It’s ironic that the Texas executioner will never spend a night in jail, yet Saddam Hussein was hanged. As governor of Texas, George Bush executed 131 prisoners. He slept on clean sheets last night and enjoyed three hot meals today. Hussein, recently convicted of killing 148 people in 1982, was hanged this morning.
Bush should certainly be tried for misconduct in office at both the state and federal levels, but I’m opposed to the death penalty. Although he was responsible for all those deaths in Texas and the deaths of 3,000 US service men and women in Iraq, I believe that when found guilty he should be imprisoned, not executed. And vaguely, I felt the same way about Hussein. State sanctioned homicide is no better or worse than the private enterprise version. Killing is killing, and by permitting Bush to turn him over to the hangman we’re all complicit in the death of Saddam Hussein.
I won’t lose any sleep over Hussein’s passing, nor Gerry Ford’s, nor the recent demise of Pinochet. I do continue to regret the shallow and callous nature of George W. Bush.
The Chicago Tribune published a compelling report on an investigation of all 131 death cases in Governor Bush’s time. It made chilling reading.
In one-third of those cases, the report showed, the lawyer who represented the death penalty defendant at trial or on appeal had been or was later disbarred or otherwise sanctioned. In 40 cases the lawyers presented no evidence at all or only one witness at the sentencing phase of the trial.
In 29 cases, the prosecution used testimony from a psychiatrist who — based on a hypothetical question about the defendant’s past — predicted he would commit future violence. Most of those psychiatrists testified without having examined the defendant: a practice condemned professionally as unethical.
Other witnesses included one who was temporarily released from a psychiatric ward to testify, a pathologist who had admitted faking autopsies and a judge who had been reprimanded for lying about his credentials.
Asked about the Tribune study, Governor Bush said, “We’ve adequately answered innocence or guilt” in every case. The defendants, he said, “had full access to a fair trial.”
There are two ways of understanding that comment. Either Governor Bush was contemptuous of the facts or, on a matter of life and death, he did not care.
{ 32 comments… read them below or add one }
I can go with life imprisonment, but with NO opportunity for release after a few years of good behavior, which is the way most states do it now. In the case of W, could we at least add a little bit of soul-tormenting and body-mangling torture?
“Life without parole” should be the worst sentence we impose. Isolating the villains from the rest of us should be good enough. Capital punishment is medieval bullshit, and it goes right along with the whole hierarchical dominance thing that the right wing is so comfortable with.
If only - http://www.at.ns.co.yu/BushExecution/BBC_Breaking_News.htm
Capital punishment only makes “sense” if you are a firm believer in a vengeful God. If you are an atheist or an agnostic it makes no sense at all as once a person is dead they are no longer being punished. Murderers such as Saddam or Bush deserve to be locked up for life in solitary confinement with no possibility of release or joining the prison general population. The psychological torture of this will punish them for their crimes and stand as a warning to others of what will happen to them if they pursue the same path.
The prospect of decades of complete solitary confinement is a far greater deterrent than that of death.
This is why I’m so disgusted with the platitudes being spoken this week about Gerald Ford. His action of pardoning Nixon set the stage for the behavior we see in Bush today, Utter contempt for the law and the constitution knowing he’ll never have to pay a price for that contempt.
kudos to this article and the few comments I read. I couldn’t agree more.
I have little doubt that Hussein was a “monster” and I have shed no tears for who he was. But he was a human being and I shuddered at the obscenity that state murder always is. I would have wished for him what I wished for all his victims. Mercy, compassion, humanity. Civilised people ought to be above the brutalities that we condemn.
But I do not condemn his hanging so much because of what it did to him, but because of what it does to me and all of us. Although I live in Australia, on the other side of the world, and although I have railed and rallied against the war, as a citizen of my country I am complicit in the war and I have been made complicit in the manner of his death. The manner of Saddam’s trial and sumary execution subverts the very basis of western democracy and freedom which the war supposedly defends and promotes - the rule of law, fairness,justice and humanity. And I object to the stench of deceit and brutality and death and arrogance which is now unavoidably in my nostrils and which will not go away.
To Doug Alder.
