Hang em. Nothin unusual about that either. `

Imagine being strapped to a gurney, then wheeled into a cold and brightly lit, stark white room. White is for purity. Then a couple of people stick needles into your veins and you watch the poison drip through the plastic tubes, knowing it is going to slowly kill you. You turn your head and see your loved ones and some other witnesses watching you die through a lrage thick glass window. A preacher speaks soothing words while reading from a Bible.

Not cruel? How about if you had never committed a single crime in your life, but an "eye witness" had pointed you out a tyhe killer. ___ Well, naw that could never happen.

Nothing "cruel and unusual" about putting a human in a cell for months or years awaiting to die? to be laid out on a table to watch someone stick a needle in your arm to kill you is not "cruel and unusual? I guess not in the good ole US of A. Look at all the people that have been convicted of rape and released after being found "not guilty" after years of incarceration, how many have been executed that were not guilty? Well, if they were in prison they must have been guilty of something-maybe stealing a candy bar?

If cruelty was unusual corporeal punishment wouldn't even be up for discussion.

Well, I guess this is another issue that the people will be interested to hear the candidates on.

" Well, if they were in prison they must have been guilty of something-maybe stealing a candy bar?"

Didja hear the one about the guy in Sacramento, California who got 28 years to life for stealing a weedeater? It isn't a joke and there is no punchline...it's for real! Meanwhile...back at the Whitehouse, we have two guys who lied about a few facts in order to start a war. As a result of these lies, over 4000 American soldiers, who are without a doubt someone's children and/or husband/wife, and over one million innocent Iraqi civilians have died. So far, this crime hasn't even received a slap on the wrist.

I am personally opposed to capital punishment, not only because of the very real possibility of executing an innocent person, but because I consider it morally wrong. There are however exceptions to every rule. My exception in this case would be spoiled, rich, corrupt, morally bankrupt, torturing war criminal politicians.

The USA is completely isolated among democracies in it's practice of executions.

Shining city on a hill MY ASS!

What I dont get is why other supposedly civilized countries are so against killing murderers and yet they are hardly better at sparing members of other species(who are all innocent unlike humans).

Its ok to torture an innocent being to death and claim its for the good of society, but if one wanted to find cures for diseases you would logically want to use humans, and yet even the most selfish pro research person doesnt want to use the best model for research.

Shows the hypocrisy.

As Tolstoy said we will always have war as long as we have slaughterhouses.

Condi to CIA on torture:

"This is your baby. Go do it."

its wrong for society to have any compassion whatsoever for people like ted bundy,charles ng,gacy,etc.etc. i say fry the bastards in the most inhumane discraceful way possible

But you can see, can't you rightlefthater, how ugly your post sounds? It's like walking past a place where a mouse has died.

voxclamantis google charles ng ccadp read his page, then put yourself in his victims familys shoes.

rightlefthater-
I used to think like you do. I felt like I was pro-victim and 'doing the world a favor' by supporting capitol punishment. If you analyze you will see that there is no humane way to kill someone.
It is the same mentality as torturing someone to save someone else.
Humanity is what separates us from the bottom feeders.

Killing killers: two wrongs make a right. Minus times minus equals plus. It's sheer math. Killing the second person unkills the first, surely.

The President is into that kind of logic on other counts too. Start one war wrongly (Afghanistan), then start another (Iraq) to make it right.

There's a saying in Tennessee or Texas or Tahiti or somewhere: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice and I won't be noticing any more.

some people just have to go.

If I've learned anything at all here, it's this. I ain't goona steal a weed eater in California.

You know, if someone tortured, raped and then murdered on of my girls or my wife, I'm a bit reluctnat to think it or say it, but I'd want to get even. When we hear of such a crime, we probably don't always consider how we would feel if it was one of our loved ones.

The flip side of that coin is, it's a fact that many people have been executed in our country, and others are at this very moment, sitting on death rows and were or are innocent of any crime. A Ted Bundy, a Timothy McVeay, a Richard Geen, they don't deseve to be part of the human race, but killing them only puts us dowwn to their level.

life in prison with no privelages should be suffecient, if the person has admitted the guilt and or, the evidence of their guilt is 'overwhelming'. We do not need a death penalty, ___ that's the bottom line.

Yeah, some people do just have to go, so consider leaving.

"life in prison with no privelages should be suffecient, if the person has admitted the guilt and or, the evidence of their guilt is 'overwhelming'. We do not need a death penalty, ___ that's the bottom line."

Agreed. Personally, it seems that being locked away in a 6'x12' cage for the rest of one's life would be a harsher punishment than getting a quick shot and blinking out.

