States assert right to death sentence!

piston · Post by **piston** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 9:46 pm

Do you know your death penalty history? Michigan, Wisconsin, Maine, and Minnesota are the oldest opposing states; other opposing states came on board in recent decades. But a solid majority of American states, thirty-two, still favor it and they're all running out of "humane" drugs to take away a person's life because of a boycott by the pharmaceutical companies against using their drugs in such a lethal manner. In response to this boycott:
--Tennessee wants to bring back the electric chair (which is shocking...);
--Oklahoma is considering the use of nitrogen gas (considered humane by some specialists);
--Utah is in favor of the firing squad (an old military practice against deserters).

Texas has got only death drugs for two more convicts, one this week and the other one next week. What will it support? The rope? The guillotine?

What's a civilized way to kill another human being once pharmaceutical companies deny you the right to use drug cocktails because it's not good for their corporate sales?

John F · Post by **John F** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 12:26 am

My state, New York, reintroduced capital punishment in 1995, when the Republican-led legislature and Republican governor put through a law reinstating it. But the law has been a dead letter; no prisoner has been executed here since 1963, and in 2004 the state supreme court ruled that capital punishment violates the state's constitution. In 2008 a law was passed "disestablishing" Death Row in New York prisons. In this, despite the efforts of the right wing, we're on the right side.

There is no civilized way to put human beings to death against their will. That's a barbaric remnant of our less civilized past, and can be justified only in self-defense against a plainly lethal attack. If for "civilized" is substituted "painless," advances in this respect are being made for voluntary use in countries where euthanasia is not a crime. It's to Switzerland that American states should turn if they are serious about painless execution. Have they done so? Not that I know of, but I know nothing about it one way or the other.

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 6:02 am

piston wrote:Do you know your death penalty history?

Thanks for the info-I remain in favor of the death penalty-McVeigh for example-saw another example on a TV show just a few days ago--a repeat from 2009

Season 1, Episode 1 The Washington Sniper-definitely glad John Muhammad was executed.

First Aired: November 9, 2009

The 2002 Washington, D.C., sniper attacks perpetrated by John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo and efforts executed by law-enforcement officials to apprehend the killers are examined.

Regards, Len

John F · Post by **John F** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 8:50 am

How bloodthirsty you are, Lenny!

Capital punishment has been against the law in New Jersey since 2007, and nobody had been executed there since 1986, when Ralph Hudson was electrocuted for murdering his wife.

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 9:57 am

John F wrote:How bloodthirsty you are, Lenny!

Capital punishment has been against the law in New Jersey since 2007, and nobody had been executed there since 1986, when Ralph Hudson was electrocuted for murdering his wife.

Well the majority of the states still have the death penalty-a pity about NJ. Right I'm deciding how I feel about Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev-the other 2 I mentioned-to have allow them to live, breath, eat, read, watch TV-completely unjustified! Regards, Len

Tiger · Post by **Tiger** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 2:50 pm

A firing squad sounds like a good way to execute folks. It's quick and cheap.

jbuck919 · Post by **jbuck919** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 7:17 pm

Our late member and good friend Ralph Stein was a professor of constitutional law and one rarely dared question him on such matters, but once or twice I did and a couple of times I got a response that in spite of his expertise seemed not to squash the point I was trying to make like a bug on the pavement. Once he made the seemingly obvious point that in the absence of the Supreme Court declaring it unconstitutional, Congress could just eliminate it by passing a law.* I pointed out that Congress could pass such a law, but the Constitution expressly provides for the death penalty, in explicit kinds of cases at the federal level, and implicitly for very serious crimes at the discretion of the states, and that therefore some state would sue to have the new law declared unconstitutional on that basis. Although the so-called constitutional arguments being floated at the present time are not the same, or, if one I heard about basing the "state's right" on the 14th Amendment is true, not nearly as solid, I feel sadly vindicated.

*The Court could use the same reasoning as in Brown v. the Board, that capital punishment is inherently incapable of being administered according to the principle of equal justice, which happens to be true, but Ralph, as liberal as he was, and who thought within the constraints of the lawyer he had been trained to be, would probably had tried to shoot that theory full of holes.

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 7:24 pm

jbuck919 wrote:but Ralph, as liberal as he was, and who thought within the constraints of the lawyer he had been trained to be, would probably had tried to shoot that theory full of holes.[/color]

Good for Ralph-I'm so glad I got to meet him and sit with him at that lovely forum dinner we had some time ago--there's just no justification for keeping a McVeigh or similar monster alive. Regards, Len

jbuck919 · Post by **jbuck919** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 7:32 pm

lennygoran wrote:
jbuck919 wrote:but Ralph, as liberal as he was, and who thought within the constraints of the lawyer he had been trained to be, would probably had tried to shoot that theory full of holes.[/color]
Good for Ralph-I'm so glad I got to meet him and sit with him at that lovely forum dinner we had some time ago--there's just no justification for keeping a McVeigh or similar monster alive. Regards, Len

It is not good for Ralph. In the first place, I was making an assumption and may have been wrong. In the second, he hated the death penalty as much as anyone and would have been thrilled at the Court ending it once and for all, but doubly so if it was for what he considered to be a sound constitutional reason. Not accepting what he considered pat solutions proposed by amateurs is not the same as not wanting passionately to see the only progressive and humane resolution of all this come to pass.

