Inmate set to die by firing squad asks high court to stay execution
I’m really conflicted about the death penalty.
For one thing, I don’t think one of the firing squad shooters should have a blank – if you can’t pull the trigger believing you’re delivering the killing shot, you shouldn’t be pulling the trigger.
I also don’t like that carrying out an execution means armed (be it with rifles, ropes, electricity or drugs) good men have to kill unarmed bad men in cold blood. It seems dehumanizing and counterproductive.
I lean toward the idea that prison should be very unpleasant, and that scumbags should have to suffer it until the end of their natural lives.
On the other hand, though, it was a hell of a lot easier to hold the anti-death-penalty perspective before dealing first-hand with the senseless murder of a friend. I can think of one firing squad I’d gladly volunteer for, and believe I could sleep soundly thereafter, so perhaps there’s something to the idea of good old-fashioned vengeance.
In other news, I didn’t know until reading this article that any states still used firing squads or hangings as capital punishment. Color me enlightened.
38 comments ↓
Well, as a gun owner, I cannot say I am against the death penalty. In defense of my own life and that of my family's, I am willing to risk becoming an instant judge, jury, and executioner if need be. The concept of taking a human life in and of itself is something we as gunnies always must consider as our actions to stop an immediate threat may end up costing someone their life.
A situation like what you and I are likely (hopefully not) to encounter is of course much different. We will be required to use overwhelming force to stop an immediate threat where as once the criminal is captured, the prison ostensibly should be enough 'force' to do the same.
I do believe, however, that there are people this world is simply better off without. Some monsters cannot be reformed and their incarceration costs the taxpayers an undue burden. I will readily admit that some of the worst may provide benefits via study in attempts to glean insights into what makes them tick and hopefully give us the tools to track down others before they can cause too much damage, but for the most part the thought of executing them outright doesn't morally bother me as they continue to be a drain on society.
With all that said, I totally disagree that we should have a death penalty on the books. Not because I find the concept immoral or repugnant, but because I have no faith in our justice system to mete out the appropriate punishment. If you are guilty and wealthy, you can buy enough lawyer and walk free. If you are poor and a good scapegoat, your innocence doesn't matter so long as the DA can show they're 'doing something'. With the average person committing three felonies a day, we no longer even have a system that allows innocent men and women to exist. With the failures of the populace to demand reform of the justice system, the death penalty is not an option I want the government to have in their toolbox.
I have to agree with Robb, but only 99%. There are (admittedly rare) situations where there is no absolutely question of guilt, and because of those situations I hesitate to take that tool out of the toolbox completely, though I do favor severe restrictions on it's use.
Like you, Laurel, there is one firing squad I would happily volunteer for, having had 2 friendly professional acquaintances murdered in an escape attempt, where there is absolutely no question of the killers guilt. It does make it harder to hold an anti-death-penalty perspective. That event, however, didn't change my opinion, it merely solidified a position I already held.
I also agree with you about the blanks. If you can't take the shot with a clear conscience, knowing it's real, you shouldn't be taking it at all.
My favorite quote on the subject is from one of the men that performed Utah's last firing squad execution. He said "I've shot squirrels I've felt worse about". It's from this article http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/06/09/utah.firing.s…
Personally, I feel people put too much value on human life. If a "human" is capable of killing others (especially kids) while not at war, there is no reason to keep them around. I do regret that we can not make the death last longer and more inflict more pain though. Maybe drag it out for a couple years until he just dies from giving up. That would be ideal.
The problem with life imprisonment is that it is so expensive. Why should I pay to keep, for example, Jeffrey Dahmer, or Osama Bin Laden, alive?
I am with you on that. However, according to an article out today on the Salt Lake Tribune, the death penalty actually costs more than life in prison due to all the legal fees and how long appeals are dragged out. Simple solution is to limit time spent on that process and not allow state funded attorneys to defend these people. But nothing has been done in that way. The supreme court says the government has to fund defense attorneys if the defendant requests one. But I do not know if that order trickles down through the appeals process.
