Oklahoma Botched an Execution With Untested Lethal Injection Drugs 1198
Daniel_Stuckey (2647775) writes "The state of Oklahoma had scheduled two executions for Tuesday, April 29th. This in spite of myriad objections that the drugs being used for both lethal injections had not been tested, and thus could violate the constitutional right to the courts, as well as the 8th Amendment: protection from cruel and unusual punishment. After much legal and political wrangling, the state proceeded with the executions anyway. It soon became clear that the critics' worst case scenarios were coming true — Oklahoma violently botched the first execution. The inmate "blew" a vein and had a heart attack. The state quickly postponed the second one. 'After weeks of Oklahoma refusing to disclose basic information about the drugs for tonight's lethal injection procedures, tonight, Clayton Lockett was tortured to death,' Madeline Cohen, the attorney of Charles Warner, the second man scheduled for execution, said in a statement. Katie Fretland at The Guardian reported from the scene of the botched attempt to execute Lockett using the untested, unvetted, and therefore potentially unconstitutional lethal injection drugs."
sciencehabit also points out a study indicating that around 4% of death row inmates in the U.S. are likely innocent.
Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because of people like this. Or the person (or people) who thought it would be fun to put cats in a bag and beat them to death, or the guy who raped and killed an 11-month old.
For these reasons, and a whole host of others, these people have decided the basic rules of society do not apply to them. As a result they need to be removed. Keeping them alive does nothing except waste taxpayer money on people who will never be productive members of society.
That is why we have the death penalty.
Re:Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:5, Insightful)
By the same logic then incarcerating them is holding them against their will. If you or I did it, it would be unacceptable but if the state does it, it's acceptable.
As a society (but not necessarily individually) we've deemed it acceptable and legal that a state can incarcerate and sometimes execute someone for crimes after they've had due process. That's the difference between an individual behaving that way, and the state doing so.
Re:Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:4, Insightful)
So its unacceptable for them to behave this way, but its ok if the state does it?
There is no moral equivalence. The state, in removing that man from existence, isn't preying on some randomly chosen innocent stranger with rape and murder in mind. That you find the two to be equivalent removes you from the pool of people who should ever weigh in on such subjects.
Re:Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because of people like this.
Given that the death penalty was in existence prior to his crime, yet the perp still did what he did, it seems that the threat of punishment was no deterrent. So if the death penalty is not a deterrent, why again does the US have it? It can't be to protect the victims, and I've seen figures that suggest locking someone up for life is actually cheaper to do (given all the appeals, special wings etc). The only conclusion I can realistically see is pure revenge by the rest of society.
Re:Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that the death penalty was in existence prior to his crime, yet the perp still did what he did, it seems that the threat of punishment was no deterrent.
Although I am no proponent of the death penalty, your logic is flawed. Although in this case the penalty was not an effective deterrent, there is no way to tell if it did deter others from committing similar crimes.
Re:Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:5, Insightful)
Two problems with this:
First of all, how do you decide who is a "waste of taxpayer money"? That seems to me like a slippery slope that could be applied to any group if the mob so deems it. Don't like a group? Declare their activities illegal and arrest them. Then declare that all they are doing is sitting in jail taking up taxpayer money and execute them to save some cash.
Secondly, what about the estimated 4% of people on death row who are innocent. There are people who, for various reasons (e.g. overzealous prosecutors, incompetent defense attorneys, corrupt police planting/hiding evidence, etc), were convicted of crimes that they didn't commit. They sometimes sit in jail for decades trying to get cleared. Sometimes they do (having lost years/decades of their life), sometimes they don't (cleared after they die in jail or are executed). If you wrongly jail someone, that's bad but you can release them. It's not a 100% payback for the time wrongly spent in prison, but it is something. If you execute an innocent person, you can't "un-execute" them. They are dead and no amount of "Oops, our bad" will change that.
This is why the death penalty - if it is to be kept - should only be applied exceedingly sparingly and only after a TON of legal maneuvers that are skewed towards the defendant not being executed. Better to keep a guilty person alive and in jail than to execute an innocent.
Solve the general case (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does the US still even have fines? Why does the US still even have imprisonment?
Answer any of these questions, and you'll have answered them all. Show the foolishness of any of them, and you'll have shown the foolishness of them all.
