Unethical but OK with it...

[Guest]

I was a bit surprised by some of the somewhat moralistic responses to Corndog in his "Am I a terrible person?" thread. I can certainly come up with other instances when I wasn't bothered by an action which may have been highly unethical, or even highly illegal. I know some of us are old enough to remember when the serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison. I remember my first reaction was "Right on!"

followed sometime later by "...ah, and I hope his killer gets a good deal of time in solitary confinement, and that the prison gets fined for the poor security..."

http://transitionmyself.com/wp-content/uploads/01_sad_emoticon-300x269.jpg

 

So, be honest, guys. What was your first reaction when you heard Jeffrey Dahmer was killed? And for those of you not old enough to remember that, what would be your first reaction if you learned that James Holmes or Joker Tsarnaev got whacked while they're in the pen?

[big-n-tall]

When Dahmer was murdered in prison I thought he deserved it. I still think this way and I'll tell you why.

 

I used to work in my college library as an archivist/restorer. A book came in one day that utterly fascinated everyone in the office. It was a book about death particularly caused by homicide and suicides. The book was literally filled with pictures of the various deaths caused by killers, accidents, and whatever means people kill or kill themselves (i.e. autoerotic asphyxiation).

 

In this book, there were crime scene pics of what Dahmer did to his victims. If you saw that book and the horrible acts he carried out on these men, even after they were dead... Well call me an unsympathetic evil bastard because I'm ok with Dahmer's ultimate fate.

 

I don't think I'd feel any different with Holmes.

 

Tsarnaev... that I may have a different thought, as he may have been pressured/brainwashed into doing the terrible acts because of his older brother. I really can't say how I'd feel.

[Rudynate]

Of course everyone impulsively feels that way one time or another and to think that people like Dahmer "got what they deserved" or "had it coming to them." We have the great privilege of not needing to be guided by those impulses.

[Guest Starbuck]

It's quite a leap from Corndog's scenario to serial killers and mass murderers -- downright Olympian.

 

I suspect that some of the people who were critical of Corndog's actions (after he asked ) could, nevertheless, have heard the story from him at a cocktail party without any urge to toss a martini in his face or cross to the other side of the room.

 

For a lot of us, there's a wide gap between our principles and our reaction to instances when they are violated, between our sense of "civilized conduct" and our response to "uncivilized behavior" that doesn't directly touch us.

 

In addition to which, there are often extenuating circumstances (mental illness, for example) or a hard-to-untangle mix of circumstances that muddy the waters, not to mention the tug-o-war between our rational and emotional responses.

 

I think Rudynate's opinion is smartly observed. We can stand our high moral ground because most of us have the luxury to stand there ... physically and emotionally detached from delivering a lethal injection, or encountering Jeffrey Dahmer on the prison playground, or engaging in the risky business of taking out Osama Bin Laden.

[Rudynate]

 

I think Rudynate's opinion is smartly observed. We can stand our high moral ground because most of us have the luxury to stand there ... physically and emotionally detached from delivering a lethal injection, or encountering Jeffrey Dahmer on the prison playground, or engaging in the risky business of taking out Osama Bin Laden.

 

I would hope that people who have to make those difficult choices also would not be driven by impulse. From what I have read, the decision to take out Bin Laden was hardly impulsive. It was the culmination of a massive intelligence operation that lasted for years.

[+ sam.fitzpatrick]

Having sat through a murder trial (in the gallery, victims were family friends) and find what it takes for a jury to reach a unanimous verdict of guilty on every charge has softened my moral grounds a little. I think if the other inmates take things upon themselves it may not only be due to crime committed outside of prison.

 

I have long wondered if Dahmer's killin in prison was more about what he did or concerns about who he might take out in prison.

[AdamSmith]

Why I killed Jeffrey Dahmer

By Jamie Schram

The New York Post

April 28, 2015 | 3:00am

 

Jeffrey Dahmer and Christopher Scarver Photo: Getty Images ; AP

 

Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was done in by his uncontrollable lust for human flesh, the man who whacked him in prison 20 years ago told The Post, revealing for the first time why the cannibal had to die.

