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Tennessee inmate still alive after being administered two lethal injections

47 points · 139 comments · techolic

  1. tombert · · focus · HN ↗
    Oh yeah, I read about this.

    I'm pretty against capital punishment in general, so take that for what it is, but executing someone for something they did when they were eighteen really bothers me.

    I've never been a violent person but I do know that I was even more of an idiot then than I am now.

    1. sippingabonedry · · focus · HN ↗
      > for something they did when they were eighteen really bothers me

      She lured a classmate into the woods, slit her throat with a box cutter after torturing her for half an hour, bashed her skull open with a rock for good measure, then brought a piece of her skull to school the next day.

      > I was even more of an idiot then than I am now

      Do you think the above should be chalked up as normal childhood indiscretion?

      1. tombert · · focus · HN ↗
        > Do you think the above should be chalked up as normal childhood indiscretion?

        I didn't say there shouldn't be consequences. I just think that executing someone who committed a crime when they were effectively a child is kind of upsetting. I do not see how you extrapolated that I think it's "normal childhood indiscretion" out of what I said.

        1. sippingabonedry · · focus · HN ↗
          I interpreted it as an implication that it should be viewed as a lesser crime due to the perpetrator's age. At 18 you can:

          • Vote

          • Fight in the military

          • Act in pornography

          • Rent a car in MI, NY, QC

          • Many other adult things

          The crime perpetrated was premeditated and particularly demonic. It's a far cry from shoplifting a Snickers bar.

          > is kind of upsetting

          Bringing a chunk of the victim's skull to school to show your friends how good you are at murdering was probably pretty upsetting to a few people, like the victim's family and friends.

          1. jrflowers · · focus · HN ↗
            Execution is a weird thing for a civilized society to do and the bizarre people that fetishize it say weird shit like “It makes sense to murder somebody if they made other people upset” to avoid talking about how it doesn’t solve any problems that aren’t already solved by life imprisonment. The justification for execution is always “I want the state to kill people because I enjoy that sort of thing”
            1. eudamoniac · · focus · HN ↗
              Society does not have an obligation to house and feed such people for decades on end. I'd rather they be killed because it should be much cheaper; whether it actually is or not by some aberration of dumb policy is not relevant to the philosophy. They are the enemy of society and are owed absolutely nothing but swift death, not room and board.
              1. tombert · · focus · HN ↗
                It’s not cheaper, and it really can’t or shouldn’t be.

                In the US you have a right to appeal your sentence, which is a good thing. If the government is going to be killing people, we want to (at the very least) make sure they have dotted every “i” and crossed every “t”. You have to pay someone to read these appeals, typically an attorney or multiple attorneys and/or a judge. There can be a backlog so it can take awhile to get through all of them.

                This is inherent to how capital punishment works in the US, and anything less would be borderline tyranny, so I reject your framing of it as “aberration or some dumb policy”.

                1. eudamoniac · · focus · HN ↗
                  Well I reject your framing of it being impossible. If it is cheaper to house and feed a man for sixty years than it is to kill him, that is a policy decision, not a law of the universe. Other respectable countries manage to achieve this.
                  1. tombert · · focus · HN ↗
                    Most other “respectable” countries have actually gotten rid of capital punishment entirely.

                    I think we are at a fundamental disagreement though; I think it should be expensive and difficult to execute someone. I think the slow appeals process is a good thing. It should hard for the government to kill people who aren’t a direct threat.

                    I don’t know your politics but it doesn’t matter the specifics. Imagine whichever politician that you think is most stupid and tyrannical. Do you really want to give them the ability to rapidly kill people they don’t like without at least some bureaucratic checks in place?

                    1. eudamoniac · · focus · HN ↗
                      Politicians don't convict people. It's not a political issue; the person was convicted by a jury of their peers, which philosophically should indicate something important: the body politic unanimously believes he is guilty of heinous crimes. They believe beyond a reasonable doubt that this man, for example, raped and killed a dozen infants. Then in the court of appeals it was upheld. I believe that it is better for society* in that case for that man to then be swiftly executed.

                      * In the sense that society needs to feel that the state executes justice and that such people are not being kept alive on their own dime. That breeds contempt for the system and for the state.

                      1. tombert · · focus · HN ↗
                        We can certainly agree that if an innocent person is executed that is just state-sponsored murder, right?

                        The jury system of the US is a good system but it’s certainly not immune to mob mentality. It’s certainly not immune to appeals to emotion. It’s certainly not immune to any number of the things that make humans human. This is partly why we have an appeals process. If we are going to put someone to death, I think it’s better for them to be given every single avenue possible to prove their innocence so that we aren’t murdering someone innocent.

                        1. eudamoniac · · focus · HN ↗
                          We are just disagreeing about the ideal number or length of appeals, then. You can never be 100% sure; you could allow a constant state of appeal forever. This applies just as much to locking someone innocent away for life, which is also a big problem, but we don't allow infinite appeals for that either. I just think the current amount of appealing is too much.
                          1. tombert · · focus · HN ↗
                            If we can’t be 100% sure then I think maybe we shouldn’t have potential state-sponsored murder of innocent people.

                            People who are a risk to normal society do need to be separated, and for that I am willing to not be 100% sure (though with plenty of chances for appeals). If we lock up someone for a crime they didn’t commit, we at least have the option to release them and potentially pay out some kind of financial settlement as a means of punishing the state for their mistakes. If you kill someone, there’s not really much of an opportunity to even try and make it right.

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