So at the convention last night, we were debating one of the final resolutions of the evening – a proposal by a delegate to remove language supporting the Death Penalty in the current GOP platform.
It wasn’t my resolution – I submitted two at the caucuses, both of which passed easily – but I spoke in favor, for reasons discussed elsewhere in this blog. Now, “speeches” around resolutions are pretty limited; two in favor, two against, generally short; they’re never what you’d call “great oratory”. Mine was something like “I support the death penalty for every reason but one – the inevitability of human error. Now, in the 34 years since the Supreme Court reinstated the Death Penalty, there’ve been over 200 complete exonerations – as in, people who were considered guilty beyond a reasonable doubt that were released directly from death row. And it now seems absolutely certain that Texas executed an innocent man. Since government can’t even fill in potholes correctly, should we trust them with the power of life and death?”
A woman a few rows in front of me rose to speak for the resolution. “That just seems wrong, saying the government can’t get anything right. Aren’t we the part of possibilities?”
The rules didn’t allow me to respond to the response, so I couldn’t leap to my feet and say “NO! We are the party that believes the people are capable of anything they set their mind to, and the government is too stupid to trust with a cardboard knife!”
We are, indeed, a huge tent.
To repeat a tired old line: “Mister Perfect, meet your enemy: Mister Good”.
That said, you had a powerful argument and you stated it well. It’s hard (for me, at least) to speak clearly, succinctly, and forcefully enough to convince others under those circumstances, and as you say, there is little chance to respond to what others say.
Your chances of being put to death for a crime you did NOT commit are about 1 in a billion. What are YOU so afraid of?
Well, K-Rod, I’d like the odds of me being killed by the whim of the state to be rather less than winning the lottery personally. Especially since I don’t play the lottery and my odds of winning it are thus pretty low.
“whim of the state”
Nerd, since when did Obama strike that part about a jury of your peers?
And why do certain people oppose creating more safeguards to prevent anyone from being convicted of a crime they did NOT commit?
BTW, nerd, you show your consistency when you never ride in an automobile or plane… …or take a shower… *grin*
Your chances of being put to death for a crime you did NOT commit are about 1 in a billion
K, you keep saying one in a billion, even though I showed you the actual odds of real-life cases some time ago. Either back up the 1/1×10^9 figure, or let it drop. Because if you can’t substantiate it (and you can not), you’re bascially Algoring us.
why do certain people oppose creating more safeguards to prevent anyone from being convicted of a crime they did NOT commit?
I have no idea what you’re trying to ask here. Please clarify.
““NO! We are the party that believes the people are capable of anything they set their mind to, and the government is too stupid to trust with a cardboard knife!”
So, are the people in the government, the US citizens who happen to work in local, state and federal government jobs, are they too stupid to trust with a cardboard knife, or are they, as people, capable of anything they put their minds to?
Is it that you simply revile people who work for the government, oh, like postal workers, members of the military, the police, or even members of say, the US parks Service, the US Geologic Survey teams, NASA, or the like, that THEY are too stupid? Or perhaps it’s the people who work in federal corrections, or in the FBI, or the ATF, or for that matter the EPA?
Clearly, or so it seems to me, you either want to demonize the big, bad government as a ubiquitous blob with its own will, or it seems you think that only REGULATORY staffers are bad, like those in the IRS or EPA or OSHA are bad – or just those people who let their power overcome themselves (and I’m sure THAT never happens to police or anything.. nope) – but the context and contrast is, there are PAWLENNNTY of people who let their power go to their heads, who abuse their authority, let alone their responsibility, and many are Republicans, and a helluva lot are in private business too – trust me, I work with them. The other point is, the government truly is OF the people – so whatever you feel you want to broadbrush about the government is true of the people of the country. It may be easy, cheap and convenient to create boogey-men out of this over-arching “Big Gov’mint” fear, but you both backed an abusive government under Bush, and you speak out of the other side of your face when you say the people are perfectly fine. Big Brother is your neighbor, but mostly, Big Brother is the use of the power of government to do things it should not do, such as, oh, say, spying on US citizens without a warrant, or, perhaps, just maybe, caterwalling about state’s rights, about limited government, and then clamboring for the 2nd amendment to be incorporated – thus usurping state’s rights, simply because you like guns.