I think the most popular answer, is that we have these things to punish criminals. HTH.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
You're taking away liberty and, usually, the pursuit of happiness. So why not life, if we're grouping them all together?
Re:Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:5, Informative)
You're taking away liberty and, usually, the pursuit of happiness. So why not life, if we're grouping them all together?
Because when you take a life, you cannot give it back if you find out that you made a mistake. Cameron Todd Willingham [wikipedia.org] was executed in Texas in 2004. More modern analysis of the evidence has led many to believe that he was innocent. Oops.
Re:Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:5, Insightful)
Morally I don't have a problem with the death penalty, but I don't think justice systems are accurate enough to bet human lives on.
Re:Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Re:Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:5, Insightful)
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
The very same quote popped up in my mind immediately. However strange it may feel to refer to Tolkien on this issue, this particular quote has something unusually profound and humane to it. I ascribe it to Tolkien's experience in world war I, when death must have become very real and familiar to him.
Re:Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:5, Interesting)
"It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary." Winston S. Churchill.
Execution is a deterrent in many places; in others it is not. Various punishments have various effects, influenced by the culture around them. If we forgo execution to save an innocent man, but condemn two more to die, we have failed; it is necessary to accept our flaws and do what is necessary to save lives. If losing one man by our own action is unacceptable, losing two more by our inaction is not a solution; we must necessarily learn better to identify the innocent.
Re:Time to move into the Century of the fruit bat. (Score:5, Insightful)
A penalty is something you can walk away from and learn from it. Killing somebody does not qualify as "penalty", it is just murder. No legal fiction can fix that little flaw.
Untested? (Score:5, Funny)
Seems they've tested it now.
Re: (Score:3)
I wondered about this. If being untested is a problem for methods of execution, how exactly are you ever going to have a usable method of execution?
I'm sure those opposed to the death penalty like it this way; methods of execution are not usable until they've been tested and they can't be tested because they're unconstitutional. Ergo, we can't execute anyone. But the same legalistic argument presented many times above applies to them, too; the constitution does not forbid capital punishment, only cruel a
Re:Untested? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yup, this is basically the whole "intelligent design" thing in a different form.
People want to teach the biblical creation account in school, but got shot down by every court in the nation 50 years ago (go figure). So, they have to carefully construct the argument so as to try to present it as something new so that courts have an excuse to look the other way.
If an inmate challenged an execution on the grounds that the state has no authority to perform an execution, they'd be shot down. So, instead arguments are made about the process, but those advancing these arguments would not be satisfied with any process - they are opposed to execution in any form.
The only reason states are changing the methodology is because protesters have been fairly effective in curtailing supplies of the materials used previously. Now states are moving towards undisclosed methods with undisclosed suppliers so that it is hard for protesters to target them. They're also generally using materials that are important for healthcare in general so that it is not possible to disrupt their supply. It is a big cat and mouse game. There won't be any kind of standardization of the process since a stable process can potentially be disrupted. So, expect more events like this one until somebody decides to go back to firing squads and hanging.
I'm not a fan of the death penalty myself, but the whole argument around untested methods is just a smoke screen. The whole system of punishment needs a complete overhaul. The death penalty isn't just inhumane, it is based on a flawed premise. How the inmates get executed is fairly unimportant in the big scheme of things - it is like debating whether you'd rather get run over by a car going 35mph or 75mph.
Re: (Score:3)
Nope, not the previous lethal cocktail anymore. We mostly get those chemicals from other countries--and other countries decided to ban selling them to us, because we use them in executions. It's been bad for our medical field, because they have a lot of potential for curing as well.
Nitrogen? (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it hard to believe that no one has looked into execution using Nitrogen. Something akin to an old style dive helmet with a hose near the top to feed in gas. When the time comes, switch the flow over from air to pure nitrogen. Simple, cheap, painless and there is a limitless supply of Nitrogen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation
Re:Nitrogen? (Score:4, Funny)
Funny thing. I first read that as:
Something akin to an old style dive helmet with a horse near the top to feed in gas
That's death by methane.
Failed injection. (Score:5, Insightful)
According to Robert Patton, the director of Oklahoma's department of corrections, when doctors felt that the drugs were not having the required effect on Lockett, they discovered that a vein had ruptured.
This is not a problem related to the drug(s) used but incompetent administration.
