At what point do we need to re-evaluate the death penalty in Texas?

It is not. But an innocent man can be freed from prison if new evidence comes up. A dead man can't be brought back to life.

 

It was His plan. I don't think He wants you to regret it.


I just don't think a government should be in the business of killing it's citizens, generally.

 

And for the relatives of those victimized? We tell them "sorry, we have to compensate for our crummy trials by not giving this criminal the punishment he deserves". As I told Major, that's an incorrect way to address the problem.

No. I'm advocting that all are (in theory) a punishment to fit the crime.

My point was that to the innocent man, any punishment is unfair.

Again, I don't think this alone is rationale for doing away with the death penalty. I retract some of my previous animosity towards this point, though - it is a fair argument.

As I told Oski, I accept human fallibility (heck, I expect it - it's the cornerstone of much of my complaining on here about religion).

 

There is no justice for some crimes.

I like the death penalty. I fully agree with it. I'm more disturbed by lethal injection though. I know it is the humane thing to do and other options can be extremely painful, but dying after a shot just seems crazy. I know that seems weird.

Too bad that they spend so long on death row and their trials take longer and often go through all appeals. If they were quicker, they would be cheaper, but I guess you'd rather be 99% sure than 90% when it comes time to kill someone. Yes 1 in a 100 is terrible for that person, but you can't be perfect.

 

Nice attitude. Since I don't agree with you regarding the death penalty I guess that means I don't care. Cute.

I'm not really clear why we cannot correct bad trials. These revelations are doing just that from a preventative standpoint. DNA alone is making convictions much clearer. But that's kind of moot - I already explained how I dissociate the trials from the punishments.

 

It's not that you don't care because you disagree with me - it's that you don't care because you basically stated it. You've stated that despite the fact that the system creates errors that result in wrongful deaths, you don't think the death penalty should be reconsidered. You said the problem is in the trials and not the punishment - that's fine. So I suggested you give me ways to fix the trials - but if you can't do that, and are still OK with the wrongful punishment, then you don't seem terribly concerned with it. Maybe a better way to put it is do we pick the solution that partially addresses the problem, or do we value the vengeance aspect of the death penalty more than we value the wrongful deaths we know we are creating (a life-in-prison sentence addresses the public safety aspect of punishment). Would that be more accurate?

You can't correct bad trials because it's an inherent part of the jury system. We're asking 12 people to make a decision on evidence available to them - you will always have mistakes there. In some cases, you won't have all the evidence available. In others, you'll have jurors that want revenge or lawyers that encourage juries to make decisions based on emotion. While DNA testing certainly helps, it's not foolproof and not always available. We still rely on everything from eyewitness accounts to jury members - and anytime you have that, you introduce all sorts of possibility of human error.

 

So you're okay with killing an innocent person as long as 99 guilty people die? When is it EVER okay to kill an innocent person?

Some people act like life without parole is an easier sentence. IMO, and in the opinion of several inmates, life without parole is worse than death. We're supposed to be a civilized society, yet people want to kill each other off for vengeance. This does nothing to deter the actual crimes, nor does it make you pay any less tax money. Killing someone isn't going to bring back your loved ones. Frankly, I'm kind of appalled that you said it was too bad that the trials took so long.

But what can we expect from a state who let a man shoot and kill two men in the back who were unarmed and on his neighbor's property? It's sad being in law school and having every professor start off a hypothetical with, "Assuming this isn't in Texas, ..."

 

i would do away with the death penalty in a second if given the chance. there is no reason why in texas juries aren't given the option of sentencing people to life without parole (at least i think it's still this way). one innocent person killed is one too many and there's no way you're ever going to be sure that an innocent person won't be executed.

that said, my biggest problem is that it's not pursued in all cases. if the death penalty is the right sentence for one first degree murder, it should be the right sentence for all first degree murders.

 

Yup. That's a completely separate issue, and a good reason as to why to get rid of it. The chances of you getting the DP when you're black male and kill a white woman are significantly higher than a white guy who kills a black woman.

 

Do you know what you're talking about? What do you mean, 1st degree murder? Murder is always 1st degree. And the jury is always given the option to sentence the capital murder defendant to life without parole. That's what the punishment phase is in those trials, a decision between life w/o parole and the death penalty.

In the abstract, I'm generally against the death penalty. But I've seen circumstances and cases in my own experience where it was warranted, and I've seen defendants sentenced to it where I believed it was the right result.

 

This is Texas, we sentence people to death here. Too bad we can't sentence people to death by firing squad like OK and ID.

I have nothing further to add to this conversation.

 

A lot of this is because of how relatively new reliable DNA testing is. DNA testing was used in a crime investigation for the first time in 1988, and even then it was a crude form of testing. It was MUCH more unreliable than what is available today.

In short...these cases are dwindling in number. If we can standardize the crime labs, that would go a long way to correcting the problem. That is a huge "if" though.

 

As I already stated, I accept this "problem" and still think the death penalty acceptable.

At the risk of repeating myself for the 50th time:

1) The punishment is to fit the crime. Some crimes deserve death. This is wholly dissociated from the trial. If you did the crime, then the death penalty is perfectly acceptable from my ethical standpoint.

2) If you think the death penalty is not ok because of issues with trials (as opposed to ethical dilemmas), than the focus should be on correcting those trials.

3) If you think that is impossible, and that the only solution is to do away with the death penalty as compensation, I heartily disagree. That's akin to "giving up" in my humble opinion.

 

you think it's worth the risk to kill an innocent man?

 

he submitted himself to it...but Rome already had the system in place. free will was abundant.

 

It isn't ok to kill an innocent person. It isn't ok for an innocent person to die in war. It isn't ok for an innocent person to go to jail, but that is a cost to our society. Innocent until proven guilty allows for far less of that than guilty until proven innocent. We let guilty people walk because of it. Because we want to decrease the amount of wrongly punished. I talk about faster trials because of the decrease in expense. The death penalty could be a much cheaper end if the trials were quicker, and if they weren't so deliberate. I don't want trials to take as long as they do. I don't want people on death row to be on death row for years on end. Stop overcrowding prisons, and stop supporting those with no use to society. Of course some people would rather die than get life in prison. I certainly would grant their wish if that is what they asked for.

It took 6 years to kill Timothy McVeigh. 4 after he was found guilty, 2 after he ran out of appeals. He admited to setting the bomb and killing 168 people. I'm sorry but people like that don't deserve 6 more years. Do you think that it should have taken that long to end this guys life? Should it have taken that long even to hear his trial and find him guilty of something he admits to?

 

Yes. It is sad that it happens, but yes. The death penalty should stand. Should it be re-evaluated? Perhaps. An admitted murderer that shows no remorse, I certainly belive so. A one time convicted murderer who has no real criminal background that claims innocence or accident should probably shouldn't be put to death. There really aren't specific enough guidlines to what constitutes death as a penalty.

 

for your sake, i hope no one you know is wrongly convicted of a crime and sentenced to death.

for me, no innocent life is worth killing convicted murderers when there are other ways they can be punished such as spending the rest of their lives in prison.

 

I have a better chance of winning the lotto, and I don't even buy tickets. The odds I know of anyone even getting the death penalty are very slim, though I have known people that have murdered other people, but in both cases the person killed themselves afterwards and I'm only 22.

 

i don't have a problem with the death penalty as long as the victims family and friends do the killing.