Yesterday, Brian Dorsey was executed for a crime he committed in 2006. By all accounts, during his time in prison, he became remorseful for his actions and was a “model prisoner,” to the point that multiple corrections officers backed his petition for clemency.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/09/us/brian-dorsey-missouri-execution-tuesday/index.html
In general, the media is painting him as the victim of a justice system that fails to recognize rehabilitation. I find this idea disgusting. Brian Dorsey, in a drug-induced stupor, murdered the people who gave him shelter. He brutally ended the life of a woman and her husband, and (allegedly) sexually assaulted her corpse. There is an argument that he had ineffective legal representation, but that doesn’t negate the fact that he is guilty.
While I do believe that he could have been released or had his sentence converted to life in prison, and he could have potentially been a model citizen, this would have been a perversion of justice. Actions that someone takes after committing a barbaric act do not undo the damage that was done. Those two individuals are still dead, and he needed to face the ramifications for his actions.
Rehabilitation should not be an option for someone who committed crimes as depraved as he did. Quite frankly, a lethal injection was far less than what he deserved, given the horror he inflicted on others. If the punishment should fit the crime, then he was given far more leniency than was warranted.
Actions that someone takes after committing a barbaric act do not undo the damage that was done.
Neither does his death.
Those two individuals are still dead, and he needed to face the ramifications for his actions.
Which no one denies. Th ramifications should have been life in prison without a chance for parole.
Which no one denies. Th ramifications should have been life in prison without a chance for parole
Agreed. The death penalty should be revoked in my opinion. It’s an archaic penalty.
While it apparently didn’t happen in this case, there are a number of examples of people who have gone to death row, been executed, then proven to have been innocent after all. That’s a huge reason for me as to why the death penalty should be done away with.
That’s is one of my big issues. Another issue is it’s just vengeance. The system should be about justice.
I don’t think executing people makes society safer. I do not think it deters crime.
It obviously doesn’t deter crime.
The US is an outlier on the death penalty. Most western countries don’t have it, but we don’t have higher homicide rates.
That’s always been an excuse in America.
I’ve never one though, I’d murder this person but shucks, they’d execute me. I just don’t think about killing my fellow man in any serious way.
I agree with you.
Weird.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Or just chuck this up to I’m more socially liberal and more fiscally conservative.
One thing that puzzles me is how many religious people agree with the death penalty.
I’m not a fan of linking abortion to capital punishment. The two are different. I’m pro-choice and anti-death penalty. Pro-life people justify it by the actions of the murderer are the reason for his death. Since Jesus was about forgiveness. Seems like prison should be fine. Eye for an eye doesn’t mean you have to execute the person. I often see that quoted for the death penalty.
Did killing him bring them back? No? Then what’s the benefit?
It better be a pretty big fuckin benefit if you’re okay with our government having the authority to kill citizens. Cuz you know, the government can totally be trusted to not abuse power and authority…
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.
-JRR Tolkien
Everyone deserves death tbh
Yes, maybe he did deserve to die. But I’ll always oppose the death penalty on principle.
I oppose wasting resources on prisons and guards on people who will never see the outside of the prison on principle.
Executing someone costs significantly more than incarcerating them for life. The majority of that cost is in appeals, because we like to give people the best possible chance of not being wrongly executed. At least 4% of people sentenced to death were actually innocent. The only way to reduce the cost of the death penalty would be to take away that appeals process, trading innocent lives for money, which is usually considered “evil.”
If only that same energy went into someone not being wrongfully CONVICTED.
Gotta be convicted to be executed.
Thousands of Americans get wrongfully convicted regularly.
Do they get justice?
No.
Again, raise the bar for conviction, swiftly execute the judgement, and burn a cop who frames an innocent on the stake.
That means death is sentenced with the highest of stakes, and when it is sentenced, do it.
