Pfizer withdraws drugs from being used in executions

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I don't think any of you watched the video Aractus posted, which is actually on point about how America treats prisoners, especially with regard to solitary confinement. The "like animals" comment was unnecessary, but I can understand how, based on our nation's treatment of its own citizens (let alone others), one might come to that conclusion.

The reason it's more expensive to execute than incarcerate has less to do with the appeals process (they get the same process every other case gets, but sometimes with the extra "layer" of challenging the sentence itself--whether the trial properly afforded the defendant the rights to have the jury find death necessary, or the prosecution/judge tried to "bend" the rules in order to make a Death finding more likely), and more to do with the necessity to keep Death Penalty convicts in solitary confinement, in special cellblock wings, and with specially-trained guards (guys who feel they have nothing to lose because they're already going to die will sometimes be more violent and must be more carefully watched) to feed them and transport them to the doctor, hospital, etc. Thus, the decade or so they spend appealing their case winds up being more expensive than three to four decades of treating them as normal prisoner.

There is really only one thing that should be in question, here: Is our justice system perfect, such that we would never risk our government murdering an innocent person because the conviction was tainted (in numerous possible ways), and do we lack evidence that our government has murdered innocent people who could have been freed by exonerating evidence that emerged later?

No. We have definitely killed people proved innocent by later technology (like DNA), even though they were "duly convicted by a jury of their peers" and had appeals. Literally over a hundred known cases.

This fact is becoming increasingly recognized in the rest of the world, which is why the USA is one of the last countries that executes people, and why the drug companies (for whom the USA is not their only market) are beginning to resist our bloodlust.

Besides, as someone who has spent years in solitary confinement (so they could try to break me to elicit a "confession" out of me that never came), and nearly a decade in high-security prisons as a result of a wrongful conviction, spending most of that time writing appeals for prisoners trying to have their terribly unconstitutional convictions reversed, I can tell you that if you have faith in the accuracy of a conviction, you've not paid attention. We can never be certain enough to execute someone, even if the perpetrator of the actual crime deserves nothing less than a bullet to the face, or a thousand papercuts followed by a catapult ride into a brine tank.

Do the actual killers deserve to be killed? Absolutely. But that's not enough reason for us to do it, given the issues at stake.

It's about who we say we are as a people. Even if we could be 100% certain of a person's guilt, there are questions as to the ethics of murdering our citizens in the name of the state. But as the justice system stands right now, if you're pro-death-penalty, you're no better than the people you wish to see killed. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is as I see it.