 

Christopher Scarver — who fatally beat the serial killer and another inmate in 1994 — said he grew to despise Dahmer because he would fashion severed limbs out of prison food to taunt the other inmates.

 

He’d drizzle on packets of ketchup as blood.

 

It was very unnerving.

 

“He would put them in places where people would be,” Scarver, 45, recalled in a low, gravelly voice.

 

“He crossed the line with some people — prisoners, prison staff. Some people who are in prison are repentant — but he was not one of them.”

 

Scarver, who arrived at Wisconsin’s Columbia Correctional Institution around the same time as Dahmer in 1992, knew right away to keep a safe distance from the serial killer.

 

Scarver said the madman had a personal escort of at least one guard at all times when he was out of his cell because of his friction with other inmates.

 

“I saw heated interactions between [Dahmer] and other prisoners from time to time,” Scarver said, adding that he didn’t think much of Dahmer.

 

“There was no impression,” he said.

 

Like a lone wolf, Scarver watched Dahmer from afar on the prison yard, but never approached him, because he did not want to become a target of his sickening humor.

 

“I never interacted with him,” he said.

 

But that all changed on the morning of Nov. 28, 1994, when Scarver doled out his vigilante justice in a gymnasium of the Portage, Wis., prison.

 

Dahmer, 34, Scarver and a third inmate, Jesse Anderson, were led unshackled to clean the bathrooms by correction officers, who left them unattended.

 

Scarver, who was repulsed by the youth-molesting cannibal’s lust for flesh, kept in his pocket a newspaper article detailing how Dahmer killed, dismembered — and in some cases ate — 17 men and boys from 1978 to 1991.

 

Scarver, then a 25-year-old convicted murderer, had just retrieved his mop and was filling a bucket with water when someone poked him in the back.

 

“I turned around, and [Dahmer] and Jesse were kind of laughing under their breath,” Scarver recounted. “I looked right into their eyes, and I couldn’t tell which had done it.”

 

The three men then split up, and Scarver followed Dahmer toward a staff locker room.

 

Scarver grabbed a metal bar from the weight room and confronted Dahmer with the news story he had been carrying in his pocket.

 

“I asked him if he did those things ’cause I was fiercely disgusted. He was shocked. Yes, he was,” Scarver said.

 

“He started looking for the door pretty quick. I blocked him,” Scarver said.

 

With two swings of the bar, Scarver crushed Dahmer’s skull.

 

“He ended up dead. I put his head down,” he said.

 

He then casually crossed the gym and entered a locker room where Anderson, 37, was working.

 

“He stopped for a second and looked around. He was looking to see if any officials were there. There were none. Pretty much the same thing [happened] — got his head put out,” Scarver said of Anderson, who was serving a life term for killing his wife in 1992.

 

Scarver believes it was no accident that he ended up alone with Dahmer — since prison officials knew he hated the madman and they wanted him dead.

 

“They had something to do with what took place. Yes,” said Scarver, noting that the guards disappeared just before he clobbered Dahmer with the 20-inch, 5-pound metal bar.

 

But Scarver refused to elaborate out of fear for his own safety.

 

“I would need a good attorney to ensure there would not be any retaliation by Wisconsin officials or to get me out of any type of retaliatory position they would put me in,” Scarver said.

 

Wisconsin Correction Department spokeswoman Joy Staab did not return calls for comment about those claims — but an investigation following the killings determined he acted alone.

 

Scarver initially pleaded insanity to the murders but later changed it to “no contest” in exchange for a transfer to a federal penitentiary.

 

He was sentenced to two life terms on top of the life sentence he was already serving.

 

Scarver was locked up for killing his former boss during a robbery in 1990.

 

After getting fired from a job-training program at the Wisconsin Conservation Corps, Scarver started drinking heavily and said he heard voices that called him “the chosen one.”

