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The Death Penalty
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Isn't it just great.
The Nation
Oh, and here's a picture of him with his girlfriend and daughter. Nice to see justice prevailing, eh?
Hopefully a judge somewhere will have the balls to sort this out. He never pretended he was an innocent man, but he certainly wasn't guilty of murder.
And it a convenient twist of me doing a bit more reading, it seems his sentence has been reduced to life. Certainly shows the dangers of the death penalty in my view though.
In less than three weeks Kenneth Foster, an African American man sentenced to death in 1997 for the murder of Michael LaHood, is scheduled to be executed in Texas.
LaHood's actual killer, Mauriceo Brown, was executed in 2006. Foster, who was in a car about 100 yards from the crime when it was committed, was convicted under the controversial Texas state "law of parties", under which the distinction between principal actor and accomplice in a crime is abolished. The law can impose the death penalty on anybody involved in a crime where a murder occurred. In Foster's case he was driving a car with three passengers, one of whom, Brown, left the car, got into an altercation and shot LaHood dead. Texas is the only state that applies this statute in capital cases, making it the only place in the United States where a person can be factually innocent of murder and still face the death penalty.
Foster maintains that he did not know that Brown would either rob or kill LaHood. According to an Amnesty International investigation, there is evidence not heard at trial that the murder was an unplanned act committed by Brown, as the latter himself claimed before his execution.
In 2005, a federal district judge found a "fundamental constitutional defect in Foster's sentence" and ruled that Foster's jury had not been asked to determine if he had any intent to kill LaHood, and that this failure represented a misapplication of the law. However, the state of Texas appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned the decision.
The crazy thing about this case is that no one argues that Foster killed the victim. As the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's award-winning columnist Bob Ray Sanders wrote, the case "is further proof of how cruel, capricious, unjust and utterly insane our death penalty laws have become....Because of this tainted system, whether you believe in capital punishment or not, a man who did not plan or commit a murder will die August 30 unless somebody -- a judge, the Board of Pardons and Paroles and/or the governor-- has the heart and the guts to stop it."
The Nation
Oh, and here's a picture of him with his girlfriend and daughter. Nice to see justice prevailing, eh?
Hopefully a judge somewhere will have the balls to sort this out. He never pretended he was an innocent man, but he certainly wasn't guilty of murder.
And it a convenient twist of me doing a bit more reading, it seems his sentence has been reduced to life. Certainly shows the dangers of the death penalty in my view though.
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Comments
Why do you think the death penatly isn't unjust?
This case highlights the very danger of putting the fate of someone's life in the hands of the state. Another judge on another day, and he could've been killed.
Because I think it's perfectly just for a cold-blooded murderer to be killed for killing. I don't see why civilised people should have to fork out money to keep scum like that alive in jail. I take it you disagree.
Nor that killing a human being should ever come to economics. That's even more barbaric than the worst possible crime commited by any murderer.
I agree. I couldn't care less the nature of a murder when it comes to sentencing, because it's putting more value on one life over another, simply because of the way they were killed. The motive should be taken into account obviously, because it could relate to their risk of reoffending. But to me, the only thing that is important is the safety of the public, ability to correct mistakes, and the deterrent factor, all of which are better served by life imprisonment (the death sentence consistantly proving to have no effect as a deterrent over life in prison). The fact that it tends to work out cheaper is merely a bonus.
Yes. IMO, death penalty is the easy way out for murderers. (probably why so many have killed themselves in prison?) Also, it's saying 'it's not alright for you lot to kill, but we (the state) can'. I also don't think it's really justice for the families of victims either.
Plus, i think staying in a cell for the rest of your natural life is probably a much better punishment than death and if they do turn out to be innocent, they can get released!
:yes:
Firstly, as is obviously highlighted with this case, there is the issue of possible miscarriages of justice. When a person is sentenced to any other punishment if the verdict turns out to be wrong there is the possibility of some restitution or at least the prisoner can be granted their freedom. If the person has been killed then that obviously isn't going to happen. Worth stopping to consider what that really means, it means we've all just committed murder, when the State does something, the burden falls upon all of us in some way.
