The latest argument for the death penalty

Probably nothing.

Alcala has been dubbed the "Dating Game killer" because he appeared on the television show “The Dating Game,” as Bachelor No. 1 in 1978.

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He won the game, but the woman on the show changed her mind and didn't go out with him because she found him too creepy.

I'd like to see a Death Party.

Pro-death penalty, pro-choice, pro-assisted dying, etc. Not only would it be awesome to say "I'm in the Death Party," but it's time we faced the uncomfortable fact that we must weigh lives against one another. All of this moral hand-wringing does what, exactly? Lets things like this happen.

Or, in certain cases, we make a choice about what constitutes a person and what is just a collection of organic cells that lives in parasitic fashion off its host, whether that host is a body or a society.

blacbird said:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35954720/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts

I suspect he'll get that sentence, but, fact is, he's 66 years old, and will very likely die of natural cause in prison before it can be carried out.
caw

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bolding mine.

Or will very likely die of un-natural causes in prison. I don't think inmates particularly care for rapists, pedophiles, and child killers.

leahzero said:

All of this moral hand-wringing does what, exactly? Lets things like this happen.

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The death penalty does not prevent things like this from happening. I am reluctantly against the death penalty, but am not passionate about arguing against it. Many (if not most) of the condemned absolutely deserve to die. I won't ever argue against that.

But the death penalty is not a deterrent for serial killers.

Perks said:

The death penalty does not prevent things like this from happening. I am reluctantly against the death penalty, but am not passionate about arguing against it. Many (if not most) of the condemned absolutely deserve to die. I won't ever argue against that.

But the death penalty is not a deterrent for serial killers.

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Yep, it's probably not a deterrent. It is cheaper though. Not to sound like a heartless wench or anything but people like this IMO don't deserve to be preserved. They've taken lives and abused so many...do unto others...

It's not cheaper.

Gretad08 said:

Yep, it's probably not a deterrent. It is cheaper though. Not to sound like a heartless wench or anything but people like this IMO don't deserve to be preserved. They've taken lives and abused so many...do unto others...

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I can't argue with that at all. Except for the cheaper part. In theory, it could be cheaper, but not the way it has to be done to ensure even the pale hope of getting it right.

That's one of the eason's I think we should skip it. Put them in essentially an oubliette tent camp and forget about them. My reluctance where the death penalty is concerned has nothing to do with compassion.

Depends on what value you put on that serial killer's life. *shrug* I'd rather pay the money to execute the son of a bitch than fork over the funds to keep him fat and healthy and alive.

The death penalty isn't--and shouldn't be--about the cost. The cost to society these killers have caused is already high enough--and I'm not talking money either. Once convicted, using infallible evidence like DNA, the whole kit and kaboodle of perpetrators of capital crime need to repay that debt to society. I don't care how much money we have to spend in order to do it.

My main problem with the death penalty, is our justice system. IF it was a situation where there was irrefutable evidence (e.g. new chopper sees a huge shootout and can verify that the arrested suspects were the guys who gunned down a few of the cops), then I'm okay with it. But in just about any other type of situation, I don't think it should be on the table because of the possibility of an error.

Think about how many guys have been falsely imprisoned for crimes for like 20 years, and then are released. At least if they're imprisoned, they can still be let loose alive (Ideally with a few million dollars to try to make the remainder of their life comfortable). You execute someone, there's no going back. There are no do overs.

Liberally and quickly applied the death penalty does cut down on recidivism. Letting people spend decades appealing is what drives up the cost. The convicts should be allowed to appeal, but those appeals should be not organiz4ed in a dilatory way.

clintl said:

It's not cheaper.

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It should be. I mean how much does a bullet cost these days?

Whenever possible, the death penalty should be administered by the potential victim seconds before the execution of the crime. It works out better for everybody that way.

I'll offer my couple of pennies.

People argue so much about the relative costs of death penalty versus life imprisonment because actual data are not sufficiently clear. Either way, "saving money" is not IMHO a good reason to kill a human being.

Neither law enforcement nor the criminal justice system is infallible. I don't see any way to insure that only the guilty will ever be found guilty of a capital crime, which means if you have the death penalty, you end up killing innocent people. For me, that is it. Under no circumstances is that something I'm willing to accept in cold blood. Those who say "let the dice fall where they may" should frankly volunteer themselves and those they genuinely love to be among those executed for crimes they did not commit.

Lastly, homicide is a terribly serious act. I believe it should only be deliberately done out of necessity, such as use of deadly force to defend someone. Taking a prisoner and deliberately ending his or her life in cold blood at a time they are threatening no one and their death accomplishes nothing save satiation of a desire for revenge (a desire I share, btw) is not a necessary act. If killing a human being is not necessary, then we shouldn't do it. Period.

We've had previous death penalty threads.

It's really two questions:

Is the death penalty morally and ethically justified?

Is it enforced equitably and fairly under our present judicial system?

To the first, a philosophical question, I answer yes, though I respect those who answer no.

To the second the answer is an unequivocal no, which is why I'm against the dearth penalty.

If we could could change the legal burden of proof and require a higher standard of certainty as to guilt in order to impose the death penalty I'd have less of a problem with it. (The "beyond a reasonable doubt" would be replaced by "no conceivable doubt whatsoever.")

aadams73 said:

It should be. I mean how much does a bullet cost these days?

