Death Penalty (1):Responses to the Comments

I was thinking that since there remains much to be said and lots of words needed to do it, that rather than leaving this all in the comment section of the last post, I’d leave it as a post of its own. My rebuttals are in pine green and in parantheses.

Re: That is why juries are screened to eliminate those who have some connection to the case or who have some strong bias that can affect their judgment. (Tamara)

(I’m not even sure that you are correct about this in theory. Juries are instructed by the judges to follow the law, not to speak to anyone outside the courtroom, and abide by the judge’s rules. Some jurors are even told about nullification.

Can you honestly tell me there are people out there so ambivalent or ignorant of the matter that they would qualify, by your standard, to actually sit on a jury? And if such a person were to be found, would you want your fate as a defendant to be decided by anyone that dim? In fact, lawyers who screen jurors look for a partiality of one kind of the other to assist their cause. Jury screening is science in the legal world. Lawyers don’t want the best and the brightest; they seek the easier manipulated and those who, at worst, won’t appear as biased either way. It’s a game that lawyers play and I wouldn’t base my argument on it.

A jury is never expected to be impartial to the crime itself, rather their impartiality applies to their ability to evaluate the defendant, the evidence, and the lawyer’s presentations. Potential jurors who don’t think the crime is a crime won’t get picked for juries.

Jurors don’t have the discretion to choose a sentence. The sentencing guidelines available are set by the legislatures, proposed case by case by the prosecutors, and sometimes reset by judges under specific circumstances. Jurors only decide the innocence or guilt or a defendant; they do not choose the sentence. If a jury thinks that a lesser charge may be applicable, they must first ask the judge. Overall, juries offer little protection or safety from wrongful convictions. I know of cases where judges overruled jury decisions as well.)

Re: I support it because certain crimes are so heinous that those who commit them forfeit their right to remain on the planet. (Tamara)

(What do you consider heinous? And are you comfortable allowing another to be murdered because your find their behavior detestable?

A story. A group of men lie in wait for another man and at gunpoint, overpower him, chain him, and place him in a small restricted area under armed guard, allowing him few amenities and almost no liberty. He is then hauled in shackles before a group of complete strangers and after a short debate over his fate, he finds himself in yet another cell awaiting his death. He is taken from his cell, also in chains, and summarily executed.

The only thing that differentiates this little story from the imposition of a state sanctioned death penalty is that the guys working for the state all have titles, salaries, and wear uniforms. Had they been gang members, frat boys, or Klansmen you would consider the act itself to be ‘heinous’, yet that very same act, when done in a ‘publicly approved manner’, all of the sudden becomes justified as something else; be it self defense, cost cutting, or our vehement indignation. Just because we put on big show of it, apply a few checks and balances along the way, and buy the guy a dinner beforehand doesn’t make it any better.)

Re: Once these individuals are dead, they cease to be a threat, not only to society, but to the prison population (including corrections officers). (Tamara)

(This may come as a shock to some, but every inmate is considered a threat to and by corrections officers with few exceptions. Thus the constant searches and 100s of procedural and structural efforts in place to rigidly control the prison population. Not every inmate is a murderer, but every inmate is still capable of becoming one and is treated as such.

Now one could make the case for treating murderers more severely than others by assuming that once someone murders, their willingness to do so again increases manifold. I would agree that killers become desensitized and that allows their behavior to continue and even escalate. Yet, every killer was not a killer at one time, and even those convicted of lesser crimes and imprisoned are apt, especially in a prison environment and under the tutelage of other criminals, to become desensitized to harsher crimes as well.

The issues of protecting society from escapees or protecting corrections officer or other inmates is a concern for the corrections department and has nothing to do with sentencing. Sentencing guidelines may in fact be contributing to the problem! Logic tells me that a death row inmate stands nothing to gain by good behavior; his fate is sealed and the damage he may inflict while in prison earns him no more or less benefit or harm. Given a life sentence, there is still the chance that a ‘carrot-stick’ approach would work well and the inmate, anxious to live out his days with a few amenities, would respond positively and not be a further problem to officers and other inmates.

Lastly, the worst killers we think of when we think of killers are serial murders like Gacy or Bundy. Interesting enough, a study done of their behaviors while behind bars comes up with some interesting results. These men were model prisoners! Not all killers, even the worst of them it seems, make much trouble while incarcerated.)

