In spite of any data re recidivism, you can’t 100% predict the chances for any particular person who’s been jailed. One reason for being against the death penalty: The numerous instances of innocent people jailed, with that informing us as to what must be the many, many innocents who have been wrongly executed over the years.
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For me it’s a head versus heart conflict. My head knows how the system is broken and biased at every phase against PoC and that that bias guarantees innocent PoC will, if the death penalty is legal, be killed when they have done absolutely nothing wrong.
My heart says, there is a point where a person’s actions, especially against vulnerable people, is so monstrous that any claim of humanity and thus mercy should be void.
I’m driven more by my head than my heart so I personally stick to the argument that killing untold innocent people just to feel some vindication against the occasional genuinely monstrous person isn’t justifiable.
But that doesn’t stop my heart from having some strong feelings when I hear about someone like this and the details of how they tormented someone.
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Thank god he wasn’t atheist! Imagine the horrific acts he would have committed without a moral compass.
/s (some people just can’t process sarcasm without it)
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The girl and her family were arrested by ICE and deported.
I think that’s normal.
I’ve been opposed to the death penalty for most of my adult life.
In 1996 I was living in the Bay Area when Richard Allen Davis was convicted of killing Polly Klaas. In the courtroom after the conviction he turned to the press pool and double flipped off the cameras. The San Jose Mercury News ran the photo on the front page. The trial was well covered in the news and his un-remorseful shit behavior was known prior to this.
Mr. Davis was sentenced to die in San Quentin, and it’s not unreasonable to think “Jesus Christ, fuck this guy”.
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That’s why we need three verdicts: innocent, guilty, and obviously guilty without a shadow of a doubt. It would never work of course.
Should we wonder if any innocent people who have been executed over the years “fit” the category above?
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They have something like that in Scotland. Not guilty, guilty (beyond reasonable doubt) and not proven (there is evidence that the defendant committed a crime, but there is also reasonable doubt. The defendant is acquitted, but it isn’t the same as not guilty).
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Indeed, that’s one reason I said it’s unworkable.
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I’m strictly against the death penalty. And even stories like this one won’t ever make me in favor of it.
A human is a human, regardless of their actions. They may not have respected that dignity when it comes to others, and therefore did something monstrous.
That doesn’t mean we need to do the same. We have the resources to imprison him for life. There’s no reason to murder the man, even with state sanction.
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In the American legal system, we only have two outcomes: Not Guilty, and Obviously Guilty Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, which is normally shortened to Guilty.
The system is just that broken…
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The Stephen Miller/Trump types see that as a feature, not a bug.
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And only two sentences, Will Be Released From Prison One Day and Death.
Seriously, why can’t you imagine a system where some prisoners will never, ever be released or paroled? Why is the death penalty the only way to keep them off the streets?
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Oddly, the death penalty generally turns out to be way more expensive to the state than throwing them in supermax and tossing away the key. Gary Gilmore for one way preferred to die rather than be locked up for life. Life imprisonment would have been a way more horrible punishment for him. And that’s what he deserved.
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