Death penalty halted in PA

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

HP -- Pennsylvania ought to expand their death penalty, and transform it from a theoretical punishment that's never used to one that is actually used for people who deserve it. To cite the most famous case, it's a travesty that Mumia Abu-Jamal is still alive.

I don't think you could come up with a worse example. The guy has made so many contributions to society despite his incarceration, and I say this despite actually believing his guilt.

[© tweed]

HP. Getting rid of the death penalty puts prison guards and prisoners in danger.

How does that make any sense?

Without the death penalty there is no further punishment for inmates sentenced to life. Therefore they have no qualms about killing prison guards or other inmates.

you don't seem to have any understanding of what high-security prison life is like.

[Mr. Illini]

FG!

[Tender Branson]

Great.

PS: With Gov. Kitzhaber stepping down in OR, will the new Gov. Kate Brown continue his death penalty moratorium there ?

[pbrower2a]

HP. Getting rid of the death penalty puts prison guards and prisoners in danger.

Convicts have killed prison guards or fellow inmates in full knowledge that they would exchange the misery of life imprisonment for a faster death if suicide is unavailable or if they are scared of something even worse (a literal Hell) in the event of suicide. Maybe even the promise of a Last Meal and Last Words in a life which has lost all meaning.     

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

If every other country was smarter than the US we wouldn't be the most powerful nation in the west.

So your argument is, and please clarify if otherwise, the US is the most powerful nation in the west because it has the death penalty?

No, there is nothing in my post that implies that in any way, shape or form. You made a sarcastic remark about other countries keeping the death penalty, my point is that America is the most powerful nation in the west because we don't use the nonsensical logic prevalent throughout Europe, which the death penalty is one example of, along with guns, political correctness, etc. It's no surprise that as our culture becomes more like Europe we are slowly losing our status in the world.

[DemPGH]

Excellent! Great Gov., really like the guy so far.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Can anyone cite any statistics that show that there are more murders committed in prisons in states without the death penalty than states with it?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The funny thing is, states like California and Pennsylvania essentially have the worst of both worlds (well that's if you consider actually executing people a positive), they still blow millions of dollars in maintaining their death penalty systems, but they never use them. So it's all a giant waste for nothing.

That's why even if I wasn't morally opposed to the death penalty, I'd support its abolishment in those states. I wouldn't support reinstating it in Minnesota either, because doing so almost certainly go the same route as New York, blowing millions on it, never using it, and likely ending up with it struck down in court and unusable. As it is, I'd rather have my tax dollars wasted on nothing than spent on killing people, making those states better than Texas, but there's really no reason to keep the death penalty in any such state, regardless of your personal opinion.

[Ban my account ffs!]

If every other country was smarter than the US we wouldn't be the most powerful nation in the west.

So your argument is, and please clarify if otherwise, the US is the most powerful nation in the west because it has the death penalty?

No, there is nothing in my post that implies that in any way, shape or form. You made a sarcastic remark about other countries keeping the death penalty, my point is that America is the most powerful nation in the west because we don't use the nonsensical logic prevalent throughout Europe, which the death penalty is one example of, along with guns, political correctness, etc. It's no surprise that as our culture becomes more like Europe we are slowly losing our status in the world.

Oh, you're one of those independents.  Ugh.

[Antonio the Sixth]

HP. Getting rid of the death penalty puts prison guards and prisoners in danger.

Abolish life imprisonment too. Problem solved.

[The_Doctor]

The death penalty is not a deterrent. Agreed. People who commit these kind of crimes are already going to do them.

However, I support the death penalty (provided that we get the right guy, and DNA testing, etc is performed) on the basis that there are some crimes so heinous that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment. I think that it's a worthy punishment for terrorism, murder, violent rape, and other crimes. My sympathy is highly limited for these people, and I have no problem with the firing squad, or other forms of capital punishment.

I also suspect that certain individuals would regard death as a worse punishment than life in prison. On that and the "eye for an eye" basis, the death penalty is a good enough punishment.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

FF.  Revenge and justice are not one and the same.

Couldn't have said it better.

HP -- Pennsylvania ought to expand their death penalty, and transform it from a theoretical punishment that's never used to one that is actually used for people who deserve it. To cite the most famous case, it's a travesty that Mumia Abu-Jamal is still alive.

