BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)

Subject: BS: USA sliding into depravity
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 07:50 AM

How can any civilised nation - never mind one that presumes to lecture the world on human rights - tolerate this sort of thing?

Botched execution takes two hours

OK this one was in Arizona, and it's predominently the southern states that indulge in this disgusting stuff. But they are signed up to a federation that seems content to have them on board, and indeed the (federal) Supreme Court paved the way for this latest atrocity. Is there any point at which states that shame the union (Texas is the egregious example) will be kicked out of it?

If judicial killing is still deemed necessary in this day and age, what's wrong with hanging? In the method perfected in the UK, there was no blood, no suffocation, and the condemned individual was dead within 20 seconds of leaving the cell, by dint of a snapped neck.

We've moved on in the UK of course, but for the US, which is still on a learning curve, it's surely worth considering?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 09:03 AM

Just say no to drugs!

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 09:18 AM

The US has some way to go to catch up with Robert Shiarella's 1970s satire Your Sparkle Cavalcade of Death, in which an execution is sponsored by a soap powder company for an advertising campaign, but they're getting there.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 10:00 AM

"How can any civilised nation...."

As I have said before, and you noted, it's not a *nation*... it's a few states dominated by conservatives. You simply cannot comprehend what the concept of "states rights", which was put into our Constitution for good reason in 1789, now enables certain states to do!
In order to seriously change it, we'd have to amend the Constitution.......... which would require getting a divided Congress to agree on wording, and then get 3/4 of all the states to hold votes ratifying it! "If we only had some eggs, we'd have ham & eggs-- if we only had some ham!"

Travesties like this will only be gradually avoided by public outcry in each individual state, and by judges (all to many conservative!) making rulings on each individual case.
(and by the way, the last hanging in Arizona resulted in a woman being decapitated.)

As horrible as these stories are, they are serving to raise awareness and turn more & more people against executions in general.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 12:14 PM

I prefer the old English way. Slit the belly, roast the intestines on an open fire, before the beheading.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 12:37 PM

I prefer the English way of most people's living memory. Incarcerate and deal with society's failures rather than inflict cruel and unusual punishment.

Capital punishment is a medieval stunt to sate the appetite of erotic kick sick bastards, doing what the prisoner was doing in the first place. If it were so wrong for the prisoner to do it, it is just as wrong for the government, who are complicit in this appalling deed.

The most sick part is that everybody knew and expected the outcome here. We even covered the appeal, stay and reaffirming on The BBC.

I notice that a private member's bill is to be heard in October to refuse entry to any US citizen involved in prosecuting or carrying out capital punishment. It won't get anywhere, but the message it gives at least shows the abhorrence. Already, healthcare professionals involved, even "not touching" ones are not allowed to practice here and are de facto "struck off" by BMA, NMC etc.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 04:11 PM

This is one time I fully agree with the consensus displayed above. In what way is it more moral to act in cold blood than to commit the original act in hot blood? The whole concept is unconscionable.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 04:29 PM

Before all the questions about the methods or the rights and wrongs of capital punishment, there is the possibility of wrongful conviction.
Witnesses make mistakes. Juries make mistakes. People with mental and/or emotional problems confess to crimes they did not commit.
Once a prisoner is dead it is too late.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,H.W.
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 05:38 PM

it's Putin's fault

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 06:43 PM

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/lethal-injection/appeals-judge-says-guillotine-probably-best-executions-n161641

We will see more and more "botched" executions as we work our way toward guillotines. Can't have a real Reign of Terror without Madame Guillotine.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 07:09 PM

Quite apart from the debate over whether to allow capital punishment at all, I am bewildered by the problem they are having.

A few years ago, a male nurse was convicted of killing at least 30-40 - probably many more- hospital patients by slipping readily available drugs of various sorts into their IV lines.

Myself... I had an outpatient surgery several years ago. They put in an IV and had me lie down on a table. The anesthesiologist attached a drip and put something else in a feeder line... then he turned a valve.... and ZAP... I was out like a light for about an hour.

It is my guess that any trained anesthesiologist 'knows' how to render a patient unconscious... and how to NOT kill them with various useful drugs. Killing them would simply require a different dosage.

I wonder what I am missing in my analysis?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 07:36 PM

I was anaesthetized with fentanyl when I had my gallbladder out a few years ago, and I was out like a light with no warning at all.

For the US to adopt fentanyl for executions would mean that nobody would supply them with fentanyl, so that would be out.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 08:12 PM

What Topsie said

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ed T
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 08:57 PM

I dont mean to seem insensitive, but could they not employ Michael Jackson's doctor, Conrad Muwrray-I believe he was released from prison last year, and he may be available for specialized mefical procedures.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Janie
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 09:06 PM

Macabre as can be.

What is even more macabre is that sufficient numbers of the residents of some states are so committed to the notion of the death penalty that they are considering reverting to firing squads, the electric chair or the gas chamber as it is becoming more and more difficult to obtain lethal injection medications that work quickly and (presumably) painlessly.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 10:19 PM

First, I cannot believe that anybody here can be against the general proposition of capital punishment for premeditated and/or multiple murder. It does not compute.

If the last several executions have not gone well, it is on those who are anti-capital punishment; they have convinced legislatures and penal authorities not to use sedatives and drugs which would put the murder out within seconds, and then allow for the lethal injections.

There is no medical reason that more pain than the insertion of an IV shunt should be felt by the prisoner, if modern, humane methods, medications and trained personnel are used.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 10:55 PM

The Wikipedia article on capital punishment is distressing to me. I hadn't realized that 32 states and the federal government still have the death penalty. The Wikipedia map shows the that almost all southern and western states have the death penalty. Most of the New England and Great Lakes states do not have capital punishment.

This page says my home state of Wisconsin abolished the death penalty in 1853. I'm proud of that.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 24 Jul 14 - 11:55 PM

IMO, the various States have to decide what the purpose of the death penalty really is.

If it's the eye for an eye philosophy, that's one thing. If it's a get-even punishment, that's another. If it's to rid the world of specific 'monsters', that's yet another. Some arguments--both pro and con--hold up well to scrutiny.


"Capital punishment used to be sentenced for a variety of crimes in Canada, but as of 1961 its use was limited to homicide and treason.
On December 10, 1962, Robert Turpin and Arthur Lucas were the last people to be executed in Canada.
In 1967, a moratorium was placed on the death penalty.
In 1976, the death penalty was abolished as a sentence in Canada.
A total of 710 people have been executed in Canada; all were hanged."

from

http://www.victimsofviolence.on.ca/rev2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=327&Itemid=17


(It appears the issue is not as cut and dried when it comes to lethal injection. The folks supplying the drugs don't want to be named--ie., the drug manufacturers because they fear backlash from folks who don't agree with the death penalty, and the administrators of the injections for the same reason.)

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 12:18 AM

It is frankly embarrassing to live in Texas where they have such a high rate of executions, and at the same time, a high rate of exonerations, including people on death row.

With the pressure on states to reveal the source of their execution drugs and the pushback from states to protect those sources from public scrutiny, there is a void where individuals without a great deal of experience are involved in the dispensing of deadly cocktails. Medical professionals will rarely have anything to do with execution. If the volunteers can figure out the right cocktail and hit the right veins, it works. But it is a haphazard way of running a process that has such powerful ethical objections that all executions should be put on hold. Forever.

So often the wrong people are fingered in fatal crimes and not represented well by public defenders (a hugely underfunded and over-stressed part of the legal system). And then you have the situation where too many individuals who lost a family member have been able to push through emotional state legislation that targets specific situations - i.e., the "three strikes" laws, and the legislated sentences instead of leaving judges free to impose sentences as they deem appropriate. Forget glib chatter about guillotines being more efficient, the problem is in good LEGAL representation and 100% certain convictions - something that simply isn't possible in many of the cases that result in the death penalty. And even if it is proved 100%, there are still problems. The fairest thing is to get rid of the death penalty. We spend billions on incarceration, what is the tab for a few more inmates in for a lifetime instead of death?

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 12:54 AM

Actually, it is less expensive to incarcerate than it is to execute due to the appeals that are mandatory.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 01:03 AM

I'm vice president of an organization that works for criminal justice reform in our county. One thing we're working against, is California's thirty-year escalation of the penalties meted out for criminal offenses - "three strikes" laws, and all that stuff. It's a tough battle, because the "victims' rights" groups are strong and well-funded.

The argument of the victims' rights people is hard to refute - no criminal penalty can possibly be adequate to compensate the outrage and injury suffered by a victim of crime, especially is that crime is a particularly outrageous crime. So, in their outrage, these groups keep demanding (and getting) stiffer and stiffer penalties for crime. The penalties don't do any good, but it's hard to convince a crime victim of that. They want vengeance, and rightly so.

I'm friendly with a woman at church who's a primary spokesperson for a well-funded, statewide victims' rights group. She got involved in her crusade twenty-five years ago, when her sister was brutally murdered. So far, I've been able to avoid direct conflict with her, but I suppose it will happen some day. I just finished writing an article for the local newspaper that may well set her off when it's published.

While I can see why people demand the death penalty and all the other still penalties that state legislatures have enacted, I can also see that stiff penalties haven't really given solace to the victims of crime; and the penalties don't seem to be able to reduce crime, either. So, we need to develop effective alternatives.

It's an uphill battle.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 01:52 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law

It's a long read but it shows many of the problems with three strikes laws. The focus is on California.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 02:37 AM

"If the last several executions have not gone well,"
Now there's a chilling phrase to conjure with.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 02:55 AM

This thread certainly gives an insight into the minds of those whose moral stance you grapple with on other subjects.

Am I mis reading here or have we 1) at least one person in favour of this barbaric sentence and. 2) a macabre discussion on alternative ways of killing people?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 04:39 AM

As I always chip in when this topic come up [which is one on which I have that disadvantage I so often labour under of seeing both sides & so feeling a bit helpless and ineffectual with regard to such] --

Both emotionally and semantically, it is foolish to use terms emotively which have more precise meanings: in particular, in re this topic, "civilised" & "barbaric". The latter [or its variant 'barbarian'] was the term used by the Romans for those not within their 'civilised' jurisdiction. Now, seriously, can anyone deny that the Romans, along with the ancient Athenians and Thebans and Spartans, & the ancient orientals like Japanese, Chinese, Indians &c, were all highly 'civilised' within any reasonable and rational meaning of the term? Yet they all went on judicially executing criminals all the time. Same considerations apply to mediæval Europe &c. It is, in fact, only, at most, within the last couple of centuries that such legal deterrents were even questioned by any civilised nations. Can you really denounce the whole of history before about mid-C19 as relating to the "uncivilised"?

My point, to reiterate, is that terms like "civilised" & "barbaric" in this context are so imprecise as to be liable to confuse, rather than clarify, the issues; and so are best avoided if one expects one's posts to carry any conviction or intellectual respectability.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 05:01 AM

Can you really denounce the whole of history before about mid-C19 as relating to the "uncivilised"?

Things is moving on, sort of. The emergent distaste for capital punishment is of a higher morality born of an emergent and entirely secular spirituality which one might term 'enlightened'. This term is, of course, relative to what happened before (or happens elsewhere) rather than absolute in itself.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 05:11 AM

We like to think we are civilised I suppose. But future generations will see this time as one of knowing what is needed to create a fair and just society but still held back by superstition and primeval savagery.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 06:40 AM

Yes, JotSC, I oppose all capital punishment quite simply because whatever test one applies 100% certainty can never be achieved. Wrongly imprison a person and they can be released and (sort of) compensated. Wrongly execute them and it's rather final.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 11:42 AM

Richard, I suppose that is the second most used argument against the death penalty, and I certainly would not want to execute a person who did not do the crime. However, the long appeals process, and other legal safeguards make this an extreme rarity. I believe human life to be so important, that the only way to adequately punish the wanton murder of a person, is to take the life of the murderer. Your argument is overbroad owing to the the fact that wrongful execution of an innocent is extremely, perhaps infinitesimally rare; there is no 100% in any human endeavor or creation. Life would come to a standstill if we required 100% certainty in our actions.

I'm guessing the most used rationale for non-execution is that it is considered considered, by antis, to be state murder; it is not. Without the death penalty, there could well be more personal revenge killings and vigilantism, and perhaps even family/clan feuds, because the families of victims do not feel their loved one did not get justice.