John F · Post by **John F** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 7:51 pm

lennygoran wrote:Well the majority of the states still have the death penalty

And they should be ashamed of it. A huge majority of the nations of the world do not. Only 20 or so still carry out judicial executions, and along with the U.S., the top six for frequency are China, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. Are you comfortable to find us morally in that company? I'm certainly not.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-p ... erspective

jbuck919 · Post by **jbuck919** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 8:28 pm

The problem is that the death penalty is seen as a subject of majority rule than of human rights with people given equal protection to guarantee them. Many people in the US, often the majority, want plenty of things they cannot have in a democracy if rights and the rule of law are to mean anything. They want to be able to punish flag-burners; they want to be able to apply private justice when a family member is wronged; they want under some extreme circumstance to congratulate rather than punish an office of the law who kills--murders--a suspect past the point where anyone is in immediate danger from him. You know, the old "he saved the state the expense of a trial" argument. People still want to be able to discriminate against groups at individual whim because the Supreme Court doles out equal justice with an eyedropper and leaves much of the most needed progress up to the states. It seems to be a matter of catch-as-catch can whether we have a strictly enforced national standard or whether glaring exceptions on whatever scale are still tolerated. In any case, none of these exceptions is consistent with the sacrosanct rule of law as the guarantor of rights.

As Corlyss was fond of pointing out, there are loads of people in European countries, perhaps majorities still in some cases, who want the death penalty, and in fact it remained in place in many of them well into the 20th century until it was eliminated with the formation of the European Union. They are not better people than Americans, just more sensibly governed in this respect.

All special pleading in favor of allowing just an exception here, another there, boils down to "it would make me and maybe other people (maybe even a lot of them) feel good in a visceral way and this alone is important enough to set aside or neglect a principle that is keeping the barbarians away from the gates of modern civilization."

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 5:40 am

jbuck919 wrote:
It is not good for Ralph. In the first place, I was making an assumption and may have been wrong. In the second, he hated the death penalty as much as anyone and would have been thrilled at the Court ending it once and for all, but doubly so if it was for what he considered to be a sound constitutional reason.

Thanks for explaining that-I disagree with him if he was for completely ending the death penalty. Still it was great to read his messages and to have had the chance to break bread with him. Regards, Len

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 5:46 am

John F wrote:along with the U.S., the top six for frequency are China, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. Are you comfortable to find us morally in that company? I'm certainly not.

On most issues I would certainly disagree with those countries you try to link to the US-bringing up the very bad morality of those 5 countries has little to do with why we in our more democratic country should completely give up the death penalty. Regards, Len

John F · Post by **John F** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 6:16 am

Lenny, you've suggested that capital punishment is OK because a majority of states enable it. In response I point out that a majority of nations do not, including the nations most like us. Both comparisons are equally relevant; or if one is irrelevant, so is the other.

Capital punishment is a moral issue, one of the biggest in human rights, along with slavery and torture - to mention two other despicable practices that our country has been guilty of in the distant and not so distant past. It's completely appropriate to show that where the moral issue of capital punishment is concerned, we are on the side of the devils rather than the angels. Is that really where you want your state and your nation to be?

That we are a democratic country only makes it worse. The people of China have no say in how they are governed, including judicial punishments, but we do, and we are morally responsible for it. We are accomplices in our nation's crimes against humanity - at least, those of us who who support and vote for those crimes. We can't claim credit for the good things we do without accepting blame for the bad.

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 7:41 am

John F wrote:Lenny, you've suggested that capital punishment is OK because a majority of states enable it. ...Capital punishment is a moral issue, one of the biggest in human rights, along with slavery and torture - to mention two other despicable practices that our country has been guilty of in the distant and not so distant past. ...we are on the side of the devils rather than the angels. Is that really where you want your state and your nation to be?

It's not that capital punishment is okay because it's still law in most states-even if only 2 states left it in place I'd be for capital punishment--the thing is that I'm glad it still exists in most states-sorry NJ doesn't have it. Slavery and torture are despicable-nothing to do with capital punishment-disagree with you on being on the side of the devils-yes I want my state and/or country to use capital punishment on people like McVeigh. Regards, Len

rwetmore · Post by **rwetmore** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 9:33 am

lennygoran wrote:Slavery and torture are despicable-nothing to do with capital punishment-disagree with you on being on the side of the devils-yes I want my state and/or country to use capital punishment on people like McVeigh. Regards, Len

The problem is the law must be applied equally to everyone and the death penalty can't be 'reserved' only for the so-called McVeigh's of the country. While I certainly think the death penalty deters the crime of capital murder, I don't like it and don't feel comfortable with it because of the very real possibility of an innocent person being executed for a crime they didn't actually commit. The court system is far from perfect and mistakes are made quite often, especially with minority defendants (i.e. African Americans in particular).

