This is a refreshing bit of anti-Mike Farrellism. Prof Robert Blecker, NY Law:
No matter how vicious the crime, no matter how vile the criminal, some death penalty opponents feel certain that nobody can ever deserve to die — even if that person burned children alive, massacred a dozen strangers in a movie theater, or bombed the Boston Marathon. Other opponents admit the worst of the worst of the worst do deserve to die. They just distrust the government ever to get it right.
Now that pharmaceutical companies refuse to supply the lethal drugs that U.S. corrections departments have used for years to execute criminals — whether from their own genuine moral objections or to escape a threatened economic boycott — states have begun to experiment. Death penalty opponents, who call themselves abolitionists, then protest the use of these untried drugs that just might cause a condemned killer to feel pain as he dies.
Let the punishment fit the crime. We’ve mouthed that credo for centuries, but do we really mean it? We retributivists who believe in justice would reward those who bring us pleasure, but punish severely those who sadistically or wantonly cause us pain. A basic retributive measure — like for like or giving a person a taste of his own medicine — satisfies our deepest instincts for justice.
When the condemned killer intentionally tortured helpless victims, how better to preserve some direct connection short of torture than by that murderer’s quick but painful death? By ensuring death through anesthesia, however, we have nearly severed pain from punishment.
An unpleasant life in prison, a quick but painful death cannot erase the harm. But it can help restore a moral balance.
[…]
Lethal injection conflates punishment with medicine. The condemned dies in a gurney, wrapped in white sheets with an IV in his veins, surrounded by his closest kin, monitored by sophisticated medical devices. Haphazardly conceived and hastily designed, lethal injection appears, feels, and seems medical, although its sole purpose is to kill.
Witnessing an execution in Florida, I shuddered. It felt too much like a hospital or hospice. We almost never look to medicine to tell us whom to execute. Medicine should no more tell us how. How we kill those we rightly detest should in no way resemble how we end the suffering of those we love.
Publicly opposing this method of execution, I have found odd common ground with Deborah Denno, a leading abolitionist scholar who relentlessly attacks lethal injection protocols. Although Denno vigorously opposes all capital punishment, we both agree that the firing squad, among all traditional methods, probably serves us best. It does not sugarcoat, it does not pretend, it does not shamefully obscure what we do. We kill them, intentionally, because they deserve it.
Some people may support the firing squad because it allows us to put blanks in one of the guns: An individual sharpshooter will never know whether he actually killed the condemned. This strikes me as just another symptom of our avoidance of responsibility for punishment. The fact is, in this society, nobody takes responsibility for punishing criminals. Corrections officers point to judges, while judges point to legislators, and legislators to corrections. Anger and responsibility seem to lie everywhere elsewhere — that is, nowhere. And where we cannot fully escape responsibility — as with a firing squad — we diffuse it.
My thousands of hours observing daily life inside maximum security prisons and on death rows in several states these past 25 years have shown me the perverse irony that flows from this: Inside prisons, often the worst criminals live the most comfortable lives with the best hustles, job opportunities and sources of contraband, while the relatively petty criminals live miserably, constantly preyed upon.
Refusing to even contemplate distinguishing those few most sadistic murderers who deserve to die painfully, states seem quite willing haphazardly and arbitrarily to expose prisoners in general, regardless of their crimes, to a more or less painful life, or even death at the hands of other criminals.
Ironically, even as we recoil from punishing those who most deserve it, we readily over-punish those who don’t. A “war on drugs” swells our prisons. We punish addiction and call it crime; we indiscriminately and immorally subject a burglar or car thief to the same daily life in prison we also reserve for rapist murderers.
The time has come to make punishment more nearly fit the crime. To face what we do, and acknowledge, with regret but without shame, that the past counts.
So part of me hopes the abolitionists succeed with their latest campaign against death by lethal injection. We should banish this method. Let the abolitionists threaten to boycott gun manufacturers. See where that gets them. Meanwhile, the rest of us will strive to keep our covenants with victims, restore a moral balance, and shoot to kill those who deserve to die.
Rest assured, when we can only achieve justice by killing a vicious killer, We, the People will find a constitutional way to do it.
I’ll go one step further: I say we allow the aggrieved relatives of victims the opportunity to pull the trigger, as well.
