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Subscribe to RSSSources says Jared Lee Loughner, the man accused of killing six people and wounding Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in 2011, is set to plead guilty Tuesday. NBC News' Diana Alvear reports.
ANALYSIS
Updated at 4 p.m. ET Aug. 7: The death penalty is often regarded as a relic of a bygone era, invented in a world before prisons, when branding, maiming and flogging were the lesser options. Its role is often debated in a modern world in which incarceration rather than physical pain is the norm.
Wes Oliver is a law professor and director of the Criminal Justice Program at the Duquesne University School of Law. That Jared Lee Loughner, who shot then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and many others in Tucson early last year, pleaded guilty Tuesday shows why the death penalty may be allowed to linger on the books.
Loughner chose a certain life sentence over the risk of a death sentence. That threat — the potential of facing death — avoided a costly and highly publicized trial, saving the victims and their families from a painful ordeal and the judicial system from expending extraordinary resources.
Without the threat of the death penalty, there likely wouldn't have been a plea deal — no reasonable prosecutor would be willing to risk letting Loughner see the light of day outside a jail cell. And no reasonable defense lawyer would recommend that his client accept the maximum sentence permitted by law.
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The child sexual abuse case against former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky offers an excellent comparison. With the prosecution unable to offer anything more — or less — than a life sentence, the defense could do nothing other than recommend that Sandusky roll the dice, because there was no downside to letting the jury decide.
Loughner risked a very different outcome if he didn't reach an agreement that eliminated his risk of execution.
From the prosecution's perspective, a life sentence achieves many of the goals of a death sentence. An effective life sentence — whether it is phrased as a life sentence, several life sentences or a sentence of several hundred years —is no lenient alternative to death.
And such a sentence protects society. Our penal institutions are capable of detaining men on death row for many years, meaning those prisons can hold similar men into their geriatric years.
There are also financial advantages to life sentences. Counterintuitively, life sentences are typically cheaper than death sentences because of the greater complexity of capital cases.
Opponents of the death penalty contend that it legitimizes violence, but it offers substantial incentives for defendants to reach agreements that avoid extraordinarily expensive and psychologically taxing trials. The criminal justice system's strong interest in such alternatives may mean the death penalty lingers long after there's a consensus that there's a better way to punish violent criminals.
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But i tell you, you cannot put a value on a life. So from a cost benefit standpoint, the death of the 10 year old cannot be determined in so far as costs. I tell you, forget cost benefit analysis. The guy knew he was doing wrong when he pulled the trigger and shot the 10 year girl in the face at 10 feet. He should be executed. Forget the cost benefit analysis. If it costs more, then it costs more. The 10 year old girl is dead. It cost her everything.
As I see it:
Justice, as a moral concept, is blind to monetary cost on the system. So the cost on the system should not be a factor in determining the degree of punishment. Nonetheless, the system could perhaps be made more efficient. There's no good reason why achieving justice should be cost-prohibitive!
A plea deal should be offered only in cases where the victims (if any are still alive) and their families (of those murdered) prefer a plea deal for their own sake, e.g., to spare them from a painful trial, etc. But if they decide that it would be more painful for them to let the murderer keep his life, a plea deal should not be on the table for the sake of saving the courts time or money, at the expense of justice. Otherwise, the purpose of the judicial system has been turned on its head.
The author makes the claim that a life sentence is "no lenient alternative to death." Really? I think it's like night and day -- or life and death. That's why its apparently effective in obtaining a life-sentence plea.
But I would not argue for a death penalty law on the gounds that it may facilitate a plea deal that would othewise be impossible. The law should be argued on the justification and merits of its actual use, not merely as a potential means to a lesser penalty.
I would not argue against the death penalty on the grounds that, as the author indicated some of its opponents argue, it "legitimizes violence." I guess those people are turn-the-other-cheek Christians or some variety of pacifists. If they really want to argue that on principle, they have to oppose the penal system and any criminal punishment as such: the accused could just say no, I'm not going -- and we wouldn't be able to touch them.
I would argue that violence is not categorically illegitimate. It's sometimes necessary and proper. So the question becomes: is there a context in which the state can hold someone against his will? -- all the way up the line to -- is there a context in which we can put someone to death?
In my view, the issue must begin by making the differentiation between: 1) the immorality of the initiation of force -- i.e., the violation of individual rights, which is the essence of a criminal act; and 2) the legitimacy of force used in self-defense or retaliation -- i.e., the protection of individual rights, which is the primary purpose of the criminal justice system. It follows that there are gradations of retaliatory force, all the way up to and including exacting death on the initiator. The burden is on him who asserts that the death penalty is never moral to show why the gradation of penalties stops short of death.
Though my support for the death penalty has waned considerably over the years, I still don't feel sorry for the murderer who did something so heinous to receive it.
These evildoers know that the death penalty exists, and if they get executed it's their own damned fault.
I do feel sorry however for those persons sentenced to death for crimes that did not entail the taking of a human life, like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for instance.
This A**hole might get the death penalty any way. Courtesy of his fellow inmates.
Remember what happened to Geoffrey Dahmer?
i do not believe the death sentece does anything why would it they might be mental waistbags or anything else like some person shot another because he had an illusion because of meds do you think he should get the death penalty or should the doctor for giving this guy the meds? murderer rapict etc... they do not deserve get ever heard of the saying DONT FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE or but it into buracrats mind dont kill someody because he killed somebody that makes you just as bad!!