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 7:14 pm

rwetmore wrote:
The problem is the law must be applied equally to everyone and the death penalty can't be 'reserved' only for the so-called McVeigh's of the country.

Well should McVeigh have been executed or not-if you say say he shouldn't have been executed please explain why not. Regards, Len

piston · Post by **piston** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 8:03 pm

A lot of crimes are absolutely horrible and not a few horrible killers have actually asked to be executed! But who said that execution was the most terrible punishment for a horrible criminal?! Confinement for life, without any chance of parole, sounds more terrible to me than execution. We should ask Charles Manson and Leonard Pelletier, now that they're on their last mile, what they would have preferred....

My take on this issue is that it's a matter of economics more than a moral issue. The 32 states that still favor the death penalty don't want to be spending tax-payers money for years on such criminals. It's not about philosophy at all!

piston · Post by **piston** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 8:42 pm

We just went through a "perfect" psychopath case in this area. The victim, a teenager, was killed a mile or two from where I live. The criminal, a 21-year old Franco-American wanted to stage a kidnapping and be the hero who found the kidnapped girl. He strangled her and was caught. For the young girl who was deceived on new media, drawn into his murderous web, and killed on a spot where the river flows so hard that it covers much sound, it was as horrible as what Charles Manson and his crazy followers did. Kyle Dube is a psychopath and we, taxpayers of Maine, will be paying for his incarceration for the next ... you guess! He's young, did not manifest any feeling as the sentence was read, and may not have in him any feelings at all:

jbuck919 · Post by **jbuck919** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:35 pm

If it is any consideration, it is a well-known fact that pursuing the death penalty costs the state more than incarceration. Again, this young man's execution would satisfy some need for revenge in some people's guts (which is, metaphorically, where they do their thinking on these matters) while being entirely in contradiction to the necessary principle of law, which has prevailed in advanced countries for a long time now, that satisfying private vengeance, and by extension more public vengeful outcry in notorious cases, has no place in the administration of justice. Arguments in favor of killing someone who has committed a crime are rationalizations that there must be some good reason for doing it when the motivation is entirely base. I do not understand why people who allow a base and unworthy motivation of such consequence to rule their thinking are unashamed openly to admit it, when they would be likely to keep it a secret if they wished they could watch a legal dog or c-o-c-k fight.

piston · Post by **piston** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 11:10 pm

I sure would like to see your findings on that initial assertion. The average fee to cover the cost of a federal prison convict a couple of years ago was closing in on $29,000. Wishing Dube a long (but obviously not good) long life, to 81, that cost, assuming no major increase in the next sixty years (an unrealistic assumption), would amount to 1,740,000 dollars. I realize that lawyers make a "killing" prolonging the execution of a death sentence for as long as they can, but that's a matter that can be addressed through government rules and regulations; it has nothing to do with the annual cost of providing for a federal convict.

jbuck919 · Post by **jbuck919** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 11:56 pm

piston wrote:I sure would like to see your findings on that initial assertion. The average fee to cover the cost of a federal prison convict a couple of years ago was closing in on $29,000. Wishing Dube a long (but obviously not good) long life, to 81, that cost, assuming no major increase in the next sixty years (an unrealistic assumption), would amount to 1,740,000 dollars. I realize that lawyers make a "killing" prolonging the execution of a death sentence for as long as they can, but that's a matter that can be addressed through government rules and regulations; it has nothing to do with the annual cost of providing for a federal convict.

I can't believe you don't know this. It is not even close.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty

Those who want a death penalty and actually to apply it don't care about the disadvantageous economic effects even when they know about them because to them the "principle" of being able to employ the death penalty for particularly heinous or repugnant crimes is more important than mere financial considerations. But then, the same people continue to argue on the basis of pure and unsupportable assumption with no evidence behind it that executing such killers has the advantageous effect of deterring such crimes. These are true believers in the religious mode, like those who believe that prayers are answered. No bad outcome can shake their faith in the belief, and at the same they either make up or assign a false cause-and-effect character to any favorable outcome to give the belief phony positive support.

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 4:12 am

piston wrote:A lot of crimes are absolutely horrible and not a few horrible killers have actually asked to be executed! ...My take on this issue is that it's a matter of economics more than a moral issue.

My feeling is that it should not be the murderer's choice to decide. On the economics it's very costly to keep these appeals on the capital punishment dragging on but from a moral point of view to have not fried McVeigh would have been completely unjust imo-it's an economic cost I'm willing to pay for. Regards, Len

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 4:19 am

jbuck919 wrote: I do not understand why people who allow a base and unworthy motivation of such consequence to rule their thinking are unashamed openly to admit it, when they would be likely to keep it a secret if they wished they could watch a legal dog or c-o-c-k fight.

