Do You Support The Death Penalty?

[serious crayons]

Do we need to revisit that proud moment in American liberalism : Willy Horton? The early release of convicted murdered Willy Horton who decided that murder and rape was so much fun it was worth repeating,  after the charming Gov Dukakis released him.

I resisted the urge to correct this in your last post, but now you leave me no choice. This subject has come up before. From Wikipedia:

William R. Horton (born August 12, 1951 in Chesterfield, South Carolina) is a convicted felon who was the subject of a Massachusetts weekend furlough program that released him while serving a life sentence for murder, without the possibility of parole, during which furloughs he committed armed robbery and rape.

So see? He didn't murder anyone while on furlough. Therefore the furloughs were not a problem at all! 

And to suggest that some potential murderers will not be dissuaded from murder by a death penalty that is swiftly and surely applied also defies human nature.

Oh, there probably are some murderers out there who would stop themselves mid-crime, think ahead to the future, assume that chances are they'll be caught, know they'll get that swift and sure death penalty, and put their gun away.

Trouble is, I see that as the exception to human nature. Most people don't want to do life in prison, either. Yet somehow they keep on murderin'.

My contention is that if we weren't such a culture of violence -- including one that heartily approves of widespread gun ownership, jumps all over anyone who suggests tightening gun laws, and endorses legalized murder in the form of capital punishment (and, while we're at it, in the form of invasive war) -- there would be fewer would-be murderers created in the first place.

The problem, like most of the problems in the crime and punishment scene, are the liberals in public policy venues who prevent the swift and sure application of the death penalty. Get liberals out of the way, and the murder rate will plummet, along with taxes.

That, to me, explains why all the other industrialized countries have tougher gun laws, no capital punishment, no invasion of Iraq, in many cases even more liberals  -- and much lower murder rates.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Oh, there probably are some murderers out there who would stop themselves mid-crime, think ahead to the future, assume that chances are they'll be caught, know they'll get that swift and sure death penalty, and put their gun away.

Trouble is, I see that as the exception to human nature. Most people don't want to do life in prison, either. Yet somehow they keep on murderin'.

Anyone who is so narcissistic as to think he can get away with a premeditated murder will not be deterred by the threat of capital punishment. People who kill in the heat of anger won't be deterred by it either, as they are out of control emotionally when they kill.

Get liberals out of the way, and the murder rate will plummet, along with taxes.

Get liberals out of the way, and there will be no one to stand between you and the needle when you are falsely and unjustly convicted of murder on the basis of testimony by unreliable witnesses and corrupt or lazy law enforcement personnel.

[brokeplex]

Actually, the reason I specified New Orleans is because I didn't hear of them as often in Minneapolis. Why, I wonder? Perhaps because it's not as much of a gun culture -- despite the lack of death penalty? Part of it could be that I just didn't pay as much attention there -- with it no longer a professional requirement, I avoided the sad parts of the paper where stories like that normally run. (Ditto Chicago.) But really, I think they happened more often in LA.

Oh, well, of course. I agree. I just don't think these are as easily prevented by handgun laws.

Here, as I outlined ad nauseum in the Death Penalty thread, is where I would disagree.

Though of course you're somewhat of a self-selecting sample (how's that for alliteration?). The children who WERE tempted to mishandle their parents guns may not be here to post about it. But note that of the examples I listed in my previous post, the one you quoted, only one of them involved mishandling by a child.

  I can't see how your case against the death penalty is enhanced by reminding everyone of exactly what the brutal convicted murdered Willie Horton actually did when he was not only not executed by the state of MA for his brutal crime, but in fact released on a "weekend rehabilitation" program administered and advocated by liberal Democrat Gov Michael Dukakis (MA). I wouldn't have shared the details, because they are so inflammatory, but since you wish to press the issue.

Lets see, on a weekend furlough which put the convicted murderers they released "on their honor to return" at the end of their weekend of rest and rehab, Horton managed to get transportation from MA all the way down to MD. And there the "honorable" murderer Horton  managed to:

1) Brutally pistol whip and slice open the stomach of a man - he required extensive surgery later

2) Savagely beat, strangled and raped a woman - she also required surgery

3) stole the victims vehicle

4) after being apprehended by MD authorities, the judicial system in MD refused to return Horton to MA because of their justifiable fears that MA would just release Horton again.

REMEMBER, this is a man who had already committed a brutal murder, and because MA does not impose the death penalty, he was allowed to live, be released and commit brutal crimes again. It really is a no brainer that if Horton had been executed for the first crime, he would not have been able to commit the second.


