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An' dat's why ye' git yers!
See, I don't get that. Why (probably) should they be killed?
This isn't wholly on topic, but pedophilia is not a crime.
I believe dead people deserve to die. That's why I'm a part of the anti-zombie effort
Why?
The point is that a large percentage of the people who "preferred death over life in prison" were not mentally sound when they made that decision. This takes away from the argument that "more people volunteer to die than exhaust their appeals, therefore death is a lesser penalty than life in prison."
Damn flip-floppers can't expect to have it both ways.
Yes, but who gets to say? Quite a few British generals would have made such a judgment against Washington.
Yeah, but I'm still not getting why we should kill them. I mean, assuming we have captured the person(s) in question, and they're no longer able to harm others as they are incarcerated. Certainly, killing dangerous elements is necessary in certain contexts (war, immediate dangers of other sorts), but I don't get the mentality that says that someone who is not able to harm anyone should die.
Now, how is that mindset any different than the entire institution of the death penalty when it is carried out years later while the convict is safely behind bars? That's the whole problem. We're not only dragging ourselves down the level of murder, but the worst form of murder.
Killing someone who is an immediate threat or at large - such as your terrorist leader - is fine, it is self-defence and self-preservation. Someone behind bars? Not at all.
I think he was talking about a Kira context.
My point was that you stated "It's not a deterrent, especially when you're dealing with a crime of passion or someone not fully able to appreciate their actions." However that logic has nothing unique to it about the death penalty. You could continue that thought into saying we shouldn't have any laws because they don't deter crimes of passion.
You could easily argue that life in prison deprives someone of security and life in any meaningful form. My point is that it's not so black and white whether the death penalty is worse than life in prison. You are assigning random words as values to these two things and giving one of them more words than the other. I could say that life in prison deprives someone of freedom, the ability to vote, the ability to live life without being anally raped, and the ability to go hunting... it's just not that easy to say that the death penalty is so much more horrible than life in prison.
(All of this is me playing the devil's advocate. I'm not pro-death penalty. I just don't think it's as simple as many make it out to be.)
i think some people (including myself) feel that people should be punished for bad actions even if they are committed in the past and even if they will never be able to commit bad actions again in the future.
The death penalty should be used more often if anything in my opinion. Especially for sex offenders. Frankly there are some people who no matter what we do are going to do horrible things to others. Why should we keep a man alive for 70+ years in prison when he is a danger to every inmate and every guard. Why should we protect the lives of those people who cannot be rehabilitated and will prey on others again if given the chance, any chance to hurt someone.
Perhaps ill end up the one innocent man in a thousand, but if that stops 300 rapes and murders than throw the switch ill die content. People out there are dying everyday for worse odds.
i apologize if it looked like i was interpreting what you were saying. i wasn't.
i think we've all danced this dance before though.
deterrence is great and should be our main goal. but it's not the only goal. not for me and many others at least.
Again, this is an argument for safer prisons. Consider that most death row inmates necessarily (due to appeals) spend in excess of 15 years in prison before being executed (if they even make it that far). The "safety of prison guards and other inmates" argument really won't take you very far here.
Let me repeat myself: there is no evidence that the death penalty deters any more than life imprisonment. So, no, it doesn't stop 300 rapes and murders. It just kills people, at a high cost, with no real benefit to anyone.
On the other hand, executing a terrorist leader turns him into a martyr. In fact, imprisonment is probably a better bet for preventing attacks. You deny terrorists a recruiting device by demonstrating that their leader isn't so holy after all.
I was gonna reply to your other post but then I remembered you from the last thread. :P
It does if you stop waiting 15 years to shoot them, and if we just shot them it would be at a lower cost with a benefit to society due to safer prisons and lower costs of supporting prisoners.
That would necessarily entail killing a lot more innocent people. You just don't understand. There's an inherent tradeoff between justice and efficiency on this issue. The more appeals you deny someone to speed up the process (or, for that matter, reduce the cost), the more innocent people you kill. That's the problem with the death sentence: once you've administered it, there's no going back.
If innocent people are being found guilty it would indicate a fundamental flaw in the justice system. What is an acceptable margin of error for the justice system? How many appeals does a person need? 5? 10? Either the system works, or it doesnt. Would three appeals be sufficient? If your found guilty in three trials can we then just shoot them as opposed to waiting 15 years?
It's not a question of multiple trials - it's dealing with questions of legal procedure. Suppose, for example, that there's a Fourth Amendment question about an important piece of evidence in the trial. It might take years for that particular question to go through the courts, particularly so since appeals courts are much more likely to grant appeals for death penalty cases. And then, even if it's finally decided definitively, there might be other issues, about that piece of evidence or other pieces of evidence or questions of trial procedure, which the convicted man's attorneys could raise. Each of these appeals has to be either heard and denied or considered and ruled on, and that simply takes time, can't be sped up, and can't be skipped. There are no easy shortcuts.
