Posted on 10/02/2013 2:46:41 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
I don't think so.
There is no evidence that the death penalty serves as a deterrent to murder.
I think it is an entirely appropriate punishment for certain crimes, but I recognize that it is punitive in nature, and does not really work as a means to convince others not to commit the most heinous of crimes.
There you go again, introducing facts into perfectly good rant material.
Yeah I'm sure all those gang bangers and pissed off spouses have been saying, "Boy if it weren't for that death penalty law I'd kill that miserable so-and-so." </sarcasm>
I believe in the death penalty..that some crimes are so heinous that society has the right to execute the perpetrators.
OTOH, if it takes 20 years, or 30, or never, to carry out the sentence, then that makes a travesty of the law. Also, millions are spent on appeals ..I'd rather see the families of the victims get that money, instead of lawyers.
Re: life without parole...there is already a nascent movement among the loony-left criminal defense bar that it is also a "cruel and unusual" punishment. Look for this effort to expand.
In California, where the jails are overcrowded, criminals are actually refusing to accept life-without-parole please, because the courts have mandated that death-row inmates get better facilities, care, amenities. They know they likely will never get executed, the sentence won't get carried out...so they don't take the deal.
And of course, this puts prison guards and all who have to deal with inmates at risk...violent offenders doing life without parole can in effect kill at will..with no risk of punishment..
You make a good point. There are no circumstances in which a death penalty appeal should drag on for even 10 years. If a death penalty case is not clear-cut enough to justify a fair but short (say, maximum 5 years) appeal process, then perhaps a death sentence is not appropriate in that particular instance.
Unlikely. Most criminals don't think past the next 2 minutes or at most to their next fix. Doubt that they'll take this into acccount. The real problem lies with the families of the victims never seeing closure (even the feeble sort of seeing the murderer executed). The other problem is that "life in prison" is often NOT life and the scumbag will get out eventually.
I can give evidence that after Execution no Murderer has ever killed again.
It is a deterrent if used in it’s proper way.
It is no deterrent when it takes 20 years to have it performed.
By the way our Governor Owe Malley is a POS of the highest order.
OK. New York and Wisconsin don't have a death penalty and there homocide rates are ~ 20% and 50% below the national average, respectively. Oklahoma, Florida, Georgia, and Alabama are four of the most active death penalty states and their homocide rates exceed the national average by ~10% or more. The statisitcs show that a state's homocide rate has nothing to do with death penalty laws or the number of executions and everything to do with demographics.
The endless delays are a function of the courts...mainly liberal judges who are willing to grant appeal after appeal..because they oppose the death penalty..and you’ll never be able to fix that.
I have advocated eliminating the death penalty for that reason and the expense (and enrichment of lawyers) of the appeal process. Why spend the money to keep them alive during the appeals and paying for the appeals? Put a large percentage of lawyers out of work and eliminate public guilt for executions of innocent people. Cheaper to let jailhouse justice work it out.
Because I do not trust the govt, I am opposed to the death penalty, except in those cases where there is no doubt, such as the brutal killing of the Connecticut doctors family a few years ago.
Who is to say the State wouldn’t attempt to get those who disagree with them on death row? That is the issue I have.
Five of the six states with the LOWEST murder rate have the death penalty. Source: http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2009/oct/05/us-homicide-rates#table1
The one exception is North Dakota, where other factors (ND is apparently in the top 10 states where citizens own guns-—see here: http://www.usacarry.com/forums/general-firearm-discussion/9841-percent-firearms-ownership-state.html) may account for the low murder rate.
The State, personified by Florida's prosecuting state's attorney, Angela Corey, would have put George Zimmerman on death row if she could have....and all for political-witch-hunt reasons, nothing more.
Leni
Just giving you my first hand experience. I live in Baltimore County.
A soaring crime rate is the intention. That way, they can “crack down” on EVERYONE in the Formerly Free State.
Complete oppression — That is the result of a permanent democrat super-majority in the MD state assembly.
Good luck to all of those stuck behind enemy lines.
Make no mistake, gun control and the abolition of capital punishment are connected at the hip. If you want gun liberty, you truly need to execute the most heinous of criminals, and you need to do it expeditiously, not wait ten or twenty years to do so.
What America has been waiting for is a conservative congress, with conservative chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and a conservative POTUS, and there are several reforms that can be made quickly.
In order of importance, these reforms include:
1) Declare the individual states to be “competent authorities” to carry out executions “as they see fit”. This takes away the ability of anti-capital punishment federal judges to nit pick about *how* prisoners are executed.
2) Declare that only trial evidence can be included in an appeal, not outside or unrelated evidence like statistics about the death penalty.
3) Move all death penalty appeals to the head of the federal docket, with limits on how long the appeal can be delayed, to one month for the defense, one month for the prosecution, and one month at the discretion of the judge.
Just these things alone might reduce the wait for punishment by as much as half. Other, more technical reforms to reduce the delay to a maximum of five years.
Exactly. People escape from prison, they don't from the grave.
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