You are completely wrong in your statement
“Capital punishment only makes “sense” if you are a firm believer in a vengeful God. If you are an atheist or an agnostic it makes no sense at all as once a person is dead they are no longer being punished.
As an atheist, you do not believe in an afterlife or heaven or whatever. Thus, this life is the only one you have to live. Depriving someone else of living and experiencing that life, however confining that may be in a cell, is the ultimate punishment. Since most capital crimes are for murdering someone else, thus taking THEIR only life away without just cause, then capital punishment makes perfect sense.
In the original poster’s post, the idea that “Killing is killing” is just complete nonsense.
Any sane, rational person can see that killing in self-defense, or killing as punishment for a heinous crime is much different than killing someone for money, or sex, or to hide a different crime. THINK A BIT BEFORE YOU SPEAK!
It is in society’s best interest to remove those who would prey on it’s innocent members. I also believe that it is NOT in society’s best interest to feed, clothe, house, educate, etc… those same people for the rest of their lives. I think the death penalty is underused. One thing I did enjoy (other than the fact that he was hanged) about Saddam’s death was that the trial was relatively short, and the sentence was quickly .. ahem… executed. I wish that happened more often in the U.S.
Mercy for the guilty is treason to the innocent.
Life without parole is a form of execution. Capital punishment is state-sanctioned murder, in my opinion.
I have been troubled enough by this event (”murder as PR” - Jane Hamsher) that once I stumbled upon it, I watched this 50+ minute Google Video of lawyer and best-selling author Scott Turow examine the issue (quite intelligently, imo) based on his considerable experience with the death sentence in Illionois and at the federal level.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1955637897391681187&q=capital+punishment+scott
I understand his course of logic (ultimately, he comes down as against capital punishment but not for the reason you’d expect), and respect his disciplined expertise in the area. I remain firmly against capital punishment in the forms it is practiced, while I agree that some people carry out such monstrous crimes that they should never again be physically or mentally free.
Life sentences without any opportunity for parole accomplishes the same thing as physically executing people without enabling the barbarism of vengeance.
THINK A BIT BEFORE YOU SPEAK! Yes, James, do. There are alternatives to killing in self-defense. Being smart enough not to put yourself in a position to need self-defense is the best. You share responsibility for being in that position where you think you need to kill someone. I think James carries around a gun expecting, or hoping, someone will try to attack him, so he can kill that person. I also think he is a hunter of big-game predators. Fits the psych profile.
OMFG, would you bother to keep alive a dog who had mauled a child to death? Do you eat meat when there’s plenty of grain to go around? Those who murder with forethought (and are unequivocally proven to have done so) are less than “human” - the human standard of high self-awareness and the golden rule. Society has the right and the obligation to rid itself of predators just as nature rids itself of any genes that are unfit for the survival of the species.
Just so, and you will find many other famous people who agree with your social reasoning and morality. What is good for “society” - that is what counts. Stalin certainly thought so. And Hitler. And Saddam Hussein. Damn those pesky Jews and boorish peasants, and Shiites and Kurds. Off with their heads if they disagree with what I think is best for “society”.
Yes, actually, but then I don’t carry guns in the back of a pickup. Or to put it another way, “How would Jesus have executed Saddam?”
Oh (and “OMFG”):
1. What is this supposed “human standard” of “high self-awareness”? Which strange sect does it spring from? I can tell you that high self-awareness is not at the top of the list of human standards. High “other” awareness and “compassion”, maybe.
2. You do not know anything about evolution at all. What you claim is exactly not true.
3.
Precisely. The state execution of a person is exactly “murder with forethought” - much, much more forethought than most murders in fact - and there is no doubt about the murderers’ guilt. As you so accurately say, they are less than human. These murderers include those who bring the sentence, those who make capital laws, those who carry out the execution, those who facilitate it, those who actively support the execution and those who merely do not oppose it. They are all, as you say, sub-human.
Few points:
First off, I don’t own a gun, and I don’t hunt.
Secondly, Again… think before you speak. “smart enough not to put yourself in a position to need self defense?” It sounds like you are blaming the victims of crimes for the crimes committed against them! Are you actually serious with that statement? Is it someone’s fault if they are robbed, raped, or murdered by someone else? The blame lies with the perpetrator. Get your head on strait.
