The Boston bomber and the death penalty
Dzhohkar Tsarnaev didn’t just blow up hundreds of people in Boston. He also revived support for the death penalty (at least for himself), with 70% of Americans polling in favor of it in his particular case.
Republicans are most in favor, but in each group a majority supports it for Tsarnaev. And although there are some subgroups who are less supportive (blacks and Hispanics), it’s notable that in all these groups a majority is in favor of death if Tsarnaev is convicted, even if they don’t usually favor the death penalty for murderers:
The bigger divide on the death penalty is between whites and African Americans. While 75 percent of whites say they would back the use of the death penalty were Tsarnaev convicted, the support among African Americans barely goes past the midpoint: 52 percent of African Americans would support the death penalty, and 43 percent would oppose it.
Hispanics also are less likely than whites to support the death penalty in this instance: 62 percent would support it; 35 percent would oppose it.
The large gap between whites and blacks has probably more to do with the death penalty itself than this particular case. In a recent Washington Post Maryland poll, 63 percent of whites and only 37 percent of African Americans said they favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder.
No surprise there. If anyone is a poster child for the death penalty, it would be a guy who can place a backpack in front of a crowd of spectators at an athletic event—men, women, children—blow them up, and walk away without hardly blinking. And for most people, it doesn’t matter how “cute” he is, or what a “nice guy.”
Whg bother??
It costs less to warehouse him than to execute
Besides i hear ayers is looking for an assistant
Not to mention recent bader meinhoff n rkte zora mighf have a place
Give it afew years n the t shirts n concessions will kivk in
His art will sell well glike j w gacy did
And if he gets bored he canhave breast augmentation and live it up lkke richard speck
I canof course keep going
Maryland just outlawed the death penalty. Of course, when the death penalty is outlawed, the outlaws will still have the death penalty.
It is a confused morality that supposes that the death penalty is the imposition of a punishment. It is not, it is society’s recognition of the criminal’s choice.
The criminal, in taking another’s life has willingly forfeited their own right to life. They have ‘judged’ and, so should they be judged.
It matters not whether the criminal recognizes the consequence of their choice, only whether a society acknowledges the choice that the criminal has made.
I go back and forth on the death penalty. My main objection is not the barbarity of it (I’m fine with some rightly applied barbarism), but rather that the state/juries/courts get it wrong. And more often than we are comfortable admitting.
But in cases where we are 100% certain of the perpetrator, I am OK with it. So if we went beyond reasonable doubt to a sentencing phase that had 100% certainty, then we could do it.
It still present a problem for forced confessions though.
Like holmes, it’s the imperfection of our criminal justice system that keeps me from wholeheartedly supporting the death penalty. I’ve worked in the law long enough to realize just how often we get it wrong. That’s not exactly meant as an indictment of our criminal justice system, which might be the closest approach to doing justice that fallible, corruptible human beings can manage — along the same lines as that saying (by Churchill, maybe?) to the effect that democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all the others. But I’m not comfortable with an outcome as irreversible as death for a process that so often goes so wrong.
Nevertheless, where culpability is certain and the crime is heinous, my doubts disappear. Timothy McVeigh was one such case and this, so far, is looking like another.
Send him into the field or mine, and make him work to repay his debt to individuals, society, and humanity.
There’s an interesting juxtaposition which is worth noting. Republicans support capital punishment after due process for individuals who commit crimes against the individual, society, and humanity. Democrats support capital punishment without due process for individuals who are wholly innocent and whose only crime is that they are an inconvenient burden to their mother or father.
As for the white/black/brown divide, individuals of the latter two skin colors are more likely to support involuntary exploitation (e.g. redistributive or retributive change), denigration of individual dignity (e.g. “diversity”, Affirmative Action), and elective abortion (i.e. capital punishment without cause and without due process).
The Washington Post is a cheerleader for capital punishment without cause and without due process. They, and their readership, are sanctimonious hypocrites. Their principles are degenerate and sponsor corruption of individuals, institutions, society, and humanity.
For my part, I wish we had prisons where the inmates might wish they had been put to death.
An example would be something like Joe Arpaio’s jails except with a lot more hard labor. It is supposed to be punishment. Instead it has become warehousing.
One more reason why I’m for the death penalty will be all the terrorist pardons Precedent Ogabe will make, and you know he will make them (anything he can do to stick it to America he will do; it’s his nature). I will not be shocked to see King Putz pardon the blind sheikh (from the ’93 WTC bombing) and that poor mixed up yute, Johnny Taliban.
When it comes to terrorism, once convicted, you get 1, maybe 2, appeals. Then it’s lights out, baby. That way there’s nothing left for someone like Owebama to pardon except the corpse.
He’s pretty cute. I recommend supermax or the big house, his choice. Worse than death.
Those who banned – or of the ideology who banned – the death penalty cannot come back around to call for the death penalty now just for one criminal whom they did not foresee.
Also, reading a criminal his Miranda rights is not to be suspended on the basis of the nature of the crime committed: “terrorism” becomes the catch-all phrase by which the government can now suspend all rights of the accused: “you’re a patriotic Christian who desires a return to the constitution? Well, that makes you a terrorist; therefor, you have no rights!”
Oops! Did I just become a “terrorist” for upholding the the rights of accused criminals?
Power determines what rights are. A society is merely an authoritarian, totalitarian, force telling people what to do. That is all it comes out as.
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Most of my patients have followed a typical course on their
way to experiencing back pain. Why do you need to work out
to help ease that nagging pain in your lower spine.
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