Capital punishment

[samwarg]

I'm with you Vison. Some people may indeed deserve death, but If we are to think of ourselves as "civilized" then I don't think we should give it to them. Their punishment will come one day, and it will be meted out by one who is qualified to do so.

[nerdanel]

In yet another area where a sweeping SCOTUS decision thoroughly failed, the states are slowly but surely doing for themselves what SCOTUS could not do (though, to be fair, this decision also comes from the judiciary. However, as it is a state court, I do not think it will provoke the level of outrage that a similar SCOTUS decision would.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/us/08cnd-penalty.html

[Faramond]

Seems like a reasonable decision to me.

[Primula Baggins]

Good heavens, yes, Faramond.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

SCOAK (the Supreme Court of Anthony Kennedy), has held that a Louisiana law allowing for capital punishment in child rape cases is unconstitutional. Since I oppose capital punishment in all cases, I agree, but I'm not sure that I agree with the reasoning that Kennedy and his "liberal colleagues" made in making the distinction between the heinous crime of child rape and the other crimes that the death penalty can be imposed for (first degree murder, treason, espionage).

[axordil]

Has anyone been executed for treason or espionage since the Rosenbergs?

[Faramond]

Yes, I saw that decision and didn't understand what the legal reasoning was.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Has anyone been executed for treason or espionage since the Rosenbergs?

No, I don't believe so.

[solicitr]

Well, judges have to follow precedent, even Supreme Court justices (escept apparently Clarence Thomas). It's been established by many, many decisions since 1977 that capital punishment is not per se unconstitutional. Therefore the majority had to find some way to distinguish this particular Louisiana statute from the murder cases previously upheld.

[eborr]

killing people is bad, whether you do it judically, accidentally, deliberately or collaterally, any justification is just an excuse, a weak placebo, for immature and base emotional responses.

[Jnyusa]

Kidnapping is a capital offense, too, isn't it? Wasn't that added after the Lindberg case?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Jn, as I understand it, the death penalty only applies in kidnapping cases if the victim dies while in the captivity. The last person who was put to death for kidnapping was back in 1960.

[Jnyusa]

Thanks, Voronwë.

And I'm pretty sure that you are right about the Rosenbergs being the last to have been executed for treason.

[halplm]

I will admit, capital punishment is an issue I find myself extremely divided on.

As somone that identifies with a "Pro-Life" mentality, I can't realisitically claim that anyone should be put to death. I feel that as long as somone is living, they can find redemption.

I think rape is the worst crime imaginable... yes, worse than murder or treason, or anything else. The fact that the death penalty could be applied to child rapists is viscerally satisfactory to me, while at the same time not acceptable.

It's such times that I wish we could use cruel and unusual punishments that are not death, for people that would do such horrible things...

[solicitr]

I too wish the death penalty could be got rid of completely and forever. However, that laudable reform is not going to (or at least should not) come from SCOTUS, which is constrained by what the Constitution says, not what one might like to add to it. And since there is this:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.....

it can hardly be argued that the Framers meant to outlaw it.

[Pearly Di]

I think rape is the worst crime imaginable... yes, worse than murder or treason, or anything else. The fact that the death penalty could be applied to child rapists is viscerally satisfactory to me, while at the same time not acceptable.

I have to confess that I find the idea that rape is worse than murder very odd. Of course rape is absolutely horrible, and rapists make my blood boil, but I'd rather survive rape than be dead!

I was threatened at knife point four years ago. Thankfully the pitiful druggie who attacked me did not lay a finger on me: the sight of his knife was enough to make me hand over my purse and jewellery to him. In those situations, you will do ANYTHING to stay alive. I stayed calm and talked to him in a soft voice. All he wanted was my money.

I believe that the worst crime is taking another person's life. If ever a crime merited the death sentence, that crime is it.

It's such times that I wish we could use cruel and unusual punishments that are not death, for people that would do such horrible things...

As a Christian, I can't agree. We ought to be better than that. It is right to punish people who have done cruel and dreadful things, i.e. to punish them by locking them up for life. It is not right to descend to their level of cruelty by torturing them in return.

[nerdanel]

This has been a big week in United States capital punishment news.

First, convicted murderer Teresa Lewis was executed in Jarratt, Virginia on Thursday night. She was the first woman executed in Virginia in roughly 100 years, and one of only twelve women nationwide to be executed since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in the United States in 1976.

One of my biggest objections to the death penalty as currently administered is racial and gender inequities in capital sentencing. I find it very problematic that women escape the death penalty at a much higher rate than men who have committed similar crimes. However, I think that in Ms. Lewis' case, life in prison (with or without parole) may have been more appropriate. She conspired with two men to murder her husband and stepson for insurance money. The two male co-conspirators who actually committed the killing received life terms (one has since committed suicide in prison). There certainly is an argument that she may have deserved greater punishment because she stood in a trust relationship to the victims. But given the disparity in sentences, I'd have been more comfortable with LWOP in this case.

