New Mexico abolishes capital punishment

[DMB]

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/18/new.mexico.death.penalty/index.html

One step at a time?

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson signed legislation repealing the state's death penalty.

"Regardless of my personal opinion about the death penalty, I do not have confidence in the criminal justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes to who lives and who dies for their crime," Richardson said in a statement Wednesday...

...With the governor's decision, New Mexico joins 14 other states that don't impose the death penalty. Several other states, including Colorado, Kansas, Maryland and Montana, are considering changes to their capital punishment laws.

[Garnet]

He stated my feelings about the matter perfectly. At risk of being piled on, I do think that there are crimes where the perpetrator deserves the death penalty. But the CJ system here is far too fucked up to allow the use of it.

I've been on my soapbox more then a few times that we need a major overhaul of the systems. I also freely admit that I don't know how to approach that within the context of the constitution and states rights. But dammit, something needs to be done.

[DMB]

If you look round the world at which countries have capital punishment and which don't, it's a club the USA shouldn't want to belong to.

I agree that there are some people that are so awful you feel the world would be better off without them, but no country is immune to miscarriages of justice. This week in the UK a guy was freed after 27 years in prison for a murder that forensic evidence has now proved he could not have committed. At least he can live the rest of his life as a free man.

[Ray Moscow]

Since perhaps 10% of those on death row are actually innocent, it's pretty clear that the system is too flawed to allow executions to take place.

I'm against the death penalty for this and several other reasons, although I think some people probably deserve it.

Also: do you ever see rich people, even those caught red handed (OJ, anyone), on death row? Me neither.

[DMB]

One woman expresses the hatred and outrage aroused by the Fritzl case. Ought he to die, or ought he to suffer (mildly) being imprisoned for the rest of his life? It's a very powerful article, well worth reading in its entirety.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/libby_purves/article5934228.ece

It is a disconcerting moment when your liberal conscience hits the buffers and you are consumed by pure rage and hatred for a stranger. I supposed that I had typically modern, moderate, evolved ideas about civilisation and justice; I support prison reform, believe in the possibility of rehabilitation, am glad to live in a society whose criminal justice system takes account of serious mental illness.

Yet when those beliefs come up against Josef Fritzl, I and many other women I talk to find that every ideal goes up like straw, destroyed in the heat of pure, unadulterated hatred.

...There should be wide and sober reflection, too, on the dangers of a patriarchal culture - still extant in some communities in this country, if you consider “honour” killings - in which a father comes to believe he owns his children in the same sense he owns his socks.

[Ray Moscow]

I would include Fritzl in the list of those who deserve the death penalty.

However, I still don't like what killing him would do to the rest of us. Just lock the bastard up, preferably with a bunch of large, angry people who don't like molesters and rapists either.

[Garnet]

I was thinking of Friztl and a few other people I know about when I wrote my response.

For me, there is no reason to leave someone like that alive, even if they are imprisoned for the rest of their lives. This position doesn't tweak my conscience a bit. The only thing that tweaks my consciense is when the death penalty is wrongly applied to someone who is innocent of the crime of which they are accused or when it is not an appropriate sentence for the crime. Because of these last two things, I can only support the abolishment of the death penalty until those issues are resovled.

[Uthgar the Brazen]

... let Austria reflect on whether it is indeed socially guilty.

If things have not changed since I was last there (about 20 years ago), I won't hold out hope for this. When I was there, to almost a person the Austrians insisted they were always violently opposed to Nazism and the Anschluss, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary. So shame on the filthy Americans for letting one of its bombs hit Mozart's birth house. The utter lack of national introspection on this sad but very important part of its history left a very bad taste in my mouth about the place.

ETA: which isn't a Godwin, just a (to me) striking example of some deep underyling problems in the national psyche.

[sohy]

Not that it matters, but the primary reason so many states are currently considering ending the death penalty are economic ones. We had a capital case in Atlanta recently that just about drained the public defender office of all its funds. These cases are very expensive to prosecute, and it's very expensive to go through the appeals process. It makes economic sense to end them.

I just read somewhere that over 130 people were released from death row after evidence determined they were innocent. That's really awful. Whether you believe the death penalty is just in theory, it's never been fairly administered. Those from the lower socioeconomic classes are far more likely than others to be given the death sentence and many innocent people have been unfairly sent to their deaths by the state.

Having said that, if I were given the choice of death by lethal injection or spending the rest of my life in one our maximum security prisons, I'd take death. I've even wondered why Madoff hasn't killed himself. If I were him, I'd be gone by now. Of course not everyone feels like I do. Maybe the death penalty could be offered as an option to those who have committed heinous crimes. It would rid the state of a piece of scum while providing economic incentive.

We are conditioned to think that death is the worst punishment that can be employed by the state. I really don't think that is true. Death is final, and that's where the problem lies.

[DMB]

Latest figures from Amnesty:

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=18119

The findings, contained in the human rights organisation's annual survey of global death penalty use from January-December 2008 (Death Sentences and Executions in 2008), show that at least 2,390 people were executed in 25 countries last year, up from 1,252 in 2007. Meanwhile, there were at least 8,864 death sentences handed down in 52 different countries.

On the one hand, said Amnesty, there was comparatively good news in that only one in eight countries (25) carried out executions last year and only slightly more than a quarter (59) even retain the punishment; but the organisation warned that executions were nevertheless being carried out at an average rate of seven per day during 2008.

Full report here: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/ACT50/003/2009/en

Points worth noticing:


China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the USA are the five states with the highest rates of executions. Together they carried out 93% of all executions.

A large number of executions were handed down after unfair trials and sometimes torture.

Iran continued to execute children. And it also continued to use stoning as a mthod of execution.

Iran may be widening the scope of the death penalty to include pornography, apostasy, heresy, witchcraft and certain internet crimes that "promote corruption and apostasy".

76% of executions were carried out by Asian states.

21% of executions were carried out in the Middle East and North Africa.

[His Noodly Appendage]

Once you start dividing people into those whose deaths matter and those whose don't, you're not much better than the people you think belong in the latter category.

[DMB]

Once you start dividing people into those whose deaths matter and those whose don't, you're not much better than the people you think belong in the latter category.

Not sure what you are replying to. If you are referring to the point about child executions, there is a general agreement even by states who do still carry out executions that it is wrong to execute people who committed their crimes while still chidren because of the whole issue of criminal responsibility. Iran seems now to be the only state that still does this.

If it is respect to the Fritzl case, I think most people feel that if there is any case to be made for the death penalty, he makes it. But that is not the same as endorsing the death penalty. I am sure all of us can think of people we wouldn't mind getting rid of. Doesn't mean we are planning to off them.