Patterico's Pontifications

12/8/2006

View of an Execution from Someone Who Supports the Death Penalty

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:05 am



James A. Ardaiz, a former Deputy District Attorney turned judge in California, writes here about witnessing the execution of a man he tried for murder 25 years earlier:

On Monday, January 16, 2006, I went to a San Francisco hotel, where I spent the afternoon waiting and looking at the clock. Across the bay in San Quentin State Prison I imagined that another man was also looking at the clock. Both of us had the same reason to watch the hands of the clock move forward. At 12:01 a.m. the man across the bay would be executed. And I was going to witness his execution.

It was especially personal for Judge Ardaiz because he had prosecuted the inmate twice: once for killing a woman, and later for arranging the killing of a witness, in anticipation of a hoped-for retrial of the first case.

One of the things prosecutors always tell witnesses and families of victims and witnesses in cases like this one is that they do not need to be afraid. The killer is in jail, and he can’t do any more harm to them. Retaliation like that happens only with organized crime or on television or in the movies. It isn’t part of real life. That’s what I told the family of Bryon Schletewitz. That is what I told Bryon. That is what I believed. I was wrong.

On September 5, 1980, I was Fresno County’s chief deputy district attorney in charge of homicide. My investigator, Bill Martin, and I received a call from the sheriff’s office. There was a triple homicide at Fran’s Market. Bill and I rode out to the country store. On the way, we passed the former home of Clarence Allen. Neither of us gave it any more than a passing thought.

When we arrived at Fran’s Market, the police tape was already up and the news crews were arriving. We walked in and moved around the bodies of three young people. Each had been executed by a blast from a shotgun. It looked like they had been killed while they stood there. Near the door was the body of Josephine Rocha, age 17. Near her was the body of Douglas White, age 18. On the floor in the corner was the body of Bryon Schletewitz, age 27. He had been horribly disfigured by the shotgun blast, but I could still identify him. His parents, Ray and Fran, were outside waiting. I went out to tell them that Bryon was dead. I will never forget the look on their faces. It was like watching the life drain out of a person—they aged right before my eyes.

Within 24 hours, we knew that Clarence Allen was involved.

I have been reading Big Media accounts of executions for years, and have noticed how the accounts always focus on the plight of the person being executed, while failing to sufficiently discuss the perspective of the victim’s family and law enforcement.

I have long believed that an execution ceremony should focus on the reasons the accused is being executed. I have also thought that there should be a published account of an execution written by someone sympathetic to the death penalty, who is familiar with the facts of the crime, and can convey to readers the horrific nature of the crime, and the facts showing the defendant’s guilt.

I even contemplated doing this myself — to the point of seeking out press credentials to gain access. But I’m not interested in the project any more. It’s been done, and done well, in this piece.

Read it all.

120 Responses to “View of an Execution from Someone Who Supports the Death Penalty”

  1. Very moving. He sounds like a pretty good judge, talking about how the emotions are inevitable, but they shouldn’t overwhelm the facts of the matter. I’m not a death-penalty opponent, but I’m not necessarily a proponent either. This is an interesting take on the process. Thanks.

    jinnmabe (cc24db)

  2. I have long believed that an execution ceremony should focus on the reasons the accused is being executed. I have also thought that there should be a published account of an execution … [that] can convey to readers the horrific nature of the crime, and the facts showing the defendant’s guilt.

    Exactly. Too many times a sympathetic article about a convicted killer on death row barely even mentions the crime for which he is being punished, often without even providing the name(s) of the victim(s) he murdered. And while the condemned man’s photo accompanies the article on the day of judgment, how often do you see a photo of the victim, who never had a chance to make peace and say goodbye to loved ones and friends?

    aunursa (1b5bad)

  3. Nice work Pat.

    The biggest ‘vote against’ execution is the deterrent factor, ie. data doesn’t suggest that execution deters criminals.

    What people don’t realize is that the deterrent factor of execution isn’t for other criminals, it is for THAT criminal. The executed will NEVER commit another crime, there can be no more strong or final deterrent.

    Lord Nazh (285c90)

  4. An excellent and thoughtful article.

    My own feelings about capital punishment have changed over time. There was a time when I supported the death penalty. This is no longer the case.

    The guilt of the person whose crimes are described in the California Lawyer article is so unambiguous that his execution is largely unassailable. I won’t even address his crimes.

    Simple moral opposition to “the state” killing human beings is debatable. Somebody here may wish to argue it one way or the other – I won’t in this comment.

    Take a look at these statistics, however:

    1056 executions in the US since 1976
    60 in 2005
    52 YTD as of mid-November 06

    From 1976, 379 of those executions took place in Texas
    13 took place in California
    None took place in New York
    One took place in all of New England

    Immediately one must ask several questions:

    Knowing what we know about problems in the criminal justice system – about institutional racism and class bias… about prosecutorial misconduct… about the mishandling of evidence… about the unreliability of witness statements, honest or otherwise… Knowing all of this, can we comfortably stand by the fairness of the execution of all 1000+ of these men (and women) over the past 30 years? Is anyone prepared to do that?

    Compare the execution rates of Texas vs. that of the much larger state of California. One might wonder (superficially) if the condemned convicts in Texas receive the same “due process” as those in California.

    What about the justification for imposing capital punishment? Is it a deterrent? Are people in Texas safer from violent crime than people in California who are in turn safer than people in Connecticut who are in turn safer than people in the rest of New England and New York?

    If deterrence isn’t the justification, why do we do it? Revenge? Does anyone think that the Criminal Justice System is a morally appropriate institution to be dispensing with revenge on behalf of the people it protects?

    Indeed most of these questions are rhetorical. I’m not trying to be snide – I am hoping to foster discussion.

    The Liberal Avenger (c93dac)

  5. If deterrence isn’t the justification, why do we do it?

    It’s not so much about deterrence as it is about atonement. We as a society have determined that there are some crimes which are so heinous that the only possible way for the criminal to atone for them is to forfeit his own life.

    We do this not because life is cheap, but because we place life at a very high standard. Not every criminal, not every murderer is subject to the death penalty: only those whose crimes are so great as to outrage society as a whole.

    Steverino (d27168)

  6. Steve: does your statement mean that it can sometimes be justifiable to kill someone who you have at your mercy, and who is helpless to prevent you from killing him?

    That is what execution is, you know. To execute someone, you mush have his life in your hands (meaning: the decision whether he lives or dies is not in his power), and he must be helpless to prevent his execution (meaning: regardless of how much he resists or wishes to resist, he cannot prevent you from killing him.)

    Dana (3e4784)

  7. liberalavenger or Clif?

    The deterrent is in the punishment. Not one executed criminal will ever again commit a crime and they will no longer be living on your dime in the state/fed pen.

    Laws and punishments are not ever going to be deterrents to crime or we’d have no crime. It’s hard to deter the next guy from commiting a crime no matter what punishment you serve to the last guy (a humane/just punishment) so basically you have to try and deter the criminal you catch.

    Lord Nazh (285c90)

  8. The usually unaddressed distinction in philosophy between those in favor of the death penalty and those who are against it is this:

    Is it the function of the criminal justice system to protect citizens from crime, or to protect society from criminals? The distinction is real, as much as sloppy thinkers like to dismiss it as “just semantics.”

    APS

    Ape Man (27ff8b)

  9. Lord Nazh: from what you wrote, I think we can agree that the word “deterrent” is pretty much useless. You could call capital punishment a preventative, in that the executed man will never commit another crime, but it isn’t a deterrent.

    Dana (3e4784)

  10. I read the whole article, and appreciate being exposed to that perspective.

    I find it odd that the author sees all the trauma caused by the death penalty process for everyone involved, but it never occurs to him that maybe the problem is that the death penalty is considered “justice”. Instead, he bemoans how long it takes to get to the death penalty (and justice), and wishes that all these roadblocks to the death penalty (which can’t possibly represent “justice” themselves) could be removed.

    In other words I think he’s confused punishment and revenge with “justice.” Is killing George Allen a punishment? Sure. Does it avenge his victims? Sure. Is it “justice”? That’s a different question. I don’t think he really even bothers to ask that question.

    Phil (88ab5b)

  11. Good point dana. Words mean things, as they say.

    I would put LA’s question a different way:

    What is an acceptable ratio of guilty-to-innocent executed convicts? 10 to 1? 100 to 1?

    APS

    Ape Man (27ff8b)

  12. Ape Man #8:

    It sure sounds like semantics to a sloppy thinker like me. Please explain.

    But I still will not agree even if you do. The law is not a philosophical excercise. It is a practical tool for the function of society. Philosophy is for young people sitting under a stoa while spearmen guard the boundaries of Athens.

    nk (2e1372)

  13. What is an acceptable ratio of guilty-to-innocent executed convicts? 10 to 1? 100 to 1?

    I’m a former supporter of capital punishment turned opponent (for moral reasons, and because researching the data has convinced me that its deterrent effect is probably nil). However, the “innocence” argument, while reflexively appealing, is probably the anti- crowd’s least persuasive. To my knowledge, there is not a single definitive case in the U.S. of an executed person later being proven innocent of the crime for which s/he was convicted. Some convicts have been exonerated while on death row, but always before their scheduled execution.

