Reply With Quote
Never said anything about ditching the appeals process all together, but when the average stay on death row is 15 years something needs to be fixed.
Take your boy Charles for instance he should have been put to death in a week.
Again, the legal cost to the state is massively exaggerated. Prosecutors are salaried. The state only pays for the defense if they are indigent, and then only through the original trial and first appeal. Beyond that point the appeals are done by written brief. There are no more "trials".
Never said anything about ditching the appeals process all together, but when the average stay on death row is 15 years something needs to be fixed.
Take your boy Charles for instance he should have been put to death in a week.
Do you know why it takes that long?
Looked it up. The max a court appointed defense attorney in Bexar County can get for a death penalty case is $15,000. The prosecutors are salaried. That blows the out of the multi million dollar death penalty cost claims.
http://tidc.tamu.edu/IDPlanDo ents...20Schedule.pdf
I assume so they can exhaust every option to make sure the accused is actually guilty and deserving. Fill me in though, I'm willing to listen.
As an aside, at what point do these extended stays on death row start muddying the cons utional rights of the inmates?
There have been 152 people who were exonerated after being on death row. One would think a few of those were considered clear cut.
DNA testing has been of great help. I am talking CLEAR cut, video evidence, confession, 100 witnesses etc. The Adam Lanza's of the world.
This is from Forbes:
If you want to deny the claims, ok, but I'm satisfied there's truth to it based on the pieces I've read."..... While those complex debates rage on, some like to point fingers at perhaps the most simple reason to support the death penalty:*It’s cheaper to kill an inmate than to keep an inmate alive.
That may not, however, be true. “It’s 10 times more expensive to kill them than to keep them alive,”says Donald McCartin, known as The Hanging Judge of Orange County. McCartin knows a little bit about executions: he has sent nine men to death
McCartin isn’t talking about the comparisons between the cost of the actual execution and the cost of keeping an inmate in prison: those aren’t apples to apples comparisons.....
[more detail: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphi...llars-at-work/
To be honest, in a vacuum where we have 100% undeniable proof in every case, I'd be completely good with putting down some murderous humans that proven no better to society than a rabid dog.
But we're not, and as long as there's a chance that someone might be innocent, it's a tough thing to mistakenly take someone's life because you can't get it back.
Add to the cost being that much more for execution and it really doesn't make any sense at all.
I already read the opinion piece you quoted. That is why I researched the actual facts on cost before calling bull . It is the same old anti-death penalty mantra...If you say it costs more enough times with conviction people like you actually start to believe it.
The only fact sheet you posted and have been claiming as proof is attorney fees. It's more than that.
If you'd read the Forbes piece, or any other number of pieces out there that spell it out all the costs in detail, you'd know that.
I think we are basically on the same page on this issue, only difference being that I believe there are times where it is 100% undeniable proof someone committed the crime that earned them the death penalty, and those people should not be able to waste tax payer money filing appeal after appeal. And the cases where there isn't 100% undeniable proof still should not take on average 15 years. Allocate more resources and speed the process up if need be, 15 years isn't fair to the taxpayer nor the inmate.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was just sentenced to death. Should we waste taxpayer money on all of his appeals or take him out back and put a bullet in his head tonight? Which by the way is another thing I want changed, bring back the firing squad. No point in wasting even more taxpayer dollars on lethal injections that don't always work as intended. You could kill them for under a dollar.
edit to add: I didn't want the death penalty for Tsarnaev, I wanted that to be put in a Boston prison in general population and let the inmates handle it.
Believe what you want. The cost comparison is bull .
The reason "life in prison" trials for potential capital crimes are cheaper is because they plead out for the reduced sentence so it doesn't have to go to trial and risk the needle. Take the needle out of the equation and they have no incentive to plea and every one will go to trial. Overall cost will increase, not decrease.
It is simple logic.
Prosecution is salaried. They get paid no matter what they are doing. Take that cost out of the claim.
At least half of capital cases hire their own defense attorneys. That doesn't cost the state a dime. Take that cost out of the claim.
For the public defenders I linked the cost. $15,000 for a death penalty case certainly isn't "millions"
Say another $15,000 for the appeal and the public defender is done. The State has fulfilled it's legal obligation.
Any further defense motions/appeals are done by pro-bono attorneys and cost the state nothing.
The appeals briefs for the prosecution again are from salaried attorneys. Take that cost out of the claim
It doesn't cost any more per day to keep a guy on death row than it does for a life in prison sentence in a a maximum security prison.
In other words, the claim that death penalty cases cost millions more than life sentence trials is total bull .
Again, you're trying to make this all about prosecutors being on salary. I got past that a long time ago. If you wanna stay stuck on that ok.
I notice that you conveniently ignored that if you take the death penalty out of the equation there would be no incentive for a criminal to plead guilty in order to get life in prison. Every capital case would automatically go to trial.
I'm gonna pass on discussing it any more unless you get an outside reputable source to confirm.
Until then, I'm pretty content with believing Forbes over you. Sorry, no offense.
Baaaaaaaaa!
No one is really feeling sorry for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (just got the death penalty).
pls a peelcort pls
The 80% of the people that support the death penalty in the US don't go out and form pro-death penalty organizations and write pro death penalty newspaper articles and make being for the death penalty a focus in their life...they just support it. The minority anti's however are rabid in their opposition....linking an opinion piece that references another opinion piece that references multiple partisan "death penalty studies" certainly raises my su ions. I addressed and refuted the claims point by point. Distorting the figures to make an economic case that supports their moral case is just the latest ploy of the anti's to attempt to sway public opinion.
64% of the states have the death penalty so not much of a need for a pro-death org
I like Rachel Maddow, but she is obsessed with trying to use the availability/efficacy of lethal injection drugs to undermine the whole concept of the death penalty. Utah recently legalized firing squads as a means of execution. That's a cheap, quick and effective method.
Thoughts on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev? Should he get the years and years of appeals or be done with in a week?
Like clockwork, Rachel has spent her entire show up to this point railing against the death penalty... and unconvincingly to boot.
Appeals. I'm good with him being in prison for life too
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
