Comments

2
If they have spare time, sure, why not.
3
Not only is it racially biased it is also gender biased.
4
#1 -- At this point, dozens of people have been rescued from death row, as further investigations have discovered evidence proving their innocence. It's clear that, if such investigations were conducted for executed prisoners, dozens of innocent people have already been put to death. It's pretty rare that a prosecution is so airtight there's no room for error.

How do you square that with your supposed notion of the value of human life?

(And referring to life imprisonment as "a lifetime of room and board and medical care" is, frankly, profoundly stupid.)
5
The death penalty is also fiscally irresponsible, it cost more to execute someone than to simply incarcerate them for life, nor does the death penalty deter crime, Washington State has only 8 people on death row, and hasn't carried out an execution in almost a quarter of a century.
6
If the Carnation killer can avoid the Death Penalty then what is it for? It doesn’t work. Repeal it.
8
@7 -- You haven't responded to my comment: Innocent people have been released from death row. Murder convictions are overturned on a regular basis due to new evidence. The court system is not infallible, yet you want to impose a punishment that is irrevocable.

"You really think we are incapable of finding guilty killers and executing them?" -- I think it's impossible to know absolutely that every conviction in a legal system riddled with problems, failings, and prejudices is accurate. There's abundant evidence that errors are made all the time.

I don't think you'll find many prisoners who prefer to surrender their freedom for "free room and board and medical care." Personal freedom is a deep human need. Have you ever been in a prison? They are not places anyone wants to spend their life.
10
@8: it's not here to have a discussion. it's here to call you a hypocrite.
12
@11 -- Yeah, you're falling apart at this point. You, apparently, are okay with killing someone innocent, but not imprisoning them for life...even though they can be let out of prison if they're found innocent.
13
Shorter @11/@7/@1: "I am okay with the state murdering innocent people if we get to kill the scumbags too, and my maximum threshold before this becomes a problem is ____."
14
You get whiplash trying to track what passes for conservative philosophy these days.

Abortion is just too close to taking innocent human life to risk even in the most extreme circumstances, but the number of innocent lives taken by the death penalty is the price of law and order, but the FBI is corrupt and can't be trusted, but ICE can kick in any door they want and if a few people's lives are ruined in the process that's fine they mean well, and if you or your parents came here illegally at any point, then a price must be paid, because the law is the law, but not if it's Melania or her parents, and not if it's Donald Trump's entourage and minions lying a few times on a sworn Federal disclosure form, and hey also, just let it slide if a few of them took advantage of a little help from a hostile foreign power, but don't let a single immigrant in from any country where somebody from there once might have been a terrorist or kind of looked like one. Slash the IRS budget because we don't need to try all that hard to catch every tax cheat but spend millions checking up on each and every Medicare or food assistance or welfare recipient, because if even one of them is gaming the system even a little even unintentionally that's one too many. If it costs hundreds of millions of dollars and any number of voters are unjustly disenfranchised, it's worth it to make sure the precise letter of the law is enforced but if Donald Trump is making a little profit here and there and everywhere from his office and government resources are being wasted on his lavish, indolent lifestyle while he pretends to be President some of the time, let it go, you can't enforce the letter of the law all the time, can you? Can you?
Tell the military to go ahead and take the shot whenever they think they might have somebody who is probably a bad guy in the sights of their drone missiles, even if we're going to rack up a few thousand or tens of thousands of innocent people killed in collateral damage. We have to show our adversaries we mean business, unless it's Russia, of course then we can take a soft line and it's cool, why should the US care if it looks weak every once in a while? Life is precious except when it's not. The law is the law except when it's not. Tax money is not to be wasted except when it is.

It never ends. Always one weird, oddly specific lax standard on one hand and on the other hand a hamfisted draconian hard line in other, just as oddly specific instances. It's built on a foundation of nothing. Conservatives used to have a belief system. Now they believe nothing.

Now they are just babies who think life is fair (but can't even admit that to themselves) who spin the wheels of power all the way one direction or all the way the other direction, for transparently self-serving reasons and they feel not an ounce of shame.
15
Of course we had to go to The Babies and all that twaddle. You know me: Abort early and abort often. When in doubt, cut it out. we'd have a lot less messed up people wandering around if we made it easy to get rid of unwanted children.

But as far as the death penalty is concerned, of course we should repeal it. It's a stupid punishment that only exists to give stupid people their bloodlust fix.

to me, the death penalty is getting off easy. I'd rather see someone sent to jail for life, and (if they are guilty) I want them to have a very long, very dull, very depressing life - with plenty of time for regret and pain.

The icing on the cake is that if they turn out to be innocent - and you know how our cops are - they can get out. No one has yet been able to come back from the grave.

16
@4, @8 -- question: how many people in Washington have been released from death row after having been found to be innocent? I'm ambivalent about repeal, because I think there's good arguments on both sides. But I think if you're going to talk about people who were wrongfully put on death row in the context of a debate over repeal it's important to distinguish whether that occurred in some other state or here.

I honestly don't know the answer, so I'm interested in what it is. Do you have any examples from Washington?
17
Wont someone think of the serial killers? If Ted Bundy was still alive he'd be writing books and probably have an online following. To quote Jane's Addiction, "some people deserve to die".
18
Johnny dear, don’t be ridiculous. Washington State, like almost every other state and the federal government, has a “Son of Sam” law that precludes prisoners from taking any profit from their crimes.

Manson is a great example of the wisdom of not executing prisoners. He was a truly evil man whose execution would have been a huge media event and made him a martyr in some circles. As it was, he spent a half century warehoused in a grubby little cell in California, and by the time he died, he was only half-remembered. Most of the population weren’t even born when he did his thing.
20
Bub, I prefer him to have "free lifetime room and board and medical care" as well. Not for any tender concern for him, but to make him pay his punishment. Death is death. Once you're gone, it's probably over. No one knows. If that's what it is, we're letting him off easy by giving him "the needle".

But if we give him "free lifetime room and board" in a maximum security prison, and prison grade "medical care", I'm good with that. I hope he lives a long, boring, unpleasant life, with plenty of time for him to regret what he did. Time to see his surviving classmates growing up, getting married, having children and grand-children, living life while he just waits for death in a tiny room with no amenities and a few minutes outside each day.

Now you, being you, have probably been told - and subsequently believed, because you're obviously very impressionable and suspicious - that "free lifetime room and board and medical care" means some sort of college dorm experience. That's not how prison is. Not even King County jail is like that. Prison is horrible. Prison medical care is abysmal. A Florida prison is probably worse. It may be "free", but it's an enforced free. There's no walking away from it.

All executing him would do is give the dumb and suspicious something to cheer about. That's what professional wresting is for. Let's go for punishment and not bloodlust.

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