Capital Punishment

I'm sure it sells to those who are prepared to believe it in the first place.



In that sentence, "inclusive of their defenses" is meaningless--not that i see any reason for you to elaborate on that. Name the studies, describe the methodology, show how their findings indicated that a death penalty deters crime. Making ex cathedra statements is meaningless--if you claim you "know," as opposed to offering an opinion, you take up the burden of proof. You have proven nothing.

The rest of your post, very poorly written, is so much babble in the face of the undeniable fact that you're making statements from authority, which you haven't backed up with an iota of evidence.

People who willfully commit crimes can hardly be expected to do so in the belief that they will be caught--because otherwise, they'd have too strong a motive not to commit the crime. You have made no factual case, because you haven't presented any facts. You make no logical case, because you don't even offer a logical basis for your claim.

First of all thank you so much all of you. I asked this question because I am doing a paper on capital punishment. I am all for it. Excuse my language but if there is a dumb ass who thinks he/she can get away with murder or rape he is stupid. We all know we will get caught, sometimes it takes longer to get caught, but we will get caught if we commit such crimes. I personally believe that the death penalty needs to be used more. I personally know of a man that is sitting in Pelican Bay State Prison in Cresent City, CA. He was convicted of Murder in the First degree. He killed his sister, mother, and father. Like I said he is SITTING in prison. He doesn't get a chance at parole, but we are paying for him to sit there and not have to pay taxes, work, nothing he has to do nothing but be there. Why would we want to support somebody like that?

The death of the convict would not stop people from doing illegal or immoral acts. It would just worsen the situation.

As for the intelligence of murders, and leaving aside that so many murders are committed as "acts of passion," in which the alleged murderer acts without considering the consequence--i have long argued that crime usually does not pay because of the caliber of the people who go into the profession.

You do not address the issue of the wrongfully convicted. You do not address the issue of the huge cost of death penalty cases over the years and years, and sometimes decades, which intervene between sentence and execution--but you do whine about the cost to society if they remain incarcerated. A single appeal process can cost millions of dollars. Simply housing a prisoner in the general population for a year costs about $50,000. That means that the cost of a single appeal (and capital cases usually involve more than one appeal--many states mandate the appeals) equals the cost of incarcerating the alleged murderer for the rest of his or her natural life. Your complaint about the cost of incarceration is without merit.

Most importantly, you completely ignore the issues of wrongful conviction, and the hypocrisy of society punishing murder by committing murder. For my part, i'd rather not think that you have taken my arguments and distorted them for the purpose of writing a paper which has an obvious bias. After all, you said at the outset that you support capital punishment, and made essentially the same arguments. Since that time, you have not offered any detailed objections to the arguments against capital punishment. Don't be dismayed, most people spend their lives rationalizing their points of view, as opposed to giving them honest and careful consideration.

FOR ME!!!

Jesus Christ...I have stressed that twice now.

The thought of being confined for the rest of my life without any chance of ever being free...terrorize me. Death is just an inevitable thing that is coming...and since I am almost 73 now, it doesn't hold the fear for me it apparently does for you.

Well no, not really.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_murders_and_deaths


I agree. Let's start with drivers of delivery vehicles who double-park on busy urban thoroughfares.

Joe...I think we've found an area where we have similar thoughts.

I might extend your comment about double parked delivery trucks...to more rural setting like the street where I live (with a school on it) where the brown and green delivery truck drivers...apparently under very tight schedules...speed and honk their horns incessantly (to give peope a heads-up that the delivery man is in the neighborhood) in order to expedite their deliveries.

They are maniacs...and I don't mean they are from Maine!

I'd like you all to consider extending the penalty to people who speak loudly on their cell phones in public places. In fact, we need legislation to allow vigilante action against them.

I do not feel good about capital punishment at this juncture. Three or four things I'd have to have to change that and I don't see any of them on the horizen at present and that would include:

The standard would have to be guilt beyond any doubt whatsoever; the normal idea of "guilt beyond a 'reasonable' doubt" simply does not cut it for capital punishment, you cannot unhang somebody.

The person in question would have to represent a continuing threat to the public should he ever get loose in future time. The Canadian concept of "dangerous offender" takes this into account.

The entire "adversarial" system of justice would have to be scrapped in favor of something like the French have which is called "Inquisitional" or some such in which the common incentive for all parties involved is to discover the truth of what took place and whether anybody is guilty of anything.

