Retired Justice Stevens Wants to Amend the Constitution

[Sleepwalker]

Ah. So old fashioned lynch mobs. Gotcha.

[crashhelmet]

Ah. So old fashioned lynch mobs. Gotcha.

The last time I checked, a lynch mob completely bypassed the judicial process. Please, try again

[Sleepwalker]

...as opposed to bypassing the judicial process by bypassing trial and appeal process?

[s_stabeler]

The last time I checked, a lynch mob completely bypassed the judicial process. Please, try again

a) who gets to determine someone is 100%, without a shadow of a doubt, guilty?
b) the long list of appeals is deliberate- a staggering 66% of death penalties are overturned- with the main cause being incompetent defense counsel to the level that the trial was unfair. Thus, if you take someone freshly convicted of capital murder, and execute them immediately, then congratulations- there is a 2-to-1 chance you just killed an innocent person. Oh, and the average period of time before an unfair death sentence is overturned is 19 years. ( by comparison, a normal life sentence in the UK would be only 6 years from the first opportunity for parole. That means that there is probably a fair chance that any individual Death Row inmate will be in prison longer than someone on life with the possibility of parole)

[crashhelmet]

...as opposed to bypassing the judicial process by bypassing trial and appeal process?

Where did I say they should bypass the trial?

[crashhelmet]

a) who gets to determine someone is 100%, without a shadow of a doubt, guilty?

The judicial process, for starters. If they have compelling evidence, such as video footage where the defendant is clearly visible, then there's no chance for an appeal. No chance of a conviction being overturned.

Not every case is won on circumstantial evidence or convicting the wrong person.

b) the long list of appeals is deliberate- a staggering 66% of death penalties are overturned- with the main cause being incompetent defense counsel to the level that the trial was unfair. Thus, if you take someone freshly convicted of capital murder, and execute them immediately, then congratulations- there is a 2-to-1 chance you just killed an innocent person. Oh, and the average period of time before an unfair death sentence is overturned is 19 years. ( by comparison, a normal life sentence in the UK would be only 6 years from the first opportunity for parole. That means that there is probably a fair chance that any individual Death Row inmate will be in prison longer than someone on life with the possibility of parole)

The 66% is not mainly due to incompetent defense attorneys. It's also due to overzealous police, and prosecutors, seemingly like you in this very situation, withholding evidence. The latter 2 are corruption issues that need to be cleaned up. Your "main" reason is sometimes due to corruption where lawyers intentionally screw up a case to try and force a mistrial. Prosecutors are known to do it too.

[Gravekeeper]

I was looking at the cost of the execution itself. I'm saying execute them the same day they're convicted, if absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt guilty.

Same day they're convicted still means court costs and its the court costs where the bulk of the money goes. Like I said, a death row case in Texas costs the state over 2 million dollars. Thats NOT including the cost of incarceration. Which would add another 1.3 million to the price tag if you use the average of 15ish years spent on death row.

So you may as well just say I would kill people if I had magic.

If you applied the same reasoning to life without parole cases, the extra money saved in court costs would still pay to keep one person incarcerated at maximum security with all additional dangerous offender precautions for a bit over 40 years.

Furthermore, the cost of the execution itself is starting to skyrocketing because death penalty states can't get their hands on the drugs they use to kill people to begin with. Because every company that makes these drugs strictly forbids its sale or use for executions now after releasing what the US was using it for.

So eventually you're going to have to drop to something cruel and unusual again like hanging or a firing squad.

Of course then you do get into the whole quandry of, "is prison itself providing adequate meals, protection, and services to render it not cruel and unusual?" If you added those costs, would you still see that delta in costs.

No, the problem is not the standards of incarceration. Death row incarceration is different from general population incarceration. A death row prisoner typically has their own cell and guards. Hence the increased costs.

Furthermore, its the death row incarceration that is cruel and unusual punishment with many prisoners committing suicide or waving appeals just to not have to live in that form of incarceration anymore. They sit on death row for years on end. ( 25% die of natural causes while waiting for their sentence ). Basically in solitary confinement, where they are fed through a food slot and have guards that strip search them daily and watch them shower.

If the standards were raised, it would actually cost more for death row incarceration

[Dakhur]

Hanging, using the long-drop, when done properly and using the lengths worked out by Albert Pierrepoint, is the second most immediate and efficient method of death. It's only brutal and cruel when it's botched, generally by people who have no idea what they're doing.

The first is a spike, introduced at speed, through the base of the skull (through the opening where the spinal cord is involved.) This method has been used in the past, but fell out of favour since it required an executioner to be in contact with the executed. However, new technology would allow an adaption of the standard electric chair so this method could again be used.

