The Death Penalty and Culpability

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How would you respond to the argument that the Death Penalty is unjust due to the past histories of those guilty of their convictions? For example, while it doesn’t excuse their crimes many in prison have experienced highly dysfunctional and negative environments and/or extreme and severe trauma which most likely set them on a dark path.

Perhaps more importantly, are there ways for society to ensure that our prisons (and thus death rows) can be smaller and emptier in the future? Specifically, I am referring societal policies and programs which could be disseminated and scaled up.

Thank you for reading and Happy Thanksgiving.
 
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  1. US death penalty law conceivably considers all this past history stuff during the mitigation phase of death penalty sentencing. (In reality, unless you have a top lawyer, it usually doesn’t get “considered” very well.)
  2. Setting (1) aside, one never has to reach the issue of whether the US death penalty is "unjust’ because the fact that the process for it is economically burdensome and there is no way to 100% guarantee that no one will be executed in error (which has probably already happened IMHO) is enough reason to get rid of it. If one wished to discuss injustice, my next argument after those two would be the completely uneven application of death penalty, meaning that two people who committed the exact same crime could get totally different sentences (one gets life, one gets death) depending on factors such as quality of the lawyer they have, judge they happen to get, their race, etc.
  3. You are asking two completely different questions. First of all, death row overall in the USA is a relatively small number of people (about 2800) , a number of whom have been sitting there for years. 18 states don’t even have a death penalty any more. So we aren’t putting large numbers of people onto death row or executing large numbers of people. Second, one way that death row stays small is by ensuring that people who go to prison for a serious crime stay in prison over the long term (“life without parole” or “natural life term” or “life means life”), so if you are trying to get people out of prison faster, that creates an incentive to send those who commit serious murders to death row to ensure they never endanger society again, because if they’re sent to prison they just get let back out. Third, the vast majority of the people in prison are not there for crimes even approaching the death row level.
 
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If the convict thinks he has mitigating factors then he can communicate that to his lawyer and have them brought up during the trial or at the sentencing.

Social programs won’t do anything. Secular policies won’t do anything. If men’s hearts remain hardened against God then they will commit these crimes. It’s that simple.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
and there is no way to 100% guarantee that no one will be executed in error (which has probably already happened IMHO)
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Since 1973, 144 people on death row have been exonerated. As a percentage of all death sentences, that’s just 1.6 percent. But if the innocence rate is 4.1 percent, more than twice the rate of exoneration, the study suggests what most people assumed but dreaded: An untold number of innocent people have been executed.Apr 28, 2014
 
I read the article and still have no idea how they came up with that figure.
 
Thank you for alerting me to that, I guess I did not read it thoroughly. You get the gist of it though. It is a figure easy enough to find on the internet though. This new article lists the actual names of people sentenced to death who were later acquitted.


Here is a list of people that exoneration came too late for, who were actually put to death by the state.

http://stories.avvo.com/crime/murder/8-people-who-were-executed-and-later-found-innocent.html
 
The problem with all these “Making a Murderer” type news stories is that they are heavily biased in favor of the defendant. There is conflicting evidence for many of the people in prison, let alone death row, so the fact that somebody’s “investigation” later came up with people telling different stories does not definitively mean innocence, although it very well could. Unless someone comes up with DNA or other scientific evidence, we don’t know for sure.

Out of the whole list of 8, the first one, the Willingham case, is the one that is usually thought of as the possible unjust execution because there was scientific evidence involved, not just people telling different stories. All the rest are not generally accepted as possible executions of the innocent because there is too much uncertainty.

I am however quite sure that if you go back before the death penalty was abolished the first time, there were MANY innocent people put to death, often because of racial prejudice or other bias. Those cases aren’t really applicable to today’s DP laws though because of the abolishment and later reinstatement of supposedly better laws with more controls.
 
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But why should one believe that number if there is no explanation how they arrived at it?
 
