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I feel like a broken record but very few capital crimes convicts are first-time offenders. Likely the accused crime is not unique. While there is a small chance that the accused is not guilty of the particular crime in question or has a smaller role in it than would warrant the death penalty, the chances are the typical capital convict is a "one man crime wave." While we have a responsibility to allow an accused to show reasonable doubt, we also have a responsibility to enforce the rule of law.
The death penalty is only available for a couple of crimes, and it is used almost exclusively for murder now. I think it is a stretch to say that people accused of murder who go on death row are all serial killers or gang members going on shooting sprees. Even if you were previously convicted of a non-capital crime, that doesn’t mean it is fine for you to get the death penalty in the event of a mistake.
And to the person to say that it is just as bad to have someone go free- that doesn’t depend at all on particular punishment. Most people against the death penalty want the alternative to be life without parole.
Yep and I am certainly not Jewish, although the reformed Jews are very similar to a lot of mainstream christians.
Thou shall not kill is what I was taught and stick to it.
I am a relatively observant, and interested Reform Jew. I am in Temple far more than three times a year and I do quite a bit of reading on Jewish topics. The way our Rabbi explains it, there is plenty of killing, such as military killings and self-defense, and he and I would argue abortion that do not constitute murder.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rachel NewYork
While the concept of a death penalty is recorded as an accepted practice in "the old testament" (the holy book known to Jews as the Tanakh), the Talmud advises that the death penalty should be used sparingly. It has been stated in the Talmud that any Jewish court that handed down a sentence of execution at least once within a period of seven years was "a destructive tribunal." Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya (who lived in the 1st century C.E.) went even further to say that a court was destructive if it handed down a sentence of execution once in seventy years. (Source: Mishnah Makkot 1:10).
Isn't there a Mishnah or Talmud tract to the effect that while death is prescribed for certain classes of people "there is no such thing" as those types of people? Apparently the use of the death penalty was quite rare.
The death penalty is only available for a couple of crimes, and it is used almost exclusively for murder now. I think it is a stretch to say that people accused of murder who go on death row are all serial killers or gang members going on shooting sprees. Even if you were previously convicted of a non-capital crime, that doesn’t mean it is fine for you to get the death penalty in the event of a mistake.
The point about prior criminal activity is that it makes far less likely that a capital convict is being railroaded. I would certainly want to be sure that a person is a habitual criminal rather than a "one-timer" that snaps before executing someone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RamenAddict
And to the person to say that it is just as bad to have someone go free- that doesn’t depend at all on particular punishment. Most people against the death penalty want the alternative to be life without parole.
I used to be in favor of life without parole. That has been sh own to be fraudulent. Witness the number of ideologically driven paroles, for example, Judith Clark, the getaway driver in the Brinks robbery, see Former Weather Underground Member, 69, Granted Parole. The original seventy-five years to life sentence was supposed to make parole impossible.
Isn't there a Mishnah or Talmud tract to the effect that while death is prescribed for certain classes of people "there is no such thing" as those types of people? Apparently the use of the death penalty was quite rare.
I'm not that familiar with writings in the Talmud about the non-existence of certain classes of people, but I'm no expert in Talmud. You might ask Rosends about it over in the Judaism forum. I do, though, believe that you are correct in what you wrote about the use of the death penalty having been quite rare.
This contrasts with certain State legislatures within the United States (I'm looking at Texas in particular), where it appears that death penalty sentences are given far more commonly.
Last edited by Rachel NewYork; 08-17-2021 at 08:54 AM..
If you killed a person in anger, you should be put to death.
Having these people sit in jails we pay for, for decades is a waste.
There is a lengthy appeals process following a conviction precisely because several dozen innocent people have been put on death row. I guess there are people who actually believe that if those people lose their lives its ""just bad luck" or some such. Most of us though are appalled by such a result. We realize that a justice system that would allow such people to be killed is not really a justice system at all and not worthy of our country or our Constitution.
Last edited by Rachel NewYork; 08-18-2021 at 12:46 PM..
Reason: Removed snark about "simple people." Please don't get snarky in Great Debates. Thank you.
If you killed a person in anger, you should be put to death.
Having these people sit in jails we pay for, for decades is a waste.
Yeah? Here are the last photographs of George Stinney when he was 14 years old. He was accused of murder and the jury deliberated for a total of 10 minutes before deciding to convict him. The judge determined that he be murdered by the government. He was exonerated in 2014. A bit late.
I get it, most people on death row don't look like George Stinney, and capital punishment for juveniles in the United States was abolished by 2005, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in Roper v. Simmons. Most people on death row are certainly guilty of their crimes, but some are not, like George Stinney. But I just can't get behind any system where George Stinney's fate is a possibility.
