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Two death row executions delayed to give killers time to recover from Covid

The USA has a TV series dedicated to correcting wrongful sentences. "Reasonable Doubt" is one such. There are enough miscarriages out there to supply a TV series. How many innocent dead people should the state kill on your behalf? There's no hope of rehabilitating a dead person.
 
The USA has a TV series dedicated to correcting wrongful sentences. "Reasonable Doubt" is one such. There are enough miscarriages out there to supply a TV series. How many innocent dead people should the state kill on your behalf? There's no hope of rehabilitating a dead person.

None. That is why I only want cases that are 100% proven. Preferably with overwhelming evidence. A confession is a bonus if it matches the evidence.
 
Calling a legal execution "cold blooded murder" is a shallow appeal to emotion, yet that is not pointed out by you.

I would prefer to take all emotions out of it and have someone explain to me without emotion why living in a 10x10 cell for the rest of someone's life is better than them having their life ended sooner.



yet you are cool with the state having the power over your life to lock you up in a 10x10 cell for the rest of your life.

How would you describe killing a stranger for no other reason than to take their life?
 
How would you describe killing a stranger for no other reason than to take their life?

I would call that murder. But that is not what we are talking about.

We are talking about punishment for a crime committed. These people knew that the DP could be the the result of their actions and they took them anyhow.

To call capital punishment cold blooded murder would like like calling putting people in prison kidnapping.
 
I would call that murder. But that is not what we are talking about.

We are talking about punishment for a crime committed. These people knew that the DP could be the the result of their actions and they took them anyhow.

To call capital punishment cold blooded murder would like like calling putting people in prison kidnapping.

Not necessarily, given the US court system's flaws, anyone can be found guilty if they can't afford a decent lawyer. Your silly simile is an emotive fiction.
 
Not necessarily, given the US court system's flaws, anyone can be found guilty if they can't afford a decent lawyer. Your silly simile is an emotive fiction.

You are conflating two separate issues.

The first is the basic concept of the death penalty and the second is how it is administered in the US.

I am discussing the former, not the latter.
 
One of an innocent and one of a guilty person.

Dying of old age and being shot when you are 20 are both deaths, but they are not comparable

Well, that's the problem, isn't it? We can't tell innocent from guilty. We've screwed up in far too many cases, finding out either before (if lucky) or after an execution that the defendant didn't do it.

What you can do - what you do do - is decide not to care. And this is also part of what death penalty fans do. It's some other innocent person being executed, and their death is a sacrifice you are prepared to make.
 
You like to see people being killed as well.

I do not like to see it, but it is a fact of life

Go to any article about a heinous crime, and the comments section is filled with death penalty fans fantasizing about the evil crimes they would commit against the defendant, were they to be left alone in a room with him. (And failing that, hoping that something about the execution goes wrong so the defendant suffers). As if the defendant being a bad person makes doing bad things to him righteous.

He's right that there is very often a perverse enjoyment at the thought of a convict's death.





One has to wonder whether there is any meaningful difference between the man who breaks into a house and enjoys killing the family . . .

. . . and the person reading the article about the trial, taking pleasure in the thought of the defendant gasping for air for thirty minutes as whatever new experimental drug cocktail the prison decided to use this time fails to work as planned.
 
None. That is why I only want cases that are 100% proven. Preferably with overwhelming evidence. A confession is a bonus if it matches the evidence.

A whole bunch of proven-innocent death row inmates had confessed falsely.

This really is one of the few black and white situations. There is no such thing as "100% proven" in a court case. A trial is about things like where the defendant was seen, what he said to people before and after, whether he left fingerprints, DNA, etc., whether suspicious things were found in his possession, etc etc etc. It's a human judgment call. And even if there were such a thing as "100% proven", there would be no way to write a legal standard for judges/juries to apply that ensures a case is, in fact, "100% proven".