On a side note, another thing I read recently said that capitol punishment in Utah in 1923 cost $200 to carry out. In 1944 it was up to $653. In 2004 it was more than $45,500. That is only for supplies, manpower, and overtime pay for the execution itself. BTW, back in the late 1800's we carried out executions a week after they were ordered as long as it wasn't a Sunday, Monday, or holiday. Today it's carried out decades later.
[...] In which I completely agree with Carnaby | Home Ruminations on the death penalty Views Laurel talks of the death penalty, and I left a comment that I figured I'd bring up here to illustrate my view on the [...]
I personally am against the Death Penalty wholeheartedly. I recognize it sounds silly, but I do believe that we should issue the death penalty as a symbolic gesture; we simply shouldn't carry it out.
It isn't so much that there are men who we would be better off without, but simply that the man we execute will be defenseless, killed in cold blood. No amount of due process is enough to take a defenseless man's life. Who are we to make that judgment; it belongs only to his creator, whomever that may be. Prison is a place designed for men whom we cannot trust to let free among us. There's no reason we cannot keep a man there to live out his life under hard labor.
But the main problem as I see it are the unintended consequences. We cannot let it into our heads that it is okay for a group of men to agree that another should die. Killing is one hell of a thing and killing a man strapped down to a chair lowers us as a species. It also imbues an unjust degree of power to one man.
That said, the manner they are carrying out his execution bothers me greatly. If we do have a death penalty, the fact that the firing squad is no longer being used is sad. How strapping a man to a table and sticking needles in him until he goes asleep and dies as we would put a dog down is degrading. The firing squad is the most respectable system of execution there is, followed by hanging.
However, this firing squad is not how it should be done. If anyone should be in that firing squad, it shouldn't be a bunch of cops; it should be the jury that convicted him. They made the judgment and should be responsible for meting out their decision.
No man should have a blank for two reasons: firstly, you can tell if you have a blank. Men should be concerned more with scoring a killing shot than discerning whether or not they fired the blank and then missing. Secondly, the use of a blank to save the pysche of executioners is an acknowledgment that what we are doing is wrong.
Finally, anyone killed by firing squad should be without a mask, standing, and able to look into the eyes of those men who are going to kill him. None of these things are being done. The above requirements is more dignified for the condemned and the executioners.
Taking a man's life and feeling less bad than taking a squirrel's? That precisely what I mean by lowering us as a species.
[...] 2010 by Jake Robb has a post up about his view of the death penalty, spawned by a blog post by Laurel, and I have to agree with him 99%. The money quote? I do believe, however, that there are people [...]
Laurel..IIRC Oklahoma still has death by firing squad on the books. but only if injection or the chair are deemed 'unconstitutional'.
William. Frakking. Morva.
If the prison system won't keep someone from committing murder, we as good people have a duty to kill them to protect the innocent. Murder committed during an escape attempt should always be a capital offense, as the escapee has proven they are too dangerous for mere captivity to control.
Like a rabid animal, some people need to be put down. People who rape and murder children, or the elderly. Serial killers. Those kinds of people. People who can do things like that and enjoy it need to be removed permanently from the face of the earth, and their dignity is a secondary consideration. Put a bullet in their brain and be done with it.
But only if you can be absolutely, 100%, positive that you have the right person.
That depends on the man. Someone like Patrick O. Kennedy? I'd feel worse about stepping on a cockroach. Letting him live is what lowers us as a species.
I fail to grasp what makes Morva any more special than 1000 other people on death row. I'm not saying that there aren't people that deserve the death penalty. I'm simply saying that we have no right in levying that penalty against a man strapped to a chair.
As far as their dignity being a secondary consideration, I agree; it's our own dignity I'm concerned with. Killing men put in a defenseless position is not dignified for the executioner.