Yeah? Here are the last photographs of George Stinney when he was 14 years old. He was accused of murder and the jury deliberated for a total of 10 minutes before deciding to convict him. The judge determined that he be murdered by the government. He was exonerated in 2014. A bit late.
I get it, most people on death row don't look like George Stinney, and capital punishment for juveniles in the United States was abolished by 2005, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in Roper v. Simmons. Most people on death row are certainly guilty of their crimes, but some are not, like George Stinney. But I just can't get behind any system where George Stinney's fate is a possibility.
Makes me think that juries that wrongly convict a person who is then sentenced to death should be held responsible with an equal penalty. And that is the problem with revenge that masquerades as justice. And doesn't it make you wonder about the boy's race and the fact that this was in the South? Frankly, just another lynching using electricity instead of a rope.
Makes me think that juries that wrongly convict a person who is then sentenced to death should be held responsible with an equal penalty. And that is the problem with revenge that masquerades as justice. And doesn't it make you wonder about the boy's race and the fact that this was in the South? Frankly, just another lynching using electricity instead of a rope.
I don't think you'd get many people willing to serve on juries. Or, juries would acquit every person.
What I do believe is that for too long there have been too many people who have approached jury service in a sloppy and haphazard way. For example, eyewitness testimony should be considered far more skeptically by juries than it is. Many convictions rest on eyewitness testimony from crime victims who did not know the perpetrator before the crime was committed. Generally, the victim was under great stress when the identification was made. Cases in such situations should generally result in acquittals based on the fact that the evidence does not show--beyond a reasonable doubt--that the perpetrator was guilty. Yet, juries more often than not accept these identifications and convict someone often condemning them to lengthy prison sentences.
I think it is time for these cases to receive more scrutiny than they do. Jury instructions should lay out in more detail the requirements before a jury can convict in such a case. Judges should have more power to set such verdicts aside when they have no more basis than this kind of testimony.
I don't think you'd get many people willing to serve on juries. Or, juries would acquit every person.
What I do believe is that for too long there have been too many people who have approached jury service in a sloppy and haphazard way. For example, eyewitness testimony should be considered far more skeptically by juries than it is. Many convictions rest on eyewitness testimony from crime victims who did not know the perpetrator before the crime was committed. Generally, the victim was under great stress when the identification was made. Cases in such situations should generally result in acquittals based on the fact that the evidence does not show--beyond a reasonable doubt--that the perpetrator was guilty. Yet, juries more often than not accept these identifications and convict someone often condemning them to lengthy prison sentences.
I think it is time for these cases to receive more scrutiny than they do. Jury instructions should lay out in more detail the requirements before a jury can convict in such a case. Judges should have more power to set such verdicts aside when they have no more basis than this kind of testimony.
There is the case of Lennell Jeter in Texas back in the 80s. Jeter was a young black engineer employed by a Greenville, Texas, military contractor. I was aware of the case because I had contact with that contractor in support of the US Air Force RC-135 program.
Lennell Jeter was convicted of armed robbery of a fast food store near Dallas. Although nine of his coworkers were willing to testify that he was at work -- 50 miles away -- when the robbery occurred, he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment based on eye witnesses at the store.
In fact, Jeter was actually in a scheduled one-on-one performance report session with his supervisor at the moment the robbery was occurring. Everyone in the office was scheduled for their performance sessions that day, so everyone knew exactly where Jeter was. As the secretary said in an interview, "We always knew when Lennell was in the office...he was like a raisin in a bowl of rice." (You can't make up stuff like that.)
But there were eye witnesses to him being in the store holding a gun 50 miles away. A Texas law permits the judge to end testimony on a question when he feels it has been satisfactorily answered, so this judge refused to allow Jeter's alibi testimonies to be heard after the prosecution's eye witnesses were heard.
As it turned out, the reason eye witnesses seemed to remember Jeter is because they had been shown Jeter's mug shot over and over until his was the face lodged in their memories. The reason there existed a mug shot of Jeter was because the he had been earlier arrested for vagrancy while eating lunch--wearing suit and tie--while sitting on a bench in the park across from his employer's office building. That's a tragic story in itself.
Months after Jeter's imprisonment, the actual robber was caught and convicted for that very crime. But the Texas attorney general refused to permit his release or even a retrial, citing that there had been no technical procedural error in Jeter's trial, so there was no need for a re-trial.
So for a time, both Jeter and the actual criminal were in the same prison convicted of the same crime.
Jeter's conviction did not get reviewed until after that attorney general retired from office.
Last edited by Ralph_Kirk; 08-25-2021 at 11:35 AM..
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