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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Jul 24, 2014 - 01:53pm PT
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Although I am generally conservative, I have always been leery of killing a person in custody. I doubt that you could find any experienced lawyer who thinks that only the guilty have been executed. Unfortunately, some people manage to kill while in prison for murder. We had a case in Fresno about 35 years ago where a convicted killer got life, and managed to arrange the killing of the witnesses against him from his prison cell. What do you do with someone like that?
Answer: In California, you kill him 20 years later.
Frankly, I don't understand the rulings that the "original coacktail" can cause cruel or unusual punishment. The prisoners were completely sedated, so how could they feel any more pain than I did when put under general anesthesia? Oh well, maybe, as suggested above, we should go back to the old Utah choice, nameley would you rather be hanged or shot?
John
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Jul 24, 2014 - 02:00pm PT
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It is very possible that the condemned man was dead very quickly but went on to move, breathe, etc., reflexively. I have seen this happen carrying a very dead body down from a crag. He moved a lot, sucked in air, flailed his arms around etc. All this without a head. You get my point...
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SC seagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, or In What Time Zone Am I?
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Jul 24, 2014 - 02:08pm PT
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I have seen this happen carrying a very dead body down from a crag. He moved a lot, sucked in air, flailed his arms around etc. All this without a head. You get my point... A Super-topian by chance?
Susan
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jul 24, 2014 - 02:11pm PT
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Yes, Ward, the system is clearly designed to maximize the life of the condemned and prolong the suffering of the survivors. Of course it is.
In the case of condemned killers that's exactly what's going on. To deny this well-established fact is laughable.
Death penalty foes , especially within the legal system, have done a bang up inside job of frustrating the law and making certain , by a variety of means ,that executions are not really carried out---and then only after decades of expensive appeals. It's a rigged system.
It's not at all focused on ensuring that the current 4% innocence rate among the executed doesn't increase. Or that death is fairly applied regardless of race (hint: it's not).
Assuming the 4% is correct ---this is hardly a reason to frustrate the law . The fact that the justice system is not perfect should not be breaking news , and in any case is not a sound reason eliminate the law in general, any law. The fact that the system messed up in 4% of DP cases should never be a reason to give the other 96% a get-out-of-jail-free card. Unless one's aim is to circumvent the DP law as an inside lawyerly/political activist job.
Is realizing your need for cruelty wdorth killing those innocent (and mostly black) people? About half of God's Country says HELL YES to that one.
You've tried to push just about every button there. Let me see, insisting that the democratically and constitutionally sanctioned death penalty being actually carried out
Equals
Cruelly killing innocent people with racist and religious intent.
Again , the tone of that argument doesn't even reach the level of "nice try"
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jul 24, 2014 - 02:22pm PT
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Gee, I didn't realize that 96% of death row inmates were getting out of jail.
Not all of them do, but we all know that many of them are released to kill again, or have their sentences severely reduced.. This is accomplished by activists within the legal system who use technicalities, get sympathetic judges , and thereby sometimes hand out light sentences to begin with-- as a way of obviating the death penalty.
I mean, everyone knows we have been living in an era in which many killers have been allowed to walk. This is largely intentional, for the reasons I stated.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jul 24, 2014 - 02:33pm PT
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Activists within the legal system?
What a scathing comeback. Who is Huckleby?
I am talking about the DP foes in the legal system who are frigging legion , okay.
Another thing about endless appeals, beyond the DP sabotaging, is the big payday for lawyers. Something they likey. Oh yes. And the high profile free advertising. A sort of Darwinian process is unleashed in which the attorneys who are good at the given technicalities at play go on to thrive under this rigged system
Meanwhile the family of the victims show up faithfully everyday with that sad sleepless look on their faces.
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Jul 24, 2014 - 02:45pm PT
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I think the French figured this out already. If you are going to do it, do it right.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jul 24, 2014 - 02:48pm PT
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True, only the top law school grads get the lucrative gig of writing appeals for death row inmates.
Or, like OJ's lawyers they go on to stardom and millionaire status.
For any given attorney murder cases may not be a gold mine ---but for the criminal justice system in general it is a small Fort Knox.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Jul 24, 2014 - 02:52pm PT
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True, only the top law school grads get the lucrative gig of writing appeals for death row inmates.
Watch it, Dave! My wife's first cousin is married to a lawyer whose practice is almost exclusively death penalty appeals. While it certainly doesn't pay that well, it also has very little overhead.
For one thing, you don't need an office, because you can see your clients only in prison. For some reason, they don't let condemned people out of jail. Interestingly, though, the federal penalty for failing to surrender to authorities to allow them to execute you is that they add an extra sentence for failing to surrender. I'm sure it's a big deterrent.