    NYC 2L (4c4727)

  14. Dana: Thats why I wrote

    Laws and punishments are not ever going to be deterrents to crime or we’d have no crime. It’s hard to deter the next guy from commiting a crime no matter what punishment you serve to the last guy (a humane/just punishment) so basically you have to try and deter the criminal you catch.

    Lord Nazh (285c90)

  15. One very important point. From the article our esteemed host referenced:

    Within 48 hours, we knew this had been a killing to eliminate witnesses in the event of a retrial of the Mary Sue Kitts case, which was what Allen was hoping for.

    I believe we are supposed to infer that if Mr Allen had been sentenced to death for his first murder

    (One of the things prosecutors always tell witnesses and families of victims and witnesses in cases like this one is that they do not need to be afraid. The killer is in jail, and he can’t do any more harm to them. Retaliation like that happens only with organized crime or on television or in the movies. It isn’t part of real life. That’s what I told the family of Bryon Schletewitz. That is what I told Bryon. That is what I believed. I was wrong.)

    the situation is such that, even if Mr Allen had been sentenced to death, he was still in the appeal process, which means he could not have been executed prior to the time he arranged the subsequent killings.

    Dana (3e4784)

  16. Steve: does your statement mean that it can sometimes be justifiable to kill someone who you have at your mercy, and who is helpless to prevent you from killing him?

    That is what execution is, you know. To execute someone, you mush have his life in your hands (meaning: the decision whether he lives or dies is not in his power), and he must be helpless to prevent his execution (meaning: regardless of how much he resists or wishes to resist, he cannot prevent you from killing him.)

    No, that’s NOT what an execution is, as carried out by society. An execution follows a trial: the accused always gets due process.

    As far as whether it’s sometimes justifiable to kill someone you have at your mercy, I can certainly construct a condition where it might be. But why play mental gymnastics over a side issue, when the point of my comment was atonement for a crime?

    Steverino (d27168)

  17. the problem is that the death penalty is considered “justice”.

    Phil

    Can you unequivocally say that no person has ever deserved to die?

    That is the essense of justice … receiving what is earned or deserved.

    There is always the faintest chance an innocent person may die due to the death penality (though no such case has ever occured). But we know, by all certainty, that sparing the life of someone who deserved the death penalty has caused the death of innocents. Not just the ones in this situation… but in so many others.

    Darleen (543cb7)

  18. I have long believed that an execution ceremony should focus on the reasons the accused is being executed. I have also thought that there should be a published account of an execution written by someone sympathetic to the death penalty, who is familiar with the facts of the crime, and can convey to readers the horrific nature of the crime, and the facts showing the defendant’s guilt.

    I once heard Dennis Prager suggest that executions should be preceded by a dramatic re-enactment of the crime(s) that resulted in the death sentence.

    Stu707 (5b299c)

  19. Darleen, ensuring that one particular bad person gets the death he “deserves” is a personal revenge fantasy, not justice. That’s not to say it’s not a real, understandible desire — human beings naturally want to take pain caused innocents, and give it back to the one causing the pain. But is that desire a good thing? Is it something we should make a matter of public policy?

    Should justice include revenge? I think death penalty proponents assume it should. I don’t — I read the above story and think of all the suffering caused by our system’s effort to do to George Allen what he did to innocent people. I don’t know that you can do to killers what they do to innocents without causing much of the same harm the killer himself caused.

    Phil (88ab5b)

  20. Phil

    I don’t think that the death penalty is a deterent. It is a preventative measure designed so that the guilty do not kill again. It is also societies retribution against the guilty. And I don’t have a problem with that. I think that is the ultimate in justice.

    Richard Cook (09291b)

  21. Meant “society’s”.

    Richard Cook (09291b)

  22. Richard, you say that you think society’s “retribution against the guilty” is “the ultimate in justice.”

    OK, fine. Why? Why is killing a killer and making one who caused suffering suffer the “ultimate in justice”? Why isn’t the “ultimate in justice” declaring an END of killing and causing suffering? Why do we have to cause just one more death, just a bit more suffering, to be satisfied that justice has been done?

    Phil (88ab5b)

  23. Steverino wrote:

    No, that’s NOT what an execution is, as carried out by society. An execution follows a trial: the accused always gets due process.

    I’m sorry, Steve, but I described it accurately. Whether a person receives due process or not, and whether he received a fair trial or not, if you are going to execute him, he is at your mercy and helpless to prevent it.

    As far as whether it’s sometimes justifiable to kill someone you have at your mercy, I can certainly construct a condition where it might be. But why play mental gymnastics over a side issue, when the point of my comment was atonement for a crime?

    That, Steve, is precisely the point: if you can justify killing someone you have helpless (which condition must obtain to execute him), then other people can justify the killing of helpless people for reasons other than having committed a crime.

    You think that’s an unreasonable statement? In The Netherlands, euthanasia is legal. In most of the world, abortion is legal. The only difference I can see is that other people can find other reasons for killing the helpless.

    Dana (e7aa47)

  24. That, Steve, is precisely the point: if you can justify killing someone you have helpless (which condition must obtain to execute him), then other people can justify the killing of helpless people for reasons other than having committed a crime.

    Not to step on Steve’s toes here- and to reiterate, I don’t support the death penalty- but this strikes me as somewhat shoddy reasoning. Helplessness, or lack of helplessness, is not the sine qua non of the rationale for the death penalty.

    A supporter of the death penalty who nonetheless opposes abortion and/or euthanasia could plausibly argue that the two situations are not analagous, because the convicted murderer forfeited his right to live when he committed his crime, whereas the unborn, or the infirm, have not. Thus, “helplessness” is irrelevant, and it could well be “justifiable to kill someone who you have at your mercy, and who is helpless to prevent you from killing him,” so long as that person’s moral culpability warrants it. I don’t necessarily buy into that view, but there’s nothing in it that requires anyone to also support the killing of the “helpless” in other contexts.

    NYC 2L (4c4727)

  25. […] his readers participate as well. Posted in Pro-Life Issues, Crime and Punishment | Trackback | del.icio.us | Top OfPage […]

    Common Sense Political Thought » Archives » Capital punishment debate on Patterico (819604)

  26. NYC, the point is simple: if you have a person helpless, you are no longer defending yourself from him; he is not in a position to harm you. A sentence of life without parole means that society has placed itself in a position of being permanently defended from the miscreant.

    Dana (e7aa47)

  27. ensuring that one particular bad person gets the death he “deserves” is a personal revenge fantasy, not justice.

    Why, Phil, is that any more a “personal revenge fantasy” then levying 25 years in state prison?

    As long as the sentence is deserved it meets the criteria of “just.”

    You don’t agree with the death penalty. So be it. But do please quit with the attempt to paint all the dp advocates as “revenge” seekers.

    I support the dp on my own principle. That the law allows for the death penalty and basic Judeo-Christian tenets allow for it and the Constitution allows for it.

    I believe that some people forfeit their right to keep their life, and in the course of due process, the state can deprive them of it, just as the state can deprive someone of their freedom by imprisonment, or deprive them of their property by fines.

    Darleen (543cb7)

  28. NYC, the point is simple: if you have a person helpless, you are no longer defending yourself from him; he is not in a position to harm you.

    Agreed; however, this also assumes that the only justification for the death penalty is defending society from the criminal. But it could also be the case that some crimes (i.e. murder) are simply so heinous that we as a society have determined that by committing them, you forfeit your right to live. That is what prevents the slippery slope to abortion and/or euthanasia.

    NYC 2L (4c4727)

  29. A sentence of life without parole means that society has placed itself in a position of being permanently defended from the miscreant.

    Dana, are prison guards and other prisoners who may (and have) been murdered not members of society that deserved to be defended?

    LWOP’s have nothing to lose, and some “count coup” by seeing how many others they can hurt or kill.

    Darleen (543cb7)

  30. Similar to Iraq?

    The dp fans are probably the same people who think we should continue to “punish” the insurgents despite the fact that it is killing so many innocents, too.

    A punished evildoer is worth far more than a dead innocent?

    Neville Chamberlain (80a4fa)

  31. Darleen said,

    I support the dp on my own principle. That the law allows for the death penalty and basic Judeo-Christian tenets allow for it and the Constitution allows for it.

    I believe that some people forfeit their right to keep their life, and in the course of due process, the state can deprive them of it, just as the state can deprive someone of their freedom by imprisonment, or deprive them of their property by fines.

    I understand that you support the death penalty on principle. And I understand that the death penalty is “allowed” by various legal and religious traditions. But because it is allowed doesn’t mean it is justice — those traditions, after all, allowed stoning people for taking the lord’s name in vain.

    My question, which I asked above, is, what is this “principle” that says things will be better if we just kill one more person?

    I understand the base desire – as I acknowledged, human beings desire revenge for wrongs. And before civilization, there was rarely a situation where that instinct wasn’t a useful one — it’s the basic, lizard-brain instinct to strike out at a threat and eliminate it.

    The question is, is the death penalty any more than that — our deepest animal instinct to kill what we identify as a threat? If not, then just as we’ve eliminated the death penatly for stealing horses, shouldn’t we eliminate it for more horrific crimes? Or is there a reason to feed our lizard brains on this one?

