According to Amnesty International, among other groups who are against the death penalty, there are a disproportionate number of minorities on Death Row as opposed to the number of whites on Death Row. Statistics below disprove the claim that minorities are targeted by the death penalty far more than whites, yet that is not the reason I support the death penalty. I’m not out to get whitey, either.
FROM http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/race-death-row-inmates-executed-1976Race of Death Row Inmates Executed Since 1976Posted: January 02, 2003 in Race National Statistics on the Death Penalty and Race Executions by Race Since 1976 Death Row Populations by Race Execution information accurate as of December 8, 2008 following an execution in South Carolina.RACE OF DEFENDANTS EXECUTED IN THE U.S. SINCE 1976 BLACK 391 34% HISPANIC 79 7% WHITE 642 57% OTHER 24 2% NOTE: The federal government counts some categories, such as Hispanics, as an ethnic group rather than a race. DPIC refers to all groups as races because the sources for much of our information use these categories. RACE OF VICTIMS SINCE 1976 BLACK 242 14% HISPANIC 85 5% WHITE 1331 79% OTHER 39 2% NOTE: Number of Victims refers to the victims in the underlying murder in cases where an execution has occurred since the restoration of the death penalty in 1976. There are more victims than executions because some cases involve more than one victim. "In 82% of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e., those who murdered whites were found more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks."- United States General Accounting Office, Death Penalty Sentencing, February 1990
I support the death penalty for one reason: I grew up with a psychopath in the family.There are people who commit murder because they were high on drugs, psychotic, heat of the moment in a fight. You name it. I’m not strictly death penalty across the board for any type of murder, not that there is a good one.
But, if I had to choose between someone who kills his wife because she’s leaving him and doesn’t care that he’s murdering the mother of his children, and some kid who capped a dope dealer—I’m going to lean toward placing the former on Death Row. Why? I think it’s fairly easy to see that some ghetto kid shooting a doper in a dog-eat-dog street scenario doesn’t play as harshly as a man willing to off a wife and mother because she didn’t want to live with his abusive ass anymore.
Which brings us to the psychopath in the family. I’m not a shrink, don’t pretend to be, and I’m not about to give a lengthy sketch about what psychopathology is, but let’s just say they’re not human. They have no conscience. I believe it was Martin Buber who said that people like them live in an I/I universe. There is no other but themselves.Because they are like this, they don’t feel anything for anyone but themselves, and even those feelings are suspect. Ted Bundy was a prime example. So is Dick Cheney. (I’m sure that puts me on some list now.)
I support the death penalty for the simple reason that people such as the aforementioned have no humanity in them. I submit that putting them to death is humane. They have given up all semblance of personhood and depriving them of their right to breathe air isn’t state sanctioned murder.Maybe one day, we will have government servants willing to go after the psychopaths who lied us into an illegal war; who pretended Katrina wasn’t happening until so many had died; and who have destroyed our country.
Happy New Year, by the way.
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death penalty for:
Child rapists & their enablers (yes including catholic priests- some of whom raped hundreds) and yes including the bishops who were more worried about scandal
Mass Murderers- including those who mass murder by proxy (Hello Bush! Hello Cheney)
Why should the prison corporations profit from crime as these baddies languish in prison for decades (that is, if they are ever brought to justice)
plenty of good people die every year. i see no problem losing a few truly bad ones.
Agreed.
I suppose there is a huge cultural dimension to attitudes to the death penalty. Living in a society that sees its use as barbaric no doubt colours one’s perception. However, from afar, your logic seems psycopathic. There is no economy in its use for Americans, you spend far more in appeals and judicial expense than would be required by simply incarcerating a person for life. You execute people who are innocent. You execute people who lack resources to argue their case competently. Until recently, you routinely executed children. You still execute those suffering from mental disease or deficiency. Being psychopathic qualifies as such. Lastly, there is no evidence of deterrence in this sad, uncivilized state-onanism.
There is no public policy-upside to this barbaric American practice other than the orgasmic appeal of revenge. Think of all the cases where people, decades later, immersed in victim-hood, must attend all hearings and relive the despair in pursuit of enforcing death as a sentence, in pursuit of the mythical closure. Your policy keeps them suffering and as most confess, there was no great comfort years after the achievement of the revenge.
If one is driven to seek revenge, does life in isolation, 10, 20, 60 years of misery awaiting death not seem more punitive? And for a purportedly Christian nation, does the prospect of conversion and healing within that isolation-for-life not deserve every chance? If not, then the policy is not Christian, it is vengeance.
Do not claim being Liberal or Christian and in favour of the death penalty is possible. The two attitudes can only exist in a person or society that has their own psychosis. You are not logical, Christian in attitude, humane and certainly not Liberal. Then again, I suppose you will take comfort in feeling the rest of the world, aside from other suppressed peoples, is not as advanced as is America.
Well said Freddy.