I don't think you could come up with a worse example. The guy has made so many contributions to society despite his incarceration, and I say this despite actually believing his guilt.

Vosem is an authoritarian sadist on everything but corporate tax policy and possibly sex, you see.

The death penalty is not a deterrent. Agreed. People who commit these kind of crimes are already going to do them.

However, I support the death penalty (provided that we get the right guy, and DNA testing, etc is performed) on the basis that there are some crimes so heinous that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment. I think that it's a worthy punishment for terrorism, murder, violent rape, and other crimes. My sympathy is highly limited for these people, and I have no problem with the firing squad, or other forms of capital punishment.

I also suspect that certain individuals would regard death as a worse punishment than life in prison. On that and the "eye for an eye" basis, the death penalty is a good enough punishment.

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[afleitch]

Excellent news.

[The_Doctor]

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I'll expand on this. Currently, you need a unanimous jury of your peers (as I recall), and to exhaust your appeals before you can be executed. I think nowadays, DNA evidence is generally also considered a part of the deal. If not, it should be part of the deal to execute someone. (I should note, I am on the record for the Jeb Bush approach to limiting appeals to a few (I would say 3 is enough or a constitutional amendment to allow you to have two separate juries to determine your guilt and render unanimous consent to execute. Something along these lines)).

I agree, that you need iron clad evidence to execute someone. But once you have that I have no problem executing someone. As much as possible, we should try to make sure we get it right before executing someone. 

[free my dawg]

HP -- Pennsylvania ought to expand their death penalty, and transform it from a theoretical punishment that's never used to one that is actually used for people who deserve it. To cite the most famous case, it's a travesty that Mumia Abu-Jamal is still alive.

What the f**k?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I support the death penalty in the abstract, but not in the way it is administered in the US, much less in jurisdictions like Pennsylvania where people sentenced to death never are actually executed unless they choose to die and waive their appeals.

[Vosem]

HP -- Pennsylvania ought to expand their death penalty, and transform it from a theoretical punishment that's never used to one that is actually used for people who deserve it. To cite the most famous case, it's a travesty that Mumia Abu-Jamal is still alive.

I don't think you could come up with a worse example. The guy has made so many contributions to society despite his incarceration, and I say this despite actually believing his guilt.

Like what, besides quoting literal terrorists during his trial in order to (unfortunately, successfully) become fodder for anti-death penalty protests? A racially-mixed jury, after examining a great deal of witness testimony, came to the conclusion that he was a murderer (which I, upon reading about the trial, find very difficult to doubt) and sentenced him to death. The fact that he is still alive 30 years later is a miscarriage of justice, and indicates that Pennsylvania's justice system needs to be reformed. Under Governor Wolf this won't occur. Hopefully under his successor it will.

Vosem is an authoritarian sadist on everything but corporate tax policy and possibly sex, you see.

Wanting the justice system to punish criminals is sadist, you see

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Gandalf's point was that Frodo could not deal out death unilaterally, without knowing the full truth (he prefaces this with a discussion of what Gollum's real name is -- which Frodo was unaware of) about the person and his crime. It was not that justice can never mean death. I'm also not sure a fantasy series is the best place to get your notions of right and wrong from, or to illustrate them.

[Badger]

HP. Getting rid of the death penalty puts prison guards and prisoners in danger.

Convicts have killed prison guards or fellow inmates in full knowledge that they would exchange the misery of life imprisonment for a faster death if suicide is unavailable or if they are scared of something even worse (a literal Hell) in the event of suicide. Maybe even the promise of a Last Meal and Last Words in a life which has lost all meaning.     

That is such an unimaginably low exception to the rule, that it litterally doesn't merit discussion. Doesa con serving life (or the functional equivilent) wish everyday they were outside? Of course. Do the overwhelming majority turn into violent predators or otherwise in a sick way of thinking 'thrive'. You bet.

There are valid arguments against capital punishment, even if I disagree with many of them; but death penalty opponents need to be honest about the fact lifers will remain drastic threats to staff and other inmates, and most such inmates will gladly take the opportunity to do what they want without retribution rather than seeing capital punishment as a glorified form of suicide.

But then given the amount of anti-cop vitriol that runs endemic throughout the Atlas, I'm guessing the sympathy for threats to COs is limited, as the typical image of prison guards around here is more formed by movies like Shawshank Redemption (awesome though it is) than real life.

