Lethal injection: death by slow drowning?

[RocketMan]

Pb, again you are comparing accidental deaths to deliberate killings through the application of the death penalty.  Not even remotely similar situations.

To those here in favor of the death penalty, how many executions of innocent people are you willing to accept?  At what point do you draw the line and say "x amount is too many, we may need to rethink the death penalty"?
My attitude used to be, "Hang'em high and often!"  As I grew older and hopefully somewhat wiser, I came to understand just how often inept or even corrupt justice systems tend to be at all levels.  I realized we cannot trust them with imposing the death penalty on anyone because they get it wrong sometimes, occasionally deliberately, and end up executing an innocent.
For me, one execution of an innocent person is too many.  "Oops, sorry, we'll do better next time" doesn't cut it when the government screws up and takes an innocent life.  If the government could get it right 100% of the time, then I'd gladly go back the "Hang'em high and often!" mindset.  But we know that isn't possible.

[Perd Hapley]

Pb, again you are comparing accidental deaths to deliberate killings through the application of the death penalty.  Not even remotely similar situations.

To those here in favor of the death penalty, how many executions of innocent people are you willing to accept?  At what point do you draw the line and say "x amount is too many, we may need to rethink the death penalty"?

I can't answer for Pb, and I certainly won't answer such an ill-crafted question myself. Making it a numbers game doesn't make sense. It's not about numbers, and if you will only accept 100%, then you're not looking for a number, anyway.

The failure to execute, swiftly, the vast majority of those convicted of capital crimes is part of the corruption. It makes no sense to reform the justice system in a way that denies justice to murder victims. That would be like "reforming" the military so that it no longer guards its naval bases. Or doesn't fuel its aircraft, or whatever simile makes more sense to you.

To put it another way, our court system has a duty to (among many other things) treat each suspect fairly and impartially. It has an equally important (and indeed more foundational) duty to execute murderers. Those are among its duties. It has no excuse for failing on either of those.

[Ron]

The schism around the death penalty here seems to be at root who still has trust in the system, who still has confidence the system has justice as its primary goal?

The system we currently have is not just, it is arbitrary, is influenced by connections, money and is anything but "blind', it is nakedly political.

The whole legal establishment is a giant lawfare, obfuscation of justice, byzantine bureaucracy money making complex.

Some of us are farther along in realizing just how, I was going to say corrupt, evil the system has become.

Every day we hear how our justice system not only doesn't support justice but in many cases it enacts the very inversion of justice.

It took decades of bad judges getting appointed to get here and I'm not sure how long it will take to undo the damage.

No offense intended to our legal and judicial members here, I'm sure you folks have stories that both support my contention and also offer glimpses of hope.

[RocketMan]

I can't answer for Pb, and I certainly won't answer such an ill-crafted question myself.  Making it a numbers game doesn't make sense. It's not about numbers, and if you will only accept 100%, then you're not looking for a number, anyway.

The failure to execute, swiftly, the vast majority of those convicted of capital crimes is part of the corruption. It makes no sense to reform the justice system in a way that denies justice to murder victims. That would be like "reforming" the military so that it no longer guards its naval bases. Or doesn't fuel its aircraft, or whatever simile makes more sense to you.

To put it another way, our court system has a duty to (among many other things) treat each suspect fairly and impartially. It has an equally important (and indeed more foundational) duty to execute murderers. Those are among its duties. It has no excuse for failing on either of those.

It's not an ill-crafted question, fistful.  You are simply unwilling or unable to answer it.  Your complaint about the "failure to execute, swiftly, the vast majority of those convicted of capital crimes" implies you are good with the occasional execution of an innocent person.  Apparently, it's part of the price that must be paid for justice.   

[MechAg94]

IMO, there are two questions that are often combined, but are really separate.

1.  Do you think the death penalty is a valid punishment for murder or other serious crime?
     That is not a complicated question.

2.  Do you think our justice system is faulty and should be improved. 
     This is also not a complicated question.  However, it is not specific to the death penalty.  Injustice is a problem no matter what the sentence is.

