DC Sniper Execution Date Set -- 10 November

[Serafina]

Not that I support the death penalty; but if we really want to kill someone painlessly it seems to me that a high powered gun to the brain would do it; something powerful enough to destroy the brain between one thought and the next.

Works, too.
Arguably, all these "quick, dirty and safe" methods are just too "violent" for "civilized" sensitivities.
Tyipcial "style over substance" thinking.


Oh, and again:
Cost should not matter.
If you argue that it is too expensive to keep them in prison, you are actually saying that we should KILL a human being because this human being is too expensive.
Seriously - thats sick.

Why? What do you think keeps people alive?

False dichtomony. You do not have to choose between the live of two people because there is not enough money.

By the same logic, you could support death panels for disabled people.
After all, you are basically saying "he deserves death, because keeping him alive (in prison) is too expensive".

[Julhelm]

If executing someone is more expensive, then the system is obviously broken. If you're going to execute someone you might as well do it with a bullet in the alley behind the courthouse. How would that be less civilized than keeping someone for tens of years and then slowly killing them with an excruciatingly slow method? A humane death should be as quick as possible (and by virtue of being quick also very cheap).

It's not the method that's expensive. It's the investigation, the retrials, and appeals involved. You aren't going to just up and execute someone after a single guilty verdict without giving them the chance to appeal.

That's just because of your ridiculous insistence of leaving the verdict in the hands of a jury of random laymen who are just arbitrarily called up to serve. I would expect any reasonable justice system to leave the verdict in the hands of professional academic jurors to minimize the chance of a wrongful conviction.

[General Zod]

That's just because of your ridiculous insistence of leaving the verdict in the hands of a jury of random laymen who are just arbitrarily called up to serve. I would expect any reasonable justice system to leave the verdict in the hands of professional academic jurors to minimize the chance of a wrongful conviction.

Now you're just going off on entirely random tangents.

[Julhelm]

Whatever.

[General Zod]

Whatever.

It's not my fault you can't make a coherent argument. Juries being good or bad is an entirely separate argument from the morality of the death penalty. Cause they'd totally forego the entire process of appeals and retrials with professional jurors. For some reason.

[Alyrium Denryle]

How does rehabilitating someone who can never be rehabilitated to the point that we can release them do any "actual good" or "relieve suffering and bring about a positive outcome?" Isn't it just needlessly costly?

It is a risk analysis. Look at the alternatives. We can kill them thus needlessly increasing suffering (as he will suffer either as a result of the method of execution or during the period leading up to it), and so will his family who presumably still loves the person (even if they recognize that he gotta die). We can put them in prison and dont do anything else. This creates a prison environment that increases suffering (I mean... jesus our prisons are human rights violations). Or we can create prison environment that at least tries to make criminals better people. This reduces violence, is not really that much more expensive (as a matter of fact we can get stuff out of them like manufactured goods, childrens books, things like that. All of which have been done in the past), and is all in all a better option. Even if we can never really risk letting some of them out.

If you are a utilitarian (which I know I am) option 3 is obligatory. The logic of utilitarianism does not care whether the people are criminals or not, there is no concept of what an individual "deserves" in utilitarianism. The only possible argument is that the cost of the rehabilitation is greater than the benefit. However a monetary cost would have to be VERY significant and significantly negatively impact a large number of people in order to override the positive benefits of said rehabilitation.

[Julhelm]

Whatever.

It's not my fault you can't make a coherent argument. Juries being good or bad is an entirely separate argument from the morality of the death penalty. Cause they'd totally forego the entire process of appeals and retrials with professional jurors. For some reason.

So how the hell does that refute my argument that the way your legal systems relies on laymen makes the whole process for executing someone unnecessarily expensive just because the risk of a wrongful conviction is much higher when the verdict is left to 'gut feeling'?

Besides, you can still execute people in a swift manner while maintaining an otherwise civilized society. There is no reason really why the whole process of appeals and retrials needs to be extended over several years. I mean, we have several examples of people who have served 25+ years on death row before they are executed. Obviously something is broken there if you can't get it done quicker.

