filtherton

Ummmm, they're still dying.

SecretMethod70

Hey now, lethal injection is a "humane" form of punishment! *cough*bullshit*cough*

__________________
Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

wombatman

Sorry about that Ustwo. It slipped my mind when I first posted, and I added the edit there within 20 seconds or so. Apparently not fast enough, though. Again, my apologies.

abaya

So, what is the point of posting these photos? No one is saying that these people aren't dead. The questions are whether or not Tookie was indeed guilty, and also whether or not capital punishment is a fair and effective (not vengeful, since that's not what justice is supposed to be) punisment.

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for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
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Sultana

Exactly. Death Row is not in any way intended as a place of rehabilitation, it's a holding tank.

I am greatly saddened by the fact that prison - yes, supposed to be a place of rehab --is absolutely not doing *anything whatsofreaking ever* to rehab offenders. I understand it's a place of punishment as well, but punish offenders by making them contribute to society somehow, in unpleasant, manual-labor, whatever type ways. Locking them up and letting them rot is a complete waste, and accomplishes less than nothing. I do think America needs a wide-scale prison reform, and I can't imagine what in the world could bring that to pass.

I used to be all for the death penalty, but my views on that, like on many things I saw in black and white in my youth, is changing.

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"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath.
At night, the ice weasels come." -

Matt Groening

My goal? To fulfill my potential.

Ustwo

No problem, I should have known better, but after 'generic' "young man in pool of blood", and "older woman in bloody jeans" I wasn't expected "woman missing 1/3rd of face".

Buh bye Tookie, may you find your just reward.

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JustJess

There are attempts made to rehabilitate. My mom has taught in several prisons, and teaches them all kinds of things - from ABC's to history. It's just that on average, they just consider this "the price of doing business". It's not a deterrent. What do they always say about addicts and going to rehab centers? It won't work unless the person is dedicated to changing their lives. It's the same for prisoners - they are just hanging out, getting their 3 squares a day, and will go back to doing the same shit all over again. Because they don't want to change.

However, if prison wasn't so easy, perhaps they'd be less eager.

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Ustwo

Rehab was an experiment of 19th century America (its where we get the name penitentiary, as in doing penance) it has failed so far. I'm all for punishment modeling again, though if you wanted to use them as a form of slave labor I have no problems with that.

There is a time in ones life where the values of society can be instilled. I think few people are just geneticly 'bad' (though with some violent types I think this is true), but the problem is that by the time you get to prison many are beyond that stage. At this point we just lock them up so they can't hurt anyone else, and in some cases, kill them.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Mojo_PeiPei

How is that one prison in Arizona working out? They meals to feed the guard dogs costs more than to feed the prisoners. Also instead of being inside nice buildings, many prisoners are held in out door tent cities where they also do several hours of manual labor in the blistering heat. That sounds pretty legit to me.

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Sultana

I may have been unclear...I don't equate Death Row with prison (and prison's need for rehab). I also have no problem with punishment, but since most of the people in prison will be eventually released, it would benefit us all to instill some behavior modifications, via negative reinforcement, or rehab, or a combo, whatever works.

This is true, and inescapable.

__________________
"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath.
At night, the ice weasels come." -

Matt Groening

My goal? To fulfill my potential.

highthief

Welp, being against the death penalty in general, I can't agree with the execution.

In particular, if someone is genuinely doing good works to atone for their past sins, even if the scales don't balance out, I favour clemency. I see the death penalty as serving no purpose other than revenge, whereas if a person is doing good things for society to some degree, that does serve a purpose.

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Mojo_PeiPei

Tookie never apologized or atoned for the "sins" or "high crimes" of which he was found guilty, that being the brutal execution style killings of four people.

__________________
To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

santafe5000

He got what he deserved. Sad part is, it took so long to give him what the jury of his peer's decreed.

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When all else fails, QUIT.

smooth

The emprical evidence indicates that the death penatly is a short-lived deterrent, to the extent it deters at all.

Murders drop for a short period (1 to 2 months after) and then rise to higher levels thereafter. If anything, it seems to indicate that the death penalty is counter-productive. It isn't even a wash due to the fact that murders increase after the decrease.


