January 22, 201412 yr I've done a complete 180 in the past few years on this. I used to be a strong supporter of capital punishment, however with all the instances of botched evidence handling, wrongful convictions, etc., there's no way I can still support it. If somebody confesses to murder, it's a no brainer to me...
January 22, 201412 yr 99% of the time I am against capital punishment; however, sometimes I feel it is warranted. I can't explain it but it is one of things I know when I see it. Does anyone have those same feelings on the subject? Usually comes with harming children. I am for capital punishment. If someone confesses to murder, they get the death penalty. I agree with harming children; if you molest a child, and you are sentenced to death I have no problem with it.
January 22, 201412 yr If somebody confesses to murder, it's a no brainer to me... Numerous times you see guys locked up who confessed to crimes that were later proven they didn't commit. While it's not the norm, false and coerced confessions happen.
January 22, 201412 yr Lock em up and throw away the key sounds ok, except that tax payers are on the hook for paying for his room, board, and health care for the rest of his life. There are truly evil people in this world who have no regard for your life and the lives of those you love. I have no problem with the death penalty in certain situations. I personally have no sympathy with how this man died. That fact that his family is considering suing reinforces that he came from equally quality people. One death penalty case (including all of the appeals, as well as the cost of death row incarceration) costs much more than imprisoning a person for life without parole. A few pertinent statistics: Life Without Parole: -Cases average 24.5 days of in-court time -Jury selection takes an average of 1.5 days -Cases take an average of 526 days to complete Death Sentence: -Cases average 147.6 days of in-court time -Jury selection takes an average of 26 days -Cases take an average of 1,902 days to complete (4 calendar years longer) The state of California performed a study a few years back that concluded that their state would save $200,000,000 per year by eliminating the death penalty and replacing all death penalty cases with life without parole prosecutions. That's $1 billion saved every 5 years in one state alone...and for a little additional frame of reference, California ranks at #17 in the list of states conducting the most executions since 1976. So the United States would be saving billions of dollars each year by doing away with the death penalty and replacing it with life imprisonment.
January 22, 201412 yr Numerous times you see guys locked up who confessed to crimes that were later proven they didn't commit. While it's not the norm, false and coerced confessions happen. Then you're an idiot for confessing to a crime you didn't commit, IMO.
January 22, 201412 yr Then you're an idiot for confessing to a crime you didn't commit, IMO. If you keep someone awake for the right amount of time, and threaten welfare of the suspect's loved one(s) with the right thing....you'd be amazed what you can get a person to say.
January 22, 201412 yr Then you're an idiot for confessing to a crime you didn't commit, IMO. Does being an idiot mean you deserve death?
January 22, 201412 yr Does being an idiot mean you deserve death? If you confess to a MURDER that you didn't commit, I question your level of intelligence.
January 22, 201412 yr If you confess to a MURDER that you didn't commit, I question your level of intelligence. Right, but just because someone has a low level of intelligence doesn't warrant their execution, does it? How about this example: Eddie Joe Lloyd "Eddie Joe Lloyd thought he could assist the police with an ongoing investigation into a 16-year-old Michigan girl's brutal rape and murder. In 1984, he contacted the police from the mental institution where he resided and gave them suggestions on how to better handle the case. The police visited him on several occasions and conducted interviews, hoping to gain even more information. During the interviews, the police told Lloyd, who was heavily medicated at the time, that if he admitted to committing the crime, he would help them "smoke out" the real killer, according to Ben Schmitt and Suzette Hackney in a Detroit Free Press article. Lloyd was eager to help and agreed to confess, even though he didn't commit the crime. During a 2002 Fox News Network interview with Hannity and Colmes, Barry Scheck, a founder of The Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cordozo School of Law, suggested that the police fed Lloyd information concerning the crime, such as the location of the body, the type of jeans the girl was wearing, and the fact that underwear were left hanging from a tree. Lloyd then signed a written confession and allowed his statement to be tape-recorded. He had no idea that at that moment he had signed away his freedom. To Lloyd's surprise, as soon he signed the statement and confessed, the police arrested him for the girl's murder. He immediately felt betrayed. Lloyd tried desperately to protest his innocence, but his pleas fell on deaf ears and the case went to trial in 1985. Based on the substantial evidence, namely the tape-recorded statement and the written confession, Lloyd was found guilty of the crime and sentenced to life in prison."
January 22, 201412 yr If you confess to a MURDER that you didn't commit, I question your level of intelligence. Should being "fool" enough to confess to a crime that you didn't commit mean they deserve the death penalty or life imprisonment though? I question the level of intelligence of LOTS of people, but that doesn't mean I think they should be put in jail or put to death.
January 22, 201412 yr A SCARY fact: Since 1973, there have been 143 people in the United States whose convictions were overturned after having already been convicted to the death penalty. Death penalty convictions, nationally, have averaged somewhere around 100 per year within that time period. So if you figure there have been 4,000 death penalty convictions in the last 40 years, and 143 exonerations in the last 40 years, then you can roughly estimate that, based on those numbers, approximately 3.575% of all individuals sentenced to the death penalty are innocent. So statistically speaking, chances are 7 out of every 200 people sitting on death row in the United States are innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted.
January 22, 201412 yr ^Don't know about you, but I'm not okay with those odds. Agreed. That's nowhere close to being okay.
January 22, 201412 yr This popped up on CNN today.....14 year old Boy Executed Nearly 70 Years Ago to Get New Trial?
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