[Politics_Observer]

I don't think capital punishment is necessarily a deterrence. Maybe in some cases it can be. But in other cases, depending on the person in question, it is not. Regardless, so long as they have direct evidence (and not circumstantial evidence) that somebody is guilty of some very heinous and outrageous crimes, I am OK with putting them to death. Some crimes and some specific people (like Jeffery Dahmer for example, don't understand why he wasn't put to death by the law though he was killed by an inmate) who commit those crimes warrant the death penalty.

[BigSteve]

If we open the door to the death penalty for these people, we end up with situations where some black guy gets the death penalty for being in the getaway car while someone else kills the liquor store owner by accident.

Wow.

I wonder why you felt the need to inject race into this. The person should be punished regardless of his skin color. Burt I guess that's what libs do.

Second, if a crime is being committed, there's no such thing as "accidentally kills the liquor store owner". That's stupid.

It's the unlawful taking of a life during the commission of a crime.

Period.

[BigSteve]

Wow.

I wonder why you felt the need to inject race into this. The person should be punished regardless of his skin color. Burt I guess that's what libs do. You must already sense that your argument is pathetic and weak.

Second, if a crime is being committed, there's no such thing as "accidentally kills the liquor store owner". That's stupid.

It's the unlawful taking of a life during the commission of a crime.

Period.

[Politics_Observer]

@BigSteve

There is always prison justice too when the system fails to properly implement the death penalty to a deserving convict. I call it cosmic justice. Though the justice system might fail to deliver proper justice to a deserving convict or person, cosmic justice always finds a way somehow to properly administer justice with the proper and correct punishment somehow, someway. I call that sort of thing "cosmic justice" that seems to come out of the cosmos. Look at Jeffery Dahmer. He somehow still got administered the death penalty by another prisoner in prison even though the system itself, if I remember correctly, never sentenced him to death for his crimes.

[BigSteve]

@BigSteve

There is always prison justice too when the system fails to properly implement the death penalty to a deserving convict. I call it cosmic justice. Though the justice system might fail to deliver proper justice to a deserving convict or person, cosmic justice always finds a way somehow to properly administer justice with the proper and correct punishment somehow, someway. I call that sort of thing "cosmic justice" that seems to come out of the cosmos.

Nope, hang 'em...

[Red Rackham]

Is this a US debate? Apologies, when I butted in I didn't initially realise, hey no biggie.

[Pants-of-dog]

I wonder why you felt the need to inject race into this. The person should be punished regardless of his skin color.

Let us see if you can guess why I mentioned race. How many guesses would you like? Traditionally, it is three, but a smart person should be able to do it in one guess.

Second, if a crime is being committed, there's no such thing as "accidentally kills the liquor store owner". ....

It's the unlawful taking of a life during the commission of a crime.

I understand how the law works.

That does not change the fact that a person can get the death penalty for being an unwitting getaway driver when a person accidentally gets shot during an armed robbery.

[Drlee]

I do find all of the tough talk tedious. The notion that the US would torture criminals to death is very Trumpian. Suffice it to say that most people are more civilized than that. But hey Big Steve. You could move to Iran. They would be happy to let you hang people from the top of a bus. My suspicion is that you must get some kind of macho thrill in the suffering of other people. You seem to bring it up often enough.

If you had ever been in the Army in a combat arms unit you would not feel this way. The very few who do are weeded out pretty quickly. That is until the Commander and Chief starts pardoning war crimes and getting into the weeds with the chain of command. But then it seems that even the Navy admits that they have a serious cultural problem with the SEALS.

But go on advocating for torturing criminals to death. Why don't you post some nonsense about killing children or torturing pregnant disabled women. That is about your speed.

[Rich]

That does not change the fact that a person can get the death penalty for being an unwitting getaway driver when a person accidentally gets shot during an armed robbery.

What do you mean by an unwitting getaway driver? "I didn't know they were committing armed robbery, They told me to pull over so they could pick up some pop and snacks."

