Capital punishment

[nerdanel]

Let me see what I can do to remedy the hearsay. Note spelling.

The name of the storyteller was William "Billy" Neal Moore. Here is an article originally written by bet.com about Moore. Here is his name in a listing of people whose death sentences have been commuted on humanitarian grounds.

He spoke to a constitutional law class at Suffolk Law School in Boston, Massachusetts in early March 2006. Among other things, he told the story that I recounted. I wrote that journal entry within two weeks of hearing his talk, when my memory was still fresh. Unfortunately, I didn't capture the name of the inmate he described. Again, I reiterate: it would be very difficult (absent a detailed investigation into the Georgia prison records of the putatively mentally retarded, now-deceased inmate AND corroborating evidence from others on death row who interact with him (who likely are now also deceased)) to establish the veracity, or lack thereof, of the story. So, take it for what it's worth. If it makes you feel better to disbelieve it, knock yourself out.

[artie]

Let me see what I can do to remedy the hearsay. Note spelling.

The name of the storyteller was William "Billy" Neal Moore. Here is an article originally written by bet.com about Moore. Here is his name in a listing of people whose death sentences have been commuted on humanitarian grounds.

He spoke to a constitutional law class at Suffolk Law School in Boston, Massachusetts in early March 2006. Among other things, he told the story that I recounted. I wrote that journal entry within two weeks of hearing his talk, when my memory was still fresh. Unfortunately, I didn't capture the name of the inmate he described. Again, I reiterate: it would be very difficult (absent a detailed investigation into the Georgia prison records of the putatively mentally retarded, now-deceased inmate AND corroborating evidence from others on death row who interact with him (who likely are now also deceased)) to establish the veracity, or lack thereof, of the story. So, take it for what it's worth. If it makes you feel better to disbelieve it, knock yourself out.

OK. Good. That's a start. I want to know if this actually happened the way it has been related. Otherwise I don't think there is any reason to comment upon the story and that we may very well be propagating a myth. I'm sure that it won't be difficult to learn more about this since hardly anyone is executed these days without some type of public documentation of their demise.

[Holbytla]

I fail to see how rehabilitation enters into the equation for a capital crime.
Rehabilitated or not, death is payment for crimes committed in some states.
The prosecutor made that decision at the start of the trial.
The judge found sufficient cause, the jury and then again the judge approved the decision. All totally legal and according to our system of government.
If a governor is going to step in because he has evidence of a mistake, then the entire sentence should be commuted, or the defendant tried again.
To reduce the sentence seems to me an abuse of power and a breakdown of the legal system.
These efforts would be better served in getting the law repealed, rather than circumventing what is legal and just according to the law.
I do not believe in the death penalty for a lot of reasons, except in dire cases, but two wrongs do not make a right.

[artie]

Do you remeber the date of the lecture and when the execution of MRI occurred?

Here is audio documentation of 22 Georgia executions. Certainly a list of names exists also. I don't think it would be at all difficult for you to find a list of names of those who were executed in Georgia and refresh your memory of the person's name.

Possibly the name is Jerome Bowden?

The law was prompted in part by widespread criticism of the execution of Jerome Bowden. His lawyers contended that he was mentally retarded and therefore should not be executed, but he was sentenced to death for a 1976 murder.

When his appeals were exhausted and the execution date drew near, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles granted a one-week stay to allow time for a new I.Q. test.

Despite a finding that Mr. Bowden's intelligence quotient was 65 - 100 is considered average - the board concluded that he knew right from wrong. The panel voted to allow the execution, and he was put to death June 24, 1986.

[Primula Baggins]

That was the case that caused Georgia to outlaw exceutions of mentally retarded inmates (the law that established the cutoff IQ of 70).

Here is a link to a similar story from 2005 (not the one Nel is talking about, but the same issue). (It's from the New York Times, February 6, 2005.)

The start of the story:

Three years ago, in the case of a Virginia man named Daryl R. Atkins, the United States Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded. But Mr. Atkins's recent test scores could eliminate him from that group.

His scores have shot up, a defense expert said, thanks to the mental workout his participation in years of litigation gave him.

The Supreme Court, which did not decide whether Mr. Atkins was retarded, noted that he scored 59 on an I.Q. test in 1998. The cutoff for retardation in Virginia is 70.

A defense expert who retested Mr. Atkins last year found that his I.Q. was 74. In court here on Thursday, prosecutors said their expert's latest test yielded 76.

[halplm]

I'm sorry, but I just have to point out that IQ tests are all horribly useless in any practical way... to have people's lives hinge on such tests in ANY way, is a gross misunderstanding of mental capacities.

This why the death penalty irks me so... I don't think we should be deciding who lives and who dies in any way. Lock them up and throw away the key, I'm fine with that, some people are just incapable of living in a civilized society. But they can still live, and they can still learn and improve themselves.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I was going to post in this thread, but halplm just said exactly what I wanted to say.

