how do you feel about capital punishment
um i'm i'm definitely against it definitely against it
yeah
for what reasons
uh i think that they make a lot the system makes a lot of mistakes and a lot of innocent people are probably convicted of crimes and it's bad enough when um
you know when it's not capital punishment but when it's capital punishment when you find out later it's too late
um-hum
yeah definitely yeah i i i agree that you know capital punishment is bad but just more for the economic for economic reasons because i i don't think it acts as a deterrent
and i don't think that um and and and for what i've what i've read it costs a lot more to actually you know go through the process of condemning someone and killing them than it does to actually just feed for the end end you know
yeah it dose because because of uh the the legal system that we have now and i'm sure you can make it cheaper if you wanted i don't think you should
uh-huh
but you can make it cheaper to kill people by not allowing all the appeals and as a matter of fact i think they are starting to cut back on some of them at the Supreme Court
uh-huh
um i forgot what area it is but regarding uh capital punishment there are some cases that won't automatically get reviewed by the Supreme Court when they used to be
uh-huh
so what happens is you have to pay all these high powered lawyers to keep on arguing the case over and over again uh while they're waiting for capital punishment which is what happened uh which happens a lot a friend of mine uh does that type of work down in uh
um-hum
down in Tennessee he's he's an attorney he represents people on death row
is he prosecution
he's he's he's for the defendant okay
yeah yeah and i did criminal defense work for a while so i kind of have a a um let's say um
uh-huh
cynical about the system and the way people are convicted of crimes not that i think i do believe that most people are charged with crimes and convicted certainly people that are convicted of crimes most of them are probably guilty anyway
yeah
uh-huh
uh-huh
i mean i'm not denying that but there are a few that probably aren't
yeah it's uh i mean i've you know i've seen people that you know definitely got screwed by the system
yeah so
before yeah um is do they have the death penalty in New York
no huh um they do in Georgia right yeah they
yeah they do um yeah i'm not sure how often we how often this actually it seems like about once a year they execute someone i don't really keep you know i only keep up after when the last one was
right well that's the thing i mean i happened to have been talking to somebody at at uh work today about that
um-hum
um-hum
just happened to come up in conversation and so i was surprised when i got this topic come up and uh the
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the bottom line was that uh what was i saying uh nobody in Tennessee has been convicted has been executed since nineteen executed since nineteen
uh seventy uh what seventy three or whenever it was that they ruled that the death penalty was cruel and unconstitutional
constitutional
yeah and whether it was unconstitutional and then like i said they came back and um like the nineteen eighties and and determined that if they have like a separate trial to determine the death penalty they call them bifricated trials
uh-huh
um they have a separate trial just to determine whether they're going to give the death penalty or not
uh-huh
um then then that's okay they can it becomes constitutional i guess it's like a procedural protection that that people have
um-hum
um but nobody's been nobody's been executed since they've brought that back and
in Tennessee
yeah in Tennessee so it puts a lot of pressure on them
you know one thing that i've always that i've one idea that i've heard that that that i've you know kind of had some sympathy for is though that you know when you have someone that's
you know that that that's you know that that you are going to be stuck is going to be stuck with life imprisonment you know or two hundred and fifty years you know none of it served you know at the same time that you know to give them the choice of having the death penalty
yeah
it seems you know if you lock him away for the rest of his life you know
yeah but it's kind of like under under duress anyway but you know kind of saying to someone all right now that we've got you by the chops because you decide whether you're going to die or not but but yeah that's what that guy Gary Gilmore did right
uh-huh
uh-huh yeah he he told us his yeah he said that he wanted to die at that point
that guy
right and they you know kind of chose his way to death which is is kind of interesting but um
yeah i i personally think people have the right to die if they want so yeah if you're in jail if you're in jail for life then you should be able to commit suicide if that's what you want
um-hum it
which is basically what that is but
you know it really bothers me that in historical cases where you know someone tries to kill themselves in prison you know on death row and you know where they've actually you know spent you know thousands of dollars reviving them you know just to kill them
yeah sure
and it always so it seemed to be some sort of
i did some i did some environmental environmental law as well and and one of the i remember in studying something about the F D A they was it what the hell were they trying to do they were trying to get a a a drug
it was a drug that they were using for the death penalty and they right they tried to get it proved safe before the F D A would approve it
um-hum
oh like in Texas