For me its about cultural respect. I think just about about every Native American culture had the death penalty pre contact. In fact the more you look at it, the more you realise that death penalty abolition is very much a White thing and not just a White thing but what lefties would call a White Capitalist thing. It didn't come out of Muslim, Confucian, Hindu or Pagan African Cultures. All the countries that have abolished it have been western or have had their original pristine cultures, compromised by western so called capitalist values.

The Soviet Union never abolished the death penalty. Communist China never abolished the death penalty. Cuba still has the death penalty, although there's no doubt it has gone a bit soft since Fidel left us, and has been compromised by "Liberal Capitalist" values. I've been thinking about how to explain Cultural Marxism to people in simple terms. And I realised that Cultural Marxists are just like the traditional Marxists of the Cold War. Nothing they say can be taken in good faith.

Western Commies campaigned against the death penalty, while the Soviet Union executed people willy nilly.

Western Commies campaigned for civil rights and due process, while the Soviet Communist party ruled with an unchallengeable iron fist.

Western Commies campaigned for gay rights while the Soviet Union and Cuba locked them up.

Western Commies demanded disarmament while the Soviet Union and Red China engaged in the greatest military build up the world had ever seen.

Western Commies demanded self determination and independence, while the Soviet union and Red china were the prison houses of nations.

Western Commies demanded all US troops must come home, while little Cuba sent troops into Algeria, Syria, Congo, Angola, Ethiopia.

[BigSteve]

Let us see if you can guess why I mentioned race. How many guesses would you like? Traditionally, it is three, but a smart person should be able to do it in one guess.

Oh, because you understand that the only way you can hope to win an argument is to make it about race, so then you can call anyone who disagrees with you a racist.

Here ya' go: If a black guy is driving the getaway car for a robbery on which someone is killed, execute him. Hang him in the town square. Maybe if the black guy had chosen to go to the mall with his baby mama he wouldn't be executed...

I understand how the law works.

That does not change the fact that a person can get the death penalty for being an unwitting getaway driver when a person accidentally gets shot during an armed robbery.

If you understood how the law works you would also understand that your statement is stupid...

[BigSteve]

I do find all of the tough talk tedious. The notion that the US would torture criminals to death is very Trumpian. Suffice it to say that most people are more civilized than that. But hey Big Steve. You could move to Iran. They would be happy to let you hang people from the top of a bus. My suspicion is that you must get some kind of macho thrill in the suffering of other people. You seem to bring it up often enough.

No, but it's nice to know that you believe someone who would rape or kill a child shouldn't suffer the ultimate sacrifice. I'm sure those who would do such things would appreciate the fact that they have a fan in you...

If you had ever been in the Army in a combat arms unit you would not feel this way. The very few who do are weeded out pretty quickly. That is until the Commander and Chief starts pardoning war crimes and getting into the weeds with the chain of command. But then it seems that even the Navy admits that they have a serious cultural problem with the SEALS.

I've got my combat tour under my belt, Private Pyle. Please, the way you routinely trot out your (alleged) military experience as though it's at all pertinent to the discussion is pretty fucking pathetic. You weren't in a combat unit. You were more likely a desk clerk at a supply unit at Fort Irwin.

Admin Notes: Rule 2 Violation

But go on advocating for torturing criminals to death. Why don't you post some nonsense about killing children or torturing pregnant disabled women. That is about your speed.

Death by hanging happens pretty quickly. Firing squad? Same thing. The electric chair takes a bit longer, but it's a better show.

Killing a child should warrant the death penalty. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about when you mention disabled pregnant women, though. Your logic's off into the weeds there...

[Pants-of-dog]

@BigSteve

You failed with your guess.

Would you like to try again?

[late]

I've been thinking about how to explain Cultural Marxism to people in simple terms. And I realised that Cultural Marxists are just like the traditional Marxists of the Cold War. Nothing they say can be taken in good faith.

I had to google that. I should have known..

""Cultural Marxism," described as a conspiratorial attempt to wreck American culture and morality, is the newest intellectual bugaboo on the radical right...

