[GardenSirens]

Death is a release from the world. Why give this kid something like that. Rape and beatings happen in jail and honestly, this guy deserves that way more than the easy way out. The terrorism is linked to capital punishment because if they can legally prove it was terrorism (which they probably won't) there are more harsh penalties. I have 3 cousins who were running the marathon that day and a handful of my boston friends were there with their family and all witnessed the bombing. None were scared as it wasn't that big of an explosion. My one cousin joked about it saying "Is that all they have". I guess that's her coping mechanism for almost being torn to shreds, lol. I was more upset they did damage to buildings (as I love boston) but that's a different conversation.

[Logan]

Well even though I live close to Boston , felt it hit us real hard .
Frankly if we sent away to another tougher Fed prison to Rot is just as easy!!

Having been to many Boston Marathons , buy the finish line is most compact , with major area of stores bars restaurants condo 's convention center ..

They , the brothers , it was homemade with intent to kill Destroy maim . Sadder that at least 3 others died having a connection to both brothers . 2 over a year before in a city in Ma . Two men Murded the brother that was killed was a person of interest . Then last summer in Fla a men , wanted buy FBI and State police , was killed buy FBI in a struggle ..

Plus 2 other students on possible deportation or some jail for removing and deposing of evidence ..

Shows you how wide
A net this whole bombing had .

[GardenSirens]

Didn't all that from the year before have to do with the older brother? I'd rather see him rot in jail, though. Death is what people like him want. Invoking terror like that created fear and loyalty (so sick of hearing boston strong like no other city has problems lol). But, killing someone because he killed others doesn't make it right. It turns us into the murderers. There's no situation where someone deserves death. Someone like this kid probably deserves a good beat down and prison tickling matches (wink) but no death. He needs a long life in jail where he can be reminded every day of what he did that day...especially that little boy.

I read a story of someone carving or tattooing a victim's name on another prisoners forehead to remind them....I think that would be cool in this situation. We can't let this kid forget. We also can't kill him as that makes us just as bad as him.

[kiamay]

Originally Posted by placebobsh (View Post) But, killing someone because he killed others doesn't make it right. It turns us into the murderers. There's no situation where someone deserves death.

I totally agree! It also sends the wrong message about killing. The death penalty suggests that - for the right reasons - killing is okay. That is the same reasoning that killers use.
Killing people just needs to be off limits for everyone.

I find it quite interesting that in the states that abolished capital punishment over the last ten years the number of murders dropped noticeably.

[GardenSirens]

Heck, murder in general is dropping where it used to be and rising where it wasn't before. Michigan now isn't the murder capital of America...it's a bunch of southern states that preach that everyone should have a gun. It's disgusting.

I agree, it is for the right reasons that the death penalty is ever brought up. It's certainly not, "let's murder this bastard". It's all in the eyes of the law, etc...but still wrong.

[sunnykerr]

I think there is some notion is some corners of the United States (and surely elsewhere as well, but I'm more familiar with the death penalty in the U.S., so...) about the death penalty acts as a deterrent, but I can't see how.

Surely, if you're committing a crime you know you'd get the death penalty for, you're more likely to "give it your all" or whatever, because once you've crossed that line... why not go whole hog?

And then there are so many studies about the issues of the death penalty with regards to subjective problems with race, poverty and emotions.

Damian Echolls was put on death row for a crime he didn't commit in the 1980's. It wasn't a racial thing, just a small town with a lot of heightened emotions thing.

Now, how did the death penalty stop anyone from committing the murders he was charged with?

It didn't.

[GardenSirens]

I totally agree that it was meant to but doesn't deter criminal activity. The way the justice system works these days, especially for death penalties, you will be on death row for close to 20 years before actually being killed. Prison life isn't that bad anymore. Good health care, food, shelter, you get tv and internet access, wonderful rec rooms, a nice library...prison is an upgrade to many people who commit these murders (many of whom live in poverty or horrible areas).

[sunnykerr]

Well, the solution also can't be to make prison life miserable.