There. I said it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

1. To understand the death penalty as not only acceptable for some reason or other related to social order, but actually desirable in itself, to the point that one is actually incensed when it is not carried out, is sadistic, yes, in that it understands 'justice' as state-sponsored revenge and actively takes pleasure in seeing that revenge carried out. Why stop there? Why not just replace judges and juries with maenads and furies and call it what it is? That would be more honest, and the justice system would have some real dramatic weight to it that way, rather than just being a glorified bureaucratic abattoir.
2. Don't try to school me on Lord of the Rings, Vosem. You will lose. If the genre bothers you, would quoting the argument on the same subject from The Idiot be classy enough for your exacting standards?

[Türkisblau]

I'm loving Governor Wolf

The death penalty is something that no "civilized" country can support. Any Christian who is sincere in their belief of forgiveness should be strongly opposed to the death penalty.

This is not even mentioning the travesties in justice that have occurred with the death penalty and will occur in the future without it's repeal/disuse.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

HP. Getting rid of the death penalty puts prison guards and prisoners in danger.

Convicts have killed prison guards or fellow inmates in full knowledge that they would exchange the misery of life imprisonment for a faster death if suicide is unavailable or if they are scared of something even worse (a literal Hell) in the event of suicide. Maybe even the promise of a Last Meal and Last Words in a life which has lost all meaning.     

That is such an unimaginably low exception to the rule, that it litterally doesn't merit discussion. Doesa con serving life (or the functional equivilent) wish everyday they were outside? Of course. Do the overwhelming majority turn into violent predators or otherwise in a sick way of thinking 'thrive'. You bet.

There are valid arguments against capital punishment, even if I disagree with many of them; but death penalty opponents need to be honest about the fact lifers will remain drastic threats to staff and other inmates, and most such inmates will gladly take the opportunity to do what they want without retribution rather than seeing capital punishment as a glorified form of suicide.

But then given the amount of anti-cop vitriol that runs endemic throughout the Atlas, I'm guessing the sympathy for threats to COs is limited, as the typical image of prison guards around here is more formed by movies like Shawshank Redemption (awesome though it is) than real life.

There. I said it.

So then Minnesota prisons must be WAY WAY more dangerous than Texas prisons then? And Canadian prisons have to be way more dangerous than in most states?

Yeah, no.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Again, the moral and logical solution is to abolish life imprisonment. If someone is sentenced to 20 years and kills a prison guard, they get 10 more years.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

Again, the moral and logical solution is to abolish life imprisonment. If someone is sentenced to 20 years and kills a prison guard, they get 10 more years.

And then we get 38-year-old killers out of prison as a danger to society.

The proper solution, if we're going to abolish the death penalty, is to isolate killers (the only people who should be getting life sentences, at least on the state level) solely among each other and have the guards interact with them as little as possible.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Okay, I'm going to address Vosem's interpretation of the Mines of Moria scene, because this is going to bother me if I don't.

What Gandalf is saying in that scene is not limited to a commentary on the relationship between Frodo specifically and Gollum specifically. 'Even the wise cannot see all ends' is a remarkable statement coming from Gandalf, who, we read in the Silmarillion, is the wisest of the Maiar, a class of beings that also includes such luminaries as Melian and Uinen. The point is that the sort of knowledge that would be necessary to say whether somebody 'deserves' to live or die is practically impossible to obtain!

I would never claim that the Tolkien canon is a pacifist set of texts, or even a death penalty abolitionist one. (It also has...uncomfortable racial and sexual politics.) But what it does say is that killing is to be understood as something that one sometimes does to make a problem go away NOW, not because one has come to some sort of certain, enforceable conclusion about what the person one is killing 'deserves'. (Again, in the Silmarillion we see that if somebody were to have just up and killed Maedhros and Maglor after the first couple rounds of Kinslaying, which they would have richly 'deserved' by most metrics, things would actually not have gone so well towards the end of the story! Elwing would have had no reason to throw herself into the sea, et cetera.)

tl;dr what Gandalf is saying is basically, as Tony Abbott might put it, that nobody, not even Gandalf himself, is the suppository of all wisdom, and that only somebody who was would be qualified to say whether or not killing somebody would be altogether 'just'. In Tolkien's worldview, this is nobody but God. In the worldviews of most forumites, it'd be either nobody but God or nobody at all.