Our supposed moral betters chide us for our desire for “vengeance,” hoping to shame us into confusing our vengeance — the reason we’re willing to exact the ultimate punishment from those who have aggrieved us — with the rationale for the punishment, which is that it fits the crime, and re-establishes, as Professor Blecker notes, a kind of moral order.
— Or, if you don’t buy into the notion of morality here, fine. Instead, think of it as engaging in a form of equality and fairness.
Consistently liberal media has presented us with the character of the conflicted righteous killer, the cop who shoots a rapist, or who is haunted by the criminal he killed in the line of duty.
And yet, while I’m sure some of that does exist, I believe that the extent to which such soulful torture and long-term regret actually occurs is far more rare than we’re “nudged” to believe, and that our own feelings — me, I wouldn’t lose a moment’s sleep putting a bullet into the head of a someone who raped and killed a child, or shot a woman pumping gas with a sniper rifle, or killed a jogger just because he and his buddies were bored — far from being sociopathic or barbaric, are far more mainstream than the almost caricaturish depiction of anguish we see coming from those who, politically speaking, tend to support the scrambling of preborn babies right in the womb.
Evil people exist. And when they’re caught for doing heinous things that take the lives and dignity of their fellow man — who’ve they determined they can treat as subhuman playthings — it doesn’t take any kind of “strength” to “show mercy.” It takes a form of self-righteousness that, in many cases, has less to do with altruism and more to do with easy grace and showy politics.
Regardless, there will always be available those willing to do the job. If not the relatives of the aggrieved, or professional sharp shooters, then citizens in a voluntary lottery.
You can go right ahead and call me a monster, then try to conflate my actions with the actions of criminals, where we are told that exacting justice for injustice makes our just act equally unjust.
That’s bullshit. And the professor is correct: it is a corruption of the very notion of justice to run from our responsibilities as members of society to police that society and remove its monsters.
In exchange for such a system, I’d gladly accept a thorough, state-subsidized use of DNA tests and ask, in return, for a rapid appeals process.
Nothing quite so concentrates the mind, to paraphrase Dr Johnson, as the prospect of a hanging. And if there’s to be real anguish, it should be with the man to be hanged, not to those who do the hanging.
Because if we be monsters, we’re the kind that you rely on to keep the social balance. So a thank you might not hurt from time to time.
(h/t Guido)
How about we send them off using the same method used to end Terry Schiavo’s life (also used by the NHS’s Liverpool Care Pathway): Starvation and dehydration.
No good? OK, then use the Kermit Gosnell method.
Go ahead, tell us that’s cruel and unusual. Please.
The death penalty isn’t about making examples, it’s about making bad people dead.
I have zero problem making it an unpleasant death, if the extra suffering serves as a deterrent to someone contemplating killing because “what’s the worst they can do?”
Hamstring them. Handcuff them. Give them to the women and mothers. Give the rest to the hogs.
No need to be dramatic about – I’d just settle for proper hangings.
Ideally performed the good, old-fashioned American way: Off the back of a horse…
And to anyone who says “but the death penalty doesn’t deter”, I would invite them to show me a single case of recidivism by anyone who has been put to death.
As “One-Drop” Trouper says, “I only ever sees a man up here but once.”
And for those who managed to die before facing justice, there’s always gibbeting…
Many Libertarians quail from notion that the State should sanction killings. That’s crap. The correct interpretation is that murderers – killers sanction their own deaths when they take innocent lives. The State just grants their request for early withdrawal.
Alternately, the argument can be made that with a “life” sentence, the state is already sanctioning a killing. The only argument is if it takes years at considerable taxpayer expense, or instead expedited…
I have always been agnostic when it comes to the death penalty, I really don’t care if they rot in jail or are taken out back and shot. However, if you abolish they death penalty, what punishment is there for someone who kills while they are in prison on a life sentence (a guard or fellow inmate) ?
The rationale that life in prison is a condign punishment since “they’ll have to spend every day for the rest of their lives thinking about their crimes” strikes me as largely untrue. While some lifers may have a conscience, I’d bet that most hardened criminals don’t feel much remorse, only regret for being caught.
