I would rather see a guilty person live in prison than an innocent person possibly be executed.

That's always a good point, given the amount prosecutorial misconduct we've witnessed over the last several years.

Now, if you can promise me that people convicted of murder with malice a forethought will never see the outside of a prison while they're still alive, I can get behind that.

What I fear is that some bleeding heart governor will get all soft in the head and give a pardon to one of these jokers and more people will needlessly die.

These "lethal injection" follies are the logical result of the lack of willpower to act as the victim would have in effective self-defense.
A pistol bullet is just too messy for these people, even though effective and swift. Cheap, too.

Prefer a fast track trial system straight up to Supreme Court w/harsh penalties to those that withhold evidence and then a swift execution if absolutely guilty (don't care how to kill them 'cause there are plenty of ways to do it w/o pain).

Why pay for decades of care? Why put 'em in a prison system that rapes, emotional terrorizes, and is physically awful?

Those that say different just do not want to actually make a decision. If they did, they would not allow the the prison system to be they way it is. Prefer to not know about it, pretend it is a decent way to treat a human being.

If they are truly guilty put 'em down. If they are not or there's doubt let 'em go.

I have an alternate medication to suggest.

A high-speed injection of copper-jacketed lead to the anterior cranium, in the 9mm, .45 cal, or .308 dose.

And the injectors don't need to be sterilized, first. . .

People die from drug overdoses all the time, is there not something to learn from that? Surely a extra-large dose of heroin could do the job, without the need to do a lot of testing and certification? I must be missing something, I am always confused why this is such a persistent problem.

I can't count myself as a death penalty supporter, but I can't say that there's absolutely no situation where it might be warranted, either. That sounds morally squishy, I know, but there it is.

Leaving aside the question of how to punish prosecutorial misconduct, if a convicted prisoner is later proven to be innocent, it's possible to turn the prisoner loose and apologize, and maybe even give the person a bunch of money.

You can't walk back a wrongful execution.

Also, consider what it's like to be the state executioner, to pull the lever or throw the switch, and to live with the possiblity you might have executed the wrong person. This guy did, more than 60 times.

I don't have an issue with the concept of executing people who've committed terrible crimes; I have a problem with the idea that we've probably executed innocent people. I'd be fine with the death penalty if it required a higher burden of proof. I live in Texas, and we have almost certainly executed innocent people here, and we DO have prosecutorial misconduct.

If we ARE executing people, I don't really care how it's done as long as it's quick and legal. Firing squad, hanging, beheading- whatever.

One issue with the appeals process is that most courts will not allow new evidence that might prove the innocence of the defendant. This is even if someone confesses to the crime and can produce reliable proof that they did it. It will likely stall an execution, but it takes next to forever for someone to be released from prison under these circumstances, and this is even WITH the intervention of the media.

Even better, the Oklahoma House wants to impeach the judges who tried to delay the execution so these guys could find out what chemicals were being used to kill them.

I have no problem with a victim of violent crime, at the scene and in fear, killing his assailant, if it's not out-of-proportion to what he/she reasonably fears might happen otherwise.

But once a suspect is in custody, there's no reason either to hurry to judgment, or to kill, and if either happens, the system is broken.

And there is nobody in our government, federal, state, or local, whom I would trust with the power either to pronounce or to execute death sentences. I don't expect that to change.

One serving a sentence of life without parole can kill again: maybe a guard, another inmate, or ,as happened in Texas several years ago, some lifers escaped and killed a security guard in a store they were burglarizing. And if the worst punishment one can receive is life w/o parole, then a killer , even a repeat killer, will only receive life w/o parole AGAIN. To these guys I say they deserve execution.

I also favor execution for the Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer's of the world. In the Bundy and Dahmer cases, guilt was a fact. And it was insulting that these guys could breathe the same air I did. Bundy got the electric chair. Their punishment was justified and the world is a better place w/o them.

Whenever people advocate doing away with the death penalty I refer them to the Martin Appel case. They walked into a bank planning kill all the staff and customers during the robbery. They were caught within hours with money and weapons. There were cameras, confessions from both of them and witness identification. The guy is still breathing.

He is a waste of time, food, space, money and all the rest to keep him locked up for however many more years.

In cases that there may be a possibility of innocence, I can agree to life w/o parole. That is more of a redesign of the prosecution and justice system than whether there should be a death penalty or not.

As for cruel and unusual -- why not use propofol. It was good enough for Michael Jackson.

How about this solution: if someone executed later turns out to be proven innocent, then put the chief prosecutor in jail for murder!

