Earlier this week, Paul Reid was to be executed for murders he committed a few years ago here in tenn. He has admitted he did them, was tried and convicted for them and sentenced to death.
A week ago he told a judge he was dropping his appeals and was ready to die for his crimes. Three hours before he was to die a court stopped the execution,Now Paul Reid says "It was an act of God" that stopped his execution and he is going to prolong his date with death for as long as he can.
My question is: Should death row inmates that have admitted their guilt and been found guilty and sentenced to death, be allowed to have a change in heart after the fact and continue to file numerous appeals?

I would say it should be looked : IF HIS CONFESSION WAS THE PIVOTAL PIECE OF EVIDENCE THAT LED TO THE CONVICTION. People can be coerced, insane, etc. and if the confession was not honest then the case needs to re-examined. If there is other evidence, there is no reason to stop the execution.

BTW, I am in favor of execution regardless of mental status, age, drugs, etc. I believe that execution is a punishment for a crime, not "rehabilitation" or deterrant in nature. Bad apples need to be eliminated from the gene pool (I am sure many would think that's a rough sentiment, but that's how I feel.)

I feel that if a person admits his or her guilt and is then found guilty by a jury of their peers, All rights should be revoked.
But then again I am for capitol punishment as a whole, If you are found to be guilty and sentenced to death, all your rights as a citizen, Should become null and void. This dragging out the appeals for a dozen years is idiotic and very costly to the american tax-payer.
Now im sure i will get raked over the coals for this reply but thats how i feel about it.
Paul Dennis Reid is guilty for murdering seven innocent young people, He was sentenced to die for his crimes, lets strap him down and give him his dose of meds and get him out of our lives and off our tax rolls.

(In the red haze of the coals, we see what appears to be the marks of a rake...)

I understand your view, Fish, but I have to wonder - what about people who were found guilty at trial and then later, during the appeals process, it was determined they were in fact innocent of the charges? There is no refuting the fact that we have executed innocent people. Getting rid of the appeals process would only broaden the margin of error. I agree that the process can be frustrating, and can even be taken advantage of. However, the question it comes down to is this: are you OK with executing a few innocent people, as long as most are guilty? If you were facing charges of capital murder, and you knew you were innocent, would you not want every dang appeal you could get? Death is the final arbiter, is it not natural for us to rail against it by all available means?

It's too easy to distance ourselves from the whole thing - a part of us can look at the innocent person on Death Row, and say, "well, he must have been doing something wrong to have been caught up in this mess. The way I live MY life, such a thing wouldn't happen to me, so there's really no need for me to empathize." I wonder if that's not exactly what every innocent person ever drawn up on false charges thought, until it happened to them...

For every story like the one you presented, there is a story of a Death Row inmate who was denied appeals, sometimes even when there might have been DNA evidence proving their innocence.

Amlord, there's still some coals left for you:


How can those factors you listed not be important in judging the nature of the crime? If intention and understanding have no importance, then all murder ought to be a capital crime - whether premeditated or not. The five year old who smothers his baby sister to stop her crying? execute him - after all, it was his actions alone we are looking at, not his level of intent or comprehension.

Look, I'm not arguing from the opposite extreme here, that we need to be totally "touchy-feely" about crime - I just think that until we have a way of determining 100% the guilt of the murderer, the appeals system certainly helps cut down on the margin of error, and so is worth keeping, blemishes and all.

What I am saying is that once a person has a taste of killing someone, it will be easier the next time. In that sense, I believe that murderers cannot be rehabilitated.

I know my view is contraversial.

OK, but that brings me two thoughts:

1. What about soldiers? Should they be allowed back into society after serving in combat?

2. That doesn't really answer my question. Do you believe that intention and comprehension play no role at all? Because in your first post, that seems to be your implied conclusion.

I don't know the exact figures, but I do know that the recidivism rate for murder is much lower than for sexual predators (rapists and paedophiles, etc.).

Do you believe humans are incapable of fundamental change? Perhaps I am foolishly optimistic, but I believe every human has the ability to escape their particular paradigm of reality.

Paul Reid was far from admitting his guilt when he was trying to wave his appeals. He was ranting about a government conspiracy to convict him and fighting his sister's efforts to force him to use his appeals.

Although I am against the death penalty, I am ok with an admitted multiple murderer (confession) who stands by that same confession being "fast tracked" to the end of the process.

But death penalty convicts deserve a long list of checks along their due procesing to execution to keep the general public from being responsible for the state murder of an innocent person.

Reid, 45, claims the government has used advanced scientific technology to make his ears ring and his body parts flicker - tormenting him to the point of wanting to die.

