Death Penalty Is The Wrong Punishment For James Holmes

[DonViejo]

by David R. Dow Apr 2, 2013 2:03 PM EDT

By seeking death, the Colorado DA is ensuring Holmes’s victims’ loved ones agonizing years of trials and appeals with no clear end, writes David Dow.

“Justice is death.”

With those three words, Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler attempted on Monday to justify his decision to seek the death penalty for James Holmes, who is charged with murdering twelve people and injuring 58 more in a movie theatre in Aurora, Colo., last July.

Court filings released last week indicated that Holmes’ attorneys had offered a deal in which Holmes would accept life in prison without the possibility of parole in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty. But on Monday Brauchler rejected that offer, explaining that he had discussed the decision with at least 60 people who lost a loved one in Holmes’s massacre.

Brauchler did not say whether he told those women and men that if his office succeeds is sentencing Holmes to death, they will have to wait at least a decade before the sentence is carried out—if it is carried out at all. Nor did he say whether he told them that his decision will have the perverse consequence of making those loved ones largely irrelevant at the trial, which will instead be all about Holmes.

That is perhaps an ironic outcome, but it is a necessary one. A central strand of modern death-penalty law is that death is different from ordinary imprisonment. It is different because it ends a life, and for that reason it is irrevocable. Therefore our criminal justice system is much more careful in death-penalty cases. For example, unlike other trials, which focus almost entirely on what the defendant did, death-penalty trials focus on the individual characteristics of the defendant, and whether there are factors that would mitigate against sending him or her to his state-sanctioned death.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/02/death-penalty-is-the-wrong-punishment-for-james-holmes.html

[get the red out]

1. agree

I think he is truly insane. He needs to be securely locked up, but I can't see the benefit of putting someone that mentally ill to death.

[grump3r]

4. Prison Facilities

I'm sure CO is like CT with a secure section of state mental hospital for criminals: or a special section of the prison. That's been my thought on where he should be kept for life.

[SCVDem]

2. When there is zero doubt of guilt

Walk him out back to the tree and be done.

No appeals and no bulllshit!

No more expense on this killer!

AMF!

[HERVEPA]

6. Uhm that's not how this country operates (or is supposed to operate).

[Life Long Dem]

7. Justice is what society says is just

And at least 60 people who lost a loved ones in Holmes’s massacre want him put to death. The prosecutors words - “Justice is death.”

[HERVEPA]

8. Does the law come into play here? Or should it be ignored.

[Life Long Dem]

9. “Justice is death.”

At least 60 people who lost a loved ones in Holmes’s massacre want him put to death. The prosecutors words - “Justice is death.”

[Tommy_Carcetti]

21. No it's not. nt

[Life Long Dem]

24. Tell that to the prosecutor

And the locals in Colorado.

[SCVDem]

10. You must still believe in

Liberty and justice for all!

Tell it to the Bush administration!

Time to reconfigure the system!

[Tommy_Carcetti]

12. That's not going to bring anyone back to life.

If putting someone to death enabled his victims to magically come back to life, I'd be all for the death penalty.

But it doesn't work like that.

Hence, the death penalty is an exercise in futility and does nothing except to attempt to satisfy bloodlust.

[frylock]

15. but but but SIXTY PEOPLE!!1

[Sharpie]

17. The system goes on....

Look at Hasan the Ft. Hood shooter...

That cowardly piece of crap hasn't even had a trial yet because no one has the balls the shave his beard and strap him in for a court case.

[frazzled]

3. Agree as well

I have been unqualifiedly opposed to the death penalty for many decades, both on moral and technical grounds. No exceptions. I'm glad my state has revoked it.

The state should not be in the business of putting people to death, in cold blood, in the name of "justice." The people who perished at James Holmes's hand will receive no justice from this. He should be permanently removed from society for what he did, mentally ill or not. Permanently removing him from the face of the earth is revenge, not justice for society.

[Life Long Dem]

5. 60 people who lost a loved one disagree

"Court filings released last week indicated that Holmes’ attorneys had offered a deal in which Holmes would accept life in prison without the possibility of parole in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty. But on Monday Brauchler rejected that offer, explaining that he had discussed the decision with at least 60 people who lost a loved one in Holmes’s massacre."

[rainy]

11. Sounds like the DA

Wants to go to trial for personal self importance.

[otohara]

13. I Want Him Dead

Pay for him to live another 60 years on our dime - fuck that.

[frylock]

16. executing him costs more on your dime than housing him will..

but what fun is that? it certainly doesn't sate the lust for vengeance.

[otohara]

19. Fun

how did you jump to "fun" and "lust for vengeance" ?

this is about money... as for the cost being more, not buying it in this case... it's moving
along ... it won't drag out for years.

California has spent millions on Charles Manson.
I'd rather see that kids get got a decent breakfast vs housing these evil pieces of shit.

[Fla_Democrat]

20. I knew the cost of ammo had skyrocketed

but that much?

[MadHound]

14. No death penalty for anybody, period.

I don't care how heinous the crime, no state sanctioned murder.

[davidn3600]

18. Justice is death? Are we not all going to die someday?

How can death be a penalty to fear if death is something we will all inevitably face?

"But...but...the death penalty ends his life quicker and that's the punishment!" Really? Who guaranteed that you will live a long, happy life? Any one of us can die in a car accident on the way to work tomorrow. Any one of us could have deadly cancer growing in our body right now and not know it. People die young everyday. There is no guarantee you will live to life expectancy. No body knows how long they are going to live.

Does killing Holmes provide closure? In what way? In Newtown, CT, Adam Lanza gunned down 22 and then shot himself. Adam is dead. So shouldn't we feel closure and that justice is served? Let's ask the victims families if they feel closure. Would it feel better if we caught Adam alive, kept him alive for 20 years, and then killed him ourselves? In that case, we are not after justice, we are after revenge. When Adam shot himself, he robbed the victim's families for their opportunity to get revenge.

The US is falling behind civilization on this issue though. Over 155 countries no longer practice the death penalty. China is the only country that executes more people than the US. The death penalty is banned through practically all of Europe. Yet at the same time we like to believe we are the world's leaders in human rights.

[markpkessinger]

22. Even if you have no problem with Holmes being executed . . .

. . . If you support capital punishment in what may be regarded (by some, at least) as an "easy" case like this, then you should be prepared to argue in favor of it in cases where the line is not so bright. I'll be honest: I'm not going to lose a whole lot of sleep over this particular case. But I do lose sleep over the fact that our criminal justice system gets it wrong, and does so frequently (as hundreds of DNA exonerations around the country have clearly demonstrated). If you support the death penalty, then you should be prepared to come up with an ethical and moral framework within whiich the execution of innocent persons (even if only rarely) can be justified, because to a greater or lesser extent, all human systems are flawed. So you can't really have one without the other (i.e., you can't have capital punishment where, by somebody's standard, the case is obvious, without also having the occasional execution of innocent persons). If you can justify the latter, then fine, support capital punishment. If you cannot, then you need to think long and hard about the greater ramifications of your ad hoc application of principles of justice. That is why I always have been absolutely and utterly opposed to it.

[backscatter712]

23. I want him to be a lab rat for psych researchers.

Make no mistake - he should never breathe free air again.

I say keep him locked up under maximum security, but give psychological researchers access to him so they can figure out why people become psycho-killers.