 

He returned to his former workplace with a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol and demanded cash from site manager John Feyen. When he gave only $15, Scarver put a bullet in the head of a worker, Steven Lohman.

 

He shot Lohman two more times before Feyen knocked the gun out of his hands and ran off.

 

Hours later, cops arrested Scarver sitting on the stoop of his girlfriend’s apartment building.

 

After the killings, Scarver bounced from prison to prison until he landed at his current home: Centennial Correctional Facility in Canon City, Colo.

 

Scarver says he has been evaluated by 10 to 20 prison doctors but still doesn’t understand his mental issues.

 

He partly blames prison food for his insanity.

 

“I found out in my own research what the problem is: Certain foods I eat cause me to have a psychotic break — bread, refined sugar,” he said. “Those are the main culprits.”

 

He now spends his days writing poems for his site. He also has self-published poetry books for sale on Amazon.

 

http://nypost.com/2015/04/28/meet-the-prisoner-who-murdered-killer-cannibal-jeffrey-dahmer/

[Rudynate]

Having sat through a murder trial (in the gallery, victims were family friends) and find what it takes for a jury to reach a unanimous verdict of guilty on every charge has softened my moral grounds a little. I think if the other inmates take things upon themselves it may not only be due to crime committed outside of prison.

 

I have long wondered if Dahmer's killin in prison was more about what he did or concerns about who he might take out in prison.

 

Dahmer was so repellant that everyone, of course, wants to believe that he "got what he deserved." But what if he was just a victim of random prison violence?

[mike carey]

Dahmer was so repellant that everyone, for course, wants to believe that he "got what he deserved." But what if he was just a victim of random prison violence?

You're right, we can never know if his death was the result of righteous indignation for what he had done or just random prison violence. I don't shed tears for the likes of him if they die in gaol, but I don't wish death upon them either.

[+ purplekow]

Karma. Can't live with it, can't dress it up like a pig and take it dancing. It is just there.

As for prison terms of life without the possibility of parole, for me it is a ridiculous option. I am generally against the death penalty, but if it is determined that someone presents such a danger that they should never be released, if their crimes were so atrocious as to have us throw away the key and keep them forever jailed, then I think it better to take their life all at once instead of day by day. Make juries choose. That is not to say that the death penalty is something of which I want to see more. I just think paying for the expenditures of a person bound to the prison system for a lifetime with out hope of redemption back to a useful life, is wasteful and ultimately costs other lives.

[+ Robster]

And for those of you not old enough to remember that, what would be your first reaction if you learned that James Holmes or Joker Tsarnaev got whacked while they're in the pen?

My first reaction would be, "Who the hell are they?" I've honestly never heard of either of them.

 

As for Dahmer, he got what he deserved. Actually, he deserved much worse. I'm just glad he's gone.

 

Rob

[Guest Starbuck]

My first reaction would be, "Who the hell are they?" I've honestly never heard of either of them.

 

Rob, I think you're just not recognizing the names at the moment. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is the surviving brother of the two Boston Marathon bombers. James Holmes is the shooter in the Aurora, CO movie theatre massacre.

[AdamSmith]

I just think paying for the expenditures of a person bound to the prison system for a lifetime with out hope of redemption back to a useful life, is wasteful and ultimately costs other lives.

 

http://www.ksabolition.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-23-at-11.55.52-AM.png

http://ksabolition.org/facts/kansas-facts

 

Nevada Audit Shows Death Penalty Is Not Cost Effective

http://blogs.rj.org/rac/files/2014/12/dp-chart.png

http://blogs.rj.org/rac/2014/12/03/nevada-audit-shows-death-penalty-is-not-cost-effective/

[+ Robster]

Rob, I think you're just not recognizing the names at the moment. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is the surviving brother of the two Boston Marathon bombers. James Holmes is the shooter in the Aurora, CO movie theatre massacre.

Ah. I didn't follow either story very closely, but heard about both, of course. Thanks!

