Hypothetical: Would You Spare A Serial Killer?

[Huckleman2000]

Measures that are passed through initiative are generally proposed and passed because the politicians in Sacramento are too cowardly or too dishonest to risk voting for them. Some of them are non-PC and the pols will not pass them because they know they will lose votes if they do. Others are against the interests of fat cats and the pols know it they vote for them, the flow of bribes (in the form of campaign contributions) will be cut off. Others are against the personal interests of the politicians such as the term limitation initiative of a few years ago or the change in drawing district boundaries that should be on the ballot in November.

Out of curiosity, do you speak for the citizens of the UK? I don't but I don't claim to; I just wondered if the majority oppose the death penalty.

Democracy isn't the same as Majority Rule.

Your justification makes little sense. If the politicians fear losing votes by being "non-PC", how are there enough votes to pass the referendum? If the problem is campaign finance, why not pass a referendum outlawing political contributions? Holy shit! Then we couldn't try to hijack the system with referendums! So who's ox is getting gored with the district gerrymandering?

Oh, and that recall thing worked out great, didn't it? The state spent a fortune on the election, and now the guy they put in is less popular than the guy they put out.

Pet rocks were a craze once too. It just doesn't strike me as a model to base a government on.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Democracy isn't the same as Majority Rule.

Your justification makes little sense. If the politicians fear losing votes by being "non-PC", how are there enough votes to pass the referendum? If the problem is campaign finance, why not pass a referendum outlawing political contributions? Holy shit! Then we couldn't try to hijack the system with referendums! So who's ox is getting gored with the district gerrymandering?

Oh, and that recall thing worked out great, didn't it? The state spent a fortune on the election, and now the guy they put in is less popular than the guy they put out.

Pet rocks were a craze once too. It just doesn't strike me as a model to base a government on.

You seem to be confusing a referendum with an initiative. The former is placed on a ballot by vote of the legislature and the voters say aye or nay. The latter is placed on the ballot by its sponsors who collect enough signatures, statewide, to put it there. It is a grassroots thing although, to be honest, it usually costs a lot to place a measure because of the expenses of writing it and collecting millions of signatures. Most of them are collected by paid individuals who sit in front of shopping malls and similar places. Even so, people don't sign it and they don't vote for it if they oppose it.

The recall of Gray Davis was similar to an initiative. The Governator is unpopular now mostly because of an ad blitz opposing some of the measures he is supporting in November. After the election, his popularity will probably go back to 50% or so. In California, that's pretty good.

What does the pet rock craze have to do with anything? The initiative process has been in place for almost a century.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

An interesting point:

I posted this on another board, one fairly conservative and right of center. The people there were largely more supportive of the idea of keeping him alive in heavy confinement, but killing him when he stops producing.

I wonder about this. Most conservatives I know are very big on law and order. In general, a conservative would disapprove of every breath such a man drew between sentencing and doing away with him. The same could be said for most capital punishment supporters I know.

I will grant you the fact that most of the Neo-cons are not really very conservative. It is, afterall, not a very conservative idea to change the system to make exception for anyone. Rewriting entire volumes of law and weakening the very foundation of the arguments for capital punishment, seems to me to be much more a liberal idea.

To be honest, your position seems to me to be one that is anti-capital punishment. You have set a hypothetical where you have stacked every variable you can against carrying out the sentence that would surely be handed down in such a case. The logical obvious here is trying to establish that situations exist where capital punishment is not in the interest of the greater good, which leads to an equally obvious opening to extrapolate the position that society is better served by leaving convicted felons in capital cases alive, so long as they are contributing to society. Of course, contribution to society being such a nebulous concept it would in effect require a case by case evaluation of each deathrow inmate.

Conservatoive thinkers will, in general, stand on the principal that justice must be done and the law sets the standard by which justice is applied. Weakening that position and the laws already in place would be anathema as you are making change for change's sake, with not proof change needs to be made or that change would produce a better result.

Solid proponents of the death penalty, will, in general, not allow for any abberation from application of the sentance. There is a slippery slope there and most recognize their position is dependant on the concept of justice being the primary focus of a legal system. You may maintain your position that capital punisment is neccessary, only by rigidily maintaining the position that justice applies to all and must be upheld for all or you have justice for none.