It's still a matter of what kind of world we want to live in.

If nothing else, keeping prisoners content makes life easier and safer for prison guards, who haven't done anything wrong.

I do think we oversell the wonderfulness of prison life, though.

Look at the Tsarnaev kid. He's in his cell 23 hours a day.

I don't care how cosy that cell is, and I'm willing to bet it's not that great, it's still being stuck staring at the same four walls for most of your day.

[GardenSirens]

yeah that would absolutely drive me insane. I've been to jail once for 3 days. Didn't leave the cell at all. To this day, if I think about it (which sadly I am now) it makes me feel cold and sucks any energy and spirit out of me. I can't imagine that for life.

[sunnykerr]

Another reason to oppose the death penalty, generally speaking:

Study: Record number of US convicts cleared in 2013 The number of US convicts cleared of their alleged crimes reached a record high in 2013, a new study reports. The National Registry of Exonerations said 87 people were cleared last year. It has recorded 1,281 exonerations in the US since 1989. The previous annual high came in 2009, with 83, but the registry continues to add past data. The report put the rise down to a growing responsiveness among authorities to claims of innocence. The state of Texas led the US with 13 exonerated cases, the report said. Illinois and New York also had a high number of people exonerated of crimes for which they had spent time in prison. Guilty pleas The 2013 report from the National Registry of Exonerations, a project of the University of Michigan and Northwestern University law schools, noted those who were cleared last year were convicted on average more than 12 years ago. A senior researcher at the registry, Maurice Possley, told the BBC the large number of cases in which DNA helped win exonerations has lent credibility to convicts' claims of innocence in the eyes of the courts and the prosecutors. "DNA has given us this window into the criminal justice system and what can go wrong," he said. Now, claims of innocence are less likely to be dismissed "out of hand". "It's a more level playing field," he said. The report found 17% of those cleared had pleaded guilty to the alleged crimes, likely under pressure from prosecutors who threatened to pursue more aggressive charges with longer sentences if defendants went to trial. However, the report noted those who pleaded guilty despite their innocence were far less likely to receive assistance in contesting their cases later on. Of the cases reported by the project, 47% were for homicide, including one exoneration of a defendant who had been sentenced to death. And almost a third of the people cleared were convicted in cases in which no crime in fact had been committed, the researchers found. A little more than a third of the exonerations happened with the initiative or co-operation of law enforcement. "Police and prosecutors appear to be taking increasingly active roles in reinvestigating possible false convictions, and to be more responsive to claims of innocence from convicted defendants," the authors wrote. The exonerated convicts were pardoned, had charges dismissed by the courts, were acquitted on retrial, or were issued "certificates of innocence" or the like by a court. Among the more than eighty cases of exoneration in 2013: In 2012, Adam Tatum was wrongfully convicted of assault on a police officer and of possession of marijuana. He pleaded guilty but he was exonerated after CCTV footage showed he was beaten by police officers. David Ranta was convicted in 1991 of murdering an esteemed rabbi in Brooklyn, New York. He was exonerated 22 years later after a new investigation found detectives pressured and bribed witnesses to testify against him. Eight years after her conviction for killing her four-year-old son Jacquari, who was found asphyxiated by an elastic band in 2005, Nicole Harris was exonerated after evidence was presented that police coerced her into confessing and that the boy's brother saw him wrap the band around his neck while he was playing Spiderman. The brother, then six, had been ruled incompetent to testify by a judge. Gerard Richardson served 19 years in a New Jersey prison for the murder of teenager Monica Reyes. He was convicted largely on bite-mark evidence taken from the victim's back, but new testing showed the bite mark contained another man's DNA.

I realize they mention crimes in general, but when you take all of these factors in consideration, it spells out pretty clearly why the death penalty is highly problematic.

The fact that Texas is the state where there were the most exonorations is, of course, incredibly significant since that is also the state with the highest use of the death penalty.

And the fact that almost one in five who were exonorated had confessed to the crime, but only under duress, and it still counted as a conviction? That can't possibly be ignore when we address a death penalty scenario.

