Another reason why I'm against capital punishment

Intentional homicide rate :
US (death penalty) : 5.8 per 100,000 per year.
Canada (no death penalty) : 1.83 per 100,000 per year.
France (no death penalty) : 1.59 per 100,000 per year.

Ah, Francis, thank you for your effort but I have never argued the death penalty reduced murder. Can we compare different countries is the first thing that comes to mind. The figures need also to be compared with arrest, conviction and execution rates, and the crime rate in general but the data may be interpreted the way you want, that is certainly one option. Anyway, the statistics dont mean anything because there is no blind and no control, which is obviously impossible.

Then it's just that we have different goals : You seek revenge, I don't...

Correct. Revenge and the better utilisation of resources. I am not allowed to put a dog in prison conditions but we can put a man in for his natural life, which may be 80 years. You should look a starving child in the face and say we dont want to feed you because the money is better spent on a murderer.

You guys argue from emotion. Crimes of blood, guts, brutality; vengeance of blood, guts, brutality. Putting a person away for life without parole effectively rids the world of these people, while allowing room to correct mistakes. Simple, civilized, effective.

He got into that position because too many white people in this country couldn't tell two blacks apart if one was male and the other female or one alive and the other dead. Eye witness IDs in these cases have a strange habit of being worthless.

I did.

You could come up with a better fallacy, couldn't you?

Or on an illegal invasion of other countries?

Then it's just that we have different goals : You seek revenge, I don't...
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And to me you are a sociopath caring little or nothing about the victims family only the poor murderers.

Which proves that you are so self-centered that you don't even read or understand what others are trying to express.

You inference is insulting, but I suspect it's your real intent.

You guys argue from emotion. Crimes of blood, guts, brutality; vengeance of blood, guts, brutality. Putting a person away for life without parole effectively rids the world of these people, while allowing room to correct mistakes. Simple, civilized, effective.
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Did you not perhaps not read my cut and paste on how the two brothers escape from death row along with four other murderers after considering killing their guards?

Lovely, being a guard in a prison where an inmate serving a life sentence can kill you for free.

Simple, civilized, effective
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Here is the part of the pasted story you that you seem to had missed edgarblythe. Simple and civilized my rear end.


Linwood and J.B. Briley were the ringleaders in the six inmate escape from Virginia's death row at Mecklenburg Correctional Center on May 31, 1984. During the early moments of the escape, in which a coordinated effort resulted in inmates taking over the death row unit, both Brileys expressed strong interest in killing the officers that they had taken hostage. They went so far as to douse captive officers in lighter fluid and were prepared to toss in a lit match to complete the action. Willie Lloyd Turner, another death row inmate, stepped in the way of James Briley and forbade him from doing so. Meanwhile, cop killer Wilbert Lee Evans prevented Linwood Briley from raping a female nurse who had been taken hostage while en route to delivering medication to inmates in the unit. These events were featured on I.D. Channel in Escape from Death Row.
Splitting off from their two remaining free escapees at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Brileys went to live with their uncle in the north of the city. They were captured on June 19 by a heavily armed group of FBI agents and police. Returned to Virginia, few sought to plead for their lives to be spared.
[edit] Execution

Second as you would not even allow us to executed even a Ben Laden that mean we are very likely to find ourselves in the same position as the West German government in the 80s where their people where being taken hostage and or kill in order to try to force the West German government to release terrorists.

Until that is all the terrorists together just decided to do a mass suicide in their cells.

Oh Edgarblythe I did a fast google news search on murderers escaping from prisons and it would seem that this is fairly common and not only in the US.

In one case a murderer even kill a prison guard in escaping and this is not going back into the news but just the current stories.

Seem like your simple solution have some holes in it. One thing is that after a man had been executed it damn hard for him to kill a guard or a fellow inmate or in the worst case a member of the public.

For your reading enjoyment.

CENTERVILLE " A Texas prison inmate convicted of killing a corrections officer during a September 2007 escape is headed to death row.

A jury in Leon County decided Tuesday that 39-year-old Jerry Duane Martin should die for the death of 59-year-old guard Susan Canfield of New Waverly.

Canfield was killed when Martin and John Ray Falk, both inmates at the Wynne Unit in Huntsville, broke away from a work detail, stole a truck and rammed into Canfield while she was on horseback.

The fugitives were caught within hours.

Martin already had been serving to 50 years for attempted murder.

Falk is awaiting trial on similar charges related to the officer's death. He is serving life for a murder in 1986.

Canfield's horse had to be euthanized.

PHILADELPHIA " A Philadelphia prison official says a murder suspect who escaped on Thanksgiving had a pass allowing him in unauthorized areas and passed at least a dozen jail employees as he left the building.

Oscar Alvarado escaped from the Curran Fromhold Correctional Facility in northeast Philadelphia between 3 and 6 p.m. Thursday. Authorities continued their search Saturday.

Prison Commissioner Louis Giorla says that although Alvarado had no visitors on Thursday afternoon, he obtained an unauthorized pass allowing him access to the visitors' room.

Giorla also says Alvarado changed into street clothes instead of orange jumpsuits inmates are supposed to wear when they have visitors.