By creating and maintaining a hypothetical situation where you are goading the people evaluating it to sparing a convicted felon, you are, in effect, pushing the position of those opposed to capital punishment. Not furthering the position that supports it.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I am one of those solid proponents of the death penalty and I am in agreement with Collie, as usual. I would say "Put the man to death, and do so expeditiously." The alternative that has been proposed would not be legal in any state that I know of, and if it were made legal, it would be fraught with danger. Even the most brilliant of men would not be able to do the researh being posited here without supplies and equipment and materials and who is to say that he would not use them against humanity? Instead of developing a cure for cancer, he would be just as likely to release carcinogenic gases into the atmosphere to infect everybody for miles around. Even if he killed himself in the process, he would be such a psycho that he would gladly take many thousands more with him.

I say, exterminate him, like the vermin he is!

 

[shereads]

Quote:
Originally Posted by oggbashan
In the UK we have abolished the death penalty so the question is irrelevant.

We wouldn't extradite him to a place that might impose the death penalty without an assurance that, whatever he was found guilty of, he would NOT be executed.

Og



Undemocratic, I would call it. What do the people of the UK think about the abolition of the death penalty? I don't know about there but in California, about 80% of the voters favor it. They have said so, and to get tough generally on criminals, in initiative elections. They, including I, even kicked out the chief justice of the state supreme court when we had the chance.

In a democracy, one of the essential functions of government and the law is to prevent the majority from running roughshod over the rest of us. Would the majority of Californians in the poll you cited be in favor of the death penalty if they were confronted with statistics on the number of erroneous guilty verdicts exposed by new forensics technology? Maybe, maybe not.*

The larger question is whether you want to be governed by referendum.

I could google up statistics showiing that a majority of Americans who were in favor of invading Iraq now want us out of Iraq. Does that mean it's okay to invade a country, remove its infrastructure, and then skeedaddle as soon as the majority changes its mind?

We could probably have a system under which every issue was decided by majority vote. We'd just go to our computers and fill out a poll, and presto, the death penalty would be reinstated in California. In other states, the majority might wish to reinstate laws criminalizing homosexuality, sex outside wedlock, and sodomy. In states with a majority of Christian fundamentalists, the move to teach creationism and/or intelligent design alongside evolution might be set aside, in favor of outlawing the teaching of evolution.

Majority rules.

[/threadjack]

*My own opinion of the death penalty has less to do with the heinous nature of capital crimes than with the fallibility of juries. Your peers don't become smarter, more honest, or less prejudiced when they're chosen for jury duty. They're not Twelve Angry Men; they're Twelve Random Schmoes who showed up.

Having served on four juries as a Random Schmo-ette, I can attest to the fact that most people in a jury room, after hours or days of mostly unexciting testimony, fall into one of three categories: (1) bored/confused/eager to get it over with; (2) drunk with power/eager to deliver the verdict they had in mind all along; (3) "Godalmighty, were these people watching the same trial? WTF?"

The verdict will be determined by Types 2 and 3, either because they both want the same verdict or because two people can't both win a tug-of-war.

In other words, the verdict doesn't have to be right, it just has to feel right to the most stubborn juror. Guess who that was, four times out of four?

Me.



Fortunately for society, I was pretty sure I was mostly right. (Except for one out of the four trials; that time, I was sure I was right until I got to the parking lot, and figured out that I was wrong. Too late.) If you are smart, you don't want to convict anyone of murder on my say-so or yours, if there will never be a chance to right our wrong.

When I deliver a guilty sentence by error, at least a sentence of life without parole leaves open the possibility that new evidence will save the life of the poor bastard whose trial fell on one of my off days. If you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or framed by the Mob, that could be you.

 

[oggbashan]

UK and capital punishment

In the UK, most of the time, there would be a significant majority AGAINST any form of capital punishment. The only time that would change is after a headline case with particularly horrible features. Even then it would be difficult to find a majority willing to have a particular individual executed. We have had too many miscarriages of justice that would previously have had the death penalty.

The UK does not have and never had a Death Row by US standards. After sentence of death the appeal procedure could be dealt with in days. Execution was usually within a week of sentence, or if no appeal, within a few hours or days.