[General Zod]

So how the hell does that refute my argument that the way your legal systems relies on laymen makes the whole process for executing someone unnecessarily expensive just because the risk of a wrongful conviction is much higher when the verdict is left to 'gut feeling'?

It doesn't refute it because it doesn't need to. Your argument is irrelevant to the point, since professional juries would still make mistakes and leave room for retrials and appeals.

Besides, you can still execute people in a swift manner while maintaining an otherwise civilized society. There is no reason really why the whole process of appeals and retrials needs to be extended over several years. I mean, we have several examples of people who have served 25+ years on death row before they are executed. Obviously something is broken there if you can't get it done quicker.

I don't really see the issue here. If the alternative is life in prison or execution then who cares how long you take to prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt? They're going to be in there a long time regardless.

[Samuel]

If you argue that it is too expensive to keep them in prison, you are actually saying that we should KILL a human being because this human being is too expensive.
Seriously - thats sick.

How so? If we can use the money to save more than one life would it not be the ethical choice? Not to mention we already do place a dollar value on human life when determining how high a level of pollution is acceptable, how much you can get for losing limbs and other fun activities.

False dichtomony. You do not have to choose between the live of two people because there is not enough money.

Yes you do. The money has to come from somewhere, does it not?

By the same logic, you could support death panels for disabled people.
After all, you are basically saying "he deserves death, because keeping him alive (in prison) is too expensive".

Does the state support disabled people in the US? I thought they eliminated that program- I know they did in CA for the mentally ill. If there is no state support, there is no state cost.

The logic of utilitarianism does not care whether the people are criminals or not, there is no concept of what an individual "deserves" in utilitarianism. The only possible argument is that the cost of the rehabilitation is greater than the benefit.

Actually it also depends on wheter there is a deterence effect. I'm pretty sure it only applies to property crimes though.

[Thanas]

I am opposed to it simply because you cannot fix the mistakes anymore once the person has been executed.

[Broomstick]

Ahh, I love Madame Guillotine, too. It is definitely the most preferred method of execution, save firing squad, but that should be reserved for more honourable sorts of people. I have ethical issues with lethal injection which mean I can't really support anyone being executed by that method, since it's basically obscenely cruel and contrary to human dignity and the person being executed is, well, still a person.

What's so honourable about a firing squad?

Preferred method for a soldier, as he had to face death by a bullet on the battlefield anyway. Similar to beheadings by sword, the preserve of noblemen, because they too as men of the military and honour should be executed by a weapon and not by a tool (like an axe). I always wondered why they didn't use harsher penalties for noblemen, after all, they were more trusted and supposed to be extra-loyal, so as a king I'd feel more betrayed (an more thus vengeful) by a noble's crime than that of a commoner.

In England drawing and quartering was reserved for treasonous nobility and leaders of rebellions - the run of the mill followers were typically hanged. Hard to imagine getting much harsher than drawing and quartering, it was, after all, designed to be prolonged and horrible.

[Broomstick]

Look at hanging, when done right, it breaks the condemn's neck, so death is painless, and yet it is no longer used in the US.

Untrue - Montana, New Hampshire, and Washington state still have the option of hanging.

[Broomstick]

Let's see... should probably state my own position.

I feel the only justification for taking a human life is self defense or defense of another. If we can keep a killer confined for life then we can not, morally, justify killing him (or her). Thus, I am opposed to the death penalty.

Now, I'd be willing to consider certain exceptions. For example, if a convicted multiple killer escapes and is on the loose shooting the dangerous person could be justified as a defense of the community. But for the most part, these are truly exceptions to the rule.

That said, if society is going to execute people (and clearly I live in a country where this is the case) then I'd prefer it be done in an efficient, methodical, and non-torturous manner. The problem is that is can be surprisingly hard to kill someone quickly and (if it's not a total contradiction) humanely.

IF the person performing lethal injection is competent it is NOT a lingering, torturous, painful process. The first drug injected is an anesthetic that produces swift unconsciousness. IF it is done properly. As no doctor will participate in an execution in the US, and neither will the vast majority of other trained medical personnel, lethal injection is not always done properly, as we well know. The problem is not with the method but with (pardon the term) the execution.

