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Kentucky lethal injection upheld by Supreme Court
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If only that was why China does it that way.
Why not life in prison? They are effectively removed from society in both situations.
Actually, we can't. The two are pretty tightly linked.
Even barring the discussion of wether or not we should sanction executions at all we should never allow innocents to be execute. The fallibility of the justice system makes this a powerful argument as to why we should not execute people at all. If a mistake is made it cannot be undone.
Yep. Too bad there's no place like that.
It is the perfect example that the debate about "cruel and unusual" or "humane" methods of execution aren't really about what is least bad (don't want to say "best" here) for the person being executed.
Why? Removing them from society, we have LWOP statutes for that. Deterrence? Doesn't work. There is no justification.
And honestly given the choice between 23 hours a day in a 6x6 cell or death, I'd choose death.
We'd been successfully doing it so far. Discussion of means of killing people in a painless manner. We assume that capital punishment exists.
I like how you say this as if it weren't accompanied by its own whole other set of important and difficult problems. Like "oh, we have LWOP, fixed!". It merits a chuckle.
Because "the wicked" are "our fellows". Bad people are still people. If we have to kill them there's no reason why we shouldn't make a token effort to do so as humanely as possible. Provided we wish to continue to claim to be human ourselves, and to be in any position to pass judgment on people like the BTK killer who torture their victims to death.
We can try but that stuff will creep in. Especially because someone's argument that pain during execution doesn't matter is probably very closely tied with their views about the reasoning behind capital punishment.
My belief is that no matter how painless, capital punishment is wrong.
Magic Online - Bertro
I just feel we should show them the same kindness that they showed their victims.
And my belief is that straining the corrections system more than we already do only makes it harder to reform it in such a way as to allow for actual rehabilitation where possible so that people who go in for ten years can find a job other than "armed robbery" when they get back out. Economic realities tend to fuck with pretty ideals.
So you approve of their behavior. Good for you, that's terrifying.
I don't follow your train of thought, but way to go ad hominim.
Because you are no better than them if you seek to kill them in a knowingly painful manner, maybe even worse if they lack the capacity to understand human suffering. The capacity to kill in this way is innate in mankind, something in their past or in their biological makeup has caused them to be this way. We who can help it are better than our biology or our history and if cessation of life is necessary, should have the forethought and capability to do it in a humane fashion, else we are no better than the sadists.
It's not ad hominem, it's a restatement of your own stated ideal, coupled with a remark as to how safe I feel knowing how popular that ideal is. You explicitly stated that you condone doing what they did to another human being. Many of such psychopaths as I referred to also believe themselves to be justified in performing those actions upon another human being who they deem deserving of it. You explicitly approve of their behavior. Torturing people to death to punish them. That's a little different from killing out of necessity. The only way that even works is via the pleasure you derive from doing it, they're not actually learning anything by being tortured to death and even if they do their learning it won't do anything more to stop what they did from being done again.
You can make a pretty clean-kill on a human being with existing rifles of common calibres. It would certainly be more reliable and effective in that purpose than the chair, hanging, guillotines or the 3-drug cocktail.
How can 20 years of an unjust prison sentence be undone? We can't give a person those years back.
Non-capital punishment doesn't give us a chance to undo mistakes. At best it gives us a longer window in which to catch the initial error and avoid compounding it further.
You simply cannot do that after an execution. That person's life is gone forever.
No it doesn't. Not in our corrections-system. Far more could be done while they're in to help them get back on their feet when they get out to keep them from coming back whether they're guilty or innocent. The objective of corrections needs to be more than just containment, the objective should be lower recidivism. That means they need to have the option when they get out.
I'm talking about an innocent person who's in jail for 10 years before we find out it was a mistake. The point here is that a mistake of LWOP CAN be corrected to SOME EXTENT. A mistaken execution cannot. At all.
Once again, a system with unlimited resources would undoubtedly go a great way toward improving the criminal justice system. However there are certain economic realities to consider, economic realities that kill innocent people just as well as wrongful convictions, but in much greater numbers.
EDIT: I guess you're saying that spending time in prison is the same as being dead because of how bad the prison system is?
Wrong. With a LWOP system we lose the ability to change, to reform the system. That shit isn't cheap, and nor is putting up people we have no hope of rehabilitating, and so we're left unable to rehabilitate either one, and thus those that get out come out and recidivate.
Actually because either way innocent people are dying, but if we don't rehabilitate effectively in corrections (as now) we kill more innocents in the long run.
"An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." - Ghandi
I prefer to prove that I am better then them.
Oh well.
Oh, wait...
You seem to think that a LWOP system doesn't increase exponentially in cost, continuously, forever. Let me direct you to the financial situation of General Motors at present.
Ever heard of a concept called "interest?" If you knew anything about finances, you'd know that, in fact, costs don't increase exponentially in cost, continuously, forever. They, in fact, decrease in cost in comparison to the balloon payment you have to make for a death penalty trial. You also seem to forget that even if a defendent isn't sentenced to death in a capital trial, we still have to pay for the costs of that trial.
If you're going to talk about the costs of the death penalty, I'd suggest you have at least a passing familiarity with the actual numbers, rather than just pulling them from whole cloth out of your ass.
Please tell me you didn't say something that dumb.
First, LWOP is meant to be the ultimate punishment, reserved only for the most heinous of crimes. I don't think anyone here has advocated a policy of "lock them all up and throw away the key." Second. the main stressor of the prison system right now is the number of non-violent drug crimes that are being pushed through the courts, thanks to poorly designed drug laws.
As someone with a fear of needles and drawn out traumatic shit, I'll take a shotgun to the face over LI any day. Even dropping me out of a plane into the ocean, or releasing me in Jurassic Park or something. Fuck needles and letting the chance of long, excruciating death rest in the hands of a correctional officer.
For example:
Death penalty imposition: $3 million
Number of years, assuming zero inflation, $3million/50000 = 60 years.
So as long as the criminal doesn't live longer than 60 years in prison, the death penalty is cost-saving. That's assuming we value not murdering innocent people at zero - presumably we want to give justice a positive value, so even if LWOP was somewhat more expensive, it would make sense from a public policy standpoint.