Transcript
Alabama suffocated a man to death in a gas chamber tonight after starving him so he wouldn't choke on his own vomit as they did it. And this was deemed perfectly legal by multiple courts in the vaunted American legal system.
That's what happens when you value institutions over people.
Link for more info: https://www.reuters.com/legal/alabama-prepares-carry-out-first-execution-by-nitrogen-asphyxiation-2024-01-25/
Chances are, an innocent person has been killed because of the death penalty. That alone has me against it entirely.
Many innocent people.
That’s a chance we are just going to have to take.
How many innocent people are you ok with murdering before it's no longer worth it?
Last I checked the guy they Nitrogen’d wasn’t innocent.
How many guilty killers are you ok with escaping punishment?
I am ok with every guilty killer not being executed if it means saving a single innocent person. Note that I did not say that I am ok with them being released.
I ask again, how many innocent people are you ok with murdering before it's no longer worth it?
I’d rather not see any innocent people executed. But nothing made by man is perfect, there are always going to be mistakes. No one wants to kill the innocent but it can happen. That’s the chance we take when living in a state with the death penalty.
Given that we live in real life, and nothing is perfect, you would rather see some innocent people be executed. The only other alternative is being against the death penalty. If you're for the death penalty, then you're for some innocent people being executed.
I’m for justice to be carried out. There are people on death row who certainly deserve to die for the violent crimes they committed against innocent victims.
Our system may not be perfect but it’s the best one we have.
Life in prison is justice. Our system is what got Sedley Alley killed by the state. If it's the best we've got, then we need to find a better one.
Ok, but whats the number of innocent lives you'rewilling to end? Or maybe percentage? Where do you draw the line?
No one who is found innocents by a jury of their peers should be executed. The guilty however are a different story.
Some people are found not guilty when they really are, and some people are found guilty when they're really not. This is not a good enough metric by which to judge whether we should end a person's life.
Good enough for me.
So you are totally fine with a justice system that let Emmett Till's murderers go free, and slaughtered a man who lost his daughters to a fire he didn't start? Absolutely monstrous.
What if the jury is wrong every time? Or half the time? Where do you draw the line?
So you’ve decided to go down the “Make up bullshit loaded questions that have no basis in reality” route. I’m sure in your own mind those questions make you seem justified and righteous in your own mind. But that fantasy world only exists in your head.
Why are you so desperate to justify your position especially for a man that brutally murdered Elizabeth Sennett?
https://www.al.com/news/2024/01/kenneth-smiths-execution-bittersweet-for-elizabeth-sennetts-family-nothing-happened-to-bring-her-back.html
Not justifying it for that person, but for everyone. Why haven't you answered my original question? How many innocent people do you think it's ok to execute?
I answered why in the comment above.
Maybe my reading comprehension is just bad, but I do not see anything that looks like an answer there
“So you’ve decided to go down the “Make up bullshit loaded questions that have no basis in reality” route. “
Your question is akin to asking why abortion is legal when it kills babies. You’ve taken a complex subject and distilled it down to the parts that make your case seem right. Your question fundamentally has no basis in reality, juries are not wrong 50 percent of the time. We would not base our legal system on a flip of a coin.
That doesn't look like an answer to my question.
My point is that a non-zero number of people are executed for crimes they did not commit.
My question is: How many innocent people do you think it's ok to execute in order to keep the death penalty available?
Do they just let them go free if they don’t execute them?
No they tried to execute this guy before, it didn’t work so this is their second mistake.
In this case I was responding to a loaded question with another loaded question.
Apt username.
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" - William Blackstone.
Buddy are you so deprived of empathy that you have no problem with sending innocent people to their deaths? Are you okay with cops playing judge, jury, and executioner? Lot of innocent people die from cops deciding that its okay if that guy is dead.
No, I’m happy to send this guy to meet his maker.
Literally avoided my questions. Why are you okay sending someone who is innocent to death?
Death cult.
You started with a quote that has nothing to do with the case I commented on. You also presented a straw man argument with a loaded question about cops shooting people which once again has nothing to do with the case and situation I originally commented on.
