Death Row
My view on the death penalty is it certainly is not a deterrent; the complete opposite of what it is intended to be. To take another's life for whatever reason is murder. You can dress it up however you like but the way death row inmates in the USA are treated and the psychological impact of being locked up in the most inhumane standards is both abhorrent and against all our basic human standards.
Yes, of course, anyone committing horrific crimes should be punished, but keeping these prisoners lurching from appeal to appeal, some for over 20 years is surely like them having 'the sword of Damocles' hanging over their heads.
Once the system is started after conviction and sentencing the inmate enters a dark realm of process; many not understanding much of what is happening because a large number of these people are poorly educated, come from impoverished areas where violent gang culture is a way of life, have had traumatic upbringings and are not treated fairly by the legal system; not forgetting that a very high percentage are non whites...
Lawyers, judges, court appearances, ad infinitum; a constant circus with all sorts jumping on the band wagon including the aforementioned, other inmates, prison wardens and the media. It surely makes a mockery of the whole system.
Decades to carry out a death sentence? Why? Because when you dig down deep enough you find that most people involved in the process do not want to appear to be the ones that 'flicked the switch'...
There should be a time/number limit for appeals and then, if a decision could keep going to appeal, the sentence be commuted to life and actually meaning life unless an appeal is, in the future successful and the prisoner released.
There have been too many executed and posthumously found not guilty or perhaps guilty to a much lessor crime.
The UK got rid of the death sentence in the mid 20th centuary for all the reasons I have given.
This is a post I made on the FB page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Voices-for-deathrow-inmates/161880877228168
Yes, of course, anyone committing horrific crimes should be punished, but keeping these prisoners lurching from appeal to appeal, some for over 20 years is surely like them having 'the sword of Damocles' hanging over their heads.
Once the system is started after conviction and sentencing the inmate enters a dark realm of process; many not understanding much of what is happening because a large number of these people are poorly educated, come from impoverished areas where violent gang culture is a way of life, have had traumatic upbringings and are not treated fairly by the legal system; not forgetting that a very high percentage are non whites...
Lawyers, judges, court appearances, ad infinitum; a constant circus with all sorts jumping on the band wagon including the aforementioned, other inmates, prison wardens and the media. It surely makes a mockery of the whole system.
Decades to carry out a death sentence? Why? Because when you dig down deep enough you find that most people involved in the process do not want to appear to be the ones that 'flicked the switch'...
There should be a time/number limit for appeals and then, if a decision could keep going to appeal, the sentence be commuted to life and actually meaning life unless an appeal is, in the future successful and the prisoner released.
There have been too many executed and posthumously found not guilty or perhaps guilty to a much lessor crime.
The UK got rid of the death sentence in the mid 20th centuary for all the reasons I have given.
This is a post I made on the FB page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Voices-for-deathrow-inmates/161880877228168
posted by Lynda Phillips @ 2:22 AM
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