Besides, I'd rather you put a bullet in me than have me spend the rest of my life getting gang-raped in prison. Talk about degrading…
I also forgot to mention the one instance when I do believe in the death penalty. If a man's continued existence puts others in peril, then the death penalty may be warranted. Saddam or Manson come to mind here.
Then again, I'm not saying that punishment should not be meted out on them when not in a defenseless position. If you want to mark them as legally killable then turn them loose, well, seems a mite dangerous, but I wouldn't be against it.
TI, I'll go 100% in agreement that each should have a live round and no blanks. But I cannot agree that the jury be held liable for doing the deed as I don't believe it's up to the jury to deliver the sentence. The jury should decide on guilt and guilt alone. Too many times the defense can weasel out a "not guilty" because the jury doesn't want to be responsible for the punishment.
IIRC, you're a Marine. I put that uniform on as well. You and I decided that we could stomach what was required of us come time to defend our country. Not everyone has that ability or the desire to do that. I cannot fault someone who wants freedom but can't fathom going to war for it (there are other ways to protect freedom). Finding juries that could also serve as executioners would make our 'justice' system even less stable. Let a select few who can handle the deed do so and you do not need to worry yourself about society at large pulling their dignity down. I don't believe in socialism when it comes to economics, I don't believe in 'shared dignity' either.
Sometimes, life isn't fair and there's no way to win. Homicide is an awful, awful thing, even if you're defending your own life. But it's the lesser of the evils and it doesn't degrade me as a human.
I think gladiatorial combat would satisfy a lot of your issues with the death penalty.
I have many of the same issues with the death penalty as Robb and TI. I can get on board with it theoretically, but the practical implementation by humans is prone to too much fuck'uppery. Cost being just one of the tangible issues. There are so many more intangibles.
As a practical solution, how about allowing those in prison to check out voluntarily? Na, that'd mean acknowledging total ownership of our own bodies. That's crazy. I must be reading too much Heinlein.
You can read too much Heinlein?
Heh. The copy of Time Enough For Love I'm reading now is 600 pages of pulp paperback. Maybe not "too much," but "daunting" feels applicable. ;)
I have come around to thinking that, to consider right and wrong, one also has to consider the real-world process.
Do I have a problem with the death penalty? Not in the least. Let the friends and relatives of the victims do the killing, if they want to.
Do I think we should have the death penalty? No. Our judicial system is way too screwed up, and too many innocent people have been imprisoned or even executed. To have the death penalty, we'd need a much better justice system, and I don't think there can be a perfect one.
So, the penalty is just, but we don't have a system I want making those sorts of irrevocable decisions. The process is way too messed up.
Another example of this, to me, is abortion. The pro-life contingent has a persuasive argument: abortion kills a human life (of some sort) and we as a society agree that killing an innocent person is wrong. However, in order to enforce a ban on abortion, we have to make the bodies of women the property of the state. A fetus cannot live on its own, so a ban on abortion means that the state can appropriate the most sacred private property, a person's body, at the whim of the state. So, while in theory, there may be an argument for a total ban on abortion, the process of doing this involves even greater wrongs, with even more potential for evil.
BTW Idaho allowed execution by firing squad as an option until July 1, 2009. Now lethal injection is the only option. I've always thought lethal injection to be quite unsporting.
Actually I think you can read too much Heinlein. I think we all know when we've reached that point when you start getting really strange ideas in your head… and suddenly think they make a lot of sense.
Honestly? most of the people that are in jail [Not sure what the stats/percentages are for death row inmates]are multiple repeat violent offenders. human cockroaches. why feel guilty over squashing them? As far as cost is concerned..I'm of two minds about that.
One mind is..Yeah it does cost too damn much to feed and clothe these boils on the butt of humanity. It costs 6 figures a year to house a prisoner here in the state of Texas. As far as cost that way goes my attitude has always been….make them WORK for it. Chain gangs with armed guards who WILL shoot them without blinking or thinking if the convicts try to run. They want to eat? prison work farms. Our prisons are cushy compared to prisons elsewhere in the world. Have you heard about the jail they're keeping Van Der Sloot in in Peru? From what I hear IF the guards decide to feed the prisoners they put huge slop buckets out in the yard, once a day. then the prisoners get to run a gauntlet of guards beating on them, to get to the buckets. THEN you get to fight with your fellow inmates over the food.