This in spite of myriad objections that the drugs being used for both lethal injections had not been tested ...
How does one test lethal injections?
'Untested' had nothing to do with the botching. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's one thing to claim about the drugs being untested .. and you can still probably claim they're untested, because all of the reports are suggesting that it was a blown out blood vessel, so the whole thing would've been botched no matter what drugs they had actually used.
(and before you say I'm just against executions ... I actually think that prisoners who are sentanced to life without parole should be given the opportunity to be administered euthenasia ... but the costs of capital punishment as they curently exist are so high that it should only be reserved for those really, really horrible crimes (which this one would seem to be).
Should we bring back the firing squad? (Score:5, Interesting)
Or even something simpler, like some kind of coup de grace, maybe a 12 gauge slug to the back of the head? Maybe by making executions much more visceral we'll be less inclined to make them clean and clinical and stop thinking about them as clean and clinical.
As bloody as such an execution would be, perhaps it should be so and the judge, prosecuting attorney and lead low enforcement investigators could be mandated to be in attendance and watching. It's one thing to plant evidence, withhold exculpatory information from the defense, commit gross prosecutorial misconduct and run quadrennial judicial elections on your persona as a "hangin' judge" when the convicted is executed somewhere else in a manner more consistent with outpatient surgery than an actual execution.
But when you know ahead of time that if the death penalty goes through you're going to see a human being have a good chunk of the head taken off in front of you, maybe you might not sleep so well knowing it happened because you broke the rules.
Re:Should we bring back the firing squad? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've thought for a while now that the method of execution should be decided by the convicted.
He wants injection? He gets injection. He wants the firing squad? He gets a firing squad. He wants to skydive into an active volcano with no parachute? He gets it. As long as it's guaranteed to be lethal and isn't grossly impractical, it goes.
That has the obvious benefit of making sure that the execution is as humane as possible, because the person with the most interest in making it humane is the one making the decision.
It could have a second benefit. Namely, what happens if he chooses "execution by old age"? You could easily block that as "grossly impractical", but I see that as a feature, not a bug. It basically turns into life imprisonment with no parole, only way out is to actually overturn the verdict. So if you're truly innocent, that might be a good option. Otherwise, it's arguably a worse execution than many others, although that's a very arguable point.
There is already a solution... (Score:3, Insightful)
Government Abuse (Score:3)
I wonder how many of the people who are saying "What's the problem if the death penalty is horribly painful? This guy deserved it!" are also the ones who express horror over the government torturing people to get information from them or spying on everyone just on the off chance that one of those people might be planning something bad. If your government is willing to go to such lengths to get information from people, then do you really want to give that government the ability to kill any prisoner that they deem to be a "waste of taxpayer money"?
Why is this so difficult? (Score:4, Insightful)
Leaving assite entirely the debate over death penalty to begin with, when we have to put down our pets, vets don't seem to have any trouble putting them to sleep, (and then inject more and more until sleep becomes permanenet.) Maybe the state just needs to fire to their medical experts and hire some country vet?
Re:Why is this so difficult? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a lot of bloodthirsty people here on Slashdot.
I think it's a good thing to try to move away from the, "He made others suffer so he should suffer," mentality. Punishment, capital or otherwise, should be about rendering the criminal incapable of commiting futher crimes to protect the populace. It's self defense, nothing more. Making sure that criminals suffer is barbaric. It turns my stomach a bit, and I liked that cinnamon roll.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Jury Panel (Score:5, Insightful)
I was recently assigned to a jury panel in a murder case. The state I live in has capital punishment.
I went into the courtroom with a fairly solid conviction against the death penalty (excluding military cases, i.e. fratricide, where soldiers should be held to a higher standard and capital punishment could be considered a necessary component of discipline).
As the evidence was presented, I started to question my beliefs. The defendant was accused of murdering and raping a 12 year old boy, and was a twice-convicted sex offender (why he wasn't already in prison is an entirely different question). This person showed no remorse for the crime, and if given life imprisonment, would still be able to see his friends and family....something his victim could no longer do. It really made me question my thoughts on capital punishment.
In the end I wasn't chosen for the jury, and the guy was found guilty. I still believe that capital punishment is wrong and doesn't solve anything, but life imprisonment, although no cake walk, doesn't necessarily equate to justice or punishment...because let's face it, this criminal won't be rehabilitated and shouldn't be given the chance.
