The unofficial death penalty thread!

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Death Penalty?

Yes
23
58%
No
17
43%
 
Total votes: 40

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Tsyroc
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Post by Tsyroc »

neoolong wrote:
Tsyroc wrote:
C.S.Strowbridge wrote:I think if you've commited a harsh enough crime you should be killed and cut up for spare parts.
I read a short story once that touched on this idea. Basically, it started out as you suggested and then demand grew to the point that people who put other's lives at rise, to the equivalent of speeding in your car, would recieve the slice & dice sentence. The story is set way in the future and the government of Earth is a bit extreme, although I could see the US progressing on a similar track.
Isn't that a slippery slope fallacy? Just because it could happen if we move to a more extreme punishment doesn't mean that we will. Though the U.S. can be pretty fucked up.
I think your right about the fallacy. Certainly that story was taking things to an extreme to make a point about that particular sci-fi society. I do think it is a good idea to consider what *might* happen but insisting that it will happen is stupid.
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Post by Guest »

Here in the UK we abolished the death penalty. I believe it was a mistake. Look at the number of peadophiles and child murdereds that have emerged here. The only solution to some crimes is to kill the perps. Peadophiles and mass murderers NEVER reforme they only get worse and the way the goverment is here they'd get away with it. At the moment we live in a blameless society. Ian Huntly the man accused to killing 2 wee girls in england already had the left wing appologiest out to help him. "It's not his fault, he was abused as a child" and similar excuses. IF and when the man is found guilty beyond a doubt of his crimes he must die, he has to die. The more criminals get away with it the more criminals will multiply.
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Pu-239
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Post by Pu-239 »

C.S.Strowbridge wrote:I think if you've commited a harsh enough crime you should be killed and cut up for spare parts.
Yea make them "donors". Since people need the organs they would accept them anyway. But only do this when the evidence is very obvious. However I think rotting in a prison for the rest of your life without parole is worse than death. If I had life sentence I would shoot myself.
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Post by Soontir C'boath »

I say no and let them rot in jail. I prefer them to have pain for a whole lifetime then a quick death.

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Post by weemadando »

Pu-239 wrote:
C.S.Strowbridge wrote:I think if you've commited a harsh enough crime you should be killed and cut up for spare parts.
Yea make them "donors". Since people need the organs they would accept them anyway. But only do this when the evidence is very obvious. However I think rotting in a prison for the rest of your life without parole is worse than death. If I had life sentence I would shoot myself.
Exactly why I think a "for the term of their natural life" sentence to be served in solitary confinement is the best way about it. And I mean solitary, like not even the guards will talk to them solitary...
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Post by Priesto »

We have no right to judge.A person who is sick and needs help would be better served spending the rest of their natural lives thinking about what they did.That in itself is punishment.Attempting to rehabilitate the person in the mean time would be good.Killing one, serves no purpose.It makes me sick to see young kids tryed as adults, only to have their lives thrown away.Making a thirteen year old better by putting him in prison for the rest of his life so he can grow up and become an even harder and heartless person.Ok I'm going off topic now. :wink:
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Post by neoolong »

Priesto wrote:We have no right to judge.A person who is sick and needs help would be better served spending the rest of their natural lives thinking about what they did.That in itself is punishment.Attempting to rehabilitate the person in the mean time would be good.Killing one, serves no purpose.It makes me sick to see young kids tryed as adults, only to have their lives thrown away.Making a thirteen year old better by putting him in prison for the rest of his life so he can grow up and become an even harder and heartless person.Ok I'm going off topic now. :wink:
What do you mean we have no right to judge? If you decide to commit a crime in this country you give us the right to judge you. It's your choice to commit the crime here so you take your chances. You don't like it, go somewhere else and commit the crime.

A person that is sick mentally would probably not spend the rest of their lives thinking about what they did as a punishment. A sociopath wouldn't care about what he did and a psychopath wouldn't understand that he did something wrong.