    Phil (9638ab)

  32. If prison time is not detering the rate of say,armed robbery, should we consider doing away with it because it`s not a deterent? No. So why do people seem to use that arguement only on the death penelty? It`s called the ‘death penalty’ for a reason-it`s a penalty. It`s not called a ‘death deterent’

    jim (268044)

  33. Knowing all of this, can we comfortably stand by the fairness of the execution of all 1000+ of these men (and women) over the past 30 years? Is anyone prepared to do that?

    I am.

    sharon (dfeb10)

  34. “My question, which I asked above, is, what is this “principle” that says things will be better if we just kill one more person?”

    Common sense. The same “principle” that says things will be better if we take penicillin for an infection.

    nk (8214ee)

  35. Neville

    Which dead innocent are you referring to?

    The theoretical one that might be mistakenly executed? Or the proven ones that have been raped, maimed or murdered by the already convicted murderers?

    Darleen (543cb7)

  36. Darleen,

    Are you trying to use the incompetence of those who run our prison system as an excuse to execute people who may possibly be innocent?

    Sounds exactly like Iraq.

    Neville Chamberlain (80a4fa)

  37. A lot of sloppy argument in this thread. That’s to be expected I suppose, I also suppose I’ll contribute.

    Steverino said it best I suppose, the death penalty is not about deterrence or incapacitation, although those are benefits, more the death penalty is about atonement. That is the criminal who has committed the crime, is now by his own actions seperated from the community of what it is that makes us men. By executing the guilty we allow him to make right his wrong by paying in his death for his evil. Once so executed, he is able to reenter society, not literally, but metaphorically, able to be considered worthy of human dignity again.

    Also, I notice some people on this thread casually throw out the word justice asking if the death penalty is really justice. The problem is that the death penalty is not justice, it is the best the state however can provide. Justice would be far worse then the death penalty. It might be for many of the people that do actually receive the death penalty described as Wesley did in “The Princess Bride” as “to the pain.” Justice for most who receive the death penalty would be far more appalling to our rose-colored eyes. Justice is that provision to the offender of that which is due. What is due to the one who murders in cold-blood, no less than the same, but a single cold-blooded murder is unlikely to warrant the death penalty. Not until we reach special circumstances.

    NO, what is when people complain that the death penalty is not justice is what they are actually saying is that the death penalty is not mercy. While I could argue that is also incorrect that the death penalty is mercy in much the way that the death penalty accomplishes atonement, let us for the moment accept that the death penalty is not mercy. But mercy is not a thing that is owed, it is something that is granted, we should never treat it as an expectation. Maybe we should be a more merciful society. Mercy is a great and wonderful thing. But do know that when you cry about the injustice of the death penalty you subvert justice. When you implore that we extend mercy, and that failing to is unmerciful, you are at least recognizing the true lineup for the one to whom the death penalty is due.

    Joel B. (955208)

  38. i have no problem with executing this guy. he demonstrated that people in prison can still procure the murders of people outside. other than executing them, how do we stop people in prison from doing this again and again?

    assistant devil's advocate (e88b01)

  39. I don’t understand why some commenters have discounted incapacitation as a basis for the death penalty. The death penalty is the only way to protect society from some offenders. Even multiple life sentences may not be enough – killers have been released under these circumstances to kill again, not to mention the possibility that they might escape from prison. And even if you disregard these arguments, what about the danger these offenders pose to the prison staffs and jailers who are responsible for incarcerating them for the rest of their lives?

    DRJ (a41dd4)

  40. The death penalty is also more fiscally conservative for the government and the people 🙂

    Justice would be: locked room, bound, with the victims family for 1 – 2 hours. But that would not be humane.

    Lord Nazh (285c90)

  41. Neville sez

    Are you trying to use the incompetence of those who run our prison system

    … making me wonder just how often he blames the rape victim for the rape.

    Darleen (543cb7)

  42. Hehe, Darleen,

    Isn’t your crowd fixin’ to blame the Iraqi people for the mess Bush, Cheney & Rummy made of their country?

    Maybe the prison guards could spend more time watchin’ the actual criminals if we weren’t locking up so many people for “moral” violations.

    Neville Chamberlain (80a4fa)

  43. Neville

    “moral violations”?

    Care to cite me some people in jail for adultery?

    You don’t do the legal system so well, eh?

    Darleen (543cb7)

  44. I write as a Texas attorney who does not regularly practice in the criminal-law field, nor the subspecialty of capital cases. However, I was a clerk for a Fifth Circuit judge in 1980-1981, when the first huge wave of post-1976 (i.e, post-Furman v. Georgia) capital cases were coming up through the federal appellate courts on habeas applications, and I’ve handled a complicated capital murder case on a pro bono basis through two Fifth Circuit appeals with an intervening evidentiary hearing back in federal district court. I’m no longer an “insider,” but will nevertheless claim to have a fair knowledge of the system as it’s operated in Texas since 1976.

    Criticisms can always be leveled at the quality of representation given capital defendants. That’s also true of the representation given to felony criminal defendants in general, however — almost of whom receive considerably less diligent representation, prosecutorial investment of resources, and appellate scrutiny than every capital defendant gets.

    What strikes me as most remarkable about our host’s original post and the facts related in it is that the original conviction dates back over thirty years. That is a travesty of justice, and it’s simply inexcusable.

    In his comment above, “The Liberal Avenger” cites statistics demonstrating how many more executions have been conducted in Texas than almost anywhere else. “One might wonder (superficially),” he writes, “if the condemned convicts in Texas receive the same ‘due process’ as those in California.” With due respect, that’s one of the silliest and shallowest arguments I’ve ever heard.

    There is no legal argument, and no legal proceeding, that ought to take 30 years to resolve. None, ever. Never in the history of man has there been such a legal dispute. There is no such thing as “perfect due process,” but rather there is a constitutional right to such process as is due — that being a subjective standard about which there is much argument, all of which is fair grist for the mill all the way from the original trial court, up through the initial appeals, and then once more through the federal habeas process at the trial and appellate levels.

    Texas and California are both states with large populations. Based simply on statistics, that translates directly into large numbers — relative to, say, North Dakota — of people who have committed, which is to say who are entirely guilty of, the most terrible capital crimes. Some people refer to the Texas system as a “death factory,” and that evokes powerful imagery that most people find repellant. But it does not follow at all that the “quality of due process” is necessarily lower in Texas. Rather, an equally logical explanation is that the state trial and appellate courts in Texas, and the federal trial and appellate courts up all the way through the U.S. Supreme Court, have been taking seriously the will of the voters in Texas who’ve consistently elected politicians who’ve consistently supported the death penalty for the worst capital crimes. Death penalty cases aren’t handled perfectly in Texas or anywhere else. But they are handled here; they don’t just clog the system until the convicted capital murderers all die of natural causes in prison.

    And without intending any offense to anyone in particular in the California criminal justice system, the death penalty as it nominally exists in California is, overall, a joke. As administered there, it’s a system that doesn’t value due process, but delay for its own sake.

    The best argument that could be made in favor of these ridiculous delays has to do with the supposed “special” nature of the death penalty, because it’s the only sort of conviction in which injustices can’t be corrected. “Look at DNA evidence,” some will argue, “isn’t it a good thing that the lawyers and the courts in California have stretched out those death penalty cases long enough for advances in technology to allow us to take a fresh look and reach a more perfect degree of justice in those cases?” But that’s an argument that would completely undo the death penalty altogether: You’ll never have a conviction of anyone in which there’s not at least some articulable theory as to how a reasonable doubt might someday arise as to the defendant’s guilt, and if we’re going to all hold our horses until we’re sure something won’t turn up, then we’re never going to actually use the death penalty. If that’s what people want — no one to ever be executed, because there’s always some chance of later developments that might turn “enough due process” into “perfect due process” — then they should just be candid enough to say, “I oppose the death penalty on principle.” But don’t argue that stretching these cases out for 30 years is a good thing in and of itself.

    A gas station in Houston looks pretty much like one in Los Angeles. But when there’s a police siren and an officer who shouts “Police! Drop it!” the armed robber in Houston is living in a place where pulling the trigger and killing that police officer will actually be treated as a capital crime — and not after 30 years of lag time. Everyone here knows the death penalty isn’t just theoretical. But the armed robber in L.A. is living in a place where just the opposite is true. So tell me: If you’re that cop’s wife or husband, that cop’s parent or child, which would you prefer?

    Beldar (7fabfe)

  45. Darleen,

    55% of Federal prisoners are in jail because of drug offenses.

    http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/p04.pdf

    What a waste of time and money…

    Neville Chamberlain (80a4fa)

  46. […] Patterico blogs: I have been reading Big Media accounts of executions for years, and have noticed how the accounts always focus on the plight of the person being executed, while failing to sufficiently discuss the perspective of the victim’s family and law enforcement. […]

    ” View of an Execution from Someone Who Supports the Death Penalty” « Something should go here, maybe later. (c46123)

  47. Joel wrote:

    Steverino said it best I suppose, the death penalty is not about deterrence or incapacitation, although those are benefits, more the death penalty is about atonement. That is the criminal who has committed the crime, is now by his own actions seperated from the community of what it is that makes us men. By executing the guilty we allow him to make right his wrong by paying in his death for his evil. Once so executed, he is able to reenter society, not literally, but metaphorically, able to be considered worthy of human dignity again.