The real solution is quite a bit more practical, but also quite a bit more distasteful to many: the operative syllable in the term "self-defense" is "self".

How do you determine the wrongful conviction rate is 25% or 0.027%?

I visualize the pollster asking the prisoner, "were you wrongfully convicted?"

Then asking the police officer, "was prisoner Fred wrongfully convicted?"

I support the death penalty in theory, but I think it's being applied too broadly in TX and am also concerned about investigator and prosecutor misconduct. I think it should first be reserved for the worst of the worst crimes, and that there should be a higher burden of proof. (DNA, video, multiple witnesses, or the like). We have people on death row for participating in an armed robbery where someone died, where the person on death row wasn't the actual shooter. bad? terrible? yes. death penalty . . . no. IMO.

but the drug thing -- honestly I just don't get why it's so freakin hard! how about a massive overdose of sleeping pills? morphine? not medical enough?, OK how about propofol or a deeper general anesthesia to put them under and then the heart stop drug???

From the account I read it sounded like the problem in the botched execution was the poor quality of the IV access and not the drugs themselves. Large doses of midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride would definitely be lethal for anyone in pretty short time. But if the IV site failed, so that most of the drugs entered the surrounding tissue instead of the vein, things could get ugly in a hurry.

I may well be missing something here, but why bother with drugs and injections and all that instead of simple inert gas asphyxiation via breathing pure nitrogen?

I may well be missing something here, but why bother with drugs and injections and all that instead of simple inert gas asphyxiation via breathing pure nitrogen? -- Jeff Guinn at April 30, 2014 1:21 PM

That would be considered cruel and unusual no matter that bastard they're putting down carved his name in the victim's back before killing them.

Asphyxiation is not quick.

Jim:

According to Wikipedia:

Inert gas asphyxiation ... results from respiration of inert gas in the absence of oxygen... The experience is painless, as it is caused merely by lack of oxygen, and not due to carbon dioxide buildup up in the bloodstream, which is the cause of pain in suffocation.

...

An occasional cause of accidental death in humans, inert gas asphyxiation has been used as a suicide method, and has been advocated by proponents of euthanasia (using helium or nitrogen in a device called a suicide bag). Nitrogen asphyxiation has been suggested as a more humane way to carry out capital punishment, but so far this use of inert gas has not been attempted by any country, state or territory.

Why not?

I dont think we want to make execution painless, amd anxiety free.
It looses most of its meaning if it becomes nothing more than euthenasia,

I can live in a society without a death penalty, but I find the idea of one where there is no difference between the treatment of the terminally ill, and the vicious murderer frightening.

The possibility of executing someone wrongfully makes our legal process a very long one. It isnt perfect, nothing is, but second guessing every conviction, ad infinitum eventually will lead to legal and social paralysis.

(I also don't believe we have a right to slaughter another person, except in self-defense.)

I agree, except I define "self-defense" fairly widely in context, as defense of self OR OTHERS. If I see someone hitting a four-year-old with a club, I don't care if I even know the kid.

----------
The general rule in appeals excluding new evidence as grounds (though it can be introduced during an appeal allowed on other grounds) does seem overly broad, but I do not know how to fix it. Is "a guy I know later heard another guy say he did it" actually new evidence?

"instead of simple inert gas asphyxiation via breathing pure nitrogen?"

I have never understood this either, and was about to make the same suggestion. Why is it difficult to find a way to execute someone cleanly and painlessly? Vet's manage this with animals every day. Inert gas asphyxiation is an obvious choice. There are others as well. There is zero excuse for mucking this up

@Isab: I very much disagree that a painless execution loses it's meaning. The point is supposed to be: We don't want this person to ever have the chance to commit another crime. Any desire for the person to experience fear or pain is a step in the direction of vengeance, and away from justice. It's not about torture - we are supposed to be above that.

That said, the huge degree of prosecutorial misconduct, encouraged by our "hard on crime" legislators and police forces - this makes it hard for me to support the death penalty. I suspect there are far more innocent people in prison than anyone want's to believe.

"We don't want this person to ever have the chance to commit another crime. Any desire for the person to experience fear or pain is a step in the direction of vengeance, and away from justice. It's not about torture - we are supposed to be above that."

Maybe, but true life in prison accomplishes that.

One of the major reasons for the justice system to exist is to provide a sense of justice, and retribution so the public believes that crime is punished, When you have a system where crime is not "punished" but criminals get put to sleep like stray dogs and cats, you will get people never letting the cops handle it at all.