Dukakis & Willie Horton
The Willie Horton case
10/88

"In Massachusetts, first-degree murderers used to get out of prison for the weekend ...

Governor Michael Dukakis believed that it was "rehabilitative" for prisoners to be allowed to roam the streets unsupervised in what was known as the Prison Furlough Program.

That practice was finally outlawed by state legislators on April 28, 1988, after an enormous grassroots petition drive brought the issue before the people.

Here are the cold hard facts about Governor Dukakis' "experiment in justice," which has received little coverage on campaign news broadcasts:

* On June 6, 1986, convicted murderer Willie Horton was released from the Northeastern Correctional Center in Concord. Under state law, he had become eligible for an unguarded, 48-hour furlough. He never came back.

* Horton showed up in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on April 3, 1987. Clifford Barnes, 28, heard footsteps in his house and thought his fiancée had returned early from a wedding party. Suddenly Willie Horton stepped out of the shadows with a gun. For the next seven hours, Horton punched, pistol-whipped, and kicked Barnes - and also cut him 22 times across his midsection.

* When Barnes' fiancée Angela returned that evening, Horton gagged her and savagely raped her twice. Horton then stole Barnes' car, and was later chased by police until captured.

* On October 20, 1987, Horton was sentenced in Maryland to two consecutive life terms plus 85 years. The sentencing judge refused to return Horton to Massachusetts, saying, "I'm not prepared to take the chance that Mr. Horton might again be furloughed or otherwise released. This man should never draw a breath of free air again."

* Variations of this story were repeated on several occasions in Massachusetts. Confessed rapist John Zukoski, who had brutally beaten and murdered a 44 year-old woman in 1970, became eligible for furloughs and was eventually paroled in 1986. A few months later he was arrested and indicted yet again for beating and raping a woman.

* The Massachusetts inmate furlough program actually began under Governor Francis Sargent in 1972. But in 1976 Governor Dukakis vetoed a bill to ban furloughs for first-degree murderers. It would, he said, "Cut the heart out of inmate rehabilitation."

* The program, in essence, released killers on an "honor system" to see if they would stay out of trouble. On the average, convicts who had been sentenced to "life without parole" spent fewer than 19 years in prison. By March 1987, Dukakis had commuted the sentences of 28 first-degree murderers.

* Of over 80 Massachusetts convicts listed as escaped and still at large, only four had actually "escaped." The rest simply walked away from furloughs, prerelease centers and other minimum-security programs. These convicts included murderers, rapists, armed robbers and drug dealers.

* First-degree murderer Armand Therrien was transferred from a medium security prison to a minimum-security one, which made him eligible for a work-release program. He walked off and vanished in December 1987.

* When citizens began to protest, Dukakis and his aides defended the program relentlessly. One commissioner stated that furloughs were a "management tool" to help the prisons. Unless a convict had hope of parole, he argued, "we would have a very dangerous population in an already dangerous system." But, critics wondered, if armed guards can't control dangerous killers inside locked cells, how are unarmed citizens supposed to deal with them?

* It was through the efforts of a grassroots organization, Citizens Against Unsafe Society, that the issue was finally brought before the people. With mounting pressure from his own aides to sign a bill ending the program - for fear that it would hurt his presidential campaign - Dukakis signed the legislation in April of this year."


The majority of this material was taken from the article "Getting Away with Murder," by Robert James Bidinotto, which appeared in Reader's Digest, July 1988.

[brokeplex]

Anyone who is so narcissistic as to think he can get away with a premeditated murder will not be deterred by the threat of capital punishment. People who kill in the heat of anger won't be deterred by it either, as they are out of control emotionally when they kill.

Get liberals out of the way, and there will be no one to stand between you and the needle when you are falsely and unjustly convicted of murder on the basis of testimony by unreliable witnesses and corrupt or lazy law enforcement personnel.

and so you know that the handgun crimes that you were discussing in an earlier post are all crimes of passion? 

and, if even only one of those crimes is premeditated and the killer is stopped by the thought of a noose around his or her neck, then the death penalty still sounds like a good idea to me.

I sincerely hope that more than "liberals" stand in the way of a miscarriage of justice, I do recall that there are both  state and a federal constitutions that just might help me avoid the needle and the gurney in that situation.

[brokeplex]

Oh, there probably are some murderers out there who would stop themselves mid-crime, think ahead to the future, assume that chances are they'll be caught, know they'll get that swift and sure death penalty, and put their gun away.

My contention is that if we weren't such a culture of violence -- including one that heartily approves of widespread gun ownership, jumps all over anyone who suggests tightening gun laws, and endorses legalized murder in the form of capital punishment (and, while we're at it, in the form of invasive war) -- there would be fewer would-be murderers created in the first place.