The 27-year-old was jailed on charges of gunning down a woman last year in Kensington.

See Next Story in U.S.

Row over murderer's escape to Africa
A cross-border row has broken out over how a murderer was allowed to escape prison and travel to Africa using his own passport.

By Simon Johnson, Scottish Political Editor
Published: 3:42PM GMT 11 Dec 2009

John Burt Brown has been found dead in Gambia after absconding from Castle Huntly open prison near Dundee six months ago.

Sources close to Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish justice minister, questioned how the 57-year-old had been allowed to leave the country without the UK Border Agency (UKBA) being alerted.

By Brian Lysaght

Nov. 25 (Bloomberg) -- British police recaptured Jane Andrews, a convicted murderer and former aide to the Duchess of York, after she escaped from prison three days ago.

Andrews, 42, was taken into custody early today in Maidstone, southeast of London, the Kent County police force said on its Web site. She walked away from East Sutton Park prison in Maidstone on Nov. 22.

Andrews was convicted in 2001 of killing her boyfriend, Thomas Cressman, with a cricket bat and a knife after he refused to marry her. Andrews, whose lawyers argued that she was defending herself after Cressman raped and threatened to kill her, was convicted of murder and jailed for 15 years. Cressman’s father, Harry, rejected Andrews’ allegations about his son as “totally despicable,” the British Broadcasting Corp. reported.

The sentence was reduced by three years in 2006, over opposition from the Cressman family, and she was eligible for parole in 2012, the BBC said.

Andrews had worked as a dresser for Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, for nine years. She was based at Buckingham Palace and traveled on official overseas visits with the duchess and her former husband, Prince Andrew.

Andrews was discovered missing from the prison at an evening roll call, police said. The East Sutton Park facility, based in a mansion house overlooking parkland, is an “open” prison where offenders are prepared for resettlement, according to the prison service Web site. About 25 of the 100 inmates have jobs in the community outside the prison.

Kent police said Andrews was found “safe and well” and called her a “vulnerable lady.” Her lawyers had argued at her trial that she had a possible personality disorder.

After being moved to the open prison last week, she took an overdose of painkillers, provoking fears she might try to kill herself again, the Daily Telegraph reported.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Lysaght in London at [email protected].

There is certainly a case to be made for keeping the death penalty around for extreme cases.

Nonetheless as a general rule I cannot support a death penalty in America at this point in time; too many ways it resembles giving the Ronnie Earles, Janet Renos, Scott Harshbargers, and Mike Nifongs of the world a license to kill people.

In theory at least I've got nothing against hanging somebody like Manson, Dennis Rader, Paul Bernardo, John Mohammed...

Here's the problem: I'd want several changes to the system before I could feel good about capital punishment anymore.

1. Guilt should be beyond any doubt whatsoever; the usual criteria of guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt" doesn't cut it for hanging somebody.

2. The person in question must represent a continuing threat to society should he ever escape or otherwise get loose. The "bird man" of Alcatraz would not qualify, John Mohammed clearly would.

3. I'd want all career/money incentives for convicting people of crimes gone which would mean scrapping the present "adversarial" system of justice in favor of something like the French "inquisitorial" system in which the common objective of all parties involved was a determination of facts.

4. I'd want there to be no societal benefit to keeping the person alive. Cases in which this criteria would prevent hanging somebody would include "Son of Sam" who we probably should want to study more than hang, or Timothy McVeigh who clearly knew more than the public ever was allowed to hear.

Given all of that I could feel very good about hanging Charles Manson, John Muhammed, or Paul Bernardo, but that's about what it would take.

In fact in a totally rational world the job of District Attorney as it is known in America would not exist. NOBODY should ever have any sort of a career or money incentive for sending people to prison, much less for executing people. The job of District Attorney in America seems to involve almost limitless power and very little resembling accountability and granted there is no shortage of good people who hold the job, the combination has to attract the wrong kinds of people as well.

Actually... One person who for sure would have wanted to study Son of Sam would have been Julian Jaynes. The only difference between Berkowicz and the main actors in the Iliad was the state of war existing in the later case.

My only hope, Francis, is that this moron will, sooner or later, run out of nonsense to post. It's too late to hope that he will ever learn to read and write...let alone think.

Gungasnake I have zero problem with reviewing when we used the death penalty and even greatly reducing it used however I draw the line at not using it for someone who could raped and then bury a 9 year old alive for example or someone in prison with a life sentence who kill a guard and in most cases another inmate.

There are some crimes and some people who the only punishment that fit at all is the death penalty.

LOL and this is from a man who would like not to used capital punishment on a man who raped and then bury alive a 9 year old little girl or on Ted Bundy or the DC sniper or even Ben Laden for that matter.

Talk about not thinking beyond the correct far left liberal PC position.

In the continuity of my stance, I prefer to let him have the benefit of the doubt, and, if some hidden redeeming quality remains, that he improves as a human being..

Actually 4) I believe in not killing (except as protecting if needed).

The poor issue you mention doesn't completely hold water - plenty of people give to the poor to help/to hospitals to assist the poor to get medical care and even to animal shelters to prevent animals from being put down. Yes I feel responsible for those may need help and therfeore give money and time to particular charities.