If there was any doubt, however unreasonable, about the evidence, and the mandatory sentence was death, UK juries used to refuse to convict because IF they were wrong the defendant would be dead before the jury's error could be corrected.

I think most UK jurists would regard the extended stay on Death Row as 'cruel and unusual punishment' and therefore illegal.

Og

 

[shereads]

In the UK, most of the time, there would be a significant majority AGAINST any form of capital punishment.

Og

Ahem.

Drawing-and-quartering.

Newgate.

Public hangings as a spectator event, with a preferred drop of no more than one or two feet to assure that the victim's neck didn't break, and he or she would die slowly by strangling.

In modern times, I agree that Britain and most of Europe are less bloodthirsty in their attitudes than a majority of Americans, whose eagerness for retribution causes them to ignore the issue of wrongful conviction.

Americans didn't invent bloodlust. We're just a century or so behind in letting it go.

 

[JokerWild]

It would be really nice to do all these things, and I would happily volunteer for the privilege of helping do them, but it would not be permitted under the Constitution. In that case, put him to death in the normal way.

Then i'd beat up the president and make him disable the constitution for one hour so we can make him suffer...and if congress gets in my way i'll flatten their tires!

 

[SonOfAGhost]

If you murder even one person, age doesn't matter, any positive attributes you may have are moot and you should hang.

 

[oggbashan]

Ahem.

Drawing-and-quartering.

Newgate.

Public hangings as a spectator event, with a preferred drop of no more than one or two feet to assure that the victim's neck didn't break, and he or she would die slowly by strangling.

In modern times, I agree that Britain and most of Europe are less bloodthirsty in their attitudes than a majority of Americans, whose eagerness for retribution causes them to ignore the issue of wrongful conviction.

Americans didn't invent bloodlust. We're just a century or so behind in letting it go.

Public hanging, drawing and quartering were supposed to be long-winded as possible as a deterrent to others. The headsman's axe was a privilege for the nobility - quick and 'painless'.

The scientific methods of hanging so that the neck was broken were a later introduction (and weren't always successful). If the convicted person survived the drop their sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

Og

 

[Kassiana]

If anyone's really worried about decisions to spare someone's life "undermining the death penalty," the best solution would be to eliminate the death penalty altogether. Life in prison without parole does the same as death in keeping someone away from general society and from doing the same thing again, it's less expensive, and when someone innocent is convicted of a crime they didn't commit you don't have innocent blood on your hands. Sounds good to me.

 

[Huckleman2000]

You seem to be confusing a referendum with an initiative. The former is placed on a ballot by vote of the legislature and the voters say aye or nay. The latter is placed on the ballot by its sponsors who collect enough signatures, statewide, to put it there. It is a grassroots thing although, to be honest, it usually costs a lot to place a measure because of the expenses of writing it and collecting millions of signatures. Most of them are collected by paid individuals who sit in front of shopping malls and similar places. Even so, people don't sign it and they don't vote for it if they oppose it.

The recall of Gray Davis was similar to an initiative. The Governator is unpopular now mostly because of an ad blitz opposing some of the measures he is supporting in November. After the election, his popularity will probably go back to 50% or so. In California, that's pretty good.

Oh, for Christ's sake, I was talking about the tyranny of the majority, and you know it. And you still didn't explain how initiatives are supposed to pass if even legislators who fear losing votes don't support them. I mean, if it's the sort of law that no one with responsibility to a constituancy would put their name on, that's got to say something. When you pin a "non-PC" label on it, it sounds like, "Hey, here's a law that's going to screw some minority over - let's put it on a ballot so we can keep our hands clean". That doesn't strike me as an improvement in democratic government.

What does the pet rock craze have to do with anything? The initiative process has been in place for almost a century.

Well, seeing as how you're blaming your Governator's low popularity on an ad blitz, I would think the analogy would be obvious.

But I keep forgetting Huckleman's Principle: Irony is lost on Conservatives.

 

[Boxlicker101]

In the UK, most of the time, there would be a significant majority AGAINST any form of capital punishment. The only time that would change is after a headline case with particularly horrible features. Even then it would be difficult to find a majority willing to have a particular individual executed. We have had too many miscarriages of justice that would previously have had the death penalty.