Re:Jury Panel (Score:5, Insightful)
The solution to that is simple: This person is not a criminal, this person is severely mentally ill and likely in a very real sense unable to make a moral judgment. For that, closed mental institutions exist. You cannot punish people that are so damaged they are incapable of understanding what they did wrong. You can only exact perceived revenge on them, and that is exceedingly immoral.
Re:Jury Panel (Score:5, Informative)
For that, closed mental institutions exist.
Closed mental institutions don't exist anymore. Since the late 60's we have, as a society, been systematically closing these vital institutions. This has made our penal system our de facto long term option for people like this with untreatable mental disease.
America, bringing up the rear. (Score:4, Interesting)
China, Malaysia, vietnam, Uganda, Indonesia, Gambia, Thailand, India, pakistan, Bahrain, Botswana, Equitorial guinea, Bangla desh, UAE, North Korea, Kuwait, afghanistan, Taiwan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Sudan North and South, Ethiopia, Somalia.
Nice crowd.
Why not just use sedatives? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Punishment fits the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
> 20 minutes of semi-conscious agony ending in a heart attack vs. breathing dirt
False dichotomy. Everyone reading this would not be effected by either, as long as he's behind bars.
Cue the madding crowds telling me why I'm wrong to hold my opinion
Re:Punishment fits the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people think that the justice systems' job is the arbiter of karma, rather than preventing crime. I've not discovered a way to discuss these things with the former group. I'm not sure what you can tell that kind of person.
Re:Punishment fits the crime (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We have to pay for this monster to live for the rest of his life. We *all* pay taxes for that. It's expensive. Tell me how that doesn't affect us. A death-row inmate costs, what, $50-75-100K/yr to house and feed? We get no value from this. This is akin to toxic waste disposal. How many doctors, teachers, scientists can we hire for the amount of money we pay to house these people? How much further would we be as a society if we spent the money on getting ahead, not waste disposal?
I'm sure I will get an argu
Re:Punishment fits the crime (Score:5, Informative)
We have to pay for this monster to live for the rest of his life. We *all* pay taxes for that. It's expensive.
And carrying out a death penalty also has it's costs. Take a read of costs death penalty [deathpenaltyinfo.org]. (I may be cherry picking a bit here but) From that article it was estimated that California could save $170 million a year by commuting al death sentences to life in prison.
So do you want to pay more or less taxes?
Re:Punishment fits the crime (Score:5, Informative)
We have to pay for this monster to live for the rest of his life. We *all* pay taxes for that. It's expensive. Tell me how that doesn't affect us. A death-row inmate costs, what, $50-75-100K/yr to house and feed? We get no value from this. This is akin to toxic waste disposal. How many doctors, teachers, scientists can we hire for the amount of money we pay to house these people? How much further would we be as a society if we spent the money on getting ahead, not waste disposal
There are approximately 3,000 people on death row. I would imagine a liberal estimate, if we never killed any, would put mayby 10,000 people that might otherwise, eventually, be executed in prison for life.
As of 2011, there were 2,300,000 people in pirson.
So to answer your question as a percentage: We could save less than 00.5% of our prison budget... assuming executations themselves add $0 cost to the process, and assuming that those executions were carried out before even the trial happened. If you have trials, and waits, and there's a cost to the execution: we save less still.
And remember: these are based on grossly liberal estimates. If I just use current numbers, the savings is closer to 00.1% before lowerign it further with execution costs.
How about you drop the pretense that the issue is cost?
Re:Punishment fits the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
That cost, even if it is correct, it is negligible in the face of: (a) the risk of murdering innocents, when other methods of containment exist; (b) the shame of being one of only developed countries in the world that still implement archaic methods of containment; and (c) the fact that this sort of person and his mental condition is ultimately a result of his own unfavorable context imposed by society.
Re:Punishment fits the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not justice if somebody is been given the death penalty and then gets 45 minutes of torture on top.
There is a reason torture (or cruel and unusual punishment) is not legal. If we treat criminals not better then they treated their victims we're not better than they are.
As a society we should strife to be better than our criminals and not hide our own cruelty behind words like justice and punishment.
Re:Punishment fits the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Learn the difference between justice and vengeance.
