I see no upside in this

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

Saddam is dead. Executed.

First, I’m opposed to capital punishment. Period.

Second, just what Iraq needs: A high-profile martyr to rally around and provide reason for an even more massive explosion of violence than we’ve already seen.

PAD

216 comments on “I see no upside in this”

  3. Death Penalty? Great idea. When it’s God that’s imposing it. Because anything that relies on humans to implement is going to have errors. And, Jerry C.’s experience notwithstanding, I’d rather see a hundred guilty men go free (or live out their lives in incarceration) than one single innocent man punished. When we’re talking about jail time, I’m willing to accept that errors will be made, because there’s always a chance that those errors can be discovered and things set to rights. Once you execute someone, that’s it. There’s no do-over, no reaching across the void and reanimating the body with a “sorry about that” comment. If the state kills an innocent man, that’s murder. Cold blooded, premeditated, murder.

    So Saddam’s dead, and there’s little question that he was responsible, probably personally in many cases, for murder. Here’s something to consider…we know there were rumors of Saddam having doubles that would make appearances for him. How do we know this wasn’t one of them? I never read about and DNA proof made that this person really was Saddam Hussein. If he was a double, then he certainly was guilty of something, but maybe not guilty of a single death. How can we know for certain?

    We can’t. Because we’re not God.

    I’m also reminded of this: “Strike me down, and I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” Keep Hussein imrpisoned, and he’s harmless. Let him die a withered old man in jail, and he inspires few. Sure, some will try to free him, and use his name to rally around. But he’ll die, and people will relegate him to history.

    But killed by the state, and he becomes a martyr. He becomes a mythic figure that countless generations can look upon as a source of inspiration and hatred.

    I’d rather see him incarcerated and subject to hard labor the rest of his life. Let him work off his debt by slowly trading the rest of his life to make his world a better place. Force him to rebuild the homes he destroyed. Serve the families of those he killed.

  4. “Death Penalty? Great idea. When it’s God that’s imposing it.”

    God’s track record is not that great either.

    There’s a tendancy to exagerate the power of martyrdom. People can become mythic figures without dying, and dead martyrs are not as powerful as the living using their memory.

  5. “God’s track record is not that great either.”

    We’re not talking “what does God need with a starship” here. Or at least, I’m not. And while I’m not literally talking about God smiting people, because, really, how do you know? But the point is, only the omnipotent could really hand out final justice and not have any doubt as to innocence or guilt. We don’t prove that people are guilty…we decide that beyond the shadow of a doubt (or whatever legal requirement phrase is used today) a person is likely guilty.

  6. Killing Saddam only proved that Iraqis are merely trading one brutal government for another.

    I find it hilarious that the same people who cheer this public murder get OUTRAGED when Muslims carry out public murders. “They’re cold blooded killers!”

    1. Saddam was convicted of killing just 187 Iraqis. How many has Bush killed? Saddam had his rationalizations, Americans have their own.

    2. When a criminal kills, HE is a murderer. But when the state kills in our name, that makes US ALL murderers.

    3. Capital punishment is about revenge, pure and simple. Just check out the first rationalization in this thread. (“What if your family were killed…”)

    4. The most dámņìņg statistic about U.S. capital punishment refers not to the race of the accused, but to the race of the victim.

    5. Capital punishment is NO DETERENT. Look at the correlation between states with the death penalty and that state’s murder rate. It’s higher in DP states.

    6. All the overturned convictions in recent years have made glaringly clear the flaws in our system. It’s already happened that an executed man was found innocent due to DNA evidence. With life in prison, there is always a chance to rectify (as much as possible) a wrongful conviction. The death penalty renders those mistakes permanent.

    I remember a day when America believed it was better to let a few guilty people go free than the innocent go to jail. Not anymore, I guess.

    Convenience and expedience are the enemy of a fair trial. I don’t care how many appeals the accused gets. Better to exhaust every possibility than rush to kill.

  7. I remember a day when America believed it was better to let a few guilty people go free than the innocent go to jail. Not anymore, I guess.

    That’s a questional philosophy. Where do you draw the line? Is it better to let 100 guilty go free than imprison 1 innocent man? 1000 guilty? At what point does it cease to be of any benefit to the innocent that they are free from the risk of jail but face the liklihood of getting maimed or murdered by the hordes of the guilty?

    Anyway…when was this day you speak of?

    As far as the death penalty, that day is perhaps closer now: http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=550605&category=&BCCode=&newsdate=1/4/2007

    U.S. death sentences drop to 30-year low

    Death sentences fell in 2006 to 114 or fewer, according to an estimate from the group. That is down from 128 in 2005. It is also down sharply on the 137 sentences handed down in the year after the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 and the high of 317 in 1996.

  8. “It’s already happened that an executed man was found innocent due to DNA evidence. With life in prison, there is always a chance to rectify (as much as possible) a wrongful conviction. The death penalty renders those mistakes permanent.”

