Platform Item 18: The Death Penalty
The Constitution within the Fifth Amendment, recognizes there to be crimes that are of a capital nature. As such the Tea Party Movement shall resist any effort to regard capital punishment as either cruel or unusual.
The Tea Party will request that Congress and all state legislatures review criminal sentences and determine whether the goal of that punishment should be rehabilitation or the protection of the society as a whole from the acts of certain criminals. Although we believe certain criminals are capable of rehabilitation we also believe that certain types of criminals should be considered incorrigible and as such the criminal must be removed from society to protect the society as a whole. We ask that all state legislatures and the Congress work to identify those types of criminal acts in the interest of permanently removing such criminals from our society and treating their misdeeds as capital offenses.
A life sentence without the possibility of parole is a cruel, unusual punishment. Persons with no hope for ever being released should be considered candidates for capital punishment. It is naturally the crimes of the future that should be considered. No current prisoner should be in jeopardy of his or her life as a result of the expansion of the definition of what constitutes a capital crime.
Argument
No felon deserves a fate that is better than that of his / her victim.
If an individual can be proven to have committed a premeditated crime that resulted in the death of an individual whether as a result of intentional murder or the result of some other felony that person should be put to death.
Today’s prisons are full of individuals who in a better environment might be rehabilitated. Unfortunately these persons are often placed in an environment that is filled with persons who are career criminals and it is these career criminals who have the greatest influence on the typically young person we identify as possessing a potential to return to society as a solid citizen. Therefore, we believe that in order for a person to be successfully rehabilitated that person must first be removed from the influence of the career criminal. Attempts to do this should involve segregation of prisoners into separate prisons to permanently and completely remove them from the influence of these career criminals.
Where it becomes unlikely that the state or federal budget is sufficient to create housing for all criminals currently in custody the state and federal governments should review those persons who do represent an unlikely risk for removal to safe houses or an electronically monitored house arrest. But these same legislatures should also review the crimes of those with extended sentences to determine whether the cost of housing persons with these extended sentences is justified or whether their crimes might better be considered as worthy of consideration for capital penalties.
There are crimes worse than murder and these are typically crimes committed against children. Returning sex offenders to communities with nothing to protect the children in that area from a repeat offense is not a reasoned approach. It is often said that sex offenders are likely to want to repeat their offense. Self medication is not a valid method for reducing this risk because there are no guarantees that the offender will take his medication. We offer the following as crimes that should automatically result in a sentence of death upon conviction:
Categories: Platform
Tags: Death Penalty Constitution Crime Punishment
Your inclusion for child molestation as a criteria for death is very disturbing. To think that a child's life is going to be somehow increddibly "ruined" byt the i"inapropriate" touching by some adult is furthering the "victim" nature of present day America. I am not advocating child molestation. However, punishment must be commensurate with the deed. Repeated instances should be met of course, with increased punishment. To forward any radical position just because the "crime" was committed against a "child" is inflammatory and sensationalizing. Also, trafficking in illegal narcotics is also something young people may do without fully understanding the consequences. This would put someone who sold a bag of pot in the gallows? That is radical and can only alienate any people who look to the Tea party as any hope for better governance. This is far too radical. Please remove "your" references to death sentences for child molestation and drug trafficking from the Tea party platform.
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Doctor,
I can think of no more destructive person within our society than one who would prey upon children either by sale of narcotics or by molestation.
Sadly, as stated in the original argument those who take sexual liberty with children are career molesters. I am not talking about someone who cops a feel or slaps a child on the rear. I am talking about someone who commits a crime against a child. The child must live with what has been done to them and the perpetrator is often back on the street some day with the full knowledge by the state that he/she is likely to commit the same crime again on another child. Some may return with a vengeance to the same child.
With regard to my comments on narcotics this is a platform and if laws are to ultimately be drawn from this platform then certainly degrees of violation would have to be taken into consideration. Do I want to hang someone who is caught with an amount of a marijuana that is for their personal use? No. Might I react differently to someone who pushes heroin, cocaine or some other narcotic and ruins lives? You bet your *ss.
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This is unbelievabable. Automatic death penalty for assault, molestation, rape, attempted murder, and narcotics? Your assertion that child molesters are "career molesters" and will molest repeatedly has no validation whatsoever. Even if you had some studying showing that most molesters reoffend, that is not taking into account the fact that most molesters never even get charged. There ARE people who molest and don't do it again. Sometimes people do inappropriate things because they were abused themselves or have emotional problems, they are not necessarily pedophiles that just want to have sex with children because they like children. There are millions of people who commit the crimes you listed and CHANGE their lives for the better. They have wives, mothers, children, brothers and sisters, and you want the state to kill them because they committed one crime, that wasn't even murder? Apparently the tea party does not support small government and freedom because they support the government having way too much power and cruel and unusual punishment.
