Is the death penalty dying?

That's what Time magazine is saying. Snip:

Last year saw just 37 executions in the U.S., with only 111 death sentences handed down. Although 36 states and the Federal Government still have death penalty laws on the books, the practice of carrying out executions is limited almost entirely to the South, where all but two of last year's executions took place. (The exceptions were both in Ohio.)

Even in Texas, still the state leader in annual executions, only 10 men and one woman were sentenced to death last year, the lowest number since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. In recent years the Supreme Court has voted to forbid the execution of juveniles and the mentally retarded, and it banned using the death penalty for crimes that did not involve killings.

Comments

[FanDanGo]

It's probably not dying off. Rather, it might be that those cases in which the death penalty was assessed were particularly heinous and offenders weren't willing to take a plea agreement.

One good thing about the death penalty is it gets killers to plead to life without parole. If you're in Texas facing a capital murder charge and you know -- you know -- they'll execute you, if the district attorney offers a murder 1 and life, you'll jump at it.

It'd be interesting to compare the number of death penalties handed down to the number of offenders who pleaded guilty to murder and were sentenced to life thus avoiding death by accepting the plea agreement.

[Mikeybackwards]

FanDanGo, you raise an interesting point. I am admittedly, an opponent of the death penalty, for a lot of reasons that I detailed in the Dennis Skillikorn thread earlier this week. While I have seen alot of numbers relating to the general inefficacy of the death penalty detering murder in the first place, I don't know, off the top of my head, of any on the efficacy with regards to prompting individuals to plead guilty.

My one concern, however, would be with prosecutors charging individuals with a capital crime to induce a plea, and how that might prompt innocent people being coerced, by the threat of losing their life, thus waiving all of their rights to appeal and possible later exoneration, instead of fighting to prove their innocence.

Personally, I am glad we have the adversarial system we have, because as the famed English jurist wrote:

"Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer,"

[Sasquach]

I don't know Mikey. I thought we were moving toward a "Hey, tourture those 10 guys over there till they tell us who the guilty one is," kind of system. That's why people in Guantanamo don't need trials, right? Then the terrorists win, right?

[Mikeybackwards]

Well, since you put it like that, why don't we just move to nuke 'em till they glow, let God sort em out.

[blarneology]

what kind of trials do terrorists desrve? What kind of trials do non military combatants deserve? They deserve the tribunals they are getting and that's it. They have no rights to your legal system(until Hussein gets all his buddies moved stateside) and should not get one.

[aqua]

I thought lethal injection was challenged last year so there was a stay on executions until the Supreme Court ruled on it.

[Mikeybackwards]

As we already know the overwhelming majority of the 700+ detainees at Guantanamo were not terrorist. And if it had not been for people insisting on the rule of law, both within and without the military, those 500+ innocent people would still be illegally imprisoned by the United States.

For the United States to be Reagan's SHINING CITY ON A HILL we must adhere to the standards that we demand and set for others.

We cease to be that city, or that beacon of hope and freedom when we let our fears turn us into the same thing we claim to oppose - a barbaric society that rules through fear, not through the consent of the governed and the rule of law.

Personally, I think a good old regular criminal trial would be the type a terrorist deserves. It was good enough for Ramzi Yousef, Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammad Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Abdul Rahman Yasin and Ahmad Ajaj, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, The Sybionese Liberation Army (SLA) and Armed Forces of Puerto Rican National Liberation (FALN). It treats them like what they are, common criminals. Rather than giving them the ego-boost and prestige of being existential threats to the most militarily powerful nation on the planet. Once they are found guilty, then lock them away until like many of the names and groups I have mentioned, they become forgotten names in a history book, rather revered martyrs to 'the cause'.

[Mikeybackwards]

The last line above should read:

. . . rather THAN revered martyrs to 'the cause.

[Tom K]

I really can't see that copping a plea to avoid the death penalty is anything but giving in to a death threat. It's a coerced confession.

[Herbert Spencer]

Time is dying, and thank God for that.

The problem with the death penalty is that it has become a joke. Liberals have so weighed it down wit

h expensive appeals that it takes forever. If you've found the guy guilty beyond any reasonable doubt, kill him. Give his attorney a maximum of 30 days to come up with a realistic appeal and then execute him (the criminal, not the attorney, although it probably wouldn't hurt to take out the occasional shyster with his client).

[Jonathan]

"I really can't see that copping a plea to avoid the death penalty is anything but giving in to a death threat. It's a coerced confession."

So we should stop allowing these criminals to plea to avoid the death penalty and just fry em up. Oh, wait, I forgot, you are against THE MAN, THE SYSTEM, AND punishment for crimes commited.