So I'll just say

[truehobbit]

"Humanizing" - at least in the States - is a verb used to refer to the process of bringing a person's human (i.e. "good" or "redeeming") qualities to light.

For instance, I have heard the sentence, "A prisoner appearing for sentencing should have his family, friends, and others who know his good qualities appear as character witnesses during sentencing in order to humanize him for the judge." Of course that doesn't mean that a prisoner is not a human.

Thanks for explaining, nel.

Hmmmh, I think I understand, but I also think it's a strange use of the word (and something of the original meaning seems left in it).
If the judge only knows person X as suspected perpetrator of crime Y, then he would indeed be unable to see him as a human being, so 'humanize' still means avoiding that the accused is seen as a case file or so.


It's also kind of cool that the proud, old term of "abolitionist" is coming to new use here.

[nerdanel]

Artie: No, unfortunately I don't recall the date of the lecture. It was not a formal talk for which there were posters put up. I believe Moore was in town for some more significant event (IIRC), and a professor at Suffolk requested him to make a stop to speak informally to a lecture class of about fifty people. I wasn't a Suffolk student, and it was happenstance that I heard about the lecture the day before, via a visiting professor on my campus. I could figure out a date via checking old emails but I'm not sure it would make any practical difference. The journal entry I posted was written on March 24, 2006, and says that it was written roughly two weeks after the lecture.

I can't honestly represent to you that I heard the name "Jerome Bowden" or indeed, whether or not Moore provided any name at all. It's been too long. But more importantly for your hearsay point, even if I could confirm that that was the name Moore named, the most human element of the story as he told it - the story of a previously illiterate person who exhibited a childlike delight at learning how to read and demonstrate minimal mental competence - could not be confirmed by anyone save other inmates who were acquainted with Moore and/or MRI on death row. You seem to think that absent such verification, repetition of the story is no more than propagation of a myth. I disagree in that even assuming arguendo that the story is a myth, it implicates important social issues swirling around the death penalty:
- The socioeconomic status of those on death row
- The educational status of those on death row
- Death row inmates' potential for rehabilitation
- The importance of reaching out to (tutoring? mentoring? working to provide a stable home situation for?) underprivileged, mentally disabled children early in life.

The story touches on all these issues, which are real, non-mythical issues irrespective of the truth of the story. There are too many death row inmates from similar backgrounds who might be reached, even after their crimes, given the opportunity for education and rehabilitation on death row. There are too many underprivileged, disadvantaged youth who in the future will take the place of those currently on death row - if they are not taken off that "career track" sooner rather than later. (I have heard liberal contentions that it is "classist" even to talk about underprivileged and disadvantaged youth as at higher risk for committing such crimes - but the statistics are very clear that lower-income people are responsible for a larger share of violent and fatal crime than middle-income and rich people, and it does no one any favors to sugarcoat that.)

So, just as religious mythology has value when it causes us to think about important ethical issues, so too I contend does this story, myth or not. (Of course, its value is increased if it is truthful, and I wish there was a credible way to establish its veracity.) Perhaps it is more sensible to comment upon the social issues that the tale raises than the tale itself, in the absence of confirmation.

Hobby,

'humanize' still means avoiding that the accused is seen as a case file or so.

Yes, it does, but that is my point: the word "humanize" does not deny the person's humanity (i.e. does not treat the person as some object that must be made human), but rather, acknowledges the importance of the person's humanity in a situation where it's important that it not be ignored.

[artie]

I have absolutely no argument with you - yet. I simply ask for more details of the case. I would like to know more of the facts in the case.

[Crucifer]

Well, I got here after posting a thread on it, not realising that there already was one.

Capital punishment is never right. The whole point of punishment/discipline is to make a person learn that their act was wrong. If they are killed, they never learn that. Capital punishment is merely legal murder.

[Faramond]

That's an interesting theory of punishment, Crucifer. But I don't think it is consistent with how punishment is handed out by the justice systems of most countries, even leaving capital punishment out of it.

How does punishment teach someone their act was wrong, anyway?

[Holbytla]

The whole point of punishment/discipline is to make a person learn that their act was wrong.

I don't agree with this.
Part of the point is to pay for crimes commited, and that in turn is supposed to deter others from doing the same.

[nerdanel]

Criminal law 101: there are two purposes of punishment, deterrence and retribution. Each sentences fulfills these two aims to a greater or lesser extent. It is undisputed that capital punishment fulfills the aim of retribution (Holby's "pay for crimes committed"), in one of the most extreme ways. The issue is whether it fulfills the deterrence objective, which goes to educating the criminal and others that the act was not permissible in the society in question.