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Assault? No, I am speaking about sexual assault, sexual assault against a child. This was the point of my comments. Those studies I have heard referenced indicate that child molesters and child rapists will repeat their crimes. The death penalty would prevent that, don't you think? You say this has no validity. What are your credentials on this subject? I admit that I am a layperson, I have been swayed by arguments from psychologists, and sociologists that I have seen interviewed on television, usually after some small child has been raped and murdered by someone who was on furlough or who has completed their sentence on pedophile charges. I did find a study in the Wall Street Journal. http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/how-likely-are-sex-offenders-to-repeat-their-crimes-258/ Apparently the research is not complete largely because of the difficulty posed by performing the research. Of particular note to me is the following:
Meanwhile, the existing research raises tough questions about the relative danger child molesters pose to society. Their likelihood of being convicted for a crime after release is much lower than average for all criminals released from prison, and even for all sex offenders, at least in the short term, as measured by a Bureau of Justice Statistics study and others. Yet their crimes, when they do repeat child abuse, are unusually harmful, and their victims particularly vulnerable.
Your assertion that this punishment should not be applied because most offenders are never caught is sheer lunacy. Would you also then disagree with me that when we find someone in this country illegally I believe we should deport that individual or when we find someone who has robbed a bank I believe we should put him/her in jail all because most don't get caught?
There may be people who molest and don't do it again but remember, I did say that there would naturally need to be a reference in any law based on my platform that introduced degrees of the crime. We are speaking hypothetically and it is much easier to deal with real examples but when someone rapes a child I believe that once is enough. I see nothing cruel or unusual about this. To the contrary, I see the crime as cruel and unusual.
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You have in your list of crimes that should have an automatic death penalty "aggravated assault." The death penalty is not going to "prevent" sexual crimes because it isn't going to change the underlying social problems which cause people to do these things in the first place. The majority of offenders will never get caught, a certain number of offenders would be killed by the state but sexual abuse and rape would continue, obviously. You are speaking about these criminals as if it is black and white, rapists go out and rape repeatedly so if we kill them off then that will stop rape. That's not how it works, it's a very complex issue, a person may rape or molest someone and then change or grow, they learned certain things in their childhood and they can change through interventions.
I never said we should not punish people for crimes because the majority of offenders don't get caught. I am saying that killing sexual predators is not going to make the problem go away because for every person that would get the death penalty for molestation, there would be 8 more molesters still out there. The social problems would still be there, and in the mean time people who have committed crimes are treated as if they are evil monsters, not people, and have no chance of ever changing. Why should the government have the ability to take a person's life away because they made a mistake? If you want to argue the death penalty for repeat offenders then that is one thing, but you are saying that a person should automatically be put to death if they rape one time, traffick illegal narcots one time, attempt murder one time, and all those other things. You are also assuming that our justice system is perfect and no one is ever going to be wrongfully convicted. Sociology really comes into play here, the police are going to handle each situation based on their on life experiences, and studies show that certain minorities are more likely to be sentenced to death even when committing the same crimes as whites. It could even be something as simple as being in the wrong place at the wrong time, police will sometimes convict people of things they really didn't even do. Did you know it is possible to convicted of murder even if you did not actually kill the person? Our justice system has many problems, and your proposal of killing all those people for those crimes is absurd. And as for my credentials, I have a psychology degree.
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No the death penalty won't keep John Jones from raping and murdering his victim just because John Doe was just executed but John Doe won't do it again.
We have had forty or fifty years of unadulterated nonsense dealing with the underlying social problems of the perpetrator while we turned our backs on the victims of their crimes. When we began to cry for and study why the perpetrator acted as they did and we turned our backs on the victims things only got worse. It is high time to stop the nonsense and punish those who can't seem to live in our society without preying on other people. I care not what kind of a childhood they had, what kind of neighborhood they lived in or how unfair society was to them, etc. If you do, fine, go stop the next one from happening but this one must pay the penalty. I refuse to feel sorry for the felon. The felon deserves no fate that is greater than that of his victims.
I have no idea what the statistics are but accepting yours for a moment, I'd rather have eight molesters out there, still in society than nine. If we take 11% at a time this will eventually reduce the number then to seven, etc. We are talking about horrid crimes and yes, I favor treating the perpetrator as evil not like people. I am pleased that you would consider the death penalty for a repeat offender. I wonder how the person's second victim would feel about that?
With today's technology, guilt is more readily determined but yes despite all the DNA technology available it could still be possible. I am willing to take that risk even if the person eventually accused might be me. Our system says proof beyond a shadow of a doubt and this is good enough for me. I believe courts need to relax their rules of evidence and begin to seek the truth instead of seeking to perfect their process or protecting the rights of the accused to the extent that truth can never be determined.
A psychology degree is worth what? Do you have a second degree? Are you a psychologist or an MD? I personally believe that many of society's problems were created by people with liberal arts educations and absolutely no common sense.
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