This case was also notable because it caused Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a noted international human rights activist, to speak out against (America's use of) the death penalty. Mr. Ahmadinejad is concerned that Ms. Lewis' execution was insufficiently condemned by the international community, while his government's attempt to execute by stoning a woman convicted of adultery was strongly condemned by the international community. (Note: the Iranian woman in question is also alleged to have played a part in her husband's subsequent murder, but the sentence of stoning was not levied for that offense.)

In other death penalty news, on Friday, San Jose-based U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel may have cleared the way for California's first execution in nearly five years to proceed this Wednesday. In 2006, Fogel suspended executions in California over concerns that the three-drug cocktail used in California for lethal injections was unconstitutional - condemned inmate (and rapist-murderer) Michael Morales alleged that it would cause him to endure too much pain in the 5-15 minutes before his death. Morales and other inmates sought execution via one drug alone: sodium thiopental (described below).

At issue now is the execution of Albert Brown, who in 1982 undisputedly raped and murdered a 15-year-old schoolgirl, then spent a day making taunting phonecalls to the victim's mother advising her that she would never see her daughter alive again. Accordingly, Fogel has offered Brown this unenviable choice: he may choose to be executed by sodium thiopental alone, or may choose the standard three-drug cocktail. Sodium thiopental, an anesthetic, is the first drug in the three-drug sequence. Increasing the dosage of sodium thiopental from three grams to five grams renders it fatal by itself. Since Fogel halted executions in California, Ohio and Washington have used sodium thiopental in nine U.S. executions without visible flaw.

Fogel's ruling thus took this form: Brown may either choose the three-drug cocktail (thus waiving his prior objection to it), or he may choose the one-drug execution that Morales, he, and others had claimed to want because it was supposed to be less painful. In 2006, California had balked at using a one-drug procedure because it was not tested; however, California officials indicated to Fogel on Friday that they were ready to proceed with a one-drug execution if that is Brown's choice. (Fogel has stated that if Brown chooses the one-drug execution and California refuses to provide it, he will stay the execution.) Fogel has directed Brown to decide by today; if he does not, California will be free to use its default three-drug cocktail.

Finally, sodium thiopental is all the rage these days. There is only one U.S. manufacturer, Hospira. Hospira has recently advised prison officials in all fifty states that it does not approve of the use of its anesthetic in executions. Due to an unrelated manufacturing shortage, at least one death penalty state, Ohio, is running out - Ohio has enough only to execute its two inmates who are scheduled to die this year. A spokeswoman explained that there was no "reason to be concerned" with respect to availability of the drug for this year's execution - though the two inmates in question might view it otherwise.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The other issue with Lewis's execution is that she had a tested IQ of72. If she had tested just a few points lower she would have been officially considered mentally retarded and would not have been eligible for the death penalty. I find such an arbitrary cut-off line to be unacceptable in determining whether someone should live or die. According to her lawyers, one of the gunmen was the actual mastermind of the crime, manipulating her. Given her low IQ, that is not difficult to believe.

While I agree in theory that the death penalty can be just in the must egregious cases, in practice, I think it is impossible to determine a cut off line for what constitutes sufficiently egregious cases, and that the only way to ensure justice is to abolish the death penalty all together.

[vison]

That post makes me almost inexpressibly sad. The whole vast machinery of a great nation's laws brought down to this sordid level!

The "death penalty" is barbaric, no matter the crime, no matter the method. Whether the criminal is stoned to death or gently put to sleep by lethal injection, it is all the same.

Canada no longer has the death penalty, a fact of which I am very proud. Any comparison of crime rates and types will make it clear that barbarism breeds violence.

[nerdanel]

The other issue with Lewis's execution is that she had a tested IQ of72. If she had tested just a few points lower she would have been officially considered mentally retarded and would not have been eligible for the death penalty. I find such an arbitrary cut-off line to be unacceptable in determining whether someone should live or die.

This is only a tenable position for an abolitionist (which, of course, you are). Others can accept that (1) people who are genuinely mentally retarded should not be executed, and no longer can constitutionally be executed and (2) a significant majority of our society is not retarded, able to accept responsibility for its actions, and thus death-eligible where significantly egregious murders are committed. There will, then, always have to be a dividing line, and some people will always fall close to it. If the IQ cutoff was 75, thus exempting Lewis, the next "sympathetic" capital defendant would proffer a 77. If it was 120, someone would have a 123.

ETA crossposted with vison, with whom I respectfully strongly disagree, particularly as to this: "Any comparison of crime rates and types will make it clear that barbarism breeds violence." If you are trying to say that the United States has more violent crime than Canada because we have capital punishment, this seems to be a rather egregious conflation of correlation and causation. I certainly will agree that your country gets many, many things right that my country can learn from - in my recent research of Canada's immigration and refugee policies, I'm struck by how admirably progressive your policies are, for instance. But there are far too many factors that play into the differences in our crime rates for me to accept the overly simplified assertion that death penalty --> more violent crime.