In the first place LWOP is unjust for the victim. However, in a slightly less principled vein, once the death penalty is gone, LWOP won’t be far behind. An internatinal “tribunal” has already decleared LWOP to be too cruel to be used. About two years ago, the Michigan ACLU began its campaign against LWOP as they have no death penalty cases to worry about there. An federal appeals court judge in the south also wrote a dissenting opinion asserting that LWOP could not be used because it is cruel and unusual. Right now you anti-DP folk have to expend your resources saving murderers from a reasonable approach to justice. Once you no longer have to keep murderers alive, you will be able to devote all of your resources to getting murderers back onto the streets sooner.

Keeping them in prison would have also saved those lives. What about replacing death with life without parole. Or do we execute them because we don’t trust our ability to actually do that? If true they are being executed because we don’t trust ourselves?

The infallibility of mankind is vastly overrated.

“How heinous is any accidental death”.

If you cannot see the difference between an officially sanctioned killing of an innocent and a slip and fall off a ladder we see where the wrongly condemed fall in your world.

The Stanford Law Review analysis estimated “only” 821 victims in 1984: “Of the roughly 52,000 state prison inmates serving time for murder in 1984, an estimated 810 had previously been convicted of murder and had killed 821 persons following their previous murder convictions. Executing each of these inmates would have saved 821 lives.” (41, 1 Stanford Law Review, 11/88, pg. 153)

However; since than, I know of one previously convicted murderer who murdered 11 more victims after he was released on parole.

What happens if you execute the wrong guy? I am seeing too many cases where people are being released after jail time when they had to wait for the advancement of technology to prove they where innocent. Exactly how heinous is killing the wrong guy?

Posters are posting about “fewer murderers”, “more murders”, blah, blah blah. Why don’t you present some statistical proof instead of pulling statements out of your behind? I can make great generalized statements about “how things are” but getting the actual data is much harder.

“Hey Al, more than 840 people have been murdered by murderers who were not executed after their first murder conviction. How viable is that? If I am accidently executed for a murder that I did not commit, I won’t be anymore dead than if an airplane falls out of the sky and kills me while I am asleep in my bed. But there is a difference; I am much more likely to be killed by a falling airplane than I am to be accidentally executed.”

That has got to be one of the most idiodic things I have seen. That has nothing to do with the question at hand. The fact that an innocent person is murdered by the state means everything not degrees of death. Where did the 840 number come from? Sources?

I’d like to see child rapists given the 18th century penalty for treason, especially that part about you shall be hanged by the neck until you are not quite dead. But having been a jury forman, having my life in the jury’s hand’s is a damn scary proposition if you are facing death and are innocent.

The victim deserves more justice and mercy than the rapist. Killing the rapist brings a lot of closure. Sure death is quite a deterrent…

How many nurses, maintenance personnel, teachers, social workers and other non-guards have been killed inside US prisons by people incarcerated for murder?

How many convicted murderers have escaped from US prisons and then killed again?

How many convicted murderers who are held incommunicado in Supermax-type prisons have managed to order the death of witnesses?

You say these aren’t imaginary threats, and I’m sure you are right. Yet I suspect they are quite rare and can be addressed in other ways.

And one last thing – why is it that most of the Western world does not execute murderers, yet still has fewer murders per capita than we do in the US?

Guards and other prisoners are still part of society. Not to mention other prison employees such as nurses, maintenance personnel, teachers and social workers. Also, witnesses that a lifer might plot to have executed are members of society. In addition, people who are killed after an escape are part of society. None the people I mentioned are imaginary murder victims of unexecuted murderers. However, the imaginary accidental execution victm remains an unreal victim.

Most death penalty opponents think we should send convicted killers to prison for life without parole. Obviously there will be some danger to guards and other prisoners, but they will pose no further threat to society.

What we really need to do is address the problems in the justice system that allow murderers to be set free and kill again.

Link

If you do a search for American Bar Association, you’ll find about the 3rd paragraph from the end that the present Supreme Court case against the death penalty has been contributed to by the EU! The site is extremely annoying – it may be because I use an old Mozilla version, but about half of it was covered with the graphics that were supposed to line the left side. In any case, there’s a lot there to make you wonder what in the heck the EU has any business doing trying to influence politics in the US.
Ticked me off, it did.