Finally, murderers who are given less than death sentences have been known to kill whilst in prison, both other prisoners and guards. Some have escaped and murdered again, and some are paroled and murder again.

It is a pleasure, Richard, to exchange ideas with you.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Stu
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 12:02 PM

"I believe human life to be so important, that the only way to adequately punish the wanton murder of a person, is to take the life of the murderer."

What separates us from them? The intent to kill is there in both cases.

What might we have learned about the human condition from executed prisoners? How might we have helped people not to stray outside the bounds of our society's moral framework? If we kill people too, how can we justify our place within that moral framework?

The death penalty is about revenge, not justice.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Bill D
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 12:48 PM

"...the fact that wrongful execution of an innocent is extremely, perhaps infinitesimally rare; "...

Sadly, not so... there have been many proven- too late. And only recent DNA technology has prevented many more. In the Wild West and in the first 2/3 of the 20th century, executions were common, often hurried, and done with little public outcry. Only modern communications and research has shown how frequently vengeance and the desire of prosecutors to pad their records has led to wrongful executions.

However...this IS a serious concern: " murderers who are given less than death sentences have been known to kill whilst in prison, both other prisoners and guards. Some have escaped and murdered again, and some are paroled and murder again."

Every day prison guards deal with unrepentant and seriously dangerous prisoners who bank on the idea that "they can't execute me, and they can't give me MORE than life in prison" to try to harm guards & other prisoners.
It is considered fair & unavoidable to use deadly force to deal with a dangerous person on the streets, but 'barbaric' to use it after they are captured.

We needs to understand the serious aspects of ALL sides of the debate as we grapple with it all.
I will make this prediction: If ... as population increases and societal pressures grow and more & more serious crimes are committed, costing more & more money and resources, the pendulum of opinion will swing back to general public favoring of capital punishment. (This opinion reflects my sad view that the &%#@%$* gun culture in the US shows no sign of diminishing, leading to more & more murders)

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Greg F.
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 01:01 PM

First, I cannot believe that anybody here can be against the general proposition of capital punishment

Believe it, John. It computes just fine.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 01:09 PM

Well, reading what John on the sunset coast just said certainly wasn't a pleasure.

Perhaps before embarrassing himself with such awful disdain for human life, he might think on that many people reading Mudcat live in the civilised world that moved on from such barbaric savagery years ago.

I find the subject abhorrent yet find myself fascinated when people are interviewed on the TV news when we cover botched executions on The BBC. They seem to walk dress and just about talk normally yet their excitement over killing a person seems somewhat surreal.

Despite our government's fawning over The USA in some areas of agreement, I am proud of the fact that we will not and by law cannot allow people to be extradited there when a capital charge is possible. The successful prosecution of a company supplying lethal injection drugs to US prisons demonstrates how we do not allow such things to flourish.

Sure, there are people who would welcome the death sentence here, but they tend to be a small minded small number minority. It is sport for newspapers to interview them from time to time so we can laugh at their lack of reasoning.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 01:20 PM

Had the death penalty been in place during the 1970s and 80s around a dozen people, later exonerated, would have died wrongfully, including the Birmingham Six and the Guildford 4.
The death penalty was finally abolished in Britain in 1964 - it would have happened 8 years earlier had it not been for the intervention so the House of Lords.
This wonderful piece from The New Statesman, describes that intervention:
"From the hills and forests of darkest Britain they came: the halt, the lame, the deaf, the obscure, the senile and the forgotten — the hereditary peers of England united in their determination to use their medieval powers to retain a medieval institution."
The U.S. practice of carrying out the death penalty puts it to shame, along with its archaic 'Wild West' gun laws.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 01:35 PM

"The death penalty is about revenge, not justice." Stu

.,,.

Not entirely mutually exclusive terms. Revenge against the wrongdoer on the part of Society, along with deterrence, & the protection of Society by isolation of offenders, is indeed one of the recognised constituents of justice.

I incline to believe that for certain good reasons, such as its irredeemable finality and irreparability in the case of error, death of the offender should not be one of these instruments of justice. But I think I can see the counter-arguments a little more clearly than some.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 01:46 PM

That'd be a first...

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 02:28 PM

"The death penalty is about revenge, not justice." Stu.
Well, Stu, while I disagree about that, if I did agree I would say that structured, societal 'revenge' sure beats individual revenge six ways to Sunday.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 02:38 PM

"But I think I can see the counter-arguments a little more clearly than some."
I wonder (doubt) if you can see it half as clearly as the survivors of those who went to the drop innocent of the crime they were condemned for - or for Paul Hill and his friends who, but for the grace of..... Chris Mullins.....!
The death penalty is neither humanity, nor is it logical or effective; few acts of revenge are
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 03:14 PM

Stu already said it - execution is a form of revenge. Execution is a codified legal form of revenge, where the individual is not responsible, the onus of the act rests on all of us, the public, as the government sanctions the act. In theory our hands aren't dirty.

It's a step removed from lynching. Tidied up with legal justifications and rituals and practices that keep it from being a spontaneous vicious act. And no mistake about it, many of these people who are eligible for execution or the life without parole sentence are pretty awful people. But I'd much rather the penal system be reformed and the profit be removed from it (all of these private for profit prisons just love the high incarceration rate in the US) and at the same time, those who really do need to be in prison be housed in a humane way. And while they're at it, make a way for meaningful work and useful education for those who will eventually be released.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 03:36 PM

There are some very good reasons not to have a death penalty in Canada. Those reasons are Brandley, Clarence Lee; Chew Wing, George; Cirofici, Frank; Cruz, Rolando; Ford Heights Four; Grzechowiak, Stephen; Johnston, Dale; Marshall, Donald Jr.; Milgaard, David; Morin, Guy Paul; Nepoose, Willie; Peek, Anthony Ray. All were convicted wrongfully.

I noticed that a few people have intimated that the US is a backward place because so many States do have the death penalty. The people doing that forget that the death penalty existed in the land of the Britons for close to two thousand years. Finally they got it right. The US has some catch-up to do, but they've only been at it for fewer than 400 years.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 03:49 PM

"Finally they got it right."
A couple of millenium late - but I'll drink to that at the session tonight
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 03:51 PM

I'll raise one with you, Jim.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Janie
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 04:57 PM

Even if there is no doubt of guilt, I don't understand the arguments of those who argue others 'deserve' to die. I don't understand arguments for death as punishment. I don't understand how any of us can rationally decide that some one else 'deserves' to die. I understand that people, individually or collectively, do hold that belief. It simply is not a belief that seems to me to make any sense.

I'll have to think a bit more about you comments regarding barbaric and civilized, Michael, but at first blush, they do make sense. Involve, it seems to me, very moralistic and ill-defined concepts. I can't tell, from your postings here, what you may think about socially endorsed killing, so not commenting from that aspect.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ed T
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 05:00 PM

An odd related item on Youtube?


??? 

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 05:02 PM

I think I know who posted the following. It is, I believe, someone whom I respect, so I looked up his list which I've annotated [-].

There are some very good reasons not to have a death penalty in Canada. Those reasons are Brandley, Clarence Lee[RELEASED]; Chew Wing, George[EXECUTED 1937]; Cirofici, Frank[EXECUTED 1914]; Cruz, Rolando[PARDONED]; Ford Heights Four[PARDONED]; Grzechowiak, Stephen[EXECUTED 1930]; Johnston, Dale[FREED]; Marshall, Donald Jr.[FREED]; Milgaard, David[FREED]; Morin, Guy Paul[FREED]; Nepoose, Willie[NOT A CAPITAL CASE-FREED]; Peek, Anthony Ray[RELEASED]. All were convicted wrongfully.

From this list we see that three folks were executed, probably wrongly. All of them were put to death before WWII. It should not have happened.

Nepoose, was not convicted of a capital crime and so was not subject to the death penalty. His second degree murder conviction was overturned.

The remaining enumerated persons were subsequently found to be wrongly convicted either by evidence or technicality; they were released and compensated for their wrongful convictions, not to say that money heals the wrong done them. All of those cases are from the latter quarter of the last century until more recently.

I would say, based on Guest,#'s list, that the ultimate protection of wrongful execution is now quite, good...perhaps even excellent.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ed T
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 05:21 PM

I suspect some of those Canadian folks noted earlier would have escaped the death penalty in many states in the US of A anyway, due to their age, the type of crime they were charged with (initially convicted of) and the amount of the alotted for new appeals. After all, Canada is not the only country where innocent folks are wrongly convicted and eventually releasedcas time passes.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 05:32 PM

Ed T--that list consists mostly of Americans, and some--2 or 3, I think--Canadians. The important thing is that civilized countries (among which I consider USA and Canada) take great precautions to not erroneously execute the innocent.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ed T
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 05:43 PM

As stated earlier, unfortunately sentences for murder in some locals are so low (with parole) that the deterrent value is seen by many as minimal. In addition, some found guiltyty of more than one murder only face actual time for one murder. This reinforces those supporting capital punishment.

Below is a recent example of just how slack the Canadian justice system is ( as I am unsure if the link is available to all, I will cut and paste the news article.:


25 years for two murders 

Recent Canadian Case:

There was a shocking display in a Halifax courtroom Wednesday by a man who was being sentenced to life in prison for two different murders.

Dustan Joseph Preeper was unrepentant when a Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge asked him if he had anything to say before he was sentenced.

"I just want to say thank you and congratulations and you can all go f--- yourselves," the 26-year-old Dartmouth man said, giving the court the finger. "You mutts."

The victims' relatives and friends in the gallery applauded after Justice James Chipman said the remarks were inappropriate and ordered Preeper to sit down.

"What are you going to do, give me another 25 years?" Preeper said.

Preeper pleaded guilty Wednesday to first-degree murder in the 2011 death of Melissa Dawn Peacock, 20, of Dartmouth. He must serve 25 years before he is eligible for parole.

His brother, Joshua Michael Preeper, 22, of Kennetcook, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the killing and also received an automatic life sentence. He can apply for parole after 12 years in prison.

Peacock was reported missing in November 2011. Her remains were found in a shallow grave in the Upper Stewiacke area of Colchester County in July 2012.

According to an agreed statement of facts, Peacock was killed Nov. 8, 2011, in Upper Rawdon, Hants County, after partying with the Preepers.

Dustan Preeper stabbed Peacock and then instructed his brother to drag her into the woods, where they poured gasoline on her body and set it on fire.

Later that day, the brothers returned to the scene, retrieved Peacock's burned remains and drove to a remote wooded area off South Branch Road near Upper Stewiacke, where they buried the remains. Dustan disposed of the murder weapon, a knife, by throwing it off a nearby bridge.

The court was told that Dustan was mad at Peacock because she had tried to leave the party house with his car. He stabbed her several times in the chest.

Dustan Preeper also pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the July 8, 2010, beating death of Ben Hare, 26, of Truro in a brawl outside an apartment building in the east end of the town. That life sentence will be served concurrently, with parole ineligibility set at 12 years.

The facts revealed that Hare attacked Preeper first, stabbing him with a knife in the face, neck and back. A melee ensued and Preeper struck Hare with an aluminum baseball bat.

Hare lost consciousness and fell to the ground. After chasing Hare's colleagues away, Preeper repeatedly bludgeoned the prone man on the head and chest with the bat.

The medical examiner said Hare suffered multiple skull fractures and died from blunt-force trauma to the head.

Preeper had been acquitted two months earlier on a charge of assaulting Hare's younger brother, Denver, in October 2009.

Barbara Elizabeth Marshall, 26, of Halifax, Dustan's girlfriend and the mother of his child, was also accused of second-degree murder in Hare's death, but the Crown withdrew that charge Wednesday.

The guilty pleas and joint sentencing recommendations were the result of weeks of discussions between Crown attorneys Peter Craig and Shauna MacDonald and the defence lawyers. Peter Planetta represented Dustan Preeper, while Brian Bailey was Joshua's lawyer and, with son Mark, acted on behalf of Marshall as well.

The judge said the two killings were horrific.

"These were indeed heinous crimes perpetrated on individuals who in no way deserved the fates that befell them," Chipman said.