Re: Additionally, some people are not well intentioned at all, and will go to all sorts of lengths to 'get a conviction'. (Guzik)

(Absolutely right! Being a prosecutor is intended as a trusted position within society, but is not always treated as such. As an elected position holder, a prosecutor has to run for office again when his term is up. He earns his ‘bones’ by winning cases and being ‘tough on crime’. This pretty much forces a prosecutor to seek harsher sentences, lobby for harsher penalties, apply a good deal of histrionics to his trial technique, and even subvert the process for his own benefit.

If anyone believes this is a rare occurrence, they should Google the words ‘prosecutorial misconduct’ and see what you get. There are literally 1000s of cases where innocent people are railroaded into taking pleas or are outright wrongly convicted by overzealous prosecutors that ignore exculpatory evidence, manipulate witness and victims, or create evidence where none exists.

Barry Scheck is my hero.)

Re: I find it interesting how you refer to emotion and morality throughout, yet fail to realize it in your own rebuttal. Specifically, I am referring to the part where you disregard the conversion of lives into dollars and cents. (Hrafnkel)

(If I told you that I wasn’t emotional about this issue I’d be a damned liar. Yet, don’t you find it also interesting that anyone who disagrees with your position is by default considered ‘too emotional’ or irrational? As I’m sure I said before, this is about trying to reduce the emotional response as much as possible before taking drastic action.

Now as far as translating human lives into dollars and cents, how can you affirmatively support such action? And where would you draw the line at cost? I doubt your devotion to capitalism is so devout as to cause you to label family members and friends as either cost-effective or not. It is important to consider the financial prospects of a marriage or perhaps whether or not one can support a family, but once alive, are those children discarded simply because they become too expensive? Of course not. So why, in the case of capital crimes, do we all of the sudden consider cost as an issue? The answer goes back to BSpinoza’s comment “it satisfies peoples emotional need for revenge/Justice. This is the real reason; the rest is just a fig leaf.”

You do bring up a good issue that serves as a backdrop to any debate like this one. Is reason work with emotion, can emotion mimic reason, or are the two mutually exclusive functions? I hear many right wing pundits mistakenly announce that reason and emotion are two diametrically opposed functions and that the problem with liberal is that they use their ‘hearts’ and not their brains. That notion is scientifically false, not only from a psychological standpoint, but from the physiological as well. Emotion is not heart function; it’s brain function expressing itself as a biochemical reaction in the body.

Think about it this way. We all have emotional attachment to the idea we think are right or are best suited for us. Sometimes old and comfortable ideas are stubbornly clung to because they have served a practical purpose and fit into our existing paradigm. Now, when new information comes along that either improves on that ideas or disrupts it entirely, we tend to cling to the outdated and perhaps wrong minded ways of old. This is a normal, biological response created to ensure the stability that any organism seeks. Nature doesn’t necessarily seek to fix something it doesn’t consider broken.

Now those organisms that demonstrate a greater flexibility or adaptability tend to survive in greater numbers. Our flexibility, in one sense, is the ability we have to overcome initial emotional or instinctual responses and think about what we are doing, so much so that we can develop intricate strategies to deal with challenges we face, even distant and future ones. Flexibility also means that we evaluate and consider new ideas, which requires man to put his instinctual sense of ‘conservativism’ aside.

Next time you hear someone call Progressives and Liberals ‘emotional’, think about what I’ve just said.)

Re: It seems that this refusal to even consider such a practice is more emotional than the pro-Death penalty position. (Hrafnkel)

(It seems that I have considered it quite carefully, in fact. I’m not finished yet either.)

Re: life imprisonment and mandatory grunt work might be acceptable as well. The long and short of it is that I am personally uncomfortable with the idea of capital punishment in a modern society.(Hrafnkel)

(I agree with you on this one. My major concern with prison labor is not so much that it may be subtly or not so subtly coerced, but that prison labor ends up competing with honest, law-abiding citizens for contracts and jobs. I’m not so sure that putting my neighbor out of work to keep an inmate productive is such a good idea.)

Re: but on the other hand it is definitely wrong that tax dollars go to putting these criminals up for life. (Hrafnkel)

(No one wants to spend more money than is needed, but the fact is that if we don’t separate those who pose a danger to the rest of us out from the population, then what’s our alternative? If we consider the actual dollar cost to society with their being freed, then it’s a no-brainer. You can’t leave potentially dangerous people on the loose.

Your objection in terms of taxation is an overall greater issue. In a civilized society, in order to maintain that civility, especially with a growing population, more manpower, technology, and time are going to be required to get the job done. Every step of the way costs money to do and jobs that are done well usually end up costing a bit more. You get what you pay for.)

Thanks for all your comments!

Kol Tuv