Remembering George Stinney: The price we pay for the death penalty

[AthenaAwakened]

 George Junius Stinney, Jr. (October 21, 1929 – June 16, 1944) was, at age 14, the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century.[1]

Stinney, an African-American youth from South Carolina, was convicted in a two-hour trial of the first-degree murder of two pre-teen white girls: 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker, and 8-year-old Mary Emma Thames. However, no physical evidence existed in the case, and the sole evidence against Stinney was the circumstantial fact that the girls had spoken with Stinney and his sister shortly before their murder, and the testimony of three police officers that Stinney had confessed. He was executed by electric chair.

Since Stinney's conviction and execution, the question of his guilt, the validity of his confession, and the judicial process leading to his execution have been criticized as "suspicious at best and a miscarriage of justice at worst."

On December 17, 2014, his conviction was posthumously vacated 70 years after his executiom.

...

George Frierson stated in interviews that "there has been a person that has been named as being the culprit, who is now deceased. And it was said by the family that there was a deathbed confession." Frierson said that the rumored culprit came from a well-known, prominent white family. A member, or members of that family, had served on the initial coroner's inquest jury which had recommended that Stinney be prosecuted.

Is the death penalty worth killing an innocent person?

 

[prideandfall]

Is the death penalty worth killing an innocent person?

IMO this has nothing to do with the death penalty and everything to do with a lackadaisical, corrupt, and fundamentally racist legal system.
the case is a tragedy all around to be sure but i think you (or whomever else) is seriously reaching to try and shoe-horn in blaming the concept of the death penalty for this.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Is the death penalty worth killing an innocent person?

IMO this has nothing to do with the death penalty and everything to do with a lackadaisical, corrupt, and fundamentally racist legal system.
the case is a tragedy all around to be sure but i think you (or whomever else) is seriously reaching to try and shoe-horn in blaming the concept of the death penalty for this.

You didn't answer the question.

 

[cycomiko]

Growing up in Houston surrounded by people who were all for the death penalty I was, of course, pro-death penalty. It wasn't until I got to college and started to actually consider the issue in a more intellectual way that I began to change my mind. Now I'm of the opinion that if it's in any way possible that even a single innocent person can be executed, the death penalty should be outlawed.

 

[laughing dog]

Is the death penalty worth killing an innocent person?

The death penalty is not worth killing a guilty person, so no.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I think you can reserve it for cases of undoubtable guilt (Boston Marathon bombings for instance), in order to stave off the innocent issue. Not certain how easy that'd be to codify.

 

[prideandfall]

IMO this has nothing to do with the death penalty and everything to do with a lackadaisical, corrupt, and fundamentally racist legal system.
the case is a tragedy all around to be sure but i think you (or whomever else) is seriously reaching to try and shoe-horn in blaming the concept of the death penalty for this.

You didn't answer the question.

the question is superfluous and not in any way connected to the story with which you very dubiously tried to link the question, so in the context of this thread you might as well have shown a video of someone baking a cake and then asked "is wearing fur worth drinking soda with artificial sweetener?"

IMO the death penalty as a concept is fine.
the idea of a group deciding that there are some crimes for which the perpetrator loses their privilege to live within society is fine with me, and since exile is no longer an option and (despite how monumentally fucked in the head most people are in thinking this is a good idea) prison is far more fucked up conceptually than just killing someone, i have no beef with the death penalty on moral or ethical grounds.

so basically, i can't answer the question because the question is a non-sequitur, there is no answer because the question is bullshit.
the solution is simple: never execute an innocent person.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Is the death penalty worth killing an innocent person?

IMO this has nothing to do with the death penalty and everything to do with a lackadaisical, corrupt, and fundamentally racist legal system.
the case is a tragedy all around to be sure but i think you (or whomever else) is seriously reaching to try and shoe-horn in blaming the concept of the death penalty for this.

Well, what you just said there sums up the main problem with the death penalty. The legal system is imperfect and has biases and therefore makes mistakes. You're never going to completely remove those issues, so enacting punishments that can't be undone when one of those mistakes inevitably occurs is unacceptable behaviour within such a system.