"Two young and promising persons are now gone forever and all that we have are their memories — memories of who they were and who they might have become."

The judge prohibited the brothers from having weapons for the rest of their lives and ordered them to provide DNA samples for a national databank.


Outside court, Rufus Peacock, Melissa's grandfather, said he was satisfied that justice had been done.He said it was difficult to have to hear the details of his granddaughter's killing and to understand why it happened."But it happened, and we go on with our life," he said. "Melissa was very, very close to me. I spent a lot of time with her, and someday I'll see her."Peacock said Dustan Preeper's comments to the court were "just horrible, horrendous.""It made it very difficult for the families on both sides. All we can say is that justice has been served and we're thankful for it."

Tiny White, the Preepers' aunt, blamed Dustan's courtroom outburst on the fact he has Asperger syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder.

"He's not a monster, he's not a monster," White told reporters.

The Preepers were arrested in July 2012 thanks to information about the Peacock case that police received through the provincial Justice Department's Rewards for Major Unsolved Crimes Program, launched in 2006. It was the first time a tip to the program, which offers rewards of up to $150,000, had led to charges in a murder case.

The court heard Wednesday that investigators used an undercover police operator and a police agent to gather evidence against the Preepers. Dustan took the undercover officer to the burial site in July 2012 and divulged that he burned his clothing and Melissa Peacock's wallet and phone the day after the murder. Dustan also admitted that he hit Hare in the head with the bat severaltimes and did not stop until police arrived.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ed T
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 05:49 PM

Thanks JotSC, I only recognized a couple as being Canadian cases?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Bill D
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 06:06 PM

""The death penalty is about revenge, not justice."

Here goes Bill D again:

I'm sorry, it certainly is for some...even for many- but it is not that for everyone.

We cannot read minds... and many people view it much as they would culling overpopulating deer or shooting a marauding lion who preys on a village in Africa.

I am not defending the death penalty--- there are far too many problems with flaws in both flawed convictions and the current 'methods' --- but it IS possible to treat it as one theoretical pragmatic solution to dealing with evil.

There is a phrase.. "with extreme prejudice" that is used to explain.. if not to justify... an assassination of an enemy- or even an out-of-control friend of some sort. I can see the point of the concept, even as I would hate being involved in such matters.

As I posted above, 'most' of us can imagine situations where we would use deadly force...if possible.. to protect the family, etc. It is not a huge leap to the idea of eliminating permanently a known & avowed threat.. i.e., a murderer who has killed again after escaping or being paroled.

I still predict that society's view will change over time as crime & danger increase.

   Do the math... if there is always a certain % of the population which resorts to evil & crime, and the population continues to increase, and the need for more & more prisons costing more & more money and requiring more & more people willing to be prison guards keeps growing, there MUST come a time when there are not only many dangerous criminals near everyone, but practical ways of incarcerating them and training psychiatrists to treat them is not in ANY budget.


We cannot simply define executions as 'barbaric', any more than we can define all abortion as ... wicked/murder/immoral... whatever.

I favor counseling. treatment, gun control, legal reform, and a host of other things in the attempt to minimize all consideration of the death penalty... I just doubt the very long-term societal view that banning it will solve much. YMMV

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 06:06 PM

There are lots of people dead who deserve to live.

Be careful before you choose those who deserve to die.





Typical of personality disorder specimen such as the one on the sunset coast. Argue over wrong conviction rather than wrong sentence.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 06:25 PM

I wouldn't say definitely, but I think musket types at Mudcat to keep arthritic fingers limber. I can think of no other reason, as he never has anything constructive on his mind.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 06:26 PM

What about the kids that are being disappeared in the current U.S. "border crisis"? Some will be sold into sexual slavery; some will be sacrificed by occultists; some will probably even be cannibalized. Would any of you argue against executing the people who perpetrate crimes like that?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Greg F.
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 08:30 PM

I would say...that the ultimate protection of wrongful execution is now quite, good...perhaps even excellent.

Would you be willing to bet your own life on that, John?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 08:43 PM

Greg F. --
You've post twice to this thread, and added exactly zero to the discussion. That's on a par with the vast blather you contributed to other threads in recent months.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 08:58 PM

He made a valid point, John. Exonerations are a regular thing in many communities now in the US.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 09:15 PM

It occurs to me that if the US, as a whole, were to ban executions unequivocally it could conceivably be our country's first step away from our fixation on guns. ??

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 09:15 PM

MtheGM says, Can you really denounce the whole of history before about mid-C19 as relating to the "uncivilised"?

True, Mike. Until the middle of the 19th century, most executions were carried out for "civilised" political reasons. I think that's been the case through most of history - people were executed for political reasons. It's only in our enlightened modern times that we execute people for actually committing horrible atrocities.

I still oppose the death penalty, but I have to say that most people executed in the U.S., are people who committed horrendous crimes. And I have to have great sympathy for the victims of these crimes, and for their families.

But victims of crimes don't really know what they want, since there's really nothing that can repay a horrendous crime. The public outcry in the U.S. demands the death penalty, and nothing less, for horrendous crimes. I believe that execution doesn't do anybody any good, but I don't know how to convince the victims' rights people of that.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 09:29 PM

SRS, that was the conclusion of my post. Our system is very good at getting it right as to who is eventually executed. There have apparently been no execution of innocents in the past forty years or so. Greg F. didn't add to it, he was just taking his usual shot at me (as with others whom he disagrees)...this time I shot back. Bad me!

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 10:09 PM

"There have apparently been no execution of innocents in the past forty years or so."

Oh, good grief! Read.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 10:31 PM

No execution of innocents, John? I think you could get tarred and feathered for making a comment like that here. The Death Penalty Information Center will tell you otherwise, as will the Wikipedia article.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Janie
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 11:06 PM

Can some one provide a definition of 'evil' that 99% of people currently living could agree to without any caveats or qualifiers?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 11:12 PM

I am not in favour of the death penalty as a general rule. There are too many possible screw-ups, mostly to the detriment of the person who gets killed. However, we practice the death penalty frequently and despite not liking it we do walk away saying, "Such is life."

How far is a trained sniper's shot from murder 1? I submit it is no further and no different. It is murder. But it is a sanctioned murder. I doubt anyone here would suggest a sniper not take the shot if that shot were to save an innocent life. But, how that differs from capital punishment is that it is preventative and not retributive. Personally, I think keeping Charles Manson alive is stupid, but I am willing to agree with it because the law says he's to be kept alive until such time as he drops dead. We do at times love our mass murderers, not that we'd want them moving into the 'hood after their rehabilitation. That would be carrying democracy too far.

So, we have a problem for which there is no right or morally superior position. To insult John for his position is wrong. He is a thoughtful and intelligent man. Argue with him all you want, as I'm sure I will in posts to come, but there is not a single person posting here who does not believe that capital punishment is necessary at times. Keep in mind that there are lots of kinds of capital punishment. Some of them aren't all that bad even if others aren't all that good.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 11:22 PM

John you're not paying attention. There have been. And in Dallas, Texas alone, the 34th exoneration of an innocent man was announced today. Since this program began in 2007 to examine DNA evidence convictions have been overturned. In just one county. Extrapolate from there and you'll see the problem with the death penalty and with mandatory sentences.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 11:24 PM

The method is obviously flawed.

It is time to return to the tried and true absolutes.

Hung By A Rope Until Dead

Beheading (by whatever means)

Firing Squad

Electrocution

Gas Chamber

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Swift, clean, and broadcast

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 25 Jul 14 - 11:56 PM

Well, it looks like I over-extrapolated in my post about no wrongful executions which I hastily made from reviewing the list provided by Guest,#. After following Joe Offer's links, I retract that statement. Please, folks, don't tar and feather me...I'm almost sure that would be cruel and and unusual punishment.

I do stand by my earlier conclusion that overall the system works quite well. The link by SRS, re Michael Phillips, is an example of it. He was not executed, he has been exonerated and is now free.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 26 Jul 14 - 01:00 AM

If you check out the history of executions in Texas, though, you'll find records of executions that were later shown to be in error. I'm not going to dig out the source tonight, but one of the long-term warders at the Huntsville Penitentiary wrote a book a dozen years ago or so, and went on speaking tours. The question came up and he knows of at least one who was later shown to be innocent. Jim Willett. He runs the museum at the penitentiary now.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 26 Jul 14 - 02:41 AM

Joe mentions the families of the victims. True Joe, your feelings towards the person convicted are not going to be compassionate if your nearest and dearest were murdered by them.

But that is why we have juries to decide the evidence and judges to decide the sentence. It's a matter of objectivity.

The person on the sunset coast should be aware that the sun is slowly setting on his macabre support for this shameful practice. It seems The USA is about where we were in the early. '60s. The same debates are beginning to be heard nationally.

Gargoyle either ironically or otherwise shows this in sharp relief. Who couldn't be disturbed by reading his or her multicoloured but mono pointed post?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 26 Jul 14 - 03:08 AM

I haven't ploughed through all of this thread, so someone may have made this point already - if so, sorry! Nevertheless, according to accounts of this case that I have read, Joseph Wood committed his crime 25 years ago and his trial was two years later. So, presumably, he was sentenced to death 23 years ago and has been on 'Death Row' ever since? It seems to me to be crueller to keep someone waiting to be executed for 23 years than actually executing him!

Anyway, concerns about this case seem to me to be a bit out of proportion - especially when you consider that a century ago some rich and powerful European old men forced millions of (mainly) poor and powerless European young men to execute each other. More recently some Ukrainian rebels have executed 295 innocent civilians and the Israeli government have executed around 800 Palestinians - now that's 'depravity'!

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ebbie
Date: 26 Jul 14 - 03:20 AM

The point has been made that there have been innocent people executed. That is a proven fact. But never mind that those people died- how about the people left behind? How would I feel if it were my brother or my husband or my father or my son or my beloved friend who was 'successfully' tried but that I was positive all along that he was innocent- and that I hoped against hope that the evidence would show up that proved his innocence - but they killed him?

Would I ever again trust my government? Or anyone in authority? Or people?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jul 14 - 03:34 AM

"Please, folks, don't tar and feather me...I'm almost sure that would be cruel and and unusual punishment."
And it tends to be the type of behaviour those who support capital punishment are in favour of - one of the great practices in dealing with the 'blacks' - before stringin''em up.
"Until the middle of the 19th century, most executions were carried out for "civilised" political reasons. I think that's been the case through most of history - people were executed for political reasons."
You have to be joking Joe

"Sir Samuel Romilly, speaking to the House of Commons on capital punishment in 1810, declared that "[there is] no country on the face of the earth in which there [have] been so many different offences according to law to be punished with death as in England." Known as the "Bloody Code", at its height the criminal law included some 220 crimes punishable by death, including "being in the company of Gypsies for one month", "strong evidence of malice in a child aged 7–14 years of age" and "blacking the face or using a disguise whilst committing a crime". Many of these offences had been introduced to protect the property of the wealthy classes that emerged during the first half of the 18th century, a notable example being the Black Act of 1723, which created 50 capital offences for various acts of theft and poaching. Crimes eligible for the death penalty included shoplifting and stealing sheep, cattle, and horses, and before abolition of the death penalty for theft in 1832, "English law was notorious for prescribing the death penalty for a vast range of offenses as slight as the theft of goods valued at twelve pence."
Whilst executions for murder, burglary and robbery were common, the death sentences for minor offenders were often not carried out. A sentence of death could be commuted or respited (permanently postponed) for reasons such as benefit of clergy, official pardons, pregnancy of the offender or performance of military or naval duty. Between 1770 and 1830, an estimated 35,000 death sentences were handed down in England and Wales, but only 7,000 executions were carried out."
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Stu
Date: 26 Jul 14 - 07:19 AM

"I do stand by my earlier conclusion that overall the system works quite well"

But I ask the question again: if a section of society decides to kill a person, how does that differ if it's a judicial system killing a criminal or a single person committing a crime?