I don't feel that being strapped to a table and a needle stuck in your arm is inherently any less dignified than being tied to a pole and shot, or having one's head stuck under the blade of a guillotine, or being lead to a gallows and having a noose placed around your neck and then waiting for the trap door under your feet to fall. There is anticipation and foreknowledge of death in all those cases and it is delusional to pretend otherwise.

[Master of Ossus]

How does rehabilitating someone who can never be rehabilitated to the point that we can release them do any "actual good" or "relieve suffering and bring about a positive outcome?" Isn't it just needlessly costly?

It is a risk analysis. Look at the alternatives. We can kill them thus needlessly increasing suffering (as he will suffer either as a result of the method of execution or during the period leading up to it), and so will his family who presumably still loves the person (even if they recognize that he gotta die). We can put them in prison and dont do anything else. This creates a prison environment that increases suffering (I mean... jesus our prisons are human rights violations). Or we can create prison environment that at least tries to make criminals better people. This reduces violence, is not really that much more expensive (as a matter of fact we can get stuff out of them like manufactured goods, childrens books, things like that. All of which have been done in the past), and is all in all a better option. Even if we can never really risk letting some of them out.

This is just a false dilemma: is it impossible to have a prison that you would not classify as a "human rights violation" without trying to rehabilitate them? If not, then your standard for a "human rights violation" is obviously inextricably linked to your requirement for rehabilitation. Moreover, nothing that you have here evaluates risks, at all. No cost-benefit analysis for death penalty can ignore further suffering inflicted on victims' families (and victims, in the case they're still alive) and the community while perversely hanging its hat on the "suffering" of the criminal's family.

If you are a utilitarian (which I know I am) option 3 is obligatory. The logic of utilitarianism does not care whether the people are criminals or not, there is no concept of what an individual "deserves" in utilitarianism. The only possible argument is that the cost of the rehabilitation is greater than the benefit. However a monetary cost would have to be VERY significant and significantly negatively impact a large number of people in order to override the positive benefits of said rehabilitation.

Now you're just massively oversimplifying the analysis. Surely any cost-benefit analysis would look at the costs of effective rehabilitation (assuming that it's even possible) and compare it with the benefits of rehabilitation. But neither the benefits nor the costs of rehabilitation are obvious or easy to define and measure. For instance, is there a loss of deterrence that makes other people more likely to commit crimes, or more likely to commit serious offenses? What are the chances of screwing up and mistakenly releasing inmates who have not been effectively rehabilitated, and what danger do such individuals continue to pose to society? What happens to labor markets as a result of rehabilitation efforts? What resources are used in rehabilitating people, and what uses would those resources normally be used for? These are very complicated issues, and it's totally dismissive to claim that "a monetary cost would have to be VERY significant and significantly negatively impact a large number of people ... to override the positive benefits of said rehabilitation," since many of these costs are non-monetary and hard to define, let alone evaluate.

[Rye]

I've no problem killing real shitty human beings. The problem as far as morality goes is getting the wrong guy, in which case, people in for life sentences have more opportunity to prove their innocence than if you kill them all as fast as you can.

The best way to kill a man as far as I'm concerned is making him breathe an atmosphere of nitrogen till he dies. He gets a pleasant little trip and expires.

You could have a suicide booth in a prison where lifers can go if they would prefer death, just go in, press a button, doors lock, atmosphere gets pumped with nitrogen. I would guess anyone that was innocent would want to stay alive and clear their name, this would let them do that, and anyone who thought prison for life was worse than death would have an outlet too.

[Starglider]

If you are a utilitarian (which I know I am) option 3 is obligatory. The logic of utilitarianism does not care whether the people are criminals or not, there is no concept of what an individual "deserves" in utilitarianism.

In classic utilitarianism, perhaps. That abstraction usually works when you're talking about policies as applied to entire populations, and trying to discriminate based on 'deserved benefit' would be a futile endeavour anyway. However to make utilitarianism work on a personal level, you really have to weight personal utilities based on 'deserves' if you want it to in any way resemble normal human (customary) morality. A benevolent utilitarian would prefer that no bad things happen at all, but if they have to happen to someone, I for one would prefer that they happen to mass murderers rather than innocent citizens.