The UK does not have and never had a Death Row by US standards. After sentence of death the appeal procedure could be dealt with in days. Execution was usually within a week of sentence, or if no appeal, within a few hours or days.

If there was any doubt, however unreasonable, about the evidence, and the mandatory sentence was death, UK juries used to refuse to convict because IF they were wrong the defendant would be dead before the jury's error could be corrected.

I think most UK jurists would regard the extended stay on Death Row as 'cruel and unusual punishment' and therefore illegal.

Og

What you seem to be saying is that the majority of citizens in the UK would favor the death penalty in the case in question in this thread. The torture and murder of 46 children would be an extremely heinous series of crimes and the case would be highly publicized.

At one time executions were swift in the US also. Then, it was decided to go more cautiously, just in case there had been a mistake. Personally, I think that was a good idea although there are many times when it is clearly known that there was no mistake. This Polly Klaas case is an example of that. Richard Allen Davis confessed to her murder and led police to where he had hid the body. Obviously, he was guilty and he was quickly convicted but his case is dragging on by appeals. In his case, the appeals are just stalling tactics to delay the inevitable. Even so, they are allowed, because some cases are not so clear-cut, and they must be repeatedly examined, and discrimination against Richard Allen Davis must be avoided.

I can't understand why confinement on Death row would be "cruel and unusual punishment" while confinement in the regular prison population would not be. Mainline prisoners are constantly in danger of assault, sexual and otherwise, even murder. Those on DR do not have that problem although they are not isolated from other prisoners, except for being kept for most of the day in one-person cells. It isn't fun but conditions on DR are less harsh than conditions in the rest of the prison.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

I'm in a non-compromising standpoint.

He could be the greatest mind on earth, but he should be executed.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Life in prison without parole does the same as death in keeping someone away from general society

Unless they escape or are pardoned later.

and from doing the same thing again

Unless they kill an inmate or something. Or use escape/pardon to kill again.

, it's less expensive,

A long enough time line (even a moderate time line) of cost of keeping alive is greater than what it could take to execute someone early on. Many forms of capital punishment are relatively cheap.

and when someone innocent is convicted of a crime they didn't commit you don't have innocent blood on your hands.

It is a margin of error that we may be comfortable with--not everyone, but enough of us.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Oh, for Christ's sake, I was talking about the tyranny of the majority, and you know it. And you still didn't explain how initiatives are supposed to pass if even legislators who fear losing votes don't support them. I mean, if it's the sort of law that no one with responsibility to a constituancy would put their name on, that's got to say something. When you pin a "non-PC" label on it, it sounds like, "Hey, here's a law that's going to screw some minority over - let's put it on a ballot so we can keep our hands clean". That doesn't strike me as an improvement in democratic government.

Well, seeing as how you're blaming your Governator's low popularity on an ad blitz, I would think the analogy would be obvious.

But I keep forgetting Huckleman's Principle: Irony is lost on Conservatives.

First, I am not that much of a conservative. I favor the conservative position on some issues, such as capital punishment, but I oppose it vehemently on others, such as civil rights.

When you said:
Democracy isn't the same as Majority Rule.

Your justification makes little sense. If the politicians fear losing votes by being "non-PC", how are there enough votes to pass the referendum? If the problem is campaign finance, why not pass a referendum outlawing political contributions? Holy shit! Then we couldn't try to hijack the system with referendums! So who's ox is getting gored with the district gerrymandering?

I assumed you were referring to a referendum, which I then described. An initiative bypasses the legislature. Some politicians may support individual initiatives and campaign for them. Some may oppose them and campaign against them, but they don't vote on them, except for their own personal secret ballots, just like any other citizen.

Elected officeholders should be responsible to their constituents but, too often, they are responsible to special interest groups or to getting re-elected. That was and is the purpose of the initiative process, to reduce the influence of money and special interests.

Some initiatives have screwed over the rights of minorities and these have usually been overturned as being unconstitutional or as being contrary to federal laws.

 

[shereads]

If the convicted person survived the drop their sentence was commuted to life imprisonment

and was thereafter nicknamed, "Stretch."

