The title is taken from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s infamous statement as she was trying to defend herself from charges of ineptitude as four Americans were killed by rioters in Benghazi. But that statement can apply to so many things.
Clarence Dixon
Clarence Dixon’s Final Words Before Execution in Arizona
by Khaleda Rahman | Thursday, May 12, 2022
Clarence Dixon chided medical staff in his final moments before he was put to death in Arizona’s first use of the death penalty since 2014.
Dixon, 66, who was blind and in declining health, died by lethal injection at the state prison in Florence for the 1978 killing of 21-year-old Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin.
He was executed at 10 a.m. local time, according to Frank Strada, a deputy director with Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry.
“The Arizona Supreme Court should follow the laws,” Strada said Dixon declared shortly before he was put to death, according to The Associated Press.
“They denied my appeals and petitions to change the outcome of this trial. I do and will always proclaim innocence. Now, let’s do this sh**.”
There’s more at the original.
I have to ask: after 44 years on death row, for a murder Mr Dixon committed when he was 22-years-old, and with him being both blind and in declining health, why even bother? It cost the state of Arizona gobs of extra money to execute a guy who was going to die anyway in short order.
It was the first execution carried out in the Grand Canyon State since 2014, in which the state botched the execution of Joseph Wood, in which a lethal injection killing took over 90 minutes to execute the condemned man.
There are 113 men and 3 women on death row in Arizona, and from 1992, the date of the first execution following the reinstatement of capital punishment on August 8, 1973, until that botched execution in 2014, there had been 38 state and one federal execution there. Thirty-eight state executions, in 22 years, works out to 1.73 per year. With 116 people left on death row, it’s going to take until 2089 to execute them all.
And the state put all of that effort into offing a guy who was going to croak on his own soon enough.
Chart source: Death Penalty Information Center.
Is it really worth it?
Absent the 13 executions carried out under President Trump, all of the states put together managed to execute 15 murderers in two years, 8 in 2021 and 7 in 2020. There were 2,474 people under death sentences at the end of 2021, and the vast, vast majority of them will die in prison from something other than execution.
Is the harm to the prolife cause by supporting capital punishment really worth it when it is actually carried out in only 0.445% of the cases?[1]Calculated using 2021’s statistics.
We waste time, we waste money, and we harm the prolife cause by supporting capital punishment, when capital punishment doesn’t really do any good. Death penalty cases are much more expensive to try, and the continual appeals guaranteed to condemned prisoners winds up making capital punishment more expensive than simply locking up these cretins for the rest of their miserable lives.
References
| ↑1 | Calculated using 2021’s statistics. |
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I agree with the overall point of your post, but this one…not so much:
“And let me be clear on this: it greatly weakens the argument of those of us who are prolife, who oppose the killing of human beings for the convenience of the woman who is pregnant if we are willing to say that it’s perfectly fine for us to kill someone else because our reasons for doing so are better, more noble.”
Anyone who can’t grok the difference between killing an unborn child innocent of all wrongdoing simply because the mother finds her pregnancy to be inconvenient and killing a violent criminal who has demonstrated the inability to coexist with others in a civil society is not worth having the discussion with in the first place.
Ignoring the moral argument, anyone who can’t see that killing a child who was not afforded representation or due process of any kind as is required by the Constitution is a completely different prospect than killing an adult afforded a presumably fair trial and found guilty by a jury of their peers as well as afforded decades of appeals, isn’t someone with whom arguing would be productive.
Would you also argue that pro-life people harm their position if they support the right to use deadly force in self defense? Because that’s no less ridiculous a position.
By the way…full disclosure: I don’t support the death penalty under the current system, but it has nothing to do with squeamishness about taking the life of heinous, violent murderers. In fact, if our court system were better, I’d probably support expanding the death penalty to include other violent crimes.
The problem I have isn’t with the penalty itself, it’s with our judicial system in which coerced confessions of mentally handicapped people, “jailhouse snitches” being rewarded for their testimony, prosecutors refusing to provide potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense during discovery, questionable judicial rulings about the evidence allowed and how it is presented, and many other shady occurrences in a quest not for justice, but for a conviction, are not only accepted – they are often rewarded.