Hopeflly, years down the road, Bu$h/Cheney, et al will be writing a book describing what it's like sitting in a small dark cell getting butt raped year after year after year.

Pro-capital punishment readers should try rereading Kem's post @ April 17th, 2008 10:28 am.

It's a little exercise in compassion, placing yourself in another's shoes.

Innocent people have been executed on many occasions,
and Mr. rightlefthater ought to hope he is never incorrectly fingered for a capital offense.

I re-read it. Frankly, I like the choice of white as purity for these subhumans - it serves to remind them of the lives, the purity of those lives they've ruined or taken away. As to it being terrifying - too bad - im sure the victims of Tookie Williams were petrified before he murdered them in cold blood. im sure the families murdered by Tim McVeigh still suffer because of his actions. Its a damned shame that cop killers like Mumia and Leonard Peltier won't face this same kind of harsh but necessary administration of punishment.

Deleting the worst elements of society instills justice. And no, I don't give a damn about its value or non-value as a deterrant.

rightlefthater - Death penalty talking points pro and con just go around in circles. Here is the standard response to your standard opinion that some people just have to go: The death penalty isn't about them (the criminals and their evil deeds), it is about us. They have made their decision about the kind of people they want to be. With the death penalty we make our own decision. The same thought goes through the head of a killer in an all night convenience store and an executioner with his hand on the switch: This son of a bitch has got it coming.

If you are envious of killers, get yourself a gun and become a criminal. If you want certain people removed from society (as I do) lock them up. Capital punishment degrades us all.

Lock them up and for how long? how long before they get released by the efforts of people like yourself who call everything and anything an injustice? How many years will I as a taxpayer be foreced to feed, clothe and care for them? how many appeals? how many college courses must I pay for despite the fact that our public schools are in the toilet and that many cannot afford college?

Delete the waste.

Do it now.

It is both cruel and unusual to kill someone no matter what you call it. State sponsored lethal injections are unusual and at the same time cruel. There is no way to call putting someone to death as anything less than cruel and it is unusual to put someone to death. How many ways or times can you say it? The death penalty, however demonstrated, is cruel and unusual. If you're going to be cruel I rather they rot in a cage…

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

Gandhi...

Cruel is repeatedly raping a young girl then burying her alive (Jessica Lundsford). Putting a killer to sleep before poisoning him to death - its downright charitable.

as long as people like charles ng randy kraft are breathing there is a chance that they might be freed from prison ie natural disasters political revolutions, or worse some genius screwball will eloquently nominate them for a nobel peace prize for writing some stupid cildrens book

The same group of judges that gave their approval of executions are against abortions . DON'T BOTH PRODUCE THE SAME RESULTS ? God gives life . Wouldn't a good public beating be a better option ? It works in a lot of places .

Whats cruel, though sadly not unusual, is to have such a fascist supreme court.

There is nothing cruel or unusual about death. It is simply the far right bookend of your life. The chemical cocktail seems at least as humane a way to go as any. The only question is whether or not there is a greater good served by the state in putting someone to death.

There are two basic reasons used to justify the imposition of death - retribution and determent. There is no real arguing the point if you believe in retribution. It's just the same old "eye for an eye". Some studies support the fact that states using the death penalty deter a certain percentage of crime, but if that is the reason behind the use, the punishment should be administered in as public, brutal, and painful a way as possible and frequently. The old public beheading in the square sort of thing.

There is guy in the neighboring state of Idaho, David Duncan. All he ever did was murder a woman, her boyfriend, kidnap her two children (boy and girl), rape them both, kill the boy, and get caught in a Denny's with the girl. If you believe in the death penalty, he certainly deserves it. On the other hand, here in Washington, we had a gentleman coined "The Green River Killer". He killed at least 42 women and was given life in prison even though we have the death penalty.

So I have two basic arguments against the death penalty:
1) If it can't be administered evenly - Like crimes are punished like - That seems patently wrong.
2) Too many people have subsequently been exonerated on the basis of advanced technology particularly in the realm of DNA analysis. If you place a person in prison and find out you made a mistake, you can give the person an apology and a couple of million dollars. It is pretty tough to apologize to a corpse.

Whatever these death row inmates did to their victims was definitely cruel and unusual punishment, so an eye for an eye.

an eye for an eye is senseless...

Capital punishment would cease if the following rule were implemented: if a person who is executed is posthumously determined to have been innocent, the prosecutor who asked for the death penalty, the judge who imposed it, and the executioner who carried it out are to be put to death as well.