Perhaps you would rather have fathers of raped and murdered children hooking the perpetrator up to jumper cables in the family garage?

but the drug thing -- honestly I just don't get why it's so freakin hard! how about a massive overdose of sleeping pills? morphine? not medical enough?, OK how about propofol or a deeper general anesthesia to put them under and then the heart stop drug???

You get them to take sleeping pills how chickia? With a choke hold until they pass out? Why not just strangle them then? It's hard, at least when you're trying to avoid having specific executioners. Anyway, dosage is hard to calculate if you don't know the medical history. You could inject enough alcohol directly into my bloodstream to drop a horse and I'd probably thank you. There's no upper limit that anyone knows on people's tolerance to opiates, so heroin/morphine are out as suitable candidates.

Ken R's point was very good, most likely the IV insertion failed (we're not talking about a willing person here, and perhaps his veins were fucked already) and the drugs didn't properly enter the bloodstream. I don't see how changing drugs will help here anyway.

The whole point is to not have people perform executions hands on. Wasn't it the British Army that assembled a firing squad but issued one blank round in the twelve at random so that everyone could console themselves that they didn't fire the fatal shot?

As attractive as a dose of Excedrin .357 looks as a solution (cures headaches for good!), for that to work someone has to be the psychopath that steps up to deliver a point blank round to the head, and more as required if they survive (which does happen). I can think of countries where that is how it works. I wouldn't want to live in any of them.

I'm not necessarily opposed to the death penalty, but I can't think of a foolproof way of making it clean, painless, and guaranteed humane. If you want it, you have to accept the messiness. This is not a perfect world, and perfect solutions don't exist.

Inert gas asphyxiation ... results from respiration of inert gas in the absence of oxygen... The experience is painless, as it is caused merely by lack of oxygen, and not due to carbon dioxide buildup up in the bloodstream, which is the cause of pain in suffocation.

The experience is painless - says who Jeff? You must know a good medium. The person undergoing it is still going to flop around for a while until brain death, so it isn't going to look good either.

Equivalent training is unlikely for a condemned individual, making unconsciousness without warning probable, although as much as a 30-second warning is possible.

Loss of consciousness may be accompanied by convulsions[1] and is followed by cyanosis and cardiac arrest. About 7 minutes of oxygen deprivation causes death of the brainstem.

From the same Wikipedia article Jeff. The words unlikely, possible, may, and about give me some doubt about believing your theory that inert gas asphyxiation is a more humane way to go. Maybe it's the best available - I don't know. Of course, if you know it's coming, the "you haven't been trained" argument collapses, and someone will practice holding their breath to conserve oxygen rather than breathing the inert gas. So one day, someone will recover after their statutory ten minutes, probably with significant brain damage. What then?

"There's no upper limit that anyone knows on people's tolerance to opiates, so heroin/morphine are out as suitable candidates."

This is false. You have just said that there is no amount of heroin, etc., that is fatal.

"The experience is painless - says who Jeff?"

Jeff is totally correct. Asphyxia has occurred in industrial settings - in a variety of gases - in full view of surveillance cameras, and the victim simply stops where they are. Now, if you think that someone can suffocate without a struggle, OK.

"As attractive as a dose of Excedrin .357 looks as a solution (cures headaches for good!), for that to work someone has to be the psychopath that steps up to deliver a point blank round to the head, and more as required if they survive (which does happen)."

Here, you equate action to assure that a savage criminal will not prey on another person with mental illness. You also falsely present the scenario that a person must walk up to the criminal with a pistol to shoot him. Further, you are conflating shots to the head in police action, which includes impact to the face and jaw, with impact to the brain itself through the thin bone of the skull. The brain cannot survive the application of ~500 ft-lbs, and of course you beg the question if you restrict this to the .357.

I get it. You just want the criminal, no matter the proof or nature of the crime, to go on living.

Living felons in jail today have killed more Americans than died in Vietnam. They will never miss a meal due to layoffs. This is where caring more for the criminal than for the victim has brought us.

By the way - there are unintended consequences of "life" sentences: some aren't, really, removing an increment of deterrence, and confining people for the majority of their lives creates a jail environment savage to those with lesser sentences.

I also favor execution for the Ted Bundys and Jeffrey Dahmers of the world. In the Bundy and Dahmer cases, guilt was a fact. And it was insulting that these guys could breathe the same air I did. Bundy got the electric chair. Their punishment was justified and the world is a better place w/o them.

This. Also, a bullet to the brain is inexpensive, painless and quick. Done.

