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Most people would argue that you should not punish them for doing something wrong, if you are not going to punish other people who have done the same thing.

I’m not sure it does. Even if you felt, as a prisoner, that your death was justified (and at least some death-row prisoners appear to take that stance) it could piss you right off that your accomplice, equally or more culpable, wasn’t suffering the same fate. Certainly it works that way in cases where lesser punishments are meted out.

“Executing a man who shot someone in the course of a two-perpetrator, two-victim robbery in which one of the victims died: not so much, even if it was the other victim, shot by the other robber, who died.”

According to the article you linked to, it was not a two victim crime. There was only one victim. Robert Lee Thompson shot and wounded Mansoor Bhai Rahim Mohammed. Sammy Butler also shot Mansoor Bhai Rahim Mohammed, killing him.

Whether the lack of equity constitutes an “injustice” to society (and whether “society” can be done an injustice), I will leave to philosophers of language.

If an injustice is done to the prisoner solely because of the state’s not killing someone else, then the prisoner would not say merely, “Don’t kill me.” He would say, “Don’t kill me unless you kill him too.” That sounds a bit absurd, doesn’t it?

I think the victim is society in general. We have an expectation of reasonable equity in the law: Similar criminal acts should receive similar punishments. When that expectation is thwarted, it damages the idea of rule of law.

(Injustice is done to the prisoner who is executed, but the remedy sought isn’t “Kill him too” but “Don’t kill me”.)

Equity in sentencing does not cut both ways in the sense you mean. You seem to confuse justice with symmetry. For something to be unjust, it must be more than asymmetrical; it must be unjust TO someone. There must be a victim of injustice. Who is the victim if the state spares one man while killing the other? Surely not the man who is spared, and it would be a stretch to say that sparing him is unjust to the man who is killed. Not many murder or capital punishment victims go to their death shouting, “This is unjust — kill him too!”

(That’s all modulo what Horseball, who is more experienced in these matters than me, said about mitigating circumstances, coercion, and so on.)

Like I said, I oppose the death penalty, but there are arguments I’d make as someone’s attorney that I would not make as an activist. On the facts as I read them, this is one of them.

Well, I’d disagree. Not sure I grasp your point.

According to the link, both defendants were tried. “Butler was tried and sentenced to life.” I don’t see anything suggesting a plea bargain.

I will assume that the links state the case most forcefully against execution, i.e., that the convict was not “the shooter” of the victim. There can be many ways in which the non-shooter is more culpable than the shooter, e.g., was the guy who got the death penalty in any sense the instigator of the crime? Was there an express agreement beforehand to shoot the victims? Did the death penalty defendant coerce the other into the crime? Did the life sentence guy present more compelling mitigation evidence (deprivation, mental illness, low IQ, etc.)?

I also don’t understand the question that you have directed to K. I would guess that most death penalty supporters would agree in imposing the death penalty on both (in the absence of coercion, mitigation, and so on). The fact is that many people get away with murder altogether or, more rarely, like OJ Simpson escape liability altogether. I don’t think any of those cases demand that we set all murderers free.

One reason to support the death penalty, in my view, is that life in prison is not adequate punishment. I’ve been to Attica, and I can tell you that the inmates don’t spend their days in silent contemplation of their regret at having committed crimes. They have some kind of life, even behind bars. As to the loss of freedom, etc., its not any of these guys’ lifestyles would be confused with Frank Sinatra’s before they went into prison. The human capacity to adjust is quite ample.

It really struck home once when I was at the NY AG’s office and I was reading a legal brief that had been prepared for another prisoner by Joel Steinberg – the Joel Steinberg who was then serving as the prisoners law clerk in Southport prison. Here was a true piece of sh*t, and here he had the chance to match wits with other lawyers, take intellectual satisfaction from a job well done, savor his victories, lament his defeats, etc. just like any other practicing lawyer. It seemed to me then that if you had sentenced him to a lifetime of that sort of existence, he wasn’t suffering quite enough for my tastes. And without enough suffering, the corrections system is not likely to produce a contrite heart in hardened criminals.

Also, while most justifications for the death penalty rely on retributivist theory, it is also quite possible to favor the death penalty on incapacitationist grounds. One way of looking at it is as the ultimate in incapacitation.

