Capital Punishment
walter nusbaum nusbaum@iglobal.net
Sun, 1 Mar 1998 16:41:08 -0600 (00888813668, 19980301224107093.AAA145@nusbaum.iglobal.net)
Walt(3/1)
JAMES
At 12:56 PM 3/1/98 -0800, James M. Breithaupt wrote:
>It is fundamental to the implied social contract between citizens
>and their government that the government will take measures to separate
>the practicing criminal from the rest of society.
> We often hear of crime and punishment, capital punishment, etc.
>Nowhere in that social contract is government given permission to
>"punish" someone because they act in ways contrary to societal norms.
WALT
"Punishment" of criminals is spelled out in the statutes and laws of every
state in the union. They were installed by elected officials acting in a
manner that was essentially "the will of the people".
JAMES
>We speak of penitentiary as if the inmate is supposed to be undergoing
>so sort of penance. Why? True, all of them are sorry, not penitent,
>that they got caught doing whatever they did. Some are genuinely sorry
>for their crimes and stand a chance of being rehabilitated. If prison
>reform is ever going to work, rehabilitation not punishment must be the
>goal.
WALT
Rehabilitation is indeed a worthy goal, but can you provide statistics that
show the present-day rehab programs reduce recidivism by any significant
amount, while considering the costs involved?
JAMES
>Punishment is returned to society with considerable interest. You
>are not protecting society with capital punishment. Such brutality only
>brutalizes society and we are doing the same thing that we find so
>abhorrent in the murderer.
WALT
How does capital punishment "brutalize" society? There has been talk of the
innocent lives taken by the state, and this is a horrible tragedy. What has
not been mentioned are the thugs who have been set free by the system, only
to find other innocent victims to kill/rape. etc.
JAMES
>The fact is that we are often seeking revenge.
>Oklahoma City was a tragedy that was precipitated by an earlier
>tragedy in Waco, Texas with the government sponsered murder of 95
>religious eccentrics. No one was ever charged in what, at its best, was
>gross stupidity on the part of federal law enforcement officials. This
>prompted a sense of rage in McVeigh who responded by killing all those
>people in the federal building in Oklahoma City. We seem not to have
>any deeply ingrained sense of justice in this country because if we did
>neither Waco or Oklahoma City would have happened.
WALT
You are correct in part, but two wrongs do not make a right. The first was
precipitated when Federal Agents were killed by the Waco "eccentrics", who
fired the first shots. In the second, McVeigh cooly planned and executed the
murder of innocent people who had no connection whatsoever with Waco.
JAMES
Though posturing to the contrary, we have no deeply ingrained
>respect for life. First we dehumanize those we don't like and then we
>feel somehow justified when they are destroyed as in Waco.
(Snip)
>The execution of Karla Faye Tucker served no purpose except to show
>the horror of the death penalty. She was not the same person who had
>weilded a pickaxe 15 years before and society was poorly served with her
>execution. We had the spectacle of hearing some degenerates cheer when
>they heard she was dead and when the execution was proceeding.
WALT
Ms. Tucker was the first woman to be executed since the *civil war*. She
brutally murdered two people, and after some fifteen years she finally ran
out of appeals, and the law was ultimately invoked. You may rant about the
death penalty as you wish, or you can act to get it abolished.
(Snip)
JAMES
>It is a mistake to have capital punishment. George Bush, Jr.
>supposedly couldn't figure out a way to spare Karla Faye when it would
>have been rather simple to do.
WALT
Governor Bush could have done nothing more than delay the exection for
thirty more days, at which time the sentence would have been carried out.
FWIW, I side with Farrell on executions and Doug(as regards the present day
country club atmosphere of today's prisons). I believe that with the
advances in science, such as DNA testing, that the death penalty can be
accurately and appropriately applied. There are still problems with
super-aggressive prosecutors, lying witneses, and imperfect juries.
Perhaps, if all members of the prosecution, including witnesses, the judge,
and the jury were required to gather at the site of the execution, and each
push a separate button on command, only one of which would start the lethal
injection, then it might give them pause when considering the death penalty.
One more "FWIW": From Forbes, 2/23/98, pp.14, "In 1997 Texas granted parole
to just 17% of eligible prisoners, compared to 79% in 1992. Texas has beaten
the national average in crime reduction, with crimes down 27% versus 14%
nationally from 1991 through 1996, the latest period for which figures are
available." I do not mean to imply that the death sentence in any way
correlates to the reduction in crime, only that harsher sentences apparently
do, if for no other reason than to keep the bad guys off the streets.
Best wishes,
Walt