Amy, so the victim could kill a person trying to murder them, assuming they have the means. But if we shouldn't kill murderers why shouldn't the victim just give up his/her life knowing that we will dutifully lock up the murderer for life?

We put murderers to death because it demonstrates our value of the life of the murdered and the lives of those that are touched, perhaps ruined by that murder. It is not for the state, it is on behalf of the victim. That is consistent with why we would not find guilt in a victim who had to kill to prevent their own murder.

Also, to have a discussion about when the death penalty can be applied, and where the bar is set, that's sensible. But I don't think most reasonable people would doubt the guilt of most on death row. If we need to fix the criteria, let's do that. But to devalue the life of the victim is injustice.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/witness-execution?fullpage=1

The link is for a story that just came out in Texas Monthly about an execution that was getting lots of media coverage a few weeks ago. It's an interesting read if you're having a slow day.
From the story: "Before the crime, I was against capital punishment. It was part of the party platform I adopted as an educated, moral person with liberal tendencies. But about a week after my father’s death, Kerr County district attorney Bruce Curry called and asked my input as to whether he should pursue the death penalty. I had just heard that Hernandez had sworn from jail that he was going to come back and kill my mother and grandmother, who lived at my parents’ home."

Amy, you can find studies supporting each position. But, in your view not slaughtering murders will be an example to murderers not to murder. In my view, execution of murderers will deter murderers. Which in your view is more likely?

Even if we were to agree that it is not a deterrent, in these types of sickening crimes as Clayton Lockett not only committed but admitted, death is the just punishment.

"You don't teach people not to murder by doing what they do -- slaughtering someone. Capital punishment is not a deterrent -- a number of studies show this."

Ah, so you think teaching people to be good citizens and not murderers is the answer?

Do you think If Ted Bundy had had better parents, he would not have ended up a murdering sociopath?

I don't, I think murder and bad behavior is a fixed part of human nature, and you don't 'teach' anyone not to do it..

You control the impulses and the mayhem by making the consequences and punishment for murder, as final as possible.

In short, you deter it, and punish it.

The murder rate in the US has gone way down over the last thirty years. We must be doing something right.

"The murder rate in the US has gone way down over the last thirty years. We must be doing something right."

Removing lead from gasoline helped.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/01/03/how-lead-caused-americas-violent-crime-epidemic/

murder rate in the US has gone way down over the last thirty years. We must be doing something right."

Removing lead from gasoline helped.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/01/03/how-lead-caused-americas-violent-crime-epidemic/
Posted by: Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at May 1, 2014 9:03 PM

Yea, A lot of people have claimed that, but i don't think you can trace sociopathy to high lead levels.

This country had a very high crime rate before gasoline was even invented, and Europe had leaded gas, for much longer than it was available here,

Availability of abortion in the crime prone populations might be a bigger factor.

You would think mental illness and autism would have declined as well, if it was high lead levels, but those maladies seem to be skyrocketing.

I think two other things have had more effect. First is concealed carry. Second is cell phones, and surveillance cameras everywhere,

"Capital punishment is not a deterrent -- a number of studies show this."

I see this time and again, and the bass assertion is a lie, in that is not complete. Here's the correct rendering:

"Capital punishment as we apply it today is not a deterrent – a number of studies show this."

Every effort is made to see that the murderer keeps breathing.

I suspect that capital punishment is not a deterrerent. But that's a deterrent to others. It is absolutely a deterrent to the murderer committing another crime. While still alive, a murderer is capable of committing more murders. For example, this story in The Boston Globe:
Imprisoned killer tried to start riot

ALBANY, N.Y. — The gunman who killed six people and wounded 19 on a New York commuter train in 1993 tried to incite a deadly riot at an upstate prison, a state court concluded Thursday. . . . A corrections officer reported hearing him encouraging others to riot and use weapons to kill guards on Sept. 11, 2011, at Attica prison.

I don't really care whether or not it's a deterrent to others. I think it's just. I reject the argument that executing a murderer is just as bad as what the murderer did. This is one point on which I agree with Muslims (most Muslims anyway; some are opposed to capital punishment). Their Allah says that it's permissable when it's done for justice. ("Take not life, which God has made sacred, except by way of justice and law. Thus does He command you, so that you may learn wisdom" - Qur'an 6:151

The only thing I would require is absolute certainty of guilt, such as the case of the aforementioned commuter train murderer and Major Nidal Hassan, the Fort Hood murderer. There is no doubt whatsoever that these men committed the murders. It is abhorrent that any innocent people have been executed or are awaiting excution.