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Botched execution in OK

RJKarl said:
Here's one that says 10 cases of voter impersonation since 2000:

http://votingrights.news21.com/article/election-fraud/

"Analysis of the resulting comprehensive News21 election fraud database turned up 10 cases of voter impersonation. With 146 million registered voters in the United States during that time, those 10 cases represent one out of about every 15 million prospective voters.

“Voter fraud at the polls is an insignificant aspect of American elections,” said elections expert David Schultz, professor of public policy at Hamline University School of Business in St. Paul, Minn.

“There is absolutely no evidence that (voter impersonation fraud) has affected the outcome of any election in the United States, at least any recent election in the United States,” Schultz said."

That's not ten cases from 146M votes. It's out of 146M registered voters. Over that time frame, there could easily have been 750M-over 1B individuals votes.
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preaching to the choir bud.

Though it's pretty naive to think there aren't any cases of voter fraud that go unreported.
 
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let's make sure to turn this thread into a voter fraud discussion, since we don't have any other threads for that.

i don't think the death penalty as currently carried out (25 years of appeals, conducted out of the view of the public) is any more of a deterrent than life in prison. In order to make it a deterrent, you have to do it like Iran and China, i.e. death rapidly follows the crime and the executions are public. Personally, I don't want to go down that road.

I don't see what rational relationship the death penalty has to corrections officer deaths. There were apparently only seven last year and of those only three were at the hands of inmates, only one of which was serving a life sentence, according to this page (top result when I googled "how many corrections officers were killed last year): http://www.apbweb.com/officer-down-news-menu-26/63-corrections-casualties.html
Last year, seven correctional officers were killed in the line of duty. They included: Missouri Corrections Officer Rodney C. Welch, who died after being assaulted while breaking up a fight between two inmates; Georgia Corrections Officer James G. Henderson Jr., who was beaten to death by a prisoner under his supervision; Sergeant John T. Hart Sr., of the New York State Department of Correctional Services, who suffered a heart attack while hiking up a mountain to supervise a group of prisoners fighting a forest fire; Sergeant Eric J. Autobee, a Colorado correctional officer, who was beaten to death by a man serving a life sentence for killing his 11-week-old daughter; Pennsylvania Corrections Officer David H. Bowser Jr., who was struck and killed by a car while training with his department's Response Team; Alaska Correctional Officer James C. Hesterberg, who died in an automobile accident, along with four inmates he was transporting; and Pima County (AZ) Correctional Officer Shannon Russell, who suffered a fatal heart attack during a training exercise.
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If it's not a deterrent, then the only reason left is retribution. If we are killing people to get revenge on them for their crimes, first of all in my opinion that's a shitty reason (especially for those who claim to be Christians), and second, we better be darn sure we're getting revenge on the right people.
 
China's homicide rate is low. If we could cut the murder rate here by, say 10,000 victims per year by adopting Chinese methods, would that be worth the additional innocent people executed? (I am not advocating that, I am just asking the question.) I mean, supposedly the victim are also "innocent".
 
tjcmd said:
China's homicide rate is low. If we could cut the murder rate here by, say 10,000 victims per year by adopting Chinese methods, would that be worth the additional innocent people executed? (I am not advocating that, I am just asking the question.) I mean, supposedly the victim are also "innocent".
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No
 
Deacon923 said:
If it's not a deterrent, then the only reason left is retribution. If we are killing people to get revenge on them for their crimes, first of all in my opinion that's a shitty reason (especially for those who claim to be Christians), and second, we better be darn sure we're getting revenge on the right people.
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There are retributive theories of punishment that are not about revenge. I personally don't think any of those theories can be used to support the death penalty, but just wanted to make that distinction.
 
Just doing a back-of-the-napkin calculation, reducing the U.S. murder rate by a factor of 10,000 would essentially eliminate murder in this country. There would be only a few per year.

That said, if we adopted Chinese tactics, judging by estimates, we'd then execute about 1,200 people per year ... ostensibly for capital crimes ... like murder.

Something would have to give.

IMO, it wouldn't be worth the chilling effect on society by becoming evil fascists.
 
Shorty said:
Studies have shown that murderers first try to talk their victims into traveling with them to states that don't have the death penalty, then kill them there.
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Cite your source, please? This sounds like BS.
 
I just can't get my mind around the idea that as a society, we would have any interest in our government killing our citizens.

If we really want to do it right, give the next of kin of the victim the choice to kill the murderer after a jury has returned a death sentence. And make the next of kin pull the trigger.
 
It blows my mind that the people most afraid of big government are the most who most support government stripping citizens of their voting rights, civil rights, and last breath through a government run criminal justice system.
 
PhDeac said:
It blows my mind that the people most afraid of big government are the most who most support government stripping citizens of their voting rights, civil rights, and last breath through a government run criminal justice system.
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But those are black people, Ph, they don't count.
 
DeaconSig said:
I just can't get my mind around the idea that as a society, we would have any interest in our government killing our citizens.

If we really want to do it right, give the next of kin of the victim the choice to kill the murderer after a jury has returned a death sentence. And make the next of kin pull the trigger.
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this would work
 
Deacon923 said:
let's make sure to turn this thread into a voter fraud discussion, since we don't have any other threads for that.

i don't think the death penalty as currently carried out (25 years of appeals, conducted out of the view of the public) is any more of a deterrent than life in prison. In order to make it a deterrent, you have to do it like Iran and China, i.e. death rapidly follows the crime and the executions are public. Personally, I don't want to go down that road.

I don't see what rational relationship the death penalty has to corrections officer deaths. There were apparently only seven last year and of those only three were at the hands of inmates, only one of which was serving a life sentence, according to this page (top result when I googled "how many corrections officers were killed last year): http://www.apbweb.com/officer-down-news-menu-26/63-corrections-casualties.html


If it's not a deterrent, then the only reason left is retribution. If we are killing people to get revenge on them for their crimes, first of all in my opinion that's a shitty reason (especially for those who claim to be Christians), and second, we better be darn sure we're getting revenge on the right people.
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The point of asking murderer recidivist rates is to show that, even assuming the death penalty doesn't result in general deterrence (and I'm not ceding that point), it certainly has special deterrence effects. An executed murderer is not going to kill (or maim) again.
 
PhDeac said:
It blows my mind that the people most afraid of big government are the most who most support government stripping citizens of their voting rights, civil rights, and last breath through a government run criminal justice system.
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I am afraid of big government. But one of the few things government should be doing is as much as it can to protect individual citizens from other individual citizens. I am not advocating government killing its citizens. I was just asking a question. If it were possible to save 100 inocent victims by executing Saudi Arabia-style 100 falsely accused criminals I think everyone would say it would be a bad idea. But what if the calculus were 200 to 100 or 300 to 100? Is there some point where you would accept executing some falsely accused criminals in order to save innocent crime vicitms? I am just trying to see where the moral compass is.
 
I don't understand why it's necessary to execute anybody save anybody else.
 
Junebug said:
Bullshit. Executing people doesn't cost a lot of money. Giving death row inmates endless appellate rights does.
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Um, that's why I said death row and not executions? So, not bullshit.

We give death row inmates lots of chances at appeal because it sucks when the system gets it wrong and executes innocent people. That's not hard to understand.
 
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