How do you feel about your state not having the death penalty? (movies, living in)

[FleeingFlorida]

I'm of two minds: on the one hand, if the convicted person is innocent, the death penalty's permanent, no "oops, sorry, you're free to go" possibility.

OTOH, "He needed killin'" to me is a perfectly valid argument, not just a line in a list of reasons the South is different from the North. There's some people that really are a waste of oxygen, and of taxpayer money.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by HotStove

How do you Minnesotans feel about your state not having capital punishment? Do you hope Minnesota keeps it outlawed, brings it back, or does it not matter one way or another to you?

The death penalty is a complex question in my mind, but not because I consider human life to be sacrosanct, though I do attach a very high value to it.

For me, like it seems with many others, the key issue isn't "do some people really deserve to die?" as much as it is "are we absolutely certain that we have the guilty person in custody?".

Killing the right person doesn't bother me if that person has actually done an extreme amount of harm, has shown little remorse, and has demonstrated that they will never again be a constructive member of society through reform. Why should that person continue to suck up common resources?

Killing the wrong person bothers me a LOT. That could well be worse than the original crime. :-(

Of course, I guess I could be considered a Georgian now, and Georgia has the death penalty, so...

[moving123456]

Originally Posted by molochai2580

That's not really a fair comparison since Texas has nearly 5 times the population of Minnesota.

Murder rates are often calculated by the number of murders per 100,000 residents, not a total number in one state vs the total number in another state.

[moving123456]

Originally Posted by HotStove

When comparing crime rates to states with the DP and states without it, I used Texas as the model state with it (it's by far the leader in executions) and Minnesota as the model state without it. I found that Texas has a murder rate almost 3 times as much as Minnesota.

Local culture might be another thing to consider when comparing the two. Compare Scandinavian "reserved" culture to Spanish "macho" culture. That alone might affect the murder rate more than the state having the death penalty or not.

[deckdoc]

what bothers me are the sactimonious people that want to do away with aborion because life is to be protected! Many feel that the death penanlty is a good thing. Can't have it both ways people ~ if life is not to be taken its not to be taken~ under any circumstances!

And I agree~any life is not to be taken lightly

[marmac]

I am strongly against abortion and strongly against the death penalty.

[mmhl]

count me in the column of very glad we do not have it. It makes me extremely uneasy that the death penalty is legal anywhere, for the reasons the posters all stated above.

[Ben Around]

Originally Posted by FleeingFlorida

I'm of two minds: on the one hand, if the convicted person is innocent, the death penalty's permanent, no "oops, sorry, you're free to go" possibility.

OTOH, "He needed killin'" to me is a perfectly valid argument, not just a line in a list of reasons the South is different from the North. There's some people that really are a waste of oxygen, and of taxpayer money.

Yikes, do you really believe this? I hope you are just satirizing, like Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal".

[FleeingFlorida]

Originally Posted by Ben Around

Yikes, do you really believe this? I hope you are just satirizing, like Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal".

Not by half. Seems like every day I read about another horrific act of violence committed by one human being against another, and I can't help but think we'd be better off without certain people--they're just not wired right.

[ColdRedRain]

Personally, I like it. Being all the way out in the middle of the country and having an area that has such a vast rural suburban and cultural shift, relevant cultural, sociological and psychological factors are usually ignored by arresting officers. It's a dirty little secret amongst the MPLS and STP police that they have less than favorable views towards Somalis, Hmong and interracial couples and they tend to be arrested and cuffed more often.

An instance I remember was when some drunken white suburban kids were causing a scene on the train. They were visibly drunk and they were harassing the other people in the cabin. What was worse, they had an open bottle and they were brandishing it. It was becomming unbearable and I finally had enough of the drunken kids and called the transit police. They talked to the kids, took away their bottle and let them go clubbing later on that night. These are the same transit police that constantly pick up drunken Native Americans on the train platforms and book them for public drunkeness and have arrested groups of drunken Natives before.

I can probably see this nightmare scenario sprininging if we have the death penalty in our state: A lilly white preppy girl wants to stick it to her father by screwing a Somali immigrant. They've been doing it for a while and later on The girl later finds out she's pregnant and suddenly realizes the shame the mixed baby will bring onto the community. The woman doesn't want to face shunning from her community, so she lies and says that the guy raped her. She can see the story starting to slowly unravel and she doesn't want to be known as the "Sand N$#^$er F#$er" in her neighborhood. It would ruin her chances of getting to the top of her social structure. The woman then calls the Somali man over for one last goodbye at the local McDonalds, then drives off into a lake and kills herself without the Somali guy knowing what happened. Days later, they find her car and her body. Witnesses put him at that McDonalds. They assign a detective to invesitgate the case. Turns out, that cop has an inherent prejudice against Somalis. He also has connections with the woman's father. As a favor to the father, the cop plants evidence on the Somali immigrant so she and her family can avoid shame. They arrest the Somali guy. The Somali guy can't afford a lawyer and is given a public defender. He's asked to testify. He gives poor eye contact and takes some questions asked by the judge literally, due to a poor understanding of English as well as the Somali immigrant quite possibly having a case of undiagnosed low grade Autism, which is common in Somali communities.

The Somali immigrant also has a confident swagger to him, which irritates everybody in the prison system. They're wondering why this Somali person doesn't have a defeated, desparate look on his face like so many other minorities and other Somalis in the prison system. It turns out that back in Somalia, before the government collapsed, their family were highly influential and they were one of the richest people in Somalia and they owned many 2 star Indian Ocean resorts and immigrated to Minnesota after the collapse of the government. He has rich family members in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but he himself isn't rich. His confidence violates Minnesota Jante Law #1 and 2. (Never act like you're something special and don't think you're better than any of us.) and is labelled in the prison system as "defiant".

He's later diagnosed by a court appointed psychologist as having low grade Autism, but the jury doesn't understand because most of them have a less than rudimentary understanding of psychology and just see an arrogant, avoidant person with a lack of empathy and emotion. He doesn't give the jury eye contact either because of his disability and because in Somali culture, eye contact is seen as a sign of aggression. In this case, the evidence can go either way because the woman drove her car into a lake and drowned herself and he was the last person spotted with her. The jury has an unfavorable view upon the immigrant and convicts him and is "convinced" he did it, based on his "avoidant" and "arrogant" behavior.

That nightmare scenario happens a lot in Minnesota without the death penalty with a lot of minority suspects. It's partially because of our culture, our niave and sometimes backwards police officers, and I hate to say it folks, our relative shelteredness from the rest of the world. I can foresee the state putting somebody like that guy to death.

FYI, I think the death penalty is a good thing for some sectors of society. There are some people in society who are so evil that they need to be put away from society forever and killed before they're a danger to other people. I'm in favor of the death penalty for federal crimes, since the jury pool and federal law enforcement draws from a more diverse and well informed people than a state of 5 million people in the middle of nowhere. Our state's culture is prohibitive to giving somebody a fair trial.