 

[shereads]

margin of error

I've often wondered what margin of error would be acceptable to most proponents of the death penalty. If you were shown convincing evidence that 50 percent of convicted murderers were convicted by error (misidentification by an eyewitness, new forensic evidence, deathbed confession by the real killer (aka O.J. Simpson), would you demand a moratorium on the death penalty until the current trial-by-jury system could be replaced with something more accurate? What if nearly all convictions were solid, and only 10 percent were probable errors? Would you be willing to chance killing 10 innocent people in exchange for the benefits of killing the 90 murderers?

What's a comfortable margin of error? How many innocent lives can we risk ending along with the guilty, before we lose the moral high ground?

 

[Blackie Malone]

and was thereafter nicknamed, "Stretch."

You make me tingle all over....either that or it's the battery I've been licking.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I've often wondered what margin of error would be acceptable to most proponents of the death penalty. If you were shown convincing evidence that 50 percent of convicted murderers were convicted by error (misidentification by an eyewitness, new forensic evidence, deathbed confession by the real killer (aka O.J. Simpson), would you demand a moratorium on the death penalty until the current trial-by-jury system could be replaced with something more accurate? What if nearly all convictions were solid, and only 10 percent were probable errors? Would you be willing to chance killing 10 innocent people in exchange for the benefits of killing the 90 murderers?

What's a comfortable margin of error? How many innocent lives can we risk ending along with the guilty, before we lose the moral high ground?

I would have a hard time being comfortable with ANY errors, and certainly not as much as 10%, but I don't think there is a better system than trial by juror. Judges can be just as pigheaded or bigoted or stupid as jurors, you know.

I would favor eliminating certain prosecution tactics, such as showing photos of a mutilated body. Testify that the body was mutilated, but that is enough. The photos can only inflame the juror against the handiest person, and that would be the accused. That's when determining guilt or innocence. During the penalty phase, the pictures would be valid evidence of a killer's depravity.

I would not accept the word of a jailhouse snitch who said the accused had confessed to him or her. Such "confessions" are too easily made up by jailbirds who want to curry favor with the cops and jailers. I do not believe that a person who steadfastly maintained his innocence to the cops would spill his guts to a total stranger.

Videotape interrogations of the accused. Let the jury actually see and hear what the cops claim was a confession. It is too easy for somebody to take words out of context and claimed the accused said them. Let the jury see and hear the alleged confession for themselves. If there is no videotape, throw out the supposed confession.

Given time, I could probably think of some more ideas but it's late and I'm sleepy.

 

[thebullet]

Shereads wrote:
What's a comfortable margin of error? How many innocent lives can we risk ending along with the guilty, before we lose the moral high ground?

Too late! We've already lost the moral high ground on this issue. I wish those that speak of an acceptable 'margin of error' would listen to themselves. It's kind of like some soldier trying to justify the death of civilians by using the euphomism: 'collateral damage' - when it now becomes clear that the majority of those killed in wars are just that: collateral damage.

"Off with their heads" is such an easy, gut reaction. But what does it say about our society? Nothing good.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Too late! We've already lost the moral high ground on this issue. I wish those that speak of an acceptable 'margin of error' would listen to themselves. It's kind of like some soldier trying to justify the death of civilians by using the euphomism: 'collateral damage' - when it now becomes clear that the majority of those killed in wars are just that: collateral damage.

"Off with their heads" is such an easy, gut reaction. But what does it say about our society? Nothing good.

I didn't say I supported a margin of acceptable error, only that it may be that we (as a people) accept one. Nothing wrong about stating as much, either. Unless we're just fans of sticking our heads in the sands and not thinking about scary things.

Personally, I don't play that game.

 

[oggbashan]

What you seem to be saying is that the majority of citizens in the UK would favor the death penalty in the case in question in this thread. The torture and murder of 46 children would be an extremely heinous series of crimes and the case would be highly publicized.

At one time executions were swift in the US also. Then, it was decided to go more cautiously, just in case there had been a mistake. Personally, I think that was a good idea although there are many times when it is clearly known that there was no mistake. This Polly Klaas case is an example of that. Richard Allen Davis confessed to her murder and led police to where he had hid the body. Obviously, he was guilty and he was quickly convicted but his case is dragging on by appeals. In his case, the appeals are just stalling tactics to delay the inevitable. Even so, they are allowed, because some cases are not so clear-cut, and they must be repeatedly examined, and discrimination against Richard Allen Davis must be avoided.

