As one of the shrinking number of countries that still practice state-sanctioned murder (the death penalty) the US shares that honor with countries such as Afghanistan, Burundi, Congo, Cuba, Iran, Malaysia, Myanmar, North Korea, Rwanda, Uganda and Uzbekistan. Very few developed nations on that list.
amnestyusa.org/abolish/abret2.html
We’re also one of the even smaller number of countries that violates international law by executing juvenile offenders:
MT,
My own feeling regarding capital punishment has changed over the years.
I previously was a staunch advocate of capital punishment.
However, due to the possibility that innocents may be wrongly convicted and thus subjected to capital punishment, I no longer support the use of the death penalty.
However, I do not regard capital punishment as “barbaric”. In fact, I still agree with the notion that some people deserve to be executed by the state… and I think execution, in theory, is appropriate punishment for crimes such as rape and attempted murder (why should an inept and thus only “would-be” murderer be spared because he was too incompetent to conclude his intended act?).
So while I now do not support the use of capital punishment, it is not the theory that I object to, but rather the practice that offends me.
Tigerman,
If I am following you correctly, are you saying that you support the death penalty, but not its implementation because of the danger of wrongful execution?
If that is correct, do you support the death penalty if there is absolute certainty of guilt? (which is of course hypothetical!)
Secondly, could you clarify what you mean by objecting to the practice: You object to it outright, or you object to the methods in current use?
Tigerman.
Strangely my dance with the death penalty went - against - for - against. The clincher for me in the end was also the strong likelihood of innocent people being executed. Of course it has never been a particularly major issue until I began living in Taiwan. Australia scrapped the death penalty when I was still in nappies.
Actually saw a good online documentary about prisoners wrongfully convicted and later released on Frontline.
Some very interesting statements that link rather nicely to the other thread on the three strikes. Clearly poverty is a major factor in the convictions, or at least the inability to fight a wrongful rap. Amazed that there was no compensation!
HG
Not barbaric Tigerman? Maybe you (and the rest of us) would feel differently if could actually witness what takes place in a state-sanctioned murder. I’m not downplaying the horrific crimes that many of these people may have committed, but. . .
1983 Alabama. John Evans. After the first jolt
of electricity, sparks and flames erupted from the electrode
attached to his leg. The electrode then burst from the strap
holding it in place and caught on fire. Smoke and sparks came
out from under the hood. Two physicians entered the chamber and
found a heartbeat. The electrode was reattached to his leg.
More smoke and burning flesh. Again the doctors found a
heartbeat. Ignoring the pleas of Evans’s lawyer, Russ Canan
(202-393-7676), a third jolt was applied. The execution took 14
minutes and left Evans’s body charred and smoldering.
Mississippi. Jimmy Lee Gray. Officials had
to clear the room eight minutes after the gas was released when
Gray’s desperate gasps for air repulsed witnesses. His attorney,
Dennis Balske of Montgomery, Alabama, criticized state officials
for clearing the room when the inmate was still alive. Says
David Bruck, "Jimmy Lee Gray died banging his head against a
steel pole in the gas chamber while the reporters counted his
moans.
Georgia. Alpha Otis Stephens. After the
first jolt of electricity failed to kill him, Stephens struggled
for eight minutes before a second charge finished the job. The
first jolt took two minutes, and then there was a six minute
pause so his body could cool before physicians could examine him
(and declare that another jolt was needed). During that six-
minute interval, Stephens took 23 breaths.
Texas. Raymond Landry. Pronounced dead
40 minutes after being strapped to the execution gurney and 24
minutes after the drugs first started flowing into his arms. Two
minutes into the killing, the syringe came out of Landry’s vein,
spraying the deadly chemicals across the room toward witnesses.
The execution team had to reinsert the catheter into the vein.
The curtain was pulled for 14 minutes so witnesses could not
observe the intermission.
Texas. Stephen McCoy. He had such a violent
physical reaction to the drugs (heaving chest, gasping, choking,
etc.) that one of the witnesses (male) fainted, crashing into and
knocking over another witness.
Florida. Jesse Joseph Tafero. When the state
replaced a “natural” sponge with a synthetic sponge in the
headpiece of the execution apparatus, six-inch flames erupted,
and three jolts of power were required to stop Tafero’s
breathing.
Virginia. Wilbert Lee Evans. During the
electrocution, blood spewed from the right side of the mask on
Evans’s face, drenching Evans’s shirt with blood. Evans
continued to moan after the first jolt of electricity was
applied.
Texas. Justin Lee May. May had an unusually
violent reaction to the lethal drugs. According to Robert
Wernsman, a reporter for the Item (Huntsville), May “gasped,
coughed and reared against his heavy leather restraints, coughing
once again before his body froze …” Associated Press reporter
Michael Graczyk wrote, “He went into a coughing spasm, groaned
and gasped, lifted his head from the death chamber gurney and
would have arched his back if he had not been belted down. After
he stopped breathing, his eyes and mouth remained open.”
Then there’s the issue of being fit for execution:
[quote]Often, the mentally retarded do not understand what they are asked to do by others. Sometimes, because they have been taught by years of conditioning to give others the answers they want to hear, they are incriminated with no understanding of what the consequences are for their “confessions.”
People with mental retardation often exhibit low self-esteem, poor
tolerance for frustration and a desire to please authority figures.
Often, they acquiesce to others whom they perceive to be in positions of
authority.
One death-row inmate in California, a mentally retarded man who always
saved his dessert “for later,” set aside the dessert of his last meal
to eat after the execution. Another in the same state told his escorts on
the way to the death chamber that he wanted to watch his favorite TV show when he returned to his cell. Executing such individuals as these clearly does not serve the interest of justice.[/quote]
HG
Yes.
