Inmates on death row

[moggy]

With two more death row inmates due to die this week, do certain crimes fit the penalty?
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/upcoming-executions#year2017
Looking into Ronald Phillips due to die with lethal injection this Wednesday and having already had his execution stayed on several occasions, think his time has run out. A most haenous of crimes and maybe the penalty is the right one here?

 

[sir albion]

With two more death row inmates due to die this week, do certain crimes fit the penalty?
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/upcoming-executions#year2017
Looking into Ronald Phillips due to die with lethal injection this Wednesday and having already had his execution stayed on several occasions, think his time has run out. A most haenous of crimes and maybe the penalty is the right one here?

Yes many crimes do and many more should be put to death and stop holding these people for so many years also....If its 100% that they're guilty then don't hang about.

Maybe give drug dealers the death penalty ?

 

[Wellesley]

Anybody living here and showing any support for extremist terrorism against this country should be terminated. Oh, and palace fans.

 

[Kaiser_Soze]

I'll start off then.

The death penalty should be abolished world wide. It's not a deterrent to crime. If we are focusing on the punishment aspect of criminal sentences, then psychologically the 24 hours prior to execution will be easier to deal with then a lifetime of having your actions on your conscience.

And where does it stop? We've already said death penalty for murder. Manslaughter as well? Illegal drugs can kill so that's drug dealers receiving the death penalty. Death by dangerous driving. Add that to the list as well. What about the developer that signed off the cladding at Grenfell? Corporate manslaughter. Lets add them to the list too. Ah, that corner shop owner that sells several litres of vodka to the bloke next door who dies from alcohol related illness. They can go too.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I'll start off then.

The death penalty should be abolished world wide. It's not a deterrent to crime. If we are focusing on the punishment aspect of criminal sentences, then psychologically the 24 hours prior to execution will be easier to deal with then a lifetime of having your actions on your conscience.

And where does it stop? We've already said death penalty for murder. Manslaughter as well? Illegal drugs can kill so that's drug dealers receiving the death penalty. Death by dangerous driving. Add that to the list as well. What about the developer that signed off the cladding at Grenfell? Corporate manslaughter. Lets add them to the list too. Ah, that corner shop owner that sells several litres of vodka to the bloke next door who dies from alcohol related illness. They can go too.

Perfect reply.

I have always said that if anyone killed my son (or indeed vandalised my car, my threshold is low) I would happily kill them with my bare hands, and would seek to do so, but society and civilization is better than that and I would expect the state to stop me (by locking the *******s up).

 

[Kaiser_Soze]

Perfect reply.

I have always said that if anyone killed my son (or indeed vandalised my car, my threshold is low) I would happily kill them with my bare hands, and would seek to do so, but society and civilization is better than that and I would expect the state to stop me (by locking the *******s up).

The reason we have lawmakers in the land is for precisely this reason. Decisions based solely on emotion are invariably flawed. Emotion needs to be removed as much as possible from the justice system.

 

[studio150]

No, just see Bentley and Craig as to why not.

 

[GT49er]

Staying away from the to execute or not to execute debate, the thing that shocks me on that link is the length of time people are planned to be kept on death row - they've got executions scheduled months and even years away. That is just adding unjustified mental torture - if you're going to execute people, at least do it promptly when their appeals fail, not keep them hanging around on death row for years.

 

[The Upper Library]

Perfect reply.

I have always said that if anyone killed my son (or indeed vandalised my car, my threshold is low) I would happily kill them with my bare hands, and would seek to do so, but society and civilization is better than that and I would expect the state to stop me (by locking the *******s up).

Agree totally.

The argument that if it was your loved one who was killed you would want them dead is exactly why we have a justice system - to remove the emotional response.

As for capital punishment acts of terrorism - it will simply create martyrs.

Also I don't buy the cost argument for keeping someone incarcerated for life.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Buzzer]

I'm against the death penalty for two main reasons: It doesn't act as a deterrent and if taking a life is wrong then it's wrong also for the legal system to take a life.

I also don't have a high opinion of the way that the Yanks especially treat their death row prisoners. There's a documentary from the 80s called "14 days in May" which told the story of death row inmate Edward Earl Johnson and his British lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith's attempts to prevent him being executed. It's harrowing. Once watched, never forgotten.

There was a follow-up a few years later where the film crew followed up on the anomalies, contradictions and unanswered questions from the investigation and trial of Johnson. And they make a very convincing case for the real murderer being a different chap altogether and that Johnson was an innocent man executed by the State.

 

[dazzer6666]

Staying away from the to execute or not to execute debate, the thing that shocks me on that link is the length of time people are planned to be kept on death row - they've got executions scheduled months and even years away. That is just adding unjustified mental torture - if you're going to execute people, at least do it promptly when their appeals fail, not keep them hanging around on death row for years.

Exactly my thoughts when I saw the OP.........

