Electric Chair or Firing Squad?
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Never said the death penalty was a cause of violent crime....just said it wasn't a deterrent.
You can't win this argument on a factual/logical basis....the ONLY reason we still have the death penalty is revenge.....an "eye for an eye" belief.
Well, if the violent crime rate was higher when they used to have the death penalty, then you have the beginning of the argument for causation.....that the presence of the death penalty results in a higher violent crime rate.
No you don’t because crime rates were falling almost universally including the US.
That's fine...and I can accept that. Not the logical part, but without a doubt the fair part.
That is why I said the "beginnings" of an argument. There is a lot that goes into it. But our deadliest decades, such as the 1930s and 1980s, were when the death penalty was widely imposed, even in Cali and NY.
Well, it is not logical based on the two reasons often given for keeping it....cost and deterrance.
Okay. That still doesn't make what ol yard buzzard suggests any less cruel and/or unusual.
It always works, the person given the death penalty never carries out another crime, even jaywalking...
Ok sure I’ll concede the cost argument. But deterrence is conjecture.
I don't know about that. I saw a man shot between the eyes with a .38. He fell to the ground, wheezed, sat up several times gasping for air as his lungs filled with blood. It took him several minutes to die. Of course it was only one shot. I think people who are shot linger longer than we might think. It was nothing like the movies or tv.
How is cruel & unusual punishment defined? Does it vary by generation, i.e., perhaps our contemporary definition of cruel and unusual differs from 1921, which may differ from 1821?
Yea, i was reading about how Utah does it and it’s literally five guys putting their guns through holes in the wall and taking aim (at a distance) at a patch on the inmates shirt. I was just thinking there had to be a better way.
The US rejected being ruled by a King and Canada embraced it. So I don't know we are much like them. That said, England hung a lot of folks out in front of Ole Bailey.
Depending on the crime, this is my problem with the deterrence argument. It presumes that people are acting logically, IMO most murders are not logical (and I understand that there are psychpaths and sociopaths that this does not apply) and are more emotional.
The two areas that I could support the death penalty with little hesitance is sexual abuse of a child...that is simply depraved behaviour....and the long-term abuser that ends up murdering his or her spouse in a CDV situation.
I also believe that the CDV penalties need to be drastically increased. As a state, SC is weak on CDV laws.
LOL. Both of those were a long time ago.. Modern day there isn't much difference between being an American or a Canadian....we are both influenced by the same trends, media, etc...
I guess it's one of those things you just know. Like, if you put someone in a pen with a pack of starved timberwolves, you know that's cruel.
We can agree on those certainly, but what about mass shooters, serial killers, and folks that kidnap and torture?
Spent about a week in Ontario in June 2016. The noticeable differences I spotted were English & French on some road signs, and English & French on all consumer products for sale in stores. The Walmart I shopped at in Hamilton, Ontario had the "facilities" signed as "Washrooms".
CBC programming seems to be a mix of what the US commercial networks broadcast & PBS. The Canadian commercial networks (CTV, Global, and City) carry a lot of US programming, often simulcasting in prime time.
And finally, like the rest of the world, Canada uses the metric system in everyday life. The US is officially on metric, but it's not mandatory (US government statutes do state that metric is preferred). And that's why you'll see me posting social distancing as 2m (I want my extra 17cm of distancing over 6ft 😜).
The best pro death penalty story is that of Kenneth McDuff. He killed three people and was sentenced to three death sentences. For a period of time, the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Furman v. Georgia prohibited executions. His sentences were reduced to life imprisonment. After 20+ years in prison he was paroled and within three days started this killing spree:
| Sarafia Parker | 31 | Found Oct. 14, 1989 | She was beaten, strangled, and dumped in a field. |
| Brenda Thompson | Oct. 10, 1991 | She was tied up, raped, and tortured to death. She almost escaped when she kicked at and cracked McDuff's windshield in front of a Police Checkpoint, but McDuff was able to evade them. | |
| Regenia DeAnne Moore | 17 | Oct. 15, 1991 | She was tied up with stockings, raped, and murdered. |
| Colleen Reed | 28 | Dec. 29, 1991 | She was kidnapped in plain sight from an Austin car wash by McDuff and Worley. Both repeatedly raped her and tortured her with cigarettes before McDuff murdered her. |
| Valencia Joshua | 22 | Feb. 24, 1992 | She was strangled to death and found at a golf course near Texas State Technical College in Waco (where both she and McDuff were students). |
| Melissa Northrup | 22 | Mar. 1, 1992 | She was kidnapped from the Waco Quik-Pak where she worked and strangled with a rope. She was pregnant with her third child at the time of her murder, and was found in a Dallas County gravel pit with her hands still tied behind her back. |
I could go along with those also....serial killers are typically psychopaths or sociopaths...they know what they are doing is wrong at the time, even plan on doing it, and lack empathy. Kidnappers and torturers to me have a similar mindset as long-term abusers...and they often, if not always, torture their victim to death and are probably serial in nature.
Mass shooters I am a little more hesitant on....simply because it can be a pure emotional crime and I think a life sentence without parole would impact them more harshly.
Wasn't that case before the states' had life without the possibility of parole? They commuted the death penalty to the next highest penalty....at the time.
We just need to bring the chain gang back. Make em work their debt off in full. They won’t come back and it would really help out our road and highway situation. Plus we wouldn’t have to slow down driving through these areas anymore. Win, win.....Just saying
Back to the original question about electric chairs. The reason we have the electric chair is Thomas Edison. He and Tesla were fighting over which form of electricity should be used for the power grid. Tesla (and his mentor Westinghouse) held the best alternating current patents, while Edison had the best direct current patents. Alternating current is more dangerous because you can so easily be electrocuted, but it has the advantage over direct current because it travels better over distance. So alternating current eventually won out. But while this was still up in the air, Edison convinced the New York legislature to start executing criminals with electric chairs, all to scare the public about the dangers of alternating current. Edison's power company, still existing and called ConEd is based in New York. Westinghouse (backing Tesla) was based in Pennsylvania. So it was a state vs state thing too, so the NY legislature did as Edison asked. Edison even electrocuted an elephant named Topsy on Coney Island, all to try and discredit alternating current. It obviously didn't work, we have a power grid of alternating current, yet still are stuck with the electric chair proposed to scare us away from it.
Yes, at least before Texas had it. But it still illustrates a point that at least that multiple killer won't kill again. Remember a lot of multiple killers who are in prison in states without the death penalty have no incentive not to kill inside. What are you going to do, they already have the life without parole sentence?
Eh if you take the lives of innocent people I don’t have much patience for that. Some of those crimes are intricately planned for months in advance.
http://www.doc.sc.gov/news/death-row-report.pdf
The death row roster in the state has 37 people on it convicted as far back as 1983. Do you know any of them?
The death row roster in the state has 37 people on it convicted as far back as 1983. Do you know any of them?
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