Disagree completely with your analogy-the dogs are innocent animals being subjected to brutality-the death penalty is a valid attempt to seek totally understandable retribution--those victims families who have suffered so much are definitely entitled to see people like McVeigh executed--why should he have lived. Regards, Len

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 4:22 am

piston wrote: I realize that lawyers make a "killing" prolonging the execution of a death sentence for as long as they can, but that's a matter that can be addressed through government rules and regulations; it has nothing to do with the annual cost of providing for a federal convict.

Agree with you here-many big name lawyers take these cases on on get incredible publicity-this death penalty dragging on and on is terrible imo. Regards, Len

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 4:25 am

jbuck919 wrote: Those who want a death penalty and actually to apply it don't care about the disadvantageous economic effects even when they know about them because to them the "principle" of being able to employ the death penalty for particularly heinous or repugnant crimes is more important than mere financial considerations. But then, the same people continue to argue on the basis of pure and unsupportable assumption with no evidence behind it that executing such killers has the advantageous effect of deterring such crimes. These are true believers in the religious mode, like those who believe that prayers are answered.

On the economics I'm in that first belief you mention-it is costly but justice must be done-McVeigh-type people have to be executed. On bringing in religion you must know by now that for me it doesn't enter in at all. Regards, Len [agnostic]

rwetmore · Post by **rwetmore** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 11:42 am

lennygoran wrote:Well should McVeigh have been executed or not-if you say say he shouldn't have been executed please explain why not. Regards, Len

I think anyone who actually commits capital murder deserves to be executed; however, that's not my point, which was that the court system is no where near reliable enough to ensure that an innocent person wouldn't be executed for a murder they didn't actually commit. For that reason, I don't like and don't feel comfortable with the death penalty.

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 8:37 pm

rwetmore wrote: For that reason, I don't like and don't feel comfortable with the death penalty.

You and I disagree to some extent-in McVeigh's case there's no doubt he did it. And now we have great DNA scientific tools to make sure we don't execute innocents--if there is doubt on evidence by all means don't execute. Regards, Len

Chalkperson · Post by **Chalkperson** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 8:45 pm

The other countries who execute people do it in a relatively humane way, by comparison the US creates a ritual that causes agonizing torture in the condemned, decades of legal appeals, last minute reprieves. The segregation a week or more before, moving from cell to cell etc

Worse still they botch up the executions due to lack of the correct drugs.

Whilst I'd agree some cases warrant it, you can't pick and choose. I'm 100% against it.

In the UK, if memory serves, hanging was banned in 1969, but High Treason or Regicide remained on the books until 1998 or 99

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 5:07 am

Chalkperson wrote:The other countries who execute people do it in a relatively humane way, by comparison the US creates a ritual that causes agonizing torture in the condemned...Whilst I'd agree some cases warrant it, you can't pick and choose. I'm 100% against it.

I can support finding a way that's gets it over as quickly as possible-I'm not for torture but otoh I'm not too concerned if these monsters undergo a little pain to get the job done. We agree on there being cases that warrant it but I say we can pick and choose-for example they executed McVeigh and that Washington DC sniper and I was all for that. Regards, Len

John F · Post by **John F** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 6:41 am

What Chalkie means, I think, is that we should not decide individually, for reasons of our own, which convicts we want to kill and which we would permit to stay alive. That's not how the law is supposed to work, but too often it's what happens. Indeed, it's what you are talking about.

When I was at W.W. Norton, we published a book by Charles L. Black titled "Capital Punishment: The Inevitability of Caprice and Mistake." (Black was professor of constitutional law at Yale University.) Not only is the book still in print, but it has been published in an augmented second edition; things haven't gotten better since then. Caprice is still a factor and so is mistake; DNA testing does not eliminate all mistakes, and in some cases the states have opposed and courts have ruled against allowing new DNA-based evidence to be introduced in an appeal.

You like to point to a couple of specific cases in which you personally believe the felon deserved to die. But even the McVeigh case is tainted, since only he was sentenced to death and his accomplice Terry Nichols was not. Seven years after Nichols was convicted on federal charges, the State of Oklahoma tried him again seeking the death penalty; the jury deadlocked and the judge decided for life imprisonment. The fact that the jurors couldn't agree shows that they were moved by individual feelings rather than logic - in effect, by caprice.

As for the Washington DC sniper, he killed seven people in Maryland and three in Virginia, injuring three others, in a period of three weeks. He was tried in both states, sentenced to life imprisonment in Maryland and death in Virginia though he had killed less than half as many as in Maryland; eventually he was executed. If he had been caught within a week, when he hadn't yet killed anybody in Virginia, he would be alive today. Meanwhile, Ted Kaczinsky, the unabomber, sent out sixteen letter bombs over a period of 17 years which, luckily, killed only three but injured 23 others. He pleaded guilty to all charges but was sentenced to life imprisonment.