For another, there is a great deal of cheaply- or freely-available resrources.
Of course, you need to have a very thick skin, because many will despise you because of who you represent, and your won-loss record will make last year's Cal football team (1-11, sad to say) look like a big winner by comparison.
At least they don't do to him what they did to defendants' lawyers in France. The defendant's lawyer in France was required to be a witness to the guillotining of his or her client! Ycch!
John
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 24, 2014 - 03:02pm PT
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John,
That must leave them a cut below the rest,..
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Psilocyborg
climber
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Jul 24, 2014 - 03:16pm PT
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You might have zero sympathy for murderers, but we do not administer the death penalty equitably in this country. You are far more likely to receive it if you are poor and not white.
And how many times has DNA exonerated convicts? Plenty of people get wrongfully convicted. Kind of hard to free them after execution,..
I get these points, and I agree. This is a complex issue. It still doesn't change the fact that I could care less if murderers live or die, or if they suffer during execution. Obviously I don't want the innocent to be executed.
In my view, we go about solving problems in this country backwards. I think we can all agree that capital punishment isn't a good thing. But FIRST we must work as a society to bring down the level of violence before we can do things like abolish the death penalty.
Europe looks at us with disdain because of the death penalty but if they had the murder rates and levels of violence we do they might change their tune.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Jul 24, 2014 - 03:36pm PT
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Always seemed a little odd to me that may anti-capital punishment folks play the what-if-we-execute-someone-who's-innocent card. But, they don't seem very interested in determining whether the millions incarcerated here, many for decades or life, are actually guilty.
So it's this unspeakable horror to execute an innocent person, but putting them in an American prison for life is just fine?
In actuality, if you are wrongly imprisoned these days, you are probably a lot better of on death row where you'll have hordes of eager beaver young lawyers and other do-gooders coming to your aid than you would be as just another guy serving life in prison. (And not to pick another argument with Kos, but I know from personal experience that it's common for big law firm lawyers, who generally went to top law schools or did very well in lower ranked schools, to volunteer their time on behalf of death row inmates.)
I will concede that the irreversibility of the death penalty cautions that it be used with care.
One slightly interesting issue in DP law, as I recall, is whether a judge or jury should or even may properly consider so called "residual doubt" as a factor in whether to apply the DP. At least when I studied it, as I recall from about 20 years ago, the majority rule was "No." If someone has been convicted, the DP decision maker is supposed to take that as an absolute fact, and should not consider the possibility of innocence.
That seemed really freaking stupid to me then and still does--we've got enough serious murderers to give the DP to that it seems insane to suggest giving it to anyone who can raise any credible case at all regarding their possible innocence.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Jul 24, 2014 - 03:49pm PT
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These laypeople insisting that he was "sleeping because I heard him snoring" have literally no idea what they're talking about. Snoring is a sign of a compromised airway, not sleep. Additionally, chemically induced "sleep" does not ensure a lack of suffering. If he was opening and closing his mouth on his own, as a journalist who witnessed the event described, he was not very well sedated.
Those interviewed with this view then go on to insist that the convict's suffering was not "real suffering" because the suffering of the victim or the victim's family was worse. The "your suffering isn't real because I think my suffering is worse" position seems morally wanting. Additionally, if you find yourself arguing "he didn't suffer" and follow it up with "well his suffering doesn't count" then you may be seeking vengeance, not justice.
blahblah posted Always seemed a little odd to me that may anti-capital punishment folks play the what-if-we-execute-someone-who's-innocent card. But, they don't seem very interested in determining whether the millions incarcerated here, many for decades or life, are actually guilty.
So it's this unspeakable horror to execute an innocent person, but putting them in an American prison for life is just fine?
Putting the word "card" after a perfectly valid and factually real argument does not actually rebut that argument. We have, in fact, executed innocent people. We have freed hundreds of others who WOULD have been executed were it not for both advents in DNA technology AND lawyers committed to working completely for free to exonerate them. If your system is imperfect enough to kill people who committed no crime while letting the person who did commit that crime go unpunished then pretty much any other argument is moot. "Well, we MOSTLY only kill guilty people but hey nobody is perfect" might not be the best foundation for a "justice system." Additionally, if your system disproportionately executes the poor and people of color despite the severity of the crime, you aren't peddling "justice."
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aspendougy
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Jul 24, 2014 - 04:05pm PT
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If you are innocent, but get life in prison, you at least have a small chance to get your conviction overturned through THE INNOCENCE PROJECT, and other groups. That does not negate the injustice of being wrongly convicted.
One of my relatives was a public defender in the Bay Area, and he had to spend some time defending the man who abducted and murdered 12 year old Polly Klass. This man is so evil and unrepentant, it was amazing.
