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Askville: Capital Punishment
Apparently someone was recently executed for a crime it was then proved they hadn't committed. Someone asked if this would mean the end of capital punishment in the USA.
I suppose this is political, so here's a cut.
No. As long as there's a Texas, there will be capital punishment in the US - and drunk Texans throwing tailgate parties outside the execution grounds while waving mocking signs and dancing to country music.
You know what amazes me? That right-wingers swear that government is incompetent, evil, inefficient, and can't do ANYTHING right. And yet they want it to have the power to kill.
But maybe I shouldn't say anything. They might start throwing teabagging protests to privatize the justice and execution systems! Can you imagine if the courts were run by Enron, Bernie Maddoff, Bank of America, and Lehman Brothers?
...maybe we wouldn't notice a difference. Many of our prisons are pretty much run by corporations as it is! And they make a substantial profit out of them.
I suppose this is political, so here's a cut.
No. As long as there's a Texas, there will be capital punishment in the US - and drunk Texans throwing tailgate parties outside the execution grounds while waving mocking signs and dancing to country music.
You know what amazes me? That right-wingers swear that government is incompetent, evil, inefficient, and can't do ANYTHING right. And yet they want it to have the power to kill.
But maybe I shouldn't say anything. They might start throwing teabagging protests to privatize the justice and execution systems! Can you imagine if the courts were run by Enron, Bernie Maddoff, Bank of America, and Lehman Brothers?
...maybe we wouldn't notice a difference. Many of our prisons are pretty much run by corporations as it is! And they make a substantial profit out of them.
no subject
My feeling is that, well, it's not like we can undo or make up for a wrong execution like we kind of can with other punishments. Thus while I may in principle think that some people probably deserve death for their crimes the risk of killing an innocent outweighs that in an advance society. I seem to recall Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe asserting pretty close to the opposite; in effect, that the risk of not killing people who deserve it outweighs the chance of killing innocents. Which is, well, crazy talk if you think about it enough.
As for Texas, I'm reminded of a bit from Whose Line Is It Anyway in the category of "Slogans on license plates": Texas: "Capital Punishment Rocks!" It is entirely possible that a majority of Texans don't care if innocents are executed 'cause they figure they're probably really guilty (at least of something) and if it ain't them or their family or friends why should they care?
Now on privatizing law enforcement and all that, Talking Points Memo has had a number of postings (Should they be called postings? They have actual reporters so it's not like average blogger stuff.) on a deal between a private police force and a town in Montana. What comes to my mind is notions of "anarcho-capitalism" such as featured in some stories by Vernor Vinge and I think in some cyberpunk settings. The idea is that for some reason it would be possible to have private law enforcement and private judges instead of having a government and somehow this would be better. This should be self-evidently nonsense (justice would go to the rich and connected even more than it does now, with no chance of recourse beyond violence), but it appeals to some wishful thinkers.