So some guy tapes his dog's mouth shut to keep him from barking....

S

Scottwax

New member
...and the dog dies. He is convicted of animal cruelty and sentenced to 2 years. Fine, no problem with that. He didn't mean to kill his dog but his reckless behavior caused the suffering and death of his dog.



Meanwhile, some 23-year-old is driving drunk and kills a 10-year-old boy and gets 180 days...and get this, he has to serve it 18 days a year for 10 years. 9 days around Christmas through New Year and 9 days around the time of the kid's birthday. Regardless, still only 180 days total.



Both cases were in the Dallas area and the sentences were handed down this week. Can someone explain why a dog's life ended by reckless behavior is worth more than a human child's life, also ended by reckless behavior?



Seriously, this is some fouled up dookie.
 
Wow... your court system blows.



But I do like capital punishment.



If you kill someone in TX, the state will kill you back. ;)
 
MongooseGA said:
Wow... your court system blows.



But I do like capital punishment.



If you kill someone in TX, the state will kill you back. ;)
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How can you like capital punishment? It does not deter crime and is highly racist.



Im not saying that eye for an eye is wrong, I dont get it when you say you like it.
 
DetailGirl said:
How can you like capital punishment? It does not deter crime and is highly racist.



Im not saying that eye for an eye is wrong, I dont get it when you say you like it.
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Name me one single person who has been executed who killed again after their sentence was carried out. Just one.



How exactly is it racist? Last I heard, two of the three men who dragged Mr. Byrd to death in Texas are still on death row.



BTW, I do like the death penalty. Regardless of any deterent affect it may or may not have, it is a just punishment for capital murder.
 
Apparently our little DetailGirl has read that 3/4 of the people subject to the death penalty are minorities. Looking at prison statistics, I am not surprised by that fact. Sounds like Jesse Jackson is on the case, and I am not about to open a can of worms just to debate the topic.



Fact:



At midyear 2004 there were 4,919 black male prison and jail inmates per 100,000 black males in the United States, compared to 1,717 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males and 717 white male inmates per 100,000 white males. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm
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I support the death penalty for severe crimes including murder and sexual molestation of children. Perhaps it does not act as a deterrent but it does prevent the same person from committing crime once again.
 
Yeah, I've gotta say I'm a big death penalty proponent too. I could care less that it disproportinally affects minority murderers , cause its not like theyre picking innocent black guys off the street and putting them to death (for the most part, yes I know that mistakes do happen, sadly).



I dont know about you, but I feel that justice should pretty much be about revenge. If no one is pissed off (underage drinking, drug use, speeding, other statutory crimes) than I feel the punishment should be light/nonexistant. If there is a victim, than the perpetrator should be punished harshly. I hate to say it, but its a messed up system when you can get 30 days for allowing underage drinking at your house, and no time for keying some guys car (yes, I know as an Autopian, my perception is a little bit warped).



Basically, I think if you kill someone who didn't have it coming in a premeditated matter, and its proven through DNA/you confess, etc, there should be an automatic death penalty. If you kill someone accidentally in a stupid manner (drunk driving, accidental shooting, various fire-related manners of death), than you should serve a coupla years, minimum.



As far as the guy who killed the dog, there was definetly no sadistic intent behind it. He should have gotten probation/not allowed to own pets for 5 years or so. People who torture animals deliberately, on the other hand, should have the same done to them. I know if anyone ever did something to my dog, the cops would never find them.
 
I don't have a problem with an eye for an eye. If you commit a bad enough crime than you deserve what you have comming. Unfortunately I have ZERO confidince in the legal system to get the guilty person and apply the death penalty in a consistant manner. Far too many dirty cops out there. DNA I don't trust. It's so easy to set some one up with DNA. You leave traces where ever you go. It's so easy to plant this stuff and set you up. Bottom line is I'm for the death penalty on principle but I believe that the people in charge of handing out the sentences and gathering the facts to build a case are in many cases as bad if not worse than the criminals and are morally unqualified to be doing so.
 
Both incidents are terrible Scott. I would certainly agree with the dog dying and owner going to jail as I am an animal lover. However, the drunk driving killing a 10 year old should be longer.





My girlfriend's brother lost his best friend to a drunk driver. He was in the car and they hit a tree doing 65. The drunk driver walked away. Hes doing 6 months in juvi and community service. The incident was over a year ago and the family is still distraught; he was an only child.