I don't like the idea of him getting room and board for life, at tax payers expense. He should be required to work at a job that is unpleasant, boring, and repetitive for the rest of his life, inside the prison.
If we are going to execute, why not several sleeping pills, then carbon monoxide poisoning?
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jul 24, 2014 - 04:22pm PT
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This argument is so bad its more strawdoll than strawman:
"Always seemed a little odd to me that may anti-capital punishment folks play the what-if-we-execute-someone-who's-innocent card. But, they don't seem very interested in determining whether the millions incarcerated here, many for decades or life, are actually guilty.
So it's this unspeakable horror to execute an innocent person, but putting them in an American prison for life is just fine?"
In point of fact, the very same (large) organizations that fight the death penalty also seek to end the Drug War and scale back our Incarceration Nation.
Surprise!
I also love the ubiquitous idea that we should execute the 'really bad ones who we know are guilty'. Um...everyone goes through the same trial process - and that process is not infallible in its attempt to discover how 'guilty or really bad' a person is. The idea seems to be that there is some other, better (legal) means of finding this out that we're not employing. Like some omniscient movie narrator is going to step in and call it. There isn't.
Such cartoonish opinions quickly reveal that the author is neither familiar with our criminal justice system nor working in any capacity to reform it.
Long on opinions, short on action.
It's the innernut way.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
dancin on the tip of god's middle finger
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Jul 24, 2014 - 04:54pm PT
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i've seen heads at phish shows
rock the morphine-valium high.
then chase it with nitrous.
those kids are durable.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 24, 2014 - 05:00pm PT
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I'd throw the switch myself on someone who really did commit murder.
Kos throws the first stone (or is he a just another thrill killer?)
He should be required to work at a job that is unpleasant, boring, and repetitive for the rest of his life, inside the prison.
In England in the 19th century prisoners were required to sit at a machine that counted the times a crank on it was turned by the prisoner. Every so often a guard would come along with a "key" that was used to tighten the hold on the crank. This is why the term turnkey came into being.
I wonder if they discontinued it after discovering that prisoners couldn't even pee left handed, but with their right could crush a rock.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jul 24, 2014 - 05:16pm PT
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Most of us object to cruelty.
Only some of us choose to proscribe cruelty as a remedy. It's amazing how much imagination some posters here put into their pet fantasy punishments.
Hmmmm.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Jul 24, 2014 - 05:18pm PT
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A Super-topian by chance?
No. It was Father's Day, 1984. Mark Wagner, Ian Katz and I had a had done Largo's Turbo Flange variation to The Edge, and were running laps on the Bat Crack to burn off steam. We got back down to the traversing trail, and a young woman in street clothes came around. "Can you help us, our friend fell?" Expecting to help someone with a broken leg or some such thing we rushed around to see what was up.
There were three people, the poor fellow's friends - presumably waiting for him to return from his ascent of the Maiden - when their buddy came crashing down from the top. Apparently he was having his picture taken and he backed off over the edge.
The body was headless, and one leg was gone at the knee.
His friends, who were totally freaked, begged us to get him down so the animals would not eat him, so we got the stokes litter and did so, not an easy task.
Anyway, from that experience I can say that the condemned man could well have been long dead and still gasped for air and jumped around etc.
Sorry to be graphic, this was a profound experience for Me. The story was not over when that day was done.
Edit: Father's Day 1994.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Jul 24, 2014 - 05:21pm PT
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I also love the ubiquitous idea that we should execute the 'really bad ones who we know are guilty'. Um...everyone goes through the same trial process - and that process is not infallible in its attempt to discover how 'guilty or really bad' a person is. The idea seems to be that there is some other, better (legal) means of finding this out that we're not employing. Like some omniscient movie narrator is going to step in and call it. There isn't.
Tvash, it is true that no "omniscient movie narrator is going to step in and call it" and there is no way to ensure there will be a zero percent error rate.
But you seem to be struggling with at least two points:
1. It is at least conceptually possible that a jury (and courts and parole boards) could be instructed to consider its degree of certainty in its conviction as one of the factors to use in its decision whether to impose a death sentence; and
2. There is a certain class of criminals whose guilt even the strongest opponents of the death penalty do not dispute.
Until you can grasp those points, you may want to think a little more before questioning others' legal acumen.
Since I've been accused of raising a straw man, let's consider another one: The death penalty applied in the US isn't done perfectly. Therefore, we should abolish the death penalty.
How about reforming it?
For starters, (and this doesn't address the question of guilt), who has an objection to using a good old fashioned firing squad as a method of execution? Would Tvash the philosopher extraordinaire point out that maybe the team of trained sharpshooters could have off day, and not place the bullets exactly where intended, and the condemned may suffer a bit more than planned. yeah right.
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