To answer that argument, suppose a supporter of capital punishment says to you, “I believe both men should have been given the death penalty for this crime, and that it is unjust that one of these men has not been killed. What makes it unjust, however, is not that one man is executed–that part is just–but that the other is not, when justice would require that he, too, should have died. So sparing the first man’s life would not remedy the injustice.”

What would you say to that?

This isn’t a defense of capital punishment.

If this execution is kosher, then fine, may we all sleep the sleep of the just. But if it’s not, & we’re talking about killing someone, then it’s a little rustic for my taste to suggest that the test of whether it’s unjust enough to warrant interest should be how loudly a faintly husky & heavily bearded middle-aged man is capable of snoring through the execution, or how strongly it argues against capital punishment in general.

Not to speak for Mark, but I think his point is that, if you accept the validity of the death penalty, then striking a deal with one of two people who commit a capital crime in order to ensure that punishment is given to both but only one receives the death penalty is also valid. What isn’t perfectly just, in this case, is that the accomplice rather than the shooter is receiving the death penalty–not perfectly just, but not so unjust to be unconscionable.

If you oppose the death penalty (as I do), then you might regard any application of the death penalty as wrong (as I do). If I were an attorney for the man sentenced to death in this case, I might well have made the same argument, as in that case my loyalty would be strictly to my client’s interests. As an advocate or an activist, however, I don’t think the argument is so good for the cause of death penalty abolition, politically or emotionally.

If you support the death penalty (which I do not), you might still regard the way in which it was handed out in this case to be unjust (which I do), but not so unjust as to be an argument against the death penalty.

I think I have that parsed out right.

If you’re for bloodlust, then by all means. But in that case execution almost seems compassionate. Why not truly make the punishment fit the crime – the blood fit the lust: torture, dismemberment, etc., etc.

My hunch is that this is exactly what lies behind most death penalty supporters’ thinking. If so, I wish they wouldn’t be so PC and have the guts to be honest about it.

And if you’d bother to read something about the 130+ Innocence Project cases, you’d find that mistaken identity, testilying cops/forensics, and just out and out “we need to collar someone for this” is EXACTLY what goes on. These people weren’t released because they later got damning evidence suppressed. They were released because THEY DIDN’T DO IT.

It’s always astonishing to me how people who will rave all year about how government can’t organize a two-car parade without screwing it up suddenly find massive governmental competence everywhere when it’s about killing (mostly brown and always poor) people.

Wow. Way to make a bold, brave stand. It sure is horrible, but you know, not so much. Hey, most (or at least some) we get the right guy so it’s all good.

I am really surprised you would have this kind of attitude towards the taking of a human life. I would think you would be all too familiar with how seriously flawed the judicial system is, especially when it comes to the death penalty.

He’s not being executed for the attempted murder, on a moral luck argument, but as an accomplice to the other man’s (successful) murder, & his own attempted murder enters at sentencing. If we executed people for good moral luck, there wouldn’t be enough holes to bury them in.

And, no, there have been 130-plus released because they were innocent. There is a website that lists them. If a mere procedural defect is found, then a new trial is ordered. In any case, if one of the 130-plus was released because he was innocent, I’ve made my case that the system is not foolproof.

“…the difference between imprisoning the innocent and executing the innocent is that those who have been wrongfully imprisoned can be released and compensated for their wrongful imprisonment…”

In this case, the robbery happened in 1996 (giving ample opportunity for new facts to emerge), and my understanding is that there is no dispute about the central facts. The only question is whether the death penalty is merited in this case, which the courts have found. So, this is not a case where there is a risk of later-discovered evidence would change our view, and the concern you raise is not present here.

Likewise, as others have noted, the imposition of life sentences is no light matter either. And death penalty defendants tend to get better defenses on average than other defendants. So, for every death penalty you hear of being overturned, there are many more life imprisonments, 20 year sentences, and the like that would never have been imposed had the defendant received a better defense.

For the death penalties that have been overturned, how many are substantively “innocent”? I think you’re falsely giving the impression that all of the cases are those of mistaken identity or something. I would hazard that almost all of those were due to procedural defects. Convicts that suffer from sufficient procedural irregularities are released not because it is just to that defendant, but to protect the system for other defendants.

I agree that both men could be considered guilty of the killing, but having execution on the menu seems to make the level of punishment appear more arbitrary (if death is fundamentally more punitive than life in prison–and I think it is).