The state of Missouri on Tuesday executed Brian Dorsey for the 2006 murders of his cousin, Sarah Bonnie, and her husband, Benjamin Bonnie, after an effort to have his life spared failed in recent days.
Dorsey’s time of death was recorded as 6:11 p.m, the Missouri Department of Corrections said in a news release. The method of execution was lethal injection, Karen Pojmann, a spokesperson for the department, said at a news conference, adding it “went smoothly, no problems.”
The execution of Dorsey, 52, occurred hours after the US Supreme Court declined to intervene and about a day after Missouri’s Republican governor denied clemency, rejecting the inmate’s petition – backed by more than 70 correctional officers and others – for a commutation of his sentence to life in prison.
Dorsey and his attorneys cited his remorse, his rehabilitation while behind bars and his representation at trial by attorneys who allegedly had a “financial conflict of interest” as reasons he should not be put to death. But those arguments were insufficient to convince Gov. Mike Parson, who said in a statement carrying out Dorsey’s sentence “would deliver justice and provide closure.”
We also have state-sanctioned kidnapping, wherein the convicted are taken from their families and held against their will, sometimes for years at a time.
There are many good arguments against the death penalty. I don’t think those that just rephrase what is done in an emotional way are good ones.
And the whole property seizure without due process thing (civil forfeiture) although each of these is somewhat less important than the last.
no, you’re right, especially as nearly every single independent study agrees with your first paragraph.
Prison generates profit first, solves crime… well not second, maybe ninth? Sixteenth? A hundred and twenty eighth?
I mean, you could argue that even if the criminal justice system in the US were massively improved, there would still be no reason to have the death penalty. And yet there could still be good reason to keep imprisonment as a consequence for many types of crimes.
I’m curious what your alternative is.
I don’t think you want to tie getting rid of the death penalty to current inequities and private prison corruption unless in your ideal system it should make a return.
it’s not about “me” or “my” alternatives as I am not an expert. however, look at Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands and New Zealand.
The kidnapping analogy also applies to the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. They all have governments which detain people against their will.
you have absolutely lost my interest in this conversation if you’re going to flat out state that the Nordic system is identical to the US
But they didn’t say that though?
They pointed out those countries also have jails/prisons that detain people against their will. That isn’t the same as saying the systems are identical.
yeah but the differences are so obvious there’s no point in me engaging in this conversation, it’s just a snooze fest of saying obvious things and arguing over semantics.
If they’re engaging in gotchas like “oh HO, YOU said that the US prison system doesn’t work and yet you acknowledge that in better systems they imprison people a LOT less, but that still means they imprison SOME people.”
it’s like yeah, thanks, I know, not interested in having a conversation like that.
You have to read back through the thread. The whole point is that every country on earth justifies imprisonment for crimes. Calling it kidnapping doesn’t make it wrong.
The same is true of the death penalty. Calling it murder doesn’t make it wrong. It’s a bad argument. This sub-thread was on that narrow topic.