But, having met many of Tookie's supporters in person, and knowing a handful of people who have worked with him, interviewed him, and know him as a person, as well as being on the floor of a number of people involved in the innocence project and other criminologists, in general, I need to point out the three main categories of beliefs surrounding this case:

1) people who believe in a general notion of punishment for rehabilitation.
These people believe that our sysem of punishment ought not to be based on retribution. They are general opponents of the death penatly. It could be based on practical reasons or moral reasons, but Tookie is less important to them than the overarching notion of abolishing the death penatly.

2) people who believe in Tookie's personal redemption
he ought to be given a chance to live based on his changing personal views and behavior, to these people. Most often, I find the people who have personally met him to hold this view.

3) people who are supporters of the message he sends to young children regarding gang violence. These people may or may not believe in the effectiveness of the death penatly as a deterrent, but they know first hand young boys who have mentioned Tookie as deciding factors in their desire to leave gang life. My wife, who works as a youth counselor as her day job, first learned of Tookie from a young boy. Whether his influence is overstated, or his creation of the crips is apocryphal (my personal belief), is immaterial in this portion of the debate. The reality is he has some influence, but unanswered is how much. I'm unaware of any studies on the issue (possible master's or doctorate thesis plug for budding criminologists, btw). One must decide for oneself whether his influence warrants clemency from death.


People may suscribe to one or all of these categories of beliefs.
Personally, I am opposed to the death penatly in general on both moral and utilitarian grounds. A close second to that is my belief that Tookie does create at least some social good due to his anti-gang messages. Lastly, and very distant as a fact to be honest, is the notion that he is reformed as a person. Not that I don't believe him, just that it isn't really relevent to me given my thoughts on the first two reasons.

Finally, I thinkan interesting scientific/biological case can be made that Tookie wasn't the same person as the one who comitted the crimes when he was a young man. If his personality has changed and if all the cells in his body have been replaced by new ones after nearly 30 years (and I'm aware of evidence suggesting this is so), then one could reasonably say that he wasn't the same person at all when he went to his death last night. Of course, this brings up matthew330's (valid, in my opinion) point that he shouldn't have been allowed to live long enough to become a different person. So there you go,

I voted that he should have received clemency.

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smooth

BTW,

I also think that if the victims' families needed this 30 years later to get over the pain and etc., then they have deeper issues they need help with. This is not intended to be a slight on them by any means, just that what they perceive to relieve their pain will over time in no way compensate and may even increase their feelings of guilt/pain or whatnot. Revenge in my experience certainly feels good, but I don't know how effective it is as a healing mechanism and certainly not after such a protracted period of time.

And, ustwo, rehabilitation has not been utizilzed in our penal system...and not in any correctional system to date, that I am aware of. While penitentiary does stem from the word, pennance, it definately did not equal rehab. Pennance meant sitting in a single cell praying to god until one's death (the usual punishment for all sorts of crimes in our early days of punishment). It certainly had no notions of forgiveness coupled with release into the community as a reformed person attached to it.

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"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

smooth

elphaba,

3 hots and a cot is jail time.

If he's been convicted and sentenced, he's in prison...which would be 3 smokes and a poke.

...just to add to your lexiCON and hopefully give you a slight smile...


(sorry folks, I read the first 1 1/2 pages, started answering some things, and then continued by reading backwards...)

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

Elphaba

Smooth, thank you for the excellent additions to this thread.

Elphaba

Quite a large one actually. Would it be so.

SecretMethod70

That's only sad if you have absolutely no interest in keeping innocent people from being put to death. Far too many people in my state and others have been proven innocent while sitting on death row, and many of them for quite a long time.

__________________
Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

Elphaba

Didn't DNA testing prove several death row prisoner's innocent, and a moratorium on capital punishment was instituted by Illinois' governor? I would hope that Texas would follow that lead.

troit

I am going to have to disagree with you - I think only a very...very small percentage of individuals are ever nominated so it has to mean something.

__________________
I've yet to dephile myself...

zz0011

Could it be in part because the death penalty usually doesn't get carried out for 25 years after the fact? Yeah, could be.

Speed up the retributive justice, and THEN let's talk about a deterrent effect [or perhaps we should say detergent].

That also might be a much more legit reason why some of the victim's loved ones have a hard time "getting over it." Their closure is delayed because we want to be a merciful and just society.

Except for those who suffered at the hands of a cold blooded killer.

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10th sig ~> "How many a dispute could have been deflated into a single paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms?" -- Aristotle

smooth

actually, the mother was interviewed tonight and she said she was only present because she thought she had to be. Even she didn't think she needed to see someone die to feel "closure."