I seriously doubt you have any idea of the concept of what justice is.
I’m not completely for the “eye for an eye” type of justice. Each case has it’s own circumstances, and each story is it’s own. But I completely support it’s use as punishment.
Executions are not murder my friends. It is simply false to equate the two.
State execution is not murder with forethought. It is silly really to try and convince people that actual murder and executions are similar. Stop with the hysteria and drama, and realize that executions are good with due process.
The idea of comparing our justice system to the likes of Stalin, Hitler, Hussein… .again, stop with the hysteria and drama. Your analogies are fundamentally flawed.
“How would Jesus have executed Saddam?”
Please. Keep the religious superstition and false morals out of rational arguments.
In fact, in Saddam’s case, it’s the irrational hatred of religious groups against one another that is at the root of all the problems in the Middle East.
It’s that strange sect that refuses to grow humans for food.
Compassion springs directly from self-awareness. And our ability to see ourselves in others gives rise to the Golden Rule. This is my reference to a “human standard”. It’s also what makes us feel superior to all other life forms, and therefore discriminate: innocent animals are butchered for food, but butchering humans must be preserved, because dammit, they’re just so much like us.
State execution is not murder. No more than the surgeon who is “murdering” those innocent cells of the malignancy he just removed from your spleen. But then, maybe we should prove our compassion by allowing those cells to fulfill their (indeterminate) natural life, in a big cozy petri dish.
Salmonsen, I’ll not argue with you about capital punishment. It sounds like you have a huge ax to grind there and that you enjoy the sense of power and control that a final solution can bring. I’m responding because of your unsupportable assertion that “it’s the irrational hatred of religious groups against one another that is at the root of all the problems in the Middle East.” This is a convenient fiction that we find easy to accept because of the historical roots of a credulous mass of believers swarming out of the typhus infested castles of medieval Europe in pursuit of vague goals of conquest over the heathens in the name of their savior, the living God, Jesus Christ Almighty.
If you peel back the fiction and see who benefits from the projection of power and control, you will always find a secular root cause for the struggle. Consider Ireland…. Labeling these conflicts “religious strife” is a red herring.
Regarding justice systems… our adversarial system had five hundred years of development out of a tradition of trial by combat in feudal England before the enlightenment. I would rather compare our system to the French system than to the system practiced under the dictatorships of any of the three men you named.
Frank,
The religious problems in the middle east aren’t simply Islam vs. Christianity. It’s Islam vs. Islam. It’s Islam vs. Judaism. Israel is a huge thorn in the paw of the ME. It would be wrong to say that religion is the ONLY thing causing the violence and hatred, but it’s a big part. Groups oppressing other groups over there would be another big part. It just so happens that those groups are easily labeled and identified along religious lines.
Ireland is another good example of this. It’s one group with a history of oppressing the other. It just so happens that each group sends it’s youth to segregated religious schools, and it perpetuates the division.
It’s a completely supportable assertion that a great majority of the violence in the middle east is religion based.
I agree that our justice system is closer to the French than to the dictatorships. I was not the one who named them though, that was Grahm “What is good for “society” - that is what counts. Stalin certainly thought so. And Hitler. And Saddam Hussein.” and I was responding to that bit of nonsense.
oy
uh… yeah
oy
“Mercy for the guilty is treason to the innocent.”
Indeed! Works for me . . . or did for a while anyway . . . Pity itself is treason. Punishment is a form of clemency, that’s the ticket.
What Walt was advocating
amounts to Eugenics - the betterment or purification of the race either by selective breeding or by removal of the inferior. That has been the justification of the atrocities of Hitler and Pol Pot amongst many others who believed they had some access to absolute truth.
My point is that the real and lasting consequences of judicial murder - and yes it is cold-blooded, pre-meditated murder - are the effects it has on the societies that preactise it and on the individuals in those societies.
Again, I say to you that your analogies are fundamentally flawed. And, calling executions murder again, is simply false. You have no credible, rational justification for comparing the two. It is not (to use your inflammatory and hysterical language “cold-clooded, pre-meditated murder”. It is rational, righteous punishment for serious crimes.