The law system really makes me wonder sometimes.
 
DetailGirl said:
How can you like capital punishment? It does not deter crime and is highly racist.
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Calling capital punishment an instrument of racial bias is an old argument that's been ripped to shreds so many times, I'm surprised people still bring it up.



I guess we should get rid of law enforcement entirely. After all, look at the statistics...it's an obvious source of racial bias.
 
I believe it is less of a matter of it (racism) being a legitimate argument against capital punishment (or any other punishment, for that matter) and more that the person is unable to form their own opinion, look at valid statistics, and so on. Instead, they jump on the bandwagon of groups against capital punishment and use the very same arguments, even if they are invalid.
 
Yeah, the sentences do seem disproportionate. Sounds like a more sensible set of sentenceing guidelines is called for.



I dunno about taping a dog's mouth shut not being a case of "sadistic intend"? I'd say any "I didn't know better..." defense is BS.



I find the whole notion of "revenge" to be irrational (sorry, that sounds all :nono and I don't mean it that way). People and animals that I truly loved have been unspeakably victimized (violent sexual assault happened to an "in-law-in-law" just last week in TN, so traumatic that her life might basically be over), but returning the favor wouldn't solve anything and doing like unto the perpetrators would, IMO, make me no better than they are. Kill the perpetrator(s) of the aforementioned assault? Sure, but in the right way and for the right reasons.



Best argument I can think of for the death penalty (which I do support) is that when they're dead, they can't do it again and killing them is more efficient than keeping them alive but neutralized. Yeah, I'd do it personally with no remorse at all, but I wouldn't take any pleasure in doing so. And I would sure want to be certain that the person was guilty. Which isn't so hard to ascertain sometimes, like when they brag about it :rolleyes:
 
The biggest problem with the death penalty is that sometimes people who get executed aren't guilty.



The whole penal system works against society, against all of us. It is a vestige of a solution that was concocted 500 years ago, and it doesn't work today. Once a person is incarcerated, it becomes very hard, almost impossible, for them to ever get back in step with the mainstream of society. Few employers are willing to take a chance on him/her. Many of these people come out far worse off, and far less likely to contribute, than they were when they went in. Our penal system doesn't just punish criminals, it makes them stronger, better criminals.



I have no doubt at all that the criminal justice system judges minorities more harshly than it does the majority of Americans. To think that that wouldn't carry over to capital punishment doesn't make sense to me. If there is an argument that counters this I'd like to see it.



Ask any black man if he's been hassled by the police for what they call "DWB"; "driving while black".



I used to own a Good Humor truck. One of my friends there, Darryl, is black. Now, at the end of the day you have a big bag of money; change and ones and fives. Typically we would get to the plant (where we parked for the night) around 9PM, clean the trucks out, and go home. Darryl rode the bus home and caught it at about 9:50. So this one night, he was a little late and had to run the quarter mile or so to the bus stop, with a money bag full of change and small bills.... And of course a police car lit him up, and shook him down, and took him in, and hassled him for several hours, and he did nothing wrong. Point being, all he was was a black guy running at night. A white guy wouldn't have drawn a second look.



What do you want to bet that in the cases Scott is describing, the guy who got 2 years is black and the guy who got 18 days a year for 10 years is white?



I dunno, I probably shouldn't post this, but what the heck.





Tom
 
Does anyone know the just how many people have been executed that were in fact not guilty? I am sure it is very few in comparison to the overall number of legal executions. I will look for facts on it later today.



No doubt race has an influence but we are all guilty of it. I do not believe for a second that there is a person standing on this earth that has not judged a person because of their race. Do you feel comfortable getting on a plane with 5 arabs? Doubtful. End of that discussion as I do not want to take this off-topic.



Mosca says the penal system works against criminals. Would you, as an employer, be willing to take a risk with a convicted sex offender or thief? I wouldn't. You have to protect yourself and if it means discriminating against ex-cons, then so be it. Sad, perhaps, but mistakes have lasting consequences.
 
No disagreement on the racism, TW85 HHI. The first step is recognizing it within ourselves.



As far as executing the not guilty, I'd say that once the person is executed no one goes back and checks, because that implies that the execution was in error and no one wants to believe that it could happen. I think the strongest evidence is the number of people being exonerated by modern forensic investigation. Too often eyewitness testimony is flawed. And evidence is often altered or suppressed by investigators who are certain that they have the right man but need more to "prove" that they do.



