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this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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The other issue is that it quite frequently costs exponentially more to administer the death penalty due to years of appeals. I'm not sure how that would work in this case, since as you said, it's apparent that the defendant is guilty.
His appeals will be focused on procedure, rather than facts. Pretty much the go-to defense strategy when a suspect is caught red handed. If you can’t argue the facts of the case, try to get the facts thrown out on technicality (like maybe the police mishandled evidence so it’s not admissible anymore,) or try to minimize the person’s crime as much as possible. Try to get the sentence reduced, try to downplay the convict’s actions, emphasize how much they have changed, etc…
Basically just damage control. Accept that you aren’t going to come out of it unscathed, so just work to mitigate the damage instead of trying to avoid it altogether.
I mean, given the choice of paying for him to have 3 squares and a place to sleep, I’d rather pay a little more to be rid of him.
It's not "a little more" to prosecute a death penalty case. It's a lot more depending on the state. I strongly recommend reading the link but here are some snippets from it.
Now consider that there is a very strong agreement among experts that the death penalty does not serve as a deterrent to other criminals.
That means that the extra expense of pursuing the death penalty has no effect on increasing public safety since the convicted criminal, whether they are executed or are spending the rest of their life in prison, is not a risk to the public. Finally, all that extra money spent on death penalty trials is money that could be better spent on measures that really would improve public safety such as reducing poverty or improving education.
Why do you people present this is as an answer to the previous statement? EVERYONE knows this at this point, it doesn't change thee previous statement in the slightest. It's like when people smugly respond "that's not how free speech works"....no, not according to everyone who prefers to limit it, it ain't. You're rebutting someone's principles with regulations made by people don't care for that specific philosophy and saying more about yourself than you think.
I don’t care. That prick has forfeited his right to keep living. That’s the bottom line. I would rather pay $3 million for him to die that $1 million to keep feeding, housing, and otherwise caring for him.
And face it. You present a false choice. The money would not be spent on education or reducing poverty. It would be used to give the rich larger tax cuts first.
If it were up to me, pricks like this should the tortured to death. Call me ruthless of you want, but what else does the guy who decided to kill innocent people because they are black?
I get that that is your preference. Personally, I would choose to spend the money where it would do some good rather than just slaking some people's need for revenge.
What on earth makes you think that is where politicians would choose to spend the money? Heck, we could spend that now and don’t.
If you could point out even one benefit to the death penalty in our modern world, I'd be willing to consider it. There is none. Not on a moral, societal, safety, or fiscal level. There is certainly harm caused by it, not least of which is the belief that it's okay to take someone's life for any other reason than the immediate risk of life and health of another person. Some people think it's okay to kill 10, some think it's okay to have the government kill 1.
For many of us, simply knowing we will no longer be sharing this planet with them is enough. That’s a moral and societal benefit most definitely. He who deprived others of life gets deprived life themselves.
Hell, if nothing else, the death penalty can save a trial by providing leverage for a plea. If you are guaranteed life imprisonment, why not force a trial? But if you might be executed in such a clear cut case, maybe you plead guilty on exchange for life imprisonment to save your life. Save victims having to testify.
The bottom line for me is that this guy is pure evil. The cops shouldn’t have taken him alive to begin with.
There is a moral cost for treating life casually. When police kill a suspect who shoplifted $100 from a store and engineer some flimsy excuse to claim self defense when they flee or use excessively brutal force when arresting a drug user and possible petty counterfeiter isn't so surprising when we have the public advocating for summary police justice rather than doing what they can to uphold the rule of law, which does not include gunning down criminals in the street.
Also, a whopping 2.3% of federal criminal cases go to trial already. So your other justification for capital punishment is that number is just too high?
I’m not the one treating life casually, that’s the mass murderer.
I swear, some of y’all have more sympathy for him than the victims that died in far more pain and were far more innocent than he is.
As a poor, I would rather let him rot in prison and have that money go to making my life materially easier to live
As I said, there is a zero percent chance of that happening. Death penalty spending is hardly the obstacle to ending poverty, providing health care, investing in infrastructure, or anything else.
And he’ll hardly be rotting. He’ll be getting food, shelter, and healthcare. I’m not saying prison is fun, but they are not just throwing away the key.
Okay, lemme change my position then
As someone who has moral principles, I would rather the process by which he can be executed by the state not exist, because any law that the state can use to rightfully kill a guilty person can be abused to wrongfully kill an innocent. The state can never be truly 100% certain of the defendant's guilt, and so there can never be a 100% guarantee that only guilty people are executed.
This guy is 100%, no doubt, guilty as hell. Put us safeguards, but at some point, you have to do more.
That's exactly what they said about Cameron Todd Willingham. Professional firefighters took to the stand and said that there was no way his house could have burned the way it did without accelerant. They were as certain of his guilt as you are of this guy's. It turns out even "100%, no doubt" isn't a high enough bar.
He was wrongly convinced. This guy won’t be.
The next person could be. As I said, any law that can be used to rightfully execute a guilty person can be abused to wrongfully execute an innocent. Not every person on death row is as certain as this case, and as much as you will say "it should only be used when there's this much proof," in the real world, it won't be. Better to be rid of that system altogether. We don't gain anything from killing someone.