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Actually, no, it shouldn't be cheaper. When we have a justice system unreliable enough that 10% of death row inmates in a state can be proved to be factually innocent (not just a reasonable doubt) by university law school students, as happened in Illinois a few years ago, we have no moral justification for using the death penalty at all. And we certainly should not be making it easier to carry it out without very extensive reviews of the original convictions by higher courts.

clintl said:

Actually, no, it shouldn't be cheaper. When we have a justice system unreliable enough that 10% of death row inmates in a state can be proved to be factually innocent (not just a reasonable doubt) by university law school students, as happened in Illinois a few years ago, we have no moral justification for using the death penalty at all. And we certainly should not be making it easier to carry it out without very extensive reviews of the original convictions by higher courts.

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Who made university law students the keepers of factual innocence?

Roger J Carlson said:

Who made university law students the keepers of factual innocence?

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I find your question a bit dismissive, honestly.

Many times law students are the only ones with both the time and the legal knowledge, not to mention the conviction, to fully investigate these cases.

This can be anything from filing requests for DNA evidence testing (which may not have been technically possible at the time of the original conviction) to finding and interviewing witnesses who were ignored by both prosecution and underfunded defense lawyers at the time of the trial.

Further DNA testing with new technology is routinely opposed by prosecutors, by the way. You can't just request it; you often have to fight for it.

Some of their clients have been released after having been found "factually innocent" by a judge -- from information developed by those students.

Roger J Carlson said:

Who made university law students the keepers of factual innocence?

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Pretty much agree with rugcat here. To my knowledge, there is no serious dispute over their conclusions, which held up in court and led to Gov. Ryan's commutation of the death sentences of everyone on death row in Illinois. Which was the right thing to do, once the flaws were exposed.

You know what I think would seriously aid in the ascertation of guilt/innocence?

If witnesses were given truth serum and or subjected to brain scans during there questioning.

It is easily worth a few hundred million dollars to develop a highly reliable truth serum and brain scanning technology.

Specifically, all you'd have to do is injected the witness with a radioactive dye and monitor brain activity during questioning with a basic sort of MRI/CAT scan you develop specifically for the purpose.

If brain activity in the memory portion of the brain are the most active, then there is a high probability the witness is telling the truth.

If the brain activity is high in the 'creative' centers of the brain, then there is a high probability the witness is lying.

This in combination with a line of good questioning along with a truth serum should make it almost impossible to lie during questioning.

In short. It would be interesting if we updated our judicial system from its 1800s model to incorporate the latest technology, psychology, and nuerological progresses.

Mel...

Why did I just have a flashback of "Minority Report?"

A friend of mine is doing research on rats (she's getting a PhD in neuroscience), and the end goal of it is to be able to "decode" the thoughts of a brain in real time (a lot of what she does involves putting electrodes in rats and subjecting them to different stimuli, and measuring the electrical behavior in the brains). Probably won't happen anytime soon, but in maybe 20 or 30 years, it may be impossible to lie and get away with it(e.g. we won't know what the actual truth is, but we'll know who's lying or holding back).

This could make interrogation pretty interesting. It could turn into asking a bunch of "true/false" types of questions, until you can narrow down what a person knows. Of course it would still be limited, because by nature we're all a bit delusional (we think we saw something, or we think we know something, etc.). While it might not work well for determining who's guilty(hard to prove something to be true), it would probably be very useful for determining who's innocent.

dgiharris said:

You know what I think would seriously aid in the ascertation of guilt/innocence?

If witnesses were given truth serum and or subjected to brain scans during there questioning.

It is easily worth a few hundred million dollars to develop a highly reliable truth serum and brain scanning technology.

Specifically, all you'd have to do is injected the witness with a radioactive dye and monitor brain activity during questioning with a basic sort of MRI/CAT scan you develop specifically for the purpose.

If brain activity in the memory portion of the brain are the most active, then there is a high probability the witness is telling the truth.

If the brain activity is high in the 'creative' centers of the brain, then there is a high probability the witness is lying.

This in combination with a line of good questioning along with a truth serum should make it almost impossible to lie during questioning.

In short. It would be interesting if we updated our judicial system from its 1800s model to incorporate the latest technology, psychology, and nuerological progresses.

Mel...

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This is a positive step, but still it's amazing how one's beliefs can be manipulated - Presuming the techniques you describe are reliable, all you can tell is what the witness BELIEVES the truth to be. This may or may not correspond to the facts (Nova "Secrets of The Psychics" with James Randi - I think the horoscope-reading scene is quite pertinent here):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTXmo4_LR4w&feature=PlayList&p=4C8C1807AEE735BB&index=0&playnext=1
(this has nothing to do with legal testimony, but I think it helps make the point - each 10-minute segment links to the next with auto-plays)

Perhaps more pertinent is this story on the (as I interpret it) amazing power of belief by all around, and showing how some continue to believe even after some pretty strong evidence to the contrary (55 or so minute video Frontline "Prisoners of Silence"):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3439467496200920717#
Transcript:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/transcripts/1202.html
This one IS about a court case, this one concerning accusations of child abuse, and uses scientific techniques to investigate claims of "Facilitated Communication" as used to help profoundly autistic children communicate.

I agree that modern science and technology can help greatly in court cases, but its application may need to be more subtle and in-depth than one might at first think.