Death Penalty in California

Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 3:12 am

After reading California death penalty report issued on June 30, 2008 by California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice and their recommendation that California should either consider scrapping the death penalty or undertake drastic reforms to its costly and "dysfunctional" capital punishment system.
I checked to see the number of executions and methods world wide for 2007 and found the below information interesting.

The countries in which verifiable executions took place during 2007 were:

Afghanistan- Shooting 15
America - Injection 42
Bangladesh- Hanging 6
Belarus- Shooting 1
Botswana- Hanging 1
China- 470 estimated
Ethiopia- Shooting 1
Indonesia- Shooting 1
Iran- Hanging 265
Iraq - Hanging 29

Having 670 inmates on death row with a 25 year average appeal time in California is preposterous. The rest of the world seems to favor hanging or shooting. I curious how other forum members feel about Death Penalty and methods of execution.

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 3:52 pm

This is a tough audience, over 18000 members and not one opinion? Wink

In “General discussion” you can talk about whatever you want (no spam).

Anyone want to talk about politics, war, abortion, civil right, price of gas, discrimination, affirmative action, America’s global role, health insurance, death penalty of offenders with mental retardation, drug war/legalization, global warming, gun control, ethics in the professions, current affairs, euthanasia, human rights, immigration, homeless, energy crisis, health care, poverty and welfare, prisons, racial profiling, racism, social security, terrorism, same s-e-x marriages or any other subject?

Getting back to the death penalty I found this interesting quote by John McAdams - Marquette University/Department of Political Science, on deterrence
"If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect, we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims. I would much rather risk the former. This, to me, is not a tough call."

My personal opinion is appeals should take no longer than 10 years, mental retardation should not be a defense in the killing of a public safety personnel or in special circumstances and reinstate the Gas Chamber in California.