The deterrent effect of capital punishment has been questioned extensively and its results are inconclusive. I have some citations to recent studies in my apartment that I could post later, which reveal that neither the pro-CP or anti-CP factions are completely correct about the deterrent effect (or lack thereof) of CP. The deterrent effect as to the criminal himself (or herself, in the rarest of cases) is negative. How the criminal will act if again at liberty is irrelevant. Indeed, s/he may feel MORE free to murder behind bars if given the chance; what ELSE can the state do? (Of course, some death row inmates do everything possible to increase their (slim) chances of a successful appeal or pardon/commutation, but not all or even most.)

All this to say, in my view this:

The whole point of punishment/discipline is to make a person learn that their act was wrong.

...is too conclusory a statement. If you define the point of punishment so narrowly, then the conclusion that capital punishment is wrong is little more than rhetorical, as applied. (Of course, even accepting your "whole point" as accurate, you could say that a person on death row DOES learn that their act was wrong (and thus subject to our most extreme penalty), in the years between their sentence and execution. So the conclusion that capital punishment is improper because it does not educate the condemned person sufficiently, does not follow from your "whole point.")

[Túrin Turambar]

The whole point of punishment/discipline is to make a person learn that their act was wrong.

Is it? What if the person will never believe their act is wrong? Likewise, what if they already know what they did was wrong - do they escape punishment?

[anthriel]

Oh, I think most of those folks knew that their acts were wrong before they did them.

They just chose to do them anyway.

[Frelga]

That's an interesting theory of punishment, Crucifer. But I don't think it is consistent with how punishment is handed out by the justice systems of most countries, even leaving capital punishment out of it.

How does punishment teach someone their act was wrong, anyway?

It doesn't. It just teaches to avoid the punishment. By not breaking the rules/laws, or by being more clever at not being caught. This goes for innocent babies and hardened criminals. Or, of course, it can teach to just accept the punishment and do whatever the person wants anyway.

However, I assume Crucifer means "learn it was wrong and act differently in the future."

[elfshadow]

In my mind, the best argument I can think of for capital punishment is that it keeps people who were willing to commit such a horrific crime in the first place from committing one again--permanently and irrevocably. However, if the justice system can do the same thing without killing someone, such as locking them up in prison without chance of parole, I think it is much better to punish someone with prison rather than death. I do have a hard time truly believing that capital punishment is "morally" wrong when the prosecution can prove beyond reasonable doubt (reasonable doubt must be much more stringent in the case of such dire and irreversible punishment of course) that the person being tried is guilty of such a heinous crime. But the key for me is that the punishment of death and the punishment of life in prison should both equally fulfill the deterrent criteria in keeping the particular criminal from committing the crime in the future.


As nel outlined in her post, the trickiest personal issue that I have deciding for or against the death penalty is whether or not the death penalty deters others from committing similar crimes. I have done a lot of research on this in the past and, like nel, have yet to find any conclusive statistical results. My intuition tells me that there are two types of people who commit heinous crimes that may be, under current law, prosecuted with capital punishment. 1)Those people who committed the crime in the "heat of the moment" and acted without thinking. For these people, it seems that capital punishment would not be a deterrent. In order to be deterred from a crime by the thought of its punishment, it seems that a person must be thinking rationally and in cases like these, rational thought does not apply. 2)Those people who committed the crime "in cold blood" and calculated the crime, well aware of the situation, regardless of the deterrent. I cannot see that capital punishment would deter these criminals either--these people are aware of the punishment when they commit the crime and do it anyway. In other words, they are beyond deterrence.


This is simply my take on the issue, and although it involves some research it is more largely based on my intuition--which in this case is likely inadequate since I have never committed nor intend to commit such a crime and therefore cannot personally testify as to the effectiveness of my theory as applied to those in question. There are other, more "logistical" reasons that I do not like the death penalty, however. From the statistics I have seen, it is much more likely, for instance, that a black person be sentenced to death for murdering a white person than the other way around. I have also read many stories of the actual death itself going horribly wrong and inflicting huge amounts of pain (which would, to me, constitute a cruel and unusual punishment that is prohibited in the Constitution--this particular aspect I apply only to the US since I am decently aware of US law only). Also, the fact that there is a chance that innocent people could be put to death just chills me. There have been people who have been exonerated from death row after new evidence proves their innocence, as far as I know, and I can't imagine such evidence being discovered after the person is put to death. Although methods of determining evidence are much more accurate now, with new technology, I am still wary of the possibility of putting innocents to death.

[Túrin Turambar]

My understanding is that the death penalty is not actually that much of a deterrent. It makes sense - someone who won’t be deterred by the prospect of life in prison probably won’t be deterred by the prospect of a humane execution in ten or twenty years.

[baby tuckoo]

OFF TOPIC, but I wonder sometimes if artie is simply a college Social Science experiment designed to study Holby.





Their parameters had selected him for message board behavior evaluation .





Should we warn the townspeople?