It amazes me how many right-wing "Christians" favor the death penalty. Remember what Jesus said about capital punishment: "Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone."

AngstOfThePeople, interesting that you raise the issue of cost-- particularly as multiple studies have shown that the death penalty costs tax payers far more than life in prison. I would much prefer my tax dollars go to college courses and other programs aimed at actual "rehabilitation" (although the outdated notion of prison as rehabilitative is viciously tragic and I won't go into it here).

However-- on a basic level, there are paradoxes surrounding the death penalty which are simply ignored as we process defendents through the justice machine. First, how can we as a nation, and as a people, decry the cheapness of life in the hands of criminals when our government is setting the prime example? "Do as I say and not as I do" is a particularly un-democratic trope, but seems to be the ruling justification here. State-sanctioned murder is murder nonetheless. Secondly, how are we to trust that the system currently in place-- from the under-eqiupped crime labs to the overworked public defenders-- are consistently and unerringly capable of making a decision as hugely important as that of life or death for an american citizen? In an ideal world, anyone taking another life would be considered insane from the start-- can you imagine doing so?-- but our numbed nation has somehow reached the point that the rapes and murders you mention are considered to be the acts of "sane," mentally-capable persons...else our existing ban on the execution of the developmentally disabled would apply to all such horrifying men and women.

What the convicted person did, or whether the person was wrongly convicted is irrelvant to this discussion.

The Death Penalty is not about the criminal's conduct - or even that he may be wrongly convicted - it is about OUR conduct or government conducting morally repugnent acts in MY name.

And as far as right wing "christians" supporting the death penalty, I've always seen something distinctly "Protestant" about the death penalty. Most Catholic majority countries abolished executons long ago. The first thing all Latin Americans did when they threw off their US sponsired dictators was abolish the death penalty.

USAn

"And as far as right wing "christians" supporting the death penalty, I've always seen something distinctly "Protestant" about the death penalty. Most Catholic majority countries abolished executons long ago. The first thing all Latin Americans did when they threw off their US sponsired dictators was abolish the death penalty."

You have to hand it to the Catholics. At least they are consistent in their logic. No Killing!!! No assisted suicide, no abortion, no death penalty!

The Christian Right Wing Republicans, not so much. I wonder how they can keep their heads from imploding with the incredible rationalizations they have to make by having such an inconsistent world view.

Angst - Life without parole is a sentencing option in most capital cases. They never get released, and many never should. Also in the real world (as opposed to the world of quick and cheap frontier justice you advocate) the cost of executing people far exceeds the cost of keeping them in prison for life. The cost of either is trifling compared to the cost of killing "insurgents" in Baghdad.

When you speak of people categorically as "waste" you are thinking of some archetypal child molester who should never have been born. Actual individuals on death row are not so easy to demonize given real life circumstances, zealous prosecutors and an inherently racist judicial system. Batching up human beings into subhuman types who must be denied existence is a slippery slope. Societies which give dignity to retributive punishment and the cleansing effect of executions are not enviable places to live.

Vox

Its not an archetype - it exists. One only has to revisit the case of John Couey, a subhuman (there is no other word) who viciously raped and murdered Jessica Lundsford, 9 years old. He buried her alive.

Think about her death and come back to me on a real definition of cruel and unusual. I am aware that killing Couey won't bring her back - I am also not interested in deterrence - its murders like this, its monsters like this, that have to be removed in the harshest way possible to restore a balance to humanity.

As to the costs - you're talking legal costs in prosecuting and defending these cases. I submit that these costs would be drastically reduced by a mitigation of the appeals process - with enhanced DNA and related availability - these cases can and should be decided more efficiently and with less risk of executing the wrong person.

People like Couey are waste. I cannot extend compassion to a walking bag of disease in any form.

You see NOBODY has the right to take someone elses life. Not only is it stupid because you're doing the very thing you hope to prevent but it is illogical. Do you RAPE rapists, do you rob a burglar, of course not but the most religious country in the world murders its citizens.

THOU SHALT NOT KILL doesn't mean some are excused because they're the authority, it means EVERYONE.

The USA has got to be the most hypocritical bunch of idiots on this planet of ours and probably other planets too.

Actually the state does have the right to prescribe appropriate punishment for certain crimes. IMO rape should be a hanging offense.

That said, being as more people support death for certain crimes, the court is merely doing the will of the people.

Besides, when's the last time a killer escaped from the cemetary?

An EYE for an Eye and we would all be blind, think about it. Authority takes an eye in retribution so the authority's eye has to be taken and so on.