I don't have an answer for the question of what to do with ex-cons; I wish I did. Too often our assessment of a person is wrong. We can think a man has changed when he has not. Until we get that order of mirrors into the soul, there won't be a solution. But not everyone in prison are sex offenders or thieves. Some are delinquent child support. Some accidentally killed their dog. Some are regular guys who got drunk and killed someone in a car accident.





Tom
 
-Since 1973, there have been 119 exonerees. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=6&did=110



-Of those 119 exonerees, 60 were black, 46 were white, 12 hispanic, and 1 "other." http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=412&scid=6#inn-yr-rc



-At least 966 people have been executed in the United States since 1976. 560 were white, 324 were black. 81% of the victims were white, 14% were black.



-Here is an interesting link for those that argue capital punishment is racist. This proves otherwise: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=5&did=184#inmaterace



-Currently, there are 3,455 people on death row. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=9&did=188#year



Here is another link. http://deathpenaltyinfo.org/FactSheet.pdf Yes, it says blacks receive the death penalty at a 38% higher rate than whites and a defendent with a white victim is 3.5 times more likely to be sentenced to death, but the death row statistics prove fewer black people have been executed than whites, and that fewer blacks are on death row.



DetailGirl, above are FACTS. Still want to say it is racist?
 
DetailGirl said:
How can you like capital punishment? It does not deter crime and is highly racist.



Im not saying that eye for an eye is wrong, I dont get it when you say you like it.
Click to expand...



Racist my as*.



I don't get it when you say you don't]/i] like it.
 
Mosca, I don’t agree with your post, but you make some good points. There are a lot of incontrovertible arguments against the death penalty, and they mainly focus on the imperfections of our legal system. No matter how remote the possibility of executing an innocent person, the small chance still exists….meaning that it will happen every once in a while. That is something that no one can deny.



However, your entire argument for racism extending to capital punishment, because it “obviously� exists in society in general isn’t too compelling. The entire basis of your argument is from a general assumption that people will be more likely to convict a minority than a non-minority. Thus, the death penalty doesn’t work or should be discarded.



Well how about people that are wrongfully sentenced to life? How about people that are wrongfully sentenced to one year? In your mind, these situations are less tragic, right? So basically, your argument against the death penalty due to the inevitability of racism and innocent people being wrongfully executed is like saying our justice system should be more lenient in general when handing out punishment because we might actually be punishing an innocent person (due to racism or whatever). The harsher the punishment, the more tragic it is for the inevitable times when someone is wrongfully convicted. So from your arguments, perhaps we should chop all jail-terms in half and abolish capital punishment so that we can help mitigate the disaster of wrongfully convicting an innocent person.



I’m not saying racism doesn’t exist. As a member of a minority group myself, I obviously know it exists.



Hehe, but then again, you might not want to listen to me. I’m in LA…the city that acquitted OJ. :D
 
S'Ok, I don't mind being disagreed with, because we really all want the same result: justice. It's not as if I want anarchy and you want law. The only way we can see each other's POV is by saying it to each other. If there's some of what you say that makes sense to me, and some of what I say that makes sense to you, then maybe somewhere in there is a way to make things better.



You're right Intermezzo, I based my argument on general assumptions, and I specifically reworded my post before sending to include phrases like "doesn't make sense to me" and "I have no doubt at all that" so that it would be what it is: not anything based on statistics, but based on what I see in the world (which can be highly skewed). I don't have any problem with capital punishment, in the abstract. My problem is with the imperfectness of implementing it. And I don't have an alternative. I have what I WISH the world would be like, but we all know what that's worth.



TW85 HII, thanks for the link. I will check it out. My immediate thought is that since the percent of population that is black is lower than the percent of blacks that get executed, there is bias there; but that is not a strict and stringent argument, just a thought. I personally think that the number of whites who get "let go" (at traffic stops, for instance, like happened to me when I was a foolish kid and could have been put away for years if the officer had done a thorough search) where blacks would get greater scrutiny is one place where statistics will never be kept showing that bias.



Anyhow, it's good to listen.







Tom
 
All I can say , is thank GOD for DNA tests.... Too bad that a too high percentage of convicted felons were found not to have done the crime, only the time....



And why is death row exempt from this statistic ?



So to all you Capital punishment buffs, if the state is so perfect as to mete out such true justice, PLEASE show me the state owned time machine that they use when they find or suspect that an INNOCENT has been put to death...:grrr
 
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