In response to your quip about the deterrent effect of the death penalty, firstly you should read the scholarly studies on the subject before making firm decisions one way or the other. Secondly, you're wrong on the empirical data on the average length of stay on death row.

For Average length of stay in:
California: 16 to 17 years
Florida: 11.8 years
Texas: 10.4 years.

You can't take one high-profile case and conclude that's the average length of stay on death row, which is what you unfortunately evidently did.

Thirdly, simply because you think the death penatly would deter individuals from killing another human being, or even due to the fact it deters you, does not lead to an inference that killers would be detered. For a number of reasons, you can actually think this through on your own without my guidance, but for the sake of the thread: does the death penalty deter you from murdering? I suspect a wide variety of social factors lead you to conclude you ought not to kill. The death penatly is reserved for particular crimes: none of which are likely to be detered at all. Serial killers, killing in the commission of a felony, killing a public official, killing multiple people, and etc. People in those situations are not, for one or many reasons, bound by their everyday rationale that we expect most people to wind through in their decision making processes. Even in this example of Tookie Williams, we have a case of a young man under extremely high levels of peer pressure, pressure to prove machismo, and highly atognistic and hallucigenic, mind & physiologically altering substances--not a very good recipe for rational thought about the consequences of one's actions. If you want to argue, so what, he's responsible, that's fine and I may or may not agree, although such a stance is particulary irrelevent to what you are claiming: that ordinary, rational people will weigh the cost/benefit of their actions and decide that the death penatly is too great a cost for their actions. This all breaks down further when we consider that a) almost universally criminals don't expect to get caught, and b) even more problematic, the most rational thing a person can do when they are confronted with witnesses to their crimes is to remove the witnesses. Had the police not been able to retrieve the tape from the convenience store, Tookie may well have been out of prison today or imprisoned for a completley different matter. Looking at one of his particular crimes, in fact, his mistake wasn't killing the victim, it was a failure to eradicate enough evidence.

That's a far more scary thought to me personally. You can't have both simultaneously, either you have rational actors, and then they be sociopathic in order to think across social mores and act outside the bounds of normalicy, in which case deterrence would work but then you have someone able to think across variables while committing heinous crimes and act within the same time frame in a completely rational manner and eradicate evidence of their wrongdoing. Or you have irrational actors who would normally act according to the social boundaries, but are unable for one reason or another, in which case deterrence would not work. Have you read Catch-22? I propose the same condundrum is faced by your conception of criminality (a conception that is valid to some degree in criminology, I do have to add to be fair, but vastly outweighed by a number of equally or more plausable explanations for crime).

BTW, when you read those articles on the efficacy of the death penatly, you can also conjunct them with studies on punishment in general. There have been found to be 3 main factors in deterrence:
A) certainty
B) swiftness
C) severity

Certainty and swiftness are the two that explain the most variance. AH HA! you say, I was right--execute the filthy scum swiftly and we set a blatant and stunning example in the town square. Unfortunately, we find that severity doesn't actually do much for deterrence (except in my aforementioned point that it may actually be counterproductive)...that means a lengthy prison sentence, or even any sort of punishment that is bound to be certain and swift, does much more for deterrence than the most severe punishment can ever hope for.

Couple that with the fact that your claim left out--that people are executed fairly routinely, it's not that we have a particular 25 year period where we kill en masse--and we become hard pressed to recognize how a young or old murderer would care about who is murdered by the state. To have any kind of effect we'd have to ensure that every potential murderer knew the cause and effect of someone on deathrow (say commits a murder on Tuesday, goes to the chair on Friday). But then that leads us to one of the most important earlier points I made: if you have someone standing in a convenience store about to pull the trigger, but contemplating whether they are going to get caught at all, you almost never will have a murder to investigate anyway.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

zz0011

[1] Oh, sorry. 10 years. How speedy! My bad.

[2] I should have mentioned my bias. I don't care if it is a deterrent or not. I'm all for retributive justice.

[3] I'm glad the mom didn't need to be there for closure. But I hope you're not slamming those who might need it? No wait, I don't want a response. I can't read that much without pictures.

I'm sure you've guessed it already. I'm just such a neanderthal...

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10th sig ~> "How many a dispute could have been deflated into a single paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms?" -- Aristotle

smooth

Damn shame, I've got an amazingly sexy picture of my wife's ass right next to this comment, but you still missed it:



The mother confirmed my comments in her interview.

sexy picture - check
insightful comment - check
confirmation of comment's validity by the victim - check

have a pleasant evening, I'm off to finish my thesis...