That, to me, explains why all the other industrialized countries have tougher gun laws, no capital punishment, no invasion of Iraq, in many cases even more liberals  -- and much lower murder rates.

Well, at least this is consistent with your view that the furlough program was not a failure since the murderer Horton only brutally assaulted, raped, and stole while on his weekend furlough - courtesy of Michael Dukakis. It seems to me that if ONE innocent victim is saved from being murdered by a swift and sure death penalty for murderers, then it has served a great purpose.

 I am often amazed at the apparent belief among the foes of the death penalty that the victim's life is not really important, I mean they are gone anyway, right? Flushed, over with, so why worry?

Death Penalty = Legalized Murder?

Essentially what you are saying is that the state taking of the life of someone like Horton is an unjustifiable killing. Therefore "murder by legal means", which puts that killing on par with the original murder committed by Horton. What you are also implying is that under your "enlightened" system, which you feel it necessary to call forth the criminal codes of other countries, the life of the victim murdered by Horton is of less value than the life of the murderer Horton. Now, you can claim that is not what you mean, but that is the underlying implication of having no enforceable death penalty. If the life of the murder victim was under the law as important to society as the life of someone like Horton, then Horton should die.

  talk about conflating issues, I thought I had reached the limit with the "taxes and hand gun murderers" conflation. But, you have me beat hands down on the conflation front when you link : handgun violence, death penalties, and the war in Iraq.  

don't you think that the unique history of this country, and its unique demography might explain much more about why some countries which do not have the death penalty have lower murder rates than the US? maybe the murder rates were already at much lower levels than the US rates when they abolished their death penalties?

that is the same error you made in comparing NO and Minneapolis. compare like with like and the analogies will work better.

[serious crayons]

As Del and David have correctly noted, there is a whole other thread about the death penalty. So I'll try    to minimize my philosophical views on that subject and simply point out the fallacies in your intepretation of my post, which is MUCH more on-topic about Charlton Heston. 

Your response contains a number of major leaps in which I say A and you take that to mean C. But more troublesome is your describing my post as "conflating" two things -- as in, treating them as the same thing, or at least moral equivalents -- and what my post intended to do, which was compare them, categorize them similarly, consider them as side-by-side factors in a common outcome.

Here are a couple of illustrations of what I mean. The economy might be declining because of a) a crisis in the subprime mortgage industry and b) lack of consumer confidence. That does not mean there is no difference between subprime mortgage overextension and nervous consumers. Brokeback Mountain is my favorite movie because Heath Ledger was a great actor and Ang Lee is a good director. Yet Heath and Ang are two different people, who by happenstance came together to make a masterpiece.

So let's get to the specifics.

Well, at least this is consistent with your view that the furlough program was not a failure since the murderer Horton only brutally assaulted, raped, and stole while on his weekend furlough - courtesy of Michael Dukakis.

Where on earth did I make any assessment of the success or failure of the furlough program?? I simply pointed out that Willie Horton didn't kill anybody while on furlough. Which, contrary to what you had said, he didn't. Of course, as the moms at the playground always tell their children, armed robbery and rape are not OK.

It seems to me that if ONE innocent victim is saved from being murdered by a swift and sure death penalty for murderers, then it has served a great purpose.

It seems to me that if ONE innocent person is murdered unjustly by a swift and sure death penalty, then it is fatally flawed from a moral perspective. And since studies have shown that has likely happened numerous times even with a slow and uncertain death penalty, I'd say that consequence is all but inevitable.

Let me ask you, OFT, why is it that death penalty proponents seem to worry less about the lives of innocents hypothetically unjustly accused of murdering, than the lives of innocents hypothetically being saved by the capital punishment?

I am often amazed at the apparent belief among the foes of the death penalty that the victim's life is not really important, I mean they are gone anyway, right? Flushed, over with, so why worry?

Where on earth did I say this?? Again, this particular debate is better suited to the death penalty thread. But even on that thread, I can't recall any death-penalty proponent characterizing opponents in quite this extreme (and frivolous) a way. It's one thing to say that opposition to the death penalty doesn't treat the victim's life as important enough in contrast to one's horror of state-sponsored killing. Endlessly arguable, but a fair question. But how does opposing the death penalty equate in your view with considering "the victim's life ... not really important ... they're gone anyway"? That's misconstrues my point to an absurd degree. On the contrary, my view on the death penalty reflects the importance I place on ALL lives.

Essentially what you are saying is that the state taking of the life of someone like Horton is an unjustifiable killing.

