and 9/11. I doubt if Gore would have the nuts to throw the switch on Timmy and he would have had a front row seat for 9.11 on CNN rather than Hell Network.

 

[Sir_Winston54]

If a guy's rap sheet takes 15 minutes to print from all the violent crime he has done in his life then I'm not sure we aren't doing the world a favor by killing his ass even if he is innocent. But I'm against the death penalty being carried out by any state simply because it is much cheaper just to lock them away than have 103,939 appeals and having the taxpayers pay for them all. Some like Obama and Timmy do deserve it for acts like OK and 9/11. I doubt if Gore would have the nuts to throw the switch on Timmy and he would have had a front row seat for 9.11 on CNN rather than Hell Network.

Ummm... I'm sure you meant to type "Osama?"

 

[Etoile]

Ummm... I'm sure you meant to type "Osama?"

It took me a long time to figure out what he meant, too.

 

[Primalex]

There is a C in RACK, though. Risk Aware Consensual Kink.

Thank you for agreeing.

 

[Sir_Winston54]

It's not at all about consent. There is no C in BDSM.

There is a C in RACK, though. Risk Aware Consensual Kink.

Thank you for agreeing.

And a C in Safe, Sane & Consensual (SSC), too!

 

[satindesire]

And a C in Safe, Sane & Consensual (SSC), too!

He'd argue with a brick wall if he thought he wouldn't get locked up in a loony bin for it. Don't bother.

 

[Sir_Winston54]

He'd argue with a brick wall if he thought he wouldn't get locked up in a loony bin for it. Don't bother.

I know, darlin'. We've had our moments in the past. It's still fun to yank his tail once in a while.

 

[Netzach]

I disagree with this. Death is an easy way out. If someone is so terrible, they should be made to suffer. Leave them in solitary and feed them bread and water (and vitamins, I guess, or they're gone quickly) but don't let them just run away. I am against the death penalty because I believe nobody deserves to die...but hell yes I think some people deserve to suffer horribly.

I was reading about the options for the Times Square bomber, and yeah, one of them was like "kill yourself now, because you won't have the means to do it when you go here."

 

[satindesire]

I know, darlin'. We've had our moments in the past. It's still fun to yank his tail once in a while.

xD "yank his tail". Haha!

 

[Primalex]

And a C in Safe, Sane & Consensual (SSC), too!

Impressive.

Now, dear children, what has SSC and RACK to do with BDSM?

Right, they are methods and concepts how to employ BDSM or if you prefer a moral point of view. SSC and RACK are as much part of BDSM, as visiting a church is part of a religion. Feel free to believe that there is no religion without a church - everyone has the right to be a moron.

 

[Sir_Winston54]

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say:"What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!"

Actually, there are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

 

[satindesire]

Actually, there are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Dude!!!

You get plus one internets.