However that's a well documented problem, and is only one of many. Another issue is that of the criminal who may be facing death as opposed to imprisonment. It's long been suggested that the death penalty encourages the murder of witnesses, or those who suffer a crime. If someone has been killed, even by accident, then if the penalty will be death then there is little reason to leave others alive, risking the further loss of life in order to satisfy an apparent need in society for simplistic and barbaric punishment.
Thirdly there is the issue of the encrochment of death penalities. Once introduced for murder it becomes an easier to start adding other crimes to the list, or expanding the scope of the penalty to other crimes. In the often suggested case of the death penalty for rape or child abuse this vastly increases the chance of the victim ebing murdered. In the case of apply the penalty to those who may not have been directly involved in murder themselves we see cases like this.
There is also the barbarity of the death sentence. Killing someone is evidently difficult, horrific and soul destroying. Many of those involved in the actual act of carrying out a death penalty have spoken out against it but they are required by their jobs to commit the act. It's one thing to ask a person to remove the liberty from another, it's a step far to far in my eyes to ask them to kill another person to appease some notion of justice.
The evidence that the death penalty prevents crime is also, as far as I can see, unproven and often inaccurate. The death penalty simply doesn't prevent murder (though it may provoke more as in the cases above). Murders involving the drug trade in the USA especially are about economics and profit, for those who see no other way to exist the death penalty matters as little as a life sentence, you aren't leaving the game because of what a judge might do to you. It's their life, and I'd rather see other options considered in dealing with poverty, crime and the drugs trade rather than pile government killed bodies on top of the already growing pile.
The death penalty also carries with it a huge amount of supposed benefits for the families who have lost loved ones. Whilst I'd never dare to speak for them, it would seem that ultimately it is understanding that leads to people moving forward, and the knowledge that another person has been killed because of what has happened to their lost one seems in the end to be more of a burden for many than the release they expect.
It's worth noting that in the trial of Gary Ridgway, the 'Green River Killer', who sat dispassionately through his 48 guilty pleas for muder in 2003, it was only the statements of one of the victim's fathers that final led to him breaking down and showing any remorse. The other families' wishes of painful deaths left him unmoved - the following did not -
'Mr. Ridgway, there are people here who hate you. I'm not one of them. I forgive you for what you've done. You've made it difficult to live up to what I believe, and that is what God says to do, and that is forgive, and he doesn't say to forgive just certain people, he says forgive all. So you are forgiven.'
Which brings me to the main point. It isn't the role of society to behave in the worst way it can, but to attempt to show that there may be a different path to walk. There is little doubt in my mind that those who commit murder have often seen the very worst that our civilization offers, and although that can never condone any crime, it does provide us all with one of two options. We can chose to confirm that our society is at it's heart as barbaric as all those that have been in the past, or we can chose to show that the human race does hold some hope of development.
It's an option that can be difficult, and horrible, and is far harder than to simply kill those who show themselves unwilling to exist within the law, who have committed the very worst crime. It's to chose to show that our civilization has decided that we are better than a murderer, that no matter how they may view the world, or how they may act, that we have begun to find a better way to exist.
As Dostoevsky put it far more eloquently than I ever could - 'The degree of civilization can be judged by observing its prisoners'
As a society, as a civilization, we should always reach for the better angels of our nature, rather than the basest demons in our culture. The death penalty will never be part of any solution, and always part of a problem. If it takes a 1000 years, one day it will hopefully be gone and the human race will be immeasurably better for it.
well said!
the death penalty is barbaric and disturbing to think that it's still going on in 2007. there are sick murderers out there but you must be pretty naive to think that by killing them one by one you are going to rid the world of evil. plus there is so much opporunity to get it wrong, 'oh shit wrong dude'. it's not exactly something that can be retracted. how can someone who is against murder commit or support the act themselves??
Which happened over here when we had the death penalty. However, science has evolved since then and it's easier to get the right person now.
There will always be the chance of a mistake. That's enough for me.
you will never get all crime's happening in circumstances you can prove definetly, especially with murder when most is commited by someone who knows them, then it comes down to circumstances as well - and if you have 1st degree murder, you need to prove intent
So because we are more likely to get it right then that's ok, where do you draw the line at an acceptable amount of innocent people killed? Let alone as others say that it's hypocritical and just morally repugnant to kill someone.
If you're going for the punishment angle, then i'd say being locked up for life without the chance of parole is more of a terrifying idea then simply being executed.