When an I.Q. Score Is a Death Sentence The Supreme Court declared it was unconstitutional to execute intellectually disabled people. On Thursday, weâre set to do it anyway.
The Trump administration revived the federal death penalty last summer after a nearly two-decade hiatus. Since July, the federal government has executed eight prisoners.
Those scheduled to die find themselves just weeks away from the start of an administration that has signaled it would not seek to carry out their death sentences. Mr. Biden has promised to work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and incentivize states to follow suit.
At the moment, the USA is the ONLY rich, western democratic nation that continues to carry out capital punishment. The ONLY one.
The Trump administration revived the federal death penalty last summer after a nearly two-decade hiatus. Since July, the federal government has executed eight prisoners.
Those scheduled to die find themselves just weeks away from the start of an administration that has signaled it would not seek to carry out their death sentences. Mr. Biden has promised to work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and incentivize states to follow suit.
At the moment, the USA is the ONLY rich, western democratic nation that continues to carry out capital punishment. The ONLY one.
The Trump administration revived the federal death penalty last summer after a nearly two-decade hiatus. Since July, the federal government has executed eight prisoners.
Those scheduled to die find themselves just weeks away from the start of an administration that has signaled it would not seek to carry out their death sentences. Mr. Biden has promised to work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and incentivize states to follow suit.
Yet as Trumpâs killing spree unfolded, it was chilling for its ruthlessness as much as its timing. âIf youâre interested in carrying out the law, you donât rush executions while a court is still determining whether your process is legal,â said Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center. âIf you are interested in the orderly administration of the law, you donât set three executions for five days after not having done it for 17 years.â Although the news out of Terre Haute would soon be eclipsed by images of camouflaged Customs and Border Protection officers descending on Portland, Oregon, the executions were yet another show of state violence staged to bolster the presidentâs image.
Forty-three years after the Supreme Court reversed course and reinstated the death penalty, reliable data on the individuals sent to death row is maddeningly difficult to obtain. The Intercept set out to compile a comprehensive dataset on everyone sentenced to die in active death penalty jurisdictions since 1976. Our findings show that capital punishment remains as âarbitrary and capriciousâ as ever.
"Republican Sen. Mike Padden, who voted against the death penalty abolition, said he was troubled by the ruling’s impact.
“The death penalty should be rarely used, but I do think it should be an option in the most heinous cases,” he said."
That's the thing, even if you agree that there are exceedingly rare cases that it could be appropriate, there is a far greater danger that it will be applied when it is not. The death penalty is not a good deterrent. No one is going to say, "I think I'll go kill someone. What's the worst that could happen, life imprisonment? That's no big deal." The cost of abolishing it is strictly financial and any reasonable cost-benefit analysis would say the benefit of not killing innocent people far outweighs that cost.
And personally I feel the most appropriate punishment is to make people stew on the consequences of their decisions for a long time.
I know, right? But he remains an actual conservative. He has abandoned the GOP, which is by no means conservative anymore.
Like RD, I reversed my position on capital punishment some years ago. Not for merciful or humanitarian reasons: I still believe "Some folks just need killin". But our system is shot through with bias, corruption, errors of omission, false confessions, and on and on. Too many people have been exonerated after spending decades on death row. Texas has almost certainly executed at least one innocent person. Google 'Cameron Todd Willingham' for a particularly egregious case. 'Michael Morton' is another, 'Rodney Reed' still another...
I know, right? But he remains an actual conservative. He has abandoned the GOP, which is by no means conservative anymore.
Like RD, I reversed my position on capital punishment some years ago. Not for merciful or humanitarian reasons: I still believe "Some folks just need killin". But our system is shot through with bias, corruption, errors of omission, false confessions, and on and on. Too many people have been exonerated after spending decades on death row. Texas has almost certainly executed at least one innocent person. Google 'Cameron Todd Willingham' for a particularly egregious case. 'Michael Morton' is another, 'Rodney Reed' still another...
I remember those conversations. I thank Steve Earle for making me think about it. He's done a few songs that deal with sad cases.