A related story about a possible false confession

The word you're looking for is unfounded.

In your rush to cast all people convicted of murder you have ignored one issue entirely (it would seem) that I would like you to adress. If executions cost MORE than life imprisonment, and they are NOT an effective deterrant (I've never seen an iota of evidence to suggest it is), then why take the chance of killing an innocent person when you can lock people up for cheaper and receive the same benefit for society?

Of course, the reason it may be cheaper to give them a life sentence is the appeals process. Trim the appeals process and it is cheaper to execute.

Soldiers have dicipline. Plain and simple.



I don't think so. YOu are who you are, and no one can change that. Some people never grow up. IMO, those who change fundementally, are those who have life altering/threatening experiences. (cancer comes to mind). I hope this would be the vast minority.

This is all in my experience anyway

I don't believe in rehibilitation for this reason.



Touche!

--cheers

The death penalty should be for punishment, not deterrant, as I stated. By keeping convicted murderers around, we are just waiting for someone like Michael Dukakis or George Ryan to let these killers go.

The reason I believe that rehabilitation of murderers is highly unlikely has alot to do with environment. The killer gets out of prison and goes right back to the same environment that allowed the killings in the first place.

Forensic evidence today is so much greater than it has been in the past. Public awareness is also pretty high for murder cases. The chances of someone being "railroaded" is very low in today's society.

Confessions would seem to be the most impressive piece of evidence a prosecutor has. However, that is often not the case. Police are trained in interrogation techniques designed to get a confession. This, in itself, is not a bad thing at all. These techniques are designed to break down the psyche of a criminal and force them to give up the information they know. Unfortunately, being designed for hardened criminals, average innocent people are easily convinced that they must confess.

Most murderers do not take murder lightly. They have been down a long road, often as juvenile delinquents or petty criminals, slowly moving onto bigger and bigger crimes. They have often previously been arrested. They have been exposed to the system and are somewhat immune to it. A person in police custody for the first time does not have this advantage. If police repeatedly tell a person like this that they committed a murder, they may very well begin to believe it. They can even hint at details, so as to make the confession look more believable.

Now, this isn't to say that police are being unscrupulous. The overwhelming majority of people they deal with are very guilty, sometimes of more than the police can charge them with. It probably gets easy to gloss over the innocent people when they hear the same things over and over again from suspects. In cases with imperfect evidence, even the most seasoned police investigator can't determine 100% of the time when someone is guilty. They can only recommend pursuing a case or dropping it.

It doesn't surprise me at all that people often give false confessions. They do need to have the ability to take them back and to appeal their convictions. This system is how we ensure that the guilty go to jail and the innocent do not. Eliminating the right to appeal is not an acceptable price to pay to expediate the carrying out of death sentences.



Dukakis let a rapist go on furlough, on a program begun by his Republican predecessor. Ryan did not let anyone out of jail, merely changed death sentenced into life inprisonments, with no chance of parole. Nobody is advocating letting convicted murderers go, especially not any politician. Trust me, it is not in their interest to even let people go who prove their innocence, much less those who may be guilty.



Perhaps if we did more than give them a suit of clothes and a bus ticket back home, this might not be the case?



There is a great deal of forensic technology today. Unfortunately, the level of accuracy is dependent on the ability of the people running the investigation. Forensic evidence is very fragile, and slight mishandling can either make the results inaccurate, or result in the evidence being ruled inadmissable.

Most crime labs do not work like they are shown on TV and in movies. All crime investigators aren't meticulous and up to date on proper procedure. They certainly don't all have reasonable access to all the equipment they need. This is not to mention the fact that many times, important evidence is misplaced and/or lost.

In today's 24-hour news society, public pressure on the police to solve every crime instantly creates a great deal of pressure to make an arrest and convict someone ASAP. Accuracy often comes in a distant second to speed. Note that when prosecutors run for office, they run on their number of convictions and percentage of closed cases, not their ability to ensure they convict the correct people.

The very best and very worst attorneys are defense attorneys. Wealth defendants get the best representation. Poor ones, unless their case has unusual circumstances, get the worst. Most people on death row are poor and a substantial number had public defenders who were later disbarred for incompetence. Poor people from bad areas in big cities with bad representation that are on trial are rarely covered by the news.

I think the guy has every right to appeal and change of heart or whatever you want to call it. After all, it's his/her life...not ours.

The problem is, is everyone overlooks who is in charge of the criminal's life. Lawyers.

