John Mohamed gets death for...

.

It's cheaper than the average $57.92 a day to support him...

Not really. Once you figure in the costs for mandatory reviews and appeals, and the added costs of death row expenses. I read recently it cost over two mil to excute someone.

In any case, if that's the best argument we should kill all of the prisoners.

Dan

It was the people that decided he should be executed, not the state...

The state asked for it and the state will fight for it and the state will carry it out.

Dan

The jurors, ie the people, were given a choice of life or death and they chose death. Are you saying the will of the people should not even be considered?

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That's not exactly accurate. The jurors were given specific legal instructions. They had to decide whether the murders met certain criteria, which in Virginia call for the death penalty. So yes they decided, but their decision was based on state law, not their personal wishes.

They decided in terms of the law, not their wishes. The "fact" (I don't know whether that's true, or not) that the Judge could reduce the sentence is irrelevant to the decision making of the jury.

Ian

Hi, Josh.

Why is it that a "jury of your peers" in a capital case only includes those of your peers who accept the moral rectitutde of the death penalty? There's a solid 20% who, like me, find the death penalty morally repugnant. Without the summarily exclusion of "peers" with that moral compass, the calculation of 20% x 12 jurors would mean that the death penalty could never be imposed. Please show me how a strict construction of the Constitution allows for my exclusion from a capital jury?
-- Dave K.

....I suppose it could be argued that since the defendant saw fit to impose the "death penalty" on his victims, he believes in it and therefore the jury was composed of his peers.

You really ought to have said SITUATIONALLY in there as it is well remembered your comments about a certain social misfit who blew up a building in Oklahoma (won't mention the name as I really don't want you to be embarassed).

You also find it "morally repugnant" to call a fetus a baby rather than a parasite Dave.

Hi, Ed.

I never said what you accuse me of saying -- I said that relative to the mother, a fetus fits the scientific definition of a parasite. And that's a fact.
-- Dave K.

a parasite AND the scientific definition of a parasite leaves any fetus out of the equation as has been shown to you several times (using your own link a time or two). A fetus could possibly be likened to a symbiote as both mother and child receive from the relationship and usually without detriment to either EXCEPT even symbiotes must be of differing species (scientific definition Dave).

http://martin.parasitology.mcgill.ca/jimspage/biol/intro.htm

http://www.aber.ac.uk/parasitology/Edu/Para_ism/PaIsmTxt.html
"Parasitism is, like most other animal associations defined in terms of two different species, who form a regular association, although this seems sensible, and it does exclude consideration of the mammalian foetus as being parasitic upon its mother, there are some very interesting immunological parallels between the mechanisms the foetus uses to avoid being rejected by the immune response of its mother and the ways in which the parasites of mammals seek to avoid their hosts immune response. Also in a number of deep-sea fish, the males are tiny and become parasitic on the females, nothing is known about the physiological basis of this."

Dave, I can't seem to find jury of your peers in the Constitution of the United States. That doucument does not spell all of the out the legal mechanics of everything that is assigned to the States, the States do that in their laws.
Jury exclusion is a complex thing. If a person were to be tried for say, selling cocaine to school kids, there would be a trial and a jury would be selected. If a prospective juror were so say in a jury selection questioning that they felt that they felt that durg laws were unjust and everybody should be free to use or sell whatever drug they pleased, would you say that that person should be seated? What if they said that they would not impose an existing penality that the State allowed for selling illegal drugs?

because ALL those same appeals and reviews are utilized for life terms plus the cost of maintaining PLUS geriatric care gets expensive.

In addition Death Penalties CARRIED OUT have a definite deterrent effect on inhibiting premeditated capital crimes by others and this goes without mention of the fact that the person punished with death will not be involved in riots and the killing of other prisoners and guards.

Anyone should be able to agree that today's sanitized death sentence no longer presents the same deterrent effect as yesteryear's public hanging...

is still there albeit to a lesser degree.

Making them public on "Pay per View" channels would also decrease the national or state debt if properly targetted.

Public death innures the viewing public to the vision of death. The reverse of the effect you wish.

Have a close look at the Roman empire and middle ages.

Ian

there is a great difference between a public execution and a circus for entertainment.

Public executions worked their magic quite well in this country, Australia, England, France, and a host of others in years gone by.

and will quite likely learn that you either misremembered or "learned" incorrect information.

The deterrent effect of executions CARRIED OUT is well documented as is the weakening of any deterrent effect when sentences are handed down but never carried out.