Re:Punishment fits the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
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The punishment should be proportional to the crime, but does not need to mirror it. An eye for an eye is a bit outdated, no? If capital punishment is to be used, it should be done in a way that is neither cruel nor unusual - that's the law, until a jurisdiction collectively decides otherwise.
Breaking our laws to punish those who broke our laws: this may be widespread and socially acceptable to some people, but that doesn't make it right. If you want someone to be tortured to death, then seek a change in the
Re:Punishment fits the crime (Score:4)
You're absolutely right. Proportional. He raped, tortured and murdered. So what is proportional to rape, tortured and murdered?
Re:Punishment fits the crime (Score:5, Funny)
From my understanding, a week with Slashdot Beta should about do it.
Re:Punishment fits the crime (Score:5, Interesting)
It's more complex than that.
You face many concerns considering legal punishment: deterrent effect, risk of harm to innocents, and direct impact of punishment, to name three. These depend largely on the crime, the punishment, and the surrounding culture.
The deterrent effect, for example, has two major factors: perceived severity of the punishment and perceived threat of punishment. A weak punishment, colloquially a "slap on the wrist", carries little deterrent effect; a strong punishment carries high deterrent effect. A punishment lacks threat if it is unlikely to actually occur.
The strength of punishment comes from perception: jail time, pain, execution, fines, and how much the individual fear these personally. Some individuals do not fear prison; others fear it a lot. The poor fear fines more than the rich. Death almost universally incites terror. Pain is unpleasant, but imprisonment may destabilize personal security and provide greater fear.
Punishment carries threat when it is likely. The death penalty is a great example: in drug-riddled ghettos where criminal activity meets its abrupt end 99% by death and 1% by state execution, state execution carries no threat. In peaceful but armed suburbs, attacking someone may get you shot. Either way, someone will probably shoot you in the face before the state gets to you; if the police do catch you, they may simply provide a noose to save you from a bullet. In peaceful suburbs with low justifiable homicide rates, state action is the dominating outcome to murder; execution becomes a looming, subconscious threat.
Putting these together: the death penalty is a deterrent only where death is feared and state execution is a likely consequence of capital crime. In places where the criminal base is used to and does not fear death at a distance, state execution is a laughable thing; the first thing to consider is how to not get killed committing your crimes.
Once it's determined the deterrent effect, you have to consider other consequences. Fines and jail time can destroy lives. Executions kill people. If 4% of the executed are innocent, but executions provide such a deterrent effect as to stave off a hundred murders for each innocent executed, then that is unfortunate. If 4% of the executed are innocent, and executions provide no deterrent, then that is unacceptable.
And of course there are other considerations. I mentioned direct impact of punishment. You will want a punishment which rehabilitates criminals if repeat offense represents a larger proportion of the crime than the additional general deterrent from the next best method. Putting together further conditions, you can increase the severity of punishment as the risk of punishing innocents decreases (it's null if the punishments to innocents is dismissed on appeal 100% of the time before the time is served--increase punishment as much as you like). It gets extremely complex.
Justice is like sex: it feels good, but that doesn't make it wrong. Executing a man who stalks, rapes, and murders a woman feels immensely liberating to some; it is anxiolytic to a society who can distance themselves from the act of killing yet feel that they have participated in punishment. At the same time, such a man has earned his punishment. We may look down on people for enjoying vengeance, but we should not thus assume punishment is wrong.
Re:Punishment fits the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally when we as a society decide that we do not torture criminals to death, it is not because we don't feel the criminals deserve it, but rather that we as a society are better then that.
Re:Punishment fits the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the standard philosophical counterargument is "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind" but I suspect that despite the fact that the edgucated world as a whole had already resolved that capital punishment is immoral over a thousand years ago, you'll continue to lack empathy for those you feel "don't deserve it" so I'll argue from your point of view.
Lets make several points so you can disagree with them directly if you feel you need to:
1. Capital punishment costs orders of magnitude more money than Life in prison. The trials have to be rigorous, and therough, we have to be absolutely sure of the defendants guilt before we execute them. They get guarenteed retrials and the evidence has to be air tight. As a result, capital punishement trials costs states many millions of dollars each.
2. Murder trials are very difficult on the victims family. In order to get a conviction the prosecution needs to present very gory details, interview the family on the stand in depth, etc...