Good grief, think about that. I am in favor of capital punishment in theory, but against the reality. I wouldn't put two lawyers in charge of my cat's life - let alone a human life.

When justice becomes all about truth and facts, I say fry 'em. They deserve it. But as long as the gamesmanship in the courtroom exists as it does today, and the scourge of our society are in charge of this process, the damage this creates can't be undone.

So, the criminal should have as much right to cheat and lie as the people trying to kill him.

Ronald Mock, Defense Attorney

A few choice quotes:





From the ACLU:


Finally, a list of countries who still have the death penalty:

AFGHANISTAN, ALGERIA, ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA, BAHAMAS, BAHRAIN, BANGLADESH, BARBADOS, BELARUS, BELIZE, BENIN, BOTSWANA, BURUNDI, CAMEROON, CHAD, CHINA, COMOROS, CONGO (Democratic Republic), CUBA, DOMINICA, EGYPT, EQUATORIAL GUINEA, ERITREA, ETHIOPIA, GABON, GHANA, GUATEMALA, GUINEA, GUYANA, INDIA, INDONESIA, IRAN, IRAQ, JAMAICA, JAPAN, JORDAN, KAZAKSTAN, KENYA, KOREA (North), KOREA (South), KUWAIT, KYRGYZSTAN, LAOS, LEBANON, LESOTHO, LIBERIA, LIBYA, MALAWI, MALAYSIA, MAURITANIA, MONGOLIA, MOROCCO, MYANMAR, NIGERIA, OMAN, PAKISTAN, PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY, PHILIPPINES, QATAR, RWANDA, SAINT CHRISTOPHER & NEVIS, SAINT LUCIA, SAINT VINCENT & GRENADINES, SAUDI ARABIA, SIERRA LEONE, SINGAPORE, SOMALIA, SUDAN, SWAZILAND, SYRIA, TAIWAN, TAJIKISTAN, TANZANIA, THAILAND, TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO, TUNISIA, UGANDA, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, UZBEKISTAN, VIET NAM, YEMEN, ZAMBIA, ZIMBABWE

Includes all of the "evil axis" countries. Scary.

Hugo:


That is true; however, since we know definitively that even with a lengthy appeals process, some innocent people get executed, to trim away that process would mean a lessening of what safeguards there are. Due to appeals action, over 100 people have had their convictions overturned since 1977 (when the SCOTUS weighed in to reinstate the death penalty). Of course, from your statement, it's hard to tell if you are just stating a fact, or if you approve of the idea of trimming the appeals process... clarify?

Since 1977? nobody has said our judicial system is perfect and i agree its not,but 100 people in 26 years have had their verdicts overturned, I wonder if anyone knows how many death sentences have been imposed in that time span. Im sure the amount of people whose verdicts have been overturned are very small compared to all death sentences.
Its not a perfect system but its the only system we have.

It might be worth mentioning, briefly, that Charles Whitman, Timothy McVeigh and John Allen Muhammed were all military veterans.

Returning to the statement that sparked the military question and response...People are not lions nor tigers nor bears... oh my! Not every person who kills develops some "taste" for killing or continues to do so. With the clear exception of the soldiers mentioned, not every military serviceman does. Nor does every police officer. While those convicted of murder are guilty of "unlawful killings," their experience is no less killing than that of government agents. I believe Joe was correct in labeling this particular position "unfounded."

Taking a look at the idea of capital punishment being punishment and not simply a deterrant, I think the list of countries still practicing CP is important. Without particular statistics, there seem to be some of the most violent nations in the world included in that list. You don't see too many industrialized nations in there, do you? Perhaps even more telling... how many European countries can you find?

Right now there are some 3500 people on death row. Over 525 have been put to death. 100 out of over 3500 is, granted, a small percentage. But that's missing the point. We should be clear that we are talking about putting people to death. There is no reversing an execution. Is even one innocent person being executed OK? I think not. As the saying goes, there but for the grace of God go I. We cannot morally afford to seperate these innocent victims from our lives. These people are not statistical anomalies. They are brothers, fathers, sons, and friends (most are male, hence the gender usage). You get the idea. How can you cleave yourself of this fact? It seems to me to be a most egregious case of NIMBY. One of those things that a person can dismiss, until and unless it happens to them or their loved ones.

edited to add: Abs, the piece I saw said that some 80% of executions in 2002 took place in China, Iran, and the US...

Another article said that 100 percent of the hands cut off for theft in 2001 were in the US and Arab nations.