I can't understand why confinement on Death row would be "cruel and unusual punishment" while confinement in the regular prison population would not be. Mainline prisoners are constantly in danger of assault, sexual and otherwise, even murder. Those on DR do not have that problem although they are not isolated from other prisoners, except for being kept for most of the day in one-person cells. It isn't fun but conditions on DR are less harsh than conditions in the rest of the prison.

While the UK public might temporarily be in favour of the death penalty for a heinous crime as a result of the media frenzy AT THE TIME, the majority are generally not in favour of the death penalty in principle. Our legislators are certainly not in favour and this is one, and possibly the only, law where the legislators were ahead of public opinion that followed later.

The difficulty in any discussion of this type is the differences between US and UK penal systems. Neither is a shining example of how to treat prisoners. Serious assaults on and deaths of prisoners in UK prisons are comparatively rare (except for genuine suicides) and usually confined to sexual offenders e.g. paedophiles who are segregated for their own safety. The proportion of the UK's population who are in prison is much lower than in the US.

The 'cruel and unusual' part of Death Row is that the inmates are under sentence of death that may or may not be enforced. The privileges that Death Row prisoners have are a criticism of the conditions prevailing in the prison population generally. Prison sentences should be punishment enough just by the deprivation of liberty and an enforced regime. The abuses of prisoners in prison should not be institutionalised and the UK is constantly trying to ensure that abuses of prisoners by other inmates or staff should NOT occur. Unfortunately we continually fail.

Og

 

[elsol]

You know this is actually a very simple question...

a) Do you believe in the death penalty?

Answer: NO!

Okay... your work is done here.

You are not going to change my mind on the DP issue.

Just like you are not going to change my mind on the freedom of speech issue, or the gun issue, or the God thing, or the abortion thing, or the girl thing.

Answer: Yes.

Okay... on to the next question about the super-genius killer of 46 children.

Let's say I killed 46 children (convicted, blood on my hands, and I HAPPILY confessed).

Let's say Me, your child, and you are in the same room.

Let's say someone drops a loaded .357 magnum in the room and says 'Whatever happens in this room, stays in the room.'

Question: Are you going to let ME hold the gun?

How the fuck can you tell me you'd give a super-genius the very tools he needs to change his circumstances?

He's willing to kill, at that point, intelligence makes him MORE dangerous not less.

God (or whatever) help you if he doesn't agree with you that killing those children was wrong.

If I don't think something you are punishing for was wrong, I'm going to feel very justified in doing bad things to you.

Yes, that is a completely reasonable way of thing... it's called revolution, we all have that right.

You don't have to kill the guy... but don't play Russian Roulette with him either.


Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[Lisa Denton]

Let's say I killed 46 children (convicted, blood on my hands, and I HAPPILY confessed).

Let's say Me, your child, and you are in the same room.

Let's say someone drops a loaded .357 magnum in the room and says 'Whatever happens in this room, stays in the room.'

Question: Are you going to let ME hold the gun?




Sincerely,
ElSol

"Lets say I picked up the gun to hand it to you ............ when it accidentally went off ................... several times."


Those who support or oppose the death penalty will probably never change thier minds, but should pursue other things with the same passion.

1. Making sure innocent peoples are not wrongly convicted of ANY crime. Getting rid of the prosecutors who say "truth and innocence don't matter, just get the conviction." And have the police, prosecutors and judges all supporting each other and working toward one goal, seperating the most violent and evil from the rest of society, and especially the children.

2. Complete prison system overhaul, I am not talking about reform. Every freakin guard knows what is going on, any warden who says he doesn't know what is going on, or how to stop it, is also involved, or an incompetent idiot. The federal government should have on-hand inspectors in the prison staff with virtualy un-limited powers, including firing the freakin currupt or inept warden. Prisoners are brutalized, while others order drugs and alcohol. How can you expect to have a "good prison guard" when he/she can at best say "I looked the other way, and didn't hear the screams."