If you believe in individuals, and we grasp that a very large number of people work in one governmental role or another (from teachers to firemen/women) – you seem unwilling to accept that as they ARE a large block, they thus constitute a broad spectrum and therefore generally average set of Americans, and if THEY are flawed (as you seem to effectively assert) then average Americans are flawed, and if they aren’t flawed, then unless you believe in some sort of HAL9000 personna of government lead by NON-PEOPLE, they and thus the government is no more nor no less flawed than any other major element of American society or business.
Pen thinks he’s trapped me in a logical inconsistency.
He’s wrong, naturally, but let’s gnosh this out:
So, are the people in the government, the US citizens who happen to work in local, state and federal government jobs, are they too stupid to trust with a cardboard knife, or are they, as people, capable of anything they put their minds to?
I’m not sure if you intend that as a joke or not, Pen.
As individuals – who are, lest you’ve forgotten, the ones that we conservatives exalt? Of course.
But government as a self-perpetuating bureaucratic institution (rather than as the “by, of and for the people” ideal, which is just that – an ideal) is not about people.
Is it that you simply revile people who work for the government, oh, like postal workers, members of the military, the police, or even members of say, the US parks Service, the US Geologic Survey teams, NASA, or the like, that THEY are too stupid? Or perhaps it’s the people who work in federal corrections, or in the FBI, or the ATF, or for that matter the EPA?
Nope. Never said that individual government workers lack any personal value, or even merit as public employees. Many of them serve very useful purposes.
Clearly, or so it seems to me, you either want to demonize the big, bad government as a ubiquitous blob with its own will,
You’re getting warmer…
or it seems you think that only REGULATORY staffers are bad, like those in the IRS or EPA or OSHA are bad –
Statement based on facts nowhere in evidence. IRS, EPA and OSHA mix necessary missions with stupid ones, and they spend too much money on too many government employees – but that isn’t necessarily a reflection on any given worker as an individual.
or just those people who let their power overcome themselves (and I’m sure THAT never happens to police or anything.. nope)
Er, yeah. It does. And since they are government employees, that is a fairly concrete example!
You go on to say that I need to remember plenty of people work in government. Well, yeah.
But government as an institution is big and dumb and in many areas dubiously competent and prone to being corrupted – which, as you point out, happens in big busienss, too. But big business can’t tax me, can’t send me off to war, can’t by itself completely skew the market against me, can’t arrest me by mistake and throw me in prison not because I did something wrong but because I didn’t have the resources to fight them.
That’s the difference.
Mitch, not having read the New Yorker article, but having read the Tribune article, it seems to me that there is a bit of disputability in the conclusion here.
However, even if I concede your claim, the implicit claim is that if we prevent the death penalty, innocents don’t lose life…..since every person executed appears to deter 18 murders or so, that’s obviously false. There is also the unpleasant reality that too many people will relax about the reality of false conviction when no one is being executed….ironically the elimination of the death penalty could cause more years of life to be lost in prisons simply due to relaxed vigilance about ensuring the guilt of the accused/convicted.
So if I’ve got to risk something, I’ll take the 1/n part of risk of false execution to the 18 parts of risk of being needlessly murdered, as well as the unquantified (as yet) risk of being wrongly incarcerated for other crimes.
Nerd, since when did Obama strike that part about a jury of your peers?
A jury of my peers wouldn’t worry me. A jury of folks too dumb to get out of jury duty does.