I am not in favor of granting the Mike Nifongs, Roland Burrises, Janet Renos, or Scot Harshbargers of the world licenses to kill people and that is in fact what the present system amounts to.

Nobody should have any sort of a career or money incentive to put people in prison or hang people. In particular, a lot of demokkkrat political careers appear to be built upon the blood of innocents.

Ko-Ko:
As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list, I've got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed, who never would be missed!
There's the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs
All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs
All children who are up in dates, and floor you with 'em flat
All persons who in shaking hands, shake hands with you like that
And all third persons who on spoiling tete-a-tetes insist
They'd none of 'em be missed they'd none of 'em be missed!
Chorus:
He's got 'em on the list, he's got 'em on the list;
And they'll none of 'em be missed, they'll none of 'em be missed.

Ko-Ko:
There's the banjo serenader, and the others of his race,
And the piano-organist -- I've got him on the list!
And the people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face,
They never would be missed, they never would be missed!
Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,
All centuries but this, and every country but his own;
And the lady from the provinces, who dresses like a guy,
And who "doesn't think she dances, but would rather like to try";
And that singular anomaly, the lady novelist
I don't think she'd be missed, I'm sure she'd not he missed!
Chorus:
He's got her on the list, he's got her on the list;
And I don't think she'll be missed, I'm sure she'll not be missed!

Ko-Ko:
And that Nisi Prius nuisance, who just now is rather rife,
The Judicial humorist, I've got him on the list!
All funny fellows, comic men, and clowns of private life
They'd none of 'em be missed, they'd none of 'em be missed.
And apologetic statesmen of a compromising kind,
Such as What d'ye call him, Thing'em-bob, and likewise ... Never-mind,
And 'St 'st 'st and What's-his-name, and also You-know-who,
The task of filling up the blanks I'd rather leave to you.
But it really doesn't matter whom you put upon the list,
For they'd none of 'em be missed, they'd none of 'em be missed!
Chorus:
You may put 'em on the list, you may put 'em on the list;
And they'll none of 'em be missed, they'll none of 'em be missed!

No reasonable person equates the slaughter of 6 million innocent Jews with the execution of those guilty murderers committing that slaughter or the rape and murder of children with the execution of the rapist/murderer.

If so, then these rapists and murders would not go to prison. Believing in killing another human being (although I would agree these people are barely human) is wrong does not mean you equate a murderer to the victim - it means you still punish, but you do not kill in order punish. Life in prison (without any means of parole and with only the basics to live) is an appropriate punishment without making society murderers.

I agree that we as tax payers should not pay for a prisoners room and board - they should be made to work for their 10 x 10 foot cell and blanket.

I don't even believe in Capital Punishment for the worst of the worst! I think Bush and Cheney, who collectively slaughtered 1.2 million people, should be locked up in cells for the rest of their lives with muscular, 300 pound, murdering homosexuals.

There is another option. You could just get a job murdering people for the state. You get to kill people, and you get paid for it! What kind of people get those jobs I wonder...

Great to see you back Frank

Some of them do work. I know one of the prisons in CA make the inmates get a job to pay child support or whatever they may owe or they just might want a job . They only get paid 32 cents an hour and they dont even get to see that money but still that doesnt make up for the fact that they killed someone.

Of course it doesn't make up for killing someone. I only refer to working to pay their own expenses to exist and to keep the prison running - that why taxpayers are not supporting them.

Taking away all freedom and making their lives miserable, but not having anything but the very basics along with the fact of having to live with the knowledge that they will only have this. I can't imagine it is a comfortable of pleasant way to live.

Neither killing them or keeping them in prison for the rest of their lives will make up for killing someone.

Good to see you too, Eorl.

Actually, the word murder usually is used only when the killing is illegal...so technically it is not murder. And it certainly is not a job I’d want to do…any more than killing cattle for beef steaks would be.

Frank brings up an interesting point, in re a distinction between murder and other forms of killing. So, for example, Eric Raudi (Erik the Red) came to the conclusion that Greenland would be a good place for a colony while outlawed for three years for manslaughter. If you read the saga accounts, though, it's pretty clear that he committed murder, and one might even say "cold blooded" murder. But in the early history of Iceland, murder was fairly common--manslaughter was a euphemism, and in the absence of any central authority with law enforcement powers, the boys would get together in warm weather for a "Thing," at which time it would be proposed that this or that person be outlawed. An outlawed man could be killed out of hand, and if he couldn't drum up enough local support to defend his case, he'd have to get out of Dodge--which is how Erik ended up coasting western Greenland in 981. When he got back in 984, it looked like breaking out anew, and a few people were killed, but he made it up with his enemy, and probably paid some sort of compensation (the sagas aren't specific on that point).