If we want to believe we live in a good society, putting people to death cannot be a solution.

Not when we have all the proof in the world that the system does not work.

There are too many problems.

[GardenSirens]

Think of how many people were killed by DP and later would have been exonerated especially with how we have amazing technology now to pretty much prove 100% who did crimes.

[Musicchild]

I just wanted to jump in voice my thoughts. Okay most criminals end up dead any because they get killed in prison by other killers. Now other criminals, even with the harshest prisons, are not bothered by it. In fact some think its like a hotel stay for them. They get food that they wouldn't have been able to have outside. A small percentage of inmates can be reached and they do get out to become a member of society. But how to contain someone where stuff like prison just doesn't phase them??? Like they are that far gone from humanity that prison doesn't work.

[quaist]

Originally Posted by Musicchild (View Post) I just wanted to jump in voice my thoughts. Okay most criminals end up dead any because they get killed in prison by other killers. Now other criminals, even with the harshest prisons, are not bothered by it. In fact some think its like a hotel stay for them. They get food that they wouldn't have been able to have outside. A small percentage of inmates can be reached and they do get out to become a member of society. But how to contain someone where stuff like prison just doesn't phase them??? Like they are that far gone from humanity that prison doesn't work.

First of all; hi there and welcome to the board!

While I do agree that prisons aren't exactly the merriest of environments, I would doubt that 'most' end up dead there.

Also, I don't believe that penalties (including the death penalty) are the tools of choice to reduce crime rates. It's prevention in the form of, amongst other things, education.

And although even a society with the most 'perfect' of education systems would still see minor crime rates, numbers would be nowhere near where they are now. Thus prisons would serve their initial purposes -- a band-aid if anything else has failed.

[sunnykerr]

According to this article, people who work in the prison system believe that part of the reason why recividism rates are so high in the United States is precisely because the prison system has too much of a "lock ’em up and throw away the key" mentality.

Not sure how that relates to the death penalty, except perhaps in that dead people can't re-offend. Although if that worked for real, you'd think prison populations would be decreasing, as opposed to the other way around.

But, yeah, I don't think prison deaths (of the non-official variety) are that common an incidence.

[sunnykerr]

Washington governor suspends death penalty The governor of the US state of Washington has put a halt to executions there, saying the death penalty is used unequally and inconsistently. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, said he would grant a reprieve in any death penalty case that required his action. "There is too much at stake to accept an imperfect system," Mr Inslee said. The move does not permanently abolish Washington's death penalty, which would require legislation. The state has executed five convicts since 1976. That year, states were allowed to re-instate the death penalty after a brief Supreme Court-ordered moratorium. The north-western state's legislature has previously considered outlawing the death penalty but has never moved beyond public hearings on the issue. 'No executions, period' The first-term Democratic governor said he came to the decision after months of review, and meetings with family members of victims, prosecutors and law enforcement officials. "There have been too many doubts raised about capital punishment, there are too many flaws in this system today," Mr Inslee said at a news conference, noting that a majority of the state's capital punishment cases had been reduced to life prison sentences. There are currently nine men on Washington's death row. The moratorium will last at least as long as Mr Inslee is governor. He is up for re-election in 2016. "During my term, we will not be executing people," Mr Inslee said. But "nobody is getting out of prison, period". Mr Inslee also said he expected the move would push the state into joining "a growing national conversation about capital punishment". Last year, Maryland abolished the death penalty, becoming the 18th state to do so and the sixth in the last six years. Thirty-two US states allow capital punishment, but Oregon's governor has declared a similar moratorium and many states have been pushed into a de facto moratorium due to shortages of the drugs used for executions.

In other words, we're not quite there.

It's a very good move in the right direction, even though one has to wonder how seriously the death penalty is taken when they use on average once every six years or so.

Nevertheless, I do believe this is the way of the future.

Even those states who are looking for alternative ways of murdering citizens. Eventually, they're gonna have to face the facts that you can't be a civilized society and use the death penatly.

It is incongruous.