These and countless other cases highlight how arbitrary it has been whether or not the death penalty has been sought and, when sought, whether it has been imposed. Differences between federal and state laws, and among the laws of the 50 states, insure that essentially the same crime will not be punished consistently. Caprice is built into American criminal justice and cannot be taken out of it. For that reason if no other - and there are plenty of other reasons - the death penalty is inherently unjust, whether or not you may feel it is justified in certain cases that particularly offend you.

The long delays between imposing the death sentence and carrying it out, which Chalkie complains about, are a recognition in America that the state must not wrongly put someone to death. That is the ultimate injustice, and in this country we go to great lengths and expense to try and prevent it. Even so, we sometimes fail. Chalkie's claim that this delay is not humane is most likely based on the assumption that no mistake has been made and no injustice will be done in killing the prisoner. I doubt many on death row would agree; I certainly wouldn't if it were me. Where there's life, there's hope.

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 8:29 am

John F wrote:

The long delays between imposing the death sentence and carrying it out, which Chalkie complains about, are a recognition in America that the state must not wrongly put someone to death. That is the ultimate injustice, and in this country we go to great lengths and expense to try and prevent it. Even so, we sometimes fail.

Well thanks for such a well written argument--I of course don't want any innocent executed-there's no doubt McVeigh was guilty and it was proper for him to be executed. I certainly don't like long drawn out delays but recognize we have to be sure before we use capital punishment. I wouldn't discount DNA-science has made amazing strides in this area as far as what I've seen. Regards, Len

John F · Post by **John F** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 10:05 am

lennygoran wrote:Well thanks for such a well written argument--I of course don't want any innocent executed-there's no doubt McVeigh was guilty and it was proper for him to be executed.

The issue isn't whether he was guilty, but I've argued that it was questionable for him to be executed. You'll never agree to that, of course.

lennygoran wrote:I wouldn't discount DNA-science has made amazing strides in this area as far as what I've seen.

I haven't discounted DNA results. But they don't apply to all cases, they don't eliminate all mistakes, and they aren't always allowed to be used.

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 11:32 am

No system is absolutely perfect but there can't possibly be any error in McVeigh's case-it's good that he was executed-at least a little justice for the loved ones of all the victims he murdered. Regards, Len

John F · Post by **John F** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 12:39 pm

Len, this discussion isn't about Timothy McVeigh, it's about the death penalty generally. As for "justice for the loved ones of all the victims he murdered," you aren't talking about justice, you're talking about revenge, a primitive and immoral objective. Neither thay nor you nor anybody else has gained anything worth having from McVeigh being dead. The government saved some $$$ they would have spent to maintain him in prison - less than a penny from each of us. Not worth a human being's life.

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 3:55 pm

John F wrote:Len, this discussion isn't about Timothy McVeigh, it's about the death penalty generally. As for "justice for the loved ones of all the victims he murdered," you aren't talking about justice, you're talking about revenge, a primitive and immoral objective. Neither thay nor you nor anybody else has gained anything worth having from McVeigh being dead. The government saved some $$$ they would have spent to maintain him in prison - less than a penny from each of us. Not worth a human being's life.

John I disagree with just about everything in your message. Regards, Len

John F · Post by **John F** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 2:24 pm

Since I disagree with everything you've said about capital punishment, except that innocent people shouldn't be killed by mistake. I guess that makes us even.

jbuck919 · Post by **jbuck919** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 4:41 pm

This seems to contradict my assertion that most people want the death penalty and that it is courts or dpcmentary guarantors of human rights that forbid it/color. Oh well, this is Boston, hardly the real world.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Most Boston Residents Prefer Life Term Over Death Penalty in Marathon Case, Poll Shows

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYEMARCH 23, 2015

BOSTON — Despite this city’s immersion in a trial that is replaying the horrific details of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, the vast majority of Bostonians say in a new poll that if Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the admitted bomber, is found guilty, he should be sent to prison for life and not condemned to death.

Given the choice, 62 percent of Boston voters said they would sentence Mr. Tsarnaev to prison for the rest of his life without the possibility of parole, while 27 percent said he should be put to death, according to a poll released Monday by WBUR, Boston’s NPR news station.

Previous polls have shown Bostonians opposing the death penalty for Mr. Tsarnaev. A Boston Globe survey conducted in September 2013, five months after the bombings, found that 57 percent favored life in prison while 33 percent wanted him put to death.

But the WBUR poll is the first to be conducted since Mr. Tsarnaev’s lawyers admitted this month that he had participated in the crimes. And it was conducted in the midst of his trial, which has included survivors recounting the graphic details of their limbs being blown off and of loved ones being killed.
Continue reading the main story
Boston Bombing Trial, Week by Week

The poll clearly shows that Boston voters have nonetheless held firm on his potential punishment, underscoring the enduring depth of sentiment here against the death penalty.