    Uhhh, he can reenter society metaphorically, now that he is dead? What the heck does that mean? Maybe once he’s been executed, he now deserves a state funeral or something?

    But, leaving aside the question of how one reenters society metaphorically, as nearly as I can tell from your statement, the murderer who is not executed has not atoned for his crime; are you suggesting that every murderer who is not executed has somehow gotten away with it, even if he is imprisoned for the rest of his life?

    Dana (e7aa47)

  48. Beldar wrote:

    A gas station in Houston looks pretty much like one in Los Angeles. But when there’s a police siren and an officer who shouts “Police! Drop it!” the armed robber in Houston is living in a place where pulling the trigger and killing that police officer will actually be treated as a capital crime — and not after 30 years of lag time. Everyone here knows the death penalty isn’t just theoretical. But the armed robber in L.A. is living in a place where just the opposite is true. So tell me: If you’re that cop’s wife or husband, that cop’s parent or child, which would you prefer?

    So, since everyone in Texas knows that the death penalty in the Lone Star State is not just theoretical, we ought to see a much lower murder rate there than we do in places where the death penalty isn’t applied very often, or does not exist at all, right?

    Dana (e7aa47)

  49. Why, I wonder, do we use lethal injection as a form of execution?

    Our legislatures have, virtually without exception, moved to a form of execution that is like the SPCA putting an unwanted kitten to sleep; we want the murderer gone, but, heaven forfend, we don’t want to actually hurt him!

    It would seem to me that, for those who believe that capital punishment is both justice for the crime committed and deterrent in nature to those who have not yet killed someone but might be considering it, executions should be carried out in the most gruesome fashions imaginable. Should not the punishment for someone who burned an innocent person to death be being burned at the stake, to provide real justice? Why shouldn’t a killer who raped and tortured his victim for hours or days before she died not be put to death as slowly and as excrutiatingly as was his victim?

    And should not such things be done on the public square? The Streltsii used the knout and breaking on the wheel out in public, where the citizenry could see justice being meted out — and where those who were subject to being deterred could have a full view of what punishment awaited them should they cross the line. Surely such is a greater deterrent than an announcement outside of stout prison walls that no, Tookie Williams would not be in Stockholm to receive his Nobel Prize in person.

    Dana (e7aa47)

  50. Good morning, Dana.You’re up early too, I see.

    The movement to make punishment of criminals less cruel started with the Age of Enlightment. The guillotine was invented to replace the hackery of the axe or the sword. Likewise the hangman’s drop to break the neck as opposed to slow stangulation. At a time when there were no prisons. Gaols were for holding someone for trial and for minor offenses and “felony” was defined as any offense punishable by death. The Eight Amendment and “penitentiaries” for felons have roughly the same birthdate.

    Lethal injection was opposed by opponents of the death penalty in the early eighties. They argued that it would make more people accept the death penalty if it were painless. It took away from their “cruel and unsuasual” argument. They wanted the “barbarity” of the electric chair, the gas chamber and noose to pull at people’s emotions, and by generating outrage at the procedure generate outrage at the sentence.

    The simple answer to your question is that we do not want torturers among us any more than we want the criminals they would torture. Our sensibilities no longer tolerate such freaks.

    nk (4d4a9d)

  51. Lethal injection was opposed by opponents of the death penalty in the early eighties. They argued that it would make more people accept the death penalty if it were painless. It took away from their “cruel and unsuasual” argument. They wanted the “barbarity” of the electric chair, the gas chamber and noose to pull at people’s emotions, and by generating outrage at the procedure generate outrage at the sentence.

    This is a dangerous and mean-spirited conservative myth.

    The Liberal Avenger (c93dac)

  52. Dana –

    First, the reentering of society, is that the man who was executed can once again be accorded the dignity of humanity, that is the proper burial, the proper grave, his name may be used again, etc. Until that time, so doing, will always feel grating, the prisoner who was sentanced to death but dies in prison of old age, will always leave a taste of cheating the system, that he owes society something, and as such, it will never feel as though he paid his due. And as long as time remains the man will be seperated from fellow men.

    As to what the death penalty should really be like, just this past week, I was talking with a group of other people about the death penalty and we were mentioning how come to think of it, years ago we cared far more about the executioners than the executed. Which was far more proper. Instead of having a lethal injection administered, we procured a firing squad, where no one person would know who actually killed the executed. They cared that is, about the executioner’s psyche. That is far more proper. In the same way, the public executioner was hidden behind a heavy mask so that none would see him, while the prisoner was hanged. That is the proper way to do the execution. Respect the executioner’s dignity not so much the executionee.

    Joel B. (955208)

  53. Gee Neville, if they’d only make drugs legal, we could dump 55% of the criminals right?

    If they only made other offenses legal, heck we might one day have NO criminals… of course, we’d have no society, no government and no people after awhile, but we’d be the first (and last) criminal-less society.

    Lord Nazh (285c90)

  54. LA, #51:

    I was an appellate defender and afterwards pro-bono member of a death penalty defense team at the time lethal injection was being considered in Illinois. I personally heard that argument made by “my side” in trying to persuade the legislature and Governor Thompson to retain the electric chair.

    nk (947b03)

  55. The death penalty is also more fiscally conservative for the government and the people

    Actually, that’s not true, and it’s one of the reasons that, as a fiscal conservative, I don’t support the death penalty. Perhaps the death penalty could save the taxpayers’ money if it were administered with some swiftness and efficiency, but as the original post and Beldar’s thoughtful comment above remind us, the current system of decades-long appeals and habeas petitions consumes an enormous amount of judicial resources.

    Maybe the solution to that is habeas reform- but then again, maybe the solution is abolition.

    NYC 2L (4c4727)

  56. Phil

    Because we are living in the here and now instead of a land where cruelty and death and crime do not exist. In the perfect world there would be no crime. However we have to deal with what is.

    Richard Cook (3781cb)

  57. If the facts are correct, Clarence Allen got what he deserved. Personally, I don’t want my tax money housing some vile animal, giving them 3 squares a day, medical, etc and millions spent on legal fee’s, wasting years for some just discovered constitutional right just because some judges want better speaking tours in Europe when the supreme court is in recess.

    My only problem with the death penality is it has become too political. Politics and anything else is a bad combination.

    If the death penality was outlawed today, a special lifer prison built in the middle of a western desert, there would still be the same crowd crying about how cruel it would be. Some people aren’t happy unless they have some to complain about, and a reason to ask for donations.

    Gerald (82543f)

  58. Neville, sweetcheeks, I knew you’d pull out the drug offenses = moral offenses chestnut.

    Fact remains, there are laws involved and if you want to change ’em, organize and do it. Don’t sit around and whine.

    In CA, we have three programs aimed at addicts and no one picked up on mere possession and/or under the influence ever does jail or prison time. Period.

    And again, your snide yammerings about murderers continuing to murder in prison reveals more about you than you might like. You’re attempting to make a moral equivalency argument between the murderer and the innocent victims.

    Which really is the foundational motive behind those dp opponents who oppose the dp under any and all circumstances.

    It is the refusal to recognize and confront evil; thus, the life of the murderer is equal or greater than the life of his/her victims (past or future).

    He who is merciful to the cruel will become cruel to the merciful. ~~Midrash

    Darleen (543cb7)

  59. In response to my original comment (#44), Dana (#48) above wrote,

    So, since everyone in Texas knows that the death penalty in the Lone Star State is not just theoretical, we ought to see a much lower murder rate there than we do in places where the death penalty isn’t applied very often, or does not exist at all, right?

    My 90-second Google research suggests that in fact the murder rate in Texas is lower in Texas than California. But I respectfully submit that your suggestion is fundamentally inapt, Dana. There are many, many other variables that go into local crime rates from place to place. Texas and California probably have more of those in common with one another than either of them has with, say, New Hampshire. But your suggestion would only make sense if the relative certainty and swiftness of capital punishment were the only difference between California and Texas.

    The relevant questions — which I would readily agree are very difficult, and perhaps impossible, to answer with empirical precision — are (a) whether there are fewer capital crimes committed in Texas with an effective, non-hypothetical capital punishment system than there would be without one, and (b) whether there would be fewer capital crimes committed in California were it to switch to an effective, non-hypothetical capital punishment system than there are now without one. That’s why in my hypothetical, I didn’t ask, “If you were the cop’s family member, would you rather he/she be working in Houston or L.A.?”

    This takes us immediately into one of the fundamental issues that’s been under debate for decades and decades with respect to capital punishment — is it or isn’t it a deterrent? Although I believe it is, and that there are other reasons why the death penalty is justified, I’m not so much arguing here that it is indeed a deterrent. I’m instead arguing that as administered in California — or non-administered, more precisely) — it can’t possibly be one. By strangling its real-world application in states like California, opponents of the death penalty have indeed successfully undercut one of the main arguments in its favor.

    Beldar (84bd83)

  60. I was an appellate defender and afterwards pro-bono member of a death penalty defense team at the time lethal injection was being considered in Illinois. I personally heard that argument made by my side in trying to persuade the legislature and Governor Thompson to retain the electric chair.