 

[prideandfall]

IMO this has nothing to do with the death penalty and everything to do with a lackadaisical, corrupt, and fundamentally racist legal system.
the case is a tragedy all around to be sure but i think you (or whomever else) is seriously reaching to try and shoe-horn in blaming the concept of the death penalty for this.

Well, what you just said there sums up the main problem with the death penalty. The legal system is imperfect and has biases and therefore makes mistakes. You're never going to completely remove those issues, so enacting punishments that can't be undone when one of those mistakes inevitably occurs is unacceptable behaviour within such a system.

i think it's very naive and laughable to try and suggest that killing someone is the only punishment that can't be undone.
it's only by the most simpering and idiotic mantra of "life, at all costs, regardless of circumstance" that would demand that a life spent in confinement and slavery, surrounded by violence and degradation every day of your life for your entire life, is better than just being dead and getting it over with.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, what you just said there sums up the main problem with the death penalty. The legal system is imperfect and has biases and therefore makes mistakes. You're never going to completely remove those issues, so enacting punishments that can't be undone when one of those mistakes inevitably occurs is unacceptable behaviour within such a system.

i think it's very naive and laughable to try and suggest that killing someone is the only punishment that can't be undone.
it's only by the most simpering and idiotic mantra of "life, at all costs, regardless of circumstance" that would demand that a life spent in confinement and slavery, surrounded by violence and degradation every day of your life for your entire life, is better than just being dead and getting it over with.

Except in the latter cases, victims of the mistake can be compensated for the error. If you're dead, you get nothing. The death penalty adds nothing of value to the criminal justice system and only introduces potential problems.

 

[prideandfall]

Except in the latter cases, victims of the mistake can be compensated for the error.

i'm having a hard time figuring out the actual logic here - i mean, i get what you're saying in a sort of knee-jerk reactionary emotional way, but it doesn't make any actual SENSE.
so what if they can be financially compensated for having their life within a free society ruined and their psychology irreparably damaged? i don't see how that magically undoes anything or relieves you of the moral weight of having done that to them in the first place.

If you're dead, you get nothing.

and if you're dead you suffer nothing and your circumstances no longer matter, because you're dead - so it really doesn't make any difference either way, so who cares? (i mean, i guess besides friends and family who get all pissy about a dead person)

The death penalty adds nothing of value to the criminal justice system and only introduces potential problems.

i disagree completely, at least insofar as the concept of the state killing someone is concerned.
i'll totally agree that the process by which guilt is determined, the death penalty assigned, and the sentence carried out is completely fucked up and should be totally reformed, but i've got no bones with the idea in principle.

 

[Blahface]

The only way I see the death penalty making any sense is if there were actually dangerous super villains in the world who seem to be able to escape from prison every few months.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

i'll totally agree that the process by which guilt is determined, the death penalty assigned, and the sentence carried out is completely fucked up and should be totally reformed, but i've got no bones with the idea in principle.

Ya, neither do I. I do have bones about the process, though. I also don't think that there's a decent way to reform that process which will eliminate error. There's always going to be mistakes made and you need to retain a method which allows you to reverse or offer compensation for those errors. You can't do that if the guy's already dead.

 

[prideandfall]

The only way I see the death penalty making any sense is if there were actually dangerous super villains in the world who seem to be able to escape from prison every few months.

maybe you (or anyone) can explain this...

let's take for example charles manson, or jeffrey dalmer, or that boston bomber kid, or whatever and whomever.
is it reasonable to assume that you (or whomever else) would feel that the crimes that these people have committed warrant life in prison without parole? do you think there is anything that could convince the general public that it's safe to allow them to freely rejoin society? i'm not asking if you personally are some tree-hugging hippie who can forgive anyone of anything, i'm asking if you think there's any possibility that society would collectively ever be OK with that.
based on what i understand of how humans think, the answer to that question is no - there is a class of act perpetrated which will singularly void the social contract, and negate an individual's privilege to exist within free society for the rest of their life. i guess argue that point if you disagree with it?

anyways, in that circumstance, i can conceive of absolutely no reason to keep them alive: just take them out of the courthouse to the back lawn and put a bullet or three in the back of their skull.
keeping them alive for absolutely no purpose is immeasurably more fucked up and morally depraved to me than to simply kill them.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

The only way I see the death penalty making any sense is if there were actually dangerous super villains in the world who seem to be able to escape from prison every few months.

But if you eliminate that, you run into the potential for Captain Amazing type situations where all the decent villians are gone and the heroes risk losing their corporate sponsorships because they don't have any interesting battles anymore. You don't want to fuck over the heroes like that.

 

[prideandfall]

I also don't think that there's a decent way to reform that process which will eliminate error.

i really don't think that's true, honestly.
there are cases where there is no doubt of guilt: as i've already mentioned in my previous post, there's absolutely no doubt whatsoever as to the guilt of say Dzhokhar Tsarnaev or James Eagan Holmes, and these are the sorts of people who are NEVER going to be allowed back into normal society anyways, so WTF is the point of keeping them alive?
error is easy to eliminate so long as you adjust your standards and expectations, though i'll totally agree to the idea that there's no way to just slightly shuffle the currently fucked legal code around to be a magical fix to the whole thing.

There's always going to be mistakes made and you need to retain a method which allows you to reverse or offer compensation for those errors.

i disagree there will always be mistakes made, but that's rather another conversation.

You can't do that if the guy's already dead.

... so? he's DEAD, what difference does it make?
good god i simply cannot wrap my head around why humans have such a neurotic obsession with each other's beef mechs.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

i disagree there will always be mistakes made, but that's rather another conversation.

No, that's the central aspect to the conversation. How is it that you plan on eliminating errors in a process that involves humans?

 

[prideandfall]

i disagree there will always be mistakes made, but that's rather another conversation.

No, that's the central aspect to the conversation. How is it that you plan on eliminating errors in a process that involves humans?

how do you eliminate the errors of putting kiwis, chili peppers, and motor oil into your cake batter mix? by not doing that.
it's so obvious to me how you do this that i'm having a hard time figuring out how to even formulate a response that isn't simply "uh... don't fucking do that?"

beyond a reasonable doubt is fairly decent in terms of compromising between fair evidence against the accused and the interest of society to protect itself, but it's a terrible standard for life imprisonment or the death penalty.
so... in the US we have murder in the 1st degree and murder in the 2nd degree: the legal system recognizes that there can be a difference in the level of murder.
so just have a new standard of guilt, "without any possibility of doubt" or something, which would of course be a very rarely used standard because it would be very rare for there to be no possibility of doubt.
there are some instances of it though, and those are the instances where the crimes are the sorts of things that would make it so the perpetrator is never allowed back into society anyways, so at that point what difference does it make?

but, now that i type that out, maybe we're dancing around concepts that aren't fully formed.
i do not support the death penalty for say "suspected of killing a white girl" or something like the case in the OP - i don't support handing out the death penalty all willy-nilly to whatever case happens to get your bile up.
i definitely support the death penalty in cases where there is no real possibility of doubt as to guilt, and the crime is such that the person will never be allowed back into society - and i support the death penalty in that case because i think just murdering the person directly in the face is the morally superior option to putting them in a federal prison for the rest of their life.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

No, that's the central aspect to the conversation. How is it that you plan on eliminating errors in a process that involves humans?

how do you eliminate the errors of putting kiwis, chili peppers, and motor oil into your cake batter mix? by not doing that.
it's so obvious to me how you do this that i'm having a hard time figuring out how to even formulate a response that isn't simply "uh... don't fucking do that?"

Well, I'm glad that you've put so much detailed thought into the methodology you'd be using.

Have you considered working for NASA? You could put some colonies on Mars by just kind of going there and building them.

 

[prideandfall]

how do you eliminate the errors of putting kiwis, chili peppers, and motor oil into your cake batter mix? by not doing that.
it's so obvious to me how you do this that i'm having a hard time figuring out how to even formulate a response that isn't simply "uh... don't fucking do that?"

Well, I'm glad that you've put so much detailed thought into the methodology you'd be using.

Have you considered working for NASA? You could put some colonies on Mars by just kind of going there and building them.

he said sarcastically, ignoring the other half of my post that then touches on the details.