Steve Koczela, president of the MassINC Polling Group, which conducted the survey for WBUR, said he initially expected to find that support for the death penalty had intensified, given the grim testimony about the bombings, the worst terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

But, he said, the poll’s results reflect the region’s fundamental liberalism and its longtime opposition to capital punishment.

“It seems voters stuck to their core values,” Mr. Koczela said.

New England was in the forefront of the movement to abolish capital punishment in the mid-1800s. Massachusetts did not do so until 1984. But the state has not carried out an execution since 1947. And the state legislature has withstood attempts to revive the death penalty, even in the immediate aftermath of the marathon bombings.

Mr. Tsarnaev is facing death now because he has been charged under federal law, not state law. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who personally opposes the death penalty, nonetheless authorized it for Mr. Tsarnaev, saying that “the nature of the conduct at issue and the resultant harm compel this decision.” The Justice Department is determined to get a death sentence and has refused overtures from Mr. Tsarnaev to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence.

Opinion here stands in sharp contrast to that of the nation as a whole. The most recent Gallup survey, from October, says that 63 percent of Americans support the death penalty for convicted murderers. Gallup has not polled nationally on whether Mr. Tsarnaev specifically should be given life or death.

But generally, legal experts say, the Northeast is the least hospitable section of the country to the death penalty. Since 1976, when the Supreme Court reinstated it, the Northeast has carried out four executions, one in Connecticut and three in Pennsylvania; the South, by contrast, has carried out 1,137, with 518 in Texas alone.

Analysts say that several factors explain the attitudes here. John Donohue, a professor at Stanford Law School, who was involved in death penalty research while teaching at Yale, said that liberal politics and higher education, both hallmarks of New England, correlate with anti-death penalty sentiment. In addition, he said, New England has relatively low rates of crime, so fewer people here call for death as punishment.

Austin Sarat, a professor of jurisprudence at Amherst College in Massachusetts, said attitudes in New England toward the death penalty tended to be “utilitarian.”

“People think about whether it works, whether it deters crime, whether it makes us safer,” Mr. Sarat said.

And, he noted, Rhode Island and Massachusetts have the nation’s highest rates per capita of Roman Catholics. Even though church attendance here is relatively low, he said, “the American Catholic Church’s anti-death penalty position has played a role in sustaining the opposition.”

The WBUR poll found that opposition toward the death penalty was not as great in the Boston metropolitan region as it was in the city itself, but those in the metro area still preferred a sentence of life in prison over death: 49 percent favored sending Mr. Tsarnaev to prison for life, while 38 percent opted for death.

This might hearten the defense, but the poll does not necessarily reflect the views of the jurors who will decide the case. Only those who are open to imposing the death penalty can sit on the jury, while those who oppose it are excluded.

The poll interviewed a total of 504 registered voters from March 16 to 18 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points. It interviewed 229 voters in the city of Boston; that portion of the poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus seven percentage points.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/us/mo ... shows.html

piston · Post by **piston** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 7:13 pm

And, meanwhile, Utah, the governor and legislature, has approved the firing squad if the drug cocktail is not on hand. Apparently, some death row convicts have requested that in the past, the firing squad, over other technologies. It is, after all, a question of suddenly enforcing, without any snag, what has been ordered by a judge: the death penalty.

John F · Post by **John F** » Wed Mar 25, 2015 7:47 am

That would be a retrogression of nearly 40 years, to when Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad after he refused to appeal his death sentence and wanted it carried out. Norman Mailer wrote a book about it, "The Executioner's Song."

Chalkperson · Post by **Chalkperson** » Wed Mar 25, 2015 9:32 pm

John F wrote:What Chalkie means, I think, is that we should not decide individually, for reasons of our own, which convicts we want to kill and which we would permit to stay alive. That's not how the law is supposed to work, but too often it's what happens. Indeed, it's what you are talking about.

When I was at W.W. Norton, we published a book by Charles L. Black titled "Capital Punishment: The Inevitability of Caprice and Mistake." (Black was professor of constitutional law at Yale University.) Not only is the book still in print, but it has been published in an augmented second edition; things haven't gotten better since then. Caprice is still a factor and so is mistake; DNA testing does not eliminate all mistakes, and in some cases the states have opposed and courts have ruled against allowing new DNA-based evidence to be introduced in an appeal.

You like to point to a couple of specific cases in which you personally believe the felon deserved to die. But even the McVeigh case is tainted, since only he was sentenced to death and his accomplice Terry Nichols was not. Seven years after Nichols was convicted on federal charges, the State of Oklahoma tried him again seeking the death penalty; the jury deadlocked and the judge decided for life imprisonment. The fact that the jurors couldn't agree shows that they were moved by individual feelings rather than logic - in effect, by caprice.

