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Lujack
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It remains irrelevant to a debate about the practicalities of the current death penalty, because people like that don’t end up on death row right now.
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SonCatcher
Guest
Care to provide your source for the allegation that he was able to conduct meaningful communication with the Egyptians?
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Ender
Guest
Why do you ask? Is this something you doubt or that you find significant?*In 2005, members of Rahman’s legal team, including lawyer Lynne Stewart, were convicted of facilitating communication between the imprisoned Sheikh and members of the terrorist organization Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya in Egypt. *(Wikipedia)
Ender
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Ender
Guest
Perhaps, but it is indicative of the problem authorities face and it has to be addressed in determining the level of protection prisons can actually provide. Even if we eliminated the use of contraband cell phones we cannot eliminate the right of a prisoner to confer with his lawyer and it was that right that was the source of the communication between this prisoner and his people on the outside. I’ll ask again: what constitutes “sufficient protection” and how do we measure it?
Ender
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SonCatcher
Guest
So his ability to communicate was not due to a fault of the system. It was a deliberate infiltration by another criminal who had evaded detection until that point.
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Ender
Guest
The system allows the inmate to communicate with his lawyer and there is no way to control what the lawyer does. There are laws that allow us to punish lawyers afterward but there is nothing to prevent lawyers from passing information from criminals on the inside to those on the outside. That is a systemic issue for which there is not even a theoretical solution.
John
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SonCatcher
Guest
If you don’t have a solution, then what right have you to complain?
An even better question: If there is no theoretical solution, then is there even a problem?
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Ender
Guest
We are assured - despite evidence to the contrary - that modern penal systems provide adequate security for the public. I have no responsibility to solve problems with our prisons but I assuredly have the right to challenge the assertion that I am adequately protected by them. This appears to be especially true inasmuch as no one has even attempted to define what “adequate protection” is or how it should be measured.
I suspect that someone with an inoperable brain tumor is pretty sure he has a problem.
Ender
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SonCatcher
Guest
The only “evidence” contrary to efficacy of the system has been in the form of exceptional circumstances. No evidence of a systemic failure has been presented.
A few decades back, every brain tumor was inoperable. The solution was to discover ways to make them operable and develop other courses of treatment. In time, even more tumors will be operable because doctors look for solutions instead of griping.
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Ender
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Until someone defines what “sufficient protection” means there is no way to provide evidence that we do or don’t have it. We know that some percentage of imprisoned killers kill again by escaping, being released, killing within prison, or ordering friends on the outside to commit them. The question remains unanswered - how many of these repeat murders can we have and still believe we are sufficiently protected by the prison system?
If a person has a tumor today it is either operable or inoperable; what may happen in the future is of no consequence to him. The same is true of our prison system: either it provides sufficient protection today or it doesn’t. The claim is made that it provides such protection now but if it doesn’t there is no justification for believing we should act as if it does. The objection to capital punishment is that it isn’t needed to protect society but if that claim isn’t true now, today, then the claim vanishes and whether a safe system can be created in the future is meaningless to what should be done under the system we actually have.
Ender
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SonCatcher
Guest
How about you define it? Remember to balance protection of society with the protection against unjust punishment. Society is no more protected if any victim of a witch hunt is summarily executed or locked away in solitary confinement than if convicted murderers are allowed to walk free.
The cancer patient has a “right” to complain about the lack of treatment right now because he knows the solution is to study and experiment. Many such patients even volunteer to undergo experimental procedures themselves, knowing they would likely die, for the chance that the next patient might undergo the same procedure and live.
The application of that is: You have only been complaining about the situation. You have not made any useful suggestions for how to rectify it. Put your disappointments to better use by using that energy to hypothesize how we can better protect society, punish criminals and treat everyone (even the criminals) justly.
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Ender
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Action A leads to fewer innocent deaths than Action B.
I don’t need to worry about this as that was not the argument against using capital punishment. No one has claimed that executions are unjust, nor will they inasmuch as the Church has supported them for 2000 years.
Again, no one has suggested implementing witch hunts. You should recognize that your position is weak if this is the best argument you can come up with.
Yes I have. I have advocated the use of capital punishment.
Ender
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SonCatcher
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solely? No concern about rape, pillaging, etc?