Here in the US? 3 squares a day, access to books, satellite television and computers. I'd personally be inclined to take away the satellite and computers. Let em keep the access to books. I'd go nuts if I couldn't read..hell who knows..it might actually improve the minds of some of them that are eventually gonna get released. I don't mind if they improve their minds in that case. I do object to paying for cable/satellite television and net access for them though. For the really highly dangerous ones..put em in a cage..24/7 solitary. For the rest..work farms and tent cities. Electrified Razor wire and guns.
As far as the cost of executing them..I'm not exactly sure what the actual cost is for the drugs used. However…Rope is cheap AND reusable.
I agree that the death penalty is grotesquely expensive, but only because of the appeals process. The actual penalty is pretty damned cheap for the relief it brings a civilized society.
I believe that our "justice system" is royally fracked up and only about winning. (moreso corrupted by the winning than even the influence of money and power) There are prosecutors that wouldn't think twice about putting an innocent man behind bars or in the chair if it would help his win-loss record. Prosecutors are fracking lawyers and we all know most lawyers are the devil's spawn.
I think we use the death penalty too much, but only because it's used in circumstantial or other non-definitive cases, not because I don't believe the cancer needs excised. I believe the biblical standard (Deut 17:6-7, 19:15) should be used for applying the death penalty. Carrying out the penalty should be swift, once decided.
As for the cost of incarceration for the others in jail? Bring back chain gangs. Put the bastards to work. There is a reason why it's called "debt to society." Make them pay off that fracking debt. Letting them rot in a cell doesn't pay off any debt, it merely increases it. Remove the televisions. Remove the recreation centers. KEEP the libraries and schooling, though, because there are criminals that repent and become productive citizens.
The biblical standard for the death penalty?
You mean you believe in the death penalty for men who experiment with homosexuality (Lev 20:13), girls who aren't virgins when they move out of their parents' homes (Deut 22:20,21), teenagers who cuss out their parents (Lev 20:9), or a salesman who goes in to the office on Sunday to get ready for a big presentation, even though he might take a 2 week vacation afterward (Ex 35:2)?
People want to think that it's easy to make every moral decision. Just read some text written by the despotic tribal leaders of some traveling sheepherders a few thousand years ago!
Give me a break. It's not only not that simple, it's downright dangerous to think it is.
I have yet to hear a single argument against the death penalty that is not really an argument against having a justice system at all. Take Robb's comment about rich guilty guys lawyering their way out of death while poorer ones cannot. Is that unique to the death penalty? Hell, no! O.J. didn't face the death penalty, and he walked. Indeed, there is not a single criminal offense on the books for which a very good, expensive lawyer can't get you off with a lesser sentence than a public defender would, on average. Does that mean we should abolish prisons and even fines, for that matter? Or reduce every poor criminal's sentence to the lowest sentence the world's best lawyer might have gotten them? Or should we accept the reality that we're better off with an imperfect justice system where most hardened criminals actually get what they deserve while a few uncommonly rich ones may not?
Equally unpersuasive is the notion that we should get rid of the death penalty because it's so expensive. On balance, it's anything but that. Sure, carrying out an individual execution is slow and expensive (courtesy of the death penalty opponents who work around the clock to make it so), but that's only part of the picture. The real savings are found in the saved costs (economic and otherwise) in investigating murders that never happened (whether by deterrence or by incapacitation) and in trials that never happened because the murderer pleads guilty to avoid execution. When assessing the supposed costs of the death penalty, did the Salt Lake Tribune factor in the cost of the Unabomber trial that we didn't need, but would have needed if life without parole were the stiffest sentence available at trial? I didn't think so.
Don't be a dumbass, Barry.