Yes, well said. I do not think you can reconcile the death penalty with anything new what one thinks of as a Christian outlook that values all of God’s creation. And as noted above, the tragic reality is that the system makes mistakes. Yes, there are people who are serious psychopaths. That does not mean any one deserves to be killed in a tragic miscarriage of justice. Undoubtedly in our system, innocent people have been sentenced and executed.
Well, firstly…I don’t execute anyone. Secondly, I recognize the system is flawed—seriously so. Thirdly, I am not a psychopath, nor is my logic psychopathic. That’s extremely offensive, and colors my entire approach to what you have written. Persuasion isn’t your strong suit, I can tell.
I wasn’t trying to persuade anyone with my blog. Merely stating my own beliefs and feelings. You’re free to have your own. Just don’t pin your bad feelings on me. Thanks.
MadCabbieJan
Perhaps you are not a psychopath. I hope not. Wikipedia defines a psychopath as follows: – The psychopath is defined by a psychological gratification in … aggressive impulses and the inability to learn from past mistakes.
Murdering prisoners is certainly an aggressive impulse and doing so has not accomplished any reduction in crime. You have 5% of the world population but 25% of the prison population and these murders have had no discernable impact on crime. But Americans want more people jailed and more crimes qualifying for state sponsored murder.
You assert that you support killing people as punishment. You state you do not execute anyone. That is psychotic. You are complicit, you just take comfort in having your surrogate do the deed in your name.
Your system is not flawed, it is bankrupt. Your state sponsored murders exist only as a feel-good exercise in barbarism.
You were clearly rattled by my calling you out. I am not pinning my bad feelings on you, whatever that means. I am holding a mirror to you and inviting you to see that your beliefs and feelings, like those of your country, are the antithesis of liberal. I am inviting you to see that because my sense from your message is that you think. Doing so can bring about change – in you – and in prisoners left alive to do so.
Freddy,
I agree with your conclusions against state sponsored executions, but don’t agree with “calling out” MadCabbieJan. For example, a parent who has had a child murdered is not a psychopath for wanting the same treatment for the murderer. Statistics are misleading – the majority of U.S. prisoners are held for drug-related crimes, not death-sentence crimes. Although one of the biggest arguments against the death penalty is the number of false convictions, the issue is not religious, or Liberal vs. Conservative. It is a moral issue. Is it moral for the government to kill people? In the U.S., most citizens believe the answer is yes. Non-defensive war, heavily armed police, armed border guards, lethal drug raids – all acceptable to the majority. Execution of criminals is perhaps easier to justify than letting homeless and poor die of malnutrition, curable disease, or cold weather. Certainly more moral than the U.S. military’s killing of so many foreign citizens during my lifetime. Until the U.S. people prefer peace, and life, to killing humans (both foreign and domestic), our government will reflect the will of the people. Capital punishment is just a small part of that morality.
There have been several documented cases of innocents being executed here in your home State. DNA testing has proved a boon to preventing this farce upon justice, but how many have been killed that we will never know about?
The news tells us that:
So we have doubt cast upon the the evidence used to convict these people, but as the Rev pointed out it does come too late in some cases.
I do not have any faith in the infallibility of the Judicial System. My experience with it here have proven it to be deeply flawed, unfair and imbalanced. I challenge the figures provided on the racial proportionality of the application of capital punishment, they are certainly not correct for Texas.
The NAACP produces a document titled “Deathrow USA”, which contains a State by State break down of the Deathrow populations. MadCabbieJan’s figures were indeed correct, however in Texas, I learned that the Composition of the Death Row was 41% Black, 30% Caucasian, and 28% Latino. The Southern States uniformly reflect this racial imbalance.
Th States AL, AR, CO, CT, DE, LA, MD, MS, NC, OH, PA, VA, the US Government, and the Military all have a majority of Black inmates populating their respective Death Rows. CA and IL both have a the majority population of their Deathrows comprised of Latinos and Blacks. The figures appear to be skewed by the States like Montana, Utah and the Dakotas where the Deathrow populations are 100% white.
My problems with the death penalty stem from the uneven application of it. Dark skin? Don’t have enough money for any attorney save an over-worked court-appointed one who has so many cases all they can hope to do is sieve out the really big chunks? You will likely get it. Light skinned? Silk handkerchief lawyer? Not so much. That has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with class. If there was some space-age sure fire way to absolutely determine 100% of the time if someone were truly guilty and not just unlucky, it wouldn’t bother me so.
Mental illness throws a whole different spin on things. As you correctly point out, psychopaths can’t be cured. Neither can pedophiles and pederasts. Both should be permanently removed from society, because they will ALWAYS be a threat. Should they be warehoused away from society? Yes. Should we be looking to kill them all? I think not – who, exactly makes that determination? The courts? A jury of their peers (usually made up of folks who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty and carry their own host of prejudices)? Some Executioner General? I think it is inherently wrong for the State to kill it’s own citizens, because no matter how you cut it, there is a human somewhere involved in that decision, with all of their failings and problems.
I would argue that clear-cut violations of oaths of federal office merit the death penalty. I imagine a lot — not all — of the corruption in DC would dry up pretty quickly.
Ah, well. A guy can dream.