In practice this distinction is almost never relevant, since neither individual humans nor governments make decisions about law and punishment by evaluating utility functions (weighted or not), but it is very relevant if you are studying formal ethics.

[Azazal]

Look at hanging, when done right, it breaks the condemn's neck, so death is painless, and yet it is no longer used in the US.

Untrue - Montana, New Hampshire, and Washington state still have the option of hanging.

Did not know those states still had the option, thanks for that. Did a little digging, from wiki on US hanging

At present, capital punishment varies from state to state; it is outlawed in some states but used in others. However, the death penalty under federal law is applicable in every state. Other forms of capital punishment have largely been replaced by lethal injection in the U.S., where the condemned may choose this as an option. Only lethal injection is used at the federal level and only the states of Washington and New Hampshire still retain hanging as an option. Hanging was the preferred method of execution in the state of Iowa until 1965, when Iowa abolished the death penalty. The last inmate to be executed by hanging in the state of Iowa was condemned murderer Victor Feguer, on March 15, 1963. Currently, Iowa has no death penalty, all suspects convicted of capital murder are automatically sentenced to life without parole.
Laws in Delaware were changed in 1986 to specify lethal injection, except for those convicted prior to 1986, who were allowed to choose hanging. If a choice was not made, or the convict refused to choose injection, then hanging was the default method. This was the case in the 1996 execution of Billy Bailey, the most recent hanging in American history. Since the hanging of Bailey, no Delaware prisoner has fit into this category, thus the practice has ended there de facto, and the gallows have been dismantled.
In New Hampshire, if it is found to be 'impractical' to carry out the execution by lethal injection, then the condemned will be hanged, and in Washington the condemned still has an outright choice between hanging and lethal injection.

Following on Billy Bailey

Billy Bailey (1947 – January 25, 1996) was a convicted murderer hanged in Delaware in 1996. He became only the third person to be hanged in the United States since 1965 (the previous two were Charles Rodman Campbell and Westley Allan Dodd, both in Washington) and the first hanged in Delaware in 50 years. He is currently the last person in the United States to be hanged as capital punishment.

I did not know that some one had been legally executed in the US by hanging as recently as 1996, while not yesterday, it is still somewhat recent, point to Broomstick.

[Broomstick]

Following on Billy Bailey

Billy Bailey (1947 – January 25, 1996) was a convicted murderer hanged in Delaware in 1996. He became only the third person to be hanged in the United States since 1965 (the previous two were Charles Rodman Campbell and Westley Allan Dodd, both in Washington) and the first hanged in Delaware in 50 years. He is currently the last person in the United States to be hanged as capital punishment.

I did not know that some one had been legally executed in the US by hanging as recently as 1996, while not yesterday, it is still somewhat recent, point to Broomstick.

That was an interesting case - as I recall, the condemned chose hanging in part to thumb his nose at authorities who were entirely set up for lethal injection. A consultant had to be hired and research done into the most effective way of hanging someone, as the knowledge had largely been lost in the US. A gallows had to be constructed for the purpose. Again, if I recall correctly, the result was a "clean" hang - rapid death by broken neck, body remained intact (in other words, neither strangulation nor decapitation occurred). Arguably, it's a pretty quick death if done right.

[Simon_Jester]

Fair enough, and I agree with you on those points. That's why I brought up the nitrogen asphyxiation, it is a more humane form of execution from what I have read. The condemned does not suffer, they simply pass out and their body stops working. From the state's side, there can be multiple valves turned at once by multiple people, with only on actually flooding the chamber with nitrogen, much like blanks in a firing squad, no one truly knows who performed the execution that way.

Clever, since it combines the "relatively quick and overwhelming damage that no one could possibly survive for long to feel great pain" with "relatively easy cleanup." Or at least tries to.