BTW, I think you should look up the definition of retributive justice before claiming to be a proponent of it. I suggest starting with Kant. Your comments indicate you are a supporter of vengeance. They are two different concepts. If you were a retributionist, you would have to weigh the negatives of Tookie's life against the positives...and then you would join the ranks of the category I named that hinge their opposition to his death on the net benefit he has produced since his incarceration...a position I hold...and I'm almost positive you don't want to be in the same category as me

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

SecretMethod70

Again, a comment stating we ought to be faster with putting people to death on death row. I'd like to know, do you not care about putting innocent people to death then? This is truly an honest question. Since 1973, 116 people have been exonerated from death row, only 14 of them were exonerated due to DNA evidence, and their average length of stay on death row before exoneration was 9 years. As a total, there have been 1042 years of innocent imprisonment on death row - and that's only counting those who have been discovered. In my state, Illinois, 18 people have been exonerated from death row since 1973 and the system was shown to be so flawed that our former Republican governor, and former supporter of the death penalty commuted every single death sentence in Illinois to life in prison! (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/arti...id=45&did=1149)

If we were faster at administering the death penalty, most of those innocent or likely innocent people who were exonerated would have been put to death. Is this something you just don't care about? Do you consider this collateral damage? Are you willing to be put to death while innocent of the crime in order to maintain a speedy death penalty in the name of revenge against killers? I know I'm not.

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Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

jwoody

A lot of comments in this thread refer to 'putting innocent people to death' as a reason for abolishing death sentences.

I'd like to make my position clear by stating that I don't believe in killing people 100% guilty of any crime.... and I mean any crime.

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.

Mojo_PeiPei

Like Yasser Arafat?

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SecretMethod70

I agree, but I think the focus is on innocent people being put to death when debating about it because you either believe it's right to kill people who are guilty or you don't, and the fact that you and I don't isn't going to do anything to point out the problems with the death penalty to those who do. There are enough other serious problems that the debate can be had on many different levels. All of which come out in favor of removing the death penalty.

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Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

james t kirk

Canadian: I don't believe in the death penalty. Ever.

I used to be a strong beliver in the death penalty, from about age teen something to mid twenties. (I used to be strongly pro-life also). But since then I have mellowed, and I have realized that the world can be a fucked up place. I don't think that it serves humanity to execute a criminal, no matter how heinous (sp!) their crime. It only serves to lessen us as a species a little bit lower than we already are.

Besides, there have been too many incidences of the wrong guy being convicted for murder when they didn't do. I can think of several...

Steven Truscott, 14 convicted of muder in Ontario, sentenced to hang. Turns out, he didn't do. Spent 10 or so years in jail.

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/truscott/

Donald Marshall, Nova Scotia, convicted of murder. Turns out, he didn't do it. Released, died a few years ago.

http://www.cbc.ca/lifeandtimes/marshall.html

David Milgard, Saskatchewan, convicted of murder, spent almost 30 years in jail. Turns out the cops framed him, crown hid evidence that could have cleared him. DNA proved he didn't do it. Probably one of the most tragic cases EVER.

http://archives.radio-canada.ca/IDD-...ople/milgaard/

Guy Paul Morin.

Convicted of killing a young girl in 1992. Exonerated by DNA in 1995.

http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view...2/morin980202a

Can't imagine the hell he went through.

I saw a documentary on this one. Again, cops and crown attournies worked to frame him because the cops were "sure" that they had the right guy. Absolutely sick.

The one thing I will never ever ever forget was this fat woman who sat on the jury telling the show that she "knew" he was guilty because when he was testifying, he didn't look the jury in the eye.

Fuck the evidence, I "KNOW" he is guilty, my instincts tell me so.

There's four that I can think of in 5 minutes.

Oh, and add Reubin "Huricane" Carter to that list. There's 5 guys I can think of that were wrongfully committed of murder.

If it had been the United States, most of them would have probably been dead. And when the truth came out, it would have been, "whoops, sorry about that."

No fucking way do I trust juries to be infalable. Most of them are made up of morons too stupid to get out of jury duty.

No, keep them in jail for the rest of their lives, I don't care. But executions are just wrong. No different than the muslim extremists hacking off heads in my opinion.

crfpilot

Glad he's dead, sad it took so long.