3. Prison is worse than death.
So, if you want to save money, save the family grief, and punish the prisoner in pretty much the worst method available legally, let him rot in prison for the rest of his life. You don't even need to be an ethical person to know that it's the right thing to do from every perspective. When even the catholic church things what you're doing is too barbaric, you know you're doing something wrong.
Re:Punishment fits the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
That's exactly the same standard we're supposed to be using in non-capital cases too!
It is not valid for death sentences to cost more than life sentences. The real problem is that people aren't getting competent and thorough defenses in the initial trial. I would argue it's even more of an injustice for those receiving life sentences because, without the permanence of execution, the public sees it as less of a problem worth fixing.
Re: (Score:3)
Did you know that in many countries, sentences are served simultaneously, rather than consecutively?
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all heart attacks kill. Many induce absolutely tremendous levels of suffering.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would prefer the guilty walk free over the innocent being condemned.
You can't "undo" an execution or imprisonment. The guilty still have a chance at getting theirs.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
None of you would survive in an open debate with me
Of course not. It's mathematically proven that it's impossible to win a debate with a troll since the troll just keeps trolling any argument and evidence given by the other part.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
At this point, the real question is: Why anyway?
And no, I definitely refuse any notion that at some point a conviction is final. It is always preliminary, as it is always possible that new evidence pops up.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I think that is only the tip of the iceburg. The whole idea of punishing criminals seems pointless to me. How about rehabilitating them? If somebody is innocent, then we rehabilitate them and in theory that should go pretty quickly since they weren't particularly prone to committing crimes in the first place. If somebody is a likely criminal, then rehabilitation should involve whatever it takes to make them no longer a likely criminal. That doesn't necessarily mean locking them up at all, unless they're so prone to criminal behavior that having them out on the streets is a danger to society.
Getting rid of the death penalty is like arguing that it is better for an innocent person to be raped in prison for the rest of their life instead of being executed. It kind of misses the point, and I don't think the way we run prisons in the US is appropriate for even the guilty, let alone the innocent.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about rehabilitating them?
Well, I am all in favor of that, but how do you actually DO that? What if they don't want to be rehabilitated? What if they like raping and killing babies (that is what one of these guys did)? What if they pretend they were rehabilitated so that you would let them re-enter society and then they did it again? The crime that eventually got these guys on death row was only the last on their rap sheet. Some people are deemed fit to re-enter society and then go back to the prison several times over.
I'm sure everybody would be happy to rehab instead of incarcerate if only somebody could come up with a rehab plan that actually worked.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides that: I don't think the death penalty makes sense at all. It is no penalty, as it doesn't influence the future behaviour of the perpetrator. It is just codified revenge.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Informative)
Because, murderer or no, they are human beings? Nothing is actually gained through their suffering, besides pleasing the bloodthirsty.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's the problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, as it turns out quite a few people are not any better than the murderers they try to elevate themselves above.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, yeah. Pretending I'm endorsing the murder of one person because I don't support the torture of another.
Great. That's extraordinarily dishonest and you should feel bad.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, took some digging on the proceedings of the national academy of sciences.
Essentially they applied comparative statistical methods on exoneration rates of those on death row(but not yet executed), those not on death row, and found that while the latter mapped to a Poisson distribution for exoneration occurrences, the former fell off sharply at the time of execution(but until then fitting the same model).
They then extrapolated that curve forward past the point of execution, concluding that if they had been continuing to fight for exoneration 4.1% would have gotten it. This includes the very small dataset of those who actually were exonerated after death. They call those conclusion a conservative estimate because it's entirely possible that exoneration rates don't actually cover the full set of unjustly punished.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, right, I forgot how okay pointless suffering is if an anonymous poster on the internet says they don't mind. I can be so forgetful.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the morally superior group that retains the right to judge this guy just loves suffering so much?
You know what I get out of a murderer suffering in agony? You know what amazing benefit society at large gains?
Nothing. Nothing at all.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure why your personal lack of concern is even relevant.
We've got a debate here that has two sides.