The article said 1.6 percent of people on death row had been found to be innocent. How did they come up with the 4% number?
 
Im going to scour the internet for authoritative articles and sources until your 100% Convinced! And then Im going to come over and wash your car!
 
RCIAGraduate said:
How would you respond to the argument that the Death Penalty is unjust due to the past histories of those guilty of their convictions?
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“In not a few cases such external and internal factors may attenuate, to a greater or lesser degree, the person’s freedom and therefore his responsibility and guilt. But it is a truth of faith, also confirmed by our experience and reason, that the human person is free. This truth cannot be disregarded, in order to place the blame for individuals’ sins on external factors such as structures, systems or other people. Above all, this would be to deny the person’s dignity and freedom, which are manifested - even though in a negative and disastrous way also in this responsibility for sin committed. Hence there is nothing so personal and untransferable in each individual as merit for virtue or responsibility for sin.”

“Having said this in the clearest and most unequivocal way, one must add at once that there is one meaning sometimes given to social sin that is not legitimate or acceptable, even though it is very common in certain quarters today. This usage contrasts social sin and personal sin, not without ambiguity, in a way that leads more or less unconsciously to the watering down and almost the abolition of personal sin, with the recognition only of social guilt and responsibilities. According to this usage, which can readily be seen to derive from non-Christian ideologies and systems which have possibly been discarded today by the very people who formerly officially upheld them - practically every sin is a social sin, in the sense that blame for it is to be placed not so much on the moral conscience of an individual but rather on some vague entity or anonymous collectivity, such as the situation, the system, society, structures, or institutions.” (JPII, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia)
 
2towers said:
Since 1973, 144 people on death row have been exonerated. As a percentage of all death sentences, that’s just 1.6 percent. But if the innocence rate is 4.1 percent, more than twice the rate of exoneration, the study suggests what most people assumed but dreaded: An untold number of innocent people have been executed.Apr 28, 2014
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This is not even close to being accurate, starting with the number you say have been exonerated. By far the largest percentage of those removed from death row were in fact not exonerated (judged innocent), but were removed for other reasons. Beyond that, although there have been any number of claims about innocent people being executed, it has not (yet) been demonstrated that any of them actually were innocent. Even those organizations most opposed to capital punishment have been unable to make reasonable claims for more than a handful of those executed, and claims do not equate to proof. Finally, while it is always possible that a (very) few innocent people have been executed, it is beyond argument that a fairly large number of innocent people have been murdered by recidivist murderers. The latest example of this was in Delaware just last month, where a corrections officer was brutally murdered by prison inmates, four of whom were already serving life sentences for first degree murder. Basically, since Delaware has no death penalty, those inmates are free to kill whenever they choose to do so without fear of government reprisal. What can be done? Give them consecutive life sentences?
 
look it up for yourself ender. my goodness there are figures about exonerated people from definitive sources everywhere. Furthermore, I am not the one that is saying it, theses sources are. I don’t mean to come across so testy, but if you don’t like the sources you dont like the sources. Post your own proof, don’t just say that they are totally inaccurate

Sorry, the death penalty argument is a no brainier. DNA evidence has exonerated people, witnesses recant. This is why civilize nations dropped the DP years ago. Just one person executed is too many. It is too expensive to prosecute, it is all out there. Not liking it is not going to change anything. If you disagree with the sources I chose, find some of your own for someone else to look at. Im done with it, as I won’t be coming back to this thread.
 
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Ender said:
Beyond that, although there have been any number of claims about innocent people being executed, it has not (yet) been demonstrated that any of them actually were innocent.
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This is pretty much what I said above. Willingham is the case that everybody who works in this area points to as being the big example of a man who was likely innocent, so if there was one that could be demonstrated, it would be that one. There’s supposed to be a movie on the case coming out next year. Be prepared for a whole lot of people who haven’t been paying attention for years to suddenly get all outraged after the movie comes out.
 