Look at the actual numbers, please. It isn't valid to just lump the US with a couple of bloodthirsty countries and use that as a world statistic to demonstrate our violence.
US- 71 total executions
China-1060 total executions
Iran-113 total executions

Iran has a population which is a little less than 25 percent of ours, with almost twice the number of executions.

AmnestyUSA: 80% of death penalties...
This report highlights the 80% claim set forth by Quarkie, though it also includes our pals in Saudi Arabia. Something else that struck me from this particular report...
Yes indeed... we done be civilized in dis country. Mmmhmm...

Why is it not valid? I wasn't trying to hide the real numbers - the page I was looking at had the percentage, so I grabbed that. In spite of the difference in real numbers, it is cogent to point out that the three countries leading the world in executions are the three mentioned. Like it or not, by having the death penalty, and by practicing it as freely as we do, we are lumped in with those countries, no matter how much we rail against it. People who support the death penalty must come to terms with these several things:

1. We are in some pretty poor company.

2. We are condoning the fact, undisputed, that innocent people have been and will be executed.

Quarkhead, do you have a link to a story of someone who was proven innocent AFTER being executed?

Why isn't it valid?

Do a little arithmetic. 80 percent of the world executions are in the US, Iran, and China. 76 percent of that number is from Iran and China.

Saying that the number of executions in the US is 4 percent doesn't offer the same punch does it?

Bear in mind you aren't simply talking about 4% of worldwide executions either, mrspigpen. You are only talking of 4% out of the 80% mentioned. I don't have the numbers for every other nation practicing execution to tell you what percentage of worldwide executions the United States holds, but I imagine it will be over 4% if we are already in the top three.

As to amlord's question of people found innocent, I found this piece in a quick search.
The Need for a Federal Moratorium on the Death Penalty
In it we find It goes on to detail the poor quality of defense attornies provided to those accused as well. Remember, from the previous article cited, 98% couldn't afford their own attorney and the quality presented to the Senate isn't too appealing.

WRONG. I am speaking of 4 percent worldwide.

FORMULA:
x (.8)=1244
x=1555 people executed worldwide

(I got 1244 from the numbers I cited previously, I think it was the CIA world book, or something like that....the numbers are (113 executions(Iran)+71(US)+1060(China))

The fact that poor people are more apt to be murderers is irrelevant to the discussion.

I asked for people proven innocent AFTER being executed, which none of that proves.

EDIT: Mrs P is citing correctly : 71/1555 = 4.5% of all executions.
(US)/(worldwide)

Hey abs, Bringing in mental status of killers is opening up a whole new can of worms. To many times i have read about people trying the mental incompetance issue to avoid getting fried for killing somebody.
Not having the mental facilities to understand that what you are doing is wrong, would ,I agree be grounds to avoid the death penalty. But, If someone kills someone and really has no mental concept of right and wrong, wouldnt he or she just stay there and wait till someone comes and gets them? The minute they run and hide to get away from what thay have done means they know they have done wrong, and knowing they have done wrong throws out mental capacity out the window.

Apologies, mrspigpen, I wasn't aware you were introducing the rest of the international community or other numbers into your statistic at the time.

You're right, amlord. I misread the article I cited, not realizing the 89 were acquitted prior to the sentence being carried out. I'll continue to look into it and be sure of what the articles state before posting again on the matter. I do imagine, though, that for all those saved at the last minute, there have been those not saved. And for those in question (should they indeed exist as I suspect) how much more research would have been given to their case following an execution? Or would it have simply been filed away and never been given another look?

I fear this is the case in many instances, but I will continue to look for documentation of people found innocent after having been executed.

fisherman, the mental status of defendants had already been introduced in other postings. My quote which included the mental status was meant to show primarily that 98% of those accused couldn't even afford legal defense.

While on the subject of those with mental retardation, though, the quote isn't talking about it being used as a legal defense to avoid capital punishment; it's saying the "many death penalty states make no allowance for those suffering from mental retardation." By making no allowance, this allows the state to execute even those clearly and truly suffering from mental retardation. So, if 30 year-old Billy, who has been a ward of the state for the bulk of his life, kills somebody by way of accident, he can still be tried and sentenced to death.

OK, real numbers (from amnesty):





From various places:







Amlord, here's a site with people executed who were probably innocent. In many cases there is no 100% DNA evidence to exonerate them, as many are older cases, or are cases in which DNA evidence did not come into play, but it might be what you are after.

Here

That's much better, thanks
I am not pro death penalty anyway. Just wanted to make trouble

Kidding. I DO, truly think it is an archaic means of punishment, but I don't believe it puts us in the same category (at least not the way we use it) as countries who have secret police and hold family members hostage as blackmail.