It’s also not Eugenics. Are you simply blind to the fact that the person being executed committed a grievous crime against someone else? Where is the justice for the victims of their crimes? How can you equate one person murdering or raping someone else to selective breeding?
We’re not talking about killing Jews because they’re Jews, and gassing them with Zyklon-B. We’re talking about justifiably punishing someone for acts they committed.
It is simply not rational to compare the two.
As far as the so-called “effect” it has on the societies that practice it… Well, let’s see. It’s definitely a benefit to any other victims the murderer/rapist (whatever) would have victimized. It’s a benefit to the society because they won’t have this predator to take care of any more, or worry about what they might do next. So, yeah, it’s a good thing. I’d say it’s bad for the lawyers. Once their client is gone, they can’t soak up any more legal fees.
I can live with that.
And, I would feel safer in society without them around quite frankly. Does anyone have any data on repeat offenders? Think about that for a bit. Think of the stories you’ve heard of people getting out of prison, or escaping, and then committing the exact same crimes they were in there for in the first place!
This idea that executing people for serious crimes is harmful to society is simply nonsense.
Given the rate of false convictions in capital punishment cases, claims to the justice of it are entirely fatuous. The eugenics argument Graham debunked is a step down from fatuous. Furthermore, nature is not a conscious entity weeding out the unfit. Evolution and survival don’t work that way.
Society is not an organism, a machine or a natural force. It is a fragile construct of often flawed human interactions, which can easily be turned hostile to the people it’s supposed to serve.
And what is that rate of false convictions exactly? I think it’s quite low.
I agree that societies can become corrupt. I agree that governments can become corrupt. If you happen to think that the current U.S. government is corrupt, you would find me in total agreement. You can also make a good case that our justice system is flawed. However, that’s no reason not to use it to the best of our ability to make sure justice is done.
Between 1976 and 2024 101 people were released from death row after being wrongfully convicted. A Northwestern University J-School study and activism on the part of the students helped to address the problem in Illinois. The best articles documenting the Northwestern work are behind paid firewalls, but if you are really interested and if data regarding prisoners wrongfully convicted AND executed would sway you, then just let me know.
Out of those 101 people, you think all of them were actually innocent of the crime? Or, were they let go due to other reasons?
One other point: The advancements in DNA testing has improved greatly the chances that a suspect is guilty or innocent correctly. What are your thoughts?
The question is, how many innocent people is it okay to execute in order to be sure you got the all the guilty ones? And are you advocating executing rapists as well as murderers? How broad would you like to make the list of capital crimes?
Northwestern Journalism students found three people in Illinois who were innocent, not on a technicality, but INNOCENT. All would have been executed. Regarding the other 98… you can do your own research. I’m not debating with you. What are my thoughts? My thoughts are that you are a deranged individual, fit only for the company of squirrels.
Thank you Frank for your constructive criticism. I will be sure to send my squirrel friends your fond wishes.
John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia, on capital punishment:
Sadam Hussein deserved what he got he is a beast. The world needs to rid it self of such violent perpertrators of crime, who are an insult to the concept of a human being. If he was sentenced to imprisonment for life. What good would that do to society? With his high connections is it not possible that he could escape even from a max security prison? Life imprisonment where the government has to cater to such criminals is a waste of the government’s resources. It is a waste of the money of tax payers. Instead give the money to the children starving in Africa.
One thing that never seems to be mentioned in debates over capital
punishment is that the law DOES NOT impose the death penalty for
every form of culpable homicide. The division of homicides into
degrees of severity under English law goes back hundreds of years;
unlawful killings were divided ino murder, voluntary manslaughter
(= murder with mitigating circumstances such as the accused being
in a state of uncontrolable anger as a result of provocation by the
victim or unreasoning fear as a result of credible threats of violence by
the victim), and involuntary manslaughter ( = negligent homicide).
American law carried this one step further by dividing murder itself
into “ordinary” (i.e. second degree) murder, and “aggravated (i.e.
first degree) murder in which aggravating “special circumstances”
were present. Whether you are a supporter of capital punishment or
not, this has to be taken into consideration.