BTW, nerd, you show your consistency when you never ride in an automobile or plane… …or take a shower… *grin*
Or do any of the other things I do that I do that are of my own free will. I climb mountains, including some that have death rates six orders of magnitude higher than the rate you quote. Stuff I do to me is my responsibility, stuff the government does to me needs to be constrained to the least possible impact on citizen’s freedoms and especially on their lives.
Mitch, the math is easy, divide the number of people actually put to death for a crime they did NOT commit by the total number of people that have been in the US over all the years.
Your risk of being put to death for a crime you did NOT commit are about 1 in a billion. Your chances of being killed at the whim of govmint light rail are A LOT higher, not to mention the risk you take that a government worker might run you over on your way home from work.
*grin*
….
I would like to make the risk even less by enacting more judicial safeguards instead of your lazy route of abolishing capital punishment altogether.
In your heart you know I am right.
“A jury of folks too dumb to get out of jury duty does.”
You think folks that dishonestly shirk their civic duty are dumb?
Do you think the more honest cops that don’t lie all the time are even dumber?
Pen, allow me to paraphrase a mildly amusing movie
“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”
oops, correction nerd:
Do you think folks that refuse to dishonestly shirk their civic duty are dumb?
Nicely done Bubbasan!
Like Mr. D said yesterday:
“The pitch to Bubba — it’s a drive, way back, to the fence — Hey! Touch ’em all, Bubba! He got a hanging curve ball and he sent it deep into the night!”
…. ….
“You know, there are some parks where that ball wouldn’t have gone out.”
“Name one.”
“Oh, Yellowstone…”
8)
No, KRod, in my heart and in my brain I know you’re wrong.
Mitch, the math is easy, divide the number of people actually put to death for a crime they did NOT commit by the total number of people that have been in the US over all the years.
That’s a terribly misleading place to start, but what the heck, you’re still wrong. Since 6% of all Americans who ever lived are currently alive (actually, that may be low, but let’s be conservative), which means a total population, EVER, of about 4.5 billion (which, again, may be high).
How many people have been executed in error? Stanford University Law School believed that in the 20th century that 14 innocent people were executed. How many more between 1789 and 1899? We don’t know; let’s say that it was 14 (although in those days of not-very-uniform justice, much-more-ubiquitous capital punishment (even city governments carried out death penalties; the City of Saint Paul executed a guy in 1906), and the lack of forensic evidence of pretty much any kind, that is almost certainly off by at least an order of magnitude, maybe two. We know almost beyond a rational doubt that Todd Willingham was innocent.
So – that’s between 29 and 165 executions of the innocent in all of American history, divided into 4.5 billion; your odds are at best one in 155 million, at worst one in 27 million. FAR from one in a billion.
But, Krod, your comparison is faulty. The number we need to look at is not the number of wrongful executions among all Americans that ever lived. You even noted this yourself, although you probably didn’t realize it; if you’re never charged with a crime, it doesn’t matter. It only matters if you’re the one who’s arrested, tried and sentenced to death for a crime you did not commit. There are two numbers you need for a valid comparison:
1) Percentage of death sentences that were in error
2) Percentages of executions that involved an innocent person.
As I showed you before, the answer to #1 is 240 complete overturnings out of 7,000 death sentences, or about a 3% chance that any given death sentence is in complete error. You wouldn’t send your kid to a doctor with a 3% error rate! And of the 1200 executions since 1976, we know to a virtual certainty that one was innocent.
So, Krod – in my heart, in my brain, and in my figures I know you are wrong, and every time the subject comes up I prove it. 🙂
I don’t care if you support the Death Penalty – like I’ve said, I support it too, for every reason but one (and that’s enough).
But as a fellow conservative, I beg you; use real numbers. Don’t Algore the issue.
What about the number of innocent people who were killed by those who were not put death by the state. This includes those released after both national and state ending death penalty and those who continue to mastermind the death of other while on life without parole.
If you want I can give you all the stats, but I can tell you it is much more than 1.
That is the flaw in your logic, you assume that by ending death penalty we will reduce the chance of an innocent death, when in practice it is the opposite.
