This is a really controversial thing to say, but look into the case of US serial killer Richard Ramirez who was on death row. He was almost certainly railroaded and couldn't defend himself because he was brain damaged, with temporal lobe syndrome, schizophrenia and epilepsy.
He was also left undefended by incompetent attorneys who covered his mental illnesses up, because they were relying on payment for a film deal and brain damaged vulnerable men aren't bankable like psychopaths are. He was definitely declared mentally incompetent, but it was buried by the courts and he was sentenced to be gassed.
It's highly likely he didn't commit the crimes either, in some incidents, it wasn't his blood, or semen, or hairs, and all the eyewitnesses changed their description in court, sometimes they'd originally said he was short, or fair-haired or Chinese, or long-haired (his hair was short at the time and he was 6'1" and Mexican). However, the defence failed to mention these things.
So, an impoverished, homeless brain-damaged Mexican man was sentenced to death for 13 murders/rapes but after 27 years in solitary, he died suddenly of cancer just before his Writ of Habeas Corpus reached California's 9th circuit. It's one of the biggest miscarriages of justice of all time and yet nobody wants to know about it. My friends and I write this blog and it's a good place to start.
Thank you for sharing your arguments. A very well written piece, but it didn't change my mind (wow! one issue where I actually don't agree with you!). There are some crimes that are so heinous, so beyond the realm of comprehensible, that you realize there is absolutely nothing else left but death for the perpetrator(s).
The death penalty is, in my opinion, a lazy and dishonest way out for society. Of course I think that there are some criminals who would look better at the end of a rope, but to act on that would require me to ignore two key fundamentals: a) the state has a duty to protect the lives of all its citizens, and b) some people are wrongly tried and convicted. Terrible as the treatment of the Guildford Four, Birmingham Six etc was (and that treatment is a stain on this country forever), at least some of them were alive to be be pardoned. A posthumous pardon means nothing to the dead person; it serves only to salve the conscience of a few decision-makers. Until some mythical time when guilt can be determined absolutely and without mistake comes to pass, the death penalty is a policy built on the lives of innocent people, no matter how few they may be.
I’m an opponent of the death penalty in ordinary civil penal codes but I feel an emotional pull towards death for crimes of genocide and some crimes against humanity. Was the death sentence on Hans Frank at Nuremberg unjust? It’s difficult finding a place in my heart to say that it was
This is a really controversial thing to say, but look into the case of US serial killer Richard Ramirez who was on death row. He was almost certainly railroaded and couldn't defend himself because he was brain damaged, with temporal lobe syndrome, schizophrenia and epilepsy.
He was also left undefended by incompetent attorneys who covered his mental illnesses up, because they were relying on payment for a film deal and brain damaged vulnerable men aren't bankable like psychopaths are. He was definitely declared mentally incompetent, but it was buried by the courts and he was sentenced to be gassed.
It's highly likely he didn't commit the crimes either, in some incidents, it wasn't his blood, or semen, or hairs, and all the eyewitnesses changed their description in court, sometimes they'd originally said he was short, or fair-haired or Chinese, or long-haired (his hair was short at the time and he was 6'1" and Mexican). However, the defence failed to mention these things.
So, an impoverished, homeless brain-damaged Mexican man was sentenced to death for 13 murders/rapes but after 27 years in solitary, he died suddenly of cancer just before his Writ of Habeas Corpus reached California's 9th circuit. It's one of the biggest miscarriages of justice of all time and yet nobody wants to know about it. My friends and I write this blog and it's a good place to start.
https://expendableforacause.net/
And here is where we obtained all his court documents.
https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/hzs23c78/california-central-district-court/richard-ramirez-v-robert-l-ayers/
There was a netflix documentary about him, but most of it is lies.
Thank you for sharing your arguments. A very well written piece, but it didn't change my mind (wow! one issue where I actually don't agree with you!). There are some crimes that are so heinous, so beyond the realm of comprehensible, that you realize there is absolutely nothing else left but death for the perpetrator(s).
It may not deter crime, but it keeps those who are executed from committing more crimes.
The death penalty is, in my opinion, a lazy and dishonest way out for society. Of course I think that there are some criminals who would look better at the end of a rope, but to act on that would require me to ignore two key fundamentals: a) the state has a duty to protect the lives of all its citizens, and b) some people are wrongly tried and convicted. Terrible as the treatment of the Guildford Four, Birmingham Six etc was (and that treatment is a stain on this country forever), at least some of them were alive to be be pardoned. A posthumous pardon means nothing to the dead person; it serves only to salve the conscience of a few decision-makers. Until some mythical time when guilt can be determined absolutely and without mistake comes to pass, the death penalty is a policy built on the lives of innocent people, no matter how few they may be.
I mean emotive pull not emotional
I’m an opponent of the death penalty in ordinary civil penal codes but I feel an emotional pull towards death for crimes of genocide and some crimes against humanity. Was the death sentence on Hans Frank at Nuremberg unjust? It’s difficult finding a place in my heart to say that it was