As for the time wasted waiting, that's where the "year and a day" rule would be introduced. Appeals, if any, would have a year to get up, as would pardons. Once that final 24 hours is in play, it goes ahead as planned.

[HYHYBT]

It's also due to overzealous police, and prosecutors, seemingly like you in this very situation, withholding evidence. The latter 2 are corruption issues that need to be cleaned up.

And a huge part of why there is as little of that as there is is that cases get overturned when it comes to light. Which does no good if you've executed the prisoner in the meantime.

As for the time wasted waiting, that's where the "year and a day" rule would be introduced. Appeals, if any, would have a year to get up, as would pardons.

Which puts people's lives at the whims of court schedules.

[Gravekeeper]

Which puts people's lives at the whims of court schedules.

Indeed. The average death row case takes 3-4 years to wind through the system as is. The idea is to establish absolute guilt. Not to execute people on scheduling issues. >.>

[s_stabeler]

The judicial process, for starters. If they have compelling evidence, such as video footage where the defendant is clearly visible, then there's no chance for an appeal. No chance of a conviction being overturned.

Not every case is won on circumstantial evidence or convicting the wrong person.

The 66% is not mainly due to incompetent defense attorneys. It's also due to overzealous police, and prosecutors, seemingly like you in this very situation, withholding evidence. The latter 2 are corruption issues that need to be cleaned up. Your "main" reason is sometimes due to corruption where lawyers intentionally screw up a case to try and force a mistrial. Prosecutors are known to do it too.

a) video evidence can 1. be faked 2. not be clear- most security cameras, where most video evidence would be from, are set up for maximum coverage, NOT maximum detail. as for various types of concealed camera- the concealment usually means it is again not entirely clear.
b) the entire point is that, currently, 66% of Death Row inmates are actually innocent. Assuming all innocent people can get their sentence overturned, which is no guarantee. Ergo, any move to swiftly execute someone convicted is going to result in more innocent people being executed. Create punishments based on the justice system you have, not the one you want to have.

let me clarify- if you can guarantee, 100%, that someone is guilty, then I support the death penalty. However, the simple fact of the matter is, is is impossible to be that certain. Therefore, I do not support the death penalty as opposed to life imprisonment w/o parole.

[Sleepwalker]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/11/us/lou...nn-ford-freed/

But think of all the money we could have saved if we'd just killed him 30 years ago.

[s_stabeler]

it's a question of attitude- some people feel that it is better for a gulity person to go free than an innocent person be punished. Others..don't. (for executions, I subscribe to the "if there is any doubt, don't execute" idea. for imprisonment, then beyond a reasonable doubt is fine. Why? because if you imprison an innocent person, they can be released when their innocence comes to light. if you've executed them, then you can't reverse the sentence. )

[smileyeagle1021]

The cost of prosecuting and appealing death row cases is typically 40-80% higher or more than life without parole cases. Thus the cost of killing a death row inmate easily exceeds the cost of locking him up until he dies.

The thing with those appeals is that they are mandatory... even if the convicted person says "I'm guilty, I don't deny it, and I don't disagree that I deserve death for my crimes" they are required to go through the appeals... I know that is a small minority of cases, but looking at the cost of the appeals and saying it is inherent to the cost of the death penalty is a bit disingenuous. It is entirely possible way that it has been proven beyond any doubt, reasonable or otherwise, that the person is guilty (DNA evidence, surveillance video, arrested with the weapon in possession, eye witnesses, the whole nine yards, no plausible way to explain all the evidence other than the person being guilty), and the years long appeal process would still have to play out (again, I know this is a small minority of cases, but they are also the cases that would be best suited for the death penalty).

b) the entire point is that, currently, 66% of Death Row inmates are actually innocent. .

To clarify, are 66& found to be actually innocent, or are 66% found to have insufficient evidence to prove guilt beyond any doubt or to have had some procedural mistake in their trial/sentencing? That is a big distinction to make.

[s_stabeler]

To clarify, are 66& found to be actually innocent, or are 66% found to have insufficient evidence to prove guilt beyond any doubt or to have had some procedural mistake in their trial/sentencing? That is a big distinction to make.

it's not procedural errors- those cause retrials, not release, and this statistic was about people being released from Death Row- as for if it was insufficient evidence or actual innocence, it's usually DNA evidence, so most of them are actual innocence- even so, does it really make a difference? someone being executed despite there being insufficient evidece would mean they were executed because they might have killed someone. Is that really much better than a lynch mob?