Also, based on your comment “NO! We are the party that believes the people are capable of anything they set their mind to, and the government is too stupid to trust with a cardboard knife!”
Should we support disbanding the US Military because the chance they might accidentally shot the wrong person.
Or if we don’t trust them with a cardboard knife, should we trust them with a tank and fighter bomber.
Should we end all national defense since the government isn’t capable of doing anything, we should just higher our own personal security guards and hope for the best.
krod, if I made statistical arguments like you do, I wouldn’t.
I’ve never claimed to have a strong grasp of math, but even I can see the gaping hole in what you call logic.
Just to ante up what Sam said, we have a convicted child abuser in San Diego who is now charged with the murder of a teen girl they found in a shallow grave. I’m not a big fan of government, but seriously, this monster served five years in prison for a similar offense and then they let him out to kill. What the fuck are we supposed to do? I have a teenaged daughter. I would rip this bastards throat out with my bare hands if he did that to her.
Sam does make a valid point. In the end I support the death penalty so people will not commit crimes again. If that POS in cali had been offed for raping a 13 year old that 17 year old honor student would still be alive today.
Should we support disbanding the US Military because the chance they might accidentally shot the wrong person.
That’d sort of conflict with their key job
Look, all of you “conservatives” who are mortally offended that I’ve besmirched the sanctity of the myth of the competent government;
a) It was a joke at a convention. Gimme a break.
b) We give government jobs to do, including a few that it’s supposed to have (defending the country, enforcing laws). We (conservatives) also try to limit those jobs, hold it accountable, and keep its filthy mitts out of places it doesn’t belong.
If you want to translate that into an insult against every soldier, cop, epidemiologist and meter maid that ever got a government check, go for it, but that really isn’t the point of the post or, for that matter, anything I’ve ever said.
Mitch-
So you get home from work, hear a scream, and through the open door you see your child on the ground bleeding from his or her chest. Above the child stands a stranger holding a bloody knife. Your child screams “Help! Help Stop him!”
Being a lawfull permit holder and packing heat, you draw and fire, killing the stranger.
Jusifiable? Yes. A terrible mistake? Possibly. You can imagine scenarios where the stranger had nothing to do with the stabbing.
Why would it be okay for individual to do this in hot blood but wrong for the state to do it after years of deliberation?
In other words, if you accept that on rare occasions a legal firearm owner is going to kill someone because of a mistake, why do you want to hold the state to a standard you admit is impossibly high?
Mitch, even if there have been about 100 innocents executed in the past couple of centuries, that pales before the hundreds/thousands each year deterred by the death penalty. Moreover, if we assume the average new convict is about 30, four or five wrongful sentences for even fairly minor crimes in comparison do exactly the same thing as executing one person wrongfully.
Sorry, you’re wrong here, Mitch. Even if there were no deterrent effect of “Old Sparky,” the existence of the death penalty does a wonderful thing; people clue in to the problem of wrong executions in a way they don’t to a wrong rape conviction. Hence, they insist on clear standards of evidence–and all people benefit by that.
Sorry, Bubba, but I disagree. If government uses the full force of law to execute one innocent person, ever, it utterly negates any deterrent effect (and that doesn’t even address the fact that the deterrent you note is deeply disputed).
Traditionally there are three reasons why we use the law to punish people: Deterrence, rehabilitation, and justice. To say that the state can never be justified in executing a killer is too absolute.