The key difference is that with life imprisonment, the appeals process takes place while the penalty is being administered - while the guy is in prison. With the death penalty, the appeals process by necessity must take place, in its entirety, before the penalty is administered - to do otherwise would be to deny the convicted man his right to due process of law.
I've heard a lot of people espouse this "quick trial, short appeals, cheap sentence" idea, but the fact of the matter is that it results in gross injustice, and in the killing of innocent people. Even the protracted, deliberate process we have now has repeatedly been demonstrated to have killed innocent people. If we sped things up, this problem could only get worse.
I agree, and sorry about the earlier misunderstanding.
In my opinion, no one in favor of the death penalty has addressed this. What is the drive behind this desire to "punish" people that "deserve" it? Punishment (all punishment, not just the death penalty) is nothing more than falsely legitimized vengeance.
I don't understand this whole "I love the death penalty, let's improve the justice process so that we can keep killing people without killing so many innocents" thing. If we're going to spend money improving our justice system, how about we abolish the death penalty and spend more time actually rehabilitating people?
It was brought up in the first couple pages, but the fact that many criminals stay criminals is not a surprise given the state of our prison system. I mean, you throw a bunch of people in a big box, completely ignore inmate abuses of all kinds, and then act surprised when everyone comes out even meaner than when they went in? (Otherwise known as "let's all laugh at prison rape because it's funny and they probably deserved it.") Until our prison systems become something more than a school playground filled with angry bullies, it's ridiculous to claim that rehabilitation can't work.
Also:
Are you kidding me? I don't care if the death penalty stops 300,000 rapes and murders, if I'm shot in the head by my own government for a crime I didn't commit I will be anything but fucking content.
Because you need to pay the price for your actions?
Punishment is a person accepting consequences for their actions. You commit a wrong against someone, or society? You have to pay the price.
The act of murder, taking away another persons life, is probably one of the greatest wrongs you can commit against another (if not the greatest) the price, of course, would be your own life. Thus, the death penalty.Of course, such a heavy punishment needs the massive amount of watching, appeals, etc that it currently gets.
At least, that's my view on it.
Retribution is not, and should not, be the goal of our justice system.
Also, it is not murder when the State takes a life?
(lordy, i don't believe this is happening...)
I agree. The government cannot follow 'an eye for an eye' philosophy when making policy for the justice system. This is my major concern with the death penalty.
"This is where I say something profound and you bow, so lets just skip to your part."
What?
Justice, is, essentially, the innocent not being punished for crimes they didn't commit, and the guilty being punished for the crimes they commit.
Punishment not for some sense of revenge, or to make people feel better. It's because it needs to be done because all actions have consequences.
No because, remember what I said. A person who is being given the death penalty has lost the right to their own life. They are paying the price for the murder they committed.
What else is there for the worst of the worst crimes? Life in prison isn't much better, personally I think it's less humane in some ways. You're going to be spending decades in some small cell, cramped, unable to have any freedom at all. At least in death you're getting peace and release.
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think that we should be hanging people left and right. The Death Penalty needs to be freaking rare, because it's permanent, you can't take it back. It's only for the most extreme cases.
Here in VT we don't have the death penalty and in general are pretty lax when it comes to punishing criminals. However, we may get to have an execution for the first time since '54 thanks to this asshole:
http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=felltrial
Edit: He crossed state lines from VT into NY so it became a federal matter.
There's no helping this person reintegrate into society for his crimes. There is no forgiveness that can be given to this man. He consciously carjacked a woman in a Price Chopper parking lot, kidnapped her, and then beat her to death as she prayed and begged for her life (this on top of the other two murders he committed). He'll never understand her fear and suffering and at the very worst he'll be given a merciful death by the state. And this is after a long process of appeals and a waste of tax payer money.
It really comes down to the accidents, for me. Of all possible punishments, it's the one that ultimately causes the most harm if it's in error and the least good if it isn't. Prison should be for rehabilitation, not vengeance.
Is this axiomatic for you, or is it the result of some kind of value system? That's a genuine question, because a lot of people here seem to take it for granted that "paying the price" is some sort of obvious universal rule.
I also think your mention of accepting consequences is inappropriate. If I'm an asshole to all my friends and they stop hanging out with me, then you might say I need to accept the consequences of my actions - I need to acknowledge that I'm the one that's responsible for what happened. Accepting consequences is a psychological phenomenon. It's disingenuous to say someone should "accept the consequences" when what you really mean is that they should "get ready to be locked up and/or executed by me."
A "justice system" is not the same as some concept of "ultimate justice" or whatever you might believe that is. I'm talking about the criminal justice system and how it works in America. The State is not a vehicle for punishment of criminals because they did something bad and therefore must have something bad done to them. The point of the criminal justice system is to catch and stop crime, deter crime, and rehabilitate those who commit crime.
A person who has been given the death penalty is alive until the State takes away that life. How is that not murder? Knowingly taking the life of another person? Or I guess once you get sentenced to the death penalty you are no longer a living human being?
I wonder if those who were executed would agree they got "peace and release" through the death penalty process.
What this thread needs is some love.