    NK:

    I don’t know who your crazy friends were but retaining the use of the electric chair and pining for continued “cruel and unusual” modes of execution has never – never – been part of the platform of any anti death penalty group.

    Most of us here don’t appreciate your lying about this.

    [LA, you have provided no evidence that nk lied. I can’t speak for “most of us here,” but I for one don’t appreciate your accusation that nk lied, at least without solid evidence of it, which you have not provided. Read what he claimed again. — P]

    The Liberal Avenger (c93dac)

  61. nk wrote:

    Good morning, Dana.You’re up early too, I see.

    5:00 AM, every morning.

    The simple answer to your question is that we do not want torturers among us any more than we want the criminals they would torture. Our sensibilities no longer tolerate such freaks.

    Why then must we go to the step of actually killing a prisoner at all?

    You are right, of course: we went to lethal injection because it is the least barbaric way of which we could think to execute criminals.

    Which leaves us with what? A system which sentences only a relative few to death, which has evolved into a torturous legal process to actually execute anybody, one in which most of the few who are actually sentenced to death will never be executed, and one in which the few who are executed will never be in a manner which is anywhere consistent with notions of justice. I would think that even the supporters of capital punishment would see our system as mostly futile.

    Dana (e7aa47)

  62. Joel wrote:

    First, the reentering of society, is that the man who was executed can once again be accorded the dignity of humanity, that is the proper burial, the proper grave, his name may be used again, etc.

    Joel, surely you know that a condemned man who dies of natural causes is still granted a proper burial, his relatives are allowed to take possession of his remains, etc. We do not in any way deny a dignified funeral to those who have passed away under such circumstances.

    As for his name being used again, unless he has a fairly unusual name, it is being used again, probably multiple times, by other people.

    Until that time, so doing, will always feel grating, the prisoner who was sentanced to death but dies in prison of old age, will always leave a taste of cheating the system, that he owes society something, and as such, it will never feel as though he paid his due. And as long as time remains the man will be seperated from fellow men.

    Do the dead care?

    I am interested in how you come up with the notion that the man sentenced to death but who dies in prison of old age will leave a taste of having cheated the system, yet (at least as you wrote it) the men convicted of murder but who are not sentenced to death somehow don’t.

    Dana (e7aa47)

  63. LA, as an opponent of capital punishment, I agree with the position that lethal injection reduces society’s repugnance at executions, and is thus a bad way to go.

    It seems to me that if we, as a society, are going to kill someone for his crimes, we damned sure shouldn’t be squeamish about it; we should face up to exactly what it is we are doing, and we ought to do it in public.

    Dana (e7aa47)

  64. Gerald wrote:

    If the death penality was outlawed today, a special lifer prison built in the middle of a western desert, there would still be the same crowd crying about how cruel it would be. Some people aren’t happy unless they have some to complain about, and a reason to ask for donations.

    Not me.

    Dana (e7aa47)

  65. Beldar wrote:

    My 90-second Google research suggests that in fact the murder rate in Texas is lower in Texas than California. But I respectfully submit that your suggestion is fundamentally inapt, Dana. There are many, many other variables that go into local crime rates from place to place. Texas and California probably have more of those in common with one another than either of them has with, say, New Hampshire. But your suggestion would only make sense if the relative certainty and swiftness of capital punishment were the only difference between California and Texas.

    Eleven of the twelve states which do not have capital punishment have murder rates lower than the 38 states which do. Of the nine states with the lowest murder rates, six of them do not have capital punishment.

    The region with the lowest overall murder rate is the northeast, which accounts for only 1% of actual executions; the region with the highest murder rate is the south, which accounts for three-quarters of all executions.

    You know, it just seems logical that the more severe the punishment, the greater of a deterrent effect it would have. The trouble is that, when talking about murder, we are simply not talking about a rational act. It would be irrational to kill someone even if the highest penalty was five years in prison; not one of us here would see it as worth ruining our lives to do such a thing, even if we got out in five.

    Crime itself is irrational. Every convenience store in the country has signs plastered all over, telling people that the clerk can’t get to more than thirty or forty dollars, yet every day, some hood walks into a 7/11 with a gun, knowing that if he gets caught it’s automatically years in the state pen, and that he can’t get more than $40 and a twelve-pack. There is no rational decision taking process by which such is a rational act, yet it happens all the time.

    And that’s why the death penalty has no deterrent effect, because we are trying to use a rational calculation to dissuade an inherently irrational act — and actor.

    A young man died in Philadelphia a few weeks ago, the result of being shot in the neck — because he wouldn’t give some punk his Allen Iverson jersey.Would that have been a rational act even if the penalty was just a year in jail?

    Dana (e7aa47)

  66. Look how long it took them to exicute ROBERT ALTON HARRIS while all those bleedinghearts were running around doing all that stupid protesting well WHAT ABOUT HARRIS TWO VICTIMS?

    krazy kagu (6cb3c5)

  67. Dana,

    Because a murderer’s motivations seem irrational to you doesn’t make a murderous act irrational or unintentional. Do you believe that most murders occur because the perpetrator is mentally ill or suffering from an unrestrained passion or delusion? If so, then I assume you also find it hard to believe that people intentionally commit evil acts. If that is your view, what is the point of law enforcement – let alone the death penalty? It seems to me that your position supports treating murder as a mental health issue.

    Beldar,

    Excellent point. California really should just do away with the death penalty. As far as I can see, capital punishment in California serves no useful deterrent or incapacitation function.

    DRJ (a41dd4)

  68. DRJ: If the argument is that the death penalty is a deterrent, it must presuppose some commonality of rationality. If we cannot assume such to be the case, then no reasonable deterrent can ever be formed, because you simply cannot calculate for what we might call alternate forms of rationality.

    To me, the simplest explanation is that there isn’t a common rationality between reasonable people and murderers — which explains perfectly well why what we think ought to be a deterrent, isn’t.

    No, I don’t see a lack of rationality as a mental health issue; I just want to lock ’em up!

    Dana (e7aa47)

  69. LA, #60:

    Where were you and what were you doing in the early 1980’s? What do you know about how lethal injection was adopted?

    My “crazy friends” were professional, dedicated attorneys who worked for free (or practically for free at public defender wages) to save their clients or at least grant them a few extra years of life. If you have even casual knowledge of the death penalty debate then you know how successful their “craziness” has been in Illinois.

    I did not say that they PINED for cruel and unusual modes of execution. They thought lethal injection was too sterile and clinical and would desensitize the public to the fact that a human being was being killed. To use Dana’s analogy from a previous comment, they did not want the water being warmed — they wanted the kittens not drowned.

    As for you calling me a liar, I rewrote this comment fifteen times and I’ll leave it as it is now. If any “anti death penalty group” with a “platform” wants to believe you they are free to do so.

    nk (54c569)

  70. Dana,

    On the question of public executions. You are probably right (in your hidden purpose). They could very well repulse a large enough majority, no matter how “mercifully” they were done, that the death penalty would be abolished legislatively. In our democratic society, that is. In the Russia of your example they led to a growing public outrage which resulted in the Czar himself being executed. Lenin and Stalin were smarter. People simply disappeared into the trucks of the NKVD.

    We are very far removed from Russia, Imperial or Soviet, or Dickensian (hang pickpockets) England. I truly believe that we only execute monsters who have committed such horrible crimes that we have to kill them or otherwise we become their accomplices after the fact.

    nk (54c569)

  71. Dana

    Crime itself is irrational.

    Only to the person with a conscience. Understand, for many career criminals, or for many first degree murderers, the criminal act is “rational”. They believe their only mistake is in getting caught. For them, those of us with respect for, and obediance to, the rule of law are nothing but chumps and it makes us prime prey for them.

    Darleen (543cb7)

  72. Dana:

    Why then must we go to the step of actually killing a prisoner at all?

    That’s a rather odd question to ask in a thread about a California man who was recently executed for murdering three innocent people while in prison for murdering someone else.

    DRJ:

    Excellent point. California really should just do away with the death penalty. As far as I can see, capital punishment in California serves no useful deterrent or incapacitation function.

    That’s a rather odd statement to make in a thread about a California man who was recently executed for murdering three innocent people while in prison for murdering someone else.

    Xrlq (cd8934)

  73. A young man died in Philadelphia a few weeks ago, the result of being shot in the neck — because he wouldn’t give some punk his Allen Iverson jersey. Would that have been a rational act even if the penalty was just a year in jail?

    Hell, yes. Evil to the core, but as rational as your typical Mob hit. More rational still to reserve such drastic measures for robbing a bank or a jewelry store, where such killings are – surprise, surprise – a lot more common. I’m not denying that some murders are irrational, but it’s wishful thinking on your part to suggest that they all are. If you concede that any murderers or potential murderers have any concept of rationality, your whole “death penalty is not a deterrent” argument goes out the window, and the debate shifts to a much more reasonable one over how much. On the flip side, if you really think all potential murderers are 100% irrational, incurable monsters, then query why any rational society wouldn’t want to dispose of them as quickly and completely as possible.

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there is only one real argument against the death penalty, and that is “I’m against the death penalty because I’m against the death penalty.” Every other argument that has been used against it is a smokescreen.