“Raising the bar for conviction” is a naive mindset that betrays a lack of understanding of the system. Nobody is sentenced to death without the judge and jury being just as certain of their guilt as they were of Brian Dorsey’s. Raising the bar to a height that would ensure no innocents are ever executed would necessitate the abolishment of the death penalty altogether.
But besides the “any law that can be used to rightfully execute a guilty person can be abused to wrongfully execute an innocent” argument, the death penalty is still a barbaric practice that the richest country on earth can afford to go without. Not every person will be rehabilitated, but I’m not convinced that not every person can be, and I will never be convinced that the State is a good enough judge of character to decide who is and isn’t capable of being rehabilitated.
Honestly, I cant follow you at all.
Your loosy goosy circular logic makes no sense to me.
I am receiving from you that “because of how the system is” we cant do anything about false conviction, so we shouldn’t do anything to address false conviction, and because of that, we cant use the death penalty, but its totally cool to lock people up for terms of 60+ years. Don’t address false convictions, end peoples lives in a far more cruel fashion but act like its okay since it wasn’t the death penalty?
No, address false convictions and act on the proper punishment for those convictions.
death penalty is still a barbaric practice
Life in prison is far more barbaric of a practice than the death penalty.
the richest country on earth
People need to stop saying this. America is not the richest country on Earth. America holds the richest 1% on Earth. Institutions like prolonged incarceration are one of the key institutions that enrich that 1 percent.
In the mean time, incarceration for petty offenses and overly invasive probation programs are bankrupting the poorest of Americans, and those high profile life sentences give the prisons the funds to lobby to expand incarceration for petty offenses and widen probation programs that keep people at the revolving door at the jails/prisons spinning.
the State is a good enough judge of character to decide who is and isn’t capable of being rehabilitated
So your argument is that people can be rehabilitated, but the State isnt even capable of deciding who can be rehabilitated, let alone actually rehabilitate them… so lock em up, out of sight, out of mind?
The part of your argument that is very valid is that correct, incarceration in America is in no way shape or form a rehabilitation effort. It is entirely punitive. It is taking a person who has been deemed guilty of a crime, it is starving them/giving them improper nutrition, it is giving that person deplorable access to healthcare, it is striping all comfort out of that persons life, and it is subjecting them to horrible people who are trained and chomping at the bit to spend all day every day inflicting severe psychological torture and domination on that person.
I hear your argument, I consider your argument, I reject your argument, I consider your argument short sighted and cowardly.
So your argument is that people can be rehabilitated, but the State isnt even capable of deciding who can be rehabilitated,
My argument is that judges, juries, and prosecutors are incapable of knowing who can and can’t be rehabilitated when they sentence someone. I believe that anyone can be rehabilitated, and I don’t believe that the state knows who will be, so I’m against the state being allowed to kill people that it thinks won’t be.
Let alone situations like Cameron Todd Willingham’s death. He was 100%, absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, guilty of setting the fire that killed his three children. Eyewitnesses said he was acting suspicious the night of the fire, and professional firefighters assured the jury that it was physically impossible for the fire to have started accidentally. And then after he was killed, new evidence showed that actually, those firefighters were wrong. There was no solid evidence that he killed his children.
You cannot make a system that allows for the execution of Brian Dorseys but not Cameron Todd Willinghams. You either allow the possibility of killing innocent people, or you don’t kill people at all. I know which I’m in favor of.
I believe that anyone can be rehabilitated
I will reiterate, incarceration in America is in no way shape or form a rehabilitation effort. It is entirely punitive. It is taking a person who has been deemed guilty of a crime, it is starving them/giving them improper nutrition, it is giving that person deplorable access to healthcare, it is striping all comfort out of that persons life, and it is subjecting them to horrible people who are trained and chomping at the bit to spend all day every day inflicting severe psychological torture and domination on that person.
So it doesn’t matter if they can be rehabilitated or not. American jails and prisons vehemently profess that they do not rehabilitate, they punish.