My issue is I feel there are people who will ban the death penalty because of injustice and then sit back happily thinking they accomplished something and do nothing further.  The solution is to try to fix the injustice, not ban only one of the possible penalties. 

Also, there are differences in how the 50 states and the federal govt handle capital crimes.  This is not something easily fixed. 

[Ben]

We seem to be getting into a binary area of "apply the death penalty liberally" or "don't apply the death penalty at all". There is the middle ground. As I said earlier, I am for the death penalty but under current conditions, believe it should only be applied very carefully. Two simple examples:

1) A nutjob dons his battle rattle, including his Gopro, and runs into a nightclub killing people. Additionally there are security cameras. Additionally there are 100 witnesses. Fry him without delay.

2) Police find a woman's body in an apartment with a knife in it. The knife has the husband's DNA on it. The two of them were in a heated argument over alimony the day before. The husband shouted, so that neighbors could hear, "I should kill you!" Do we fry the husband? Or is the knife left over from when they were living together? Did she cheat on her current boyfriend, who heard about the argument and took precautions when stabbing her with a knife from her kitchen drawer?

In instance #2, a ton of factors could either railroad the husband or else, through diligent work, discover it was the boyfriend. I wouldn't want to be the husband without a solid alibi in a city with a less than diligent police force.  Iwould certainly hope, that even unjustly sitting in prison, I might be able to eventually prove my innocence.

[RoadKingLarry]

Agreed, in cases where there is absolutely no doubt as the the what and who of the case the death penalty should be applied as expeditiously as possible.
And again, to cut down on the crooked scum in the "justice system" we need a law that those found guilty of trying to railroad a person either through perjury, fabrication of evidence, withholding exculpatory evidence or any judicial or prosecutorial misconduct those guilty of that get the maximum sentence they could have set their victim up for up to an including the death penalty.

[RocketMan]

IMO, there are two questions that are often combined, but are really separate.

1.  Do you think the death penalty is a valid punishment for murder or other serious crime?
     That is not a complicated question.

2.  Do you think our justice system is faulty and should be improved. 
     This is also not a complicated question.  However, it is not specific to the death penalty.  Injustice is a problem no matter what the sentence is.

My issue is I feel there are people who will ban the death penalty because of injustice and then sit back happily thinking they accomplished something and do nothing further.  The solution is to try to fix the injustice, not ban only one of the possible penalties. 

Also, there are differences in how the 50 states and the federal govt handle capital crimes.  This is not something easily fixed.

This is pretty much what I think.  Yes, I believe capital punishment is valid for capital crimes, but only if the justice system were perfect and never convicted innocent people.  Since the justice system is not perfect, and likely never will be, in my view capital punishment should be taken off the table.
I wish the system were perfect, as there are absolutely despicable people rightly convicted of heinous crimes that should assisted on their trip to Hades.

I truly believe we have one of the best justice systems in the world.  However, it suffers from the incompetence, indifference, or outright corruption of some few people operating within the system.  And it will always be this way.

[RocketMan]

Agreed, in cases where there is absolutely no doubt as the the what and who of the case the death penalty should be applied as expeditiously as possible.
And again, to cut down on the crooked scum in the "justice system" we need a law that those found guilty of trying to railroad a person either through perjury, fabrication of evidence, withholding exculpatory evidence or any judicial or prosecutorial misconduct those guilty of that get the maximum sentence they could have set their victim up for up to an including the death penalty.

Except that there have been many cases where there was absolutely no doubt about someone's guilt and they were sentenced to life terms without parole for their crimes.  Then the "oops moment" occurs, new evidence comes to light and/or prosecutorial misconduct is made known, and suddenly the absolutely guilty person isn't.
An incarcerated person can be released when this happens.  A dead person cannot be resurrected after they have been wrongly executed.  And we'd probably not even know that someone was wrongly executed.  Who would expend the time and effort on a dead person?
I like the idea of going after cops and prosecutors that knowingly engage in misconduct and making them subject to the same sentences of those they wrongly convict.  But being realistic, we know this will never happen.  The system protects itself.