In 2003 the governor of Illinois commuted the death sentence of everyone on Illinois’ death row when one inmate was proven innocent. Among the murderers Ryan felt that the state was too incompetent to apply the ultimate penalty was Fedell Caffey:
At 8:30 p.m. on Nov. 16, a Thursday, Laverne Ward, 24, rang up his old girlfriend Deborah Evans, 28. Evans, a welfare mother with three children and another on the way, had moved away from Hanover Park, a drug-infested Chicago suburb frequented by Ward, to try to rebuild her life in middle-class Addison. A few hours later, Ward, along with his cousin, Jacqueline Williams, 28, and her boyfriend, Fedell Caffey, 22, turned up at Evans’ apartment at 675 Swift St. According to relatives, Ward was high on crack. Evans let them in, and a brief argument ensued. Prosecutors charge that Caffey then shot Evans in the head with a small-caliber handgun and stabbed her repeatedly with a knife. Next, Ward and Caffey went into the bedroom of Evans’ daughter Samantha, and stabbed the 10-year-old to death. The wounds on Samantha’s forearms suggest that she died trying to defend herself.
The three then got down to their purported business: taking Evans’ unborn baby boy, whom she’d planned to name Elijah. Police say that Caffey and Williams were going to claim the child as their own. (Williams’ tubes, one of Ward’s friends explained, had been tied after having given birth to three children.) Others say that Ward wanted the boy for himself, and boasted shortly after the murder that he had just had a baby boy. Either way, prosecutors believe the three acted in unison inside Evans’ apartment, with Caffey allegedly using scissors and a knife to perform a C-section on Evans. Then Williams, who has some training as a nurse’s aide, extracted the 38-week-old, 6-lb. 8-oz. baby. After reviving Elijah with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Williams inexpertly cut the umbilical cord, then cleaned and dressed him.
Leaving behind Evans’ 19-month-old son Jordan, who police believe is Ward’s biological son, the threesome fled with the newborn and his brother Joshua, 8. Police later learned that Joshua reached out for help, telling an adult about the murders and charging that Ward had been involved. His captors then allegedly tried poisoning and strangling Joshua before stabbing him to death. Police found his body in an alley in the suburb of Maywood.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,983783,00.html#ixzz0hDYfVJQb
Terry said “Why would it be okay for individual to do this in hot blood but wrong for the state to do it after years of deliberation?”
Because the state/government does this kind of stuff through bureaucracies ( read AFSCME, SEIU ) that are always looking for reasons to increase in size. So today AFSCME is tasked with executing people who murder other people but after a couple years of lobbying their role is expanded to also execute paedophiles which means more union jobs, more union dues. Then after a bit more lobbying the legislature allows them to expand their bureaucracy to include executing drug dealers, then perhaps next we need to execute rapists, then maybe burglers. Outlaw the death penalty and you put a bureaucracy out of business and tens of thousands of union members out of jobs.
Like Mitch I support the death penalty except for one reason: The state should never become comfortable killing its own citizens because historically states that do become comfortable killing their own citizens soon start looking around for more disposable people.
Mitch, by the same logic, if the state imprisons one innocent rapist, it negates the deterrent effect of imprisoning rapists–or burglars, or shoplifters, or….murderers.
Since we have unequivocal data indicating that imprisoning criminals deters crime–first and foremost by preventing criminals from repeating their crimes against the innocent–we know your claim is false.
The key thing to address is to make sure ALL convictions are as equitable as possible, not eliminate one penalty.
Your first graf is not the same logic: while the state could certainly be liable, the innocently-convicted person would be alive to collect.
And the data on deterrence is, to say the least, not unequivocal. And it’s irrelevant, because I accept that there is a deterrent value! As I say all the time – I support the death penalty for every reason but one – but that one is dispositive.
And I do believe, strongly, that using state power to kill and innocent person, even inadvertently, is vastly more morally corrosive than the alternative – which is keeping people in Supermax. Not, let me remind you, never punishing them.
Kel, WE are the state. Some people just need to be removed from the planet, and I would put rapists and pedophiles at the top of the list. When we have conviction beyond a reasonable doubt isn’t that removal justified?
When we have conviction beyond a reasonable doubt isn’t that removal justified?
I’ll direct your attention to the 200-plus people sentenced to death for crimes for which they were convicted beyond a reasonable doubt that they turned out – due to police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, bad science and incompetent representation at trial – to be completely innocent.