Right-wing ideologues, racists and other extremists have jazzed up political correctness and repackaged it — in its most virulent form, as an anti-Semitic theory that identifies Jews in general and several Jewish intellectuals in particular as nefarious, communistic destroyers. These supposed originators of "cultural Marxism" are seen as conspiratorial plotters intent on making Americans feel guilty and thus subverting their Christian culture.

At the core of the far right's concept of cultural Marxism are the Jews. Lind made this plain in June 2002, when he gave a speech on the subject to a Washington Holocaust denial conference hosted by the anti-Semitic journal, Barnes Review..."These guys," he explained, "were all Jewish."

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2003/cultural-marxism-catching

[BigSteve]

@BigSteve

You failed with your guess.

No, I didn't.

You're just paralyzed with fear at the very thought of admitting I'm right...

[Pants-of-dog]

@BigSteve

Now your second guess is gone.

One more try!

[BigSteve]

@BigSteve

Now your second guess is gone.

One more try!

You just watched "Heat", didn't you?

[Pants-of-dog]

You just watched "Heat", didn't you?

I am big fan of Pacino and Deniro.

Did you want a third guess?

[BigSteve]

I am big fan of Pacino and Deniro.

Yeah, but it was Dennis Hastert who caught one in the melon as he was driving the getaway car...

Did you want a third guess?

As you've failed to demonstrate how my comment was false, there's no reason to believe it was. I don't need a third guess, simply because my first comment was true and correct...

[Pants-of-dog]

@BigSteve

Yes, you whined hysterically about being called a racist.

Please note that I never called anyone a racist, and if I had, you could have mentioned it to the moderators as a rule violation instead of crying to me about it.

Back on topic:

Race and Jury Selection

Race was raised as an issue in the criminal justice debate when the U.S. Supreme Court held in Batson v. Kentucky (1986) that a prosecutor who strikes a disproportionate number of citizens of the same race in selecting a jury is required to rebut the inference of discrimination by showing neutral reasons for the strikes. In Miller-El v. Dretke (2005), the Court determined that the prosecutor's race-neutral explanations for the strikes of potential black jurors were so far at odds with the evidence that the explanations indicated discriminatory intent.

Race and the Application of the Death Penalty

Questions of whether or not the death penalty was applied fairly along racial lines surfaced in McCleskey v. Kemp. McCleskey argued that there was racial discrimination in the application of Georgia's death penalty. As evidence for this claim, McCleskey presented the results of an extensive statistical study by Professor David Baldus of the University of Iowa Law Schooland his colleagues. Baldus’ study collected information about all the capital defendants in Georgia—whether or not they were sentenced to death. This information allowed the researchers to control for hundreds of variables about the offender, victim and crime—thereby permitting a statistical comparison of cases in order to see what factors influenced whether a person was sentenced to death. Professor Baldus found, among other things, that:


Fewer than 40% of Georgia homicide cases involve white victims, but in 87% of the cases in which a death sentence is imposed the victim is white. White-victim cases are roughly eleven times more likely than black-victim cases to result in a sentence of death.
When the race of the defendant is added to the analysis, the following pattern appears: 22% of black defendants who kill white victims are sentenced to death; 8% of white defendants who kill white victims are sentenced to death; 1% of black defendants who kill black victims are sentenced to death; and 3% of white defendants who kill black victims are sentenced to death. (Only 64 of the approximately 2500 homicide cases studied involved killings of blacks by whites, so the 3% figure in this category represents a total of two death sentences over a six-year period. Thus, the reason why a bias against black defendants is not even more apparent is that most black defendants have killed black victims; almost no cases are found of white defendants who have killed black victims; and virtually no defendant convicted of killing a black victim gets the death penalty.)
No factor other than race explains these racial patterns. The multiple-regression analysis with the greatest explanatory power shows that after controlling for non-racial factors, murderers of white victims receive a death sentence 4.3 times more frequently than murderers of black victims. The race of the victim proves to be as good a predictor of a capital sentence as the aggravating circumstances spelled out in the Georgia statute, such as whether the defendant has a prior murder conviction or was the primary actor in the present murder.
Only 5% of Georgia killings result in a death sentence; yet, when more than 230 non-racial variables are controlled for, the death-sentencing rate is 6% higher in white-victim cases than in black-victim cases. A murderer therefore incurs less risk of death by committing the murder in the first place than by selecting a white victim instead of a black one.
The effects of race are not uniform across the spectrum of homicide cases. In the least aggravated cases, almost no defendants are sentenced to death; in the most aggravated cases, a high percentage of defendants are sentenced to death regardless of their race or their victim's; it is in the mid-range of cases which, as it happens, includes cases like McCleskey's that race has its greatest influence. In these mid-range cases, death sentences are imposed on 34% of the killers of white victims and 14% of the killers of black victims. In other words, twenty out of every thirty-four defendants sentenced to die for killing a white victim would not have received a death sentence if their victims had been black.