As for Cameron Todd Willingham, so a bunch of corrupted firefighters who were in bed with corrupt cops falsely got a man convicted of triple homicide. Actually give a consequence to those firefighters and cops. I guarantee you he would still be in jail today and no new evidence would have been recovered if he were sentenced to life in prison.
Beyond that, Glynn Simmons was falsely convicted of murder, so we put him in a box and tortured him for 48 years.
You think he is going to have any meaningful life now?
Now, after he has been resoundingly broken down as a human being who likely cannot function without a billy club in his back is going to be thrown out on the street with a “sorry”, and track record for people who get exonerated after prolonged sentences, they file for reparations, they win fat judgements, and then the police and city officials come down on them like a ton of bricks to either kill them, make them kill themselves, or get them back in a cell on another framing charge before the check clears.
We put all our effort into keeping people locked up in boxes, tortured, and alive to that we can skip actually holding the wrongdoer cops (and in your case firefighters) accountable, and we encourage them to keep doing a shitty/corrupt job.
You cannot make a system that allows for the execution of Brian Dorseys but not Cameron Todd Willinghams.
Alright then, just throw up your arms, keep encouraging cops to fuck up/frame people, and pat yourself on the back because, again, as far as you are concerned, out of sight out of mind as long as there isn’t a death on my conscious. Decades of torture, that’s fine, as long as you don’t need to see it.
You cant kneecap the pursuit of actual justice because you want to keep corrupt cops isolated from consequence.
Does killing him bring back the people he killed?
Does imprisoning him? At what point does this line of thinking just reduce down to “we shouldn’t punish anyone for anything”?
Punishments should only be doled out in the event that the benefits of the punishment outweigh the harm caused. In many cases, this does not pencil out because punishment does nothing good by itself. But of course it will depend on the specific case and the indirect effects.
Imprisonment does have some indirect benefits. It may keep criminals from committing further crimes while they are imprisoned. It can also be a deterrent to other criminals, though this depends on other factors as well. Hypothetically, it could also be used to reeducate and reform criminals so that they do not re-offend, though most current prison systems actually do the opposite of this. Finally, it may bring a small measure of satisfaction to the victims or their families. However, this effect is likely small relative to the harm done to the prisoner.
Overall I am forced to conclude that the current prison system is not very effective and may do more harm than good, especially when looking at the economic costs. However, I think it should be replaced with another system rather than immediately abolished, mainly due to the risk that a release from deterrence would cause a crime wave and a reversal to the broken system.
So what would such a system look like? Well, perhaps if we focus on the perceived benefits of the current system, we can devise one that does the same things more effectively.
In terms of deterrence, research shows that likelihood of the penalty matters more than the severity, although I can also hypothesize that the penalty must be sufficient to offset the rewards of crime as well. Therefore our new justice system should be swift, accurate, and thorough so that criminals are subject to it quickly and with certainty immediately after offending. Any penalties levied must be large enough to feel punitive, but no more than the minimum required to provide the adequate disincentive. If we can quickly capture most criminals, inhumane penalties will not be needed.
In terms of preventing reoffending, we should pursue evidence driven approaches that can reduce recidivism. Job training, mental health and drug treatments may be necessary, but in general this is where my knowledgeable is the weakest. Criminals should be removed from the environment where they can offend until such time as rehabilitation has been completed. The severity of the crime can determine the dose of rehabilitation, with more serious crimes requiring greater certainty in prevention before full release.
Finally, we want to do right by the victims. This can be the most challenging aspect because for some crimes, they will never be made whole, and in some cases, interaction with the offender can cause further harm. I propose a menu of options, to be selected by the victim or their survivors, which require labor or restitution for the benefit of the victims.
Such a system does not yet exist, and would be fairly different from our current one. Therefore, some experimentation is in order, with programs that work expanded, and those that don’t shuttered. Over time we should be able to create a system that is better at prevention, better for victims, and better for offenders. But only if we can let go of our medieval ideas of justice in favor of this more rational approach.