Yes.

Therefore "murder by legal means", which puts that killing on par with the original murder committed by Horton.

No. See above. Even the legal system doesn't put all illegal murders on par with each other. For instance, premeditated murder is not treated the same way as impulsive murder, murdering a cop isn't treated the same way as murdering a civilian. So extend the categories and call them all murder.

What you are also implying is that under your "enlightened" system, which you feel it necessary to call forth the criminal codes of other countries,

Um, yeah, with the idea that it is not uninstructive to see how other similar societies handle a similar situation and consider why their systems work so much better -- why they don't have so many people in prison, let alone dead. You've disagreed with the reasons I've hypothesized. So what exactly do you see as the reasons?

the life of the victim murdered by Horton is of less value than the life of the murderer Horton.

No. See above. Their lives are of equal value. Are the two equally likable -- or, more to the point, are the two equally morally acceptable as human beings? No, probably not. But that's not the same thing as the value of life. The value of life is in a different category altogether.

I don't know where you'd get the "less value" thing anyway. Willie Horton killed somebody. So therefore that makes it OK for the state to kill somebody? How's that? Since when does our justice system have to revolve around a "tit for tat" mentality? Should we rob and rape him, too?

Now, you can claim that is not what you mean, but that is the underlying implication of having no enforceable death penalty. If the life of the murder victim was under the law as important to society as the life of someone like Horton, then Horton should die.

The law should consider all lives equally important, equally unnexpendible. It's not up to people to decide who lives and who dies.

talk about conflating issues, I thought I had reached the limit with the "taxes and hand gun murderers" conflation. But, you have me beat hands down on the conflation front when you link : handgun violence, death penalties, and the war in Iraq. 

Well, again, I wasn't "conflating." I was just saying all of those things (and no doubt others) are factors in the same product: a violent society.

don't you think that the unique history of this country, and its unique demography might explain much more about why some countries which do not have the death penalty have lower murder rates than the US? maybe the murder rates were already at much lower levels than the US rates when they abolished their death penalties?

that is the same error you made in comparing NO and Minneapolis. compare like with like and the analogies will work better.

I'm not sure what you mean by "unique demography" and I'm reluctant to wade into this any further until I do. Yes, our U.S. demography differs from those of Western Europe, and the Minneapolis demography differs from that of N.O. But I'm not sure what aspects of those differences you're referring to, and without having more specifics I'm going to hold back on debating this point.

[injest]

Let me ask you, OFT, why is it that death penalty proponents seem to worry less about the lives of innocents hypothetically unjustly accused of murdering, than the lives of innocents hypothetically being saved by the capital punishment?

very simple.

the victims that MIGHT die if we release a murderer are the 'clean, white, middle class or higher' They think of the white blonde schoolgirl, the hard working retirees.

the 'innocent' prisoner that is executed is just another piece of poor trash that we will be better off without anyway. There are very few middle class white men on death row (and no wealthy ones)...those people in prison arent going to provide anything to society and if they were out running around they would just be breeding the next generation of trash. And if you dig enough they probably deserve their fate anyway.

(they will protest but this is the real reason under all the high minded talk)

[Jeff Wrangler]

and so you know that the handgun crimes that you were discussing in an earlier post are all crimes of passion? 

I wasn't even referring to the crimes I mentioned earlier. I was speaking generally. And why do you find that comment funny?

and, if even only one of those crimes is premeditated and the killer is stopped by the thought of a noose around his or her neck, then the death penalty still sounds like a good idea to me.

I never said the death penalty wasn't a good idea, either. As a matter of fact, I agree with you, more or less. I find it a perfectly acceptable punishment for particularly heinous crimes. It's the idea that it's any kind of a deterrent that I find false--even if it's swiftly applied. I'll leave to the legislators to define heinous.

I sincerely hope that more than "liberals" stand in the way of a miscarriage of justice, I do recall that there are both  state and a federal constitutions that just might help me avoid the needle and the gurney in that situation.

Sure enough. However, as far as I can tell, it never seems to be conservatives insisting that justice has miscarried when someone is convicted, or doing the legwork to prove it. It takes people to give life to those constitutions. If, God forbid, you ever find yourself in that situation, you'd better hope that one of those awful liberals is willing to take on your case and try to save your life. Most conservatives I ever hear of will just try to move up your execution date.

[serious crayons]

the 'innocent' prisoner that is executed is just another piece of poor trash that we will be better off without ...  if you dig enough they probably deserve their fate anyway.

Sure enough. However, as far as I can tell, it never seems to be conservatives insisting that justice has miscarried when someone is convicted, or doing the legwork to prove it.