1. "We think there's a higher principal to uphold as a society"
2. *Comes in shouting about how little they care about the issue*
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that a lot of us don't think our justice system should be a purely retributive system seeking vengeance upon those we consider "wastes of oxygen." (And no, the death penalty is not a deterrent.) Maybe this guy did deserve to die. But if so, then what about the next guy who not-quite-fatally shoots the girlfriend only once? Or the one who doesn't bury her alive, but just leaves her for dead? Or the one who just rapes her, and leaves her for dead, but didn't actually shoot her? Or the one who just rapes her?
Where do you draw the line between "he deserves to die" and "he's scum, but we'll just give him life in prison"? There's a demonstrable racial bias in which "wastes of oxygen" get put to death and which have better lawyers that can get them life in prison, or eventually paroled. Given that there will likely always be such biases and imbalances in our justice system, don't you think it's a bit on the callous side to sanction the ultimate punishment on an inequitable basis like this?
Complicating matters is the fact that sometimes the justice system just plain gets things wrong. Eyewitnesses are never 100% dependable. Confessions can and have been coerced. "Wastes of oxygen" that we were absolutely certain at the time "did it" turned out to be exonerated by later evidence. As the submitter referred to in his or her summary, we know that this is costing innocent people's lives.
Personally, I would rather have the guy locked safely away where he cannot harm anyone else, but still around in case we find later that there were mitigating circumstances or the jury just plain blew a verdict. Plus, although YOU consider him a "waste of oxygen," people like me consider the fact that even locked away, he can still contribute to society in discouraging others from following his path or, if nothing else, in helping researchers study the criminal mind. There's absolutely no harm in sentencing people to life in prison instead of death, other than the mob's blood lust for revenge doesn't get satisfied. Sorry, but that's just not compelling enough to me to kill someone who poses no threat.
And food for thought, once we give the state the right to determine who it is okay to kill who poses no threat, what's to stop the state from abusing that power? Do you honestly think that the government and the media have never colluded to present a narrative to The People to justify (and get away with) truly horrible things? What if it were YOU being railroaded through the system, with only one side (hint: not your side) of the story being presented for public consumption, and sentenced to death for something that you either did not do or that you did, but with extenuating circumstances that should be a mitigating factor in your trial, but that was suppressed for political expedience so that important people can be seen as "tough on crime"? How is it that you, who I am guessing were not on the jury or legal teams, or who otherwise has no first-hand knowledge of this case, are able to determine with 100% certainty that these guys are the "wastes of oxygen" that you believe them to be?
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
While funny, it distracts from several serious problems in the US.
First, why does the US still allow a death penalty? Surely there are some people with mental disorders that can not maintain a life with the rest of society, but this is what Prisons and mental health institutes are supposed to be for. We tend to argue how much a prisoner costs society, but rarely discuss the morality of executing people.
Next, and relates to the first is that the Prison systems in the US have become a for profit business. The privatization of prisons has caused countless issues. Such as contracts requiring a specific capacity at all times in prisons and the exploitation of prisoners. Laws have been passed to help keep prisons at capacity and nearly everyone in the US can commit several felonies every day without their knowledge. This means that we have people in prison that should probably not be there, and we lack the capacity to keep the really socially defunct people in jail.
We could discuss other issues, such as how rehabilitation in the US really does not exist and society lacks opportunity for people motivating people to illegal activities but can save that for later. We should address why the US has the highest percentage of people in prison in the world, and why we still have executions first.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What's the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
When TFA includes this little gem of a statistic the problem becomes much more obvious. sciencehabit also points out a study indicating that around 4% of death row inmates in the U.S. are likely innocent.
So we not only have a messed up legal and prison system that can get innocent people imprisoned for felonies, we have a messed up legal system that can sentence 4 out 100 people to die for crimes they never committed.
The argument you are making (look at his crime) is simply an appeal to emotion which lacks logical merit. And look, I fully agree that certain people can not be rehabilitated. Should any people be legally killed while we have severe problems with both our legal and penal systems? Hell no. Should we be convicting people of felonies when society does not offer them any other option? (think of narcotics) Again hell no. Prison terms and real rehabilitation where possible? I absolutely agree with this approach.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
All that being said, and if they're so fucking concerned about 'being humane', then I don't know why the hell they don't just give criminals being executed a lethal dose of morphine and be done with it. Will kill them in short order, and they won't feel a damned thing on the way out.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Informative)
Not that the crime is entirely relevant to whether state executions should be okay or not, but you appear to suffer from reading comprehension issues. The crime you refer to was committed by the inmate who had their execution stayed after the first botched one.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How are we any better if we drop down to the same level?
