From: hans@iesd.auc.dk (Hans Huttel)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Death Penalty, for or against?
Date: 6 Oct 92 12:02:49 GMT
	<HANS.92Oct5155640@ravn.iesd.auc.dk> <Bvo0wq.Hz1@NCoast.ORG>
Followup-To: soc.culture.african.american
Organization: Mathematics and Computer Science, Aalborg University


In <Bvo0wq.Hz1@NCoast.ORG> cmort@NCoast.ORG (Christopher Morton) writes:
> In <HANS.92Oct5155640@ravn.iesd.auc.dk> by hans@iesd.auc.dk (Hans
Huttel) wrote: 
>> I would urge anyone in favour of the death penalty to think of the
>> British cases of the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six. As we all
>> know now, these 10 people were innocent and had been framed by police
>> officers seeking promotion. After the appalling IRA pub bombings in
>> 1974 there was widespread support for the idea of reintroducing the
>> death penalty in the UK. If the death penalty had been reintroduced,
>> ten innocent people would have lost their lives. It was only because
>> of British TV that the truth was eventually accepted.
>> 
>> Is that really the sort of risk we are willing to take ?
>
> Yes.  Of course why are YOU willing to take the risk of imprisoning an 
> innocent man?  After all, he could be raped or even murdered in prison.  

I have heard quite a few horror stories about U.S. prisons. Even
though Danish prisons can be very brutal places, people do not get
murdered there. I have a feeling that there is something horribly
wrong with the U.S. prison system. The death penalty only serves to
brutalize this already brutal system even more.

Let me repeat my rhetorical question: Why shouldn't all criminals in
the U.S. be executed ? Surely crime should be punished, and (by the
quoted argument) killing a criminal will certainly prevent him/her
from being raped or murdered in prison.

> What keeps them from doing it regarding imprisonment?  What prevents an Alton
> Coleman from continuing to kill in prison?  Termination of his icecream 
> ration?  What if he promises to kill one inmate or guard for each serving of
> rocky road he misses?  Will you kill him then?  Or will you impose life in
> solitary confinement?  Wouldn't some people consider THAT cruel too?

Serial killers are almost without exception mentally ill. Is the best
thing that the system can do really to kill mentally ill people, no
matter how repulsive and dangerous we may find their acts ?

(An aside: Denmark has a maximum security mental hospital for
extremely dangerous criminal patients. Such people are kept in
solitary confinement.)

I have a strong feeling that the U.S. penal system is unable to (or
does not want to) deal with mentally ill people who commit crimes.
There are a number of mentally retarded people on death row in the
U.S., some of them African-American. I would urge all netters to read
the Amnesty International report on capital punishment in the U.S. for
more details on this.

> All of the above aside, what about when there is NO doubt?

But how do we know ? What constitutes absence of doubt ? For several
years, virtually nobody in Britain had any doubts that the Guildford
Four and the Birmingham Six were IRA terrorists. 

The death penalty can be used for political ends. Think of South
Africa or China, just to name two modern-day examples. Of course this
is almost always denied by the regimes who use this practice - the
people on death row are... criminals.

--

To sum up: The death penalty is a quick fix that solves no problems.
If the penal system isn't fair and unprejudiced, innocent people will
lose their lives. In a country with social inequalities, the death
penalty will affect some groups of people disproportionately. It can
be used _against_ these groups of people. Finally, the death penalty
is irreversible. What good is aquittal once you are dead?

A much better solution would be also to do something serious to reduce
the crime rate but that would involve improving society and analyses
of the causes of crime. However, for some reason that doesn't seem to
be an important issue these days.


- Hans
--
Hans H{\"u}ttel                          - hans@iesd.auc.dk  
Mathematics and Computer Science
Aalborg University, Fredrik Bajersvej 7E,
9220 Aalborg, DENMARK                     Ad slagne veje ?