Firing Squad

[Indyhd]

Age and length of sentence should also be considered.
A 50 year old kills 3 people and gets sentenced to 150 and fifty years ? Whats the point ?
How about a 35 year old who gets sentenced to 50 years but has also has 35 felony arrests and has shown no reasonable expectation of rehabilitation ?

Like Ted Nugent says "I don't like repeat offenders, I like dead offender."

 

[Nazgul]

Appeals, lots of appeals. They take a long time and are very expensive. Lots of man hours involved to insure that the person about to be executed is the one who actually committed the crime. Even after all that, 100% innocent people have been executed. I'm really torn as an LEO. However, seeing how messed up our criminal justice system is, I don't trust it to always kill the guilty and that gives me significant pause. Seeing how many people spent decades in prison for crimes they had nothing to do with is scary if you consider that likely correlates to death row.

I remember a statement after the OJ trial [Farce??]. Someone said that is was better that 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man be judged guilty. To my mind that sounded right, and made sense in a hard way.

Don

 

[Timjoebillybob]

I remember a statement after the OJ trial [Farce??]. Someone said that is was better that 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man be judged guilty. To my mind that sounded right, and made sense in a hard way.

Don

That's known as Blackstone's ratio or formulation. It's better for 10 guilty men to escape than one innocent suffer. It's from Blackstone's commentaries. But others have said the same or similar long before him.

 

[KLB]

There's a problem with any system, but there's also a solution.

New law: When it is found out that an innocent person has been wrongly executed, (due to corruption, bribery, evidence tampering ...) the responsible party/parties are then assigned that same fate.

Won't take too long before any thoughts of illegal activity, bribery, coercion, will no longer have the desired effect upon weak minded justice system employees.

In the case of incompetence/laziness, sentence will be commuted to life at hard labor. HARD LABOR. I'm talking chain gangs here.

In either case... seeing as how your corruption/ineptitude led to the death of an innocent... YOUR case is deemed ineligible for ANY appeals, sentence to be carried out within 48 hrs.




Think of it as "drain the swamp" justice system style.

What happens when it is just a mistake? Maybe the guy looked enough like the perp that witnesses say it was him, and he didn't have an alibi that could be verified. I bet there are many more mistakes than purposeful cases of this.

 

[Cameramonkey]

Appeals are based on procedural/legal errors. Interesting tidbit. You can proclaim your innocence after conviction, another person is caught and confesses, find evidence to back up the confession, and THAT is not grounds for an appeal...

And for reasons like that, I only believe in the death penalty for extreme cases beyond the shadow of a doubt. e.g. unforced confessions like McVeigh.

Ive seen too many people exonerated after the fact due to new evidence such as DNA that let people out of prison. You can let a lifer out of prison. You cant bring them back from death.

Ive got no problem killing somebody that deserves it. But you gotta be 110% sure.

 

[daddyusmaximus]

What happens when it is just a mistake? Maybe the guy looked enough like the perp that witnesses say it was him, and he didn't have an alibi that could be verified. I bet there are many more mistakes than purposeful cases of this.

Explained in my post...
You need to be sure. Too many times the criminal will scare people into saying it was him, AND if there's no other evidence... well, then, that sounds like incompetence, and corruption to me.

 

[DadSmith]

That's known as Blackstone's ratio or formulation. It's better for 10 guilty men to escape than one innocent suffer. It's from Blackstone's commentaries. But others have said the same or similar long before him.

Come to think about it. Kyle Rittenhouse could have been given the death penalty with the right judge, jury, and prosecutor. We all seen how messed up that trial was. How many here would have been okay with Kyle getting the death penalty from self-defense actions?

Edit:
If his trial happened in a state that has the death penalty that is.

 

[BugI02]

Appeals are based on procedural/legal errors. Interesting tidbit. You can proclaim your innocence after conviction, another person is caught and confesses, find evidence to back up the confession, and THAT is not grounds for an appeal...

Please enlighten us further, specifically about what is the ratio of truly guilty people desperately staving off the justice they have earned to the number of unjustly accused people unable to appeal their conviction

And please take notice of the possibility that relitigating a case 15 or 20 years after the fact often involves original witnesses who are dead or cannot be located or do not wish to go through the experience again as well as poor use of modern technology in inappropriate settings

Do you think Bill Cosby is an innocent man?

 

[ghuns]

Come to think about it. Kyle Rittenhouse could have been given the death penalty with the right judge, jury, and prosecutor. We all seen how messed up that trial was. How many here would have been okay with Kyle getting the death penalty from self-defense actions?

Edit:
If his trial happened in a state that has the death penalty that is.

I have no moral issue with capital punishment. Face it, there are some people that just need killin.

But trusting a .gov that rarely gets anything right with something that should ALWAYS be gotten right is asking for more trust than I can give them.

 

[BugI02]

I remember a statement after the OJ trial [Farce??]. Someone said that is was better that 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man be judged guilty. To my mind that sounded right, and made sense in a hard way.

Don

In an age closer to when Blackstone originated that idea as a ratio of 10 to 1, many of the most egregious cases of miscarried justice would have still been convicted and hung

The idea of a reasonable doubt should only affect whether you are guilty of the crime you are accused of and have nothing to do with whether or not the rest of your life was comfortable for you

 

[KLB]

Come to think about it. Kyle Rittenhouse could have been given the death penalty with the right judge, jury, and prosecutor. We all seen how messed up that trial was. How many here would have been okay with Kyle getting the death penalty from self-defense actions?

