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I believe that the death penalty needs to be reserved for the most severe crimes, it shouldn't be handed out willy nilly like Texas does.
Case in point, this asshole, there is no "correcting" this behavior. The only response society should have given him is "better luck next time."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westley_Allan_Dodd
It's a travesty this asshole was allowed to plead out of a death penalty:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Weaver_III
Is the death penalty over used? Absolutely. Is it unfairly applied racially? No doubt about it.
I see those as arguments to correct it and keep it in order to remove literal monsters. It's not about punishment, or even deterrent, it's about telling another human being "What you have done is beyond redemption, there's nothing left for you here."
It's administered by humans and so there will always be error, intentional or otherwise.
You're saying you're comfortable with the state occasionally straight up murdering the wrong guy.
Not at all, read the two cases I linked, they are abdolute monsters and there is no question about it. 0% chance of "the wrong guy".
The links aren’t really relevant. What about other cases where the state murdered an innocent person? Just because they get it right sometimes it doesn’t excuse the other times when they don’t.
I'm not excusing anything, I'm saying the inherent problems with the death penalty are excuses for correcting it and keeping it rather than getting rid of it.
There are unequivocable monsters in our society that should be exterminated, I cited two proven examples.
And who gets to decide who falls under that? If you ask former (and possibly future) president Trump, the left is "vermin" and immigrants "poison the blood"; his pick for VP is happy to sign off on progressives being called "unhuman". Should these groups – in their view unequivocable monsters – be exterminated?
I'd say if you get caught cooking human body parts, any logical person would be capable of making that call.
That is your standard, theirs is different. So how do you decide which is right?
Killing and cooking another human being is never "right" unless you're stranded at sea or crashed in the mountains.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_Air_Force_Flight_571
Okay, and they would argue that being progressive is never "right". You refuse to acknowledge the fundamental flaw in your reasoning, which is that you are assuming a moral baseline that – while I'm sure is reasonable – simply not enough people share for it to be a given.
Ok. I see no reason to continue this discussion if you’re just going to ignore the point I’m making. One last time: the system can’t be “corrected”, there will always be errors, innocent people will die.
Absolutely not. When you are caught with photographs of a murdered kid hanging in your closet and their underwear kept as a trophy there is no "error" there.
Again, you didn't read the links I posted or understand the first thing I am saying. There is such a thing as uncontested guilt. In those cases, the death penalty absolutely should apply.
There can always be error. I'm not saying that there is on the two cases you keep bringing up but the sad fact is that prosecutors can withhold exonerating evidence, defense council can be next to useless, judges can be biased, defendants can have mental health issues and developmental problems and so on.
You can't just hand wave these concerns away and advocate for executing only the people who confess and send the rest to prison for life. That distinction is too messy and open to abuse.
I'M not talking about contested cases, I'm talking about monsters with human body parts cooking on their stove and in their fridge:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dahmer
Or buried in their crawlspace:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy
These are the sorts of cases the death penalty should be reserved for. Horrific crimes, no concievable evidence of innocence.
There's nuance here you're just not willing to accept, that's why you keep bringing up the worst of the worst like that's a persuasive argument.
There's a sliding scale of criminality. At some point someone has to make a determination between the most egregious, who are executed, and less vicious crimes where the defendant is jailed indefinitely. The person who is making that determination cannot ever be wrong for your approach to work.
That's my point, mistakes were and are being made because that's what happens when you ask people to make these decisions.
Because, as I've stated from the very start, I believe the death penalty should be reserved for the worst of the worst.
It might mean only applying it once or twice a decade, but in cases of monsters we need to have that option.
That's not how the legal system works, at all.
Your slightly strange obsession with "monsters" is clouding your ability to think critically on this issue.
Again, please read what I said from the beginning. You seem to be ignoring what I'm saying in favor of your own set opinion.
From my very first comment I stated that the death penalty is problematic, but that it should be reformed and kept for the most egregious crimes.
I get "that's not the way it is now", I'm arguing that it should be changed and kept and not just abandoned just because it's currently mis-applied.
In my state, the Governor single handedly put on hold every death penalty case. There were, I think, 17 of them.
In MOST cases, life in prison seems adequate.
https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2015/11/randy_guzek_sentenced_to_death.html
Double murder commited during a robbery? That's pretty mundane for a death penalty case. By all means, let's put him away for life.
Then there was this guy:
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/investigations/oregon-governor-death-sentence-clemency-christian-longo/283-6008ce2d-998a-4b9e-8dcf-4da42d1c3986
He strangled his wife and three little kids, stuffed them in suitcases, threw their bodies off a cliff, and fled to Mexico. There's no "error" there, there's no "extenuating circumstances". He betrayed the trust of his own children and murdered them, ages 4, 3 and 2. Fuck that guy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Longo
Go look in the mirror, you're describing yourself, not me.
Look at the examples you keep referring to. How to you make the distinction between the two examples you mention? The law does not and changing it to accommodate a distinction between run of the mill murder and murder + icky things is ridiculous.
Because one person murdered their own minor children. That's a huge violation of trust, then they violated the corpses in their attempt to escape.
Robberies gone bad happen all the time, what Longo did was a violation of human norms.
Right, so straight up murder = life in prison. Murder but you also fuck the corpse = straight to the gas chamber.
Weird.
This is a pretty reasonable take on the death penalty, one I actually pretty closely align with, even with as much as I don't like it. It needs to be the absolute last resort for only the most heinous and indefensible of crimes.
Ultimate penalty for ultimate crimes.
I would hypothetically be for the death penalty for heinous crimes if our judicial system was 100% foolproof. Unfortunately, false convictions happen surprisingly often, there have even been cases of death row inmates being exonerated. I don't think the benefits of the death penalty justify even one single wrongful death, so practically I'm against it.
In the two cases I listed there was no question of guilt. No problem throwing the death penalty at them.
I don't know the details of those two cases, so perhaps. As a policy it's still subject to the existence of false convictions though, so not worth it to me
Nothing more, nothing less.
What would you say about using the death penalty in a case where corporate mismanagement causes hundreds of deaths, and all those deaths can very clearly traced back to one decision made by one individual, who knew and also should have known the potential consequences?
Something like the Boeing planes falling out of the sky.
I don't see that as being a death penalty case unless the person involved did it with the intent of killing as many people as possible.