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

<snip>

Also I don't buy the cost argument for keeping someone incarcerated for life.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Me neither but the alternative is rehabilitation and the taxpayer is not up for that. The fact that thousands offend knowing (or not knowing - the same applies) they will be dropped in a mire of relentless shit shows that deterrance does not work. Well it works for me, but I'm not someone who thinks that buzzing about London on the back of a Lambretta with a syringe full of battery acid is a smart career move....

Anyway, where are the NSCers who think that prison works, and that everyone who farts in public should be hanged? Oops - sorry - the usual suapects have already burped. . . . . .

As Gus used to say, ees complicated. . . .

 

[BensGrandad]

My concern with the death penalty is that it is nearly impossible to have 100% proof of guilt even with an eye witness account.

 

[pastafarian]

My concern with the death penalty is that it is nearly impossible to have 100% proof of guilt even with an eye witness account.

Michael Olumide Adebolajo
Michael Oluwatobi Adebowale

No dispute whatsoever.
I would gladly pull the switch myself on those two.

 

[tubby]

I agree with the death penalty when there is absolutely no doubt as to a person's guilt especially when there is forensic evidence.

However I recently watched a documentary on Richard Glossip who is on death row in Oklahoma having been convicted of inciting a man to commit murder, which resulted in him also being convicted of murder. However in this case the only concrete evidence is the confession of the man who actually committed the murder. There was no DNA evidence of him being involved or any evidence of him soliciting the murder other than the word of the murderer. They showed a video of the police interviews with both men and it appeared to be the police who coerced the murderer to implicate Richard Glossip. The only other evidence, he had an alibi for the time of the murder, was that he had $2000 dollars and the police calculated that about $4000 was stolen from the victim and the murderer also had about $2000. However his defence team had evidence to dispute that much was stolen and he stated that he had saved it for an engagement ring.

In this case the evidence was so flimsy that it would make you think twice about supporting the death penalty.

 

[Albion my Albion]

Yes many crimes do and many more should be put to death and stop holding these people for so many years also....If its 100% that they're guilty then don't hang about.

Maybe give drug dealers the death penalty ?

Is it ever certain that anyone is 100% guilty?



Perhaps the bleakest fact of all is that the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are actually innocent. -Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., 1994

Executive Summary

The danger that innocent people will be executed because of errors in the criminal justice system is getting worse. A total of 69 people have been released from death row since 1973 after evidence of their innocence emerged. Twenty-one condemned inmates have been released since 1993, including seven from the state of Illinois alone. Many of these cases were discovered not because of the normal appeals process, but rather as a result of new scientific techniques, investigations by journalists, and the dedicated work of expert attorneys, not available to the typical death row inmate.

This report tells the stories of people like Rolando Cruz, released after 10 years on Illinois's death row, despite the fact that another man had confessed to the crime shortly after his conviction; and Ricardo Aldape Guerra, who returned to Mexico after 15 years on Texas's death row because of a prosecution that a federal judge called outrageous and designed to simply achieve another notch on the prosecutor's guns.

In 1993, the Death Penalty Information Center was asked by Representative Don Edwards, then Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, to prepare a report on the problem of innocent people on death row. The Center 's report listed 48 defendants who had been released from death row in the prior 20 years because of subsequently discovered evidence of innocence. The growing number of additional cases in the ensuing years has prompted us to issue another report.

This report particularly looks at the dramatic narrowing of the opportunity to appeal and to raise newly discovered evidence of one's innocence. The federal funding for the death penalty resource centers, which helped discover and vindicate several of the innocent people cited in this report, has been completely withdrawn. Some courts have now taken the position that it is permissible for executions to go forward even in the face of considerable doubt about the defendant's guilt.

The current emphasis on faster executions, less resources for the defense, and an expansion in the number of death cases mean that the execution of innocent people is inevitable. The increasing number of innocent defendants being found on death row is a clear sign that our process for sentencing people to death is fraught with fundamental errors--errors which cannot be remedied once an execution occurs.

Perhaps the bleakest fact of all is that the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are actually innocent. -Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., 19941

Introduction

In mid-1993, the Death Penalty Information Center received a request from Rep. Don Edwards, then Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, to prepare a report on the problem of innocent people on death row. At that time, crime bills were being introduced which involved an expansion of the federal death penalty and a curtailing of the capital appeal process. There also had been a series of highly publicized releases of people from death row in which it had belatedly been discovered that the wrong person had been convicted and sentenced to death.

The Center prepared a report for the Subcommittee, basing its research on its own monitoring of this issue and on groundbreaking work done by other researchers, most notably Professors Michael Radelet and Hugo Bedau.2The report listed 48 defendants who had been released from death row in the prior 20 years because of subsequently discovered evidence of innocence. It also explored why such critical mistakes had been made in the legal process, and whether it was likely that such errors would continue.