Not to mention compromised DNA evidence handling and testing, questionable forensic techniques being touted as air-tight, planted evidence “magically” discovered under suspicious circumstances accepted as unquestionable.
I could go on. In our judicial system, it is very rare that we can possibly truly know that a person convicted of a crime was actually guilty. Until we get MUCH better at rooting out such corruption (and prosecuting or at least firing those responsible) and ensuring that our judicial system is absolutely as transparent and efficient as it can possibly be, I do not and cannot support the “final solution” of putting someone to death. Dead people can’t be freed from the grave if, at some point in the future, “new evidence” comes to light proving their innocence.
Sailor Curt wrote:
That there’s a difference that some might not get, the important point is that whether they get it or not does not change their ability to vote.
No, I don’t argue that: people have a right to defend themselves, though there is a Talmud lesson to let yourself be killed, but do not kill. It does, however, refer to a more restricted question than simple self-defense.
However, when it comes to execution by the state, execution is not self-defense. If you are holding someone in captivity, and he cannot stop you from executing him, he is, by definition, helpless.
Nikolas Cruz pleaded guilty to the seventeen murders at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school, but his sentence, death or life in prison without parole, has not been determined. The state wants to execute him, and that sentence can only be passed by a jury, so the state is going through a lengthy, and delayed, jury selection process. It will cost the state a ton of money, for both the prosecution and defense, since Mr Cruz is being represented by public defenders, and even if sentenced to death, he would languish in prison for 15, 20, 25 years before all of his appeals could be exhausted.
Florida, with 330 people on death row, has executed 99 people since its first after the reinstitution of capital punishment, in 1979. Averaging 2.30 executions per year since then, but none since 2019, the Sunshine State should work its way through its current death row population by 2165!
330 condemned men, all with dozens of lengthy appeals, and Florida manages to work its way through 2.30 of the cases a year.
It would be simpler, and far less expensive, to just sentence Mr Cruz to life without parole, and keep him locked up in anonymity.
“However, when it comes to execution by the state, execution is not self-defense.”
Execution is not murder either, which is what abortion is.
Again, anyone who can’t see the difference isn’t going to change their mind because I suddenly condemn the death penalty as immoral.
You say these faux contradictions harm our position. With whom?
I’d contend that their false presumption of moral equivalence isn’t truly an expression of them being unable to comprehend our position, it’s simply a ploy. A tactic. A ruse. False equivalence is a well established logical fallacy, not a valid point and has no bearing or impact on the strength of our arguments.
“there is a Talmud lesson to let yourself be killed, but do not kill.”
I’m not Jewish so the Talmud is not in my wheelhouse. I’m Christian, but religion is not a prerequisite for morality.
As far as the rest, I don’t disagree with you at all. I stated in my initial comment that I agree with the overall premise of your original post. The way we “do” execution is just about the least efficient and cost effective way to deal with violent criminals.
But that’s a process and procedures question, not a moral one. My only argument with you is the implication that there is some moral equivalence between taking the life of a pure innocent on a whim with no due process and taking the life of someone guilty of a heinous crime against civilization after conviction by a jury and decades of due process at public expense. There is not. Period.
Just happened to stumble across a story today that (almost) perfectly illustrates my reason for opposing the death penalty:
https://reason.com/2022/05/13/louisiana-police-prosecutor-fabricated-evidence-michael-wearry-sentenced-to-death-lawsuit-scott-perrilloux-marlon-foster/
I say “almost” because in this particular instance, the courts took pity on the victim of government abuse and has ruled that the police and prosecutor who set him up are not entitled to immunity.
In fact, that finding is why this story is newsworthy…not because they manufactured evidence to convict someone they couldn’t prove committed the crime, but because they may be held accountable for it.
Of course, they’ll appeal the ruling and there’s a good chance it will be overturned and they’ll be afforded the immunity they were expecting…and that’s the problem.
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