2towers said:
DNA evidence has exonerated people, witnesses recant.
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You are going to see less DNA exoneration after a certain point because the people who have been exonerated so far were convicted prior to DNA testing, or before the testing reached the technical level it is currently at. At this point, it’s relatively hard to get anyone convicted of a serious crime without DNA, so that avenue of overturning someone’s conviction is disappearing. Although eventually, we will have a case where the DNA evidence is held to have wrongfully convicted someone, and then all bets are off.

“Witnesses recant” will always happen. Many if not most of the witnesses in these types of cases barely know what the truth is. They were all high at the time, or are just trying to tell a story that will protect themselves and get them favorable treatment. These days, juries who have been watching forensic police procedurals for years are far less likely to convict anyone just based on what a witness says unless there is scientific evidence that agrees with the witnesses’ story. And once there is scientific evidence, the jury doesn’t really care whether the witness changes his story or not.
 
But Ender even if personality responsibility does play a crucial role (as stated in the exhortation), wouldn’t you concede that our “systems” (i.e schools and social services) as well as our culture (social decay in community and family breakdown and the marginalization of the disadvantaged and downtrodden, through apathy and indifference) contribute to the hopelessness and despondency which causes so many to be “lost” and go down a bad role.

I will admit, I have my biases and I am diverging on the topic (plus preaching to the choir) but how would you address the predicament of the school to prison pipeline?
 
2towers said:
look it up for yourself ender. my goodness there are figures about exonerated people from definitive sources everywhere. Furthermore, I am not the one that is saying it, theses sources are. I don’t mean to come across so testy, but if you don’t like the sources you dont like the sources. Post your own proof, don’t just say that they are totally inaccurate.
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Here are the numbers from the DPIC (Death Penalty Information Center): From 1973-2011 they claimed that “at least 139 people from 26 states have been exonerated from death row after evidence of innocence was found.” Their claim, however, does not match their standards for calling someone exonerated:
a - Been acquitted of all charges related to the crime that placed them on death row, or
b - Had all charges related to the crime that placed them on death row dismissed by the prosecution, or
c - Been granted a complete pardon based on evidence of innocence.

Only (a) meets the definition of exonerated. That is, found not guilty. By their own statistics, the DPIC put only 47 of the 139 in that category.
Sorry, the death penalty argument is a no brainier. DNA evidence has exonerated people, witnesses recant. This is why civilize nations dropped the DP years ago. Just one person executed is too many.
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Is one person really too many? How many innocent deaths caused by recidivist killers are you willing to accept just to ensure that one innocent person is not executed?
 
RCIAGraduate said:
But Ender even if personality responsibility does play a crucial role (as stated in the exhortation), wouldn’t you concede that our “systems” (i.e schools and social services) as well as our culture (social decay in community and family breakdown and the marginalization of the disadvantaged and downtrodden, through apathy and indifference) contribute to the hopelessness and despondency which causes so many to be “lost” and go down a bad role.

I will admit, I have my biases and I am diverging on the topic (plus preaching to the choir) but how would you address the predicament of the school to prison pipeline?
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Yes, I accept that society plays a role in the behavior of its citizens. Having said that, it isn’t clear that reducing sentences for those who have been lead astray by bad influences isn’t counter productive. I attended a conference recently and one of the presenters pointed out that our perception of the severity of a crime is strongly influenced by the severity of the punishment imposed. If we reduce the severity of the punishment for murder out of compassion for the murderer and his unfortunate history we also reduce in the rest of the population the sense of the heinousness of the crime. After all, if it doesn’t receive a severe penalty it must not have been a severe crime.
 
Ender said:
The latest example of this was in Delaware just last month, where a corrections officer was brutally murdered by prison inmates, four of whom were already serving life sentences for first degree murder. Basically, since Delaware has no death penalty, those inmates are free to kill whenever they choose to do so without fear of government reprisal. What can be done? Give them consecutive life sentences?
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What could be done if they had already been on Death Row? A person can’t be killed twice.
 
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