As for the Washington DC sniper, he killed seven people in Maryland and three in Virginia, injuring three others, in a period of three weeks. He was tried in both states, sentenced to life imprisonment in Maryland and death in Virginia though he had killed less than half as many as in Maryland; eventually he was executed. If he had been caught within a week, when he hadn't yet killed anybody in Virginia, he would be alive today. Meanwhile, Ted Kaczinsky, the unabomber, sent out sixteen letter bombs over a period of 17 years which, luckily, killed only three but injured 23 others. He pleaded guilty to all charges but was sentenced to life imprisonment.

These and countless other cases highlight how arbitrary it has been whether or not the death penalty has been sought and, when sought, whether it has been imposed. Differences between federal and state laws, and among the laws of the 50 states, insure that essentially the same crime will not be punished consistently. Caprice is built into American criminal justice and cannot be taken out of it. For that reason if no other - and there are plenty of other reasons - the death penalty is inherently unjust, whether or not you may feel it is justified in certain cases that particularly offend you.

The long delays between imposing the death sentence and carrying it out, which Chalkie complains about, are a recognition in America that the state must not wrongly put someone to death. That is the ultimate injustice, and in this country we go to great lengths and expense to try and prevent it. Even so, we sometimes fail. Chalkie's claim that this delay is not humane is most likely based on the assumption that no mistake has been made and no injustice will be done in killing the prisoner. I doubt many on death row would agree; I certainly wouldn't if it were me. Where there's life, there's hope.

Correct in the first paragraph.

In the last paragraph i'm really referring to the prison ritual involved in the execution, the prisoner is part of a huge and humiliating process, whereas in the UK Albert Pierrepoint executed a condemned prisoner about 14 seconds after entering the death cell.

The wall of the cell swung open revealing the Gallows, the prisoner walked about twelve steps, and was hung as swiftly as possible.

Chalkperson · Post by **Chalkperson** » Wed Mar 25, 2015 9:35 pm

John F wrote:That would be a retrogression of nearly 40 years, to when Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad after he refused to appeal his death sentence and wanted it carried out. Norman Mailer wrote a book about it, "The Executioner's Song."

Nope, five years, a man was executed by Firing Squad in Utah in 2010

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronnie_Lee_Gardner

John F · Post by **John F** » Thu Mar 26, 2015 4:09 am

Ah, I missed that one. Quite a story - among other things, Wikipedia says he chose the method of his own execution, and that his "Mormon heritage" had something to do with it.

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Thu Mar 26, 2015 7:25 am

Another case I'm hoping gets some Japanese people executed is this one-it's taken way too long to get it finished:

"On 27 November 2004, all the Aum trials concluded, excluding Asahara's, as the death sentence of Seiiichi Endo was upheld by Japan's Supreme Court. As a result, among a total of 189 members indicted, 13 were sentenced to death, five were sentenced to life in prison, 80 were given prison sentences of various lengths, 87 received suspended sentences, two were fined, and one was found not guilty."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subw ... #Aftermath

"In June 2012, Asahara's execution was postponed due to further arrests of Aum Shinrikyo members.[1"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoko_Asah ... _and_trial

Regards, Len

parsifal · Post by **parsifal** » Fri Mar 27, 2015 2:42 am

We have heard of how chemical preparations have lenghtened the agony of the sentenced. European enterprices refuse for ethical reasons to send their products to American prisons. Now they experiment with combinations of different preparations. The result is inhuman executions not unlike torture. These atrocities have not functioned as alarm clocks. Now the state of Utah have reintroduced firing squads. Why not chop off their heads. Axes are always available. It is something of barbarism of a state to take on the rights to kill people captured, disarmed and put into safety.
Punishment, yes, but not this.

Kjell Nilsson

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Fri Mar 27, 2015 5:07 am

parsifal wrote: It is something of barbarism of a state to take on the rights to kill people captured, disarmed and put into safety. Punishment, yes, but not this.

Disagree it's only just that people who commit these terrible crimes be executed-they do not deserve to live, to breath, to enjoy eating, sleeping, reading, TV, etc. We're not talking revenge but retribution. Regards, Len

Chalkperson · Post by **Chalkperson** » Sat Mar 28, 2015 3:10 pm

lennygoran wrote:
parsifal wrote: It is something of barbarism of a state to take on the rights to kill people captured, disarmed and put into safety. Punishment, yes, but not this.
Disagree it's only just that people who commit these terrible crimes be executed-they do not deserve to live, to breath, to enjoy eating, sleeping, reading, TV, etc. We're not talking revenge but retribution. Regards, Len

Lenny, the role you are taking is that of a King, the one chooses who lives and who dies.

This is the modern world, a rule must be a rule, no exceptions based on circumstances.

You must choose, they all die, or preferably, none die.

lennygoran · Post by **lennygoran** » Sat Mar 28, 2015 3:22 pm

Chalkperson wrote: Lenny, the role you are taking is that of a King, the one chooses who lives and who dies....
You must choose, they all die, or preferably, none die.