    Really? Please give us a link for this statement to back it with facts. See, I’m a bit of a news junky, but I seemed to have missed that one. I’ve spent the last 25 minutes doing google and live searches on that topic and can’t find so much as one link to a fact based support of that statement. Found lots of nutjob blog sites with people coming up with every reason (except DNA) we killed some poor innocent. Just nothing fact based. Please, give us the link and show that I am uninformed and you are not an idiot.

    “3. Capital punishment is about revenge, pure and simple. Just check out the first rationalization in this thread. (“What if your family were killed…”)”

    Not true for all people. Besides, you can turn that argument on ANY form of punishment. Any claim of justice can be seen as revenge by somebody out there. People on TV with tears streaming down their faces demanding that SOMETHING be done to the person that raped their daughter don’t want revenge? We should just let rapist go because putting them in jail is, in some way, an act of revenge? No. Nor should we junk capital punishment because SOME people see it more as revenge then punishment after judgement.

    “4. The most dámņìņg statistic about U.S. capital punishment refers not to the race of the accused, but to the race of the victim.”

    Bull. I love the insane, no logic far left in this country and their never ending fight for ‘true” race justice in matters like capital punishment. Too bad they really have no idea what they’re talking about or saying from year to year.

    The big thing with the left used to be that capitol punishment was racist (long ago a true claim in a few areas of the country) because it targeted minorities. Then the numnbers became common knowledge, thus knocking the legs out from under that argument, and the far left then shifted gears to start pointing out that more killers of whites were being sent to the chair then killers of blacks were and thus devalued the life of blacks in the justice system.

    Well, think about that a moment. Most blacks are murdered by black on black crime. If we execute these killers, then we’re being racist because we’re putting too many minorities on death row. If we send more of these killers to jail for life, we’re racist because we don’t value black murder victim’s lives as much as we do white victim’s lives.

    No matter what you do, idiots are going to cry “race” as loudly as they can. If we ended capital punishment tomorrow, the far left would then just shift to saying that we’re all racist because of how many blacks were in jail for life.

    Statistics

    http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cp.htm

    In 2005, 60 persons in 16 States were executed — 19 in Texas; 5 each in Indiana, Missouri, and North Carolina; 4 each in Ohio, Alabama, and Oklahoma; 3 each in Georgia and South Carolina; 2 in California; and 1 each in Connecticut, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, and Mississippi.

    Of persons executed in 2005:
    — 41 were white
    — 19 were black

    Fifty-nine men and one woman were executed in 2005.

    Thirty-eight States and the Federal government in 2005 had capital statutes.

    Prisoners under sentence of death

    The number of prisoners under sentence of death decreased for the fifth consecutive year in 2005.

    Since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976, white inmates have made up more than half of the number under sentence of death.

    Of persons under sentence of death in 2005:
    — 1,805 were white
    — 1,372 were black
    — 31 were American Indian
    — 34 were Asian
    — 12 were of unknown race.

    The 362 Hispanic inmates under sentence of death at yearend 2005 accounted for 13% of inmates with a known ethnicity.

    Among persons for whom arrest information was available, the average age at time of arrest was 28; 1 in 9 inmates were age 19 or younger at the time of arrest.

    At yearend 2005, the youngest inmate under sentence of death was 20; the oldest was 90.
    ___________________________________________________________________________________________

    Some of this is a few years out of date. I’m using stuff from a paper several of us did for a class back in 2002. The numbers haven’t changed very much over time though.

    .

    82% of the murder victims in death penalty cases are white, 13% are black, a 6:1 ratio (NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), 1996). Opponents, such as Kica Matos, NAACP LDF, Steven Hawkins, Exec. Dir., National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and Sister Prejean, longtime Chairperson of the NCADP and author, Dead Man Walking, present this as evidence of a capitol punishment system values white lives over black lives and sentences accordingly. However, whites represent 56% of those executed, and blacks 38% (NAACP LDF, Summer 1996) when blacks have committed 47% of all murders, and whites 38%. Whites are executed at rates nearly 50% above their involvement in murder, blacks are executed at rates 20% below their involvement in murder.

    But what about the victims? Look at the federal statistics on crimes. The most relevant economic violent crime is robbery with injury, which shows a 4:1 ratio of white victims to black victims. By a 5:1 ratio, whites are more likely to be victims of rape/sexual assault than are blacks. For all property crimes (theft, burglary, auto theft), there is a 7:1 ratio of white to black victims. A comparison of only black and white perpetrators and victims reveal that whites are five times more likely to be the victims of violent crime than are blacks, or 7.5 vs 1.5 million. There is a 5:1 ratio for homicides, which by themselves, qualify for the death penalty. In death penalty states, police victim murders are capital crimes. From 1985-1994, 87% of murdered officers were white, 12% black, or 7:1 (LEO Killed and Assaulted, FBI:UCR, 1994). Whites make up a dominant percentage of multiple/serial murderers, whose victims are overwhelmingly white, thereby disproportionately and correctly raising the number of white victims in execution cases. In such death row cases, 87% of the victims are white, 13% black, or 7:1 (NAACP LDF data, 1996).