 

Rob

[+ quoththeraven]

http://www.ksabolition.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-23-at-11.55.52-AM.png

http://ksabolition.org/facts/kansas-facts

 

Nevada Audit Shows Death Penalty Is Not Cost Effective

http://blogs.rj.org/rac/files/2014/12/dp-chart.png

http://blogs.rj.org/rac/2014/12/03/nevada-audit-shows-death-penalty-is-not-cost-effective/

 

I didn't have an article making this point at my fingertips, but I've seen data that makes the same point. So thanks for making this point for me, Adam Smith! Life without parole is less costly mostly because of the cost of automatic appeals, costs that government (meaning society) pays for to ensure the ultimate punishment is administered fairly.

 

I'm assuming no one here is questioning the added scrutiny given to the convictions of those sentenced to death to make as certain as possible that it is deserved. Keep in mind, though, that the penalty itself is so rare that it is of necessity applied inconsistently. It is also certain that it's been applied to prisoners innocent of the crime for which they were convicted despite the appeals (at least one person was cleared posthumously).

 

The Supreme Court has never addressed the issue of whether execution in the face of actual innocence is a due process violation or constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. On due process, there are probably four votes in favor of execution in the face of actual innocence not being a due process violation. Cruel and unusual punishment might be the stronger claim.

[AdamSmith]

Related point.

 

Most death penalty sentences are overturned. Here’s why that matters.

By Frank R. Baumgartner and Anna W. Dietrich March 17 2015

The Washington Post

 

If a person is given a death sentence, what is his or her chance of actually being executed? Based on a review of every death sentence in the United States since 1973, the beginning of the modern era of the death penalty, we have found that the most likely outcome isn’t being executed or even remaining on death row as an appeal makes its way through the courts. In fact, the most common circumstance is that the death sentence will be overturned. Here is why that matters.

 

From 1973 to 2013, 8,466 sentences of death were handed down by U.S. courts, and 1,359 individuals were executed — only 16 percent. Even excluding those who remained on death row as of 2013, only about 24 percent of condemned inmates have been executed. Those sentenced to death are almost three times as likely to see their death sentence overturned on appeal and to be resentenced to a lesser penalty than they are to be executed. Here is a summary of the outcomes:

• 8,466 death sentences were imposed across the United States from 1973 through 2013.
  
• 3,194 were overturned on appeal, composed as follows. For 523, the underlying statute was declared unconstitutional. For 890, the conviction was overturned. For 1,781, the death penalty was overturned, but guilt was sustained.
  
• 2,979 remain on death row as of Dec. 31, 2013.
  
• 1,359 were executed.
  
• 509 died on death row from suicide or natural causes.
  
• 392 had their sentence commuted by the governor to life in prison.
  
• 33 had some other outcome or a miscellaneous reason for being removed from death row.
  

Execution is in fact the third most likely outcome following a death sentence. Much more likely is the inmate to have their sentence reversed, or to remain for decades on death row.

 

This graph shows how these outcomes have changed over time.

 

Executions have never been the most common outcome of a death sentence. In the early years of the modern death penalty, many were removed from death row because the underlying statute under which they were condemned was ruled unconstitutional. In fact, of 721 individuals sentenced between 1973 and 1976, just 33 were eventually executed. Other reversals have come because inmates’ individual convictions were overturned, and some were exonerated entirely.

 

But by far the most likely outcome of a U.S. death sentence is that it will eventually be reversed and the inmate will remain in prison with a different form of death sentence: life without the possibility of parole.

 

Why would reversal of the sentence be the single most common outcome of a death sentence? Capital trials have many unusual characteristics, but a key one is that there is an automatic (or “direct”) appeal through the state appellate courts and, if the death sentence is not overturned by the state appellate or supreme court, a review by a federal judge.

 

Throwing out a duly enrolled conviction is not something that state or federal appellate courts do because of a misplaced paperclip on a brief. State appellate courts and federal judges are not knee-jerk opponents of capital punishment; they participate in a system that imposes it regularly.