    Xrlq (cd8934)

  74. How do you feel about people who violate the Geneva Conventions, Darleen?

    Neville Chamberlain (80a4fa)

  75. XRLQ,

    It took 30 years to execute him. Where is the deterrence in that?

    DRJ (a41dd4)

  76. Dunno. Who was he planning to kill next? More importantly, those who think California’s death penalty is not worth having ought to consider that the death penalty has other benefits. Think of all the really nasty killers – Ted Kaczynski being among the better-known examples – who plead guilty in exchange for life without parole, just to avoid a death sentence that you don’t think means anything. It obviously does mean something to them.

    Xrlq (cd8934)

  77. Neville

    I think illegal combatants should get everything they deserve.

    now, little ‘man’, are you over your transparent attempts at baiting and thread jacking?

    Darleen (543cb7)

  78. I suppose thread-jacking, like evil, is subjective.

    Your threshold for executing someone is that they violate the rule of law, Darleen.

    So, I assume you would have no problem with executing speeders and people who cheat on their taxes.

    Or are your standards for imposing the death penalty a little more subtle?

    Neville Chamberlain (80a4fa)

  79. XRLQ,

    I support the death penalty. Like Beldar, my point was that if you are going to have a death penalty, to permit so much time to elapse between sentencing and execution seriously undermines its effectiveness. Some potential offenders may be deterred by the existence of the death penalty but I think common sense tells us many won’t. In addition, some offenders will be incapacitated if they are sitting on death row, although that doesn’t mean they are harmless in the meantime. This case illustrates that offenders can still be dangerous even if they are in prison.

    Why are we debating this? Surely you don’t think that a death penalty that takes 30 years to get to the end point is as chilling as one that takes 15, 10 or 5 years?

    DRJ (a41dd4)

  80. Of course I don’t. My point was not that California has a model death penalty (I much prefer Texas or Virginia’s by comparison), but merely that California’s semi-functional death penalty is still better than not having one at all.

    Xrlq (cd8934)

  81. Neville, you’d have to find someone that had violated the Geneva conventions first. Not just the democratic talking points of them, the actual conventions. Read them all.

    The next time we goto war with France or Germany, be sure to keep them handy, since the Conventions will be needed then.

    Do you also goto arabic websites and complain about our prisoners? You know, the ones that are beheaded on tv? Of course, Abu Ghraib was much worse than being killed I guess.

    Lord Nazh (285c90)

  82. NK wrote:

    On the question of public executions. You are probably right (in your hidden purpose). They could very well repulse a large enough majority, no matter how “mercifully” they were done, that the death penalty would be abolished legislatively. In our democratic society, that is. In the Russia of your example they led to a growing public outrage which resulted in the Czar himself being executed. Lenin and Stalin were smarter. People simply disappeared into the trucks of the NKVD.

    The Tsar was forced to abdicate because World War I was such a terrible trauma for Russia; the public executions by the Стрельцы ended by the eighteenth century. But we certainly had public hangings in our history, in New England durng the eighteenth century and in the West during the nineteenth.

    My purpose is, of course, not hidden at all. But whether we keep or eliminate capital punishment, I think we, as a society, need to see what it is that we do.

    I truly believe that we only execute monsters who have committed such horrible crimes that we have to kill them or otherwise we become their accomplices after the fact.

    Not sure how you have arrived at such a conclusion. The fact that we have apprehended them and locked them away for the rest of their worthless lives argues against that. But, more expansively, it would seem that such a statement would assume we were accomplices after the fact for every murderer we do not execute.

    Dana (e7aa47)

  83. The X man wrote:

    A young man died in Philadelphia a few weeks ago, the result of being shot in the neck — because he wouldn’t give some punk his Allen Iverson jersey. Would that have been a rational act even if the penalty was just a year in jail?

    Hell, yes. Evil to the core, but as rational as your typical Mob hit. More rational still to reserve such drastic measures for robbing a bank or a jewelry store, where such killings are – surprise, surprise – a lot more common.

    Sorry, Mr X, but if it is rational, even if evil, to risk being put in prison for the rest of your life to steal a used $100 basketball jersey, then the definition of rationality is so expansive that nothing can be irrational.

    That shooting was a snap decision, something not rationally calculated or thought over.

    Nor would I accept your idea that robberies of banks and jewelry stores are a more common venue for murder. (Had you said convenience stores, I’d have agreed that shootings there are common, but even there, wholly irrational. You walk into a convenience store and show a gun, and it’s an automatic several years in the slammer; that isn’t a rational risk for a robbery where the most you can get is $40 and a twelve-pack.) Most murders appear to be over either trivial things or battles between gangs or drug dealers.

    The Philadelphia Inquirer had a story last January, where they tracked the fact that 72% of the 380 murder victims in Philly the previous year were criminals themselves. The thugs are killing each other far more than they are killing innocent people.

    Dana (e7aa47)

  84. The X man wrote:

    Of course I don’t. My point was not that California has a model death penalty (I much prefer Texas or Virginia’s by comparison), but merely that California’s semi-functional death penalty is still better than not having one at all.

    Why? Since the first post-1976 execution in Californis (in 1992), the Golden State has executed 13 criminals, or slightly less than one per year. And there are 652 people on death row in California. Assuming that California continues at that rate, and adds no more prisoners to death row, the last man will be nearly 700 years old when he is executed.

    What is the utility is the added expense of seeking a death sentence, as well as the added expense in continual appeals generated solely by the death sentence, to achieve something in which the vast, vast majority of condemned criminals will die in prison from old age?

    Dana (e7aa47)

  85. The X man also wrote:

    Why then must we go to the step of actually killing a prisoner at all?

    That’s a rather odd question to ask in a thread about a California man who was recently executed for murdering three innocent people while in prison for murdering someone else.

    And why did he do so? Because, according to the original, he had his case under appeal, and he was hoping to eliminate witnesses at his new trial.

    Had he been sentenced to death for the first murder, he’d have still taken such a step, because he could not have been executed until all of his appeals had been exhausted. Given that a death sentence gives a prisoner more grounds for appeal, he’d have had even more opportunities to believe he might get a new trial.

    Dana (e7aa47)

  86. Sorry, Mr X, but if it is rational, even if evil, to risk being put in prison for the rest of your life to steal a used $100 basketball jersey, then the definition of rationality is so expansive that nothing can be irrational.

    I never said the act was rational. That wasn’t your question. Your question was whether it would have been rational if the penalty for murder were only one year. And taking a relatively remote risk of serving one year in prison for obtaining $100 worth of goods is rational.

    Nor would I accept your idea that robberies of banks and jewelry stores are a more common venue for murder. (Had you said convenience stores, I’d have agreed that shootings there are common, but even there, wholly irrational. You walk into a convenience store and show a gun, and it’s an automatic several years in the slammer; that isn’t a rational risk for a robbery where the most you can get is $40 and a twelve-pack.)

    If you think bank robberies and jewelry store heists are as rare as armed robberies for a $100 jersey, you really need to get out more. I don’t have the stats on convenience store robberies, but I suspect they tend to net more than $40 a pop, and more often than not, your allegedly irrational robbers wear ski masks and take other measures to hide their identities so that they won’t get caught. That’s rational.

    Most murders appear to be over either trivial things or battles between gangs or drug dealers.

    Drug related murders are rarely over anything trivial. Typically, they’re either a major drug deal gone bad, or a turf war to determine which gang or cartel gets a monopoly on a particular part of town where there’s a great deal of money to be made.

    What is the utility is the added expense of seeking a death sentence, as well as the added expense in continual appeals generated solely by the death sentence, to achieve something in which the vast, vast majority of condemned criminals will die in prison from old age?

    If you’d read my prior comment in full, you’d know that even if a 13 in 652 chance of execution seems trivial to you, it was not trivial to Ted Kaczynski, who pleaded guilty and accepted life without parole to avoid it. I don’t know how often that happens, but my understanding is that it is not particularly rare – maybe our host can provide some actual figures. I trust that you understand the utility of the saved expense of having to have a trial at all, along with the saved costs of appeals (yes, non-death verdicts get appealed, too), not to mention the occasional O.J. verdict.

    Xrlq (cd8934)

  87. Neville

    Your threshold for executing someone is that they violate the rule of law, Darleen

    How old are you? No rational person with even a grade school acquaintance with reading comprehension would come up with such a statement.

    Goodness, is you pernicious tediousness the level of trolldrom these days?

    pfffft.

    Darleen (543cb7)

  88. Dana

    My purpose is, of course, not hidden at all. But whether we keep or eliminate capital punishment, I think we, as a society, need to see what it is that we do.

    Are you a vegan? If not, then wouldn’t you find a vegan’s argument that you don’t know what is being done in your name a little condescending?

    Early in this thread your “simple point” was that society was protected when the murderer was “locked away”. Then you shifted to argue that the dp was so inefficient anyways it should be done away with.

    If your basic stance is that the death penalty is immoral, even against a Bundy, Gacy, Dahlmer, Hitler, Pol Pot, Kevin Cooper, Wayne Adam Ford, then state that and lets be done with arguing past each other; because such a stance indicates an unbridgable philosophical gulf between you and those that hold that not executing such heinous murderers cheapens the value of life.

    Darleen (543cb7)

  89. Few of the people America executes are Hitler-class criminals, Darleen. Many just killed one person during the commision of a crime.

    What is it that you feel qualifies someone for execution, Darleen?

    The act or their intentions?

    Neville Chamberlain (80a4fa)

  90. At one time people regularly attended exicutions like we might now attend a movie or picnic in fact they often brought their own picnic lunch to the sceine of the exiction

    krazy kagu (5e1710)

  91. Neville

    True to trolldom again. Either address the point I made or go drool elsewheres.

    Here’s a clue stick about your sophist point of act v. intention …

    Any act, devoid of context, is morally neutral — ie, the death of one (or more) person at the hands of another (or others) can range from a moral good to a moral evil.

    Darleen (543cb7)

  92. In China, corrupt politicians and businessmen are as likely to be executed as a drug addict who kills someone during a robbery, Darleen.

    America seems to reserve executions only for poor criminals.

    Do you think Duke Cunningham and the Enron boys deserve the death penalty?

    How about if we find out the Bush administration really did fabricate the reasons for the Iraq War?

    Should they be humanely put down, too?

    Neville Chamberlain (80a4fa)

  93. We didn’t actually need reasons for the Iraq war. We were in a cease-fire with Iraq stemming from the 1st gulf war that Saddam violated over a dozen times. Technically we could have went to war anytime he did that without the need for any other intelligence.

    Also, Congress (with a suprising amount of Democrats) also believed that war with Iraq was justified. It only became a problem later when they discovered that their base didn’t like the war.

    America reserves capital punishment for murderers.

    Lord Nazh (d282eb)

  94. I think Americans reserve capital punishment for groups they don’t think they’ll ever belong to (drug addicts, blacks, Muslims civilians, etc.).

    Consider a white, suburban mom driving her SUV a little over the speed limit while talking on her cell phone….who blows through a red light and kills someone.

    To me, she should run the same risk of being executed as a drug addict who accidently kills someone during a robbery…she killed someone while breaking the law.

    The actual chances of our theoretical white suburban mom serving jail time, much less being executed, are about zero, though.

    Americans are not troubled when one of “them” is executed…but they’ll never allow capital punishment for a crime they have a chance of committing.

    Neville Chamberlain (80a4fa)

  95. The actual chances of our theoretical white suburban mom serving jail time, much less being executed, are about zero, though.

    Her chances of being executed are actually probably closer to zero because, by the terms of your own hypothetical, she’s likely guilty of nothing more than involuntary manslaughter. I’m not a criminal law expert, but I don’t know any jurisdiction where that’s a death-eligible offense. Whereas, the drug addict who accidentally kills someone during a robbery has committed felony murder.

    Americans are not troubled when one of “them” is executed…but they’ll never allow capital punishment for a crime they have a chance of committing.

    This seems like an odd argument– are you saying we should impose the death penalty for more trivial offenses?

    NYC 2L (4c4727)

  96. Also, Neville, take care where your reasoning might lead you- do you really want to be in the position of arguing that non-whites and non-suburb dwellers are more likely to be either addicted to drugs or killing people in the course of a robbery?

    NYC 2L (4c4727)

  97. Neville, your very silly hypothetical requires us to believe that a robbery is morally equivalent to running a red light while talking on one’s cell-phone. I don’t know how many people equate the two. I mean for most people it goes Murder>Rape & Aggravated Mayhem> Robbery> and down the line. For Neville does it go Murder = Running Red Light negligently? Uh okay.

    Joel B. (955208)

  98. XRLQ said:

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there is only one real argument against the death penalty, and that is “I’m against the death penalty because I’m against the death penalty.” Every other argument that has been used against it is a smokescreen.

    XRLQ, one thing I have learned about you is you have a fantastic ability to see other people wherever you go as stupid, irrational unthinking idiots whose perspectives deserve no respect or interest. This is another shining example of that ability.

    Phil (88ab5b)

  99. DRJ: If the argument is that the death penalty is a deterrent, it must presuppose some commonality of rationality. If we cannot assume such to be the case, then no reasonable deterrent can ever be formed, because you simply cannot calculate for what we might call alternate forms of rationality.

    To me, the simplest explanation is that there isn’t a common rationality between reasonable people and murderers — which explains perfectly well why what we think ought to be a deterrent, isn’t.

    Dana:

    The death penalty (and other punishments) deter those capable of being deterred, not those who are incapable of being deterred. To point to the group that has proven itself incapable of being deterred (i.e. people who commit murders regardless of the penalty), and argue that therefore *nobody* can be deterred, is illogical.

    Patterico (de0616)

  100. Of course most white suburbanites don’t see speeding and talking on the phone as morally equal to robbing what appears to be an unoccupied house or store, Joel, because they do it all the time.

    IIRC, even first lady Laura Bush killed someone this way and didn’t even get a ticket.

    People who talk about morals always assume they are morally superior and will make whatever mental adjustments they need to mantain such a high self-image.

    Neville Chamberlain (80a4fa)

  101. Neville if your arguments were a dog, it would be put down.

    NO ONE but you equates running a red light with robbery. You ask what people will be executed? They are the people that break the laws that have death as one of the punishments. Involuntary manslaughter does not, 2nd degree murder does not, negligent homicide does not… capital murder and murder in the 1st degree do have that.

    Not one person gets executed for a drug offense.

    Robbing ‘what appears to be an unoccupied house or store’ doesn’t make it right does it? Is it somehow more moral that they thought no one was home? And then to their suprise the people that just happened to be there didn’t want their stuff taken so got killed??

    Welcome to felony murder, whereby if someone dies (even accidently) during the executon (your favorite word again) of a felony, the charge is murder.

    Lord Nazh (d282eb)

  102. Neville

    Only a few years ago in my jurisdiction, a man who wasn’t taking his blood pressure medicine correctly, ran a red light, broadsided a car and killed the three highschoolers in the backseat (parents in the front seat lived).

    He wasn’t even charged with a felony. He wasn’t speeding, and running a redlight is an infraction. So he was charged with three counts of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter.

    And …shock…he was a minority.

    But hey, drag out the tragic accident that happened when Laura Bush was a minor … why should I expect any decency from a piece of offal like you?

    Darleen (543cb7)

  103. “But I still will not agree even if you do. The law is not a philosophical excercise. It is a practical tool for the function of society. Philosophy is for young people sitting under a stoa while spearmen guard the boundaries of Athens.”

    Socrates was hardly young, and he was of course a military veteran (its where he probably got his limp from). Anyway, young men (of the appropriate class) in Athens were expected to learn how to govern as well as to fight.

    Oliver Wendell Holmes was both a philosopher and a jurist, and he of course fought in the Civil War (being wounded three times and seeing action throughout most of the war).

    Beldar,

    “Never in the history of man has there been such a legal dispute.”

    You’ve not read “Bleak House” apparently. 😉

    Dickens is truly underappreciated as a critic of the law.

    _____________________________________

    Anyway, I oppose the death penalty largely because I simply don’t trust the state to undertake such a task. Why? Because historically states of all shapes and sizes have shown themselves not to be trusthworthy when it comes to executing people.

    Horace_ (cbe5f9)

  104. “Tragic accident” that left someone dead, Darleen.

    And I have no doubt the good citizens of your community let someone off lightly for killing three people for one simple reason:

    They all thought…I could have done that.

    “Moral” people are so transparent in their self-interest.

    Neville Chamberlain (80a4fa)

  105. Horace

    but you trust the state to imprison or fine people?

    what DO you want to do when guilt is not in question?

    The law is not a philosophical excercise. It is a practical tool for the function of society.

    Odd statement that … what we consider “practical” and in service to make a society “function” is the essense of philosophy. It is an expression of values.

    Darleen (543cb7)

  106. Darleen,

    “but you trust the state to imprison or fine people?”

    Not even then, but at least the prisoner still has a chance to overcome any injustice.

    “what DO you want to do when guilt is not in question?”

    Well, see, that’s the problem, isn’t it? How does one know when it is no longer in question?

    Horace_ (cbe5f9)

  107. Neville

    I suppose I could ask you to be honest, because I know you’re not the fanatical moral literalist you are attempting to portray (all acts of killing are morally equivalent?)

    So…what’s your game? Why are you so frightened by people who engage in moral debate? Why are you so frighted by moral judgements?

    Darleen (543cb7)

  108. Horace

    Well, see, that’s the problem, isn’t it? How does one know when it is no longer in question?

    Was there any doubt about Ted Bundy? Or Gacy?

    I linked above to Wayne Adam Ford..who walked into a police station with the severed breast of one of his victims in his jacket pocket.

    Is that not enough?

    Darleen (543cb7)

  109. Because, Darleen, “moral” debate requires that we can look into someone’s heart to see the real reason they committed an act.

    As we can’t actually do that yet, I’ll stick to rational debate.

    Not to bash poor old Laura Bush anymore, but it was her ex-boyfriend that she plowed her car into and killed.

    How do we really know she didn’t do it on purpose?

    I think there should be a minimum sentence for killing someone of, say, at least a month in jail no matter what the circumstances.

    Prosecuters are welcome to ask for far more jail time depending on the evidence, of course.

    Neville Chamberlain (80a4fa)

  110. “Was there any doubt about Ted Bundy? Or Gacy?”

    That’s the problem of course. One can always come up with an especially egregious case (which may even be open and shut) to justify the death penalty, but should we be making general policy decisions based on cases which are which are unique or unordinary?

    Horace (cbe5f9)

  111. Neville

    “moral” debate requires that we can look into someone’s heart to see the real reason they committed an act.

    No, it doesn’t. :::sigh::: you either are still playacting or you really are a moral ignoramous.

    Horace

    One can always come up with an especially egregious case (which may even be open and shut) to justify the death penalty, but should we be making general policy decisions based on cases which are which are unique or unordinary?

    I didn’t ask you about “general policy decisions.” Tell me why, even in the case where guilt is not in question, that a person like Bundy should not forfeit his life.

    Darleen (543cb7)

  112. Darleen,

    “I didn’t ask you about “general policy decisions.” Tell me why, even in the case where guilt is not in question, that a person like Bundy should not forfeit his life.”

    For the rather obvious reason that no legal framework can ever be written which will merely go after the Bundy type criminals of this world.

    Horace (cbe5f9)

  113. Darleen,

    Somehow I doubt you would be so pro-war if the U.S. military were dropping bombs on your neighborhood as part of our effort to bring democracy to Iraq.

    Yet your argument for the war seems to center around your belief that it’s the “moral” thing to do to “stay the course.”

    As far as drugs being a moral issue, we get the absurdity of judges and prosecuters sending people to jail for marijuana possession, then adjourning to the local bar to knock back a few rounds of booze to celebrate how moral they are.

    Some people, usually very self-centered people, feel they can make moral judgements of others.

    Not sure if they’re born that way or if it’s taught to them.

    Either way, when they’re in charge, other people usually start dying in large numbers for their moral causes…

    Neville Chamberlain (80a4fa)

  114. #113 – Oh, Neville, so smug and full of ourselves, aren’t we?

    As far as drugs being a moral issue, we get the absurdity of judges and prosecuters sending people to jail for marijuana possession, then adjourning to the local bar to knock back a few rounds of booze to celebrate how moral they are.

    Perhaps those individuals are knocking back a few rounds of booze to help alleviate the pain of sending people to jail for violating laws which are very clearly on the books, but which those selfsame irretrievably stupid people chose (yes, CHOSE!) to violate anyway.

    Some people, usually very self-centered people, feel they can make moral judgements of others.

    Of course, you are just commenting on the judging, not engaging in the judgment yourself, right?

    (insert sound of crickets chirping here)

    Thought so.

    Not sure if they’re born that way or if it’s taught to them.

    From your responses to Darleen and others, it is apparent that you seem to have your mind pretty much made up on this one already.

    Either way, when they’re in charge, other people usually start dying in large numbers for their moral causes…

    If that means that a segment of society (namely, thugs) has to start dying for the moral sin of taking an innocent person’s life, then sign me up.

    There’s about 600 people up in San Quentin who need someone to line them up, strap them down, and flip the switch.

    JD (044292)

  115. Horace:

    For the rather obvious reason that no legal framework can ever be written which will merely go after the Bundy type criminals of this world.

    And that assumption on your part is supposed to be “obvious” because … why, exactly? Granted, our existing death penalty laws are broader than Ted Bundy, but that’s because they should be broader than that, not because we couldn’t draft a death penalty law that narrow if we wanted to. Rather than debate unfounded assertions you think are obvious, why not point out who currently qualifies for the death penalty as written, but shouldn’t, and why. [Spare us the usual tired crap about minorities and the poor; contrary to popular opinion, neither race nor wealth constitutes “special circumstances” required to qualify anyone for the death penalty.]

    Neville Chamberlain:

    Not to bash poor old Laura Bush anymore, but it was her ex-boyfriend that she plowed her car into and killed.

    How do we really know she didn’t do it on purpose?

    Congratulations, Neville, you’ve managed to prove yourself an even bigger moral idiot than the dead politician you named yourself after.

    Xrlq (cd8934)

  116. Neville

    Somehow I doubt you would be so pro-war if the U.S. military were dropping bombs on your neighborhood as part of our effort to bring democracy to Iraq.

    You’re wrong. I’m much more Oriana Fallaci

    The Italians, in fact, could get free of Mussolini because in 1945 the Allies had conquered almost four-fifths of Italy. In other words, because the Second World War had taken place. A war without which we would have kept Mussolini (and Hitler) forever. A war during which the allies had pitilessly bombed us and we had died like mosquitoes. The Allies, too. At Salerno, at Anzio, at Cassino. Along the road from Rome to Florence, then on the terrible Gothic Line. In less than two years, 45,806 dead among the Americans and 17,500 among the English, the Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the South Africans, the Indians, the Brazilians. And also the French who had chosen De Gaulle, also the Italians who had chosen the Fifth or the Eighth Army. (Can anybody guess how many cemeteries of Allied soldiers there are in Italy? More than sixty. And the largest, the most crowded, are the American ones. At Nettuno, 10,950 graves. At Falciani, near Florence, 5,811. Each time I pass in front of it and see that lake of crosses, I shiver with grief and gratitude.)

    And you still don’t realize that by pretending to scorn morality and moral judgements you ARE making a statement about yourself.

    Either you’re a sociopath or your just don’t like what people other people are sating but you don’t have the intellectual capacity to debate.

    You’re the kid who expects to be Tiger Woods the first time you ever set foot on a golf course … and when you find out you arent, you denigrate golfing and everyone that enjoys it.

    I’m actually being charitable in hoping you’re just a frightened child rather than a moral fool or an unrepetant nihilist.

    There’s hope for the child.

    Darleen (543cb7)

  117. Horace

    For the rather obvious reason that no legal framework can ever be written which will merely go after the Bundy type criminals of this world.

    Why not? Cases that are potential DP cases in CA undergo some rigourous evaluations before they are even filed. Then, after conviction, there is a separate sentencing trial to level the DP (which can only be decided by a jury).

    If you believe that the court system merely is sweeping innocent people off the streets for some nefarious reason, I would suggest you take a bit of time … six months might do … and volunteer at your local District Atty office. Get in there and actually see the day-to-day workings.

    Police and prosecuters don’t have the time to be persecuting innocent people. The stupid and evil criminal element is way too ubiquitous.

    Darleen (543cb7)

  118. Darleen,

    About as many Americans died in car accidents last year as died liberating Italy during WWII.

    While you may consider every German farm boy who fought our troops in Italy as pure evil and every suburban mom who slams her three ton SUV into another car as pure good, I can’t.

    There’s something wrong with a system that punishes one person who killed someone with 30 years in prison followed by their execution and punishes another person who killed someone with a $100 ticket.

    I think that something is “morals.”

    Neville Chamberlain (80a4fa)

  119. To paraphrase Chevy Chase: “Neville, you ignorant slut!!!”

    About as many Americans died in car accidents last year as died liberating Italy during WWII.

    If one was to look in the dictionary for the practical application of “category error,” this statement would be examples #1, #2, and #3. Neville – are you honestly trying to suggest that highway deaths (though gruesome and avoidable and tragic all) are in any way on a moral level with the liberation of Italy during the Second World War? If so, seek help. Immediately.

    While you may consider every German farm boy who fought our troops in Italy as pure evil and every suburban mom who slams her three ton SUV into another car as pure good, I can’t.

    Not every “German farm boy” was pure evil – by and large they had been ‘educated’ in the Nazi way of life for most of their adolescence, and then conscripted to do the bidding of someone they were told was a Godhead. Not to put too fine a point on it, those “German farm boys” weren’t given a choice in the matter.

    As to the suburban mom, I would encourage you to consult NHTSA, and investigate just how many highway deaths are attributable to your well-coiffed and morally upstanding straw-woman driving the Explorer. As just a teaser, the full 2004 report indicates that about 13% of fatal crashes involve SUVs, while comprising more than that percentage of passenger miles driven.

    Now, if you feel that the person who steps into the Jeep Liberty stoops down to the level of potential murderer, that’s on you. But, for comparision, it makes you look like the feminists who, a few years ago put up ‘wanted’ posters listing all male students of a college, naming them as ‘potential rapists.’

    There’s something wrong with a system that punishes one person who killed someone with 30 years in prison followed by their execution and punishes another person who killed someone with a $100 ticket.

    I think that something is “morals.”

    No, that something is called “intent.” The person referenced in the article above absolutely intended to have all witnesses killed. Your ‘suburban mom’ had no such intent when she stepped into her SUV and met her fate.

    But here’s where the ‘morals’ do kick in: For the rest of her life, your mythological SUV mom who kills someone and gets the only traffic ticket will also, in all likelihood, continue to live knowing what she has done, will likely see it in her dreams nightly, and guilt and regret will dog her to the end of her days.

    Can you say the same about your benighted convicted murderer?

    JD (044292)

  120. Neville’s version of “non-morality” —

    Rape and lovemaking are the same because they both involve sexual intercourse.

    Now, in such a situation, which person benefits? The rapist or the lover?

    Neville needs to be in a lockdown facility.

    Darleen (543cb7)


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