As a Californian it pisses me off that it takes so long for a convicted murderer to be put to death, while I pay super high taxes on everything. Somebody says it costs more to execute someone than keep them alive in prison, bullshit! If it was up to me it would be a $.25 bullet in the head of this scum. 750 gang related murders last year, and that's only counting Los Angeles!! How are we as a society going to stop this freight train of violence? Can we deter these little scumbags? Maybe get there crackwhore mommas to start disciplining their children when they're young? How bout we start executing murderers, rapists, and child molestors (convicted with DNA evedince) within minutes of the gavel dropping. It should be televised on TV for everyone to watch. Maybe if these little fuckers realized that there is a consequence to their actions they'll get out and look for a job instead of killing each other and innocent bystanders over drug territory. At least once a month there is a story on the LA network news about some innocent child sitting in a car or playing in there yard and getting capped by some pussy gangster who runs away and probably never gets caught.

Our justice system is FUCKED right now. A couple years ago I sat in the jury on a murder trial. We convicted the guy of 2nd degree murder, he was sentenced to 15 years I think. But anyway because of some bullshit technicality, there wasn't enough minorities on the jury or something like that, the conviction was reversed and he is a free man now. Free man that beat his wife with an axe, admitted it, and was set free.

Coppertop

This pretty much makes me disregard anything intelligent you might otherwise have had to say.

SecretMethod70

crfpilot, It's been mentioned many times and no one has bothred to address it, and since you're the latest person to say we should be speedier at executing people, I'll ask you. What about the people who are convicted - by juries - and are actually innocent? It is a fact - executing someone costs more than keeping them in prison for life. Now, if you had your way, then executing WOULD be cheaper. It would also be unconstitutional (shooting someone in the head with a gun falls under cruel and unusual punishment, especially since they could survive) and faster. On top of that, those 100+ people who have been sentenced to death despite being innocent in the past 3 decades or so would all be dead. Every single one of them. Would it be cheaper? Yes. All I want to know is, are you willing to kill those 100+ innocent people? The question has been ignored by many in this thread and all I'm asking is for you to either admit that you feel killing 100+ innocent people is a valid price for speedy and cheaper executions of murderers, or to admit that it's better to give those people a chance and accept the consequences which include it being more costly to execute than imprison for life.

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Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

crfpilot

First of all it is not a fact that executing someone costs more than keeping them alive. The high cost is in the pretrial and during trial ofa capital case

Now I understand that back in the 60's-80's there were people wrongfully convicted, and no those people should not be executed. But today, anyone convicted by DNA or Video evidence that is 99.99% correct should be executed within 6 months. California has only executed 12 people since 1976. We need to speed up the process.

There is probably over 600-700 now. I doubt that 100+ of them are innocent, I really doubt that 5 of them are innocent, that's <1%. Now I might be sick and twisted on this but yes, I think that would be an acceptable loss if it would mean a reduction in violent crime and possibly save thousands of other innocent people killed, raped and mosested every year.

Like I said before, our justice system is fucked right now. The process of a capital trial should not take 2-3 years. I've sat in court as a witness ALL FUCKING DAY before and not even taken the stand. When I sat on the murder trial it took about a month and I swear we sat in the hallway more than we were in the courtroom. If the justice system was more efficient it wouldn't cost more for a capital case than keeping someone in prison for life.

Cynthetiq

what makes me pause is the thought, "what if you were one of the 100+ innocent????"

would you make the sacrifice for the "greater good" or would you want the process to be changed so that you have all the opportunity for appeals and clemency or even life without parole?

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crfpilot

That's the question everyone always asks me. I would say if it would save hundreds of others sure I'd sacrifice myself. Besides if I had it my way death would be a better alternative to prison. In prison you would get hardly enough food to stay healthy, you'd work your ass off, hard labor for 10-12 hours a day, and when you were done, you'd shower and hit the rack. There would be no TV, weight room, ping pong, library, basketball, etc. Visits with family would be limited to about 5 minutes a month. Rehabilitation would be not wanting to go back to prison cause it sucks.

xrayvision2

he should have been executed 20 years ago

james t kirk

Really?

Guess you haven't heard the intreviews of the members of Guy Paul Morin trial as I did.

Here's a list I found on the net of Canadians wrongly convicted by juries. Still trust the jury system....

http://www.injusticebusters.com/04/Informants.shtml