The intent is the same, to end the life of a human being using violence. How can we claim the moral authority to judge? What is our basis for this? Is there a place for institutionalised killing outside of a war situation. The alternative, incarceration is far less morally ambiguous, and allows for errors to be corrected of discovered down the line.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Greg F.
Date: 26 Jul 14 - 09:26 AM

That's OK, SRS - John's just taking his usual shot at me, without adding anything but misinformation to the discussion.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Jul 14 - 09:34 AM

"How can we claim the moral authority to judge?"
.,,.
Depends whom you mean by 'we'. If you mean society as a whole, then that is what we elect representatives for: to enact laws embodying such procedures on our behalf which ipso facto makes them legal ~~ ie gives them 'moral authority'. That is the place for "institutional killing outside a war situation". I am not saying whether I think it right or wrong to enact so, becoz, as I said above, I can see virtues in both sides of the argument and remain uncommitted on it. But I am just seeking to answer some, what seem to me, rather ingenuous [or perhaps disingenuous] questions.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: DMcG
Date: 26 Jul 14 - 09:40 AM

What I found most disturbing (in a BBC report of this) was the number of US citizens interviewed - or more accurately shown in an edited interview - who thought there was no problem. Given the person executed had made his victims suffer, it was fine if he suffered during the execution, seemed to be their argument.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 26 Jul 14 - 10:37 AM

"Given the person executed had made his victims suffer, it was fine if he suffered during the execution, seemed to be their argument."

I suppose that a revenge motive is mainly at play here (and, in the face of significant wrong-doing, desire for revenge is, surely, a very human emotion?). In addition, debates like this always seem to concentrate on the rights of the criminal. I believe, though, that someone who has committed murder has effectively surrendered most of their rights and I'm not very concerned about what happens to them afterwards. I am concerned, though, about the rights of any victims - and think that those rights should be of paramount importance.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 26 Jul 14 - 10:47 AM

Fair play to John on the Sunset Coast. His may be a lonely voice here, but he articulates a view shared by millions on both sides of tha Atlantic. However he has already moderated his view in light of this debate, and may yet be persuaded to go another step.

Earlier he said: "If the last several executions have not gone well...." This falls far, far short of the reality, John. Since Gregg v Georgia in 1976 (at which point the US became the first and only nation to go back to capital punishment having previously abandoned it) many dozens of executions have gone horribly wrong. A Colorado University prof has collated 46 ghastly examples, making it clear that his list is nothing like exhaustive. When one digs into the detail behind these cases, it is evident that they have many times been life-changing for participants and audiences alike. It is diquieting enough just to read about them.

One of the most striking features for me is the large number of instances in which the curtain has come down mid-execution, or the witnesses have been ushered out. The ghoulish aspect whereby executions are attended by invited audiences is justified on the basis that justice must be seen to be done. So censoring the spectacle can only be an acknowledgement that justice has failed. If those who agree to attend were required to sit through the whole show, the professor's list could never have reached 46.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Janie
Date: 26 Jul 14 - 09:56 PM

Go pretend to be King Tut guest. It would be more credible.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Janie
Date: 26 Jul 14 - 10:08 PM

With the bogus srs post deleted, suggest my response also be deleted so as not to confuse.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 26 Jul 14 - 10:52 PM

Thanks, Janie.

Songwronger keeps posting bogus messages, or outright attacks, and hasn't figured out that when he shifts the subject of a BS thread from the original topic to an attack, or becomes simply so obnoxious that it isn't fit for a lucid polite conversation, the thread gets closed, or, at the very least, one of the moderators deletes the post. (Not always me.) If he'd stop the attacks and try to carry on a rational conversation, I'm sure he'd find Mudcat a more welcoming environment.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Janie
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 12:40 AM

Peter K, thank you for your thoughtful post. John on the Sunset Coast, while I often disagree with your conservative perspectives, I always appreciate that you articulate your positions clearly and rationally, and there have definitely been times when you have posted information that has given me pause, and sometimes widened my own paradigm. Even when that doesn't happen, you express your views in a way that that gives me greater understanding of what informs thoughtful people whose paradigms are very different from mine.

Thanks for all your years here of sharing your perspective and not letting the judgementalness of the attack dogs drive your voice away.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 02:30 AM

"Judgementalness of the attack dogs"

(Is that a word?)

I assume you are referring to the judges who pass sentence of death?

I can begin to see why ignorant authorities still get away with this barbaric act. Those sickened by it wish to have a reasonable debate and see where they are coming from rather than show their contempt.

You can 't reason with pig ignorance. You can merely legislate it into history as we did in The UK.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Janie
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 02:51 AM

Depending on assorted google searches, had I left out the e after the g, it might be a word, but I readily confess that I can be a tad creative with spelling at any time, but especially this late at night.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 03:06 AM

A wonderful book entitled 'The Fatal Gallows Tree' (John Dean Potter 1965 - probably unobtainable now) gives a superb thumb-nail sketch of 'the British habit of hanging', from the early days when the condemned were dragged on a horses tail to their deaths, right through the once considered 'entertaining' spectacle, to the final days, when it was finally abandoned, despite opposition from 'the guardians of British values.
One of the most memorable sections touched on was the events surrounding the last woman to be hanged, Ruth Ellis in 1955.
She had had a miscarriage in her cell previous to the execution and, to add to her punishment, she went to the gallows wearing canvas draws, because the insides of the last woman who had suffered the same fate before her 'fell out' during the 'ceremony' - justice at its very highest!
The book finishes;
"The House of Lords, much to most people's surprise, passed it (the abolition bill) with majority of 100 votes. After a thousand years the story of English hanging had come to an end. It had gone the way of boiling, branding, beheading and the burning of witches. At last civilization had triumphed.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 03:31 AM

In interests of accuracy:

spellings 'judgment' & 'judgement' are a fairly rare example of co-existing options in English spelling;

pretty well all adjectives can be conventionally formed into recognisable abstract-noun coinages by addition of suffix '-ness', if a noun from which the adjective was formed [eg 'beautiful' from 'beauty', so that 'beautifulness' would be otiose] doesn't already exist: or has a different connotation -- as here, eg, 'judgment', from which 'judgmental' forms, would not be cognate with 'judgmentalness'.

I see where good old Jim is using "civilization" in that silly, tendentious & emotive, sense again. Tch tch; some people just will never learn!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 05:06 AM

The usual US spelling is "judgment".
The usual UK spelling is "judgement", except in legal documents.

As for "judgmentalness", it conveys more than "judgement". Being "judgemental" is more than simply "judging".

May I suggest "judgementality"?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 05:21 AM

"I see where good old Jim is using "civilization" in that silly, tendentious & emotive, sense again"
Blame John Dean Potter" - it was a direct quote, I forgot to add the closing quotation marks - sorry, but then again, it saves having to respond to the humanity and the logic of the statement, doesn't it?
The fact that some people seem either unable or unwilling to approach these subjects with emotion and humanity very much accounts for some of the views they express.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 05:26 AM

I did like the word Janie, all the same!

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 07:12 AM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7546975.stm

Read that article and those against CP may have a change of heart.

(That was a 'joke' for those who think every discussion is a life or death issue.)

And that was just an unfortunate, untimely choice of words.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 07:45 AM

The international legal definition of the crime of genocide is found in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide:

Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/officialtext-printerfriendly.htm

Obamacare forces Americans to participate in birth control (item D from above). From Wikipedia:

With the exception of churches and houses of worship, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act mandates contraceptive coverage for all employers and educational institutions…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraceptive_mandate_%28United_States%29

Therefore, Obamacare is genocide. Obama and his enablers are committing genocide the same as Hitler, Stalin, Mao and the rest.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 07:55 AM

Songwronger, you are in contravention of Article II b.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 08:06 AM

Oh, if only the effortlessly prolix MtheGM could learn from topsie's succinct use of English....

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jeri
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 08:39 AM

I found the page Peter K linked to yesterday, and was appalled to see it all compiled so. One doesn't get a very good idea of all the screw-ups when the odd one is reported in the news.

I'm not necessarily against the death penalty in all cases, but I AM against torture. If the prisons are buying these drugs from illegal sources, I don't know why they just can't buy heroin. (Yes I do: because it won't cause the convict enough pain, and might even be enjoyable for a few seconds.)

As for "judgementalness", I think I would have said "anality". (Yes, I spell the "j" word with an "e" because it looks freaky without it, even though my spellchecker doesn't approve.)

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 08:52 AM

We all have our different styles, Fionn. How much of your living have you made with your writing, out of interest?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 09:00 AM

Jeri, I learned the following from you. You tell it better but this from the www is easier for me to type up, read cut and paste.

'The Famous Pig

A salesman is lost in a rural area and stops at a farm to get directions. As he is talking to the farmer he notices a pig with a wooden leg. "How did the pig get a wooden leg?", he asks the farmer.
"Well", says the farmer, "that is a very special pig. One night not too long ago we had a fire start in the barn.
"Well, sir, that pig set up a great squealing that woke everyone, and by the time we got there he had herded all the other animals out of the barn and saved everyone of them."
"And that was when he hurt his leg?" asked the salesman.
"Oh no" says the farmer. "He was fine after that. Though a while later I was in the woods out back and a bear attacked me. Well, sir, that pig was near by and he came running and set on that bear and chased him off. Saved me for sure."
"So the bear injured his leg then," says the salesman.
"Oh no. He came away without a scratch from that. Though a few days later my tractor turned over in a ditch and I was knocked unconscious. Well, that pig dove into the ditch and pulled me out before I drowned."
"So he hurt his leg then?" asks the salesman.
"Oh no," says the farmer.
"So how did he get the wooden leg?" the salesman asks.
"Well", the farmer tells him, "When you have a pig like that, you don't want to eat him all at once." '

*************************

There are those who don't like the idea of killing other humans. I can see that. It is a strict taboo in most groups or societies. The world has always had

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 09:18 AM

[Sorry. Laptop doing strange things or me hitting some something or other.]

The world has always had a problem with murderers and what to do with them. And today we have a hard time defining the term. Is a soldier guilty of murder when s/he kills someone in a fire fight? Is a police sharpshooter equally guilty? Each of us decides where that particular line is, so it's not as cut and dried as some make out. Some cultures simply banish murderers (the Inui for example). Other societies behead. Others refine the process. But on occasion it does descend to what one might view as torture, and the execution referred to in the OP is imo an example of that. If the purpose of the judicial killing is to rid society of a particularly 'evil' individual, then do so fast and to the point. However, if it cannot be 100% ascertained that the individual is guilty, then maybe judicial killings are beyond the pale.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 12:54 PM

First of all, I take exception to the thread title. An entire country does not "slide into depravity" because of the practices of some semi-autonomous states within that country.

I am opposed to the death penalty for a couple of reasons, but for one major reason.

First, a person who commits murder proves that he or she is not fit to mingle with the rest of the human race. And these persons should be isolated from the rest because they have demonstrated that they are dangerous. Life in prison with no possibility of parole is sufficient.

This removes the person from society so they can no longer be dangerous to others.

And most important, should it be determined that the person actually is innocent, they can be released from prison—with just compensation for the error.

Someone, I forget who, once said that it is better that fifty guilty persons go free than for one innocent person to be put to death.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 02:02 PM

1. Isn't imprisonment for life a form of torture?

2. No-one yet has addressed my point about the rights of victims - and I should have said their families - being more important than the rights of murderers and other criminals.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 02:25 PM

' "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer," 2 says English jurist William Blackstone. The ratio 10:1 has become known as the "Blackstone ratio." '

From the www.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 02:40 PM

"No-one yet has addressed my point about the rights of victims"

That opens many doors.

"An honor killing is the homicide of a member of a family or social group by other members, due to the perpetrators' belief that the victim has brought shame or dishonor upon the family or community, usually for reasons such as refusing to enter an arranged marriage, being in a relationship that is disapproved by their relatives, having sex outside marriage, becoming the victim of rape, dressing in ways which are deemed inappropriate, or engaging in homosexual relations.[1][2][3][4][5] Honor killings are especially targeted against women and homosexuals. The practice, which occurs in various cultures, is universally condemned by human rights organizations."

Just another thing that says we interpret justifications for capital punishment differently around the world.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 02:59 PM

There is no reason to kill folks, if the public can be protected, and life imprisonment would mean that-unless you are proven innocent. However, in some countries, like in Canada, life means 25 years- and likley less with parole. The exception is if the guilty party is deemed mentally ill of deemed to be a dangerous offender.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 03:34 PM

"Rights of the victimw" does indeed open many doors. Who is the victim when a Sikh, for instance, murders a daughter who has shamed him? In my view the only real victims of murder are the murdered. I don't mind the term being extended for convenience, in the absence of anything more precise, and I'm happy for impact statements to be taken into account when sentencing, but I don't think these secondary victims should be accorded rights above anyone else.