Yes, I'm afraid I agree with these assessments of the way some death-penalty proponents view (at least tacitly) the prospect of mistakenly executing innocent citizens. To paraphrase Ennis: They'd probably deserve it.

I like to stick with the safe assumption that ALL human life -- blonde coed, heinous murderer, Iraqi civilian -- is valuable and sacrosanct and inviolable. We can't entirely prevent killings by murderers, though of course we should do what we can through actions ranging from gun laws to anti-poverty efforts to reducing our society's overall acceptance of violence. But we have complete control over whether we as a society deliberately cut short people's lives.

[brokeplex]

As Del and David have correctly noted, there is a whole other thread about the death penalty. So I'll try    to minimize my philosophical views on that subject and simply point out the fallacies in your intepretation of my post, which is MUCH more on-topic about Charlton Heston. 

Your response contains a number of major leaps in which I say A and you take that to mean C. But more troublesome is your describing my post as "conflating" two things -- as in, treating them as the same thing, or at least moral equivalents -- and what my post intended to do, which was compare them, categorize them similarly, consider them as side-by-side factors in a common outcome.

Here are a couple of illustrations of what I mean. The economy might be declining because of a) a crisis in the subprime mortgage industry and b) lack of consumer confidence. That does not mean there is no difference between subprime mortgage overextension and nervous consumers. Brokeback Mountain is my favorite movie because Heath Ledger was a great actor and Ang Lee is a good director. Yet Heath and Ang are two different people, who by happenstance came together to make a masterpiece.

So let's get to the specifics.

Where on earth did I make any assessment of the success or failure of the furlough program?? I simply pointed out that Willie Horton didn't kill anybody while on furlough. Which, contrary to what you had said, he didn't. Of course, as the moms at the playground always tell their children, armed robbery and rape are not OK.

It seems to me that if ONE innocent person is murdered unjustly by a swift and sure death penalty, then it is fatally flawed from a moral perspective. And since studies have shown that has likely happened numerous times even with a slow and uncertain death penalty, I'd say that consequence is all but inevitable.

Let me ask you, OFT, why is it that death penalty proponents seem to worry less about the lives of innocents hypothetically unjustly accused of murdering, than the lives of innocents hypothetically being saved by the capital punishment?

Where on earth did I say this?? Again, this particular debate is better suited to the death penalty thread. But even on that thread, I can't recall any death-penalty proponent characterizing opponents in quite this extreme (and frivolous) a way. It's one thing to say that opposition to the death penalty doesn't treat the victim's life as important enough in contrast to one's horror of state-sponsored killing. Endlessly arguable, but a fair question. But how does opposing the death penalty equate in your view with considering "the victim's life ... not really important ... they're gone anyway"? That's misconstrues my point to an absurd degree. On the contrary, my view on the death penalty reflects the importance I place on ALL lives.

Yes.

No. See above. Even the legal system doesn't put all illegal murders on par with each other. For instance, premeditated murder is not treated the same way as impulsive murder, murdering a cop isn't treated the same way as murdering a civilian. So extend the categories and call them all murder.

Um, yeah, with the idea that it is not uninstructive to see how other similar societies handle a similar situation and consider why their systems work so much better -- why they don't have so many people in prison, let alone dead. You've disagreed with the reasons I've hypothesized. So what exactly do you see as the reasons?

No. See above. Their lives are of equal value. Are the two equally likable -- or, more to the point, are the two equally morally acceptable as human beings? No, probably not. But that's not the same thing as the value of life. The value of life is in a different category altogether.

I don't know where you'd get the "less value" thing anyway. Willie Horton killed somebody. So therefore that makes it OK for the state to kill somebody? How's that? Since when does our justice system have to revolve around a "tit for tat" mentality? Should we rob and rape him, too?

The law should consider all lives equally important, equally unnexpendible. It's not up to people to decide who lives and who dies.

Well, again, I wasn't "conflating." I was just saying all of those things (and no doubt others) are factors in the same product: a violent society.

I'm not sure what you mean by "unique demography" and I'm reluctant to wade into this any further until I do. Yes, our U.S. demography differs from those of Western Europe, and the Minneapolis demography differs from that of N.O. But I'm not sure what aspects of those differences you're referring to, and without having more specifics I'm going to hold back on debating this point.

   that is your "minimal" response? after your lengthy post, perhaps instead of the word "conflation" I should use the word "inflation"! 

I will respect the opinions offered above that this thread has gone a bit off topic and certainly can wait to opine, if the moderators wish to meld this with a pre-existing "death penalty" thread.