And to Todd Willingham, who was executed for a double murder via science that now looks to have been fatally flawed but led, at the time, to a “beyond a reasonable doubt” conviction that led to an execution.
If Willingham had been in Supermax, he’d be alive to tell the tale today. I think he’d prefer it, although obviously we can’t ask him.
“…that pales before the hundreds/thousands each year deterred by the death penalty”
[citation needed]
Kermit
isn’t that removal justified?
Yes! Absolutely! and permanently, but execution no. It takes fewer government employees to keep them in a SuperMax than it does to keep them on death row. If a government asserts that it values life then it should not have a bureaucracy devoted to executing humans.
What you suggest is that the state be the hand of vengeance a very slippery slope. What I suggest is impartial punishment.
Mitch,
You never address my moral equivalency argument, protection of the other innocent people problem.
You argue that the possibility of the state executing one innocent person make the death penalty wrong.
But that is based on looking at only one side of the equation.
What about the death caused by those who should have been put to death but it was either delayed or commuted.
You are saying the possibility of one innocent person being executed means there should be no death penalty, but you fail to consider the possible death of other innocent people being put to death by a guilty man.
Take a look at the statistics.
Murders at SuperMax occur. What if that innocent man sentenced to life in prison is murdered in jail by a guilty man also sentenced to life.
What about the innocent witness who death was orchestrated by a person who should have been put to death, but is now running their criminal empire while serving their now life sentence.
Note, I am not talking about about the deterrent effect on others, but the one thing the death penalty does accomplish – it prevents that person from continuing to harm others.
You never address my moral equivalency argument, protection of the other innocent people problem.
Sure I do. What makes the lives of the innocent person who is caught up in the legal system worth any less than those who are ostensibly saved by the deterrent effect ?
You argue that the possibility of the state executing one innocent person make the death penalty wrong.
Not just wrong; morally repugnant. Evil. The opposite of “right”.
But that is based on looking at only one side of the equation.
Nope! But we’ll get to that.
What about the death caused by those who should have been put to death but it was either delayed or commuted.
Not sure I understand what you’re getting at. This sounds like “we should accept the state execution of innocent people because the guilty might kill again?
Your examples also confuse me; delayed or commuted? We’ll come back to that.
You are saying the possibility of one innocent person being executed means there should be no death penalty, but you fail to consider the possible death of other innocent people being put to death by a guilty man.
I don’t “fail to consider it”; it just hasn’t come up yet. What innocent people will the would-be death-row inmate have access to? You mention it in your next graf:
Murders at SuperMax occur. What if that innocent man sentenced to life in prison is murdered in jail by a guilty man also sentenced to life.
That’s a problem for the Department of Corrections to fix. I’m not actually sure that murders do occur in Supermax; to my understanding, inmates are kept in complete isolation, no contact with other inmates, in their cells 23 hours a day. As I understand supermax, it is “safer” than any death row I’m aware of (where inmates often do have contact with other inmates).
So I question your assertion – and add that even if it’s true, accepting the state murder of the innocent because an inmate might kill someone (unlikely as it can be made) doesn’t hold water.
What about the innocent witness who death was orchestrated by a person who should have been put to death, but is now running their criminal empire while serving their now life sentence.
I’m not claiming that there aren’t tradeoffs. The person doing the orchestration should have been in Supermax, in solitary, in complete social isolation, having his every utterance, writing, even his poo examined with a fine toothed comb to prevent this. I’m not willing to sacrifice the innocent to cover for the incompetence of one DOC or another.
Note, I am not talking about about the deterrent effect on others, but the one thing the death penalty does accomplish – it prevents that person from continuing to harm others.
Which Supermax – the supermax I understand, which is complete isolation – also does, with the added benefit of being reversible.
Mitch, you can get monetary compensation and an apology, but you can’t get a decade of your life back. Wrongful jailing is just as much a wrongful deprivation of life as wrongful execution.
