4 ms·
Another solution: the states can stop killing people.
by Frondo 11y ago
Another solution: the states can stop killing people.
- tomphoolery 11y agoIf the states can barely afford killing people, what makes you think they can afford to keep them in jail forever?
- dragonwriter 11y agoFor one thing, capital punishment is more expensive than life imprisonment (which isn't keeping them in jail forever, because mortality.)
- TeMPOraL 11y agoThat's surprising to me. Bullets are cheap. What makes chemical executions so expensive?
- dragonwriter 11y agoThe execution itself is not that expensive; what is expensive are the legal costs associated with the heightened scrutiny of capital cases.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoOh, I see. Thanks!
- rdtsc 11y agoThey seem to manage just fine jailing large amounts of people for pot possession and other non-violent crimes. If they were worried about costs, they wouldn't have been imprisoning like crazy for decades.
- 6t6t6 11y agoAre you talking about the richest nation on Earth? Also, do you mean that it is Ok to kill a prisoner because it is too expensive to keep him alive?
- 13thLetter 11y agoThen that decision should be made in public by the elected representatives or by referendum in accordance with the state's laws, not by a tiny group of activists making it practically impossible via backdoor methods.
- analog31 11y agoIt's my understanding that the drug companies themselves, operating outside the US, are the ones making these drugs unavailable for death penalty use. They are engaging in a straightforward boycott.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoConsider this: http://www.csg.org/pubs/capitolideas/enews/issue65_4.aspx http://www.csg.org/pubs/capitolideas/enews/issue65_4.aspx It really is creative activists trying things against the will of the people in those states that support capital punishment. I've got a complicated relationship with the death penalty, but that aside I recognize that the only way to change it is through the institutions we have which are empowered to make those changes.
- anigbrowl 11y agoIt really is, but why shouldn't they? The people who express a preference in favor of the death penalty are entitled to their attitudes, but not to freedom from political opposition.
- pavlov 11y agoIf the "will of the people" is to have sodium thiopental injected into people, why don't the states in question build a plant of their own to manufacture the substance?
- tsotha 11y agoIt's more a question of having a method codified into law than being stuck with that method. Instead of producing the drugs the states in question will probably just switch to another method of execution.
- wtbob 11y agoBut that would be a miscarriage of justice. To leave the men responsible for, say, robbing and stabbing to death five people at a quiet bar is grotesque. (Yes, it's also a miscarriage of justice to wrongly execute the innocent—and to wrongly imprison the innocent, and to fail to execute those guilty of certain crimes)
- mtinkerhess 11y agoMany of us believe that killing is never justice, whether it's committed by the state or not.
- rdtsc 11y ago> To leave the men responsible for, say, robbing and stabbing to death five people at a quiet bar is grotesque. And how would killing again unstab those 5 and bring them back from the dead?
- wtbob 11y agoHow would caging the murderers like animals for the next fifty years unstab those 5 and bring them back from the dead? I don't see how yours is a relevant objection.
- Frondo 11y agoNot killing a killer would be miscarriage of revenge, not a miscarriage of justice.
- wcummings 11y agoPunitive justice is petty.