The idea of weregild, paying compensation for the maiming or the killing of someone, and the institution of outlawing, were both means to prevent feuds (or so it was hoped). All too often, what constitutes murder was a matter of who held what power, and where, and when. Thomas à Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in the cathedral by four knights who were long-time close friends of King Henry II--as Beckett himself had been. Legend has it that Henry had said: "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" That has a nice dramatic ring to it, but contemporary record, corroborated by several witnesses, have it that he said: "What miserable drones and traitors have I nurtured and promoted in my household who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric!" This would have been enough, of course, to spark the same response. The difference, however, lies in the exact words used, which served to shield Henry from complicity, or a charge of incitement. Nonetheless, Beckett had been a friend in his younger days, and Henry regretted the death for the rest of his life, although he did not regret removing an active agent thwarting his religious constitution for the kingdom.

Edward II of England, King from 1307 until his questionable death in 1327, was very likely murdered. He was probably homosexual (the evidence is strong), but he had done his duty, and he did produce a son and heir. But his wife, Isabella of France (the English called her "the She-wolf of France") was dissatisfied with him, and took a lover, Mortimer. She did this in France, and when her retinue returned to England, they reported this to the King, and warned him that the pair would invade England. There was no real government as we know it in those days. Henry II, great-great-grandfather to Edward II, had had a relatively stable government because of his personality and that of his wife. Edward II was not a strong character, but his wife was. Edward's government was in the hands of a friend and distant relative by marriage, Hugh Despenser, and it was weak because both men were weak and despised by a nobility which habitually stood aside in any questionable situation--and the barons resented the favoritism Edward showed Despenser. The invasion of Isabella and Mortimer took place, and quickly gathered support because Isabella was resolute and looked like being a winner, while Despenser's allies decided they needed to go home to take care of business immediately. Edward, Despenser and his father were all captured. Hugh Despenser the Elder and the Younger were both executed, in rather grisly manner. The difference between those executions and murder lay in the claim to authority of Isabella and her supporters. Personally, i see little difference between this and a Norseman in 9th or 10th century Iceland who is outlawed because outnumbered, or who brazens out an accusation of "manslaughter" because he has sufficient support to defy his enemies in arms.

These days, such actions as the killing of the Despensers are referred to as "judicial murder," since at the very least, the forms of a judicial process had been followed. Isabella and Mortimer were faced by the problem of what to do with Edward. Isabella had control of her son (who would become Edward III, and who would start the Hundred Years War--when he had come into his own), but there was no way to judicially murder a King. So Edward ended up dead, and no one then had any doubt that it was murder, although it couldn't be proved. The likely method was that he was smothered with a mattress so his screams could not be heard, while a copper tube was inserted in his anus, and then a red hot iron inserted into his bowells. Given the state of crime scene investigation in those days, that was considered a good way to murder someone without leaving marks of violence. Somebody spilled the beans, though (someone always does), and three years later, Mortimer was judicially murdered--he was seized by Edward III and was imprisoned and then hanged without trial. Isabella lived for almost 30 years more, and despite legends of her remorse and madness, she lived well and frequently visited her son's court, where she doted on her grandchildren.

King Henry VI was captured by his royal enemy and cousin, Edward IV, in 1471. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he was murdered. He was weak, and probably irrevocably mentally ill by that time, while Edward was young, handsome, imposing and competent. The murder of Henry VI is usually described as judicial murder, an allegation that he was executed for cause, but without trial (there's no way to try an annointed king, although the Puritans did it to Charles I, whose defense was that they could not try him--nevertheless, they executed him on January 30, 1649). Being King of England was not necessarily a guarantee of job security before 1700.

This may all seem irrelevant, but my point is that a difference between manslaughter and murder, or "wrongful death," may well, and probably usually does, hinge on power. In the old days that power was probably obvious and sharp-edged. These days, that power wears two or three thousand dollar suits and charges $500 an hour and up.

Sorry, but that won't fly.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/discussion-recent-deterrence-studies

For someone writing a paper on capital punishment, you seem remarkably close-minded about it. You haven't done enough research if you still need to ask that question. You have to find out and understand why the Maryland Commission came to those conclusions (probably against public common opinion) if your paper is going to be a worthwhile exercise.