A person could tell themselves that they support the death penalty if a case is "100% proven" but otherwise do not support it, but what can that possibly mean when there is no "100% proven" case, and if there were no way to tell which case it is?

(There are more complicating issues: it's not applied evenly. Two people convicted of very similar ugly crimes can easily see different results. One gets life, one gets death. Specifically because it's a human judgment call, it's uneven in application. Within that point, there is a very real racial disparity).


The choice is either imposing the death penalty despite all the innocent people we execute, or deciding that executing evil people who "deserve" it simply is not worth the deathof one innocent.
 
Replace the death penalty with life in solitary confinement.
 
that is far more inhumane than killing them

Not according to U.S. courts which. allow (frequently) solitary confinement in the U.S. And someone proven to be innocent while they are serving in solitary can be freed and then compensated. I've suggested 40-50,000 a year for approximately four times as many years as they were imprisoned. That's because most people have to spend approximately one quarter of their time working to support themselves. Thus this would "give that time back to them" that they had taken away from them in prison.
 
Not according to U.S. courts which. allow (frequently) solitary confinement in the U.S. And someone proven to be innocent while they are serving in solitary can be freed and then compensated. I've suggested 40-50,000 a year for approximately four times as many years as they were imprisoned. That's because most people have to spend approximately one quarter of their time working to support themselves. Thus this would "give that time back to them" that they had taken away from them in prison.
U.S. courts are a disgrace.
 
That is because of all the legal challenges, takes way too long. 13 years is just silly. Might as well not even have the death penalty .
Lets get rid of it then :)
 
Why is life in a cage more humane than the death penalty?
They have the ability to be released if they are found innocent, if the state screws up and kills the wrong person, they cant be brought back.
 
Murder is an unlawful killing. If someone is found guilty and then executed it is not murder no matter how many times you wish to use the word. The thing about the death penalty is that everyone on death row knew that what they were doing could be punished by death, and they choose to do it anyhow.

But back to the question....what makes living a 10x10 cell for the rest of your life more humane than having that life ended?

Do you believe in an afterlife?
The state makes a lot of mistakes. Once someone is dead, they dont come back. Thats the major difference.
 
None. That is why I only want cases that are 100% proven. Preferably with overwhelming evidence. A confession is a bonus if it matches the evidence.

But “bygones” on all the innocent folks who have been murdered thus far.
 
Cory Johnson and Dustin Higgs were due to be Donald Trump's final executions before he leaves the White House, but lawyers argue their Covid-damaged lungs would mean a lethal injection would be torture
The executions of two condemned murderers have been delayed for months while they recover from Covid-19.
Inmates Cory Johnson and Dustin Higgs had been scheduled to die on Thursday and Friday at the Justice Department's execution chamber in its prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
However, Judge Tanya Chutkan of the US District Court in Washington ordered the US Department of Justice extend their time on death row until at least March 16.
Their lawyers had argued the virus has damaged their lung tissue and giving them the lethal injection would cause such severe pain it would be like torture.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/trumps-final-two-executions-delayed-23308688

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Cory Johnson (l) and Dustin John Higgs

This moves the killing of the inmates into the presidency of Joe Biden who is known to be against capital punishment. Inmates cannot be executed by any state of the European Union as they are bound by the European Convention on Human Rights.


Did those two show any mercy to their victims?

Disgusting that more concern is shown to those two than to the victims' grieving families.

Oh, yeah, that person in the White House will stay their execution. After all, didn't you see yesterday's photo op of him standing so reverently in front of the Lincoln Memorial?
 
Did those two show any mercy to their victims?

Disgusting that more concern is shown to those two than to the victims' grieving families.

Oh, yeah, that person in the White House will stay their execution. After all, didn't you see yesterday's photo op of him standing so reverently in front of the Lincoln Memorial?
Your question has nothing to do with the stay of executions.
 
We are all in debt to President Trump's administration for executing about half a dozen.

If he had been reelected, others would have also been sent to where they belong.

Sadly, he was not reelected.
 
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