I assumed you either have poor reading comprehension or are just in it for the fake internet points and I responded appropriately and was going to leave it at that. But since you wanna do this, lets go:
“Are you ok with cops playing judge jury and executioner?” -No.
“Lots of innocent people die from cops deciding that it is okay if that guy is dead.” - Ahhh yes the meat of your argument. I can see you follow the typical Lemmy pattern of not doing any research what-so-ever on the subject you are posting on. If you take the time to read up about the subject you’ll find he was tried and convicted by a jury for stabbing of Elizabeth Sennett and has been on death row for some time. The “cops” did not play “judge, jury, and executioner”. The actual Judge, Jury and Executioner played those roles. This is an example of justice for the victim who at no point in your argument did you even think to mention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Kenneth_Eugene_Smith
Hey buddy. Lets roll it back. I'll fully agree that this person is an asshole. Okay? No one is disputing this.
However the point I really want to get to is when someone pointed out that many times innocent people are given the death sentence for crimes they didnt commit. Your response was and i fucking quote you "That’s a chance we are just going to have to take." That means you thibk it is okay to kill innocent people just because some other people did horrid shit.
So again, why the fuck are you actually okay with killing innocent people? That is what i want to know. You keep dodging around it. Answer the question "Why do you think it is okay for the state to have the power to kill people who have commited no crimes?"
Ahhh the old “moving the bar because my argument is flawed trick”. Whatever, I’m still game.
Last time I checked the state does not have the power to “kill people who have committed no crimes.” There is no law on the books nor precedent set, that gives any U.S. State or Federal agency the power to execute the innocent. So to directly answer your question, no I don’t think the state should have the power to kill people who have not committed a crime.
Certain states do have the death penalty for citizens who are found guilty by a jury of their peers for very serious crimes. All states that have death penalties currently require that said jury of their peers vote for the death penalty. Only in those cases can the guilty party be sentenced for execution.
You can make the argument that our justice system is not perfect. (Which is what I think you are clumsily trying to express with your last two posts.) That a jury’s can convict a defendant who may be innocent. To that I reply, that’s a chance we’ll have to take.
I do know a man on death row. I worked with him for two years. I traveled with him, worked on projects, I even had an hand in promoting him up the ranks in our company. I was the person who counseled him and sent him home on the day he committed his crime. He was extremely upset, I heard him out and told him to take some time for himself, go home, calm down, and think it out.
Instead he left and murdered two people and destroyed three families. He’s been on death row for well over a decade. I think he belongs there and deserves his fate. I support the death penalty.
"Committed no crimes" is an objective statement about reality. The state has killed people who committed no crimes, and the state had a right to execute all of them. Both of those statements are true, so their combined form, "the state has a right to execute people who have committed no crimes," is also true. Personally, I would prefer if we made that statement not true anymore.
what if it happens to you or your family? then is it still worth it?
I don't see any "have to" in here at all. To me, that just looks like a desire to have the state murder people. That's not justice.
I think executing someone who was convicted of murder is justified.
Elizabeth Sennett’s family can now know some peace. Don’t take it from me, feel free to read their direct quotes below:
_What was the stance of the victim’s family? “Some of these people out there say, ‘Well, he doesn’t need to suffer like that,’” Charles Sennett Jr., one of Ms. Sennett’s sons, told the local station WAAY31 this month. “Well, he didn’t ask Mama how to suffer. They just did it. They stabbed her multiple times.” Another son, Michael Sennett, told NBC News in December that he was frustrated that the state had taken so long to carry out an execution that the judge ordered decades ago.
“It doesn’t matter to me how he goes out, so long as he goes,” he said, noting that Mr. Smith had been in prison “twice as long as I knew my mom.”_
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/25/us/execution-alabama-kenneth-smith.html
Who's moving goalposts now? A decision being "justified" doesn't mean it's "a chance we have to take."
We don't have to, though. We can just put them in prison.
Or we can execute the guilty, either way is fine with me.
How is that a morally coherent stance? You're basically condoning state-sanctioned murder.