Once a kid gets to be a certain age, he is old enough so that he can distinguish between right and wrong in large issues such as murder. We are lenient to young kids if they do small stuff, like steal candy from a store because they are still learning the exact details of right and wrong as well as learning to control their impulses. We still punish them though. However, they should have already learned that murder is wrong, and therefore should be punished accordingly.
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Post by Priesto »

You're no different than the person, only you'd have support in putting someone to death.We've all done bad things in our lives, of course murder wouldn't be one of them.That doesn't mean we have a right though.Even the completely insane can be saved, and as already said, death is not punishment.Death is the way out, the way a murderer would want to go out which is wy it serves no purpose.Pain is the more sufficient punishment.A 9 year old knows right from wrong, that doesn't mean the death penalty would apply.A young person has a better chance at changing over time than an older person, so I don't agree with that but it's cool anyways.
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Post by Coyote »

Priesto wrote:You're no different than the person, only you'd have support in putting someone to death....That doesn't mean we have a right though.....A young person has a better chance at changing over time than an older person, so I don't agree with that but it's cool anyways.
Of course we have a right to judge someone who craps up our society by taking innocent lives. Anyone who bows out by saying 'we have no right to judge' is abrogating social responsibility. Once a person starts to live by that coda, where does it stop? You can apply it to child molesters, drunk drivers, etc... after all, 'we have no right to judge...'

And no young person will change if they find out that crime is easy to get away with because nothing will really happen to them. I agree that we shouldn't lock them up with other criminals, but something must be done with them to confine them from society until they know better.
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Post by neoolong »

Priesto wrote:You're no different than the person, only you'd have support in putting someone to death.We've all done bad things in our lives, of course murder wouldn't be one of them.That doesn't mean we have a right though.Even the completely insane can be saved, and as already said, death is not punishment.Death is the way out, the way a murderer would want to go out which is wy it serves no purpose.Pain is the more sufficient punishment.A 9 year old knows right from wrong, that doesn't mean the death penalty would apply.A young person has a better chance at changing over time than an older person, so I don't agree with that but it's cool anyways.
By entering into society you give up certain freedoms. Even here. One of them is acting without consequence. You have social responsibility forced onto you. If you don't like it then you can find another place to commit a crime. The social responsibility was already here, you want to do the crime then you take your chances of getting away free. The state killing is different than the criminal because the state has the implicit agreement that it is allowed to kill those that it deems deserve it. If you still want to commit a crime you do so at your own peril.

How can the completely insane be saved? Like I said a psycho doesn't know the difference between right and wrong and a sociopath doesn't care.

Death is deters people from killing. At the very least it deters the people executed from killing again. Pain as punishment, akin to torture. I don't think the U.S. justice system would alloy cruel and unusual punishment.

I never said a nine-year old necessarily deserves the death penalty. 18 years old as an adult is pretty arbitrary when it comes to matters of right and wrong. By a certain age the big things in life about right and wrong should have already been made clear. It needs to be determined by a case to case basis, but even though they are developing kids should have figured out right and wrong.

Yes, a young person might have a better chance, but so what, he still did the crime in the first place. Unless he was mentally sick, he still should have known what right and wrong are. You don't just teach a kid right and wrong after he kills someone when he's 13.
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Re: The unofficial death penalty thread!

Post by jegs2 »

Vympel wrote:Sound off here!

Give reasons.
I believe that the death penalty should be used, although not in its current form. Is it a deterrent? Hmmm, not much of one I think. But what it does do is destroy the criminal, which accomplishes the following:

1. The criminal is dead
2. Being dead, he cannot be later released (or escape) from prison to commit further crimes.
3. Being dead, taxpayers don't have to pay to feed and board him.
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Post by Darth Wong »

Also:

1) Being dead, he is now in the same state as his victim. This is symmetry.

2) Being dead, he can no longer torment the families of his victims. Did you know that there are murderers who have sued their victims' families for defamation, because they testified against them in court? I'm not kidding. There are murderers who send taunting hate mail to their victim's families, murderers who write stories about their victims' families and try to get them published, etc.

3) Being dead, he gives the victim's family a sense of closure.
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Post by neoolong »

Actually the death penalty is a deterrence. It deters those criminals from ever committing a crime because they are now dead.
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