I referenced the specific verses. Two or more credible witnesses to the crime.
(Although Lev 20:13 and Lev 20:9 have their merits…..)
Careful you don't get your generalization all over you Barry. Granted it takes some effort and a bit of thinking to realize this, but it *is* possible for people to read texts and discern the intent rather than just repeat a few lines and assume that's all there is to it.
"Two or more witnesses" doesn't require some reference to Leviticus, unless you are a dumbass, which you most clearly are.
Kill gay people? You just advocated executing homosexuals! On a libertarian blog. And you have the unmitigated gall to call someone ELSE a dumbass? Well, I guess that "human garbage" is different from "dumbass", but human garbage really is in no position to call anyone "dumbass", apart from himself.
I mean, I have fully experienced and, in time, fully rejected your filthy religion as the evil fabrication it is, but it still shocks me when I see that sort of inexcusable hatred expressed by someone living in 2010.
Only religious idiots think a person is "enlightened." Some people have had some good ideas, and I like them. I don't deify people, nor do I think it ever makes sense to do so. That would include those who wrote whatever stuff ended up in what we now call the bible, for various reasons that include justifying genocide.
The Constitution as a contract between the government and the governed is just that, a contract. Nobody has to be "enlightened" to draw up a valid contract.
Enlightened means "freed from ignorance and misinformation" or "based on full comprehension of the problems involved".
So yeah, the Founding Fathers were enlightened.
Also, I would like to mention I am discussing the generalization, not the root document being discussed. I have no intention of getting into religious debates online.
The point I'm making is that an idea's validity is measured irrespective of its source, nothing more, nothing less.
Yeah, Barry, I'm advocating execution for children that curse their parents, also.
Get real.
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The death penalty is our only legal means of ultimate vengeance but it is highly ineffective. Years of due process and appeals, to ensure the rights of the accused, is absolute torture for the family and friends of the victim(s) and extremely expensive. And yes, innocents are erroneously determined to be guilty, which also means the guilty are free to roam our streets. I would consider life in prison for our worst offenders if hard labor and a life of hell was actually an option. Our society ensures that the rights of prisoners are protected above all else. My God they have better health care, educational opportunities, food and shelter than many people. The death penalty isn't working and neither is life in prison. Our system is ineffective to say the least. Neither option seems to be curtailing crime or serving the people. Victims of violent crime have a take on this that I do not believe any of us can understand unless or until we are in their shoes and frankly I don't want to be there. In regards to the idea that we are lowering ourselves as a species by implementing the death penalty -It's common practice for humans to euthanize their pets, out of love and compassion. The beloved animals never get a chance to say, hey, wait a minute! We determine what we believe to be best for them. Yet we consider killing a human by the same methods, even the most vial of humans, to be inhumane. Lethal injection for a beloved pet is humane and lethal injection for a human killer is inhumane? When wildlife feels threatened and kills a human, they are immediately put to death. Yet a human that knows better and still chooses to kill another human, is given every opportunity to live. Yes, we are of a higher species, so why do we kill animals acting out of instinct, yet allow humans that kill, the right to live?
The laws of the Old Testament requires the death penalty for a lot of things because they were written by (and for) a nomadic people wandering through the desert, who had almost nothing but who did have a lot of rocks around. So of course they dealt with troublesome people (and homos) by stoning them to death. They didn't have many other options. As a relatively wealthy civilization, we do.
Incon, you are such an idealist! It figures, you being a Marine and all.
I do concur absolutely with every word you wrote, there. I, too, am an idealist, though I often come across as a cynic. As they say, a cynic is a broken-hearted idealist.
Think of it as putting down a rabid animal. Best for everyone involved, including the animal.
Mixed feelings is the best way to describe my opinion, death might be a lighter sentence than a lifetime sentence. Death may just provide the individual his freedom. Sometimes I think spending 10, 20, 30 or more years in confinement is better than death. But it is a tough call. Just my two cents worth.
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