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Jaguar wrote:

fickman wrote:3) You must be willing to consider the full range of punishment for the categories and severity of crime that the law allows.
For instance, aggravated robbery can carry from 5 years to 99 years or Life. For sentences of less than 10 years, it is also eligible for "community supervision" aka probation. If you cannot envision a scenario where somebody would deserve Life for aggravated robbery, you are deemed ineligible to be a juror by the court. Likewise, if you could never envision ANY situation in which aggravated robbery should be given probation, you will be dismissed.

Many years ago I was dismissed from jury duty because I could not consider the full range of punishments. This young man was convicted of drug possession with intent to sell. He jumped bail between the conviction and punishment phase of the trial and was being tried this time for jumping bail. The prosecutor said it was a state jail felony, but because he had a conviction prior made it a third degree felony, and because of something else it was a second degree felony, and because of something else it was a first degree felony. At that point I raised my hand; life in prison for jumping bail sounded excessive to me and I wanted no part of it. It was not because I don't want to do jury duty as I have served on juries since then, just didn't feel the punishment would fit the crime. JMHO, IANAL, YMMV.

I had a similar experience. We were asked if we could sentence a young man to life in prison for possession with intent to sell 4 or more GRAMS of cocaine. I thought both the charge and the punishment were inappropriate, because the DA told us intent to sell could be determined by someone "hiding" or "repackaging" a controlled substance. I'm not going to send someone to prison for life for possession when armed robbers, rapists, and murderers don't all get life sentences. The drug laws in this country are absurd.

fickman wrote:

VMI77 wrote:Executions in this state need to occur with far greater frequency.

I'd like to see cases where there is no dispute about guilt (a very public murder, clear and convincing video or overwhelming eyewitness testimony) proceed through the system in an expedited manner. A trial could be underway in a few months or a year. A death sentence could be carried out in months or a year after sentencing. When there is absolutely no dispute about guilt e.g. Jack Ruby, the Colorado theater shooter, Gabby Gifford's shooter, there's no reason to draw the entire process out for ten to twelve years.

No doubt there are people who have been punished from crimes they didn't commit, but I think it's the rare case where guilt is in serious dispute in capital trials. In any case, the place where guilt is decided is in the jury box, so unless the trial was "unfair" in some demonstrable way, then a jury has already decided someone guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Most of these long delays are not about innocence and guilt but simple exploitation of the system to fulfill the anti-capital punishment agenda. Furthermore, it is my understanding that in "most" cases that make it to trial, even when the defendant is "innocent" of a particular charge, he is usually guilty of an offense as bad or worse than the one he's on trial for.

Even a leftist like Dershowitz will admit that the jury members are really the only people who believe in presumptive innocence a a practical reality, and everyone working in the system knows that those who are actually brought to trial are in reality guilty of the offense they're being tried for, or something worse, far more than 90% of the time. I'm not attacking the presumption of innocence btw, I think it is an important part of our system ---I'm just recognizing that in practice, most of the people who get tried for a crime, are not innocent citizens who've slipped up for the first time, bur repeat offenders.

The Annoyed Man wrote:Two somewhat different viewpoints:

VMI77 wrote:

stealthfightrf17 wrote:If people who commeit vilont crimes were sentenced to death by any means, they could never do it again. Plus it would send a very strong message to those thinking about it. The older I am getting the more pro I am for public executions. I see how it would send a very strong message that we will not tolerate this.

Our system works (well, is supposed to work) on proportionality. The problem with execution for mere violence is that it creates the perverse incentive to kill all victims and eliminate them as witnesses, since if the thugs are caught, they'll be executed anyway. The death penalty needs to be reserved for those who actually kill their victims, otherwise it is likely to increase the number of dead innocents. Of course, to be effective, it also needs to be imposed regularly and swiftly --not an occasional execution 10 years after the crime.

powerboatr wrote:Thank you
for the article and your view
99 years......sounds crazy, it would seem better to extinguish his lights
save all of us $$ housing and feeding this turkey for 99

VMI77, I agree that we have a system based on proportionality. The problem isn't proportionality. The problem is that the measuring stick keep shifting. The 19th century equivalent of auto-theft was horse-theft. They used to hang people for horse-theft. If that standard continued today, car-thieves would be executed. Despite my attempt at humor in previous posts, I'm not advocating for the state execution of car thieves............although I care little if they get shot to death in flagrante by the car's legitimate owner. That's just a risk of the car thief's chosen profession. If they can't take the heat, they should get out of the kitchen. There exists a right to defend one's property. There exists no right to steal what isn't yours.