The Supreme Court held, however, that a death-sentenced defendant cannot challenge his sentence as a violation of the constitutional requirement of "equal protection of the laws" by showing that it is consistent with a system-wide pattern of racial disparity in capital sentencing. To make out an equal-protection violation, a defendant is required to prove that some specific actor or actors in his or her individual case--the prosecutor or the judge or the jurors, for example, intentionally discriminated against the defendant on the ground of race in making a decision that resulted in the death sentence.

Studies from across the nation have examined the influence of race in the application of the criminal justice system. Some have shown that race remains a factor in various aspects of death penalty.

Ways in Which Race Can Impact Capital Sentencing

Race of the Victim

Nationally, nearly 80% of murder victims in cases resulting in an execution have been white, even though nationally only 50% of murder victims generally are white. A 1990 examination of death penalty sentencing conducted by the United States General Accounting Office noted that, "In 82% of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e., those who murdered whites were found more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks." Individual state studies have found similar disparities. In fact, race of victim disparities have been found in most death penalty states.

Race of the Defendant

Nationally, the racial composition of those on death row is 45% white, 42% black, and 10% Latino/ Latina. Of states with more than 10 people on death row, Texas (70%) and Pennsylvania (69%) have the largest percentage of minorities on death row. Year 2000 census data revealed that the racial composition of the United States was 75.1% white, 12.3% black and 12.5% Latino/Latina. While these statistics might suggest that minorities are overrepresented on death row, the same statistical studies that have found evidence of race of victim effects in capital sentencing have not conclusively found evidence of similar race of defendant effects. In fact, while some studies show that the race of the defendant is correlated with death sentences, no researcher has made definitive findings that the death sentence is being imposed on defendants on account of their race, per se, independently of other variables (such as type of crime) which are correlated with defendants' race.

Race of the Jurors

In capital cases, one juror can represent the difference between life and death. A belief that members of one race, gender, or religion might generally be less inclined to impose a death sentence can lead the prosecutor to allow as few of such jurors as possible. For example, a Dallas Morning News review of trials in that jurisdiction found systematic exclusion of blacks from juries. In a two-year study of over 100 felony cases in Dallas County, the prosecutors dismissed blacks from jury service twice as often as whites. Even when the newspaper compared similar jurors who had expressed opinions about the criminal justice system (a reason that prosecutors had given for the elimination of jurors, claiming that race was not a factor), black jurors were excused at a much higher rate than whites. Of jurors who said that either they or someone close to them had had a bad experience with the police or the courts, prosecutors struck 100% of the blacks, but only 39% of the whites.

Race of the Prosecutor

Whenever and wherever capital punishment is authorized by law, the decision whether or not to seek a death sentence in particular cases is left to the discretion of the prosecutor. A 1998 examination of Chief District Attorneys in states with the death penalty found that nearly 98% are white, 1% are black, and 1% are Hispanic.

https://capitalpunishmentincontext.org/issues/race

So, even if we accept the morality and justice of the death penalty, it is clear that it is being used disproportionately against people of colour.

[BigSteve]

That's a whole lotta' nothin' right there.

You chose to inject race by saying the driver was a person of color. Why? It can only be due to the fact that you believe a black man would be more inclined to take part in illegal activity.

Now, I'm not calling that racism, but it's close...