Edit:
If his trial happened in a state that has the death penalty that is.

If not for the video evidence that night, I have little doubt he would have been found guilty.

 

[miguel]

Anyone know what caliber they'll use?

Gary Gilmore got it with a 30-30! (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gilmore#Execution)

 

[KLB]

Explained in my post...
You need to be sure. Too many times the criminal will scare people into saying it was him, AND if there's no other evidence... well, then, that sounds like incompetence, and corruption to me.

Criminals scare people into saying an innocent person is guilty? I've never really heard of a case like that. I'm sure there must have been some, but none I remember hearing about.

Mistaken identity and circumstantial evidence seem to be the big ones that sink people. Often it seems DAs are more interested in winning than justice.

 

[2tonic]

7 man firing squad, 7 bullets cost 7 bucks, inmate in prison cost 70 to 100 thousand per year to support, time for the bullet bargain i think

Actually, 6 cartridges and one blank.
Make it $6.50.

 

[Timjoebillybob]

Do you think Bill Cosby is an innocent man?

Nope, and that is not why his conviction was overturned. A prosecutor stated he wouldn't prosecute which made Cosby testify in a civil trial.

Do you believe this man was guilty? I don't.

Report Documents the Execution of an Innocent Man in Texas

eji.org

 

[Denny347]

Please enlighten us further, specifically about what is the ratio of truly guilty people desperately staving off the justice they have earned to the number of unjustly accused people unable to appeal their conviction

And please take notice of the possibility that relitigating a case 15 or 20 years after the fact often involves original witnesses who are dead or cannot be located or do not wish to go through the experience again as well as poor use of modern technology in inappropriate settings

Do you think Bill Cosby is an innocent man?

What is an acceptable % of innocent? I hate the phrase "if it just saves one life" when it comes to laws but I cannot fathom a situation where an innocent person is put to death is a reasonable loss for the entire system to keep functioning. Our system is too flawed to ensure that not a single innocent person gets put to death. Circumstantial evidence is what typically secures convictions. It is all that is also needed to secure a sentence of death.

Here is a small sample from Death Row

The Innocent and the Death Penalty - Innocence Project

innocenceproject.org

There needs to be ZERO possibility that the person is innocent.

Executed But Possibly Innocent

There is no way to tell how many of the [dpic get="total_number_of_executions"] people executed since 1976 may also have been innocent. It is now broadly accepted that the judicial review provided to death-penalty cases in the United States has been inadequate to prevent the execution of at least…

deathpenaltyinfo.org

Innocence

The Death Penalty Information Center is a non-profit organization serving the media and the public with analysis and information about capital punishment.…

deathpenaltyinfo.org

Here are non-death row that were exonerated by DNA

Cases - Innocence Project

Read the cases of our clients, who collectively spent thousands of years behind bars for crimes they did not commit.

innocenceproject.org

Read "The Innocent Man" by John Grisham. Just this one story got under my skin so much that I re-visited my core beliefs in this matter.

The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[BugI02]

As Gladstone said 160 years ago, 'Justice delayed is justice denied'

What period of time is sufficient to be sure that you can prove the negative, that a person is not wrongly convicted? How long should the family and friends of a murder victim have to wait for sentence to be carried out, while increasingly specious appeals are tried by those who don't want ANYONE executed for their crimes

Like I said, eliminate the appeals that could fall under the heading of 'guilty, but [insane, of diminished capacity, had a tough childhood etc] and limit appeals where the other evidence is solid ie:forensic rather than eyewitness or circumstantial and start a clock on a deadline by which appeals are closed and execution must happen after a conviction

To the extent that a death sentence acts as a deterrent at all anymore, it only acts as one if it is certain and relatively swift and clearing the courts of interminable appeals would grant more of the resources you seek to more carefully consider more circumstantial convictions

 

[DadSmith]

As Gladstone said 160 years ago, 'Justice delayed is justice denied'

What period of time is sufficient to be sure that you can prove the negative, that a person is not wrongly convicted? How long should the family and friends of a murder victim have to wait for sentence to be carried out, while increasingly specious appeals are tried by those who don't want ANYONE executed for their crimes

Like I said, eliminate the appeals that could fall under the heading of 'guilty, but [insane, of diminished capacity, had a tough childhood etc] and limit appeals where the other evidence is solid ie:forensic rather than eyewitness or circumstantial and start a clock on a deadline by which appeals are closed and execution must happen after a conviction

To the extent that a death sentence acts as a deterrent at all anymore, it only acts as one if it is certain and relatively swift and clearing the courts of interminable appeals would grant more of the resources you seek to more carefully consider more circumstantial convictions

Circumstantial evidence should not be allowed in court if they are going for the death penalty. Just my opinion.

 

[Denny347]

Like I said, eliminate the appeals that could fall under the heading of 'guilty, but [insane, of diminished capacity, had a tough childhood etc] and limit appeals where the other evidence is solid ie:forensic rather than eyewitness or circumstantial and start a clock on a deadline by which appeals are closed and execution must happen after a conviction

Again, appeals are based on legal/procedural error not "tough childhood" etc already. How long do you give the appeals window? A single appeal can take years to get through the courts. Just how important is it to get this right? You can't get a "I'm sorry but we made a mistake." after they are dead.

 

[actaeon277]

Some guy just got out of jail, I think it was 23 years.
While that sucks, it would have been worse had he been executed.
I agree, some should just be put down. But I'd like it to be so "bulletproof" that they wouldn't come out years later and say "oops".