    Roughly 75% of blacks and 35% of whites believe that blacks are treated more harshly than whites by the criminal justice system. This is based partly on the public use by activist leaders of a history of 400 years of slavery and blatantly racist criminal justice practices by some ares in the U.S. in the past.

    However, A study of the death penalty, as imposed by Harris County (Houston, Texas, USA) juries, since 1982, found that the death penalty was imposed on white and black murderers in proportion to the capital offenses committed by those race classifications. Even in national studies, no evidence of system wide discrimination in the imposition of the death penalty exists beyond the 1950’s.

    Some may point out that blacks make up 12% of the US population, but they comprise just over 44% of the average national prison population. Research shows a close relationship between the racial distribution in both arrest and prison statistics and the race of offenders as described by the various crime’s victims. In other words racial groups are represented in prison according to their involvement in criminal activity. Prison numbers merely reflect who commits crime and not racial discrimination.

  10. From the homepage of the site you refer to, if you select the “Homicide trends” link, and from there select the “Race” link, you will find stats showing black-killings slightly under white-killings (with black-killings dropping below 10,000 and stabilizing Clinton-era).

    You cite “82% of the murder victims in death penalty cases are white, 13% are black, a 6:1 ratio.”

    Just as you introduced the source that said California spends $90 million a year to support a death penalty program that executes one convict a year, you’ve introduced the source that says while 47% of all murder victims are black, over four out of five death penalty case are for killing white victims. Thanks for showing us things are much worse than insane, far-left illogic could possibly imagine.

  11. Those, or being dumb enough to screw with Kirk, his ship or his crew to begin with. Go ahead, be a bad guy with Kirk at the helm. See it the phasers aren’t set for, “laying a smackdown on your candy @$$!!!!”

    Actually, Picard could rack up a pretty good body count as well. By the time he was done whining to Guinan, pontificating to Riker or holding meetings while Wesley saved the ship, his opponents often died of old age waiting for him to spring into action. I guess that could count as “killing” an enemy.

    I’m not biased towards Kirk, am I?

    Hmm… For some reason, this just got my brain churning tonight. It occurs to me that the standard perception of Kirk as a guns blazin’, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later kind of captain (particularly in relation to Picard) may not necessarily be borne out by evidence.

    Now, I’m not about to sit and watch all of both series to collect hard numbers. I like being married far too much for that. However, looking over a list of titles and synopses, I see a lot of bluffing, puzzle solving, and yes, even diplomacy on Kirk’s part. I also see quite a few times where “victory” was dependent on Spock, McCoy, or a good old fasioned deus ex machina.

    Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not dissing Kirk. I don’t think you have to pick one or the other, anyway. Between the different political climates, writing qualities, types of foes, and episode count, it’s dámņ near impossible to directly compare the two.

    But then, if you’re wanting to drop all considerations of command effectiveness, crew loyalty and survival rate, and how they deal with godlike beings, and look purely at balls-out bare-knuckle macho ášš-whuppitude, there’s only one true answer:

    Sisko.

    -Rex Hondo-

  12. Whoopsie, HTML tag blunder.

    Everything up to and including “I’m not biased towards Kirk, am I?” should, of course, be italicized.

    -Rex Hondo-

  13. Now, I’m not about to sit and watch all of both series to collect hard numbers. I like being married far too much for that.

    Rex wins today’s coffee on the keyboard award!

  14. “I remember a day when America believed it was better to let a few guilty people go free than the innocent go to jail. Not anymore, I guess.”

    Well, given the fact that Saddam Hussein was not an American, nor tried by an American court, nor executed by any American, I find this judgement both premature and a little offensive. Now you might say, “Well, if it wasn’t for our invasion he’d be alive!” Granted. I won’t argue that. What I WILL argue, though, is that actions taken by a soveriegn government according to their own laws are actually not our place to judge or impose our values.

  15. Well, Sean, you could also argue whether or not he lives on this planet. That line would make sense if the U.S. had no capital punishment laws and then introduced them in just the last few years. However, since we’ve had one since the first English boot stepped on a North American beach, he’s remembering a time that never was in this country.

  16. Hey, everybody–my last post, that first “nor” was actually supposed to be a “not”, and in between judge and impose, was supposed to be “nor.” Sorry, typing quick while I’m at work. You’d think an English major and a writer would be able to type, but that would mean typing AND thinking at the same time. I can only do one of those at a time. Don’t ask if I do either well. (I’d think that’d be obvious….)

    Jerry–I was giving the benefit of the doubt. Besides, for all I know, he DOESN’T live on this planet. That’s ALL I need, an angry extraterrestrial showing up at my house while I’m trying to get my son in the car to go to school. “Come on, Brian, get in your seat!” “I am Doo from the Planet Fuzzbop, you insulted me on PAD’s board, I’m here to give you a bad hair day!”

    Of course, considering the fact that I’m having a bad hair life, not much would change….

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