No-one deprived through murder of a friend or relative can ever be compensated. Allowing such people a say in any punishment (as is the case in some parts of the world) removes consistency. One so-called victim might be compassionate; another vengeance-driven. In a democracy it is surely better that sentencing should be in accord with codes and guidance drafted by elected legislators.

I suspect that Guest# would be looking for vengeance rather than compassion from any involvement of "victims." For my part I take the view that when considering an appropriate response to any crime, in the cold light of day, any question of vengeance should be taken right out of the equation, or we are no better than those we presume to judge and punish.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 04:05 PM

"' suspect that Guest# would be looking for vengeance rather than compassion from any involvement of "victims." '

Then you would suspect wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 04:07 PM

My apologies.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 06:00 PM

Regarding the last couple of posts from Peter K (Fionn) and Guest,#:

"Without the death penalty, there could well be more personal revenge killings and vigilantism, and perhaps even family/clan feuds, because the families of victims [do not - gram. error] feel their loved one did not get justice." JotSC two days ago.

In other words, a death penalty, judiciously and sparingly used can give the victim's survivors a sense of justice and closure, without resorting to individual revenge.

JotSC

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Greg F.
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 07:06 PM

a death penalty, judiciously and sparingly used can give the victim's survivors a sense of justice and closure

As long as they're willing to reduce themselves to the same level as the perpetrator.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 07:39 PM

Here in the UK, and relying only on my own observation, there was a tendency in the years immediately following abolition for victims' survivors and newspapers to say the perpetrator should have hanged. More recently comment has been around the length of prison term, with any yearning for execution now much rarer.

Meanwhile popular support for restoration seems to have dwindled a bit. Whereas it was at one time 70 per cent or higher, and an oft-cited example of Parliament's capacity to lead rather than be led, a survey for Channel 4 TV in 2009 showed 55 per cent in favour across Great Britain (49 per cent in just England).

In the UK de facto abolition was secured in 1965 - the last executions were in 1964 - though it was not completely off the statutes until 1998. In 1966 parliament held its nerve in the face of two colossal crimes that brought renewed strength to the restoration cause: the Moors murders by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, and the murder of three police officers by Harry Roberts and others. (Hindley died in prison; Brady, as a diagnosed psychopath, is in a secure hospital, and Roberts is still in prison having long since completed the 30-year term originally recommended.)

Two or three years ago a couple of petitions were run, more or less in parallel, under a Government initiative whereby 100,000 signatures for any cause would trigger a parliamentary debate (but with no commitment to legislate). That in favour of restoration attracted 26,000 signatures; that against, 33,000 (approximate figures, from memory).

This is consistent with trends in several other countries. As I noted above, the US is the only nation to have gone back to capital punishment having previously abolished it. (It was abolished de facto in the States following Furman v Georgia in 1972, and restored a few years later with Gregg v Georgia.)

There is no evidence to suggest that victims' relatives, or anyone else, take matters into their own hands following abolition, and there is much evidence that capital punishment has minimal if any deterrent effect. It seems that perpetrators just assume they won't get caught.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 09:12 PM

Peter, in the USA there are three sets of laws in place to do with CP. They are Federal, State and Military. Then of course there is family law: hurt my family and I hurt you. I'm not saying that's the best thing, but it is a real thing.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Greg F.
Date: 27 Jul 14 - 09:33 PM

Yup. An eye for an eye & the world ends up blind.

Once again.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 28 Jul 14 - 03:01 AM

John on the sunset coast shows precisely the mindset that thinks judicial killing to be acceptable.

To say that killing a prisoner prevents families from killing others as revenge. Or murder as we call it in more civilised parts of the world.

Closure is when a jury says guilty. To expect or condone another death in another family is encouraging the idea that life is cheap. To perpetuate this playing to the ignorant crowd political showboating merely shows that the federal approach doesn't seem to prevent states from developing unequally. Sadly, in some states you can still hear those fucking banjos.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ed T
Date: 28 Jul 14 - 05:06 AM

A historic perspective in Britain.


the history in Britain 

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ed T
Date: 28 Jul 14 - 05:14 AM

Some USA information on the deterrent value of capital punishment in the link below:

Quote from the article:
""One argument in support of capital punishment is that the threat of death deters murder more effectively than prison. However, research indicates that the death penalty is no more effective as a deterrent to murder than the punishment of life in jail. States with the death penalty on average do not have lower rates of homicide than states without the penalty.""

Comment:This statement assumes that "life in jail", means life in jail, not 25 years, nor 10 years before release in parole, as in some locals.


some USA material on deterrent value 

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Stu
Date: 28 Jul 14 - 07:01 AM

<>"...without resorting to individual revenge."

It's not revenge because they didn't flick the switch? Is it that easy to abdicate responsibility for the death of a person?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ed T
Date: 28 Jul 14 - 07:57 AM

Australia, an early alternative British approach to criminal punishment:


Australia versus punishment 

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Jul 14 - 08:15 AM

Still on the fence re this question. But feel that arguments about eye for eye, reducing society to level of the perepetrator, & so on, are facile. Even if revenge is the main motive, part of criminal law, as I say above, is concerned with society's expression of stong disapproval of offence by means of making him suffer, and achieving a sense of , in the modern agreed term, 'closure', in addition to the simple question of deterrence. As I have often said, here & in other contexts, thew whole concept of punishment as such is a dodgy one; but no society has ever come up with an alternative. Even communes and such reserve exclusion or expulsion as an ultimate deterrent.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ed T
Date: 28 Jul 14 - 08:56 AM

I guess at a minimum, capital punishment does deter a guilty person from repeating that crime in society. (Whatever this value is).
;)

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 28 Jul 14 - 08:57 AM

"Or murder as we call it in more civilised parts of the world."

Where did you get the idea you're civilised? You call having a House of Lords civilized? You call having a Monarch civilised? You call what English landlords and industrialists did to Ireland in the famine civilised? You call Dickensian times civilized? You call Bedlam civilised? Pray tell, for the great unwashed across the ocean, define this term you make use of: civilised.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ed T
Date: 28 Jul 14 - 09:28 AM

Interesting point on what is defined as murder Guest,#. I suspect it has been defined throughout history in "the eye of the beholder." One example may be, some in the Some may see colonial foreign military actions (a recent example may be bombings) as falling in that category. I suspect those doing it see it differently.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 28 Jul 14 - 10:16 AM

I think you're right, Ed T. Much of it is in the eye of the beholder.

That said, let it be known that Canada last executed a human on December 11, 1962. England last executed a human on August 13, 1964. It is worthy of note that for Scotland the date for last execution is August 15, 1963; for Northern Ireland it is December 20, 1961, and for Wales it is May 6, 1958.

I have always wondered why mass murderers like Pinochet from Chile who died in Chile in 2006 and Amin from Uganda who died in Saudi Arabia in 2003 were allowed to escape the death penalty. I guess you kill one person it's murder, kill ten thousand it's a statistic. Note that neither Amin nor Pinochet spent any substantial time in jail. So much for that, huh?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Jul 14 - 01:12 PM

The death penalty, and much criminal procedure, is up to the States,

At present, 32 states out of 48 have the death penalty.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 28 Jul 14 - 02:22 PM

# (whatever that means) questions whether we are civilised in The UK.

The answer is yes, thanks for asking.

Mind you, keep selling us those documentaries about life in US. Some people, lap them up. They are up there with world's fattest guinea pigs or whatever Channel 5 show these days. The journalist and news anchorman Trevor McDonald did a disturbing documentary about capital punishment in The USA last year. Truly shocking. We watch it to feel smug perhaps. But we also watch it in the same way as history programmes that show us how we have come on over the last hundred years.

Keep banging those rocks together eh?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 28 Jul 14 - 04:18 PM

In other words, Musket, you don't know what you're talking about.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 28 Jul 14 - 04:45 PM

" # (whatever that means) "

That means it's none of your business.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ebbie
Date: 29 Jul 14 - 03:01 AM

"At present, 32 states out of 48 have the death penalty."

Make that 32 states out of 50, Q.

The State of Alaska has never had a death penalty. Hawaii abolished theirs in 1957.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 29 Jul 14 - 03:34 AM

"I guess you kill one person it's murder, kill ten thousand it's a statistic."

Yep! Homo sapiens = a species with no sense of proportion.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 29 Jul 14 - 03:46 AM

So I don't know what I am talking about?

I suppose I'll never talk about how Fred was executed the other day. I'll never have to talk about supply of drugs for judicial killing in my country. I'll never have to fear for mistaken identity leading to my demise. I'll never stop seeing uncultured redneck states as being inferior to more advanced parts of the world.

Oh, and I shall never have to make excuses that my state doesn't execute when the federal government does and all states hand over suspects to those that might kill them.

Ghoulish activities by authorities are a bit old hat around this side of the pond.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 29 Jul 14 - 06:00 AM

[Two days late, and hardly relevant, but] on 'judgementalness'/'judgementality', it suddenly came to me in the night that the usual word is 'judgementalism'.
On checking, I found that it had been added to the Oxford English Dictionary last December.

http://public.oed.com/the-oed-today/recent-updates-to-the-oed/december-2013-update/new-words-list-december-2013/

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Stu
Date: 29 Jul 14 - 06:42 AM

"Yep! Homo sapiens = a species with no sense of proportion."

Homo sapiens = a species that apparently enjoys and condones the slaughter of it's own kind.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Jul 14 - 07:48 AM

Bad taste joke follows. The bottom has fallen out of the UK depilation market now that the Met are doing Brazilians for nothing. The UK can be uncivilised at times.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 29 Jul 14 - 08:37 AM

No Bridge. UK people can be uncivilised. Im not sure you will be able to quote legislation showing the lawfulness of bumping off Brazilian electricians.

Only one person is licensed to kill, James Bond. Anyone else tries and they risk prosecution.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 29 Jul 14 - 12:30 PM

"Homo sapiens = a species that apparently enjoys and condones the slaughter of it's own kind."

The irony is, of course, that we will soon render ourselves extinct and what will be laid down in the rock, a few million years from now, is not the fact that we slaughtered each other but that we wiped out countless thousands of other living things that we were too arrogant, short-sighted and stupid to share the planet with. The American writer Jared Diamond likens non-humans to rivets holding an aeroplane togther - and presently we're busily knocking those rivets out ... when we're not busily killing each other ...

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Jul 14 - 11:55 PM

Interesting title. There's no depravity in our past; it's just beginning now.

We killed off the native population of North America and imported people from another continent as slaves, then killed millions of each other supposedly over whether to free those slaves, but did nothing to help the former slaves enter the economic system or to atone for the injustice done to them. We annexed half of Mexico, we massacred people in the Philippines in the name of liberation, we asserted and repeatedly enforced hegemony over all of the western hemisphere and later much of the rest of the world, including destroying whole cities with atomic bombs. But now we're becoming depraved.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ebbie
Date: 30 Jul 14 - 12:48 AM

Guest, you are painting with an extremely broad brush.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Jul 14 - 01:07 AM

Guest, just who do you mean by "we?"

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Jul 14 - 02:14 AM

Although I oppose the death penalty, I think I can say that for the most part the U.S. executes only people who have committed particularly horrendous crimes. And I'll say it again - this is a relatively new development. Prior to about 1850, the majority of executions in "civilized" nations were for political reasons - either to eliminate political opponents, or to exert the authority of the ruling class over the lower class by executing people suspected of committing relatively insignificant crimes. England's Black Act of 1723 instituted the death penalty for over fifty offenses.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 30 Jul 14 - 03:16 AM

But in 1723 Joe, it was a different UK. On Mudcat, there's possibly only Michael who could give you a first hand account.