If executing someone is more expensive, then the system is obviously broken. If you're going to execute someone you might as well do it with a bullet in the alley behind the courthouse. How would that be less civilized than keeping someone for tens of years and then slowly killing them with an excruciatingly slow method? A humane death should be as quick as possible (and by virtue of being quick also very cheap).

Because if you're going to kill someone you'd better be damned sure they deserve it. Holding a five minute kangaroo trial, dragging the guy back behind the courthouse and blowing his brains out is cheap, but it's also a great way to kill innocent people.

Making sure that you've got the right guy is EXPENSIVE. You have to pay very skilled lawyers, investigators, and judges to go over every piece of evidence with a fine-toothed comb, carefully analyze every point on which the trial procedure is questionable, and keep the guy alive while all this is going on. That's what causes people to spend so much time on death row: the process of error-checking the initial trial.

To get cheap executions you need a crappy judiciary, and you don't want to be like Texas, now do you? Let alone worse than Texas, because even the Texas courts are still nominally bound by constitutional rights that the Supreme Court won't let them outright ignore.

[Julhelm]

But aren't the standards of evidence the same regardless of whether the convict gets a prison term or execution?

[Mr Bean]

Based on what? A mixture of drugs is the best way to ensure someone stays dead rather than relying on morphine, which some people could have unusually high tolerances to.

?
You do know how Morphine works right? How you give them a shot of Morphine to put them under, then give them a massive(IE 20x more than you need to kill someone, we are not talking galleons here, even a hundred milligrams is enough to kill someone with no tolerance). Even Heron addicts who have very high tolerances to Morphine can die to a 300 mg dose easy. So we give them a smaller 10mg-50mg shot to induce unconsciousness, then a second 500 mg shot to kill them. If 100 can kill a healthy person and 300 kills a hardcore addict, 500 will put them down and stop the heart and they will die, no question.

[General Zod]

Based on what? A mixture of drugs is the best way to ensure someone stays dead rather than relying on morphine, which some people could have unusually high tolerances to.

?
You do know how Morphine works right? How you give them a shot of Morphine to put them under, then give them a massive(IE 20x more than you need to kill someone, we are not talking galleons here, even a hundred milligrams is enough to kill someone with no tolerance). Even Heron addicts who have very high tolerances to Morphine can die to a 300 mg dose easy. So we give them a smaller 10mg-50mg shot to induce unconsciousness, then a second 500 mg shot to kill them. If 100 can kill a healthy person and 300 kills a hardcore addict, 500 will put them down and stop the heart and they will die, no question.

As opposed to chemicals that will stop the heart with less dosage? Which doesn't explain your objections about leaving someone crippled for life, which seems nonsensical when the point is to kill them.

[Serafina]

As opposed to chemicals that will stop the heart with less dosage? Which doesn't explain your objections about leaving someone crippled for life, which seems nonsensical when the point is to kill them.

And which have been proven not to work, or leave the victim awake, making him die slowly and miserable?

Where morphine HAS been proven to work that way repeadeatly?

[CmdrWilkens]

So a couple thoughts:

Having lived in Maryland through this experience I can't say that I don't find a certain grim satisfaction in the result but it harks back to why I support the death penalty. While cases may be few and far between there will always occur those individuals whose actions and intentions place them so far outside the acceptable norm of societies interaction that society has the right to permanently exclude the individual from further interaction. Given that it follows that such individuals will often, if not always, be of such that even placement with others who have violated the strictures of law is a violation of the remaining rights of those persons, by the nature of their crimes and actions there is some hope that either they may be restored at some point to the general society or they have not placed themselves so far beyond reconciliation that their detention with other criminals is a threat to the others. Put simply there are individuals who society may rightly judge as being better off dead.

The mechanism for identifying such individuals is moreso what I worry about. I don't think we have it right and I'm not sure that there is a completely correct system out there but I do think that the right of society to judge the risks to itself from mismanagement gives it the right to continue the practice.

[Broomstick]

But aren't the standards of evidence the same regardless of whether the convict gets a prison term or execution?

As a practical matter - quite a few people would hold execution to a higher standard than "mere" life without parole for the simple fact you can't correct a mistaken execution.