AngstOfThePeople

"Besides, when's the last time a killer escaped from the cemetary?"

When's the last time an innocent person escaped from the cemetery?

"When's the last time an innocent person escaped from the cemetery?"

- not sure, but its a risk we should be willing to take.

While the number of nations that ban Capital Punishment (sounds better than Hangign, chopping heads off, drowning, quarter, poison, etc.) in THEIR march to civility, we have our super Supreme Court, with five, count them, five (5) Catholics in the majority, approving of killing a human being. Can they go to Confession now?
How long before Euthanasia becomes mandatory for all those over 90? I am 74, how many years before they come for me? Sixteen you say, wanna bet it will be sooner than that?
Wait until the recession deepens into Depression and we begin to kick the elderly out of hospitals, too expensive, you know.
And, soon hospital shall have been banners with the mortal words of Gov. Love (yeah!)
"They have the duty to die!" Or, something like that, my memory is fading, particularly on such ugly repulsive and fraightening matters.
Have a nice day and a long life and may God, if there is one, have pity on your and their D souls.

I can understnd the arguments of both the pro death penalty advocates and those who are against it.

I believe the major concern should be, with the death penalty, possible execution of a person who is innocent. It has been well proven that has happened. Once is too many.

Here is another thing to consider. Timothy McVeay did not want to sit in solitary forever, thinking of all of those innocent babies and children he murdered. He refused to fight his death sentence. I would have preferred his punishment be, until natural death, sit alone every single day thinking about those children. Some of the parents of those murdered children wanted that also.

Then you have the Richard Geen types, who would enjoy having the opportunity to sit and think of what they had done. So it's a two way street is it not? It's not a two way street for an innocent human to be executed. That is the major reason death penalties should be abolished.

Add in the fact, it is a moral stigma for a society. Death by lethal injection is humaine in some opinions, but burning at the stake, or tossed to wild dogs would be cruel. It's not a matter of the death, it's how it is preformed that is important for some. If we as a nation are gong to execute people, I believe the firing squad may be quicker and less frightful. Or just a shot in the head some night while asleep.

I'm 72 MIKESAR, if the day ever comes and it may, when the government decides it's time for me to die, when they come to get me they'd better be well prepared to meet double 0 buck from a 12 gage that holds 8 loads and can easily be reloaded while a shell is in the firing chamber and my Anne Oakley mate with a short barrel 44 mag rifle.

We will have a depression and it is going to be very nasty here in America. Be prepared.

AngstOfThePeople

"When's the last time an innocent person escaped from the cemetery?" - not sure, but its a risk we should be willing to take."

Easy for you to say. Empathy is the quality of being able to put yourself in someone else's place. Imagine it was a member of your immediate family that was falsely accused, condemned, and put to death.

One observation about the death penalty. One of the the things I notice most about people is the company they keep. I don't care for the company of thugs or bird-brains.

Take a look at the countries that still use the death penalty (besides the US).

Afghanistan
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Botswana
Burundi
Cameroon
Chad
China (People's Republic)
Comoros
Congo (Democratic Republic)
Cuba
Dominica
Egypt
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Gabon
Ghana
Guatemala
Guinea
Guyana
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Jamaica
Jordan
Korea, North
Korea, South
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Lebanon
Lesotho
Libya
Malawi
Malaysia
Mongolia
Nigeria
Oman
Pakistan
Palestinian Authority
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Somalia
Sudan
Swaziland
Syria
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Trinidad and Tobago
Uganda
United Arab Emirates
Uzbekistan
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe

Sort of a Rogue's Gallery of extremist, failed, and autocratic states. Not really a single one (except maybe India) I would want to go on vacation to.

why must I put myself in the place of a killer to know the death penalty is correct? how on gods green earth can you justify the continued existence of a John Couey? Killing him is not an example of a failed state.

AngstOfThePeople

"why must I put myself in the place of a killer to know the death penalty is correct?"

It would be nice if you read what I actually said and didn't just interprate it any old way you wanted. I said, "Imagine it was a member of your immediate family that was falsely accused, condemned, and put to death."

"how on gods green earth can you justify the continued existence of a John Couey?"

How can you justify killing even one innocent person by mistake?

"Killing him is not an example of a failed state."

No, but not killing him is an example of a compassionate state.

Not failed, somewhat immoral though.

It is not justafiable to have the death penalty and chance ANY who are innocent will be executed. You constantly fail to address that issue ~ANGST~. ___Of the people. Whose people?

kend -

the family member argument is typical strawman - I refuse to debate it because it is emotionalist tripe and irrelevant to the conversation.