Yes. That’s why I stated that I support capital punishment in theory.
By “practice” I meant simply the use of capital punishment… because there have been cases, though relatively few, where innocent persons have been wrongly convicted (sometimes by mistake and sometimes intentionally). As long as the possibility exists that this punishment could be administered by mistake or by abuse, I think it would be better to simply ban its use in all cases.
MT,
I’m not arguing that certain methods are not “barbaric”. I’m simply saying that the idea that someone who kills (unjustly), rapes or attempts to kill (again unjustly) another person deserves to die is not a “barbaric” idea.
I fully support the death penalty and I await with fond hope the expected and well-deserved capital punishment coming for the Washington sniper.
The true barbarism is practiced by those who would allow these grotesque creatures, like the Washington sniper, to continue breathing air without proper retribution or fear. They say that governments don’t have the right to decide who lives and who dies. But governments decide who lives and dies every day. They decide in the cases of people whose relatives want them to be taken off life support in ambigious circumstances; they decide in the cases of whether to allow or not allow abortion; they decide in the cases of war or where military force is elsewhere deemed necessary
Here’s another list: Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States. The total of these five countries, all of which support and carry out the death penalty are wealthier and more populous than all of Europe. At least three of them (Japan, the U.S. and Singapore) score better on quality of life issues than the average European country.
And many countries would still be practicing the death penalty today were it not for the meddling European Union, which forces many countries to adopt stances at odds with their traditional values for fear of having their trade with the prosperous union cut off.
And there has not been a single proven case of an innocent man executed in the United States since the reinstitution of the death penalty more than two decades ago.
By the way, here’s a list for you: Angola, Azerbaijan, Ecuador, Haiti, Panama, and Turkmenistan.
What can it be?
Major havens for drug cartels?
Countries with the highest number of extrajudicial killings every year?
No, these countries are among those which have abolished the death penalty.
Ahhhh, Ha Ha Ha Ha.
Now who is the world’s biggest international meddler, I wonder?
[quote=“Cold Front”]
Here’s another list: Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States. The total of these five countries, all of which support and carry out the death penalty are wealthier and more populous than all of Europe. At least three of them (Japan, the U.S. and Singapore) score better on quality of life issues than the average European country.[/quote]
And all of those countries have gun control, except the US. Do they have snipers in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore?
Come on CF, technically true but you don’t actually believe it do you?
Anyyway, that could change in an instant if they allowed DNA testing to be submitted in an inquiry. The death sentence is heavily weighted towards those that don’t have the means to fight it. The families of these victims have even less funds to fight a review of the case after they’ve exhausted what little they had in trying to beat the sentence.
I agree. I could support the death penalty in a more equitable society.
HG
You’ve never heard of crimes committed with guns in Taiwan?
i guess it depends what you mean by “proven” I was under the impression that there were a few cases where evidence was re-examined and case re-opened and with the help of new technology esp. DNA, there was a strong argument that such men were not guilty or perhaps enough to cast doubt that the case met the beyond a reasonable doubt bar. i forget exactly. i should look it up.
however, i believe there definitely have been quite a number of cases overturned and people freed that were on death row.
hmm… didnt we post this argument before?
Ahhhh, Ha Ha Ha Ha.
Now who is the world’s biggest international meddler, I wonder?[/quote]
This evades the point by changing the subject. We are not talking about U.S. meddling; we are talking about E.U. meddling. Is E.U. trade pressure to change a few facets of the domestic criminal legal systems of various poor countries almost exclusively responsible for the large number of those countries that have recently abolished the death penalty? Yes, without question.
Even the Russian Federation has felt the pressure to abolish the death penalty, even as they have continued to murder tens of thousands of Chechens and carried out numerous extrajudicial killings. After all, the death penalty is more symbolic than meaningful. It’s easy for a state to give it up in the face of strong pressure because it’s not that significant a policy.
So one cannot argue that a global norm has been established on the death penalty, and that the U.S. is outside of this global norm. No such global norm has been established. The norm is a regional one largely confined to Europe, and it has been successfully exported to a few countries in Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe that want to maintain good trade relations with Europe.
You can laud Haiti all you want as an example of civilization; no one with a lick of sense is going to buy that argument.
[quote=“Alien”][quote=“Cold Front”]
Here’s another list: Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States. The total of these five countries, all of which support and carry out the death penalty are wealthier and more populous than all of Europe. At least three of them (Japan, the U.S. and Singapore) score better on quality of life issues than the average European country.[/quote]
And all of those countries have gun control, except the US. Do they have snipers in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore?[/quote]
No, but Japan, Taiwan and Singapore still execute people, even with the benefit of anti-gun laws on the books.
Perhaps, but the hypocrisy of the statement amused me.
If the EU is “meddling” to eradicate the death penalty, it is because it feels morally obligated to stop the practice.
If the US interferes in, say, human rights violations in other countries, it does so because it feels morally obligated to do so.
The only difference is you support one but not the other.
I have not made such an argument, though there are grounds for it.
In Britain, there were proven and suspected cases of wrongful execution.
Come on CF, technically true but you don’t actually believe it do you?[/quote]
Absolutely. There is a HUGE and well-motivated anti-death penalty lobby that would have played up ANY innocent man who had been executed since its reinstatement. There a couple of cases where they have tried, but frankly they are so ridiculous in stretching the facts in each case that their cause has never caught on with the general public.
Almost every death sentence that is carried out has been reviewed and re-reviewed so many times, and the ruling been looked into by some well-financed groups, that it’s hard to believe there could be any substantial error.
People who are against the death penalty like to point to Illinois, where overturned cases abound. But Illinois is an example of how the seriousness of the death penalty causes layers of different people, from lawyers to anti-death penalty groups, to study each case carefully to make sure there were no substantial mistakes.