By quoting legislation 300 years ago, all that does is show c21 UK (and the rest of the Western world with one large exception..) in sharp relief. Also, at that time gaols were for either awaiting judgement or awaiting execution or transportation. The idea of incarcerating for a period of time and subsequently releasing was a novel idea, usually used for the aristocracy , who rather than being given a fixed term were held "at his Majesty's pleasure." A term still used colloquially today to mean "in prison. "

After all, I spoke of civilised behaviour up the thread somewhere and one clown started rattling on about Bedlam proving me wrong! Why I don't know because The UK was barbaric too up till only 50 years ago. You don't need to go back so far. I suggest reading the debates that reached first the limitations and then the subsequent abolitions. I use the plural because perversely, treason, piracy and a couple of others stayed as an unused option till comparatively recently.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Stu
Date: 30 Jul 14 - 06:57 AM

In 1830 one of my ancestors (a Scot) was on trial in Hampshire for house breaking with four other chaps but avoided the death penalty when him and another bloke was acquitted. The other three were sentenced to death but had their sentences commuted to deportation, and presumably off to Australia they went.

Funny old world.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,#
Date: 30 Jul 14 - 09:59 AM

Musket, you know a great deal. However, you're rude.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: frogprince
Date: 30 Jul 14 - 10:07 AM

For the most part the U.S. executes only people who have been convicted of committing particularly horrendous crimes. (No, I'm not going to proceed to belabor the difference with Joe, who was actually making his point pretty well.)

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Jul 14 - 01:26 PM

I don't disagree with you, Musket. I'm contrasting the 18th century with modern times. Back in the wonderful days of our ancestors, most executions were for political expedience or for racial or class oppression. Even in the U.S., executions are only for horrendous crimes.

I had more to say, but my message got "ate."

Now I'm out of time.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Greg F.
Date: 30 Jul 14 - 02:03 PM

I think I can say that for the most part the U.S. executes only people who have committed particularly horrendous crimes.

Texas excepted, of course.....

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: akenaton
Date: 30 Jul 14 - 02:15 PM

I am against "Capital punishment", but if a country is to have such a deterrent, at least they should be capable of doing the job efficiently.

The cases of "botched executions" are a disgrace, surely it is not difficult to kill a human quickly and humanely, if the law requires it?

There are some crimes against nature, like the rape and murder of infants, which are so hideous that execution would seem a mission of mercy.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Jul 14 - 04:33 PM

Texas has a reputation that some elected officials are apparently proud to promote. Not everyone who lives here is thrilled by the death penalty at all, let alone the frequency at which they happen.

That said, the most recent conspicuously botched executions were in Oklahoma and Arizona.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Jul 14 - 05:24 PM

According to searches, Oklahoma still admits the firing squad as 'legal' under some circumstances. (So does Utah, though they haven't used it since Gary Gilmore demanded it in 1977. (he was worried about hanging being botched)

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 30 Jul 14 - 10:10 PM

Guest mis-states the case. The man was accused of rape but Clinton (then 27) got the charge reduced to unlawful fondling of a minor under the age of 14.
The man was sentenced to one year in jail, and four years probation.

The man was never proven guilty of rape.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Jul 14 - 10:20 PM

"guest" is almost certainly our resident shit-stirrer--Song Wronger, who seems to think that posting anonymously hides his identity.

I sometimes wonder if he might be the alter ego of Karl Rove or Rush Limbaugh....

In any case, repeated attempts to link Hillary to anything is simply part of a general plan to throw mud at ANY perceived Democratic candidate... and is totally irrelevant to THIS thread.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Janie
Date: 30 Jul 14 - 10:27 PM

Suspect that last post was from Songwronger, Q. At least his typical modus operandi. Suggest you ignore it, regardless.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 30 Jul 14 - 10:44 PM

Janie, you are probably right, but I felt that a blatant misrepresentation should be challenged.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Jul 14 - 03:07 AM

Actually big Pharma has taken the moral high road by refusing to supply lethal drugs to execution states.

Belarus, China and Iran our are only official partners in the global execution arena.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Jul 14 - 03:08 AM

Oops I think NK is also another US partner.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 31 Jul 14 - 12:22 PM

Mexico stopped executions for political crimes, but it is still possible for homicide with treachery, premeditation or unfair advantage.
Mexican Review, Is the death penalty constitutional in Mexico? Enrique Díaz-Aranda, June, 2007.

Wikipedia lists 33 countries which have the death penalty, including Russia, Japan, India and Taiwan. Some have not used it in the last ten years or have a moratorium.

"....90% of ...executions take place in Asia."

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 01:52 AM

Does painless administration of death render it less harmful?

To kill someone is the extreme act of violence. It should be done honestly if it's done at all. If execution is decreed for a capital offense, let it be done instantly. Bullets, nooses and blades are readily available on the open market and , if not more humane, are certainly more human than administering an attempted painless overdose.
For those who commit the most heinous of murders against the most helpless and in the most cruel and prolonged ways, I have no sympathy whatsoever. If we would be too tender or noble to pull the trigger or throw the lever, then leave that duty to the victim's next of kin.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 02:04 AM

Fascinating......

You make it sound like alternative recipes for baking a cake.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 02:10 AM

"then leave that duty to the victim's next of kin."
Who with then have committed a capital crime and will be liable to be taken out, hanged by the neck, shot, bludgeoned, poisoned... or whichever method 'society' decides to be the least barbaric way of seeing off - and so ad infinitum.
Capital Punishment and the disgustingly hypocritical ritual that surrounds it is an example of humanity at its very lowest and the sooner it takes its place, along with dog-fighting, bear-baiting, hanging-drawing and quartering, branding, the branque, the stocks.... and all those other quaint traditions that once made us what we were, the sooner we can aspire to being human beings.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 04:58 AM

I think its a sensual thing.

the guy puts his hand on your knee - you know if your gay.

the talk comes round to capital punishment - and you know if you're up for it.

whenever there's a history book about Mary Queen of Scots or Charles 1, we all skip to the head chopping and take a sneaky look. some of us feel - we are enjoying a furtive frisson of sadism - and we know its not good for us really.

Warden Howe of Sing Sing - who attended many executions wrote in his auto biography he was inundated with requests from people who wanted to attend an execution - they always had brilliant and ingenious reasons. Howe contemplatecd what a success live radio broadcasts from the execution chamber would be....a nation crouched round the radio, getting off on the sensual thrill of killing someone.

Take a good look in the mirror - John on th Sunset Coast -isn't that what its reall about. that buzz, that frisson from ruining living human flesh.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 11:20 AM

Hey Big Al, I don't know from frisson-never even knew there was such a word. But it sounds as if you're playing psychiatrist. Please submit your play credentials or shut the F up.

Meanwhile, I've got to get back to squashing bugs in the garden. You better not get under foot.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 11:55 AM

John, do you own a dictionary?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 12:17 PM

Greg, is that the best you can do, spending 30 minutes think up a question that has an obvious answer? And then actually posting it! Pathetic.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 12:37 PM

John, I have to squash the bugs in my tomatoes too.

I don't care if the method I use is pain-free or instantaneous.
Death should be certain, accomplished at least cost, and harmless to both the crop and the producer.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 12:44 PM

John, if you want pathetic, re-read yours of 01 Aug 14 - 11:20 AM

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 12:56 PM

okay to use a good old English phrase - are you sure you're not getting you jollies by vicarious sadism. lots of people do....true crime magazines, accounts of executions, interviews with all those concerned..........

and its so much more exciting when its on the news, in th papers...something to look forward to!

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 01:58 PM

You might say that, Big Al. I wouldn't, and no one who has known me would. I take no pleasure in execution, but I do believe that in certain exceptional cases it is called for, for reasons I wrote about above. I also think that it should be done efficiently and with minimal pain to the executed person, which I believe I also noted above. I do not get the sort of frisson that, say, Chris Matthews once said he gets from seeing and hearing President Obama.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no9fpKVXxCc

Thank you for adding to my vocabulary. It makes Aug 1 a non-wasted day.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 05:07 PM

I wonder if Leej is making an assumption - widely held, particularly in the States - that victims' relatives will always be willing to pull the trigger, flick the switch or whatever?

Sometimes - and maybe more likely in that part of the civilised world that is not the US - a victim or relative of a victim of crime will be inclined to forgive. The lust for vengeance is by no means automatic. In the UK forgiveness or some level of understanding has been the response to some exceptionally unpleasant crimes. Would you, Leej, in a case such as that, be comfortable with a victim's surviving relative deciding the punishment? It must surely be better in a democracy that punishments, and the carrying through of punishments, should be consistent with a code determined by the legislature and applied by an independent judiciary?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 05:36 PM

"Would you, Leej, in a case such as that, be comfortable with a victim's surviving relative deciding the punishment? It must surely be better in a democracy that punishments, and the carrying through of punishments, should be consistent with a code determined by the legislature and applied by an independent judiciary?"

May it be so!

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 02 Aug 14 - 02:27 AM

Voyeur on the sunset coast reminds me of something I wrote in a letter that a newspaper kindly published when some loony MP tried a private members' bill to bring back hanging years ago.

I said that folklore has it that the condemned man dies with an erection. I pointed out that the whole ethos of executions are to give an erection to those depraved enough to support the wretched idea.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 02 Aug 14 - 09:07 AM

That bit of folklore mentioned by Musket has always sounded improbable to me. However....

It has been asserted in two books that a former British Lord Chief Justice, the repulsive Rayner Goddard got a thrill from passing the death sentence, sufficient that his valet had to provide him with a change of underwear on such days. It was Goddard, incidentally, whose blatent misdirecting of a jury resulted in Derek Bentley being hanged for a murder he did not commit - a misscarriage of justice eventually acknowledged in 1998. (We are not as civilised in the UK as Musket sometimes suggests.)

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 02 Aug 14 - 09:16 AM

it might be called for John, but we don't have answer all the calls on us. the total effect on our society was to debase it. my god -we were good at it!.. we hanged about a thousand suspected mau mau terrorists in the 1950's.

before an execution there were sneak pictures in the paper of the hangman on his way to perform his grisly task. interviews outside the prison gates. we were in love with capital punishment.

happily more civilised voices prevailed. step across the line John to the voices of decency, restraint and moderation. its the only way a civilisation can hope to improve.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 02 Aug 14 - 11:07 AM

Oh but we are civilised. We procrastinate and are scared of legal precedents due to our litigious legal system but we get there.

The erection idea is pursued as a sex game apparently. Michael Hutchence (?) being a high profile victim of letting it go too far. Floggings too good for 'em according to the gaffer in my local.

Whilst ever we neither torture nor kill our prisoners, we are civilised. It may be relative but we are not as low as The USA, China, North Korea etc.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 02 Aug 14 - 11:14 AM

"decency, restraint and moderation"

That is exactly what I call for--read my posts. You call for extremism and abolition; that does not comport with what you write.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Greg F.
Date: 02 Aug 14 - 02:12 PM

that does not comport with what you write.

Uh, John - that's because he DOESN'T call for extremism......

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 02 Aug 14 - 02:16 PM

we'll have to agree to disagree John.

like I said, you feel capital punishments hand on your knee - you're up for it.

I am most definitely not that sort of girl.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Aug 14 - 03:57 AM

The case for and against capital punishment was perfectly illustrated for me by Britain's leading judge Lord Denning (in a negative sense of course), when he spoke about the campaign to free the six men wrongly convicted of the Birmingham bombing:
"We shouldn't have all these campaigns to get the Birmingham Six released if they'd been hanged. They'd have been forgotten and the whole community would have been satisfied."
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST,big al whittle
Date: 03 Aug 14 - 06:03 AM

yes, but can't you see Jim - there is an argument that protecting society is worth a few errors.

logic hss nowt to do with it. either the the very thought disgusts and horrifies you - or it doesn't.

there again John could argue - well the rat catcher and the sewage workers job is disgusting and horrifying - you see logic doesn't work -its down to a sensual thning. its not even moral. pro hangers could say well -i am being immoral by shirking my civic responsibility and not pulling the lever, twisting the garotte, or whatever.

its the old hand on your knee test - i am not up for it.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 03 Aug 14 - 07:58 AM

Civilised countries put a higher value on life.

Thats why we have lower gun crime, fewer murders per capita and each and every country that abolishes capital punishment sees no increase in what was capital crime, making the deterrent argument dead in the ditch water.

So you are left with puerile revenge and excitement over seeing someone dead. The same argument that led to the crime in the first place in many cases.

This is usually the point where I say keep banging the rocks together...

