Death Penalty - Execution method poll

[aeropb]

I support it though I'd prefer to make the organs of the condemned available to those in need.

 

[HippyG22M3]

I chose hanging, right outside the Courthouse would be fine with me.

 

[Okie4570]

I lived in KSA for 11 years with public beheadings & hand chops weekly. I advocate for hangings. Its cost effective & green. Some folks dont deserve to draw the same breathe good folks do.

This post says that public beheading and hand chops, do nothing to prevent the same crimes from happening over and over.....they have criminals to behead and chop every week still. One would think that monthly hangings would detour criminals as well.......but apparently it didn't back in the day......or it wouldn't have been a monthly event.

 

[Foghorn]

I vote for all the above. Insitute a lottery system to choose the method after sentencing.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[okietool]

I have to go with the Iron Maiden.

 

[John6185]

Execution is a deterrent and people will think twice or thrice before committing a lethal crime. When they had the gas chambers in California I was a boy and I remember reading or hearing about that plus, the gangsters of Chicago would do everything in their power to avoid the electric chair. Bring them back, the parents, schools and government aren't doing their jobs.

 

[aviator41]

I don't really care if it deters other criminals or not. I just want the offender dead.

 

[cmhbob]

Absolute immunity takes care of that.

https://www.google.com/#q=prosecutorial+misconduct+absolute+immunity&undefined=undefined

And it doesn't happen that often right?

2011 update

I thought some of you may be interested in these statistics from the Innocence Project, which has now had some 100 death sentences overturned based upon post-conviction evidence. According to their study of the first 70 cases reversed:
•Over 30 of them involved prosecutorial misconduct.
•Over 30 of them involved police misconduct which led to wrongful convictions.
•Approximately 15 of them involved false witness testimony.
•34% of the police misconduct cases involved suppression of exculpatory evidence. 11% involved evidence fabrication.
•37% of the prosecutorial misconduct cases involved suppression of exculpatroy evidence. 25% involved knowing use of false testimony.

http://caught.net/innoc.htm

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-and-death-penalty

Blackstone's ratio etc.,

The principle is much older than Blackstone's formulation, being closely tied to the presumption of innocence in criminal trials. An early example of the principle appears in the Bible (Genesis 18:23-32),[1][2] as:


Abraham drew near, and said, "Will you consume the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous within the city? Will you consume and not spare the place for the fifty righteous who are in it?[3] ... What if ten are found there?" He [The Lord] said, "I will not destroy it for the ten's sake."[4]

The 12th-century legal theorist Maimonides, expounding on this passage as well as Exodus 23:7 ("the innocent and righteous slay thou not") argued that executing an accused criminal on anything less than absolute certainty would progressively lead to convictions merely "according to the judge's caprice. Hence the Exalted One has shut this door" against the use of presumptive evidence, for "it is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death."[1][5][6]

Sir John Fortescue's De Laudibus Legum Angliae (c. 1470) states that "one would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death, than that one innocent person should be condemned and suffer capitally."

Similarly, on 3 October 1692, while decrying the Salem witch trials, Increase Mather adapted Fortescue's statement and wrote, "It were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person should be Condemned."[7]

Blackstone's Commentaries[edit]

While compiling his highly influential set of books on English common law, William Blackstone expressed the famous ratio this way:

“ All presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously; for the law holds it better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent party suffer.[8] ”

This variation was absorbed by the British legal system, becoming a maxim by the early 19th century.[9] It was also absorbed into American common law, cited repeatedly by that country's Founding Fathers, later becoming a standard drilled into law students all the way into the 21st century.[10]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_formulation

Thanks for posting this. I was away today and am just getting back online. The Innocence Project is up to 311 people exonerated. 18 of those people were on Death Row.

Keep in mind that if the wrong person is convicted (and executed), then the bad guy is still out there. So not only have you killed an innocent person, you've caused pain and suffering to other innocent people. I saw a while back (and can't find right now) an infographic that illustrated how many other crimes had occurred as a result of convictions based on bad eyewitness ID, bad or false lab work, or prosecutorial/police misconduct. It was staggering. There were a number of murders committed, I think.

See http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/DNA_Exonerations_Nationwide.php for more.

Edit: here's the infographic:
[Broken External Image]

 

[dennishoddy]

I support it though I'd prefer to make the organs of the condemned available to those in need.

If your electrocuted, the organs are not available. At 480 volts AC, your internal organs heat to 160 degrees in less than a second if your grounded at your feet and touch live voltage with a finger.

 

[IndVet]

I'm not interested in anything but deterrence.

Televised electrocutions is my preferred method, without a hood.