 

But both Republican and Democratic appointees have voted to overturn these convictions because they so often involve such issues as evidence withheld from the defense, improper instructions to the jury, or other serious flaws in the original trials.

 

States differ greatly in the degree to which they carry out their legal promise of death, but most operate systems consistent with the trends above: They sentence far more inmates to death than they actually execute. The graph below shows the percent of death sentences that have been carried out, for all 40 states that have had the death penalty as well as for the federal government, which has executed three individuals but has condemned 71.

 

The average state has a 13 percent likelihood of carrying out a death sentence. Some states—such as Texas, South Dakota, Missouri, and Oklahoma—significantly higher rates, though none of these states reaches a level of 50 percent.

 

In fact, only one state, Virginia, has executed more than half of the inmates it has condemned. This rate of execution may stem in part from legal shortcomings, however: an American Bar Association report recently found many areas in which Virginia’s “highly efficient” death penalty suffers from deficiencies: in access to post-conviction DNA testing, jury instructions, prosecutors’ provision of evidence to the defense, and other areas.

 

Several states listed at the top of the graph have not executed a single person, though New Jersey sentenced as many as 52. Pennsylvania and California have very large death penalty systems, but extremely low rates of executing those who have been condemned.

 

You can see this clearly in the graph below, which shows the number of death sentences imposed and the number of executions carried out for each state.

 

Texas, Florida, and California have all condemned more than 1,000 individuals to death in the modern period. However, the numbers of executions in these states are 508, 81, and 13, respectively. Virginia has sentenced 152 individuals to die, and 110 have been put to death. The long string of dots along the bottom rows of the graph shows that, in general, no matter how many people the states say they are going to execute, in fact, very few are actually executed.

 

Regardless of one’s view of the death penalty in principle, these numbers raise questions about how the death penalty is applied in practice. The wide differences across states in the odds of carrying out a death sentence are potentially troubling from an equal protection standpoint. Indeed, David Garland has argued that if it were not for federalism and the strength of the Southern reaction to a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s and 1970s, we might never have seen the resurgence of the death penalty in the post-Furman world.

 

Also potentially troubling is the simple fact that most death sentences do not result in executions. In fact, a federal judge recently ruled that California’s death penalty is unconstitutional because it is in fact a penalty of “life in prison with the remote possibility of death.”

 

Ultimately, the American system of capital punishment arguably creates unnecessary suffering for both those defendants sentenced to death and the surviving family members of the victims of the crimes for which the defendants were convicted. A system that ensures prolonged court time, automatic appeals for the convicted inmate – most of whom are eventually successful – and only a small chance of actual execution is a system built on false promises for everyone, and indeed one that seems to verge on torture.

 

Frank Baumgartner is the Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Dietrich graduated from UNC-CH in 2014 and wrote a senior thesis on this topic; she now works for a U.S. government agency.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/03/17/most-death-penalty-sentences-are-overturned-heres-why-that-matters/

[Lookin]

For the ethicists among us, is 'cruel and unusual punishment' any worse than 'cruel punishment'? Or does its implied rarity make it perhaps more ethical? They must stick the extra words in there for a reason, but it eludes me at the moment. http://yoursmiles.org/msmile/think/m1702.gif

[Juan Vancouver]

Unicorn,

 

I am going to try to entirely avoid the moral high horse or even try to pretend that I know what is right or what is wrong, but I think you are forgetting something really important in this scenario. By trying to evoke cases that in your mind appear to be examples of absolute wrong doing you are trying to justify emotional, knee jerk, mob mentality vigilante executions. Here is why this is an incredibly flawed and dangerous way to look at things:

 

In all our evolution as humans there have been endless instances in which almost everyone agreed that certain individuals were so evil, so wrong, so sickly -so un-human- that the great populace thought it right that they were executed, wiped out, incarcerated, neutered, etc. I am going to skip the most obvious cases, such as the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and I am going to go for the closest to our hearts.