“And yet, while I’m sure some of that does exist, I believe that the extent to which such soulful torture and long-term regret actually occurs is far more rare than we’re “nudged” to believe, and that our own feelings — me, I wouldn’t lose a moment’s sleep putting a bullet into the head of a someone who…”
I bet you’d be surprised at the bruise on your humanity, no matter how justified. It takes a heavily calloused or scarred soul to end a life with no reaction, and I don’t think you’re that guy.
From an historical perspective, at least in my state, executions did not become hidden from public view until the late Thirties. Until then, each county sheriff was required to maintain a gallows for public hangings as necessary. I think the public aspect of it, whether painful or not, is what’s important. Society should be able to demonstrate publically that certain conduct necessitates a forfeiture of life among the rest of us.
Until then, each county sheriff was required to maintain a gallows for public hangings as necessary.
I can think of a few neighborhoods in Minneapolis where they should erect gallows right now. I think just having them there as a reminder would do a world of good for some folks who lack other reins on their behavior.
Libby, fabulous idea. Next time you engage with a leftist about the death penalty, suggest scissors into the brain or death by starvation/dehydration. Oh, and don’t forget the trophy appendages. When the leftist goes nuts, then bring up Gosnell and Schiavo.
There seems to be some room too for a discussion of a renewed, inexorably swift and undiverted passage for the certain few crimes — as for instance, that of Nidal Hasan — where there isn’t serious question (and such questions as are raised tend to subvert judicial processes, making them appear absurd on their face) as to the identity of the perpetrator, to a judgment and execution more in line with the satisfaction of society’s needs. Anything else, as in the case of Hasan, makes a mockery of the idea of justice, prolonging the suffering of the surviving victims, weighing upon the polity for the support of the forfeit life of a scum like Hasan (paying him salary, for Christ’s sake), while generating a waste of the potentially otherwise productive time of judges, lawyers, juries and all the staffers associated with the system so taxed.
Especially if some lesser offenders – first-time gangbangers, say – were required to attend.
But I would have a reaction: good riddance. And if it made the family of the aggrieved party feel better, I’d consider it a good deed, even.
It doesn’t take a calloused soul to destroy evil. And I’ve given this a whole lot of thought over the years.
I wouldn’t give a second thought after it was done, except to hope that those left behind to grieve the evil of a monster found some peace in his very decisive and unapologetic death.
Ya’ll just typical, typical.
Aussie. What do they know? “Y’all turn in your weapons. NOW.” “Okay” they replied.
Meanwhile, knifings, beatdowns, rapes and home invasions have picked up to a brisk pace. And, it seems some law-breaking types still commit gun crimes. Sheesh! There’s a law!
shorty news
One Captured One Still At Large: Demetrius Glen (16) Caught – Kenan Kinard (16-years-old) WANTED
And to anyone who says “but the death penalty doesn’t deter”, I would invite them to show me a single case of recidivism by anyone who has been put to death.
Do this math: If you commit a capital crime, what are the odds that you’ll be caught? If caught, then tried instead of plead out? If tried, convicted of Murder One? If sentenced to death, outliving the appeals process? If that, not getting the call from the governor?
THAT’s why it’s not a deterrent: the odds of actually being executed for a capital crime are so slim that there’s no reason for a criminal to take it into account. You might as well threaten them with an eternity in hell.
the worst criminals live the most comfortable lives
Without the death penalty, the only lives that the gubmint guarantees absolutely are the murderers (leaving aside getting shivved in jail, which, that’s frequent enough).
it doesn’t take any kind of “strength” to “show mercy.”
Godliness does not require that mercy rob justice — in fact, the whole point of Redemption is that the law must be honored (fallen souls such as ourselves cannot return to God’s presence), so a mediator pays the penalty, thus allowing justice to be satisfied at the same time as mercy.
has less to do with altruism and more to do with easy grace and showy politics
It’s highly discouraging to realize how many people are motivated principally by moral vanity.
A basic retributive measure — like for like or giving a person a taste of his own medicine — satisfies our deepest instincts for justice.
I’m not all that fussed about the offender suffering. For me, it’s about putting down a rabid dog — permanently — because there’s no better solution. What, we let the dog go on biting people, including people in prison?
Nope. Put ’em down, then move on.
It’s impossible to have a rational discussion with Aussies about guns or the death penalty. Even the UK is coming around about bringing back the death penalty in the last few years, but not Down Under. Considering there are 23,059,862 people in the whole of Australia, 300+ million fewer than here, they have an extraordinary number of serial murders and other lawbreakers. It’s practically South Africa there, but they want to tut-tut at us.
I am all for the death penalty when the crime warrants it.
A botched burglary or robbery…probably not (depends on the facts, past history, etc.). A heinous murder with clear premeditation, you betcha.
But with this Hassan in Fort Hood, if I were on the sentencing jury I would have a dilemma. His crime obviously warrants the death penalty, yet to leave him a paraplegic in Leavenworth for the rest of his life has a certain appeal. The motherfucker wants to go out a martyr…I want to deny him that.
” The motherfucker wants to go out a martyr”
kill him like they abort babies
ie suck his “brains” out
or give him a “gosnell”
The way you lower crime rates.
The Left’s way in all things, lie and the lie becomes a reality, or something, in the mirro-verse.
The motherfucker wants to go out a martyr…
He’ll enjoy his martyrdom only up until he gets it.
The Left’s way in all things, lie and the lie becomes a reality, or something, in the mirro-verse.
Just check for the Spock-goatee and you can tell.
@page 199 havel
eff the communists hi axeldude!!11!!
havel et al @page 201
link
“Some people may support the firing squad because it allows us to put blanks in one of the guns: An individual sharpshooter will never know whether he actually killed the condemned.”
I have never understood why they do this. Blanks do not cause the gun to recoil. The marksman can easily tell if he’s the one firing the blank.
maybe the blank is for the sake of others
Here’s the problem I have with not executing Hasan: we will be taking acre of him for the rest of his life. He will be treated well, and with dignity, just as the prisoners at Gitmo are treated (and they are living better than those who guard them).
What signal does this send our enemy? They are willing to murder with brutality & without hesitation, on a massive scale (9/11) as well as individually (Daniel Pearl beheading). And what do we do to those who are caught?Not swift retribution. We give them a trial from which they can communicate their jihad to the cameras. And when found guilty, we don’t have the stomach to kill them. Communicating loud and clear that we are a weak horse.
Bjork has been very, very clear about how she feels about the death penalty
That Hasan should die for carrying out a massacre against unarmed soldiers is straightforward: yes, and as soon as possible. That our CinC will allow it to happen? Couple angles he has to explore. With his decision based on, “What is the best outcome that both forwards my agendas and makes me look good?”.
If BHO allows Hasan to finish out his contract (murderers sign their own death warrant contracts when they plan and execute innocents AFAIC) then BHO is a ‘hero’ to those who need him to be a hero (most in the Armed Forces desire this outcome, and most civilians do too). He can then loudly trumpet “I got Hasan, too!”. Muslims hardest hit.
Or, BHO allows Hasan to live in a military prison for life. Grumbles from military enlisted and officers, but what does BHO care about that? He’s saddled them with PC bullshit since he’s been CinC, doing irreparable harm to our fighting forces. And, that’s (yet another) wink and nod to Islamicists.
I’m guessing he signals that Hasan lives, if that is what best serves his agenda.
If Hasan is death-sentenced, can BHO pardon him? That scenario might be his ‘biggest SMILE!’ outcome.
Bjork you.
Heh. One way to ensure BHO allows the military to execute Hasan? Wheel Hasan out to the middle of Area 51, and let BHO drive the strike drone.
I’ve heard that in the case of a firing squad, the emotional context and that they are listening for the order means that everyone “thinks” that they felt the recoil of a full load. Blanks do recoil some just not as much as a regular round.
If Hasan is death-sentenced, can BHO pardon him?
Unfortunately, yes. His crimes were both military (under the UCMJ) and Federal (occurring on a military base within the US), and previous decisions from SCOTUS have affirmed that the pardon authority granted to the President is both unquestionable and absolute. There is no appeal, and no need for him to feel like any explanation is required. (See also “Rich, Marc” and the largest donations to the Clinton Presidential Library.)
Another reason to push for the execution of sentence, so that Barky will have to do the most politically unpopular act imaginable, just as the election cycle hits its stride.
I’d put the execution on PPV. They would make enough to allow the White House to opened for tours again…
“In exchange for such a system, I’d gladly accept a thorough, state-subsidized use of DNA tests and ask, in return, for a rapid appeals process. ”
Sadly it turns out that DNA crime forensics is not quite as flawless or definitive as previously advertised.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html?_r=0
Straight out of the North Korean playbook…
This is fundamentally the same argument as to torture or not to torture when the lives of the innocent are on the line. The anti-torture crowd isn’t just making that choice for themselves and their families (and thereby risking their lives) they’re making the choice for me and mine, effectively risking my life to masturbate their moral vanity. The anti death penalty movement isn’t content with making the choice to spare a rapist/killer/torturer/bomber or whatever heinous scrap of humanity wronged THEM. They make that choice for everyone else, and then try to shame anyone who has a more straightforward sense of justice.
This is like the scene at the end of the movie–and you’ve seen it–where the hero has a gun leveled on the villain who killed his wife/child/mother/father and his buddy says, “don’t do it! Or you’ll be just like he is.” No, if I found and shot his mother I’d be just like him. Let’s not confuse the issue. All of this is a lying attempt to establish a moral equivalence that flat out-doesn’t exist, as it completely fails to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty. Torturing a mass murderer is not the same thing as attempting–or succeeding–to bomb, kill, and mutilate dozens or even hundreds of innocent people. Executing a convicted murderer is not the same thing as heinously killing an innocent or a string of innocent people.
DNA testing as used by law enforcement only requires that 13 markers match the given DNA profile. Most siblings share at least that many markers, so it is not exclusive. My (hypothetical) sister could be a black widow and because we share a similar DNA profile, I could be “proven” to be the killer using the forensics the DA relies on.
Good, Sentry1981. My sentiments, and better stated.
“This is like the scene at the end of the movie–and you’ve seen it–where the hero has a gun leveled on the villain who killed his wife/child/mother/father and his buddy says, “don’t do it! Or you’ll be just like he is.” No, if I found and shot his mother I’d be just like him. Let’s not confuse the issue”
I think you are confusing the issue. Or are you advocating for a great increase in cops shooting “bad guys” without benefit of a trial?
As for the rest, I’m with dicentra at August 23, 2013 at 6:24 pm, and putting down rabid dogs. It’s more a necessary deed than a good deed. There is no “good” in any part of the situation.
I have always felt that the dilemma of executing an innocent man is one of commission rather than omission. Eliminating the death penalty prevents the state from executing a person who doesn’t deserve to die, but it doesn’t prevent people who should not die for their crimes from dying. As mentioned above, if a prisoner who would otherwise have been executed is kept alive, and either kills a guard or a fellow inmate who was not found guilty of a capital crime, then we, as a society, have killed someone who didn’t deserve it by omission.
The same thing goes for the life without parolee who nevertheless gets pardoned or paroled, and does it again.
Even stipulating to the idea that innocent men have been executed, which has always been the one and only legitimate reason to oppose the death penalty, “innocent life” will be lost even if the death penalty is forbidden; the only question is whether it will be by commission or omission.
The death penalty is the immune system for the body politic. Without it, the body dies.
Dude. Jeff, way to rock your inner Jewboy. That happens to be the Torah-prescribed method of dealing with murderers – it even gives the aggrieved relative a title: Redeemer of Blood. He (or she?) is given license by the court to go after the murderer and personally dispense justice. His killing of the murderer, being sanctioned by the court, is not considered a criminal act and he is not punished in any way.
(Perpetrators of accidental homicide, on the other hand, are not subject to this form of justice; on the contrary they are allowed to seek refuge in one of several “sanctuary cities” set aside for this purpose; the relatives can’t touch him there. The classic example of this being a guy who was chopping wood and the axe blade flew off the handle and decapitated a bystander. But I digress.)
which, I forgot to add, sounds like a great name for a comic book hero.
Or a band.
Ridiculous argument, Evan3457.
Society is not responsible for the killing of a prison guard by the actions of a prisoner by any type of “omission” – the prisoner himself is, and the prison to the extent it might have been negligent; not society. Ridiculous argument, chump. “Even stipulating to the idea that innocent men have been executed, which has always been the one and only legitimate reason to oppose the death penalty, “innocent life” will be lost even if the death penalty is forbidden…” – very stupid argument.