Just days before inmate Freddie Owens is set to die by lethal injection in South Carolina, the friend whose testimony helped send Owens to prison is saying he lied to save himself from the death chamber.
Owens is set to die at 6 p.m. Friday at a Columbia prison for the killing of a Greenville convenience store clerk in 1997.
But Owens’ lawyers on Wednesday filed a sworn statement from his co-defendant Steven Golden late Wednesday to try to stop South Carolina from carrying out its first execution in more than a decade.
Prosecutors reiterated that several other witnesses testified that Owens told them he pulled the trigger. And the state Supreme Court refused to stop Owens’ execution last week after Golden, in a sworn statement, said that he had a secret deal with prosecutors that he never told the jury about.
From a strict utilitarian “this person is an active threat to the lives of others and cannot be rehabilitated” perspective, I get it. We kill wild animals for a lot less. Given perfect knowledge I don’t have a hard line against execution.
But that’s a hell of a hypothetical. Lots of violence is circumstantial and not necessarily and indication of future behavior, especially if we actually gave a shit about mental health and improving the living conditions of struggling people. Far too many convictions are improper or outright incorrect. Society should have a responsibility to care for the worst of itself. It all stacks up to “do we trust ourselves, and our government, with something so extreme and irreversible?”
Well it always costs more, in the US Justice system, to execute someone than to keep them in prison for life. So that alone throws out the utilitarian approach. We’re all paying extra just to kill him now than if we just kept him locked up for life because he might be a direct threat to everyone and not be rehabilitated.
It’s not that cut-and-dry. Yes the monetary cost is higher, mostly due to appeals and such and I’m not suggesting we do things to make the conviction and sentence less certain. But there’s an argument to be made that a lifetime of solitary imprisonment, necessary for this hypothetical criminal, is more cruel than death.
I’m not sure there are people so unrecoverable that they need a lifetime in solitary. I’m fact I’m not sure how you pass the cruel and unusual criteria with that. Even in super max prisons for people who WANT to go out and kill strangers for example, they are able to regularly socialize and exercise and have mental stimulation. So no I don’t think there are a lot of people where spending extra money to kill them would be “more humane”. Seems more like a straw man/hypothetical than a practical reality.
I did literally use the word “hypothetical” to couch my statement. It should probably be reserved for people whose existence is dangerous to society as part of a larger movement, cult leaders or treasonous generals or some such that have a substantial influence beyond their confinement. I know: martyrdom, you can’t kill an idea, etc. Not sure I buy it.
There are ways to silence those people without killing them though. Theoretically that is the reason that GITMO exists.
Guantanamo Bay is a pretty rough argument to hold up, considering its history of human rights abuse and the fact that it’s stolen land from another sovereign state. (“Perpetual lease” for a fucking pittance. Bullying weak neighbors more like.) Not exactly on a clear moral high ground.
It wasn’t presented as a moral high ground, I don’t think
That’s the reason the intelligence agencies seek influence in people’s lives. You can silence a person simply by disrupting their income. If they overcome those measures, you can escalate, but the “minimum” intervention is to fuck with their life and relationships.
Perhaps it should be a lifetime of imprisonment, with access to a painless suicide option.
That’s a very coercive relationship, I don’t think there’s an ethical way to implement “optional” suicide when the only alternative is the other party having total control over your life.
Yes it is a very coercive relationship. It should only be used on people who have proven incapable of having non-coercive relationships with others.
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But we can stop people from killing. We can get into questions of mercy killing when we start talking about supermax for life. But at the end of the day once someone’s in custody and known to be extremely violent they’re able to be stopped from killing people.
If that is your only benchmark for morality, sure.