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 03 Aug 14 - 12:39 PM

"its the old hand on your knee test - i am not up for it."

I'm beginning to wonder about your fixation with a certain part of the anatomy. I'm not sure anybody should be alone in a room with you.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Aug 14 - 01:14 PM

"Civilised countries put a higher value on life.
Thats why we have lower gun crime, fewer murders per capita"

I can dispute the analysis in the first part, while totally agreeing with the 2nd part...

"... and each and every country that abolishes capital punishment sees no increase in what was capital crime, making the deterrent argument dead in the ditch water."...
indeed.. and I fervently wish this was better understood.

'Putting a higher value on life' is a subjective interpretation of a country's value system, and the reasons for lower gun crime and fewer murders per capita are NOT necessarily a sufficient condition, even IF you believe in that subjective definition of 'civilized'.


The UK and the USA had very different historical, demographic and cultural development which led to fewer guns in one and far too many guns in the other. It's a very long discussion to outline this in detail, but it's well to be careful about interpretation of a country's 'civilized status' and overall 'moral character'. There are too many embedded premises that may or may not apply.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Aug 14 - 01:16 PM

I must still have some of the uncivilized westerner in me. For certain crimes, the saying, "hang 'em high," expresses my views.

Hmmm, for those who argue interminably in threads- Hang 'em high!

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 03 Aug 14 - 02:17 PM

in the USA - there are the equivalent of a small town being shot most years. I don't know how you put up with it.

still its your business. the same goes for capital punishment.

its their business Musket -its like female genital mutilation. if that's the way a people wish to live - let 'em get on with it. as long as they don't try it on over here.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Aug 14 - 02:34 PM

"yes, but can't you see Jim - there is an argument that protecting society is worth a few errors."
Just what Denning said - personally I'd rather be protected from sadists like him.
Would you give a primitive like him the sway over life and death
Can we assume that your willingness to accept "few errors" includes you and your family being sent to the drop, or is your magnanimous magnanimous gesture confined just to the rest of us?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 03 Aug 14 - 02:37 PM

Bill, the first bit was designed to be provocative. As Billy Connolly once noted, you never read the words "Fuck off, he hinted" in a book. I try to ensure any passion in my arguments are portrayed.

People who try to argue anything dispassionately and cold don't have an argument to put forward, just Devil's advocate.

Al. Its a small world now. Writing off tyrants and not giving a fuck for the poor people living there is soo twentieth century.

Subject: explanation
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Aug 14 - 06:04 PM

Musket... very well, but it does leave those who don't NEED to be 'provoked' with a confused impression of your actual feelings. That "first bit" is worded in such a way that it felt like you were painting with far too broad a brush.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Big Al...
"in the USA - there are the equivalent of a small town being shot most years. I don't know how you put up with it".

"Put up with it" implies that universal choice is involved. Some of us do NOT put up with it, in the sense that we argue, vote, donate and lobby in as many ways as we can to stop, lessen and restrict the proliferation of guns!
As I say again & again, our Constitution was written in 1789, and the 2nd amendment has been interpreted ever since by those who WANT guns to mean they can have almost anything.
The other problem is that 'states rights', which gives an unfortunate amount of power of conservative states to dodge federal laws, is also embedded in the Constitution, and the process of amending the Constitution to change either of those awkward situations is almost impossible under the Catch-22 rules for doing so.

I suspect that only some enormous tragedy, such as some group shooting up Congress & the NRA on the same day, would get attention... and most of the NRA would simply say it proves THEIR point.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Greg F.
Date: 03 Aug 14 - 07:07 PM

I'm beginning to wonder about your fixation with a certain part of the anatomy. I'm not sure anybody should be alone in a room with you.

Jackass John. Wonderful.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ed T
Date: 03 Aug 14 - 09:45 PM

""Civilised ""
IMO,it seems like a subjective word, that is confounding for a broad definition.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 03 Aug 14 - 10:05 PM

When the highly civilised Lord Denning expressed his regret, quoted by Jim, that the Birmingham Six had not been hanged, he had already turned down their appeal, in these terms: 'If they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence.... Such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, "It cannot be right that these actions should go any further."'

They were of course innocent (innocent of everything except being Irish) and it did indeed mean exactly what Denning said it would mean.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 04 Aug 14 - 03:49 AM

Civilisation is indeed a subjective word. On the subject of killing your citizens through judiciary process, I am quite content with the idea that what I refer to as civilised countries have evolved to a next stage of civilisation.

Ditto waterboarding, holding without trial, three strikes and you're out, arming members of the public, serving chicken in buckets and propping up dictatorships in the interest of business.

Mind you, note I said evolution... Our lot have a few skeletons in the cupboard, but we don't put neon lights around the cupboard and advertise it as a virtue.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Aug 14 - 04:14 AM

"Birmingham Six"
I've just finished reading Robert Harris's novel, 'A Gentleman and a Spy", which deals with the Dreyfus case.
Dreyfus was convicted of spying for Germany, but later investigations showed another army officer to be guilty - the fact that the convicted man was Jewish was a major factor in the original verdict.
The French army dug their heels in and refused to re-open the case, allowing the real culprit, Esterhazy, to continue spying on exactly the same principle as Denning's argument, that to admit the injustice would be to lose face - nothing to do with justice or the good of the nation.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 04 Aug 14 - 04:14 AM

its not an argument i would use, Jim.

my own feeling is that there's always some terrific valid reason to act like a complete turd.

what makes it inadvisable, is that the world will have foundations of solid shit.

but its not logic, just human decency.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Aug 14 - 06:16 AM

"there's always some terrific valid reason to act like a complete turd."
Not sure whether you are referring to murderers or Lord Denning, thanks for your response anyway
Don't think I got your reply as to whether you were volunteering the lives of you and yours or just speaking on behalf of the rest of is when you said protecting society was "worth a few errors"
Sorry if I've overlooked it
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 04 Aug 14 - 06:47 AM

no of course not. I had no time for hanging judges, like Denning.

what i'm saying ,   or trying to say - the communists say you have to follow the dialectic, the church will tell you its the bible, the tories that you can't buck world economics......there is always someone from Margaret Thatcher to Allah who will supply you with a reason to kill, to sin, to commit evil acts.

god knows you live in a land with a goodly number of self righteous murderers - you should know.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Aug 14 - 04:13 AM

"if they'd been hanged. They'd have been forgotten and the whole community would have been satisfied"

I think the judge may have been wrong in this assumption. I think it more likely that the families would have continued their efforts to demonstrate the men's innocence, and the public outrage would have been all the greater when it was finally proved.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 05 Aug 14 - 01:16 PM

but what about citizens without political influence, without friends and family to mourn them - are they to have consideration of their cases; no protection from the forces of law and order.

no protection from politicians too chickenshit to face down the sadistic buggers who want to see someone killed -no matter what the justification. or from the turds in suits in the prosecutors office pleading in court for a murder to take place.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Aug 14 - 12:59 AM

I am more or less neutral on this question: one where I can see the arguments both sides too clearly to have a definite view. Not proud of this, but just the way I see it.

But I can see, Al, that tendentious emotive use of words like "murder", as in the post immediately above, have the opposite effect to clarifying anything, but are merely foolishly and counter-productively provocative.

This is a topic on which many people's emotions run high. Exacerbating them by such locutions has the opposite effect to forwarding intelligent consideration of the matter IMO.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 06 Aug 14 - 02:43 AM

Dictionaries aside, calling it anything other than judicial murder is to sanitise a gruesome act. A bit like US prisons supplying toys for children to play with when they visit their father for the very last time....

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Aug 14 - 02:54 AM

Murder is illegal.

So judicial murder is [oxy]moronic...

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Aug 14 - 04:31 AM

"I think it more likely that the families would have continued their efforts to demonstrate the men's innocence"
Which would have been a great comfort to the six innocent men, I'm sure!
As it was, they served seventeen years in prison for a crie they didn't commit.
The police were aware of the identity of the culprit, but did nothing to follow it up - it took a book, Error of Judgement, by M.P. Chris Mullins to free the men eventually
"I think the judge may have been wrong"
I AM DE JUDGE
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 06 Aug 14 - 05:00 AM

Sorry Michael, your Boys Own Annual 1924 has let you down in its "when to shout oxymoron" inset.

The Judgement of Death Act 1823 defined the word murder in the legal sense for the first time in The UK. it had been a crime before, but had never been described in a strict legal sense.

It allowed provision for those involved in passing and carrying out sentence of death, (the judge, court officials, prison staff and hangman) to be absolved of the crime of aiding and abetting a murder when carrying out sentence. This was because murder described the act, not the reason. Reason led to the categories of mitigation, but murder is simply the premeditated taking of the life of a human in the legal sense.

Each piece of legislation up to and including The Homicide Act 1957 makes reference to it and carries the provision.

Hence "judicial murder" has a judicial definition.

Seems you certainly are moronic after all Michael....

Oh, and stop reading my posts. Your lack of principles is showing. Having principles at your age isn't a good idea anyway, as you have to remember to be consistent.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 06 Aug 14 - 08:30 PM

LOL

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 06 Aug 14 - 11:25 PM

said Michael, how awfully poxy!
my moronicism exposed as oxy
its really shitter
were I younger and fitter
I'd console myself with a doxie

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 01:27 AM

Surely "a shitter", Al?

Have said before, see no obligation to behave any more consistently than anyone else.

So if I feel like reading Bumface's posts, then I shall. In general, tho, shall not. Matter of my choice; not his. No 'principle' involved.

& as to doxies...

〠≈M≈〠

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 01:47 AM

The kids a poet, he just don't know it.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Thompson
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 03:53 AM

Any country that executes people is by definition depraved.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 04:01 AM

Justice as seen by those who administer it.
"It is better an innocent man serves a life sentence than the law is seen to be making grave errors" – Lord Denning, former Lord Chief Justice
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 04:06 AM

Bum face?

Just noticed that.

A bit rich coming from someone prone to talking out of his arse methinks..

Back to the depraved act of killing your own failings, I notice that despite everything, The USA killed another man yesterday. This amid debate and soul searching.

Any success with that rock banging yet?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 06:40 AM

Mike and Musket - last of the great double acts!

sorry about the scansion Mike, twas late at night and between Jeremy Kyle shows - the dead hour between four and five - just murder cases on the ID channel.

can anyone follow my argument about capital punishment. you can call it uncivilised - but many civilised people have been fans of CP. I believe TS Eliot wrote a letter to the Times approving of the death sentence on Edith Thompson.

it really does come down to your sensibility. there is a famous George Orwell essay called a hanging. while they are marching this Indian guy to the gallows, a friendly dog runs up to the hanging party -excited to have found so many people to play with. when they hang the man the dog slinks away appalled -even a dog knows this is a disgusting activity. Every human being knows damn well it is, too.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 06:54 AM

Just makes a case for asking how TS Eliot was "civilised," whatever that means, other than we are judging today's enlightened times, not yesterday.

I wonder if the newspapers of the day reported how her guts would probably prolapse from her as she came to a sudden stop?

I recall reading an article a few years ago where the Iranian government said they were more civilised than Singapore because their use of cranes and slow strangulation prevents this from happening.

The USA feel they are civilised because they make their children stand to attention in front of their damned ragged flag.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 08:25 AM

The most accurate measure of how 'civilised' a nation is, IMHO, is the value it places on life, both human and non-human.

The gigantic hard-on the vast majority of Americans get from possession of firearms (and thus the means to take life), the orgasmic delight many seem to take in shooting wild animals and one another, and the obsession with continuing the policy of execution of those convicted of murder (in many cases having already subjected them to a period of incarceration far exceeding that which most muderers would serve in Europe) indicates that, in the USA, life is regarded as very cheap indeed.

Civilised?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 08:35 AM

Mahatma Ghandi was once asked his opinion of Western civilistion
His reply - "It would be a good idea".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ebbie
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 10:04 AM

I usually am, to put it mildly, put off by USA bashing and tire of it quickly. However, on the subject of capital punishment I agree with every word that has been written here.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 10:53 AM

Thank you Ebbie.
In most respects I'm very USA-friendly, but with regard to gun-ownership and the death-penalty (or, more accurately, its refusal to grow a pair, and make those into things of the past) I believe the US displays a very dark and unpleasant side to its national identity.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 12:27 PM

'Any country that executes people is by definition depraved.'

