General News CT Supreme Court rules death penalty violates Constitution

I'm mixed on this topic. We can cite examples of various cases all day long . Recently, there was a federal death penalty decision for Tsarnaev in Boston and a life imprisonment with no parole decision for Holmes, the theater shooter in Aurora, CA, probably because of how his mental state was taken into account. Nobody seemed too upset by the Tsarnaev decision. However, many people were upset by the Holmes decision. I used to be pro-death penalty and now I'm mostly against it, but not staunchly against it.

 

So what exactly was cruel and unusual? The picking of which offenders got the death penalty or the death penalty itself? In Gregg v. Georgia the death penalty was ruled constitutional. Granted this direct case hasn't been ruled on in decades but it's likely not going to be appealed. If someone with power choses to appeal this decision, they will win.

I didn't know that since it's not a federal court, appeals go to the SCOTUS. Makes me think that it might be easier to go that way versus the circuit courts.

Sidenote: Am I the only one that hates the term penalty in this context? I know the word has multiple years but using the word penalty in this context makes it seem like it's not that large of a deal and sounds very sporty. Like a sports like term.

---------- Post added 13th Aug 2015 at 08:57 AM ----------

Holmes needs help. Anyone that acts like they're a real life villain is obviously insane. Give him counseling please!

 

I support this. I don't think that the government should be killing people, and yes, that means that I am anti-war as well.

 

I believe it is unjust that those who wilfully and callously take lives are allowed to continue living. I support the death penalty in all cases of first-degree murder.

 

What does the death penalty rectify, and how can that sense of justice be reconciled with placing potentially innocent people under the ultimate penalty?

 

For a while I thought I could support the death penalty only in limited circumstances. One case in Connecticut back in 2007 put the original movement to abolish capital punishment on hold, when two crackheads took a family hostage to get drug money, and ended up raping the wife and younger daughter, beating the father to an inch of his life, and pouring gasoline and burning the daughters to death after strangling the wife.

The father survived and has embarked on a pro-death penalty crusade, though five years later the Connecticut legislature repealed the death penalty but didn't make it retroactive, leaving those clowns on death row. He went to the media and said that anti-capital punishment activists "Don't care about the victims one iota."

Actually, they do. The killers got what they deserved: a lifelong prison sentence that will prevent them from committing that sort of crime again. I hate to break it to you, Dr. Petit, but killing the guys isn't going to bring your wife and daughters back to life. I support getting rid of the death penalty because of its exorbitant costs. It costs 5 times more to execute a prisoner than it does to house a prisoner for the rest of his natural life, and it's ridiculous to tell society not to kill people by killing people.

The death penalty isn't anywhere close to being a deterrent, and the reason being is that nobody thinks to themselves "I'd kill this guy if I knew I was only going to get life without parole." My home state of Michigan was the first English speaking jurisdiction in the world to abolish capital punishment in 1846, just nine years after becoming a state. We haven't had it for 169 years, and though every now and again you'll hear somebody talk about it after a murder, there's no need for it here, nor anywhere.

 

I say this is pretty good for two reasons.

The first reason that the death penalty burns a huge hole in our pockets financially. DP trials take more time to process than standard trials and the costs alone per execution is far more than keeping someone behind bars for life. The number I've seen get thrown around is at least $1B. Just imagine where all that money could have gone in the first place.

The second being that numerous studies have shown that the DP does nothing to affect the deterrence rates. Hell, states that have the death penalty have higher crime rates than those that don't. There are also many medical journals and reports on the DP and executed inmates that show evidence of suffering and are in clear violation of what would be considered cruel, inhumane, and unusual punishment.

One study on inmates who were executed via lethal injection showed that a large percentage of them didn't have enough of the agent that puts them to sleep; meaning that they were likely awake and aware of their surroundings, and experienced suffocation and excruciating pain. The study added that the manner in which they were killed failed to meet the standards for putting down animals.

I've made this case before. I believe rehabilitation for criminals are possible. But if they're "too far gone", then life in prison is the better of the options. If it's not for financial reasons, then logic and moral ones. Criminals aren't going to stop doing violent acts, no matter how severe the punishment is for their actions. At the end of the day, we're still asking the question if it's ever okay to kill another person, even if they don't pose as a direct threat to us. By ending the life of someone we believe poses a threat to us, shouldn't we be next in line for a cocktail of chemical injections with how we embrace an "eye for eye" mentality?

The DP is a paradox that we can't escape.