Sorry, you’re barking up the wrong tree. If you want to prevent wrongful punishment, you don’t end executions. You rigorously enforce laws meant to punish false witnesses, including those wearing a badge.
you can’t get a decade of your life back. Wrongful jailing is just as much a wrongful deprivation of life as wrongful execution.
There”ve been over 200 people released from Death Row in the past thirty years – some of them after decades on Death Row. I haven’t read all their stories, but I’ve read many of them. I have yet to see a single one of them say they’d rather have died than lost those decades but gotten the chance to live a normal life.
Mitch, by your own admission, the odds of being put to death for a crime you did NOT commit are 1 in 4.5 billion!
YOU have an irrational fear of being wrongly executed.
….
“You rigorously enforce laws meant to punish false witnesses, including those wearing a badge.”
Holey Cow! Bubba does it again! Touch ’em all, bubbasan.
Sam, you knocked it out of the park as well. Yes Yellowstone!
Krod, I showed you the numbers. Just saying I said something that I didn’t isn’t debate.
Kel-
I think my argument still holds. If you accept that one human being has the right to kill another, how can you say that the state does not? People, even in self-defense, can act out of fear or rage or stupidity (the current legal definition of ‘self-defense’ notwithstanding).
Everything you say about the state is just as true when pursuing non-capital cases as it does when it pursues capital cases. The only difference is that the death penalty, when enforced years or decades later, cannot be reversed. This is a feature, not a bug. If we could bring wrongfully executed people back to life, why bother executing them in the first place? The essence of the death penalty in modern times is that it cannot be undone.
I think it is a sign of a healthy society that it has the confidence to say that certain crimes will earn the people who commit them the death sentence — even if we know that there is a miniscule chance that the execution would later be found to be unjust.
Silly Mitch, you were the one that said 4.5 billion total people.
And then Terry hits one out of the park. (Wow, this has become a blood bath folks.)
“I think it is a sign of a healthy society that it has the confidence to say that certain crimes will earn the people who commit them the death sentence — even if we know that there is a miniscule chance that the execution would later be found to be unjust.”
Very very very minuscule chance.
Krod,
I hope you don’t work in a field where you need to build logical cases with proof of any kind. I noted that there have been as many as 4.5 billion Americans, ever – and then noted that you have to divide that by dozens to hundreds of erroneous executions of which we have evidence. In response, you jump up and down and say “bloodbath” and write little bits of comment-section smack talk.
Seriously, Krod – taking one number and ignoring the other numbers is not debating. I gave real numbers; you just keep making stuff up.
There may be a case for the death penalty. You’re not making it!
Mitch, I said I would accept your 4.5 billion total people number.
That we have proof, undeniable proof.
Therefore, your chances of being put to death for a crime you did NOT commit are about 1 in 4.5 billion.
But, Mitch, even though you don’t have any proof I will go with a nice round figure:
Your chances of being put to death for a crime you did NOT commit are about one in billion.
That risk is well worth the deterrent effects of capital punishment.
In your heart you know I am right.
mITCH, your fear of the death penalty is a quite irrational, regardless of how much you might think that you “work in a field where you need to build logical cases with proof of any kind.” 😉
We have yet another reason to support capital punishment:
Without capital punishment, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks (KSM), IF convicted, would be allowed to safely write letters to his terrorist family/friends possibly planning the next attack on our country.
A post on SRS should be up soon.
http://stark-raving-sane-dont-go-in.blogspot.com/
The minuscule risk is well worth the deterent effects, not to mention the lunacy of allowing terrorists to safely communicate while reading and researching and enjoying three hots and a cot.
Sure. I don’t think there’s any reason to keep KSM alive. All the more reason to keep the trials in the miltiary system.
But as far as our civillian criminal system goes – is KSM worth the life of one innocent American?
If you say “yes”, then you are rooting for the wrong side.
http://stark-raving-sane-dont-go-in.blogspot.com/2010/03/capital-punishment.html
In your heart you know I am right.
8)