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am actually mostly against the death penalty but I agree on this one. All this concern over suffering of someone you are planning to kill. It really strikes me as silly. If you really have the moral conviction to believe killing him is the right thing to do, then fucking grow some balls and do it. Shooting him in the head is many times more humane than this whole pseudomedical procedure of dressing it up.
If the people can't handle the blood shedding then they should admit they don't have the stomac for it and stop doing it; not try to dress it up and make it appear less barbaric.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:crimes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:crimes (Score:5, Insightful)
Your Constitutional Rights have freed you from morality.
Oklahoma didn't realize anything wouldn't pass muster. They were shocked and horrified by a gruesome sight. They are afraid to face the reality of what they do; lethal injection is a long, slow, terrifying process which appears peaceful to the observer so that he may absolve himself of the commission of murder.
An execution should be quick and gruesome. It should be visible death, not peaceful rest. A hanging, a beheading, shooting, a beating to death. A thing that shows us what we do so that we may face it and understand it is terrible but it is just. The more zeal a people have for a punishment, the more visible and terrible it should be so that the people are shocked and sickened back into the understanding of what it is they do.
Re: (Score:3)
For a very long time, hanging was exceptionally torturous because you essentially just waited for them to asphyxiate. It's a relatively recent advance in hanging methods to drop them from a height so the rope snaps their neck, making it quick and painless... if all goes as planned.
Re:If they're having so much trouble testing drugs (Score:5, Interesting)
I've read that in Switzerland their suicide kit comprises a helium bottle and a plastic bag.
Also when I give 0,5 litre of my blood, I know that I may faint if I don't drink enough and then stand up suddenly.
I guess making someone give all of it would be fatal with no pain.
(again I want to state that I'm against death penalty, I don't suggest anything to carry on those punishments, just wondering why they still use drugs)
Re:Untested? (Score:5, Funny)
Same way you test any new drug. Undergrads.
Re:so? (Score:4, Informative)
If you commit a capital crime in the US, are tried and convicted for it, and your skin is black, you have a MUCH higher chance of actually being executed for it.
Frankly that fact alone should be enough to rule out capital punishment in the US for the foreseeable future.
Re:so? (Score:5, Informative)
First result:
Race of death row inmates executed since 1976 (US). [deathpenaltyinfo.org]
Comparing the percentage of executions by race to the population data shown lower on the page, I don't think your statement is correct. More whites are executed, but more blacks have pending executions.
Re:so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Read that page again. The strongest documented discrimination is over the race of the victim:
White Defendant / Black Victim (20)
Black Defendant / White Victim (270)
A black person who kills a white person is far more likely to be prosecuted and sentenced to death than vice versa.
Re:so? (Score:5, Informative)
Baldus and Woodworth answered a lot of your questions. Case-controlled studies are never perfect, but they're the best evidence we have.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or... [deathpenaltyinfo.org]
Two of the country's foremost researchers on race and capital punishment, law professor David Baldus and statistician George Woodworth, along with colleagues in Philadelphia, have conducted a careful analysis of race and the death penalty in Philadelphia which reveals that the odds of receiving a death sentence are nearly four times (3.9) higher if the defendant is black. These results were obtained after analyzing and controlling for case differences such as the severity of the crime and the background of the defendant. The data were subjected to various forms of analysis, but the conclusion was clear: blacks were being sentenced to death far in excess of other defendants for similar crimes....
Another measure of race's impact on the death penalty is the combined effect of the race of the defendant and the race of the victim. In the Philadelphia study, the racial combination which was most likely to result in a death sentence was a black defendant with a nonblack victim, regardless of how severe the murder committed. Black-on-black crimes were less likely to receive a death sentence, followed by crimes by other defendants, regardless of the race of their victims.
Re:so? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I am not. That is explicitly controlled for by only counting capital murder cases.
Re:so? (Score:5, Insightful)
With life imprisonment, it is at least possible for the system to realize a mistake has been made and partially rectify it. It actually happens shockingly often.
Once an execution has been carried out, however, we can no longer even partially rectify the error.
Absolutely we should support fixing the system more generally. But that should not stop us from also declaring a moratorium on capital punishment until that goal is accomplished.