It is well known that even with minimal use, people are executed who did not commit the crime they were executed for. In a just society, people must not be punished for crimes they did not commit. Therefore, it is necessary for your proposed system to have sufficient failsafe to minimize the occurrence of wrongful conviction.
Life imprisonment would therefore result in fewer innocent deaths (among the wrongly convicted) while there is no solid evidence capital punishment will result in fewer innocent deaths in society. That is your own criterion.
Consider that the only way to prevent all escapes, false releases, killing of other prisoners or subversive communication is summary execution without trial. How many innocent parties die then? That is why I compared your position to a witch hunt.
We already have capital punishment. You have not presented sufficient evidence that it is superior to the proposed system (which really has not yet been tried).
Ender,
I actually support capital punishment in the same terms it is supported by the bishops. Also, in the same terms the bishops see capital punishment as something to be minimized when possible, I have accepted their teaching.
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Lujack
Guest
The Church has allowed for the use of capital punishment in some cases. However, can we agree that the unjust application of capital punishment (the execution of an innocent man, or the execution of a man guilty of a minor crime) is clearly wrong?
Could we further agree that the reckless use of the death penalty, a system of executions that makes the execution of innocents likely, is also clearly wrong?
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Ender
Guest
Of course - anything that is unjust is wrong but there is no reason to believe that because someone supports the use of capital punishment that is the same as supporting it regardless of how it is used. Supporting sentences of life without parole doesn’t mean supporting the sentencing of innocents to life in prison or giving life sentences for minor crimes.
This is really a non-issue. The question is this: what is the proper punishment for someone guilty of the crime of premeditated murder? Is it execution or life without the possibility of parole?
Ender
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Lujack
Guest
No, its not a non-issue and I’m kind of shocked that you’d say it is. If the justice system cannot make sure that it will not execute innocents, then any arguments as to whether or not the death penalty is acceptable in principle are irrelevant.
The only way that the death penalty can be implemented morally is if there are safeguards in place to avoid executing innocent men. There is obviously a different standard when someone is sent to life in prison without parole, since they can be exonerated by later evidence; we cannot bring a wrongly executed man back to life.
Furthermore, our current justice system answers “both”. Even in states that have the death penalty, not all people found guilty of premeditated murder are executed.
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Ender
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If execution is not appropriate for murder then it is not appropriate for lesser crimes. Let’s try to stay focused on the clearest case first.
This is commonly asserted but the facts appear otherwise. In the worst case scenario there would seem to be no more than eight innocent people executed since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976 (based on assertions from organizations opposing the death penalty.) Having said that I’ll also point out that none of the people who were allegedly wrongly executed have ever been proven innocent. The innocence is only claimed. That works out to about one death every five years.
Minimize yes, eliminate no. We have that today.
Sure there is, we only have to count the murders committed by repeat killers, which surely would not have happened had they been executed (not to mention the murders committed or commissioned inside prisons or by escapees). The recidivism rate among murderers is 2-3%. That is, of the killers released from prison, that percentage will kill again. In any given year that works out to 45-50 people. Compared to (at worst) one innocent death every five years from wrongful execution and we can readily see where the real danger lies.
bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/rpr94.pdf (US Dept of Justice)
If my position was weak you wouldn’t have to distort it in order to respond. Your conclusion that my solution would lead to summary executions is a silly exaggeration.
First, I have presented evidence (BJS report above). Second, neither you nor anyone else has presented even a shred of evidence to support the assertion that the public is sufficiently protected by imprisonment alone so your complaint on that score is a bit hollow.
Ender,
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triumphguy
Guest
My God man! You don’t have to prove your innocence! 
That’s a basic tenet of the Common Law system! It’s fundamental!
8 innocent men executed since 1976? Most jurists will say it’s better for 99 guilty to go FREE than for one innocent man to be put to death.
How many not mentally competent?
How many under represented?
How many under educated?
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Ender
Guest
Well, if you contend that an innocent man has been executed you have to prove that the assertion is true. Given that the men in question were all found guilty at their trials the burden of proof shifts to those who claim they were innocent.
Ender
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Lujack
Guest
We may disagree on this, but I’m going to argue that the burden of proof is simply re-establishing a reasonable doubt.
And even eight, one every five years, is still way too many.
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