The report was released as a Staff Report of Rep. Edwards's Subcommittee in October, 19933 and received considerable media coverage and public attention. It continues to be widely cited. The Appendix to this Report contains the original list of 48 cases of people released from death row because of evidence of their innocence.

The Need for a New Report

The problem of innocent people facing execution because of errors in the criminal justice process has in no way diminished since 1993. For example, in the summer of 1996, the state of Illinois dropped all charges against four men who had been convicted of a 1978 murder. Two of the men had been sentenced to death. The investigation which led to the discovery that the wrong men had been convicted was conducted by three journalism students who had been assigned the case in class. These releases came on the heels of the release from death row of two other men in Illinois, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez. Three former prosecutors have been indicted for obstruction of justice in that case. Although the public may have learned something about these dramatic reversals, they probably have heard little about the continuous string of mistakes in capital cases which throws doubt on the reliability of the entire death penalty process.

There is considerable evidence that the crisis of wrongful death penalty convictions has worsened: the annual average of people released from death row because of their innocence has increased since the first report was prepared, while the opportunity to appeal and to raise newly discovered evidence of one's innocence has recently shrunk dramatically. The federal funding for the death penalty resource centers, which helped discover and vindicate several of the innocent people cited in this report, has been completely withdrawn. Some courts have now taken the position that it is permissible for executions to go forward even in the face of considerable doubt about the defendant's guilt. Yet, recent research indicates that there may be a greater chance of mistaken convictions in death cases than in non-death cases.4

Part I of this report discusses why so many innocent defendants are being found on our nation's death rows and the prospects for lessening the danger of mistaken executions in the future. Part II lists the new releases from death row and also discusses additional cases which may be added to the list when the cases are concluded.

Part I: The Danger of Mistaken Executions

Pace of Innocent Cases Increases

Since Innocence and the Death Penalty: Assessing The Danger of Mistaken Executions was released in 1993, 21 more cases have been added to the list of mistaken convictions in capital cases. Seventeen of those releases occurred after the original report's release, and the other four were cases which would have been included in the original report had the information about these releases been known earlier. In the twenty-one-year span of the first report, there was an average of 2.5 releases of innocent defendants per year from 1973 to 1993. The 17 releases over the past three and a half years represents a pace of 4.8 releases per year, almost twice the pace of the previous report.

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

Is it ever certain that anyone is 100% guilty?

All the time.

Perhaps the bleakest fact of all is that the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are actually innocent. -Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., 1994

That's from 1994. Science and technology has improved a hell of a lot since then.

Just the fact people have cameras in their phones now means more crimes are caught on camera than ever before.

 

[W.C.]

I'm against the death penalty for two main reasons: It doesn't act as a deterrent and if taking a life is wrong then it's wrong also for the legal system to take a life.

I also don't have a high opinion of the way that the Yanks especially treat their death row prisoners. There's a documentary from the 80s called "14 days in May" which told the story of death row inmate Edward Earl Johnson and his British lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith's attempts to prevent him being executed. It's harrowing. Once watched, never forgotten.

There was a follow-up a few years later where the film crew followed up on the anomalies, contradictions and unanswered questions from the investigation and trial of Johnson. And they make a very convincing case for the real murderer being a different chap altogether and that Johnson was an innocent man executed by the State.

Is that the documentary where at the end, 15 minutes before he is killed, the documentary maker says his farewells? That stayed with me for days after watching it.

 

[GT49er]

Is it ever certain that anyone is 100% guilty?

Well, yes it is actually. Lee Rigby's killers perhaps? Ian Brady; Roy Whiting; Ian Huntley; Peter Sutcliffe..............and is there any possible doubt that Fred West did it (even though he topped himself before he came to trial)? Modern forensics, DNA, CCTV cameras everywhere, and cameras on mobile phones - yes, there's every chance that some convictions will be 100%.
Not making the same case for America, mind you, where the justice system is obviously not fit for purpose; I mean, O.J.Simpson not guilty, ffs!

 

[Kuipers Supporters Club]

I'll start off then.

The death penalty should be abolished world wide. It's not a deterrent to crime. If we are focusing on the punishment aspect of criminal sentences, then psychologically the 24 hours prior to execution will be easier to deal with then a lifetime of having your actions on your conscience.

And where does it stop? We've already said death penalty for murder. Manslaughter as well? Illegal drugs can kill so that's drug dealers receiving the death penalty. Death by dangerous driving. Add that to the list as well. What about the developer that signed off the cladding at Grenfell? Corporate manslaughter. Lets add them to the list too. Ah, that corner shop owner that sells several litres of vodka to the bloke next door who dies from alcohol related illness. They can go too.

This in spades.

As part of my job, I have met many many people who are in prison for life, and trust me, when it finally hits them they aren't leaving, it's a punishment of living with eternal suffering.

Also - of all the people I met, I don't think any would have stopped during the crime if it could have resulted in the death penalty.