 

Millions of Jews, Roma people and gays are round up, tortured, used for Dantean "medical research" and are ultimately killed. Millions of brainwashed children men and women are ecstatic that such filth and scum of the earth is being eradicated with the goal of building a racially pure world.

 

Mathew Sheppard gets grossly killed and crucified for being who he is. MANY religious nuts revel at his timely punishment convinced that his sins are so gross and so evidently grotesque that his possibly unethical death seems justified.

 

A man goes on a knifing killing rampage on a gay parade... twice. After being incarcerated, members of the ultra-orthodox branch of his religion express their undying support because their religious text book says that he who kills the sinner is just offering a sacrifice.

 

A bomb goes off killing hundreds of innocent bystanders. Hordes of believers celebrate the timely death of the dirty infidels. They are certain the perpetrator will receive countless rewards in the after life.

 

A street walking hooker gets raped, tortured and killed. Most law abiding citizens smugly think she had it coming.

 

A gay man walking on the street gets called names, beaten up and has his skull cracked on the sidewalk. So many people are certain death is a better fate for him than living in such gross, despicable, unquestionably disgusting depravity.

 

A client gets tossed around while he is trying to book a session, when the "escort" finally arrives he gets robbed and beaten up as a means of threatening retaliation in case he decides to go to the police. A thieve/scammer goes away certain that this gross fag was asking for it. He is not doing anything wrong, the homo deserves it.

 

It is true that it's incontrovertible that Jeffrey Dahmer committed all those heinous crimes. Reading the details of his vigilante execution it also appears to me that the jailers and the executioner acted guided by exactly the same base instincts they reviled in Damher.

 

To Dahmer -for whatever reason- his victims lacked humanity and it was justified killing them. To his executioners -for obvious reasons- Dammer himself lacked humanity and deserved to be brutally killed, even if the justice system had decided on a different punishment after careful consideration and due process.

 

As long as you, personally, allow yourself to dehumanize anyone for whatever reason, as long as we all allow ourselves to dehumanize others for whatever reason -no matter how unfailing this reason might appear to us at the time- crime, brutality, unfairness, war will continue to be what defines us as a species.

 

No sense of smug self congratulatory righteousness is worth stripping someone else of their humanity, because when we do that to others that just opens the possibility that -perhaps subconsciously- we will do that to ourselves.

[Juan Vancouver]

For the ethicists among us, is 'cruel and unusual punishment' any worse than 'cruel punishment'? Or does its implied rarity make it perhaps more ethical? They must stick the extra words in there for a reason, but it eludes me at the moment. http://yoursmiles.org/msmile/think/m1702.gif

 

They just add the extra words to elicit a greater emotional response. When a strong emotional response of outrage, fear, rage or insecurity are elicited, the old reptilian part of our brain is awakened. The Amygdala LOVES this kind of shit, and it is the part of our brain that pushes us to react without thinking.

[Guest]

I think that if I were ever to be given the choice for myself of the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole, I would prefer the former. What is the point of a permanently unpleasant life, with no hope of getting out of the misery?

[Juan Vancouver]

I think that if I were ever to be given the choice for myself of the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole, I would prefer the former. What is the point of a permanently unpleasant life, with no hope of getting out of the misery?

 

That is fair, and it is certainly your right to have a personal preference for you. That, however, doesn't give you -or anyone- the right to decide for someone else, regardless of their misconduct. We have a very complicated justice system that ensures that the decision is as unbiased as possible and will be taken by a carefully screened group of people, not one or two tough guys with murder in their minds. The system is for sure flawed and biased as it belongs to a flawed and biased culture, but I trust the system for that kind of choice much more than I trust a blood thirsty convicted vigilante.

[AdamSmith]

What is the point of a permanently unpleasant life, with no hope of getting out of the misery?

 

One point is that a wrongful conviction can be redressed if the sentence is imprisonment. Not so easy if the person has been executed.

 

See again the high proportion of convictions reversed in the chart from above: