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Broken Cog posted:What's the requirement for ending up on death row anyway? Short answer: Be poor, be black or kill a white person. Only the first is required, the next two just up your chances. Longer answer: In 1972, the US Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional as implemented. The two main problems the Court recognized were: Broken Cog posted:A lot of these people seem to have been found guilty of one or two murders, which, while horrible, seems excessive to sentence them to death for. Quite a few of them also seem to have been crimes of passion which historically have a very low reoffending rate. The second problem was that there was also often no consideration of factors in a defendant's individual circumstances that might mitigate against the death penalty. The American Law Institute (ALI), a group of really smart academics and lawyers, including defense counsel, prosecutors and judges, had came up with a proposed fair death penalty process that was put into effect by many states after the 1972 Supreme Court decision, and in 1976 the new procedures were OK'd by the Supreme Court and the death penalty was back in business. In 1977 the death penalty was limited to murder cases. The 'objective' aggravating factors that authorize the death penalty in a case were meant to ensure that a case became a death penalty case because it really was a horrible, terrible case; to remove arbitrary factors from the decision to pursue the death penalty. The individualized consideration of a defendant's circumstances was to ensure that a defendant would not be killed if there were any mitigating circumstances in his/her life. Unfortunately, the aggravating factors are not in the slightest bit objective in practice, because they have been interpreted to include just about every murder that is committed. Let's take Oklahoma's for example. [comments in brackets are court and legislative interpretations/definitions of the factors] The death penalty is authorized if a jury finds at least one of the following to be true beyond a reasonable doubt: 1. The defendant was previously convicted of a felony involving the use or threat of violence to the person; 2. The defendant knowingly created a great risk of death to more than one person; [i.e., was there more than one victim or potential victim?] 3. The person committed the murder for remuneration or the promise of remuneration or employed another to commit the murder for remuneration or the promise of remuneration; 4. The murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel; [i.e., did the victim suffer in any way whatsoever?] 5. The murder was committed for the purpose of avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest or prosecution; [e.g., did the defendant leave or try to leave the scene] 6. The murder was committed by a person while serving a sentence of imprisonment on conviction of a felony; 7. The existence of a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society; or [FREE SPACE! Has the defendant ever done anything bad in their life, ever? (Even if it never resulted in a criminal conviction)] 8. The victim of the murder was a peace officer as defined by Section 99 of this title, or correctional employee of an institution under the control of the Department of Corrections, and such person was killed while in performance of official duty. With regard to individualized consideration of mitigating factors, this evidence is expensive (in time and money) to collect. Most defendants looking at the death penalty have had utterly lovely, forgotten, fractured lives. Explaining why this is mitigating to a jury of white-collar workers and upper and middle class retirees is difficult and expensive. Unfortunately, people facing the death penalty are almost without exception indigent. Neither the defendants nor the public defender offices can afford to mount as complete of a case in mitigation as is required. [Case in point: earlier today, my lovely state-supplied work station crashed, taking with it a somewhat longer effort post than this one] If jury finds that the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors they can sentence a defendant to death. It was this arbitrariness in aggravating factors (almost any murder can be capital) and the inability to present individualized mitigating factors (though primarily the former) that caused the ALI in 2009 to abandon support for the current death penalty procedures (the ones they invented in the first place) Broken Cog posted:Edit: A lot of them also seem to have had mental problems. blarzgh posted:Some would argue (not me, of course) that each and every government function is some extension of the will of the people, and if the will of the people is retribution, then government exaction of the same is proper. Government is a function of the social contract which seeks to remove the emotion and caprice from resolving interpersonal conflict (including murder) through aspiring to objective, fair, unemotional, socially productive and proportionate means to resolve interpersonal conflict. Retribution is the call for vengeance by an aggrieved individual (or a Tumblr'd mob) and doesn't belong in government.
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Jan 1, 2015 05:18
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 02:28 |
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