What is the point of executing a person for a 1988 crime?

[Pies4shaw]

Even allowing for the fact that I cannot abide the US processes of judicial murder, no sensible purpose could possibly be served by executing a man in 2024 (after a failed crack at killing him a couple of years earlier) for a crime of violence committed the same year Graham Wright first played senior footy for Collingwood.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... trogen-gas

[What'sinaname]

Yes execution should be done within a few years of the crime.

[stui magpie]

I missed in the article when he was arrested.

If he was arrested in the 80's WTF took so long?

There's only a few crimes I'd consider worthy of the death sentence, this, bad as it is, wouldn't be one of them. And using a method that takes 22 minutes to kill someone? That's just torturing them. use the fkn Guillotine. yeah it's crude, but it's quick and 100% effective.

[David]

One good thing about the lengthy delays involved is that it allows time for appeals and new evidence to be found or, for that matter, for laws to change. And the longer it takes, the more likely it is that the prisoner will eventually die of natural causes anyway (effectively making it the same as a life sentence).

Whenever the death penalty finally gets abolished in the US states that carry it out, there will no doubt be dozens of death row inmates whose lives will be spared who would have been executed beforehand if the process had been more efficient. So that’s something.

Of course, I start from the principle that the death penalty is totally unnecessary and barbaric, and seemingly particularly so in this instance; so it’s hard for me to say which out of a quick or decades-delayed execution (i.e. of life but with the prospect of death hanging over your head) is better. I just hope places like Alabama progress into the 20th century sometime soon.

[Skids]

I always wonder if those opposed to the death penalty would change their view if someone close to them was brutally raped and murdered.

[What'sinaname]

I always wonder if those opposed to the death penalty would change their view if someone close to them was brutally raped and murdered.

I think you know the answer.

[David]

There may be studies out there on how personal experience of crime changes attitudes towards punishment, but my impression has always been that family members of victims by and large tend not to gain much satisfaction from the perpetrators being put to death (and often say as much after the verdict has been handed down). Rather, the loudest and most vehement supporters of capital punishment often seem to be those with no stake in the matter, and who merely read or heard about the crime from afar. For them, the prospect of enacting vengeance seems to deliver a vicarious thrill.

It's possible that those who are closer to the situation and dealing with grief just aren't as able to feel that same pleasure in further suffering being inflicted.

George Orwell wrote a good essay about the desire for revenge and how it gets affected by proximity: https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/ ... sh/e_revso

Properly speaking, there is no such thing as revenge. Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also.

[Magpietothemax]

^No study has ever shown that executing the perpetrator brings any form of "closure" to the families of murdered victims. (In the same way, no study has ever shown that the death penalty acts as a deterrent of any kind. )
The quote you provide David is just so true. As soon as the situation of impotence is removed, the desire for revenge disappears.

The man just executed in Alabama, Kenny Smith, was judicially murdered by nitrogen asphyxiation - a modern form of the gas chamber. This was carried out even though the state of Alabama had attempted to execute him 2 years earlier by lethal injection, but the executioners had been unable to administer the deadly drugs before the time limit for the death warrant expired.

According to a witness, Smith convulsed and writhed as he died, in a scene he described as torture. The execution proceeded despite the fact that legal experts from the UN had called on the US government to halt it because the experimental execution technique to be used might inflict grave suffering, in violation of the International Convention against Torture, which the US ratified in 1994.

Any government willing to endorse genocide in Gaza is more than capable of inflicting torture and suffering against those it deems worthless at home.

[What'sinaname]

He was unconscious so had no idea of what was happening. It wasn’t torture.

If you’re decapitated and your body twitches, it’s similarly not torture.

[lazzadesilva]

According to a witness, Smith convulsed and writhed as he died, in a scene he described as torture. The execution proceeded despite the fact that legal experts from the UN had called on the US government to halt it because the experimental execution technique to be used might inflict grave suffering, in violation of the International Convention against Torture, which the US ratified in 1994.

In such cases I always get frustrated that the Authorities are such pathetic paper tigers

[think positive]

hmm certainly not the worst murderer, not a serial, he had help, did the other one die too?

but gees, if it was my mum, rot in hell bastard, and suffer as much as possible! no **** to give

Steven Avery, now there’s a cause I could get behind,

Gees we think our justice system sux!

[David]

He was unconscious so had no idea of what was happening. It wasn’t torture.

If you’re decapitated and your body twitches, it’s similarly not torture.

That’s not what the article in the OP says:

Marty Roney of the Montgomery Advertiser reported that between 7.57pm local time and 8.01pm, “Smith writhed and convulsed on the gurney. He took deep breaths, his body shaking violently with his eyes rolling in the back of his head.”

Roney’s report continued: “Smith clenched his fists, his legs shook … He seemed to be gasping for air. The gurney shook several times.”

The Rev Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual adviser, was at Smith’s side for the execution, and said prison officials in the room “were visibly surprised at how bad this thing went”.

“What we saw was minutes of someone struggling for their life,” Hood said.

“It appeared that Smith was holding his breath as long as he could,” the Alabama corrections commissioner, John Hamm, later told a press conference.

[…]

The execution took about 22 minutes. Smith appeared to remain conscious for several of those minutes, at times appearing to shake and writhe on the gurney and pull against his restraints.

[Magpietothemax]

Yet another act of barbarism in the US.
Another intellectually disabled person executed for a crime committed 30 years ago:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/0 ... y-m23.html

Why does anyone think that the US is a "civilised state" ?

[Skids]

30 years ago or 30 minutes ago.... the brutal crime was still committed..
She was somebodies daughter and the mother of an infant.

Pye bought a .22 pistol before the three men went wearing ski masks to the man’s home, where Yarbrough was alone with the baby. Pye kicked in the door and held Yarbrough at gunpoint, while the men took her ring and necklace. The three then abducted her, took her to a motel and raped her.

The court document says they drove Yarbrough down a dirt road, where Pye ordered her out of the car and told her to lie face down. He then shot her three times.

What would you suggest... a good talking to?

Good riddance.

[Culprit]

At a cost to the Taxpayer (In Australia) @ Approximately $120k a year then execution is a cheaper alternative. Never been one for the death penalty as we may kill an innocent person but alas if most are correct then I class the others as just an error. Will it change crimes/murders etc? No.