Funny, I did not find that definition in any hard-copy dictionary nor in any online dictionary. I'm inclined to think that that 'definition' is really what one would call an emotional opinion.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Greg F.
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 12:31 PM

"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right."

    ...Carl Schurz

Is this USA bashing by a USAsian?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: olddude
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 04:29 PM

It is an act of only revenge it does nothing to deter. Why not Impaling, the rack, boiling in oil . Revenge is revenge. It is as wrong now as the drawn and quartered was back when. There is no humane way to kill

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 06:11 PM

" I'm inclined to think that that 'definition' is really what one would call an emotional opinion. "

Viewed objectively, it is exactly that. One must ask.... when exactly did the fairly neutral word 'kill' become the judgmental word 'murder'?

Murder, I'd think is a specific sub-category of 'kill'... as is 'execute'. It is not necessary to approve of any of them in order to comprehend intended differences related to proper and/or moral actions.

If a policeman defends himself or others by firing his weapon at a depraved person who is about to 'kill' someone, isn't it clear that we need more than one word?...and more than one concept of 'admissible killing'?

No doubt Osama talked himself & others into some rationalization for killing by terrorism... so if we had known the plan and intercepted those terrorists as they tried to enter airplanes, and 'killed' them when they fought back... don't we need a word to call our justified action?

Similarly, 'execution' means something different from simple 'murder', whether we approve of it in ANY circumstance, in SOME circumstances, or never.

Like Michael, I can see why people have different views, and I can assure everyone that MY vacillation on the issue has nothing to do with revenge! IF I saw a situation where I reluctantly approved an execution, it would be a matter of pragmatism.. relating to "the greater good for society in general". I can describe such a situation, but I'd not enjoy having to deal with it in reality.

.. One time, almost 40 years ago, I was 'acquainted', in an unfortunately personal way with a young man who was as close as I ever knew to 'evil'. He was in fact, the nephew of a convicted mass-murderer, and because he knew several other young people who stayed at my house, he ran into my house while being pursued by police. I came home to find police, guns drawn, surrounding my house.
*I* led the police in and found him, and fortunately, he was not armed. He was taken away, but evidently not for long enough... 2 years later, he and his buddies attacked ME on a dark street while I was driving, throwing bottles and trying to stop my van. I managed to get to a public street and evade him, but I never found out what he might have done if......

So..if anyone wonders why circumstances vary depending on one's own situation.....

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 06:24 PM

Damn, I have to agree with Primitive Tribesman.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 11:49 PM

Mmmmm, looks like you're starting to grow up.
Cut out the childish name-calling they taught you at your little-rich-boy posh school, and get that stupid hair cut properly, and you'll really be on the right road to adulthood.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Aug 14 - 12:58 AM

All this way into this thread we have been avoiding this one. So here comes a cat to infiltrate the pigeons.

How funny that nothing has been said about all those parts of the world governed by that different set of values and principles, where they so regularly smash heads in with big stones and slash off heads with ornate swords and stretch necks on cranes with ropes.

When the OK-thinker's anti-cap-pun kneejerk comes into collision with the bien-pensant's would-never-do-to-appear-racist kneejerk -- why, what should kick in but that good old turn·a·blind·eye kneejerk!...

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Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Aug 14 - 03:21 AM

What are you saying Mike - that we should be allowed to shuffle of the mortal coil of others in a more 'civilised' fashion?
It seems to me that the only difference is in the manner in which different groups, States or individuals take it upon themselves to end the lives of our fellow human beings
Pointing the finger at one doesn't make the other less barbaric.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 08 Aug 14 - 03:37 AM

It was fifty years ago today that we had our last execution. Two men hanged at the same time in different prisons for the same crime.

In terms of how civilised "civilised" is, the trial began in June and by August it was all over. The actual execution, from the hangman entering the cell to death was just over 10 seconds. (A wardrobe in the cell was actually a door to the chamber.)

If we have to bring humanity into it, them compare us fifty years ago with USA today, making them wait years followed by thirty minutes of agonising pain.

Anybody under the age of fifty in The UK has always lived in a civilised society by that particular measurement.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Aug 14 - 04:38 AM

You miss my point entirely, Jim. But that is nothing new.

It's your double standards I am drawing attention to. You get hysterical about any executions in what, for convenience [& don't pretend not to understand] may be termed The West. But Islamic regimes all execute people like there is no tomorrow. They hang them they stone them, they crucify them, they behead them... & you just ignore that -- different standards for the -- er -- 'outsiders', or what? A bit racist, if you ask me: you lot seem to be saying, "Oh, well, they are only --er-- 'outsiders', so what can you expect? But we civilised Westerners, OTOH..."

The question of whether the West should or shouldn't indulge in the practice is not one I was addressing at all. Can't get that worked up about it these days. The way the Saudis & Yemenis & N Nigerians go on, tho...

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Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Aug 14 - 05:24 AM

Apparently Allah's house, like our own creation has many mansions. not every muslim is a hand chopper.

however I think the hand choppers are arseholes. bit like the witch burners, the eye for an eyers, the UDA priests, the IRA priests, the bomb blessers.....

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 08 Aug 14 - 05:38 AM

Michael, in his Rupert Bear, Jerusalem with jam world, thinks that if you decry one set of people for behaviour, you must therefore support others doing the same thing.

It must be idyllic in leafy suburbia where the only sound is the scrape of butter knife on hot crumpets.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Aug 14 - 05:40 AM

Maybe not every, Al. But these are democracies I write of, with elected governments. & their electorates go on electing the choppers hangers stoners crucifiers caners — again & again & again & again.... & the attitude among our brethren on this sort of thread seems to be, oh well, different culture, what can you expect of the likes of them, let them get on with it...

Pure racism in other words. They think it isn't but it is...

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Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Aug 14 - 07:40 AM

"You miss my point entirely, Jim. But that is nothing new."
And you miss, or avoid my point - but there's nothing new in that either.
I don't support ritual killing in any form, and if I am involved a discussion on it I will condemn it, as, I believe, would anybody here in the same circumstances.
I can't recall anybody actually supporting some of the barbaric Islamic practices both of us find abhorrent, but one of the problems of discussing them at length is that there are those among us (not necessarily you - I would like not to think so) who will use them as proof of the degenerate nature of Muslim culture as a whole - as a stick to beat all Muslims.
If there are any double standards, it is with those who are happy to use these practices to malign the 'baddie Muslims' but are happy to ignore them in or trading partners - Saudi Arabia, for instance - I still have vivid memories of the political furore over the screening of 'Death of a Princess' years ago.
A nation which declares itself "civilised" and "democratic" and tends to hold itself superior to others, such as Britain and the United States undermines those claims when it indulges in primitive, ritualistic judicial killing.
As a Brit living in Ireland, if it was reinstated as a practice here it would have been done so in my name, so whoever carries it our does so in my name.
Again, in reference to missing or avoiding the point, there has been little response to the fact that, had capital punishment been part of British law a whole bunch of innocent men and women would have gone to the drop in the last forty years, particularly during 'The Troubles'.
If for no other reason, it would have knocked me flying off any fence I might have been sitting on.
Here's to Lord Denning, gawd bless 'im.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Aug 14 - 08:20 AM

I am not really sure what attitude you want us to have to the hand choppers, Mike.

Obviously a Thatcherite tory - would just make sure we got the contract for choppers made with Chinese steel in Indonesia - and start selling one handed pairs of gloves in Harrods.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 08 Aug 14 - 10:15 AM

I think you'll find on a quality / price ratio, Bangladesh can comfortably win the tender Al.

Indonesian people are beginning to demand a fair wage these days, apart from up around Aceh, but shipping in quantity is a bit of an issue there, especially since the tsunami buggered up the deepest dock.

Harrods wouldn't be too interested. They haven't recovered fully since the last Muslim to own them. Owning and catering for is not an ideal business model. Primark with a stack em up and flog em cheap is the model I would recommend.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Aug 14 - 11:20 AM

"the barbaric Islamic practices both of us find abhorrent, but one of the problems of discussing them at length is that there are those among us (not necessarily you - I would like not to think so) who will use them as proof of the degenerate nature of Muslim culture as a whole " - Jim Carroll

.,,.

No need to try to spare my feelings in this particular, Jim.   That is precisely what I think them proof of - for reasons which I have taken considerable pains to explicate at length at least 3 times on this forum: on the Unnamed Soldier thread on 10 Jun 13; and on the Islamic Radicalism thread on 12 Jun 13 & 14 Apr 14. They are there and accessible if you want to read my views as to the IMO mischievous nature & effects of this faith, due to its founder's teachings and the path it has followed since. I daresay I might once more get your "Can't be arsed" response; but if so, then don't take me to task for holding views whose reasons I have taken some trouble to exegesise, if not willing at least to remind yourself what they are.

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Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Aug 14 - 02:17 PM

so basically you want us to think that the Yanks are all right compared to the wogs.....

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Greg F.
Date: 08 Aug 14 - 04:49 PM

SOME wogs, Al.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Aug 14 - 05:18 PM

Nobody is 'comparing' anything; so much as wondering why different standards are demanded by the doo·gooders, as between authorities of different traditions. Only answer I can come up with, I repeat, is racism; in the implied sense of "nothing better can be expected of those backward orientals, but decent westerners like us should know better". How else can one interpret these double standards?

I repeat: when the anti-cap-pun kneejerk collides with the anti-racist kneejerk, the result is a sort of blind-eye mental paralysis.

Anyone got any intellectual argument against this contention, other than tendentious *quasi-rhetorical questions?

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*Tho, treating Al's question at face value: I think the USA, overall, rather less vulnerable to obloquy in this particular than, eg, Saudi, Yemen, N Nigeria, et al [tho I would point out that "all right" was his formulation, not mine]...
Anyone disagree?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Aug 14 - 09:58 PM

a blind eye mental paralysis.....I would have applied for a blue badge for parking, if I knew that was me problem!

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Aug 14 - 03:27 AM

"different standards are demanded by the doo·gooders,"
Now there's a telling phrase (though I prefer the correct spelling do- gooders - those who try to do good)
For me, the opposite has always been 'do badders' happy to have the 'insult' hurled at me any time.
This seems to be one of those discussion in which opinions that are presented 'seeing both sides of the argument' gradually reveal themselves to have been firmly on one side from the start
We have been here before, I seem to remember, when we discussed whether it was right to execute someone who was regarded by the law as being a child.
My opinion remains now as it was then, whatever the crime (in that case, the horrific murder of a child, Jamie Bulger, by two older children) the taking of any life is wrong, ritual killing by the State is a reminder of our primitive past - long may it remain such.
And still no comment on the tsunami of deaths of innocent people that would have taken place had Capital Punishment been operative thirty years ago.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Aug 14 - 05:46 AM

anyway if you want to slide into depravity, there are nicer ways than killing people.....

unless of course,as one suspects, there are people getting a considerable amount of creepy fun from killing people - death cell dramas, men in suits making impassioned pleas to kill some social inadequate, orgies of self righteousness......

I suppose its a lot for weak willed people to give up cold turkey.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ed T
Date: 09 Aug 14 - 09:01 AM

"I suppose its a lot for weak willed people to give up cold turkey."

IMO, It seems odd to refer to people who support capital punishment as weak willed?

How should we refer to those represented by (and support) governments that engage in many wars and bombings, that kill many innocent people?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Aug 14 - 01:58 PM

well isn't th playground bully usually some sort of emotional fuck up?

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ed T
Date: 09 Aug 14 - 04:42 PM

Well, maybe so, but weak willed?

That one seems kinda "off" to me.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Aug 14 - 08:53 AM

Ed T - take it from a citizen of the country that conquered the country that produced the kama sutra, whilst furtively covering up piano legs the world over - theres real weakness in that kind of strength.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Musket
Date: 10 Aug 14 - 09:05 AM

And after ensuring the table legs were covered for decency sake, step out in the midday sun to oversee tying a few natives to the mouths of cannons.

To be fair, such self assurance is indeed a weakness.

Subject: RE: BS: USA sliding into depravity (botched execution)
From: Ed T
Date: 10 Aug 14 - 09:47 AM

On the Anniversary of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki:


major anniversaries