Chalkie respectively disagree-I'm not being a king acting alone-this is what society presently favors-if the law changed I certainly would take revenge and the law into my own hands. Also I disagree on all or none-some cases merit some leniency-otoh in some of the most horrendous crimes like McVeigh capital punishment is fair, just and deserved. Regards, Len

piston · Post by **piston** » Sat Mar 28, 2015 7:18 pm

And it's a state decision, isn't it? Do we want the fed to impose central authority on that question too?! If 80 percent or more of the people of Utah are in support of the death penalty, they will not bow down to a market strategy consisting in depriving them of a lethal drug; they'll find other ways to execute. Personally, with the gun fire power on hand today, I think that execution by firing squad is as definitive, if not more immediate, than any other technology.

John F · Post by **John F** » Wed Apr 01, 2015 8:06 am

The Supreme Court’s Death Trap
APRIL 1, 2015
Linda Greenhouse

You wouldn’t know it from the death penalty proceeding about to take place in the Boston Marathon case, or from Utah’s reauthorization of the firing squad, or the spate of botched lethal injections, but capital punishment in the United States is becoming vestigial.

The number of death sentences imposed last year, 72, was the lowest in 40 years. The number of executions, 35, was the lowest since 1994, less than half the modern peak of 98, reached in 1999. Seven states, the fewest in 25 years, carried out executions.

California has the country’s biggest death row, with more than 700 inmates. Many more of them die of natural causes — two since mid-March — than by execution. Last July, a federal district judge, Cormac J. Carney, concluding that California’s death penalty had become “dysfunctional,” “random” and devoid of “penological purpose,” declared it unconstitutional; the state is appealing.

But if there’s one place that seems to stand apart from the tide of disenchantment with capital punishment, it’s the Supreme Court. That’s not to say that the court hasn’t issued decisions that have limited the application of the death penalty: Atkins v. Virginia in 2002 ruled out executing defendants with intellectual disability; Roper v. Simmons in 2005 prohibited executing those who murdered before the age of 18; and Kennedy v. Louisiana in 2008 held that states could not make the rape of a child a death-eligible offense.

Those were all closely fought cases, the last two decided by votes of 5 to 4. And in other, less visible cases, the court appears to be floundering, ever more tightly enmeshed in what Justice Harry A. Blackmun called the machinery of death. Recent episodes have been both mystifying to the public and embarrassing to the court.

Adam Liptak, the Supreme Court correspondent for The Times, has highlighted the disturbing way the court handled a challenge to Missouri’s lethal-injection protocol back in January: first, over four dissenting votes, permitting the state to execute Charles F. Warner, one of four inmates who had filed appeals, only to agree a week later to hear the appeals of three identically situated inmates. The court then granted stays of execution to the three and will hear their case, Glossip v. Gross, on April 29.

That bungled judicial performance reflected the fact that while it takes only four justices to agree to hear a case, granting a stay of execution (or a stay of any lower court’s decision) takes five. The distance between four and five can be a lethal chasm.

Eric M. Freedman, a Hofstra University law professor and longtime student of the death penalty, has proposed making four votes sufficient for a stay of execution while any appeal is pending. It’s a sensible idea that could save the court from itself. But a majority appears untroubled by the current practice. On Feb. 10, the court turned down a stay of execution for another Missouri inmate, Walter T. Storey, over the same four dissenting votes: Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Missouri executed Mr. Storey the next day.

A Texas death-row inmate, Lester Leroy Bower Jr., managed to win a stay of execution in February to enable the justices to decide whether to hear his challenge to the state courts’ handling of his mitigating evidence. Last week, the Supreme Court turned down his appeal, thus dissolving the stay, over the dissenting votes of Justices Breyer, Ginsburg and Sotomayor; Justice Breyer, not given to overstatement, wrote that “the error here is glaring.” Since at least two others must have voted for the stay, where were they? Perhaps after carefully considering the merits of Mr. Bower’s appeal, they found it insufficient. Fair enough. But shouldn’t they have felt moved to tell us something — anything?

An argument on Monday was simply dispiriting. A Louisiana inmate, Kevan Brumfield, with an I.Q. of 75, was sentenced to death before the Atkins decision barred the execution of mentally disabled people. At trial, his lawyer had presented some evidence of his disability, but not in the detail a court would expect in the post-Atkins world. The question for the justices in Brumfield v. Cain was whether he should have received a new hearing. The obvious answer would seem to be: Of course, why on earth not? But the justices seemed more concerned about whether Mr. Brumfield and his lawyer were trying to game the system.

In 2008, two years before he retired, Justice John Paul Stevens renounced the death penalty. His nuanced opinion in Baze v. Rees rewards rereading. No current justice has taken up the call. I’m not so naïve as to predict that a majority of the Supreme Court will declare the death penalty unconstitutional anytime soon. But the voice of even one member of the court could set a clarifying marker to which others would have to respond. And it just might over time point the way to freeing the court — and the rest of us — from the machinery of death.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/01/opini ... -trap.html

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