Rape was considered a capital offense until as recently as 1977 (SOURCE). Is rape more or less prevalent today than it was pre-1977? I don't really know the factual answer, but it seems like it is more prevalent now than it was then. For sure they were more afraid of getting caught then than now. So whenever people keep moving the yardstick in the direction of mercy, it seems that the automatic and unequivocal fallout is that crime expands to take advantage of it.

Another member said of me not too long ago that I had a draconian sense of justice. I found that interesting because it begs the question of "what is the purpose of Justice." What should be our expectations for it? Does justice exist to punish the wrong-doer and discourage further wrong-doing? Does it exist to protect society at large from predation at large? Does it exist to exact an element of revenge on behalf of the wronged? Finally, does justice exist to ensure that the offender does not receive cruel or unusual punishment? I would imagine that the answer is all of the above. I would argue that proportionality not only should take into account whether or not the punishment fits the crime, but it should also take into account the convict's share of the equity in administration of justice. As the old saying goes, "don't start none, and there won't be none." It is tempting to argue that this is a concept that criminals don't understand anymore than a shark understands attacking a swimmer. But they are not the same. The criminal knows what he's doing is wrong. He tries to cover it up to keep from getting caught. He flees. He resists arrest. He pleads innocent when he knows he's guilty as heck—and not just because he doesn't want to get punished, but because he is a serial liar. These are the things that make him a criminal—as opposed to a shark or a mountain lion, which is merely being what God (or evolution, or whatever you believe in) designed it to be. Humans are not designed to be criminals. Criminality is an aberration, and it is most often one that humans choose to engage in because their moral compass is broken.

I don't see anything in this I disagree with, it's all pretty much a matter of where you draw the line. On the whole, in Texas, I think the law as written is pretty well balanced, though not so much in the application. That doesn't' necessarily mean I agree with all aspects of it, or would write it that way myself, but in those instances where I would balance things more in favor of, say, property owners, I can understand why the law is written as it is and accept that there are some good reasons for it. I'm not the kind of person who says broadly that "a life is worth more than a television set." It may well be, but not when the person is in my home trying to steal one. I'm more of the, "I agree, life is worth more than a television, and the guy trying to steal it should have thought of that before he decided to steal one" kind of guy. I think when you prohibit the use of deadly force on the notion that life is more valuable than property you actually get less reverence for life and no respect for property. You get the UK, where criminals break into occupied homes with impunity because they know the homeowner can't touch them.

So, while I don't advocate shooting someone over a television set, I'm inclined to believe that a better balance of rights is achieved when a thief has to fear for his life rather than a property owner having to fear for his (not just from violence, but from being destroyed in the courts). I think that when someone initiates a crime of violence there should be no requirement for the person attacked to divine his attacker's intent, or the potential limits of his assault --the law should assume the worst, and I think the law in Texas pretty much does that (though perhaps there is some room for improvement). However, I think the limits to such an act of self-defense, are, and should be different than punishment under the law administered by the State.

I was speaking broadly, but yes, I agree that there are some crimes short of murder that can reasonably be punished as capital crimes. For instance, you allude to executing horse thieves, and I think the basis for this law is that at the time, stealing a horse could be tantamount to murder. So if a criminal leaves someone he has assaulted to die in a ditch somewhere, that person's fortuitous survival should not negate the death penalty, because the act of the criminal is tantamount to murder. I don't think a criminal should get a break, because through no fault of his own, his victim survived his attack. However, I do think that when capital punishment is going to be applied to crimes short of murder, the potentially perverse consequences of such laws need to be carefully considered.

Texas is often portrayed as having some kind of harsh penal system and I think that is far from the truth. What I observe is that the majority of criminals are very lightly punished --not at all in proportion to their crimes-- and the death penalty is carried out so infrequently as to be nearly irrelevant. Executions in this state need to occur with far greater frequency. Oh yeah, there is also another category of crime which should be punished by swift and certain death even when the State cannot prove a single casualty: Treason. I believe there are a number of high officials and corporate officers in this country who should be tried and executed for Treason. Holder, for one, is an obvious choice, since he conspired to undermine the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution, and his boss too, if evidence shows he was also involved in the conspiracy.

stealthfightrf17 wrote:If people who commeit vilont crimes were sentenced to death by any means, they could never do it again. Plus it would send a very strong message to those thinking about it. The older I am getting the more pro I am for public executions. I see how it would send a very strong message that we will not tolerate this.

Our system works (well, is supposed to work) on proportionality. The problem with execution for mere violence is that it creates the perverse incentive to kill all victims and eliminate them as witnesses, since if the thugs are caught, they'll be executed anyway. The death penalty needs to be reserved for those who actually kill their victims, otherwise it is likely to increase the number of dead innocents. Of course, to be effective, it also needs to be imposed regularly and swiftly --not an occasional execution 10 years after the crime.